A Moving Time, Parte the Seconde

Further grand adventures that occurred include.

• 3 innumerable quests to IKEA in search of critical components for a new household
• finally finding time to watch my Xmas dvd of Dredd and pronouncing it a 4 star experience
• the successful procurement of Young Jim into the Tuesday Knights
• finishing the grand epic Wheel of Tedium with A Memory of Light which turned out to be quite a good read and wrap up of the story line with minimal braid tugging, earning itself a 4 star rating
• a mammoth Sunday's gaming recommencement with Badger, Pirate Dave, Young Jim, Legion, FridgePower, Judge Mingus, Ball Boy, Amoeba, ElfBoy, Gavman, lot's of boardgames and fun for all in The Gaming Garage
• what can only be described as a devouring of the first season of Game of Thrones
• much attendance at various supervisor training from which Sidekick will benefit - particularly the revelations about bullying
• extreme computer rollout busyness - you all know how much one loves that
• Pirate Dave's emergence as Mister Boardgames
• the return of footy watching
• a quite enjoyable read of Accellerando by Charles Stross
• finally finding time to watch my Xmas dvd of Prometheus and pronouncing it a 3 star experience
• a return to footy excursions with The Great Sandro and one's first ever Queen's Birthday match attendance
• a good catchup with The Viking Hat GM, Exploding Ninja Pony, The Mad Magyar, and Frenchy, as TVHGM and progeny celebrated their co-located birthdays with abundant cake
• a second Gaming Sunday, thus proving that there will be an ongoing pattern

And that catches us all up to an incredibly detailed level sothat you all know what has been going on in the wonderful world of The Tales.

See you all next week.

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Birth days, Various

The past couple of weekends have been the domain of birthday celebration attendance for Salsa Girl and I.

Whereas the past couple of weeks have been the domain of rolling out new printers at work - the contrast is quite noticeable when Salsa Girl is not there escorting one through the event.


Anyway, the ageing celebrations kicked off with the early afternoon shindig for The Viking Hat GM and sprog. The usual suspects were there causing the usual mayhem - Exploding Ninja Pony, The Mad Magyar, and even Frenchy with his double daughter dance of destruction.
Fatherhood seems to have calmed down my Viking hatted friend as he was as subdued as a man suffering a heavy man-cold during the celebration. There was good food on offer - although bringing a plate oneself does seem to defeat the purpose of a free feed - still, I swapped a quiche for some chocolate cake so I know I came out ahead.


After that lovely reunion it was on to the big celebration for Mr Magpie (no relation). Fondly remembering the triumph that was his rain and alcohol soaked thirtieth I was all prepared for a big one. However it turned out to be more of a good conversation and child soaked affair. Of course Legion2 was in attendance as was Gavman and all found it quite enjoyable especially the fully over-catered buffet that was the evening repast.


Skipping forward a week we arrive at the afternoon celebration convened to celebrate Uncle Niece's second annum. The afternoon started sedately but by the end there were repeated games of Squash Uncle Phool occurring - an activity best not done at an occasion in which two different cakes and scones have been featured.


All in all a quite pleasant and Phill-fulling way to spend one's weekends.
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Conan and Sharpe's Waterloo

Well it seems to be the season for reviews as one finished both of the above named properties just before the very busy weekend.

The Conan in the title - who despite one's misleading title is not present at Waterloo fighting alongside Richard Sharpe - is last years remake moving picture which I was unable to see in it's proper environment i.e in the resplendent company of The Viking Hat GM, Exploding Ninja Pony, The Mad Magyar, and sundry others of a geekish persuasion.

Instead it was one's exercise machine distraction watched in 20 minute chunks over several days.

When watched in this fashion it comes up quite well and, despite Pirate Dave's lack of faith, I was able to last through until the end and in fact enjoyed it to boot.



