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Dec. 25th, 2017 07:40 amMerry Christmas (or other appropriate well-wishings) to all my readers! And may your next year be a significant improvement over the one you've been having!
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Dec. 25th, 2015 03:31 pmVeselé Vánoce!
I'm in a picturesque* medieval town in the Czech Republic** for Christmas Day. The forecast is warm and sunny, with a continued absence of snow.
*In both the traditional and Pratchettian meanings of the word.
**We came here from Prague via Vienna, so I've added Austria to my life list too. That's it for now, though; the foreseeable future contains only countries I've already been to.
I'm in a picturesque* medieval town in the Czech Republic** for Christmas Day. The forecast is warm and sunny, with a continued absence of snow.
*In both the traditional and Pratchettian meanings of the word.
**We came here from Prague via Vienna, so I've added Austria to my life list too. That's it for now, though; the foreseeable future contains only countries I've already been to.
Five Things Make a Post
Dec. 30th, 2014 12:47 pm1. Out-of-Town Sister couldn't make it for family Christmas this year, but the rest of the immediate family could, and we had a nice afternoon together in a shady part of the parents' yard. Two different people gave me TARDIS-shaped money boxes, one containing a fortune in jelly babies. My mother gave me, among other things I received more graciously, a can opener and frying pan, which I suspect was a Hint. (It's not as if I don't already own multiples of both already; in fact, I'm pretty sure one of my other can openers was also a Hint.) I gave the elder of my nieces The Book With No Pictures.
2. When Out-of-Town Brother is in town, our usual bonding activity is video games, but this year I got him to help me try out a couple of board games that I backed on Kickstarter but have never had a chance to play.
A Study in Emerald is a game of conspiratorial maneuvring in a world ruled by the Great Old Ones, with each player either attempting to overthrow the tentacle of tyranny or working as a loyal servant of Thing and Country. It has lots of dice and counters and cards and rules, and took almost as long to set up and read the rules the first time as it did to play, but I can see myself warming to it if I ever get to play it often enough to internalize the details.
Machine of Death is a collaborative storytelling game set in a world where there is a machine that produces accurate but cryptic predictions about how people are going to die; the players are a group of assassins who have been given a list of targets and have to plan and then carry out assassinations that fit their respective predictions. It was a lot of fun; more difficult than it looked in the demo videos I've seen, but I suspect that's because we only had two players.
We also played a few games of Star Fluxx and Once Upon a Time.
3. Less successful was my attempt to introduce the family to Dixit. It turned out not to be a good moment for it; there was a lot else going on, we only managed to get the minimum number of players, Younger Niece kept trying to make off with the score counters, and we only managed to get in one round before we had to stop, in which everybody got all the clues so we ended up on a draw. Oh, well; there's always next time.
4. The arrival of summer has meant the realisation of all the holes in my summer wardrobe and more clothing shopping. And more trying on multiple things just to find one that fits. Although when I did find something that fit I could really tell the difference, which reassures me that the difficulty of finding it is the clothes and not just me. (And perhaps, thinking back, that one particular shop. I forgot to mention, last time I was complaining about this, that at that one shop there was a shirt I tried on that was so badly cut that one sleeve fit fine but I couldn't get my arm all the way into the other.)
5. BBC Radio 4 recently aired a six-part adaptation of Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's comic novel about the end of the world. All the episodes are available on the official website for the next few weeks, even to people in foreign parts.
2. When Out-of-Town Brother is in town, our usual bonding activity is video games, but this year I got him to help me try out a couple of board games that I backed on Kickstarter but have never had a chance to play.
A Study in Emerald is a game of conspiratorial maneuvring in a world ruled by the Great Old Ones, with each player either attempting to overthrow the tentacle of tyranny or working as a loyal servant of Thing and Country. It has lots of dice and counters and cards and rules, and took almost as long to set up and read the rules the first time as it did to play, but I can see myself warming to it if I ever get to play it often enough to internalize the details.
Machine of Death is a collaborative storytelling game set in a world where there is a machine that produces accurate but cryptic predictions about how people are going to die; the players are a group of assassins who have been given a list of targets and have to plan and then carry out assassinations that fit their respective predictions. It was a lot of fun; more difficult than it looked in the demo videos I've seen, but I suspect that's because we only had two players.
We also played a few games of Star Fluxx and Once Upon a Time.
3. Less successful was my attempt to introduce the family to Dixit. It turned out not to be a good moment for it; there was a lot else going on, we only managed to get the minimum number of players, Younger Niece kept trying to make off with the score counters, and we only managed to get in one round before we had to stop, in which everybody got all the clues so we ended up on a draw. Oh, well; there's always next time.
