Well that's annoying. I woke up super early (for me anyways) to go to Echuca on the train for the day and 10 mins before we got to Bendigo they told us the Echuca has been cancelled and the train will terminate at Bendigo with a coach to Echuca
I don't really want to do the coach but they said it's at least 20 minutes away anyway
Six places on the list viewed (plus two not, but they're out of my price range so they don't count), four boxes and two pictures dropped off at the op shop and a quick Aldi run done.
I think I've earned a prosecco.Anyone here old enough to remember when Rage would debut a new "unplugged" show?... I used to tape them, both on the VCR and cassette for my Walkman. Currently listening to STP Unplugged - I remember thinking Scott Weiland was so classy sipping that huge glass of red through the set, in hindsight it was probably like 3/4 of a bottle in that glass.
Edit - thinking about it, I had a DiscMan at that point but no way to burn cds. Hence the Walkman - with the auto reverse magic.
It has been enlightening listening to a spine specialist , McGill. Really changed how I think about my back, the pain and what happened. There is no such thing as an achy back, there are injuries and aggravating weakness.
seems I have stress fractures of one or two L vertebrates and a touch of a disc hernia on my left side. Ten hours a week of walking on hard footpaths, walking thru pain, with hard shoes will aggravate a weakness from prior injury or re-injure.
It was time to upgrade the Xbox One, so I took the Nintendo switches (which haven't been used as much as we all thought they would be) plus games and traded them in for a new series X. Ended up costing me $126 with the traded stuff, so I'm pretty chuffed about that. Not as chuffed as the Elder will be on his birthday when he gets it! The switches were just not as enjoyable to use as the 3DS was.
I'm playing Mass Effect 2 and being evil. My god some of the lines are hilarious!!!
I forced a shop assistant to give me a discount by standing outside the store and yelling about how they were discriminating against me because I was poor 🤣
Resting with the cat. She loves being in bed all day. She's the little spoon, being cuddled like a teddy bear. And when I rustle for a peppermint she's instantly alert to get her own treat from a packet.
We're a pair of tired oldies who sometimes share a hot water bottle
The Fire Pig 🔥 🐽 has chosen to go into the city so I the Fire Snake 🔥🐍 and the Wood Rabbit 🌳🐰 will go and deposit some bottles 🍾 and do something with the rest of the sunny☀ day while the Water Snake 💦 🐍 runs around outside barking.
I'm having so much fun with this. 🌳🐰 isn't. He assures me he is indeed a 🦁 and he's sticking to it.
Watching some telly before I get a little rowdy tonight, and one of my favourite costuming tropes is when a character out of their depth goes to the tropics/a hot place (it doesnt matter what they're there for) they must have a huge hiking pack paired with some sort of plaid shirt and singlet, for men you can throw in a henley, for women it must be a skin tight spaghetti strap singlet.
Bonus points for inappropriate footwear, khaki cargo shorts (cargo booty shorts of the ladies), some sort of head wrap, they gain a collection of "handcrafted" bracelets during their tropical/hot place adventure.
Instant Pot Bol sauce on so I have something easy to reheat and put with salad for next few days. Plus I have chopped back the monstera and am now feeling very guilty. She was magnificent but was sprawling everywhere. Now I can get her growing upwards with a moss pole and can get back use of that part of the balcony.
I seem to have misplaced my debit card. Searched high and low and can't find it at the place I'm housesitting, my own place, or the route I walked to the shops earlier today (the endpoint at which I realised I was sans card). Nobody's used it in the past 6 hours either.
Found out I could put a temporary lock on the card and I'll try looking again tomorrow. I really don't want to get a card replacement, so many things I'll need to change 🫤
Normally I would feel panicked or frustrated but I still feel numb (not necessarily comfortably).
I do have a mysterious craving for salmon and pizza that's come out of nowhere though. None of the pizza places here in Preston seem to do in house delivery :( not having a car sucks like that. Old Kodak it is. And just a marinara pizza with garlic bread.
Anytime I need the train on the weekend, it’s bus replacements. Had to drive to the next closest train line then missed the train by 1 minute. On the bright side, the weather is lovely for a 20 minute platform wait.
At the risk of being considered a spammer...
Now listening to this - DMB - Tiny Desk Concert
As a (very) amateur guitarist, Dave Matthews blows my mind with his hand positions.
Got a letter in the mail from RACV saying welcome back and has a membership card in there. Turns out I got free RACV roadside assistance when I bought my car but they didn't say anything (unless I forgot).
Weird it took months for them to send me the card but hey, RACV has some cool discounts on fuel and movie tickets!
It took me a while with feeling crook but I finished rereading Shades of Grey and now Red Side Story. Tbh... it was a bit of a let down and I don't think it's just from the heightened expectations after 14 years' wait...
no spoilers, not even descriptions of the plot or characters, just long rambling thoughts
IMO it wasnowhere near as good as the first book - felt like the author phoned it in to get the book out of the way already. Of course the second one was never gonna have the same effect as the first with its inimitably creative and detailed world building, but where the first book was so tightly plotted and revealed tantalising hints so masterfully and with great wit, the second felt distinctly more clunky and expository with its info dumps and reveals, like it was going through the motions.
It also felt repetitive at times in beating readers over the head about character motivations and old plot points - like we needed reminding because of the huge gap of time between releases? Or maybe the author needed reminding? He couldn't keep his own continuity right (he had someone specifically helping him with this but a minor character's plot-relevant age in book 1 is mysteriously dropped by 3 years in book 2 where they are more prominent, so were even they confused?). I blame the book having two editors...
One more whinge, and maybe this last one is just because fans have had 14 years to theorise, but nearly all the major worldbuilding reveals/explanations in the second book could be correctly guessed in the first, and the second book didn't go much deeper beyond those revelations. I know they have to go through it from the characters' point of view within the world but it felt a bit "meh, we need more". But this complaint is perhaps taking the books more seriously than they're meant to be taken.
That aside it was a long awaited gift to be officially reunited with these characters and their world, and there were still some good nail biting sequences and whimsical turns to be enjoyable enough, plus enough plot threads to write a third book (if the author doesn't die first).
