photo saturday: study in white

blue sea white sailgrey sky black glass

white ribs blue glasswhite clouds grey curves
Once again, there's not a whole hell of a lot to report. Actually that's possibly not completely true, but there's a bunch of stuff I don't really want to talk about right now.

Technically I still have the cold... I say technically because it seems to mostly have moved from being an active cold to just being the general feeling of pressure in my sinuses. Dr Google doesn't seem to think that it's a sinus infection, but it's still annoying.

I was supposed to make simple soup last week... just potato and leek... with bacon, because bacon. And that's how it started... but I thought it was going to be too thin and put extra potato in, then too much cheese, then way too much pepper. So while it should have been simple, it didn't end up quite as simple... plus it ended up very, very thick. So by the end of the week I'll admit I was a little bit over it.

The rest of the week was fairly rinse and repeat... then on Friday I had my chiro appointment, which, as always, led to general wandering around in the Mall until I ran out of things to do.

This morning I woke up way too early thanks to some heartburn... well, Doctor Google has some other ideas about it, but we'll go with heartburn unless it happens again. It wasn't a whole heap of fun though, and I ended up getting up, wrapping myself in blankets and sitting in the lounge for a while, until the sensation dissipated and I was essentially falling asleep... so I got back into bed.

All of that did kind of throw off my morning though... which was only really a problem because Ma was getting her hair did, so I was left to my own devices.

And that led to me leaving the house about an hour later than I would have otherwise.

Which did lead to the shopping taking slightly longer than it otherwise would have. But that was also partly because I kept forgetting things and had to double back on myself a few times. This week's soup is very definitely going for a simpler vibe. I don't know completely what I'm going to end up with, but I'm not going to blend it... and I'm going to try and keep it reasonably thin.

We'll see.

I still managed to do all my shopping, come back, unpack and do a few other things before Ma rocked up. Interestingly, I'm pretty sure she had a cut and colour, but I honestly didn't even notice the colour if I'm honest. Maybe that means it wasn't as obvious as it sometimes is... I don't know.

Neither of us really had any plans (and to be honest, I would have been okay if we'd just called it a day then and there... but it seemed a bit cruel to have Ma drive all the way here and then just turn around and go home again)... but eventually we decided on a trip into town, mostly for Ma to run an errand, but also to check out Flinders Street Market, because that's usually worth a poke around once in a while.

Turns out it was kind of a very good day for Flinders Street.

Firstly I found a very apropo brooch for a belated birthday present... then we discovered Ark Angel Creations... she makes "sensory products"... for both kids and people with sensory needs. And I'm a pretty tactile person at the best of times, so her stall was a ton of fun to poke around at. She also had some of the water beads, so I grabbed a pack of those, because they're always fun...

Then saw these little knitted discs that are basically a circular tube with a marble trapped inside, and you just move the marble around by manipulating the disc. They were only a couple of bucks, so I grabbed one, and I haven't really been able to leave it alone since. I'll get over it eventually, but it's fun and gives me something to do with my hands while doing other things.

From there we had a poke around the Mall so Ma could do what she needed to do, then we came back to the Village, poked around T2, grabbed some food and came back here.

And that was about it really.

Current Mood:

lego minifigures series 16

lego minifigures series 16
I've been meaning to blog about the latest series of collectible Lego minifigures for a little while now.

Here's the line up...
  • Scallywag Pirate
  • Babysitter
  • Cyborg
  • Spooky Boy
  • Desert Warrior
  • Kickboxer
  • Spy
  • Ice Queen
  • Wildlife Photographer
  • Mariachi
  • Hiker
  • Banana Suit Guy
  • Rogue
  • Penguin Suit Guy
  • Dog Show Winner
  • Cute Little Devil
At this point my favourite characters are Spooky Boy, the spy, the rogue and the penguin suit guy. And it seems like the guy in the hot dog suit has a dessert companion, with the banana suit guy... That has to be it though, right? I mean maybe you could get away with an ice cream cone guy or possibly a corn on the cob guy, but that's pretty much it I think.

