Ever Shambling Onwards...

Since I kind of vanished off the radar over the weekend, here's a bit of an update as to what I've been up to:

Friday
Post work drinks with a few people. Stayed longer than I meant to due to the pub which usually has a choice of good ciders having an even bigger selection of good ciders than usual. Even if they did do something faintly horrific to the Addlestones.

Saturday
Saturday was day one of the "nuke the house" plan. Not literally. People would have noticed. This was something far wider reaching, and far more dangerous...

thankyoukindly and I tidied the front room.

I'd already moved all of my RPG books into what was urizen's room, which meant that with a little more clearing of stuff, I was able to pull out the bookcase that they had been on and do some repair work on it.

This left me with a large and empty bookcase... so I moved all of my DVDs onto it. You can actually now tell that my DVD collections isn't far behind nuuki's. I filled the bookcase, barring half a shelf at the bottom which now contains izzy_stradlin's DVDs that stay at my place rather than hers.

When thankyoukindly joined in (I'd been my usual early-rising self up to this point, up at times that are not meant to exist at weekends) we then proceeded to clear out the corner of "not our shit" at the back of the room. A reasonable amount of it went straight into the clothes charity drop box... other stuff was moved to the garage, the games cupboard or the cupboard upstairs... or the bin. What used to be my DVD cabinet has now moved to that spot, and is mostly full of booze. I might consider moving some of the booze related glassware and suchlike into that cabinet as well, to free up some kitchen cupboard space.

I also fixed the armchair again, in a way that should las slightly longer. The cover has gone the way of the dodo, though, so it's covered by a blanket at the moment. I may have to get something better to cover it with at some point.

Sunday
Continuing the theme from Saturday, tidying progressed. Not as much as I'd planned, as I was still recovering from the dust allergy induced explosion of the day before... So I started the day by heading out to get us a few new bits and bobs. I returned with new bins to replace the rather elderly and unpleasant ones in the front room, a stiff scrubbing brush for having a go at the bathroom tiles and a few non houseworking bits. I also got some food bits for the evening.

In the afternoon, we had a go at clearing the coffee table and the space under it. Most of it's shifted, although we still have an archive box of other people's stuff. It really does make a bit improvement to the place, though.

Later in the afternoon I started to feel my sinusses going from too much dust horror, so tidying stopped and we sat down in front of some DVDs instead... I started to introduce thankyoukindly to Sapphire and Steel as he's never seen in before. We made it to halfway through Assignment One before it was time for me to go fetch izzy_stradlin, after which I started cooking.

Which leads me to the fact that I cooked far too much Gumbo. I still have some left, and will probably be having gumbo and bread for lunch. I don't mind this, as it came out really quite well, I thought. I may well make it again... although it is a lot of work. That said, if I make it again soon, it'll be less work as I now have a large amount of homemade creole style chicken stock in the freezer.

Monday
Monday was a bit of a non planned day, really. In the end izzy_stradlin and I went on a random trip to Ikea, where I bought an evil mastermind chair. I wanted a good comfy desk chair that I could also watch TV from so I can watch from somewhere other than my bed... So I now have a big black high-backed chair in my room.

I also bough a few new kitchen bits and six new dining chairs. Our old ones had got so bad that they needed to go, and so those are now out in the garage and our nice new ones are around the dining table. It makes quite a big difference to the room, really.

Monday evening consisted of going out for dinner with thankyoukindly and izzy_stradlin at Gourmet Burger Kitchen - I'd not been to one for a while, and it reminded me that I really like lime milkshakes... and also that I'm a complete glutton.

Anyway - that was the long weekend. Now I'm working from home, waiting for the blokey to turn up and fix the vacuum cleaner. Might see if I can avoid another day of having to work from home by trying to get my car's tyres done this afternoon as well...

Just a short "What I did at the weekend" update, written bit-by-bit between various bits of work.

Saturday (AM) - Theatre stuff. I spend the morning converting more floodlights into useful things. Not as many as I'd have liked to do, because it turns out that two of the ones I was going to convert are actually different to the others. Which means I need to work out another way to tweak those ones, or find two more that are like the others. So I'll be going to rehearsal on Tuesday to rummage around in the lighting cupboard and look above the stage to see what I can find.

Saturday (PM) - First up, I bought a couple of new tools. My toolbox, being already too full, was not going to contain these new items, so I also bought a bigger toolbox. Irritatingly, I had no luck at all in purchasing a tap & die set. Homebase don't stock them, apparently. Halfords (which I wouldn't normally even look at, but they're next door to homebase) had one, but it was locked in a cabinet they'd lost the key to... I've ended up ordering one online. After that lot, I went and fetched an izzy_stradlin and took her out for lunch.

We then spent a bit of time moving a few bits & bobs off the shelves in her room and up into the loft... freeing up some shelf space for her to use. I then left her to catch up on sleep a bit before she went out in the evening.

I spent a chunk of the evening watching the first three episodes of The Wire with thankyoukindly - it's kind of cool, but was a bit of a slow starter. Now it's got going, it's pretty compelling. Even if the team is largely composed of liabilities.

