This will only be a fairly quick one (hurr hurr) because it's quite late and Mum's dragging me out shopping tomorrow morning. I'm writing this in between seemingly endless test renders of G2 James's nipples. This is a path I've trodden before, and I probably couldn't be blamed for giving up and leaving it at my lo-res freebie, but I decided that since I have this time off work I should bloody well get some stuff done, because once I'm working again I certainly won't have time.
Trust me when I say that playing with man-nipples for several hours isn't as much fun as it sounds, when they're digital.
Anyway, things are going along fine here. I had Simon for a week over the Easter holidays, while Mum went to stay in Filey for a week, since she didn't think she could cope with the noise and disruption. Probably a good choice ;-)
We were blessed with great weather while Simon was here, and we took full advantage of it by going to Alton Towers mid-week. We took Simon's friend Daniel, which was a great choice as he was actually wanting to go on the rides unlike when we took James last year. We went on nearly every ride in the park but unfortunately ran out of time before we could get on the new Battle Galleons ride. Probably not a bad thing as my back was quite painful by then as I had got an unexpected jolt on the Log Flume ride.
I always wish I could take a camera with me to Alton, but there's no way mine will fit in my pocket, and I don't like to take a bag in with me. They sell that "Your Day" thing, but it's an extra £20 each...
Actually... I've been thinking of treating myself to a day at Alton on my own. If I went mid-week, when the kids are at school, I bet I could get on every ride, especially as a single rider (because you get priority queuing on most of the big rides.) Buuu-uuut... a) it's £25 and b) about half the fun of rollercoaster rides is getting off the other end and going "Fucking hell, that was amazing, man! Let's go again!" to your friend/partner/whatever...
Oyyy... I need to decide what to do with this texture set. The model whose photos I used for the texture has got some really nasty dry skin/eczema on his thighs, and whilst it looks very realistic, it's not very attractive... I'm also debating whether to enlarge the texture map for the body to 6144x5200, because at the current res, the inefficiency of the body texture map make the lack of detailing a real problem. It's incredibly hard to match the head to neck, for example, because the head texture is, pixel for pixel, about 10 times the size of the body.
Wow... I've just realised his knees need major work as well. They look really dry and cracked. I want to rub some E45 cream on them, LOL.
OK gonna finish up and go to bed, I need to work on this tomorrow, preferably with coffee on hand. Let's hope Mum can be persuaded that shopping should only take 30 minutes MAXIMUM, and if you haven't found anything to wear within that time, you should go home...
- Where Am I?:Westfield, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
creative - Currently reading:Thin Lizzy - Dancing in the Moonlight (ftw!)
Mum and I have been talking about her selling her flat and moving up here with me since last year, when she realised she was going to have to sell up due to her lack of earnings while she was looking after Grandma.
She received an offer on her flat just before Christmas, but there have been really ridiculous delays on the completion, mainly because the solictor for the buyer at the bottom of the chain was about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
The week after Grandma's funeral, we finally got notice that the sale was going through, but without much notice: completion date was just 5 days' time!
So whilst Mum was in a frenzy of packing, I went into work the next day and gave my notice in, the plan being for Mum to support me for a couple of months with the leftover money from her sale, until I get something a lot more to my taste.
My boss, being eager to get rid of me, agreed to release me that Friday, which was very handy with Mum arriving the following Monday!
There were, of course, last minute unpleasantnesses with my unpleasant boss, including her spitefully removing my systems access completely on the Thursday - which meant that I arrived on the Friday, having caught two buses to work (since my car was being fixed) to find I had nothing I could do, and that of course I couldn't salvage any of my spreadsheets which I'd produced and send them to myself at home for future use. (All resource planners do this when quitting a job. When you've spent nigh on 15 hours crafting a macro or pivot table from scratch, believe you me, you want to get all of the use out of it that you can!)
Anyway, nuts to all that, I'm free, free, free! Goodbye Otto with your stupid, stuck-in-the-seventies ideas about call centre management! Goodbye Evil BitchBoss, with your witless shoe-and-handbag fetish! Hahahaha!
Anyway, as I was saying, Mum arrived on the following Monday, and for the last two weeks, we've been settling in nicely, getting all Mum's stuff unpacked (well, most of it - we haven't got room to unpack it all.) We've had to go pretty slowly, because Mum had a really dreadful cough and cold when she arrived, which of course she then passed on to me, so we've both been hacking and sneezing and using masses of tissues, cough sweets and Night Nurse.
Mum tried to persuade me to sell all my comics as a job lot, but I refused, so we managed to find some better storage options for them, and at present I'm re-cataloging and indexing them, and will be listing a goodly bulk on eBay again, but definitely retaining a good number that I just refuse to ever sell. I suppose in some ways I'm a bit silly, because (for example) all of the Sandman comics, I've got in trade paperback collections. But at the same time, I can't bear the thought of letting them go, and not just because the value's going up, either. They're part of me, part of the person I was then, on my way to who I am now.