4. The arrival of summer has meant the realisation of all the holes in my summer wardrobe and more clothing shopping. And more trying on multiple things just to find one that fits. Although when I did find something that fit I could really tell the difference, which reassures me that the difficulty of finding it is the clothes and not just me. (And perhaps, thinking back, that one particular shop. I forgot to mention, last time I was complaining about this, that at that one shop there was a shirt I tried on that was so badly cut that one sleeve fit fine but I couldn't get my arm all the way into the other.)
5. BBC Radio 4 recently aired a six-part adaptation of Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's comic novel about the end of the world. All the episodes are available on the official website for the next few weeks, even to people in foreign parts.
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Dec. 25th, 2014 08:18 amMerry Christmas (or other appropriate well-wishings) to all my readers! And may your next year be a significant improvement over the one you've been having!
Also, have one of my favourite bits of seasonal cheer: Straight No Chaser attempting to conquer The Twelve Days of Christmas
Also, have one of my favourite bits of seasonal cheer: Straight No Chaser attempting to conquer The Twelve Days of Christmas
Five Seasonal Things Make a Post
Dec. 31st, 2013 08:05 pm1. All the immediate family were in town for Christmas, which was nice. We made an unhurried afternoon of it, and all enjoyed ourselves. I gave some good presents, judging by their recipients' reactions, and I received some really nice presents, too.
2. My sister brought along a Doctor Who special edition Monopoly set which someone had given her and she hadn't had a chance to play with anyone. It wasn't really a success, because once the novelty of the theme wore off it was basically still the same old grindingly slow game Monopoly has always been, and somewhere around the point where all the chance cards had been played at least once, and all the properties had been bought without anybody getting a complete set of anything, we just gave up. The most fun we had in the whole game was when my sister and I found ourselves getting into a bitter rivalry over possession of one particular $50 note, which kept going back and forward between us as rent money, accompanied by increasingly theatrical cries of "You see! It always finds its way home!"
3. Also, while my brother was in town, the two of us played a few more levels of Lego Star Wars, which seems to have become our traditional "We don't often see each other, and when we do, we don't know what to do next" activity. We're up to Return of the Jedi now, and still occasionally accidentally shoot each other or drag each other off ledges. (All part of the fun.)
4. Another thing we all did together as a family was go to the cinema and see The Desolation of Smaug, my opinion of which in one respect may be judged by the fact that I've taken to referring to it as just "The Desolation of Smaug" without according it the surtitle. I did like the way they made an effort to ground and round out the character of Bard the bowman, but most of the other additions struck me as unnecessary and poorly-suited to the material they were allegedly adapting. I think it says something about their priorities that the film begins with a completely invented scene designed to recap the premise of the plot, and then leaves out the plot recap scene that actually occurs near that point in the novel.
5. My new year's resolution for this year is, in contrast to the usual, to get off the diet. I'll still be watching what I eat, but in a more general and flexible sort of way instead of trying to tie myself down to specific numbers (which I was never all that good at, anyway).
2. My sister brought along a Doctor Who special edition Monopoly set which someone had given her and she hadn't had a chance to play with anyone. It wasn't really a success, because once the novelty of the theme wore off it was basically still the same old grindingly slow game Monopoly has always been, and somewhere around the point where all the chance cards had been played at least once, and all the properties had been bought without anybody getting a complete set of anything, we just gave up. The most fun we had in the whole game was when my sister and I found ourselves getting into a bitter rivalry over possession of one particular $50 note, which kept going back and forward between us as rent money, accompanied by increasingly theatrical cries of "You see! It always finds its way home!"
3. Also, while my brother was in town, the two of us played a few more levels of Lego Star Wars, which seems to have become our traditional "We don't often see each other, and when we do, we don't know what to do next" activity. We're up to Return of the Jedi now, and still occasionally accidentally shoot each other or drag each other off ledges. (All part of the fun.)
4. Another thing we all did together as a family was go to the cinema and see The Desolation of Smaug, my opinion of which in one respect may be judged by the fact that I've taken to referring to it as just "The Desolation of Smaug" without according it the surtitle. I did like the way they made an effort to ground and round out the character of Bard the bowman, but most of the other additions struck me as unnecessary and poorly-suited to the material they were allegedly adapting. I think it says something about their priorities that the film begins with a completely invented scene designed to recap the premise of the plot, and then leaves out the plot recap scene that actually occurs near that point in the novel.
5. My new year's resolution for this year is, in contrast to the usual, to get off the diet. I'll still be watching what I eat, but in a more general and flexible sort of way instead of trying to tie myself down to specific numbers (which I was never all that good at, anyway).
Five Things Make a Post
Dec. 27th, 2012 05:01 pm1. To anyone I haven't already, Season's Greetings! (Or General Well-Wishings, if you're one of the people who don't find anything remarkable about this time of the year.) And a happy new b'ak'tun!
