Bachelor night with Illuminated G

Yesterday, after an all morning meeting and the necessary extended lunch, it was not long before it was evening and I was heading off to the last minute Bachelor drinks for Illuminated G.

Of course since he has three children and twenty years in the relationship it could be argued that he said goodbye to his bachelorship a long time ago. However we still deigned to celebrate the occasion.

Also in attendance were Legion2, and Zombie Monkey whom it was good to catch up with again for the first time in ages.

The most disturbing part of the evening , however, was my uncovering of the conspiracy of deception that surrounded me. After a few drinks into the evening a further guest arrived who had also been at The Viking Hatted Wedding. Some short discussion later and the floodgates of memory opened and I realised many of Illuminated G and his friends knew The Viking Hat GM's best man from their uni days.
The obvious conclusion is that I was at the centre of a conspiracy to psychologically adjust me ala The Game (the movie not the thing you just lost) or as in a Philip K Dick (teehee) novel where they had run out of actors and had begun re-using them not realising that my keen perceptive senses would allow me to tie all the threads together and expose their plan before it could be completed.

Or maybe it's just a small world after all...
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Phorgetful Phorties

While it may seem that a significant change in age has also caused a significant change in the ability of yours truly to remember to keep these humble Tales updated on something of a regular schedule I'm here to present evidence to the contrary.

Nothing has been forgotten from these weeks of silence - except possibly where I left the thingo, you know the whatsit.

Anyway here is a sampling of some of the many things that have kept me too busy to blog.

• Work of course, and far too much of it. Although I did finally receive my birthday present of my very own minion. Ms Magpie herself was lucky enough to be the recipient of the great honour.
• a lovely conference dinner with a guest appearance from Madame President over from the land of the long white sheep.
• going live with a Library Management System upgrade
• putting in a live appearance at The Viking Hat GM's latest game. Lured in by the promise of the strong leadership of Exploding Ninja Pony.
• making a brief attendance at the conference's trade show aka pen and novelty scavenger hunt. Afterwards I decided to avail myself of the shopping in the city and was then caught in the torrential downpour. There's nothing like catching the train home literally dripping water everywhere. Luckily the book I was reading was a library book so I can just say it was all wrinklified when I borrowed it.
• an expedition to the games shop to spend my librarian gifted birthday present. I now have even more of "far too many games and books", yay.
• a poker night with Dubrovnik Hater and friends in which I unfortunately cleaned up on the last hand most likely causing myself to never be invited back (since eating all the nibbles would never cause that)
• shopping in the city with The Great Sandro. Looking for my birthday present from him - Rome (the TV series, not the city) - and reminiscing about the great time he had with the librarians at my party - I did tell you he's crazy didn't I?
• last minute gaming events organised at my place by Elfboy
• a day home sick almost dying from the latest strain of man-cold - the vestiges of which are still with me to this day
• going to "our first NAB cup footy game together" with The Great Sandro and spending the whole first quarter queuing outside the, currently named, Etihad stadium to find an almost empty arena once inside - no wonder I hate that place.
• beer and board games with Badger
• Tuck's first attendance at the regular Sunday games only to have me spend several hours assuring him that, yes there are usually other people here, when everyone else decided to only make the evening.
• playing pirates with the Tuesday night gamers
• going back into the shed at work to prepare another round of new computers
• being cornered and missing out on drinks and nibbles at our new catalogue product launch
• filling my house with people for the latest of our regular card tournaments - Couch Killer was well behaved this time and no furniture was harmed
  
• a much delayed family birthday lunch at which Legion3 produced dirty rotten lying scales for our regular brothers weigh off - pffft 3 extra kilos!!!
• a training day with lots of food and me being under the weather with resurfacing man-cold and nasty headache. Honestly I was only able to eat two peoples worth of free lunch I was that bad off.
• a last minute gathering of geeks with great attendance, conversation and results. All thanks to The Viking Hat GM for going to the effort to organise lazy gamers into action.
• a day of setting up new computers with my trusty minion at my side
• a fortuitous game cancellation allowing me time to actually prepare for said games next occurrence
  
• a trip for groceries ending with my being pelted by golfball sized hailstones in the car park and once again being drenched to dripping-point - a trend I am not liking.
• and finally having to write a long and involved blog catch-up post to get you all back up to speed.