I also feel like the devil was a left over design from the series 14 monsters, but he is quite sweet.

At the bottom of the list for me is the cyborg. The hair is kind of interesting (although why the stud on the gun isn't blue to tone in with everything else is a mystery), but overall she feels a little m'eh. Likewise the Mariachi guy... the guitar is cool, but he's like the lovechild of the Mexican and the Bandito.

The collection of Lego animals from these sets are expanded this time with a penguin and a little white dog (Tintin MOC anyone?).

Current Mood:

movies: kubo and the two strings

kubo and the two strings - the quest begins
If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see...

The opening line of narration to Kubo and the Two Strings isn't just empty words, this is a movie you don't want to look away from for a second.

I'm completely and totally, madly, head-over-heels in love with Laika, the production company behind not just Kubo, but also The Boxtrolls, Paranorman and Coraline.

And this is their biggest and most ambitious movie thus far.

Essentially Kubo is a Japanese action adventure movie made with 3D printed, stop motion animation puppets.

Which shouldn't work, but as with everything Laika put their collective hands and minds to, the heart of the story of Kubo makes everything else not exactly inconsequential, but the spectacle always serves the story. And makes for some amazing moments.

I'll be honest I didn't even know this movie existed until about a month ago, and I tried not to see too much about it before the fact, wanting to go in pretty much cold (beyond knowing, as the poster shows, there was a boy, a samurai beetle and a monkey). And I'm glad I didn't know anything, so I'll be staying as far away from story as I can for most of this review.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. This movie is absolutely stunning... from the first shot to the last, it's an amazing feast for the eyes (and the characters of The Sisters... I want collectible versions of them!). If I was going to quibble at all it would be to say that when the faces are viewed close up, you can see that they're 3D printed, there's a slight softness and graininess to some of the details... particularly evident in the lines on Beetle's face.

But I would much rather they use the 3D printing and be able to create epic numbers of expressions and props and the like than the opposite. And eventually the technology will catch up with what they're doing and the faces will be flawless.

There was also something about the animation that reminded me of old-school stop motion in a way their previous movies haven't... but again, not in a negative way.

What I will say about the story is that at it's heart it's about family... and about both taking control of your own story and knowing the power that stories possess. And that even stories with a happy ending can be sad (or vice versa, I'm not completely sure which it is).

I know that there's at least some authentic Japanese mythology thrown into the mix, and it feels like it all could be... but the majority of the story is actually a creation of Shannon Tindle and Marc Haimes, and they've done a fantastic job.

Continuing the Laika/Game of Thrones cross over started in Boxtrolls, Kubo is voiced by Art Parkinson (who plays the youngest of the Starks in GoT), with Charlize Theron as Monkey and Matthew McConaughey as Beetle.

It's a beautiful movie though... sad, peaceful, frenetic, original and thoroughly watchable.

yani's rating: 5 paper samurai out of 5

photo saturday: zen garden

sentinelneedles

pondzen
This week's post is brought to you by acute viral nasopharyngitis... also known as the common cold.

Yes, after making it past the mid point in August and dodging any number of colds and illnesses that have afflicted my co-workers, it finally caught up with me this week.

So it's made the rest of the week a little more challenging.

But starting at the beginning. Last week's soup was  equal parts success and disaster... and I say disaster only because I wanted to add a little more spice and flavour to the chicken and vegetable soup I was making. I found a couple of packets of chicken tinga flavouring amongst my pantry and decided to add them both. I'm going to say for future reference that one would have been more than enough. But the soup had a little of everything in it, and a couple of chicken breasts, and I blended the whole thing, chicken included, which was kind of interesting and pretty much successful.

Then I got sick, and as usually happens when I'm sick I either lose most of my appetite or else I get cravings for very specific things. And I think both of those things happened this time. Which would have been fine, had I not already made excessive amounts of soup. Ah well, at least Ma happily accepts all my left over soup.