2. I got some nice presents for Christmas this year, but none of those really great surprises that was exactly what you would have wanted if you'd expected to get it. I did manage to hit the target a couple of times in my gifts to others, which was just as good. And it was really nice just to get to hang out with the family for a while. (At one point we were watching Fantasia, and the narrator asserted that the dinosaurs were mostly peaceful herbivores apart from a few gangsters and bullies like T. rex. A few minutes later,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
poinketh remarked out of the blue that he could picture a T. rex rocking a fedora, but he was having trouble figuring out how it worked the Tommy gun.)
3. There has been some good stuff in the Yuletide fic exchange this year.
* I particularly liked If the Fates Allow, which is the one for anybody who's suspected that Captain America: The First Avenger (2011, dir. Joe Johnston) is set in the same twentieth century as The Rocketeer (1991, dir. Joe Johnston). Though not so much if your interest is in blazing action sequences; the focus here is on the quiet moments between the adventures (which, given that time takes its toll, are not all happy).
* The Butterfly Also Casts a Shadow is another good one for fans of underappreciated retro action movies of the 1990s, in this case the 1994 version of The Shadow.
* On a different note, What You Make of It is an epistolatory fic, consisting of emails sent between Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell and his friend Yo-less during their gap year after high school. Johnny is working at a dusty old second-hand book shop that never sells anything, which since he's Johnny turns out less boring than it sounds, while Yo-less is volunteering on a marine biology expedition and making new discoveries in the area of human biology.
4. Have I mentioned we finished our run of Snow White's Pizza Palace? Well, that was a thing that happened. I enjoyed it, and I think I'll try doing more comedy next year. The first production in the new year will be a Season of Short Plays (we're officially not calling them "one-acts" any more, because informal market research has suggested that people think that means there's only one actor). I won't be involved with that, because it overlaps with preparations for the National Band Championships, which the band is going to take a shot at because they're on this side of the continent for a change.
5. Haven't seen The Hobbit Part One or Les Mis yet, because the people I was planning to see it with are out of town. (I suppose I could see Wreck-It Ralph by myself, since the person I was hoping to see it with waspoinketh, and I know he won't be back before it closes.) Have seen the Doctor Who Christmas special, and wasn't super-impressed; it was enjoyable enough and had some really good moments, but I'm not sure it all held together, and there are worrying signs that Steven Moffat still hasn't remembered that when people say the hero of the show is a clever, unpredictable trickster figure, they're not talking about him.
2. I got some nice presents for Christmas this year, but none of those really great surprises that was exactly what you would have wanted if you'd expected to get it. I did manage to hit the target a couple of times in my gifts to others, which was just as good. And it was really nice just to get to hang out with the family for a while. (At one point we were watching Fantasia, and the narrator asserted that the dinosaurs were mostly peaceful herbivores apart from a few gangsters and bullies like T. rex. A few minutes later,
poinketh remarked out of the blue that he could picture a T. rex rocking a fedora, but he was having trouble figuring out how it worked the Tommy gun.)3. There has been some good stuff in the Yuletide fic exchange this year.
* I particularly liked If the Fates Allow, which is the one for anybody who's suspected that Captain America: The First Avenger (2011, dir. Joe Johnston) is set in the same twentieth century as The Rocketeer (1991, dir. Joe Johnston). Though not so much if your interest is in blazing action sequences; the focus here is on the quiet moments between the adventures (which, given that time takes its toll, are not all happy).
* The Butterfly Also Casts a Shadow is another good one for fans of underappreciated retro action movies of the 1990s, in this case the 1994 version of The Shadow.
* On a different note, What You Make of It is an epistolatory fic, consisting of emails sent between Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell and his friend Yo-less during their gap year after high school. Johnny is working at a dusty old second-hand book shop that never sells anything, which since he's Johnny turns out less boring than it sounds, while Yo-less is volunteering on a marine biology expedition and making new discoveries in the area of human biology.
4. Have I mentioned we finished our run of Snow White's Pizza Palace? Well, that was a thing that happened. I enjoyed it, and I think I'll try doing more comedy next year. The first production in the new year will be a Season of Short Plays (we're officially not calling them "one-acts" any more, because informal market research has suggested that people think that means there's only one actor). I won't be involved with that, because it overlaps with preparations for the National Band Championships, which the band is going to take a shot at because they're on this side of the continent for a change.
5. Haven't seen The Hobbit Part One or Les Mis yet, because the people I was planning to see it with are out of town. (I suppose I could see Wreck-It Ralph by myself, since the person I was hoping to see it with was
poinketh, and I know he won't be back before it closes.) Have seen the Doctor Who Christmas special, and wasn't super-impressed; it was enjoyable enough and had some really good moments, but I'm not sure it all held together, and there are worrying signs that Steven Moffat still hasn't remembered that when people say the hero of the show is a clever, unpredictable trickster figure, they're not talking about him.Tags:
