Anotherblog

Holiday

Holiday
I worked very hard until last Thursday, at which point I commenced my one week holiday.

Lovely. I hadn’t planned the first day particularly well - Ev and Dave and Simon didn’t arrive until the evening - so I hung around and played “Final Fantasy: Tactics” and watched DVDs and played a bit of guitar and got in the kind of mood appropriate for a mooching-at-home holiday-with-the-lads. And I shot some basketball hoops, a task at which I am gradually improving. I’m still hoping to get Ted to show me how it’s done before he disappears to Japan.

My first task was to make sure there were enough beds. Ev was fine: it was his turn for the spare bed. The living-room sofa is very comfortable and large, so we only needed one extra bed, which I thought we had. So I didn’t get around to organising it until very late in the evening, at which point I discovered that it was at the store. Fortunately, Dave decided that sleeping on the floor would be good for the first night, as he had a bad back.

It was a great visit. We played a lot of music at each other, played many games of pool and Red Faction and Red Faction II, and Dave learned all about “Final Fantasy: Tactics”. We went out for many breakfasts and lunches, shopped around for a bass guitar, and did all the mooching we were hoping for. Dave and Simon went back on Sunday afternoon, and Ev went back on Wednesday afternoon.

Birthday
My 34th was on Friday, and I scored most excellent loot, especially from little sister CB, who scrounged up a copy of “The Triplets of Bellville” on DVD. Wow! Do you realise, CB, that this has not even been released in Australia yet? This is a profound upping of the birthday stakes.

I was also blessed with a multitude of cakes. One cake on Friday at lunch in the city (rich chocolate, naturally) and then another (um… rich chocolate) on Saturday at the party.

The Party
When we were wandering around the city on Friday, we ran into Nola (and then again in Newtown), so I invited her to a somewhat impromptu party on Saturday. Chris Thomas was already coming over on Saturday to do some catching up with peoples before he heads overseas, and Ted was going to drop by too, and I’d asked Chris & Amanda & Andrea over. Sunddenly, we had party critical mass. It turned into an alcohol-fueled BBQ, with Anna’s brothers over too and Anna’s mum preparing much salad and doing washing up. We played many games of Kelly pool, played loud music, ate and drank and caught up, and we played some of the early versions of the newish Spit albums. It went very late. Ted crashed on the downstairs couch (looking very uncomfortable) and we had a slow and careful Sunday feeding on scraps.

Bowie
On Friday night we went to see Mr. Bowie. It was good. Actually, it was very good, and a lot better than I was expecting - I’d seen a DVD that came with Reality that suggested he may do a set entirely from Reality and Heathen. I like both of the albums, but I was quite keen on hearing some of the older songs - an attitude that he specifically addressed in the concert. He opened with Rebel Rebel, but then went on to do a bunch of his more recent songs. “You want to hear some of the old stuff, don’t you?” he said, and went on to do a whole bunch of it, including a beautiful rendition of Star Man. It was a very good set. I was afraid that, like Romeo & Juliet, it would be something that I’d enjoy more in theory than in practice, but I would have been happy for him to play for another hour or so. All good.

Spit
After Dave & Simon had left, Ev and I got down to doing some serious Spit editing. We decided to concentrate on “Into the Wind”, contrary to our earlier decisions. After searching second-hand stores for bass guitars on the weekend, I had a look at the on-line Trading Post and found a couple of possibilities. One of the places was a guy selling guitars out of his home in Strathfield - we went there first, intending to then go on to a place more out-of-the-way. But, as it turned out, we good a good enough deal there. It was kinda funny. He showed us a couple of bass guitars, and every time we starting looking hesitant (Ev played bad-cop) he’d either drop the price or show us another guitar. He was *very* keen on a sale. I’m kicking myself a bit, because I think we could have bargained him down some more, but I ended up getting a quite decent bass guitar for $200.

It is a fun toy. Ev recorded bass lines for many of the Spit tunes (making the investment immediately worthwhile) and then we got down to the mixing. We got quite a few of the songs done or near-done, and Ev gave me some advice for finishing them off, so I spent Wednesday evening and last night working on them.

