Anotherblog

Mr Rabbit Exercises

It’s important to warm up before exercise, as Mr. Bunny demonstrates. This week has been one big warm up; at least that’s my excuse for not doing a great deal (and I had enough of a sore back and headache on Wednesday to take a day off work). Hanging out with Jade and Kat is much more fun. At least I got better enough to play badminton this week, which prevented my legs from completely taking root in front of the computer.

But I have cunning plans afoot. Very much afoot.

Oh, the documentary project with Jon took a somewhat disastrous turn when we watched the rough cut of the film for which we were doing the documentary. Jon couldn’t cope and left after the first five minutes; the rest of us couldn’t stop laughing and wincing simultaneously. I do understand about rough cuts; they often seem terrible right up until the FX and music are added and the last bits of trimming have been done. But there’s a lot of work here. For the moment, we’ve abandoned the doco, so my weekend is free for Heroes. And archery. And my mystery project.

Spiffy, the balloon animal

Here it is, my round-winning fearless beast of the jungle, Spiffy the Quagga.

Jade & Kat & Jon

Kat has a cold, which was lingering pretty much from the moment she stepped off the plane. It’s put a bit of a dampener on her ability to interact with Sydney, which has put the boot in by showing her as much as it can of things that Brisbane can’t offer - cold, wet weather.
Still, we’ve had some time to play games together (Sunda to Sahul, Lost Cities, Guitar Hero) and she is quite cheery despite the slings and arrows etc. The house is feeling a bit more lived-in!

The weekend was very busy. Archery on Saturday morning (I’m getting back into it), then Jade and I had dinner with a workmate on Saturday night, and had breakfast on Sunday with Jade’s music teacher. I’m just enjoying Jade’s company more than ever. We spent almost the entire weekend together and it still wasn’t enough time. We didn’t even have time to do our roleplaying game together (I’m running her through a one-on-one game).

Jon came over on Sunday, and Jade & I helped him film some documentary bits for the film “Zygon” which he wrote. It was a fairly quick and easy bit of filming except for losing some equipment, but even the simple stuff is tiring (oh, and we forgot that we wanted to shoot it in 16×9. Oops.) It was nice to dig out the lighting kit and sound gear again. Not so nice to spend about an hour hunting for all the cables and other vital bits and pieces that had scattered since my previous film shoot. Dammit. A stressful moment for me, and a bit boring for Jade and Jon, too.

Later, Kat joined us and we played some music together and it was really a lot of fun. Jon and I dug out some of our old standards - Circle Sky, 8 Days A Week - and Jade and Kat sung along. I really need to hunt down my bass tabs and practice some bass guitar again. We were both very rusty.

Off to Jade’s parents’ place tonight. I cooked up a sticky date pudding. Hope it turns out OK.

Bunduki

Mike L. is leaving our work this week, and as he is the current reigning Fearless Master of the Jungle (FMOTJ), held a Bunduki challenge on Monday. I was originally going to take Monday off work for the aforementioned house repairs, but the thought of missing out on the Bunduki challenge - again! - was more than I could bear.
The Bunduki (and associated challenge) is a strange tradition at work. The reigning FMOTJ has the official chair, cow, loincloth, trophy, set of books etc. (the collection of Objects grows each time the title is passed) and is greeted in the corridor with cries of “We are not Worthy!”
The Bunduki challenge is chosen by the FMOTJ to select a new FMOTJ. Each time it’s different. Astute and loyal readers may recall the snake-stretching contest of some years ago, in which I cheated outrageously to advance to the semi-finals. I missed the last challenge due to being on the SVG working group, so I was extra-determined to enter in this one.

The first challenge on Monday was to construct a Quagga. The Quagga is some kind of fearsome beast mentioned in the Bunduki novels (as I understand it, the Quagga hunt in the novel “Fearless Master of the Jungle” is the point at which most readers surrender). We were given some long, stretchy balloons and instructions on how to build a quagga, and set forth. We competed in groups of four; the fastest quagga-constructor advanced to the semi-finals.
Forty people competed in the first round. I finished fastest in my round. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever built balloon animals before - it seems like the kind of thing I’d do, but I don’t recall it - but it came fairly easily to me. Twisting those fragile bodies requires a certain confidence that they aren’t going to suddenly pop.
The second round was to construct a crocodile - much harder than the first round! The top four of the ten would go through to the third round. I finished second - through to the semi-finals!
At which point, SingStar was revealed. There’s a game associated with SingStar ’80s - you can play “Pong” by using your voice to control the paddles. We were required to hoot like monkeys to make the paddles go up or down.
To summarise: buggered if I could make my paddle go up. No matter how high I hooted, the paddle remained mired in the middle, and I lost 10-3 to the eventual Bunduki challenge winner.
I am not worthy!

Arrival of Kat, plumber, locksmith

I took yesterday off work so that I could be home for the locksmith and plumber, thus getting the house into a minimum acceptable state for Kat to arrive. It may well be redundant to suggest that the expense was sudden-exposure-to-vacuum breath-suckingly high, but really, it was. Urgh.
At least the results are good. Now all the doors have handles and locks, and the downstairs shower actually works and produces hot water and doesn’t leak.
I picked Kat up from the airport in the evening, and we chatted and cooked dinner and played guitar hero and got along just as well as ever. We concluded that we’re both the kind of housemates that don’t complain much, but are more likely to be complained about. So we’ll see who cracks first.
So far so good.

Comments spam efforts

Comments spam nowadays is getting trickier and trickier. There’s some kind of spambot sourced at clickbank dot com that is really trying hard:

“Hope it’s OK for a complete stranger to post to you ….but, WOW…it’s been ages since I heard anyone say they were practising archery…I used to compete…until all the local clubs in my area died out :-((
Stick with it….compete if you can …you’ll love it. Kind Regards.”

Presumably they’ve got a whole list of relatively obscure sports to plug into the script - but it’s a nice try. They have many more scripts that they try out. It’s the referring link that really gives them away, otherwise I’d almost be sucked into approving one of these some day. At that point, presumably, they’d blurt out big doses of comment spam.

Sunda to Sahul

Yet another addition to our lunchtime game group, Don, has independently created two board games, and therefore is current alpha-gamer and the subject of much reverence. We have been encouraging him for a few weeks to bring in his creations, and this week he brought in his first game “Sunda to Sahul”. It’s a cross between a puzzle and a game, and our group instantly got into it and really, really enjoyed it. It’s a jigsaw puzzle simultaneous-play game that resembles Carcassonne but plays completely differently. It incorporates my favorite aspects of jigsaw puzzles - hunting through for just the right piece, and the feeling of satisfaction at finding it.

Sandor & Family

Sandor & Renee & Caleb stayed from Monday to Wednesday last week, and a truly excellent time was had by all. They sadly failed in their mission to get US visas, but we caught up and I exchanged magic tricks with Caleb (who is becoming quite the magician) and did a wee bit of juggling, and played a tiny bit of guitar with Renee. I really enjoyed their company; the only pity was that they couldn’t stay longer. It just served to remind me how seldom I have visitors.

On that note, it’s not likely to be a problem for much longer - Kat is coming in just under a week, now. Lifestyle change ahoy!