So this week has been mostly been spent in a bit of a haze... especially at work.

Thursday was Haircut Night. After my last haircut I've been thinking about changing the colour to match in a little more with the uncoloured parts of my hair. In short, to take some of the yellow out and matching it with the silver that's coming in. Well, it's been there for a while to be honest.

The cut is the same, but we got a less brassy tone for the main part of my hair. Tink recommended I get some of that toning shampoo just to add to the toning, so I picked some up today.

Today was fairly standard, all things considered. First the supermarket... and I decided on potato and leek soup for this week, something simple and uncomplicated just in case this cold persists.

Neither of us bought an awful lot to be honest.

And then after we got back and I'd unpacked all my stuff, we decided to head down to Marion (with a brief stop off first at the post office to pick up a parcel).

There was also a brief stop off at Laygo (the Lego store on South Road) since we were going past, mostly to order the next series of minifigures (which I also still need to do a post about)... but I had a nice chat with the guy who runs the place too.

We didn't really do a lot at Marion... I did get a new mouse for my laptop (same brand and model as the last one, but this one is red... to be honest, the black one looked a little better... but red) from Big W, and as I mentioned, picked up some of the toning shampoo (and conditioner).

Then we pretty much headed off to the movies, more on that later, although I will just say that moving to this apartment has very much done a number on our movie going habits, and it was already in decline anyway...

After the movie we stopped off in the new "fresh food" area at Marion at one of the new eateries, Warong, and had some lunch... it was pretty good, although the seating is slightly diabolical.

It'll be interesting to have a proper poke around that area next time, try some of the other food options... but really anything will be an improvement on their food court.

And that was pretty much that to be honest. But at least we were able to stay out of the weather.

Current Mood:

photo saturday: into the blue

looking out to the blueblack and green and blue

green boardsjungle shorts
Do you know what I love... I love the fact that you can find almost anything to suit a particular need on the internet. I didn't want to sit here in silence writing about my week, but there's nothing on TV, and it would have distracted me anyway... so I'm listening to an 8 hour video of rain falling on a roof. And I could have chosen 8 hours of a campfire on a beach, or 8 hours of a purring cat... actually hang on a second...

No, I can't do 8 hours of purring... not that it's not lovely, but I'd legit fall asleep.

Technically I really should be doing this through my headphones, but I left my headphones back at the office on Friday night.

Also, I realised something this week... I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point, everybody but me on Instagram stopped using the frames and, as far as I can tell, the filters. Here was I, happily going along using the app the way I thought everyone else was, then I suddenly realised, yeah, you're out on your own there buddy. So I'm attempting to follow the herd. Still using some filters, but not at full strength, and I kinda like the results so far.

But seriously, next time there's a meeting where we all decide something isn't cool anymore, can somebody at least send me a memo afterwards? Thanks.

Oh, and just in case anybody is interested, I've added a widget to the sidebar of the blog that lists all the podcasts I'm currently listening to on a regular basis. And if anybody has suggestions for interesting ones, let me know.

Last Sunday my plan to invent mushroom soup went pretty damn well. I got the idea at some point to roast the mushrooms first, and that was a good plan. Turns out it's really easy to do (well dur... but chop into quarters, toss in olive oil, salt and pepper... then into the oven for about 20 minutes). I also threw in a potato, a turnip and a swede, which kind of bulked things out.

It was a very "and this, and this" kind of soup. I stuck a teaspoon of Vegemite in for flavour, the same with Dijon mustard... and ended with some fairly out of date natural yoghurt to make up for a lack of cream.

Side note, can you guess the downside to listening to rain sounds while typing... yeah, I need to pee...

Sorry, TMI.

This week was all a little m'eh.

There was a census on Tuesday... well, there was supposed to be a census, except the website crashed. Looks like it might be up again now though, so I may have to try and fill it out later.

