Busy busy busy
It's been pretty busy since I last got round to updating, with quite a few social and cultural things going on.
[Cut for length.Content as per tags]The Lego Batman Movie turned out to be rather better than I had hoped, with a lot of very entertaining villain cameos (including one group which remained un-named for what I strongly suspect to be for reasons relating to intellectual property law) and a hilarious rock-star-superhero song.
I managed to finish reading my first book of the month, a collection of the Hans Holbein 'Dance of Death' woodcuts with a bit of a history/commentary following on. That gave some welcome additional insights into social attitudes and the subtle and not-so-subtle social commentary included in the pictures.
A and I had a pleasantly low-key Valentine's Day. He bought me chocolates and tea and (best by far: I've been saying I wanted one for I don't know how long) a time turner. Sadly the time turner turned out not to work for muggles, but it's the thought that counts, right? I made him some cute penguin cupcakes from a kids' packet mix I found in the post-Christmas sales, and those went down very well. We missed the hordes of compulsory-coupledom by having lunch out together at a place we'd do on any non-celebratory day and spent the evening gaming with a couple of single friends. We did a one-off play-test adventure for the forthcoming Star Trek RPG, which involved much silliness but only one actual explosion. ;)
This weekend included hosting a couple of very old friends to help celebrate my birthday, with booze and shopping and clubbing. Yesterday's Shadow was the quietest I've ever seen it, as there were so many goth events on all at once in London this Saturday, and that meant all the more room for the goth two-step and the dramatic waving of arms to both goth and New Romantic hits. It was a pity not to see anyone I knew well enough to speak to apart from the people I came with, though. Oh, and silver_daisy and I spent much of Friday night digging through a box of old photos, finding many quite nice ones - plus many quite dreadful outfits and hairdos from our university years - which will have to be scanned and put on Facebook at some point.
This week will involve working my way through lots of cake, as we met the usual crew for Sunday lunch and nezumi_sama has made me a big chocolate cake for my birthday. Next weekend will be a kind of return leg of this weekend, as I'll be heading to Southampton to celebrate silver_daisy's birthday. Ironically, A will be in a holiday camp just the other side of the New Forest, doing a company away-weekend thing with one of her exes, as he's currently doing some freelance writing work for said ex's company. If I'm lucky, timing may even work out so that I can get a lift back in his hire car rather than battling strikes/rail replacement buses/etc on the way home on the Sunday. We shall see...
[Cut for length.Content as per tags]The Lego Batman Movie turned out to be rather better than I had hoped, with a lot of very entertaining villain cameos (including one group which remained un-named for what I strongly suspect to be for reasons relating to intellectual property law) and a hilarious rock-star-superhero song.
I managed to finish reading my first book of the month, a collection of the Hans Holbein 'Dance of Death' woodcuts with a bit of a history/commentary following on. That gave some welcome additional insights into social attitudes and the subtle and not-so-subtle social commentary included in the pictures.
A and I had a pleasantly low-key Valentine's Day. He bought me chocolates and tea and (best by far: I've been saying I wanted one for I don't know how long) a time turner. Sadly the time turner turned out not to work for muggles, but it's the thought that counts, right? I made him some cute penguin cupcakes from a kids' packet mix I found in the post-Christmas sales, and those went down very well. We missed the hordes of compulsory-coupledom by having lunch out together at a place we'd do on any non-celebratory day and spent the evening gaming with a couple of single friends. We did a one-off play-test adventure for the forthcoming Star Trek RPG, which involved much silliness but only one actual explosion. ;)
This weekend included hosting a couple of very old friends to help celebrate my birthday, with booze and shopping and clubbing. Yesterday's Shadow was the quietest I've ever seen it, as there were so many goth events on all at once in London this Saturday, and that meant all the more room for the goth two-step and the dramatic waving of arms to both goth and New Romantic hits. It was a pity not to see anyone I knew well enough to speak to apart from the people I came with, though. Oh, and silver_daisy and I spent much of Friday night digging through a box of old photos, finding many quite nice ones - plus many quite dreadful outfits and hairdos from our university years - which will have to be scanned and put on Facebook at some point.
This week will involve working my way through lots of cake, as we met the usual crew for Sunday lunch and nezumi_sama has made me a big chocolate cake for my birthday. Next weekend will be a kind of return leg of this weekend, as I'll be heading to Southampton to celebrate silver_daisy's birthday. Ironically, A will be in a holiday camp just the other side of the New Forest, doing a company away-weekend thing with one of her exes, as he's currently doing some freelance writing work for said ex's company. If I'm lucky, timing may even work out so that I can get a lift back in his hire car rather than battling strikes/rail replacement buses/etc on the way home on the Sunday. We shall see...