My Guitarist Joins the Club

Well, it's been a long time between drinks and it's also been a long time between drinks.

Both of these shortfalls shall be rectified by this report on One's recent attendance at My Guitarist's "joining the club" soiree (or, as Hulk predicted it, "Boring, just Adults standing around talking and drinking").

Of course, in true tradition of The Tales, "recent" in this case means nigh on a week.

There are those that may claim it would take one that long to recover from one's imbibing a single high strength honeycomb stout, but they have no proof.

Anyway, after a quickish zoom Southwards (that's zoom in the old-fashioned speed sense) one arrived at said event to have a great catch up and natter with the assorted cast. My Guitarist of course, Redneck Ben, Duff (with The Tumbling Trio in tow) and other assorted uni guitarists and associates. Fridgepower, Judge Mingus, and The Keyboardist showed up shortly after oneself as well for a real getting the band back together feel.

One cannot fault an event with friends, free food and crumbiliscious honeycomb stout, other than for not happening on a weekly schedule.

Whilst literally zooming home one's thoughts - other than those on the miraculous performance of one's sportsball team one was listening to on the radio - were on one's hopes to not have to wait quite so long for the next catch-up with My Guitarist et al.
As it turns out One had forgotten about the curse of halfway parties.

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The Breakfast of Champions

With no Tales-worthy happenings at last evening's Lit-fest opening night I shall instead regale you with the happenings of today.

I was awake at the early hour of 8am to partake in a breakfast with Redneck Ben. Our venue of choice was in the local cafe precinct and we were served up a quite filling and delicious repast.

Our main topic of conversation - as we did wander somewhat, as one is want to do - was gaming and specifically our usage of the Fudge system to building systems that suit our own game running style and the particular groups of players we run games for. He did impart some advice for me that was eerily similar to both, advice that The Viking Hat GM has frequently espoused, and action that The Bastard frequently takes in the games he runs.
I expect much crying from my players when I deploy such strategies.


Breakfast was followed by The Afternoon of IT Support as I had to visit the family home to fix the internet connection yet again. Although this time Freeloading Mum and Handy Dad are away overseas. You would think that there would be no IT support required but, alas, the house-sitting friend has been having regular problems and leaving frantic telephone messages for me - my personal favourite being "the phone isn't working properly".

Sigh. An IT man's work is seldom done.
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Shed Week

Shed Week was heralded in with a weekend party in honour of Agent Smith's newly constructed residence.

While transporting Legion2 and BrotherStealer to the shindig along with myself I may have become lost amongst the unfamiliar - and inadequately signposted - surrounds of the other side of the city. (Perhaps it should be other-other side, since work is already on the other side?) However it merely added to the sense of accomplishment once we did arrive.

At first the affair appeared to be merely a family one, and one did feel out of place amongst the relatives but soon the familiar faces began flowing in. There was The Valkyrie, and Amoeba, Mechwarrior Wayne, Camo Spice, Redneck Ben, Doom, The Doctor, and a most unexpected appearance from The Fungi Lady.

All in all a great night highlighted by Agent Smith and his band belting out some rock favourites in the pool room. The only downside was the good Agent outdoing my drumming prowess by also singing for several of the numbers - such five-way coordination having always been beyond my capabilities.


Early in shed week I snuck back into my home branch to try and recall what it was I had been missing these past few weeks. Alas no luck as the harassment soon drove me to spend the next few days in the IT shed at the corporate castle, ostensibly working on new PCs but actually just secluding myself from society.

Those days did allow me to finish reading The Men Who Stare at Goats which I found to be fun and interesting. It did confirm a lot of my conspiracy theories about the US military. Thanks to Badger for the birthday gift of the book.


A definite highlight of Shed Week was an Old School D&D bash, with The Viking Hat GM and others, in which stupid rules were enforced with TVHGM's usual forceful vigour. Despite all that my poor little Gnome character managed to survive and looks forward to serving his god Sumdertgud in future dungeon delving escapades.


Shed Week was wrapped up with a full day installing new PCs with my trusty sidekick Ms Magpie. Unlike my solo working style we got a lot done with minimal fuss - something it may take me some time to get used to experiencing.
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... The Long, Long, Long, Long, Long Week

So one of our branches was undergoing a re-carpeting and installation of a new circulation desk this week.

You would think that there would be no need for an IT Man to be on site at the beginning of such an enterprise - let alone for a 6am start.

But you would be wrong.

You would also be wrong if you thought that the first day would be the only day where such an esteemed personage would be required extra early as the second day also required such supervision.

And if you also thought that early starts would entail early finishes, thereby maintaining some sort of balance then you would be wrong once more.

You would be at your wrongest if you thought the three day quote which became four and then stretched into five once the job began would not impact on the time and opportunity to restore one branch-ful of IT equipment to it's correct places and in perfect working order.

There were, however, some good things about this week that lasted forever.

• I had fellow sufferers in the form of Sonja Roster Queen and Big J.

• I was able to muscle in on many a morning tea and cakes and the final pizza lunch. All under the pretence that I'd been working all that time that I'd been present at the library.

