imhilien

Well, the weather is up and down - some days it's t-shirt weather (hooray!) and then the next day it's put on those extra layers again. Sigh. How did it get to being December tomorrow? Some Dr Who trickery involved, I'm sure.

*whirring sounds*

TV I've Watched

I've finally caught up watching S3 of 'The Mandalorian' and I really liked it - the last few episodes made me feel happy about Star Wars again. I'm sure I've said I sometimes view the recent movie trilogy as fan fic because of *spoilers* what happened to the original cast. Must watch the new Dr Who special.

What I've Read

I loved the book 'The Fourth Wing' but after reading the sequel 'Iron Flame' I sadly felt the wheels fall off for me after the half way mark. I'm not sure how much I will be looking forward to the next book.

A new genre bookshop has recently opened in my city (hooray) and I went and bought 'All the Seas in the World' by Guy Gavriel Kay. Ah, it's so nice to have a good range of SFF books to look at again, instead of the familiar 'one whole shelf of those few for SFF must be taken up with multiple copies of Wheel of Time because there's no other SFF authors out there, ha ha' attitude that other places have.

Anyway, so this book by GGK is set during Renaissance Europe, but set on a world with two moons and there's magic too. He's written other books set in this alternate Earth, the best being the two Sarantine Mosaic books, set in alternate Eastern Roman Empire. They will break your heart at places though, so be warned.

What I've Seen

I haven't seen any movies for a while but 'Napoleon' is trying to get my attention. I've always had a soft spot for Joaquin Phoenix and I think I would almost be looking out for time-traveling Bill and Ted to nab him mid-battle for their school history assignment (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure).

It's a new year, how did that happen? In 2022, New Zealand came out of another lockdown and I was glad to get back to my art group. I didn't get Covid or colds so that was a relief. Although we now have a new wave of Covid so I'm always careful when going out. Christmas and New Year was just a quiet one with my folks.

I recently went to the quirky English film 'The Lost King' about the woman who went hunting for the lost remains of King Richard III (is it a spoiler to say she succeeded?). She deals with skeptical people who think it can't be done and are reluctant to fund a search. Complicating matters is that after she goes to see a performance of the Shakespeare play about him, an imaginary (or is it?), gloomy version of him then starts following her around! But there is some humour with this at times.

I wouldn't mind seeing the new Avatar movie but at 3 hours, 13 mins I don't think my chronic fatigue brain would like that, ouch. Instant headache. I'll have to wait until the DVD comes out and watch it in stages.

Resolutions for 2023; my art group often has exhibitions so I want to put one of my paintings in the next one. I've only done this once before but it was one of my tiny paintings and that was nerve-racking enough! But I can offer a bigger one this time. Keep writing.  Try and find a part-time job.

Well, although New Zealand has mostly squished Covid-19, there was a bit of a scare recently when two people were let into the country on compassionate grounds from abroad going down south and it turns out they were infected and hadn't been tested properly. That was an anxiety episode I didn't need that day. Testing at the border has been tightened up apparently and that's where any new cases are picked up these days (they then have to go into quarantine).

I still wear a face mask if I'm going on public transport for a decent length of time and try and keep some distance from people. My book club has started up again, so that's good. Art group is back on, though they clean the place to the nth degree at the moment and make sure hand sanitizer is on each table, which is OK. My board gaming group has started up again, though I haven't been back yet as it's at night with not much ventilation, lots of strangers etc, so I'm still a bit cautious about returning.

I went to the movie 'The Booksellers' the other day with a friend, which was good. It was about the rare book scene in New York (pre-Covid, of course). Was good to see a few book shops came with resident cat. :)

It's definitely winter here now, when I wake in the morning and it's below 5 degrees (40 F) I Do Not Like. About a week ago there were tornadoes in our region that sent a few trampolines flying here and there, ouch.

Still hunting for a new part-time admin job, a process made much harder of course now in these interesting times. Still, some of the job web sites are starting to list jobs again.

Season 5 (part 1) of 'Lucifer' is turning up in August, yay. I do want to see new adventures of my Chaotic Dumba** babies. Two new seconds of S5 footage were made available and the fandom went crazy, LOL.

Here are some fic recs set in the mid-90's when Windows 95 was released (I remember!). However, this version is an Eldritch Horror that wants to be Your Only Friend. 