I started watching the series everybody on the internet has a massive nerdboner over, Stranger Things... I'm about two thirds of the way through currently, and yeah, I'm really, really not feeling it. I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm just saying that it still really hasn't grabbed me.

Case in point, I watched two episodes Sunday morning, but wasn't compelled to watch the whole series straight through. In fact, even though I think I watched another one on Sunday night, I didn't go back to it until maybe Thursday. I also wish I could put my finger on why it isn't working. It may be that it's too earnest and I haven't really found a reason to care about the characters that much.

I'm aware that the internet may well gather their pitchforks and torches, but yeah, like I said, a well put together show, just not on my frequency.

Other than that the week was fairly dull. Work got kind of hectic, mostly because I was distracted by some other work and couldn't give anything else my full attention.

Friday we had a morning tea and drinks to celebrate someone leaving... but it was someone I didn't really like all that much, so while I enjoyed the morning tea and went to the drinks, it was most in spite of the person they were for, not because of them.

The drinks didn't really last all that long... at least not as long as last time. But Owlgirl did come in, as did Herschel, so that was nice. And Owlgirl said she had some shopping to do and could only stay for a little while, but hated shopping alone... so I decided that I'd go with her and wander around the shops. To be honest, when we left the drinks were already winding down (and I was only about three drinks in).

So we wandered about looking for whatever it was she wanted, I did take a detour off to the comic book shop for a minute to pick up one of my orders.

Then just before 8:30, we rendezvoused with her BF and they went off, leaving me to grab something for dinner before wandering home.

And when I got home, I found my fan-made Jacob Frye/Assassin's Creed Syndicate pendant waiting for me. It looks pretty good actually. I made need to make a slight modification to it, but the coin is an authentic 1844 shilling, and the necklace is pretty comfortable to wear. And yes, fan-boying pretty hard. But it also doesn't LOOK like I'm fan-boying... because it's just a coin necklace, and if you don't know what it is, you're none-the-wiser.

This morning I managed to get up, do some dishes, have a shower and be dressed albeit without any shoes, when Ma arrived... and I didn't get my ass out of bed until after she'd messaged me to say she was on her way, so that was pretty good.

We did the usual supermarket thing... I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with the soup this week. I just bought a soup pack and a ton of vegetables, so I'm guessing vegetable soup... possibly with chicken, I dunno yet.

When we got back we had to make a quick trip to Coles over at the Village, since we'd forgotten to do that at Norwood, then unpacked and kind of sat around a little bit going...

"I dunno, what do you think?"
"I dunno, what do you think?"
"I dunno, what do YOU think?"

And that never gets us anywhere.

Fortunately I had something of a backup plan, since my bus goes past the art gallery every morning, and I've been seeing a big sign for a Robert Hannaford exhibition for a while now.

Now, before today I knew jack shit about Robert Hannaford, but looking at the four images on the banners outside the gallery, I was pretty sure he was an Australian artist from the 1930's or 1940's, who primarily did male portraits. And both of these things are my bag.

Turns out that technically none of that is true, beyond the Australian bit and the portraits bit.

Robert Hannaford is a South Australian portrait artist who was born in 1944, worked as a political cartoonist and has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize 23 times, winning the People's Choice award three times. And all of the handsome men on the banners outside the gallery were self portraits.

I will say that I fell instantly in love with all of his work. I still can't get over the very 1930's, 1940's vibe that I originally saw, it's definitely there, but even just the self portraits from when he was in his 20's (which I think are most of the banner images), especially the quick pencil sketches and the like, are amazing.

Robert Hannaford - Tom (1987)

This is my favourite though...a portrait of his son Tom from 1987. Putting aside that Tom is a beautiful young man... that amazing, amazing blue against his skin tone... this image doesn't do it the least bit of justice. It just shines like a jewel.

It was also interesting that the gallery had mixed through some other works from their collection, a collection of self portraits, a group of nudes, some large portraits of important leaders, all complimenting Robert's work beautifully.