Sunday (AM) - Theatre stuff again. This time I was mainly painting flats and mixing paints for use on a backdrop. I astounded others with my prowess at mixing vile green and a nice royal purple... and my ability to not get myself covered in paint. I did end up with a bit of paint on my boots, alas, but nothing that won't come off with a firm brush. I need new boots anyway, so I'm not overly bothered. Still, the set stuff is coming along in a reasonable way. Now that I know what the backdrops are going to look like, I may need to change some of the lighting rig a bit, but nothing particularly drastic.

Sunday (PM) - Watching TV and relaxing. I was too tired to do a great deal, so I sat down and watched some Eureka, a bit of Charlie Jade. I'm not sure if I like the latter enough to stick with it, but that might just be because it's kind of impenetrable right now... If they start actually going somewhere with it then it might well manage to get me hooked as it's an interesting enough idea. I think.

Later on, I watched more of The Wire, and the liabilities seem to be slowly either redeeming themselves or writing themselves out.

So, today I'm working from home, as we're expecting people to appear and fix our washing machine and our drains. I would not be at all surprised if a chunk of washing machine (or laundry) is found to be the cause of the blocked drain...

Anyway - the drain person is due this afternoon sometime, and the washing machine person is due... whenever he feels like turning up, apparently. In other news, I am hungry, the house is cold (even though I've turned the heating on) and I've managed to make myself free this evening, so may well attend the pub. Which would be nice - I've not been properly for ages!

Right... since I've not been updating much lately, I thought I'd do a quick potted summary of what I've been up to for the past week and a half.

This is me, however, and I have a tenancy to be quite frank about illness. I poke fun at it after the fact because it helps make sure I never hide illness away and refuse to deal with it. Also, I'm occasionally just a bit vile that way out of sheer contrariness.

So, with that in mind, there will be parts of this that are TMI, so if you're disturbed by things relating to illness (particularly to do with regurgitation), stop reading now. If you're fine with them, and want the full fœtid tale of my recent days, read on beyond the cut...

( here begins the story )

So - it's been a while since I did a proper "what's up" update. So I'm going to do one now. It'll probably be somewhat patchy and with vast gaps in it... but hey, at least it's an update!

Work:
Work has been, quite frankly, barking. As an example of how daft it's been, I've been working solely on one project, and I was scheduled for the past four weeks to work on that project for five hours a week longer than I actually work. Naturally, I have not worked those extra hours. I've been working without proper breaks and generally exhausting myself making sure it gets done, because it'll fall on my head if I don't. As you might expect, my opinion of my current workplace has dropped like a stone. Considering how poor it was before, this is quite impressive.

I am working hard to either get a better job, sort this one out or (if the situation arises, which is a distinct possibility) steal my bosses job.

I am currently in the running for at least one other job, and have a promised "we'll get back to you" from another (I actually believe they will, too). More news as it happens...

As for the project from hell, I've managed to get my bit of the current workload done. I have another bit to be getting on with (fixing the accessibility gaffes the consultancy have made and that we've introduced in the process of CMS wrangling), but I figure I'm going to take it fairly easy today... I consider it payback for my missed breaks for the past few weeks. I probably have about a day's worth.

Home:
We have a mysterious broken/not broken shower. We lost internet for about three days for no readily discernable reason. I have also discovered the mightiness that is WH40K Dawn of War on the PC, but am still striving to remember that there is life without it.

Edit: I do think, having played the campaign a bit, skirmished a bit and played multiplayer, that it's a game best played with other humans, though.

Family:
I don't talk about it a vast amount, but for the unaware:
For about a year and a half leading up to the start of this year, my parents were trying to get divorced in spite of the efforts of the solicitors who were allegedy representing them.

This last weekend my dad re-married, so izzy_stradlin and I went to the wedding. It was odd, but enjoyable. Also got to meet up with blufive and calatrice, which was also good. Amongst other things, we discussed the fact that I'm hoping to attend my first Eastercon in a couple of years - Orbital 2008. The Guests of Honour make me think that a couple of other folks may also be interested...

LARP:
Unknown Armies was a blast. I didn't get back from the wedding until about 1:30/2ish, so was frantically trying to finish getting things ready prior to time in, which kind of meant that I missed the beginning of the game I (allegedly) run! Still, there was chaos, distrust, headbreaking, an atmospheric meeting in a rainy beer garden, identical sextuplets, headbreaking, amusing drunkards (IC), phone conversations on hands-free and more headbreaking. So that was all good. I must confess that I'm enjoyng running it every bit as much as I enjoyed running mage - making it joint top of the "LARPs I've enjoyed running" list.

Every LARP I've run has it's ups and downs, but so far UA seems to be almost entirely ups with only a couple of minor downs. I think this comes down mainly to two things: A fantastic group of players (and co-GM) and having created characters ahead of finalising the plot. This has let me hook all of the characters into events in some way, and I think people are generally starting to see the results of that... I think only one hasn't yet seen much direct involvement, and I'm working on fixing that.

