the sun and the moon and the stars

1. Chris's work crunch is finally over! \o/

It was getting pretty hard on me - I don't begrudge him time at work when it's needed, of course, and I'm really glad he got to sink his teeth into a satisfying project. But he worked six twelve-hour days and then two sixteen-hour days all in a row, and although I'm quite accustomed to solitude it was the worst kind of aloneness, because I couldn't just relax and do my own thing, I still had to make sure my schedule fitted into what he needed. And aloneness of that type isn't good for the brainweasels. I sort of dropped my bundle a bit on a few days... but it's over now, and we have a lovely weekend of no obligations ahead of us.

2. It is gorgeous stormy weather outside. I love the summer storms we get in Queensland, and today is shaping up to be awesome in that regard. I'd share a photo but Flickr's iOS7 app is crashy beyond belief.

3. New episode of Elementary to watch! Yay :)

I really fail at daily posting, don't I?

1) With Chris working 12-hour days all week and all weekend, I'm left to my own devices a lot more than I'm accustomed to -- and I do miss him but man, it's nice to have some time off cooking. Chris never expects me to feed him, but I still feel bad if I don't, and I do enjoy cooking, so it's not a chore per se. But it's still nice to not have to bother about it. I have a fridge full of sandwich ingredients, lots of snacks, and the number of the local Italian place that does really good pizza, pasta and ribs. :)


2) I tried the first episode of Sleepy Hollow. I liked it more than I expected - Crane in particular gets some excellent lines, and I can see why fandom likes it. That said, a lot of it pressed my story-squick buttons - I'm not a fan of stories where the main character is consistently not believed when they need to be - so I'm not sure how invested I'm going to get. We'll see.

What it has done, though, is it's inspired me to try Buffy again. (Well, that and the awesome Elementary/Buffy fusion I read yesterday.) I've got six of the seven seasons on DVD, though I stopped early in Season 3 when I was marathoning them the first time. I'll see if I can get further through them this time around.

(Edit: oh god, they're in 4:3. I had forgotten.)


3) I caught up with recent QI episodes yesterday, and the second-last episode made me laugh til I choked. Ross Noble, Sue Perkins and David Mitchell - not quite my ideal guest lineup, but pretty close to it. :)

Maybe I should do a QI rewatch this week. Chris isn't a huge fan of it (it irks him that they take too long to get to the interesting facts :D) so I'm unlikely to watch it with him, and it's been a few years since I watched it all right through.

I really wish they'd release QI DVDs so I could have the whole lot all in the same format and with deleted scenes and special features and so on.


4) Not long til Thor: The Dark World! Squee! Although Thor isn't my favourite of the MCU movies, it has the highest concentration of my favourite characters.

(Also, I am reminded of just how much Tom-Hiddleston-as-Loki is an absolute perfect match for adult Draco Malfoy, IMO. Give him blonde hair, and he's perfect.)


5) I have been hearing rumours about the Agent Carter TV series going ahead with Hayley Atwell. Does anyone have anything more conclusive about it? It is seriously #2 on my wishlist of Things I Would Give My Right Kidney For, right behind a Captain Marvel movie. Please make it happen, Marvel!

1. Turns out Guillermo del Toro cut an hour of footage from Pacific Rim - mostly character arc stuff. I am reeeeeally hoping at least some of that shows up on the DVD special features, y'know? :) (Also, Travis Beacham has been hired to come up with a script for a sequel. I don't know that a sequel is necessary, but it could be awesome. I demand more Mako though.)

2. I am not happy that Agents of SHIELD is ... failing to please, on both a personal and fandom level. But I am happy at the level of discussion that's coming out of it. Shows that push peoples' buttons tend to engender lots of gleeful flailing squee, which is awesome, but shows that fail people engender interesting conversations, and I am really enjoying that. If they're mostly negative conversations, well, that's a bummer, but in some ways negative commentary is still more interesting to me than flaily squee. (Although I certainly do my share of the latter.)

3. I discovered today that next Monday is a public holiday! I did not know! How did I not know?

Surprise long weekends are the best. Especially with a Chris for company. (You'll have to find your own Chris though, this one's mine.)

1. ELEMENTARY IS BACK. Oh Joan, I have missed you. (Okay, and Sherlock too.) I am almost afraid to watch it because I loved Season 1 so much that I may have impossibly high standards now. :)

(Note to self: need Joan icons.)

2. I have a super-lazy weekend ahead of me. I've got gaming tomorrow night, which I'm really looking forward to that, but other than gaming neither of us have any commitments at all, which is rare and very pleasant. I'm not planning on doing nothing, but I really like being able to tackle weekends at my own pace without obligation to other people. I might even find the wherewithal to do some work on my Pacific Rim vid, since all the show vids I had in mind have sort of been jossed by Developments.