I was so enamoured by his work that I did something I've never done before... I went to the gallery shop and bought the exhibition book. I'll have to set aside some time and go through it... it's mostly his artwork, but there's a few pieces of text too.

We wandered around the rest of the gallery as well, which we don't do all that often, but it's nice when we do. While I do miss some of the pieces that used to be up (and don't really like some of the new pieces... like the dead horse thing), I do love that they now mix up ancient and modern works into themes rather than time periods.

After we'd finished our wander, we headed down to Burger Theory for lunch. I had the new Burger of the Month... the Diner Burger, which has a hashbrown, egg salad, bacon, BBQ sauce and cheese in addition to the usual beef patty. I can't say it's the tidiest burger I've ever eaten, my fingers were a giant mess once I was done, but it was interesting.

I do think the hash brown got a little lost to be honest... and if memory serves and these were their "made from scratch" hash browns, they were really good. And, as always, the BBQ sauce was lovely. It was just maybe missing a little... something... I can't put my finger on what though. But still tasty.

Then we wandered back to the car and called it a day.

Oh, and I need to remember to go looking for a new wireless mouse next weekend if not before... the one I have currently is losing it's buttonness... I've replaced the battery, but it still doesn't want to click when I click... so maybe time for a new one. Maybe a trip out to Officeworks.

Hmmm... given how badly this is behaving, it may need a trip tomorrow...

Current Mood:

photo saturday: sailboats

blue celetebobbing around

red hullon the water

bridge boatslavendar dingy... the place, not the colour
There's not really a lot of news this week... so let's try and wrap this up in reasonably short order...

Last week's Mulligatawny soup went pretty well, even though I managed to fuck up the amount of lentils that were supposed to be in it, so I pretty much ended up with a much thinner soup than I think I was supposed to have. I think maybe next time I'll double everything except for the spices... don't get me wrong, it's amazing, but it is so damn spicy that by the end of the week I was a little bit over it.

I honestly can't think of anything noteworthy that happened during the week... work was work... I was hoping Friday was going to be fairly quiet since Plaid wasn't around... and it was, for the first couple of hours, and then all the crazy just dropped out of the woodwork.

So I was very glad to walk out of work and then go and do a little wandering and a little shopping in the Mall. Essentially I had to pick something up from Zing and could have just gone straight home from there, but it always feels like a bit of a waste to just do that and not wander around, especially since I no longer have the option of a wander any night of the week (well, I do, but it means going completely the opposite direction from where I'm going).

I hit Zing, I picked up the next couple of books in the series I'm reading at the moment and I grabbed another hair product pack (so much cheaper than buying some individually!), had a poke around a couple of other places and then headed home.

And that was pretty much my week.

Today consisted mostly of the usual arrangement with minor variations.

I had a severe case of apathy during the week, so I needed to do a little housework before Ma arrived... not everything got done, but enough.

I didn't get that much stuff from the supermarket, but the makings for what may be a weird little Frankenstein soup... I'm leaning towards something mushroom, but I don't have a recipe and I'm basically winging it. We'll see how it works out. I just wanted something a lot simpler this time.

We came back here, did the usual unpacking and then headed off to the city. Ma needed some birthday presents and cards, so off we went.

Normally what may have happened is that we would have gone to one place, seen something reasonable, then gone to every other possible store before deciding that the thing we saw in the first store was actually the best thing on offer. I also managed to find something for Owlgirl for Christmas, so that's that already sorted, and we're not even in double digit months yet. And after learning my lesson back in June about the best place to buy greeting cards, we went straight to David Jones and off Ma went... granted I had to steer her back in a more interesting direction when I remembered that one of the cards was for Miss Oh.

Sidebar... I had a little bit of a "WTF" moment when Ma mentioned that Miss Oh is turning 18... what the actual fuckery. I mean I know time passes and everything, but holy fuckballs, when did that happen.

Anyway, we did that, poked around a couple of other places and then pretty much called it quits.

And that's pretty much it...

Current mood: