same_difference | Everything, including a kitchen sink (part 1 of probably 2)

Eeep, when I started writing it I hadn't realised how long it's been since I last actually wrote an update. Suffice it to say things have been busy, as my list of jobs to do on the weekend should have showed and I've found myself with too many other things to do. Still

almosthonest updated so I really ought to keep up my side of the bargain.

So first things first how the house come along in the last month, well the answer is simply slowly. A lot of the last few weekends have been busy with other commitments, and the evenings tend to involve me being tired and more than busy enough with general household living stuff to get much done. Though I've managed to do an hour or two occasionally. The builder/general workmen my Dad's been employing on both the houses (his and mine) has been doing a good job, but there are a few things where we just seem to be stuck waiting to get them resolved.

Room by room:
The kitchen is not much further along, since I last posted, but it's pretty much sorted so there not too much left to do anyway. We still need to put up the blinds (which means organising things so I can borrow a drill), the painting could use a touch up still, and the extractor hood hasn't yet be connected up to the whole in the wall. The dishwashers in though which makes things much easier in an evening; even if there are a fair few things I'll always want to wash by hand. Still in spite of it not been completely finished using the kitchen is lovely; the cooker is amazing, the sink of huge is oh so useful, and the room itself is big enough for

valient_starr and I to comfortably cook separate meals at the same time without really getting in each others way too much.

valient_starr's also been good about keeping the kitchen tidy. He tends to make little mess, and cleans up the messes he does make, which means cleaning the kitchen in the evenings never takes that long. I'm very neurotic bordering on obsessive compulsive when it comes to cleanliness around food so this is definitely a good thing from my point of view.

Speaking of cooking I'm really enjoying it. I must admit I didn't do a great deal of it a home (definitely made the most of living with my parents) other than the odd big meals on weekends, or making cakes (well until house ate up all my time). It took me a few meals to remember my timings, and while I'm still getting the odd thing a little off, I think I'm pretty much sorted. I'm also experimenting cooking wise a lot more, using the internet as a cook book for inspiration. It wasn't something I could do really when I was in the flat, but aside from

purplegirl23's veg-texture issues I've got a lot of scope to work with. Current experimentations with vegetable soups look like a good way to get around that veg texture issue as well. The only thing preventing me from inviting people around for meals is a lack of somewhere for them to sit. Oh and if anyone wants the Banoffee cake recipe that I made for

purplegirl23's birthday I'll post it up on a later post.

Which leads nicely into the lounge/dining room. Not much has changed other than the wooden floor having had it's initial sand; which created more wood dust that I can possibly describe (so glad I didn't have to do it). That though has been it. The oak parquet floor has turned out to be a mahogany parquet floor (making it an even luckier discovery). Unfortunately this had made getting the blocks we need to repair it in places harder. Hopefully should have some progress on that soon. Once the floor is done, then the fireplace can be done and at which point we would be mostly there. Hopefully I'll be able to start painting it soon.

The hallways not really changed, it mostly needs a second coat of paint, but we've been holding off until the lounge is sorted.

The under stairs loo, aside from needing a bit more decorating is done. We had the cracked cistern replaced and it's got a door which can be locked now so it's getting used. I definitely think have more than working toilet in a house makes such a difference to how comfortable it is to live in. It's not a huge deal, but something to bear in mind for any would be house purchases/renovators.

Bedrooms - well the bedrooms all have skirting boards now (as in fact do all the rooms), though we still need to sort ourselves out a wardrobe. Basically we have a slightly awkward space in which we want to put a wardrobe. We ideally want something made to fit, we're just trying to find somewhere that'll do it for a price we're happy to pay. We've finished decorating the small room now pretty much, so just need to get the carpet fitted.

Finally the bathroom is coming along, with the builder having done most of the tiling (see my aforementioned limited time recently); all I did was a single row of tiles and marked things out as required. We've had enough of the tiles grouted so that the shower can be fitted today, will still need to finish the grouting before we can use it, but it's good to make progress.

Other than we've had new wiring put to the garage so we don't need to rely on extension cables to power the washing machine. There are a few other jobs I can get on with like giving the various wooden surfaces a good clean, but there's not a huge amount more to do for now. Though there will be the work that the rear 'utility' section needs, and there will be others things after that. Still maintaining a house is all part of house ownership.

The other problem with limited time is that I still need to sort out the gardens. Sadly it seems the weather isn't being nice except when I have other commitments. If I thought the weather would hold I'd take time off work to get them done. Hopefully we'll get another period of good weather while I actually have time before the year is out.

Work wise has been all right, I did about a months worth of training (read: reading technical documents and books), while the customer faffed about making their mind up about having the further work they couldn't live without. Seems like I should be on the project at least till March and maybe till end of next year. Which for me passes the all important in Bath criteria which is all I ask for really. October has rolled around which means my pay goes up from this month, which is always a pleasant experience; even if the rises are much more modest than they have been previously.

Speaking of work I've also begun walking to work, well I say begun I started about a month or so ago. I was pretty much holding off starting until I got myself into a good morning routine. It seems to be about 30 mins down to work and around 35-40 mins back up. Ralph Allen Drive is a steep hill, but not as bad as it looks. The exercise is definitely doing me good, especially as I still lack time to be able to come larping (well until the house reaches a given level of done). I've actually started trying to push myself to walk up it faster whenever I feel like I've been walking comfortably, so hopefully I'll be able to reduce my journey time, and get a fair bit fitter eventually. The one habit I have taken up while walking is taking the opportunity to call the people I don't always get a chance to chat to, helps pass the time and distract from the slope. So if you're free between about 5:00pm and 5:40pm and fancy a (slightly breatless) chat leave a comment, and I'll give you the occasional call.

Speaking of exercise it'll be good to have the time to go larping again; I'm really looking forward to getting back into it. I'm definitely missing doing it. I'm kinda missing doing lots of things. I've managed to spare the odd Wednesday evening to go play magic down the pub, but other than a very slow paced play by post game on a forum I frequent I've not done any roleplaying for a while. Obviously lack of time has been a big factor and haven't had the time really since I dropped out of

ailsa_chan's D&D game. I'm looking forward to things being more done and actually being able to play some. Even if it just ends up happening because I run it.

I've managed to get some reading done, though I need to do more, thankfully that's a little easier to squeeze in. Just need to stop playing on

purplegirl23's DS and read instead. Thing is I've finally got around to playing the first Professor Layton game and it's pretty addictive. That coupled with playing Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories has meant that the free time I afford myself is quickly spent. I'm enjoying the KH game more than I thought I would, I only really started playing because I was curious how the whole card thing worked*. I've not really played any of the rest of the series other than when I helped

ailsa_chan out with the minigames in KH2 by getting the required scores she couldn't; from an outsiders point of view the games have always seemed a bit too button mashy, and kinda of hard to follow watching. Not sure it's enough to make me want to play all the games (though KH1 is probable the only one I wouldn't bother with), but it's certainly a diversion all the same.

*Yeah stick a card game based system into something and I find it hard to resist.

Other than that there is a good core of games I've been looking forward to recently, and I've even gone and preordered them. All for the PC because

purplegirl23 and I aren't quite in a position to physically locate a console in our house yet. This is for reference why my gaming is mostly DS based, my PC, consoles and (most of my possessions) are still stowed away at my parents. The current list of new titles I'm acquiring in is Dragon Age: Origins (New RPG Bioware what's not to like) and Borderlands which can be best described as a fist person perspective Diablo with guns in a sci-fi-wild west setting. Looking forward to messing around with it, especially the drop in, drop out multiplayer aspects and the endless possibilities of procedurally generated guns. I'm also going to get around to getting the original Mass Effect. Slightly concerned that all the games I've bought for a while have been FPS/RPG or increasingly it seems FPSRPG's. Then again FPS's are best suited to the PC. Might have to invest in the new Starcraft at some point just for something different. There's just not really been a racing game that's caught my interest in a long time, sports games never did, and platformers well I've played a fair lot of, but they've all belonged to

purplegirl23. Clearly shows how much genre interbreeding there is these days.

Other hobby wise I've enjoyed helping

purplegirl23 with her costume. Everytime I do some, I remember what it I enjoy about making costumes. I guess at the purest level it's getting to make some in a vaguely artistic fashion without actually having to create the idea first. My big issue when it comes to doing anything arty is that I can't get what I see inside my head down on to some sort of medium, but taking the ideas of others and reproducing them in a different context I can do. Reminds of when as a child I used to take single frames (often an inch square) from Asterix comics and draw and paint them as large (around 2x3ft) posters. Not sure which costume I'm going to want to start on first, but as long as I stick to my cosplay for fun not for deadlines approach I'm sure I'll get them all done eventually. Though I've got to start watching anime again if I'm going to get any more ideas. Otherwise I'll just end up doing ones from games.

Speaking of watching stuff, I have been able to keep watching various TV series, a lot of them ones I've bought for my parents though. Supernatural is good and

purplegirl23 and I need to borrow series 3 and 4 off someone at some point. We also need to finish watching Farscape having just got into series 4, before we stopped. We've been watching the Big Bang Theory together which I do enjoy, is definitely well written for that style of American comedy. Just got series 2 on DVD so that should be good. Plus after

pujaemus's recommendation we've started watching Flashforward. It seems alright, need to see more of it to decide how good or not I think it is. I do like how they're using a fair amount of exposition, mostly delivered by the FBI, rather than going the overly cryptic route that such shows have favoured recently.