Sharpe's Waterloo is the umpteenth (perhaps Pratcheteenth is more correct?) in the Sharpe series and sees him in attendance at the eponymous battle - in fact it sees him traverse much of the battlefield several times over the course of the day turning the tide at almost every appearance.

It was enjoyable military history fiction although unlike a previous Sharpe story one had read, involved very little plot other than the battle itself. Enjoyable and worth a read if you are inane way interested in things Napoleonic.
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The Missing Weeks. Part the Fourth

Blithely ignoring the new year I shall continue on with retelling the myriad of events from those missing weeks.


The Viking Hatted Wedding
My next morning began with my awakening thankfully without any after-effects from the night before.
I spruced myself up and headed out for the ceremony section of The Viking Hat GM's day of nuptials. Exploding Ninja Pony was also there and The Mad Magyar was also present in his capacity as one of the best men - although sadly, for his manliness, he was beaten out of the prime spot by a girl.
After the ceremony I was lucky enough to once more be a passenger in Exploding Ninja Pony's car as we headed out to the most important part of the day - the lunch. I must say that Pony seemed a much more relaxed driver without the constant threat of Viking stomach emptying that accompanied our last sojourn together.

Lunch was a lovely Afghan affair with many courses and good company.
Afterwards I was unable to resist the allure of cake back at Viking HQ so once more was spirited to a new location on the Pony express.
Once there we partook in teo of my favourite things - cake and conversation until the early evening when I decided to make swift my exit as I detected the cleaning up had began to get underway.

In the spirit of being true to TVHGM's greenwards leanings I made the long trip back home on the various train lines - horrifyingly without a skerrick of reading matter - finally making it back to my bed a shade before midnight and collapsing exhausted into bed.


The Xmas Work Week
The workdays leading up to Xmas are a blur of activity including: several last minute IT issues; ElfBoy plying the weekly gaming table with wine; staffroom tables brimming over with enough borrower-gifted chocolate to give an elephant type 7 diabetes; a sedate lunch with the IT crowd; a rather more boisterous council Xmas lunch greatly attended by library staff; and finally an Xmas Eve gaming night transformed into Chinese restaurant feast with Pirate Dave and Fantomas. - but we did fit in a game of Piratalismanopoly so all was not un-gamey.

up next: Xmas and the New Year
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The Missing Weeks. Part the First

Well I've been out of communication for weeks now.

I could claim that it's some sort of arty project to have this December be a reverse of the previous one and it's 25 blogs of Xmas.

But methinks that's all a tad too much to believe - even of The Tales.

Instead you shall just have to believe that I have been exceedingly busy with stuff. The following list should convince you of my extreme busyness quotient until such time as I have you all caught up on the myriads of interesting events that befell your correspondent in that intriguingly un-blogged time.


SPUN XMAS Meeting
We begin with the annual SPUN Xmas meeting which, true to tradition, I attended without the assistance of the esteemed Mr Prada who once again perplexingly had better things to do than attend a free feed.
I was suffering some trepidation going into this meeting as I feared I may be elected into some official capacity for the coming year. There was also the fear about returning to the ground upon which I had received my recent dose of Wine Poisoning.
I was lucky enough to escape this time with only a mild case - despite the best efforts of Dubrovnik Hater and The Puppies.


The Viking-Hatted Bucks Night
After a brief return home for rest I was off again that night for the next stop in my social itinerary. This was the much anticipated bucks night for The Viking Hat GM. The anticipation came from the fact that The Mad Magyar was responsible for the organisation and I was expecting to get a giant insight into the Eastern European buck's night traditions - I imagined something along the lines of the groom having to win several knife-fights or possibly wrestle a wild animal into submission whilst under the influence of several litres of petrol-grade alcohol.
Apparently though, the way they do it in the old country involves go-carting, rounds of drinks, walking aimlessly through the city not wanting to pay $10 cover charges, and eventually going home when the buck refuses to enter any further establishments.
Hmm, it's a small world after all.