Mixing is difficult. I have some preliminarly versions up on otherleg. I thought they were getting towards final versions, but now, listening to them away from the mixing desk, they’re not as good as I thought. In particular, the panning position of some of the voices are just wrong. There are some tracks where the main voice is much too far to one side, with no significant instruments further on that side. There’s too much reverb on many of the main vocals, and the extreme compression on the voices - which sounded fine at the mixing desk - sounds lousy on earphones. Anyway, have a listen if you want. Let me know what you think.

Google whack
Otherleg is a googlewhack, apparently. One of the words (I won’t reveal the other, for obvious reasons) was unicycle.

Romeo & Juliet

Romeo & Juliet
Anna & I spent Saturday at the opera house watching the combination of a live orchestra with a film of the ballet Romeo & Juliet. I’m a big fan of Prokofiev, who was pretty much at the peak of his form when he did Romeo & Juliet, and the film had Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev who are generally regarded as pretty good at ballet.

It was a little disappointing.

Firstly, though ballet obviously requires incredible fitness and is chocka full of gracefulness and charm, the traditional form of ballet on show was very, very poncy. Especially the sword fights. I think part of the problem I have with traditional ballet is that is has the same exaggerated emotion of silent film (and for much the same reasons - silent film is, to an extent, inspired by ballet) that appears utterly ridiculous.

It was also odd to see the combination of Nureyev and Fonteyn - she was 46 when the film was made, and he was 28. So she’s dancing on point a lot, but not doing anything outrageously physical, while he bounds - literally - across the stage, leaping and, well, prancing like a gazelle.

The music was also slightly disappointing. I had only listened to a CD version of the ballet before. Since the ballet is almost two hours long, the music on the CD is a considerably trimmed version of the score and - in my opinion - much better. I can sometimes be a bit of a snob about purity - I like to hear the original versions - but I have to agree with the choices made in compiling the CD. It really is the good-bits version, and a lot of the other stuff is “filler”.

It is slightly amusing that ballets have been made of Shakespeare’s work, because obviously they inherit only the broadest strokes of the plot and none of the dialogue, which makes the whole exercise rather pointless.

As a side note, the final scene in the ballet has Romeo killing Paris, which I don’t recall from the play at all.

Busy
I’ve continued to be very busy at work, to the exclusion of most of the hobbies that I usually talk about here. It’s OK, though: I have been enjoying it.

Visitors
Yup, this Thursday we’ll be hosting a whole bunch of friends for various lengths of time: Ev will be here for a week, and a bunch of others for somewhat less time. Our primary mission is to watch David Bowie and have lots of fun, but there may also be a bit of Spit mixing. I hope.

Hard at work

Hard at work
I’ve been working parallel hours with Anna recently, going to work when she goes to work, picking her up when it’s time for her to go home. Hence, I was at work all weekend and have been regularly getting to work early and leaving late. It’s OK. Work is pretty interesting at the moment.

Hence, I have also been doing very little of interest to anyone wishing to read this. Move along, move along.

Freaky Friday
Yeah, so we’ve been copping the brainless entertainment when it comes to our leasure time, and watched the new-ish Freaky Friday last night. It was OK. I could kinda count it as research for “Swap”, but really, it’s your completely standard body-swapping story: magic is responsible, people learn valuable lessons, and swap back. Still, it was enjoyable, if you don’t mind being sucked into utter generica.

Weekend

Weekend
This is one of the less weekend-y weekends I’ve had lately - in at work on both Saturday and today, and it’s stinkin’ hot in here too. I don’t think the air conditioning is on, and I don’t know how to turn it on. The temperature is 30 degrees in here. I should go home but there are some things I really need to get done before tomorrow morning…

Still, it hasn’t all been hard work. I got 323.4.

Underworld
Well, the cinema was pleasantly cool and I had Anna snuggled up next to me, so it wasn’t all bad. Actually, it was a thoroughly mediocre film - not offensively bad, not particularly insulting to the intelligence (romance aside), not completely dull… it plays a little like a game session of “Vampire: The Masquerade”, or the DVD that comes with the player’s manual on “look & feel”. It’s already starting to blend with “Blade 2″ in my memory.

Squash
Played squash this morning with Ted, and almost perished. It was really too hot to play. Ted beat me 7-1, and we both agreed to forgo the last two games, as we were dripping sweat on to the court. It was a bit like my games in Townsville against my Dad: so hot that I was exhausted before I’d had a chance to get particularly fit. There will be no soreness tomorrow.