I've had a few nice surprises as I've gone through, too. A few older first editions, nothing spectacular, but certainly worth a few quid. And some things I'd completely forgotten about: an old copy of Sandman 23 which Simon Smith and I, in a fit of boredom one evening, decided to edit with our own wording for every other character but Morpheus. (The cover had got ripped, and we both already had another pristine copy.) I might have to upload some scans of some of the more inspired pages; I reckon the Fair Use clause on satire should allow me to print a few panels without enraging the copyright gods.
It's been nice having Mum here - it's horrible being on your own when you're ill. Although of course she gave me the bloody thing in the first place, so perhaps that evens out, LOL. But it IS nice having her here; I know she will push me to get out and get some exercise more, which should help with the weightloss thing (which is still going well; 15lbs lost now.)
The cats have definitely got used to Mum and are enjoying having someone around who sits on the sofa more often, although neither of them are really lap cats.
Mum has given both me and our Lucy a bit of money as a present, so I have blown mine (and some of me own money) on a new PC, which should arrive next week. It's a custom job, with 4gb RAM, a dual-core 2.3ghz processor, two HDDs, a lightscribe DVD writer, a TV card, internal card reader, AND a new TFT widescreen monitor. GEEKGASM!
- Where Am I?:Westfield
- Currently feeling:
amused
So last Wednesday it was time to say goodbye to Grandma.
I drove down on Tuesday via Wales (in order to pick Simon up.) This made my entire journey approx 900 miles in three days, ouch.
We had a cremation at T.Wells crem at 12, and then a memorial service at Hartfield church at 1pm, followed by a wake at The Anchor afterwards.
There was a bit of a panic mid-morning, as
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lucy_pointycat and rhandolph were catching the bus up to Mum's, and the damn thing never showed up. Thankfully they were able to get one to Lewes, so I drove down and picked them up there. Not the most auspicious start to the day.
My Aunty Val (who is a florist) did all the flowers, and they were lovely. Grandma would have loved them.
I think most of us were in tears at the crem. I lost it halfway through singing Psalm 23. By the time we got to the church, we were pretty much cried out, and Mum and I managed to give our two-part eulogy without breaking down, which was good, and by all accounts we did a good job.
The wake was extremely subdued - as our Lucy remarked, "Our family don't really know how to have fun, do they?" I suppose having several alcoholics in the family tree does tend somewhat to put the dampers on.
Walked down to the village with Lucy, Rhandolph and Simon. Went into Pooh Corner, where Grandma worked for several years. It's expanded quite considerably since those days. Chatted with the owner, Mike, for a while, but had to leave before having an unfortunate wallet accident. Everyone knows what a sucker I am for Pooh memorabilia. When Grandma was working there, every Xmas and birthday would bring me a present that was Pooh-related :-)
Walked up to the rec (recreation ground aka playground) with Simon and Rhandolph, where they both had a go on the slide and swings. Rhandolph got muddy trousers, and I got muddy boots.
Everyone left by about 5pm, so we went back to Mum's for a cuppa, and then I drove L&R back to Brighton, where we played with their incredibly cute kittens for a bit.
Wednesday I drove back, via Wales. Simon was very clingy and did not want to go back at all, so we had one of those sessions just before I dropped him off. Very exhausting, especially on top of a funeral. Still, he was very very well-behaved the whole time we were there, and it was such a short visit, I can't ask for more, really.
I was so exhausted on Friday that I called in to my boss to ask for an extra day's holiday, or alternatively I'd have to take it as sick since I was waaaay too tired to work. There has now been a fuss over that since she was on holiday (which I didn't know since she'd said to me on Monday "see you Friday") and didn't pick up her voicemail. More on that later in the week, probably.
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
listless
( White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise )
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
thoughtful
( FOTR Scene 1: Prologue )
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
cheerful
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
calm
I've been obsessively watching and re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy these past few weeks, originally inspired by catching a sequence by sequence discussion of each film over at Barrowdowns.com.
I think the only way I'm going to exorcise my obession is to talk about the films fairly excessively for a while - and then perhaps I can actually get something else in the DVD player...
First, a little bit of background.
I've read the trilogy only once, and that many years ago. Although I had adored The Hobbit (my cherished copy is now very battered from countless re-readings) I found the Rings books very hard-going. Perhaps it was because I was at a very low ebb in my life when I read them, but I never lost myself in Middle Earth the way other people seem to do. Never read Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales or any of the other bits.
So in many ways I came to the films as the perfect audience: having a good appreciation and understanding of Middle Earth, but without the encyclopaedic knowledge which would make me scream "Heresy!" at story changes.