3. My parents visited yesterday and brought me some new tubs of herbs to replace those that died while I was away. I have a nifty little lightweight greenhouse set up on my front deck, which keeps the possums off, and I have nice thriving tubs of parsley, basil, oregano, chives and rosemary, and a tiny-but-stubborn mint. Now I just have to keep them all alive throughout summer. ;)

1. I updated my phone and iPad mini to iOS7 the other night, and after a couple of days I think I'm finally adapted to the new setup. There are some stylistic choices I'm not keen on, but overall I think it's a definite improvement on iOS6. (Tip: in Settings > General > Accessibility, you can enable Bold Text. It looks a ton better than the default text, IMO.) At some point I'll get around to updating my bigger iPad, but that's not really urgent given I don't use it for much these days.

2. Gaming last night was lots of fun - as always. :)

3. The iTunes Music Festival is on at the moment, and I was concerned that unlike previous years they didn't seem to be providing video for all the acts after they performed. However, I think there was just a backlog, because everything seems to be posted now. I still wish they'd let you buy the video for later replay, because some of the sets are great, but in the meantime I've ripped the audio of a couple of them so I don't lose them once the videos are taken down in a month or so -- hopefully they'll sell the live shows in album format, at least, like they've done in past years. I particularly recommend the Avicii show if you like electronica; it's two hours of good solid house, and includes many of his best remixes. And the Lady Gaga show is good, as always.

1. I am full and tired and totally brainless, but basically content. All is right with the world (if I don't look too hard at the bits that aren't actually right, but we're not talking about those today.)

2. Tonight I made chicken quesadillas, which were messy but delicious! And then I made fudge, which was not an unmitigated success, but seems to be tasty and I look forward to nomming it when it's fully set.

3. Gaming trip tomorrow YAY. (I will probably not be posting until I'm back.) Chris swears he can cope without me and I'm sure he won't burn the house down while I'm away or anything. :)

1. I missed yesterday's post thanks to an all-day-and-all-evening gaming session. We've gone back to the basics: we're playing D&D. As a system, D&D annoys the shit out of me, but the game is fantastic (thankyou awesome GM) and it's about to get really, really good.

2. J.J. Abrams will not be directing the next Star Trek movie. This is good news - despite my misgivings with the first movie, it turned out to be a) awesome and b) the foundation of an amazing fandom that created amazing things. But Star Trek Into Darkness was a colossal disappointment, and the fandom is virtually silent. I'm really hoping the new director, whoever that may be (personally, I'm hoping for Del Toro), can turn things around.

3. I had delicious toasted ham-and-jarlsberg sandwiches for lunch, and I am full and very content with the world. \o/

1. Last night's dinner experiment worked well! I made shredded beef, as per this recipe, and it was a big hit. I don't usually try new recipes on dinner guests, even when they're my parents, but this one worked well. (Also, I entirely recommend this recipe, and it'd make leftovers for days if you weren't cooking for many people.)

2. I also made homemade apple strudel, for the first time ever, pretty much making it up as I went along. It was very tasty, although I made waaaaay too much. Hooray for leftovers! I know what I'm having for lunch today. ;)

3. I am going to have a nap this afternoon. I'm looking forward to this nap so, so much. It will be delicious and soft and cool and nap-like and wonderful.

1. Last night's D&D game was really really good. Lots of meaty character interactions and secrets revealed and all the things that really push my buttons about gaming. Unfortunately there will be a bit of a delay until the next game, as our GM is going away, but I can be patient. (Lady, where's my spy camera?)

2. Yuletide discussion is starting up, and I'm actually feeling like I could possibly do Yuletide this year. I defaulted a couple of years ago, and haven't tried again since then, but the extended time schedule of this year's Yuletide makes it look a lot more feasible.

3. I have an entire weekend of no commitments. I hope to get some guides written for the Firefall fan site, and other than that I'm going to paint my nails with one of my lovely new polishes, and do bugger all. Yay!

I always enjoy reading torachan's Daily Happiness posts, and st_aurafina has started doing them too. Who am I to buck a trend, especially one that's about happiness? :) So, with all credit to torachan for the idea, and hopefully it'll get me in the habit of posting daily...

1. Movies! I've been looking forward to White House Down for a while - I like the Die-Hard-esque building logistics scenarios, and I expected to enjoy Olympus Has Fallen, which was the same sort of premise but with extra Gerard Butler Srsface. I found Olympus Has Fallen to be a bit too brutal in its violence, though (apparently I'm getting squeamish in my old age) and from the trailers White House Down appears to be pitched a little lighter in tone, so it should be a fun popcorn movie. It starts in a week but there's a preview screening today, so we're going for Mexican for lunch and then movies.

2. Chris and I launched a fansite for our favourite video game obsession, Firefall, back in March this year. It really took off, and we're now one of the biggest and most popular fansites for the game. Apparently our stuff is so good that some of the guys from the publishing studio use it as their own reference material, and we get a lot of very vocal appreciation both from the community and from the studio. (Sadly, they're in California and all their content-writing positions have to be on-site. I already checked. ;)) I don't have to explain how good for me that is, I'm sure. :)

3. Chris. He's adorable and I am honestly grateful every day that he found me. :)