John & Claire’s engagement party
No, not my little sister Claire. I went to my friend John D. and his fiance Claire’s engagement party this afternoon, hung around, ate their food, chatted a bit, then zoomed off to work where I’ve been avoiding writing a report thingy all arvo by doing coding. Time to get stuck in…

Still sore

Still sore
I’m still sore after those games of squash on Sunday. It’s probably not helped by the fact that Anna and I had a lot to eat last night (a very nice pumpkin curry) and I woke up this morning being somewhat over my 86kg weight limit. Five hundred repeats of the rowing-machine later, I was just under, and happily had my caffeine intake for the day.

Still lazy
Still lazy after all these years. My excuse is that Anna got a lift home from a Weleda representative - she’s got their products in her shop display - and we ended up sitting around with the rep, chatting for most of the evening about various things. Including my zombie film idea. Anyway, there are further reasons that I have been lazy on other nights.

Cats
Jon & Kate are off to the Gallifrey convention some time in the next couple of weeks, and I have agreed to look after their cats. Should be fun. They are big and old and lazy and exclusively indoor cats. I just have to drop by each day and change the litterbox and feed ‘em.

Miss Japan

Miss Japan
When I went to Tokyo last year, we were strongly encouraged to go to a particular Irish pub, in which there was an extremely attractive barmaid. Apparently, this is something that happens every time the team go to Tokyo: they go to the Irish pub, and chat with the attractive barmaid. Apparently she enters beauty contests.

So we went to the Irish pub, and she was indeed very pretty, and she came over and talked with us for a while, and there was much swooning and later repeated discussion on the topic for the remainder of the trip.

Anyway, this year she won a very big beauty contest.

Squash

Headache
Quite disgusting headache on Friday. I don’t know whether it was due to the no-sugar thing or just the mother’s-side-of-the-family migranes, but I spent the entire day lying around watching anime and Twin Peaks episodes, and practicing guitar. Practicing guitar is quite difficult when lying down, but I eventually managed it a bit. Pleasing. I managed to avoid throwing up, which is also pleasing.

Writing
The headache was mostly gone by Saturday lunchtime, so I sat down to do some novel-writing. After about half-an-hour and a couple of sentences, I gave up and went to the Marrickville Leasure Centre and tried throwing a basketball through a hoop while thinking about writing. I’m in a tricky situation in “Fork” at the moment - I’m not quite sure whether to abandon the plot outline for a while, or try to bring things back on course, but I’ve kinda written myself into a corner in which something that is supposed to happen now, can’t. So, fribrillating.

Squash
After a several-month break, Ted and I got back into squash again on Sunday. Needless to say, Ted won a lot - eight games to two, and the two games that I won were the last two (which is fairly unusual in itself). Also needless to say, my legs are really feeling it today.
They were thoroughly enjoyable games. I was happy to concentrate on improving my serve and return-of-serve, so quite a lot of them went out - on the other hand, those that didn’t go out were a lot harder for Ted to handle, and made the subsequent rallys much more interesting.

In my enthusiasm for fitness, I then went to the Marrickville Leasure centre again, and tried to throw another basketball through the same hoop. Ted had described a technique that is used by many basketball players to throw a basketball through a hoop from the free-throw line, so I put it into practice. It seemed to work about as well as my previous efforts, though I’m sure it will work better in the long run. At the moment, I can throw a basketball through a hoop about one time in seven.

The Spanish Club
Anna & Bill & Angela & I went to the Spanish Club for a Tapas dinner courtesy of Adrian & Eva. Eva is a magnificent cook, and the meal was thoroughly delicious, and it was only thanks to the exercise that I had done during the day that I was able to fit through the front door last night.

Zombies
I had another idea for a zombie movie last night, and was describing it with enthusiasm to Bill as we were going home. Then I told him about the kidnapping movie idea, which he liked better. I think I should always describe zombie movie ideas before any of my other ideas. It seems to throw them in a better light.

Homework exercise: name a song that have the word “brain” or “brains” in it. To start with, “The Sound of Silence”, by Simon and Garfunkel.