So there you have it - not a sign of any forgetfulness or mis-remembering of actual events, but then again it was only yesterday...
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The First Days of Phorty

Last weekend was the grand occasion of my becoming a forty year old (in body, mind is a little harder to judge).

On the Saturday night - the actual anniversary of my birth as luck would have it - I held a magnificent soiree to which I invited friends, family, fun people, and librarians. So many were in attendance that were I to list them all the tagging system for the blog would collapse under the weight of numbers.
Instead I shall just say that it was a magnificent night thoroughly enjoyed by yours truly and, if I'm any judge, by all in attendance.

Highlights include: Freeloading Mum mistaking Spare Legion for myself "oh good Phillip I've found you"; The Great Sandro getting along famously with many; BestFriendSincePrep's whinging about missing the first round of cake resulting in him in his being presented with no less than five pieces from the second round; and Mr Prada almost succeeding in abandoning Supervisor Grand Chief K when heading home.

The end of the evening saw a small group of us walk back to my flat causing every venue we attempted to enter on the journey merely by staggering in the front door "Sorry guys we're just closing for the night" was the refrain.

Successfully making it back we proceeded to embark on a port and Pez fuelled rampage (Pez courtesy of Sister Serials wonderful present) all to the strains of Conan the Barbarian thoughtfully playing in the background thanks to BestFriendSincePrep.


I awakened the next morning with the only flat-company being BestFriendSincePrep in the spare room - well, and The Tiger busily trying to usurp his position on the spare bed.
We had a wonderful cafe breakfast and then I was on my own to use my new found oldness to justify napping my way through the afternoon.


I took the chance that evening to finally go and see Avatar lest it leave the cinemas unseen by oneself, a situation that would put a severe dent in one's geek cred.
I found it good that the story was easily digested which made it easy to concentrate on taking in the wow factor of the special effects and new 3D process. As a wearer of eyeglasses I am quite impressed with how well the physicality of the glasses works.

More of my impressions of Phortiness to come...
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My Week of Cake

This year my birthday week has been focused on baked goods - specifically cake.

I started the dessert theme myself, as one often has to, by concealing subtle hints within my weekly update to my library staff concerning my projected whereabouts for the remainder of the week.
Here is an example of the level cunning subtleness I employed:

Tuesday Feb 2: At SAN library all day fixing computers and possibly getting surprise birthday cake.

At first it appeared not to have worked as I went a whole day without cake. However my Wednesday arrival at BEA branch was greeted with not one but two cakes - joy!
It seems that Devil's Advocate had supplied a largish piece of Emergency Cake in case there was a critical lack of cake in my system.
So having polished off the Emergency Cake I moved on to tackling the larger, yet just as delightfully chocolaty, cake supplied by The Beaumaris Ballerina. Some time after that I started fixing computers and other things IT in a state of cake-induced fugue.

Thursday was such a blur of meetings and schnitzel lunches and crazy weather that I failed to notice the lack of any cake-ish things.
This serious lapse from my compatriots was rectified on Friday morning when I stepped out of a morning meeting into a cake wonderland - complete with the second present (no wait Pirate Dave gave me some Dolphin Clips Thursday night - let your imagination run wild about what exactly a Dolphin Clip is...) I mean Third present.

See how happy I am with my giant RFID tag cake courtesy of Days of our Libraries
(couriered in secretly by Bomber Babe).

My cake euphoria carried me through the remainder of the day and into the evening where I caught up with birthday twin CC having drinks to celebrate her attaining a measly total age on the morrow.
I stayed only long enough to down a couple of drinks and treated the whole exercise as a training run for this evenings main event.

Now I'd best be off to gussy myself up for my time in the limelight tonight. After all there is such an awful lot of gussying to be done.

I'll end with a caution for you oh good readers of mine: with what BestFriendSincePrep has planned for this evening, and knowing his track record, I fear that this missive may very well be the last time you hear from me alive...
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