Anotherblog

Updates

OK, there was the dust storm: that was pretty incredible. We woke up at 5 in the morning thinking there was a bush fire. The red light outside was bright and eerie and Martian. There’s still lots of red dust around, much of it in the swimming pool.

Speaking of the swimming pool: we saw the dragon again, and this time we have photos. It’s an Eastern Water Dragon, about 60cm long. It seems to enjoy sitting on the edge of the pool. I haven’t seen it go for a swim yet. We also found two dead Southern Leaf-tailed Geckos on our driveway, presumably killed by cats. At least, I hope so. They’re pretty hard to see, and we might have stepped on them.

We unpacked another eight or so boxes on the weekend, and hung up six of our pictures, and the projection screen. I’ve just about finished transferring DVDs into the slip cases. The house is looking very homey now.

Iona (Von’s sister) has been playing in some chamber groups recently, and Von was excited to discover that one of the pieces is a favorite of hers; a Debussy piano/violin/cello trio. We’re going to try translating the cello to a keyboard for Von, and the violin to guitar for me. I tried playing it. It’s very hard, but sounds like it could be decent, as the violin part is quite staccato. A ’stretch’ piece among my many other stretch pieces, good for running scales and hammer-on/pull-off.

And then there’s the Cars short film. The pressure is off a little as they don’t need it until the end of the year, but I’d rather keep what little momentum I have going.

Games, competitions

I had a pleasant games night last Friday with Iain, Llyn, Dave and Kyla in which we played a several-hour long game of Tales of the Arabian Nights. It was quite fun, but with five players, incredibly slow. As I discussed with Iain, definitely more of a ride game than a strategy game, and we were all a bit relieved when it finished at 11:00pm.

With Von’s help, I finally got a good bit of work done on the Cars short film (and I’ll be doing much more this week, I hope) but I also spent a bit of time practicing my Force Manipulation and Force Jump skills for demonstration to the Cheddar Monk Academy.

Busy busy busy

I did a little bit of work on the Cars short film over the weekend, but I’ll need to ramp it up this week. I really need to work out what shots are absolutely necessary for some kind of finished product, and get those done first. Fortunately, I think most of those will be the easiest to get – shots of the cars going along on a road in various configurations, and a shot of a car with a laser shorting out another car (sparklers will do, I suspect, for the latter).

Anyway, we saw Mum off on Sunday morning after an enjoyable week with her, including a bang up feast at the Luke family residence on Friday night. We saw “Charlie And Boots” on Saturday, which was a perfectly adequate Aussie road movie, and “Coraline” on Sunday with Jon & Kate. It was in 3D. It was also gorgeously done, much more compelling than the book and startlingly beautiful, though both Von and I felt rather strained by the 3D.

More Den News. Also, lots of other stuff.

We were chatting to our next door neighbour Jeff, and got the goss on the garage roof fire. Apparently, it happened about twelve years ago (so I’m rather less concerned about an imminent roof collapse) and was the result of a ten year old boy with some matches.

The sofa is looking quite decent in the new den, though if we ever want to park the car in the garage again, it will have to go. Still, there’s no sense of urgency at the moment. In other sofa-related news, our new sofa got its treatment yesterday, so we can sit on it now, and hoooooboy it’s far too comfortable. I predict we’ll be falling asleep on the sofa at least once a month.

Mum’s in town too, and it’s been a very pleasant trip so far. She explained what all of the plants in the garden are, and discovered some I hadn’t noticed – we have thyme! And oregano! – and recommended we chop down the wilting, seed-dropping, root-psychotic umbrella tree in the front yard, which we’ll be happy to do.
We took her to Waqu last night, and they really outdid themselves. Their Spring menu is the best fusion I’ve had in ages. Highly recommended.

Otherwise, I’ve been feeling guilty and doing not enough about the Cars short film, but at least I *have* been playing classical guitar (Leyenda), organising to renovate the ensuite bathroom, unpacking boxes, participating in the SUMS Puzzle competition, playing an MTG megadraft, and keeping on top of swimming pool maintenance. But now that it’s September I can’t put the Cars film off any longer. The People People are at the point of releasing their album, and it sounds awesome from what I’ve heard so far.