A Gastronomic Week

It seems that, for a change, this week past has been all about gastronomy.

It began slowly with the regular Sunday gaming day at which we sampled ElfBoy's strange snack foods and played the annual Pirate Dave's birthday game of Talisman. This event attracted The Valkyrie as usual and apparently the aim of the game is now to play until my character dies in the game and then declare everyone else the winner.
The evening portion involved sampling varied pizzeria delights from one of our usual providers.

The next stop of the tour was, once again, gaming where we took advantage of the non-appearance of several of our usual coterie to sample further heretofore unknown pizzeria delights from one of our usual providers.

The main gastro event (I have to come up with a better shortening for gastronomical!) was the biennial Clean Up Your Desk Day. In the previous instalment I had only managed to clean the shelves beside my desk but this time I launched straight into snacking from the abundant table of food that everyone had brought in to help turn the morning into a celebration rather than a chore.
Suitably sated my attention turned to my desk proper and, amidst the sounds of consumption of yummy food, I managed to excavate my way down to the desk surface and I am now the proud owner of "enough space to work in". Next time we have one of these clean up days I shall have to delve into my desk draws and sort through the detritus of four years (six by then) worth of hard work at the library. I shall also endeavour to sample everything that is on the table of bountiful food - a task I fell short on this time.
Having completed enough cleaning I zoomed off to join the birthday lunch celebrations of Groovy Spirits before returning to an afternoons languid work.
That evening I suffered a mysterious stomach bloating as if I were about to burst from the inside. I could not for the life of me think what may have caused it. Even the application of a spaghetti dish supplied by Days of our Libraries in full Strega Nona form, was unable to make it abate.

My next few days were light on for gastronomy - particularly as one has to conceal one's healthy appetite when in the presence of Candidates as they may not yet have come to appreciate it for the great thing it is.

It remains to be seen whether the coming week shall be a further gastronomic one - astute readers of The Tales should have a fair idea of the chances of that though.
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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 Footy

Here's a caution for you all. Going to the footy on a cold winters evening to see your team out of the game after the first 10 minutes is not good for your spirits.
One can only hope that Ms Magpie was able to keep her cool as if anything could break her new icy footy-watching calm it would be the teams performance.
On the good side I got to spend ludicrous amounts of money on donuts.

Sundays was a gaming day and we had a bumper turn out, with The Valkyrie and Pirate Dave showing up for the first time in years. Main game of the afternoon was Sword and Skulls a love child of Talisman and Monopoly (but one that actually finishes in a couple of hours).

Today was back to work and back to puzzling "why does it work on that computer but not on this one" problems - oh and the obligatory network outage just when I was nutting out a problem.