See You Next Wednesday
More of my friends are getting married.
Sarah and Simon got married, which was an excellent thing to do and great fun. Congratulations and keep up the good work, both of you. Craig and Winnie got married too, at the same time and about five hundred metres southward. More congratulations! Then Polly and Nola flew off to Western Australia. Soon Libby will visit, which is nice.
Why I love the Internet today.
Blogger has changed. Last time it did this I lost my layout and my orange colour. After some effort these were (mostly) recovered. This will take some time to deal with, again. Whatever happened to backward compatibility?
Previously, this month. I saw
Crescendo at the theatre, twice;
Lyndsay gave an improvisation workshop about
The Chicago Way; Simon's
Mouse Guard game continued; Emma-Jean and Gavin had a book launch for
Beginnings: a comics anthology; Amber and Oli had a games night; I saw the
Hilliard Ensemble at Llewellyn Hall; I saw
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll at the theatre; Rob came to visit from Japan; Polly came to visit from Western Australia; I saw
Yes, Prime Minister at the theatre; Narayan's
Werewolf game recommenced; Spectrum won a set at volleyball; and I saw
Midsummer (a play with songs) at the theatre. So that was nice.
More Internet fun.I broke my preferences, but I have many bookmarks so all is not lost.
More actual fun.Impro courses started again last week, and a new volleyball season starts soon, and any day now Narayan will reanimate his
Werewolf game, and there's more
Mouse Guard tomorrow.
Life gets me higher.I played a lot in January. Due to foreseen absences we have played board games instead of roleplaying games for the last two weeks at Duffy Street. Before that, Oli had a birthday board game celebration. I went to an improvised theatre workshop where a lot of games were played to devise a performance format. I also went to Impro Karaoke where even more games were played. I played beach volleyball - I think we may have even won a set. Later I'm going to go to Cancon where I will probably buy some board games to give away as birthday presents. Tomorrow I will play Mike's
Amber game for the last time, Monday is beach volleyball again, and Tuesday is back to
Mouse Guard at Duffy Street. What a lot of fun I'm having.
Fabulous people are fabulous.Danica and Jonno got married. Gosh, how lovely! Congratulations you two fantastic people. Best wishes for your bright and beautiful life together.
Season's greetings. Feed the world.I visited my pa for his birthday on 22 December. It rained a lot and we watched
Private Schulz. Then we both visited Jo, Koko, Mikey and Nils for Christmas. On the trip we saw a caravan flip over on the freeway. It was sunnier in Sydney than Woy Woy so we ran around in the park a bit. Later we watched some
Ripping Yarns,
Tales from Earthsea and
Hercules Returns. On Boxing Day I visited my ma; I filleted a trout and we watched
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe and
Red Dog.
My current Internet peeve is search engines which do things such as: when presented with "Four Weddings", return
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as the most likely candidate and place
Four Weddings and a Funeral outside the top five (or, when presented with "news 23 December 2011 caravan F3", return an NSW RTA media release from 2004 about driving safely).
See You Next Wednesday is ten years old today.
(Note to self: post this today.)
Let’s see if this still works. On Friday my car had its 200Mm service; it will have to go back in the new year for a “clutch kit”, I am told. The service engine light came back on* about half an hour after I drove away. While my car was being serviced I went to the dentist; I have to go back in the new year to clean up some decay and touch up a couple of fillings. Then I did my Christmas shopping which I managed not to complete despite using a list; some people will be getting new year’s gifts this season. In the evening I went to the
Impro ACT end-of-year event. Brad, Dave, Heidi, Marco, Nick, Ruth and I did a long-form format Heidi had developed in our class called
Homeward which was great fun. Other people watched and clapped at the end and said it was fun to watch too, which is nice.
On Saturday Alex, Ash, Gavin, James, Morgyn, Shy and Terence helped James move to his recently bought house. There were two trailers and some stuff had been moved already so it was not a lot of work, but it expanded to fill the time available. Once there were two people loading furniture onto a trailer while five people stood in the driveway watching them and a funny person said “Hooray! Teamwork!” James bought pizzas for lunch and Danica bought icy-poles too, which is nice.
On Sunday I got my
Heroclix out of the shed but I’m not allowed to play with them until I’ve finished my Christmas gift wrapping, which will probably be in the new year. In the afternoon I played in Mike’s Arthurian
Amber game with Chris, Julie, Justin and Shy. Mike runs games differently to how I am used to games being run: players keep their character secrets secret, NPC motivations change as the real world requires, character development is prescribed by the GM. We received experience and although I got the least amount, and I’m not sure how to use it, I am sure I have more than I will need, which is nice.
That was another good day.
*
The service engine light has been on constantly since the NRMA replaced the “compressor and lines”, except for an intermittent period over two days after Toyota checked it and determined it was a “stressed sensor”. This time it was a “historical code” and the “buffer was flushed”. Yet it returns...
Goodbye Uncle Henry.Uncle Henry died. I think my dad is now the oldest living person in his family. For reasons I'm also not going to write about, it's sadder than I care to write about.
Goodbye Uncle Davey.Uncle Davey died. Looking back, I think I learned a lot about courtesy, politeness and tolerance from him. I flew to Melbourne with Ma on Thursday and stayed with Aunty Zibby. Andy flew in Thursday night and stayed with Aunty Nan. Mikey flew in Friday morning for the funeral. Cousin Anna, Ma and Uncle Graeme read the eulogy; cousin Paul and Andy read
Bible passages. I met some great-aunts and great-uncles, some old second-cousins and two new ones; Paul and Miranda's daughter Elouise, and Anna and Mick's daughter Mya. I know if you were not there, and Davey had been, then he would have asked how you were. I love my family.
Meanwhile.Amongst the things I have done recently are such diverse elements as
Belong (excellent),
Namatjira (less than excellent), Mike's untitled Amber game, another
impro course, and my ma's seventieth birthday celebration at
Yeola in Kangaroo Valley over a long weekend.
Poorly Executed
I saw
Julius Caesar. There was very clever staging with nice neat chairs for Rome and messy chairs for the final battles. People would enter and exit the area outlined by the chairs pausing for a beat in synch when scenes changed. That was very effective. There were a couple of microphone stands used for whispered asides and crowd scenes and such. That was good too.
But mostly it was dull. The costumes were black and grey. Anger, grief, love, pride all required shouting and more shouting. A few people hung their head or stared painfully goggle-eyed for a while, but nobody actually cried. Portia died off stage, possible even during the interval.
Also, it was a little confused. Cassius was played by a lady and the pronouns were changed, but not the rest of the script so "she" was still a "man". Portia's "I have a man's will but a woman's might" line was nonsense because at the same time Cassius was orchestrating Caesar's assassination. And at the end an elaborately staged theatrical device suggested Rome was restored, contrary to the battle results.
UncharacteristicI saw
Untrained and I think it could have been much better. Without the characters the show is just two men doing dance exercises and two men doing dance exercises poorly. About half way in the characters began to emerge and it began to be interesting, and then it was all over. It didn't need to be longer, it needed to start sooner and not to spend half the show warming up.
Also, it was the first night, so the audience was full of friends of the performers and sections tried valiantly to applaud every action on stage - which didn't help.
Improvised sleep.The last day of
Improvention was approximately twenty-four hours from "where is coffee?" to "tequila is empty". What fun!
Yesterday, I had a lovely lunch with Emma-Jean and met her new building, visited my ma for tea and computer support, gardened until the bins were full, and played volleyball relatively well.