Music:
I have been listening to the finest in audio cheese! I admit it - I can't help but find power metal cheesy, but Dragonforce were sold to me as "what Dream Theatre would sound like if they were less clinical, faster and had a decent singer".

Now, the Dream Theatre stuff that I like isn't really that clinical, and I'll defend James LaBrie a little - he's a good singer as long as he's singing songs by other people - It's Dream Theatre's own stuff he's not so good at. But anyway - I've been giving Dragonforce a listen, and it's all pretty enjoyable in a compressed, high speed, musically very proficient yet still incredibly cheesy kind of way.

So, next friday is my Birthday.

I'm not doing a huge party this year, because whenever I do I hardly ever get to actually talk to anyone for any length of time. They're fun, but I like something different occasionally. So, this year I'm going to be doing a small gathering at which I feed people. Some folks may take note of the fact that this seems somewhat turned about... with me cooking and doing all the work on my birthday. This is because I actually enjoy feeding small mobs every once in a while, and I get to experiment with unusual food that I can't cook for just one or two.

Actually, my current plan this time is as follows:
Cook a big heap of Chicken Katsu Teriyaki
Cook a vat of noodle soup of some kind
Cook a noodle based dish or two
Cook some vegetable tempura (if I can work out how)
Buy or Cook a bunch of sushi (depending if I can get sushi making kit or not)

Feed to a group of six to eight people, of which I intend to be a part.

Due to not being made of money, I may ask for financial contributions from guests who can afford it, but only to cover food expenses.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas?

...but I do now have a job title that describes what I do in the same terms used by everybody else's job titles. No longer am I a Web Development Support Officer... I am now a Web Design Officer.

Well, more accurately, I have been so for over a year, but now I'm actually allowed to say that I'm the web design blokey. I also no longer have "support" in my job title, which is a plus.

Next stop: Payrise. Or else, damnit.

So, today I most definately do not live. At all. Not even close.

I've mostly recovered from the plague, but just because my body couldn't let me actually feel halfway decent (it's the rules, apparently) it decided that I wasn't going to be sleeping last night. I got to sleep okay, but then I woke up again... and again... and again, and so on until the morning. So I got some sleep, but never in lumps of greater than about half an hour.

The result is a somewhat less than conscious and fully functional eggwhite. In spite of this, I have already managed to have a productive and useful meeting, which will most probably result in my finishing all the work I need to do on a particular project sometime this afternoon...

As for the weekend... Well, I had an enforced long weekend starting with Thursday, when the doctor told me to go home. The advice was good, as I was feeling almost human by Saturday, when I travelled in to spend a day with izzy_stradlin. Took her to see Serenity, which seemed to go down rather well. Not hugely surprising as it is a mighty film.

Alas, there was a slight case of lost scarf in the cinema, which was looking like it could put a dampener on the day. After a bit of wandering about whilst the next showing finished, though, the manager blokey let us back into the screen and the scarf was rescued.

I had planned to go and see Night Watch on the same day, but after one film I was already coughing and spluttering enough, so I decided not to and spent the rest of the day with izzy_stradlin instead. It was a good choice, and I will go see the film another time...

On sunday I walked to Homebase to buy a bunch of storage boxes, which I then used to sort some of the stuff in my cupboards. A worthwhile activity, but tiring and dusty, so I started coughing and sneezing again. Bah! I then played around with izzy_stradlin's old accoustic guitar again, trying a strange tuning so that I can attempt some cranes songs... Tuned it down a semitone on each string. Even managed to coax some halfway decent sounds out of it, although it'll be a while before I actually render those sounds recognizable.

In the evening nuuki let me usurp his PC so I could continue with Half-Life 2. Damned ant-lions. Get back in the Starship Troopers film where you belong... and stop eating me!

Didn't sleep hugely well last night due to drinking too many sugary drinks. That's what happens when I can't drink - I drink sugary things instead. Then, of course, I randomly woke up early. I finally gave up and got out of bed at about 8am.

Then today I enacted a food plan, feeding a small assortment of less-often-seen folks. It was all experimental food, and some parts of it succeeded more than others, although nothing turned out to be vile and inedible, so I think it was a success in general. I do think I shall be making the "dirty rice" again, though. For something I randomly cobbled together based (very loosely) on a random recipe from the web, I think it worked quite well. It's quite cheap to make, too, although I'll probably add some meat next time, which will make it a bit more expensive.

The result of all of this is that I am tired. I will try for an early night, but I have no idea how that idea will pan out. Will have to wait and see, I guess.

Well, I slept like a log last night. Until about 6am, anyway. Then I woke up, and proceeded to wake up againand a again every 20 minutes or so until my alarm went off. However, this means I'm not nodding off at my desk today, which is always a bonus. Unfortunately my shoulders are aching and I have a slight headache. Oh well.

Tonight I go in to London to visit izzy_stradlin, after abandonning any form of physical exertion yesterday.