And then there's BSG. Now I enjoyed watching the reruns of an original series as a kid, and I've certainly enjoyed the remake, but after watching most of the first three series it has two characteristics that first were irritating and are now beginning to destroy my enjoyment of the show. The first is minor, and that's simply that the series teases space battles a lot but rarely delivers. It wouldn't be so bad, except that they dedicate entire episode or multiple episode mini arcs to building up a space battle to then not really bother showing much of it all. I'm fairly sure the original version managed more interesting space battles, and that's to say they mostly consisted of the same few shots edited together in different ways. The second one and this is the big one is that the writers utterly fail at writing believable military characters, with the exception of the odd gesture by the marine gunnery sergeant. Every single time their battle hardened, trained, military personnel get anywhere near any sort of non space based combat situation the show completely breaks down. Without fail they'll wander around known hostile locations like they taking a leisurely stroll, choose to stage meetings where there's lots of opportunity for being snuck up or ambushed, and always react so surprised when the cylons get the jump on them. They've got less situational awareness than the three blind mice. Don't believe me here are some examples:
- Helo on Caprica, practically all of it. The number of times he was snuck up on by large clanking metal robots, or was casually observed from a short distance above him are too many to count. All I can assume is he was trained either by playing Doom (looking up or down what's that?) or on an on the rails shooter because looking behind him seems to be outside of his talents as well.
- When the Battlestar gets boarded. They've just survived an engagement with the cylons, a ship large enough to contain more than a few robots has crashed into their landing bay and they don't act concerned. Then the power goes out, and they're too busy chatting to notice just in time to walk straight into a large clanking metal robot. Seriously how dumb do you have to be to not consider a massive unexpected power failure after a battle to be a point of concern?!
- Rescuing the resistance on Caprica so you've got a core of specially trained hand picked soldiers and pilots, meeting up with the humans who have successfully waged a gorilla war over months on a cylon controlled planet, and what do they do when they meet up. They shout loudly to confirm themselves to each other, and then stand around hugging and chatting in the middle of the forest. Then they get ambushed and after waiting long enough for the cylons to get a pretty good bead on them with their mortars decide to flee to a location that looks perfect for mortar target practise. The worst part the resistance knew they were being followed because they'd been driven from their base by the cylons!
- Meeting up in the resistance in New Caprica, where does this resistance that has successfully thwarted the cylons all this time choose to arrange a rendezvous, in a clearing by a brook with minimal cover and enough background noise to mask someone's approach. At least the Gunnery Sergeant was smart enough to spot how perfectly they set themselves up for an ambush.
- The hostage situation on Cloud Nine. Yes lets send one of our highly recognisable ranking officer (and pilot) into pretend to be the engineer rather than one of the fairly generic looking marines.

It's clear that the writers don't know how to write military experience, which is the shame because I've seen other shows (SG1 and B5 for example) where they've got it right. Anyway, so what is the end result of all of this? Well I'd say it's breaking my suspension of disbelief, but that's not quite right. It's more I'm finding the portrayal of the characters isn't coming across how the writers intend. Basically it boils down to this because this group of messed up, but ultimately trained and now battle hardened soldiers act like complete morons whenever they get into a situation they should be good at, I'm finding it hard not their moronic-ness pervasive. Plus because the writers like the ambushed by cylons plot device so much it happens over and over and over again. So the interesting social interactions and the angst end up getting tarred with the moronicness and so it feels like the characters in question are just being stupid at each other, rather than being gritty emotional drama. Then because they seem stupid the human survivors plot lines feel like they are motivated by being stupid (e.g. Make a series of risky jumps through a pulsar where they risk irradiating everyone, losing ships, why yes that seems a perfectly reasonable idea if you're all morons!) which robs things of drama, their ship design then feels moronic (why don't the space craft have reflective screens like modern astronauts to prevent being blinded stars) which detracts from the tone of the episodes, and ultimately the cylons come off stupid too. Honestly if humanity is as dumb as they now come across, the only reason the cylon needed such an elaborate plan is they weren't smart enough to wipe humanity in a more straight forward way. The end result the cylon treatment of the humans on New Caprica, not to do with their fundamental misunderstanding of humanity, nope it just they are all stupid.

I think that's enough for now I'll try and get the second half of various things I want to say down within the next week.

Basically life at the moment comes down to I'll have more time once the house is sorted, which I will then promptly fill with various forms of entertainment. What I really want to be able to do is run a general sort of games evening maybe once a fortnight to once a month. Feel free to leave a comment if you'd think you'd be interested.