In the end I made it home thanks to the grace of Exploding Ninja Pony who detoured to drop me on my doorstep despite his obvious gut-clenching fear that The Viking Hat GM was only a hair's breadth away from engaging in that wonderful Australian custom of the auto-interior technicolour yawn.


Up next: what happens when you gather 40 librarians in a room with food and drink?
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... The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

Many other things are happening whilst I chip away behind the scenes composing my much anticipated conference report.

My finishing of this novel this morning for instance. It was such a wonderful read that I am ready to pronounce it my book of the year.
The Curse of Chalion has been the most enjoyable of the scant 19 or so books I have managed to read this nigh-overwhelmingly busy year.
It is a wonderfully written tale with great depth to the characters and world. I found that it's tale resonated with me as it used many of the themes that I enjoy immensely. I highly recommend it unless you have some unnatural aversion to books of the Fantasy genre (and even then you should know that the fantastical is minimal and it is much more a novel of medieval-esque society)
A big thank you to Vengeful Vic for persisting to recommend it until I got the hint and finally borrowed the book.



Speaking of curses I attended a bountiful BBQ feast at The Viking Hat GM's yesterday wherat I was plied with food and good company until the early evening, reminiscing over gaming times past with The Mad Magyar and The Blithe Bogan.
Eventually taking my leave - supplied with a goodly portion of leftovers as is the Viking custom - I then traversed this great city we live in to attend the birthday drinks of Legion4. Along with Legion2, Jamo and Tone we talked the night away while Legion4 sadly recreated his state of inebriation of last Xmas. Some sort of intervention will probably be in order in the near future.


Today has been a sublime day of not much to do other than bask in the joy of finishing a great book and catch up on all the domestic things that have to be done in order to keep one's demesne functioning to it's full capacity.
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... The Tough Tests and Twighlight

There's nothing as confusing and puzzling as awakening in the morning with aching muscles, wondering why and - after a few moments careful pondering - realising "oh yes it's because I had gaming last night".

You see The Viking Hat GM had cunningly decided that we would use our inappropriately named rest-week, not for board games or their ilk, but for testing ourselves and rating the results in game terms.

So a series of push-pull-and-balance-ups ensued. Combined with jumping (from which my bad knee saved me) breath-holding and various other sundry tests. I for one was disappointed that there was no eating test when we were calculating our Endurance statistic (although I do suspect that Age of Fable may have outscored me on that one).

The surveys of worldly experience to determine our mental stats were a little easier although I believe I may have strained one of my lobes.

All in all an interesting exercise and I still have to complete an IQ test to achieve more than the average rating.

Interestingly the tests were created by TVHGM and The Mad Magyar and contained many areas specifically tailored to their particular strengths - I mean really, scoring bonus points for sadistic treatment of players in a game. Still, never being one to complain, I just sucked it up and accepted the bias inherent in the testing procedure.


The MRI
My second test, which technically (and actually) occurred before the gaming one, was an MRI of my dodgy knee. It had been conveniently scheduled for 8pm on a gaming night - further proof that they are out to get me.

As it was merely my knee that was being scanned I was only slid up to my waist into the giant magnet and so had no concerns at all with claustrophobic issues raising their ugly heads.

The process itself was akin to being waist deep in a giant clanking washing machine for twenty minutes with metallic hammering occurring all about my knee.

No results yet but the specialist should be giving me a buzz in the next week to arrange the inordinately expensive consultation in which I am informed of the true state of my knee injury.


Twilight
This was the third of my tests and I managed to just pass, making it to the end with some few tiny threads of my interest remaining.
Having seen the movie I knew everything that was going to happen (not that there's a lot to remember in any case) so the only extras in the book where the angsty "I haven't seen him for five minutes and I'm going to die of depression" internal monologues of a weak-willed teenage girl.
Still the prose flows well and it is your typical totally romantic novel of a 90 year old seducing a 17 year old with his overpowering presence and worldly experience.
Although why he'd choose the one person whose thoughts he couldn't read over being able to know what his girlfriend was thinking has this correspondent as confused as a geek waking up with sore muscles after gaming.
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... The Ten Thousand Dollar Woman

No this post is not about me having forsaken romance and decided to purchase myself an Internet mail-order bride - surely you know I would go for the $12,000 deluxe model with the extra safety features?