1. Welcome to Windows 95!
Done entirely in realistic (and creepy) screenshots.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/24073393

2. Re: Windows 95
People talk about their experiences with Windows 95 (Eldritch Horror version) on a mailing list. Things get creepy.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/24853906

June has started and with it, winter (brr). When the weather drops below 15 degrees (60 F), I don't like it at all. It's back to hats, scarfs and gloves.  At least today is a lovely fine day, though icy in the shade. Saturday was quite stormy, I was out and saw two different rainbows in the morning alone.

I'm planning to go to the 'Tolkien' movie with a friend when it comes out soon, it sounds good.

I went to a board gaming evening last week, one of the games we played was a fantasy-Victorian variation of Cluedo, great fun.

I've heard that 'Good Omens' came out last weekend; I don't get Amazon Prime so hopefully my local library will get the DVD version.  I recently rented the DVD of 'A Discovery of Witches', which was nice if slightly gorey (which I was expecting). It's set in Oxford so lots of lovely library pr0n. :D

When the night is clear, at the moment I can see the Orion constellation on its side in the west, while the Southern Cross is in the eastern sky. :)

Last Thursday was the autumn equinox and the morning started with a heavy, damp fog that had rolled in. Fortunately by late morning it had gone and it became a nice hot day. It's been like that ever since, although there is some stormy weather on the way later this week. Mornings and evenings are getting darker more quickly though.

I went to see 'Captain America' recently to cheer myself up and enjoyed it. It was set in the '90's and I liked how it poked gentle fun at '90's things such as video stores, boxy computers with stone age internet (and how long it takes to download stuff) and pagers.

Some links:

An Incel's life turns around when he gets some pet shrimp

https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/comments/b4phgp/love_it_how_his_life_became_better_when_he_quit/


A poem - 'I got told what to call this poem by my male colleague"

https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/rsrc/2019/03/08/i-got-told-what-to-call-this-poem-by-my-male-colleague/

Best part:

A special thank you to my dissertation advisor
Who, when I told him what I wanted to write about,
Told me about his son’s last holiday abroad
And how his son had told him something interesting
Vaguely related
To my interests
And wouldn’t that be a more interesting topic to write about?

Wow, what a week. On Tuesday night there was a wild storm in Auckland that knocked down trees and powerlines, so a quarter of Auckland was left without power. I was without power for two days (back on now, phew). The storm sounded like a jet engine at times and there must have been a mini-tornado through the neighbourhood; trees came down and some kids pink paddling pool ended up in my garden (!). At the end of the street there is a trampoline that was tossed into the neighbours yard like it weighed nothing, eep.

Yesterday I was glad to get out of the house and treated myself to go and see 'Ready Player One' at the movies - as a geeky child of the '80's, I was the target audience. The movie was different in a lot of ways from the book but I was ok with that. The villain was played by the actor who was the villain in 'Rogue One' - there was a lot of good ham and cheese in his performance and I chuckled when he made a Star Wars reference. Will hopefully see the film again on the big screen.

Today it's that time of the month, ugh. *reaches for more chocolate*

Well, it's definitely winter now (sighs). I've got my warm clothes on and I'm currently near a heater. One thing I do like is seeing the autumn leaves; there are a lot of trees in the CBD whose leaves are various shades of gold / bronze / red right now. It also gives me an excuse to make a pudding from scratch - I recently bought a bag of cooking apples and made an apple and blueberry (from the freezer) crumble, yum.

Mothers Day was a few weeks ago and Dad & I took Mum out to lunch at Devonport, a suburb on the North Shore that always seems a step or two in the past, in a good way. I had pasta and didn't need any more meals that day. Afterwards I went to a second-hand bookshop on the main street and bought a book on archaeology that I'm still happily reading in doses. Afterwards we drove up to Mt Victoria to look at the view. Half way up I noticed this lovely old Victorian house painted various shades of green with a notice saying it was a writers residence. How lovely (sigh). We took some photos looking back to the city and I'll include one under a cut.( Clicky-click... )

Movies - I recently saw 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' which left me wishing yet again that I had my own spaceship that could play '70's rock and whatever else I felt like. I should look at my music and make my own list of 'Spaceship Music (To Play Really Loudly Going Past Something i.e. Mars).

PS: My sympathies for Manchester, what a horrible event.