• I received an immense amount of help from Ms Magpie in the last afternoon which helped shave hours off the time I had to stay behind with naught but cleaners for company. Without her contribution I'm sure I would have seen midnight and beyond.

• I was far too tired at Wednesday night roleplaying to notice the maliciousness with which The Viking Hat GM disposed of my character (ironically a Viking) in his latest game. Instead I attributed it to fatigue marring my judgement.

• I had the perfect excuse for a long, long, long, long, long sleep-in this morning

In other news I have had my flowing locks pared back as part of the tarting up one must do before partaking in a Libraryland conference such as the one I shall be attending next week.
It also allows me to look my best when I am off away down South tomorrow with Redneck Ben on a drive of over an hour to attend the christening of My Guitarist's spawn.

You would be wrong if you thought this event would happen at an acceptable hour rather than 8.30am on a Sunday.
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... The Weeks of Too Much Work

Computer upgrades and crashes and so on have been claiming all my time recently - not that Supervisor Grand Chief K will recognise my effort and reward it with the suitable level of tickertape parade - so don't expect much in the way of updates until the new financial year.

I did pop down to see My Guitarist's new addition on the weekend with Redneck Ben which did end up taking most of the day but provided a most welcome break from all things computery.
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... The Ends of the Earth

(Skye actually)

Yesterday Redneck Ben and I saddled up and made the great journey down south to visit My Guitarist and partner to marvel at her enormous baby bump.
My initial concerns were alleviated when our late afternoon arrival was still in time for lunch (one of the reasons we arrived late was my attendance at a BBQ lunch at MatrixMan's which also included ElfBoy and various spawn of those attending).
Luckily the shock of my annual visit didn't trigger any early labour so we were able to have a comfortable chat and far too much dinner before zooming home at a late hour.

It was a good way to top off the shortened post-Easter working week - even though I felt like I had achieved quite a lot in those scant four days, partly thanks to Devil's Advocate ordering everyone else to ignore me so I could finish things off (I will have to try that again sometime as it was blessedly peaceful and conducive to productivity).
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... The Cursed Jumper

So this is the story. When I play soccer on Thursday nights it's always white shirts versus coloured shirts. My Svetlanaland national soccer team shirt does nicely as my white shirt as despite its checkered pattern it is predominately white.
I decided to get myself a Collingwood jumper to wear on those occasions wen I am on the coloured shirt team since it's predominately black - plus I love the irony of a black and white shirt being coloured.

The debut of my wonderful new jumper was at soccer two Thursdays ago. Coincidence.

I donned it a second time for last Sunday's footy match. Still there are extenuating circumstances - in the history of my footy match attendance with The Great Sandro the results have been 50/50, despite ladder position, so I can accept that last week was just one of those things.

However...

Last night was ridiculous. Sure we played better generally but half of Norths goals came from turnover after stupid mistakes from Collingwood, and then there was the unbelievable bounce in the centre that goes completely in Norths favour and gifts them a goal, AND to top it all off Didak misses a simple shot from right in front that could have stolen the lead back again. I was quietly weeping at the death of my jumper-wearing dream while beside me Legion2 was noisily exploding in rage.

I am now thinking that the sweet smell of burning polyester elastane will be shortly drifting about my flat. I'm sure that even Ms Magpie, who doesn't believe in superstitious mumbo jumbo and told me to wear the jumper anyway this week, will now be clamouring for it's demise.

I can tell you for sure that I will not be wearing it while I watch the Anzac Day game this Friday.


In other news
I made a Friday night visit to LURG, the League of Unreasonable Gentlemen. For a little game of Man o' War. No wait that link was wrong try this one, damn not that one either, here's the right one. Afterwards I had a nice chat with Camo Spice and caught up with Redneck Ben for the first time in years.

I'm also in a battle to reclaim my stolen parking space at home as someone else has had the temerity to park in the space I have claimed (it's an odd echo of the situation at Sandringham with Mr Prada stealing my spot all the time) and I've had to revert to parking in the spot that I own. Except someone else has taken a fancy to that spot and my car is now a vagrant of the carpark.

... Poker, Simpsons and Father's Day

After a day back home at Sandy branch on FridayI headed off to a poker night at Micko's. Most of the usual card night gang were there: BestFriendSincePrep, StumpyRudolph, Legion2, Gavman, and Bradley. We had some great games of Chase-the-Ace with our own variation on the rules and a late game of poker.

Trying to sleep in the next day to recover was a bit difficult with the Tiger jumping on me all the time and then strange phone calls from crazy Italian people and Sister Serials having issues at Hampton. In any case I had to be up for a visit from My Guitarist who was this side of town collecting some ebay winnings. We had a good catch up and I found out that Redneck Ben is getting married next weekend.

In the afternoon I finally used one of my awards for being the best person in the library and saw the Simpson's Movie at the local. It was good but not great and I didn't think it pushed the boundaries beyond what could be done on TV as much as I'd been led to believe. After the film GavMan came by for some Space Hulk action.

Today was the gathering of the Legion for Handy Dad's day Lunch followed by general blobbing around at home in preparation for the long hard week ahead.