The title for this post actually refers to the second of two unusual events that occurred last Tuesday whilst I was making a short visit to the local banking establishment.
The first happened as I joined the queue and the two people in front of me both took mobile phone calls in quick succession. My first thought was "it only needs my phone to go off to complete the picture of the entire queue being on their mobiles". Lo and behold, my phone rang that very second with an urgent request from Ms Magpie - the embarrassment level at joining my queue-mates was almost the equal of being forced to exclaim into one's phone "I'm on the train" whilst travelling on said public transport.

The second incident was when the woman just before me stepped up to the counter. She stated that she wanted to pay 10,000 dollars off from her credit card. She then opened her purse, pulled out a wad of notes, counted ten 100's out, returned those to her purse and plonked the remainding brick of 100 dollar notes onto the counter. Unfortunately I was called up to make my transactions by the other teller before I could observe the conclusion of her transaction.


The unusual banking activities almost put me off the completion of my reading of Genesis by Bernard Becket. This was another teen-read recommendation from The Hellenic Hoofer. And by recommendation I mean thrust into my hands during one of my infrequent visits to his home branch. It was quite an interesting examination of what it means to be conscious and if it's possible for a robot to be a conscious being.


Rounding out my mid-week hijinks was another nerd gathering organised by The Viking Hat GM as a way of trapping new players for his latest game. The Mad Magyar and others had fallen for it but I was there merely for the drink and conversation and there is absolutely no chance that I will be involved in their game next week, honest.
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... The Ahnold Afternoon

My day began with a quickish coffee catch-up with Rugrat Twin - newly ensconced across the other side of town. Much chat was had in the limited time available before the two of us had to go our separate ways for the remains of the day.

Upon returning home I soon found out - through the miracle of the internet - that a proposed afternoon of Arnie film watching was indeed on the cards.

Organised by The Viking Hat GM as a form of welcome back event for The Mad Magyar who has only recently returned from the old country. Also in attendance was Exploding Ninja Pony which made the whole thing have a feeling of "getting the band back together". Suitably armed with snacks and a cynical attitude we commenced our cinematic endeavour.

Our first film was the classic masterpiece Predator. I think it was still thoroughly enjoyed all around for it's over the top macho characters in an exciting action movie that moves along at a reasonable pace. Still holds up well after 20 years.

Our second film was chosen because Exploding Ninja Pony had never seen it before.
It was Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
The plot itself suffers from a little coincidence overload as everyone happens to just run into each other a few times too many however our running commentary on the flaws and "what the" moments of the film made it quite an enjoyable experience. Plus finishing up on the set of Beneath the Planet of the Apes earns it many many bonus points in this reviewers opinion.

With many other Arnie movies to explore within our particular group dynamic I suspect that there may well be several further Ahnold Afternoon in the offing.
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... Farewells and Frantic Preparations

With Svetlana flying in this week I have been saying my farewells to clear up the schedule. Monday night was farewell to The Viking Hat GM, The Mad Magyar, and Exploding Ninja Pony as we wrapped up our Spooks-esque game. It was a great story arc we played through and I intend to return to their table some time in the future.

Tuesday was the farewell for the library courier. I convinced him to leave in case our blokey camaraderie would be too much of a threat to Svetlana once she arrived.


With the farewells over I have spent my remaining time preparing the flat - i.e. franticly scrapping a year of bachelorhood away - and making the place look spiffy. Although I do think the romance of a vase full of roses is diminished somewhat after The Tiger has had a good chew on them.

Oh, well, I better sign off and get myself out to the airport.
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