I didn't see the films at the cinema (though god! I wish now that I had) because in those days I was a smoker, and I found it hard to sit through a kids' film, let alone a 3-hour epic, without a cig. Also, I've always been one for ignoring films that are getting hyped to death; I'm a bit of a snob in that regard.
So let me state now and for the record that I believe these films to be the finest ever made in the history of cinema to date. They transport me to Middle Earth in a way that the books never achieved.
But that's not to say that they don't have faults. Some of the acting can be a little wooden, and the dialogue clunks at times. Some of the action is ill-conceived and unneccesary. But the films transcend all this to become something that's somehow greater than the sum of their parts.
I'm going to start by discussing the cast and characters. And then I'm going to go through the films more-or-less scene by scene. And by the time I'm finished, maybe I'll have moved on!
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling: contemplative
1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Had more than 4 weeks off work on the sick.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't make any for this year. I will be starting new medication in 2008 and I will be making some "resolutions" around improving my health.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No humans, but Lucy and Rhandolph's beloved Leo passed away.
5. What countries did you visit?
Wales, but only in order to collect Simon.
6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
Better health. More time with Simon. A decent job.
7. What date(s) from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
June 23rd, Lucy and Rhandolph's wedding.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Oooo, something I found out about on Tuesday, but it hasn't been officially announced yet :-)
9. What was your biggest failure?
Putting on yet more weight :-(
10. Did you suffer any illness or injury?
Continued back pain.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
I'm gonna have to go with my sat nav.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Simon has been remarkably mature, under the circumstances of being uprooted and taken away from me to Cardiff.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My boss's >:-[
14. Where did most of your money go?
It seemed to just go on bits and bobs. I spent a really big chunk having a professional photo set done with Simon.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Pirates of the Carribbean 3 coming out. And series 3 of Dr Who!
16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
I reckon "Rain Down Love" by Freemasons, although "Uninvited" (also by Freemasons) is giving the former a run for its money.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Sadder
ii. thinner or fatter? Fatter (again)
iii. richer or poorer? Poorer
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Spending time with Simon, but then that wasn't really an option.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Eating...
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I'll be collecting Simon from Cardiff early Sunday morning, and we'll be spending Xmas at my house. All the shopping is done, we'll be having roast turkey with all the trimmings :o)
21. Did you fall in love in 2007?
No.
22. How many one-night stands?
One.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
Gonna have to go with Dr Who again.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don't like thinking of myself as a hater, but YES.
25. What was the best book you read?
I'm going to have to go with David Baddiel's "Whatever Love Means". Great plot, good writing, and provided the useful phrase, "He's not just a cunt. He's off the cuntometer."
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I've listened to/watched a lot of Shakira this year, but that's more about the hypnotic arse than anything else, LOL
27. What did you want and get?
A new critique forum and gallery on Renderosity.
28. What did you want and not get?
Improved health. Enough time with Simon.
29. What was your favorite film of this year?
I haven't been to the flicks much this year. I'm going to have to go with Pirates 3, even though it was over-long and not as good as previous efforts.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Nothing really, I was working.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not having taken this job.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
I wouldn't.
33. What kept you sane?
Music.
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Gonna have to go with David Tennant this year, although David Duchovny has reappeared on my radar.
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
I have to say I haven't really focussed on politics at all this year.
36. Who did you miss?
Simon :-(
37. Who was the best new person you met?
What an odd question. I've met quite a few new people this year thanks to changing jobs, and most of them suck. I suppose I will have to nominate the only one who doesn't suck...
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.
Don't ever assume your boss knows what they're doing just because they're the boss.
39. Sum up 2007 in one word.
"Forgettable"
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Maybe there's no haven in this world for tender age
My heart beat like the wings of wild birds in a cage
My greatest hope my greatest cause to grieve
And my heart flew from its cage and it bled upon my sleeve
Oh the cries of passion were like wounds that needed healing
I couldn't hear them for the thunder
I was half the naked distance between hell and heaven's ceiling
And he almost pulled me under
Now someone's on the telephone, desperate in his pain
Someone's on the bathroom floor doing her cocaine
Someone's got his finger on the button in some room
No one can convince me we aren't gluttons for our doom
But I tried to make this place my place
I asked for providence to smile upon me with his sweet face
But I'll tell you
My place is of the sun and this place is of the dark
And I do not feel the romance I do not catch the spark
My place is of the sun and this place is of the dark
(by grace, my sight grows stronger)
And I do not feel the romance I do not catch the spark
(grows stronger)
By grace
(my place is of the sun)
My sight
(and this place is of the dark)
Is growing stronger
(I do not feel the romance)
I will not be a pawn
(I will not be)
For the prince of darkness any longer
(Prince of Darkness - Indigo Girls)
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling: thoughtful
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