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January 2nd, 2004
 | 12:14 am - Hello, 2004 !
And a Happy New Year to whoever might be reading this.
So, Adelaide. Arrived on Dec 29th. That night, visited  dmw, dalmeny, Alex & Gabrielle - alas, the day after their housewarming / dmw's birthday party, where I would have caught up with lots of other people I haven't seen for ages. Anyway, the four of them are sharing a cool house - seems to be an older-style house (very high ceilings, etc), with a later extension, and a large garage. They seem to have settled in happily, the music room was set up nicely (Alex plays piano, Gabrielle violin), the cellar had a bunch of wine, and there were books everywhere (nothing wrong with that at all :-) ).
On the 30th, a very lazy day, despite being woken up earlyish by the people replacing the side fence at my parents place (right outside our bedroom window). Lazed around, had hotdogs for lunch (for some reason, a little deli (translation for other places : milk bar, convenience store, corner shop, etc) two blocks from my parents place makes "squished" hotdogs - ie, they toast the hotdog buns in one of those toasting/press-type things. I don't know why, but they've always done it, and they turn out really nice. Yay squished hotdogs). rwrylsin and I went for a walk on the beach later, and after dinner, we watched some TV and I read Quicksilver for a while more (more than half-way through ! yay !). Like I said, a lazy day ...
The 31st, New Year's Eve. Once again, woken early (before 8am) by the workmen replacing the fence. I dozed some more, rwrylsin didn't, much. Once we were actually conscious and sentient again, rwrylsin and I went in to the city centre, browsed up and down Rundle Mall (no Adelaide Effect ? Have I been gone too long ? Oh no !), I had some Balfours sausage rolls (note to all makers of sausages rolls in Victoria : No carrot ! No onion ! Nice flaky pastry ! Sheesh, it's not that hard ... ), rwrylsin tried out the wireless networking from her Mac laptop (it worked, I'm sure we looked very geeky sitting on a bench in the middle of the Mall fiddling with a laptop), we browsed some more, then left. We went to the house of Ruth and James, two friends from fencing and SCA (from some years ago, when I was living in Adelaide), and met their cats, and had dinner with them.
From there, we followed them to a New Year's Eve party at the house of Liz and Marty, another couple of people I knew from fencing/SCA days. This was lots of fun, because their house has a pool and a spa. rwrylsin and I joined many other people in the pool for a while, then moved to the spa for a while, and then we got out and dried off sometime after 9. Many others stayed in the spa, and this being NYE, were consuming alcohol, so at various times various numbers of people were in various stages of undress in the spa (mostly in the spa, I should say, one person arrived fairly late, came outside in bikini, took it all off, and dived in the pool). Midnight duly got counted in (twice, because ... well, see above about alcohol :), and then everyone got back to the partying. Unfortunately, the lack of sleep from the early morning, and the micro-cold which I might possibly have passed on to her, caught up with rwrylsin not long afterward, so we headed home again.
So, today we woke up without the "help" of fence-replacement-noises (at a more reasonable 10am-ish), and headed into town to meet people at the Academy cinemas. A bunch of people were there - dmw, dalmeny, Alex, Gaby, Andrew, Ruth, Adam, Alison, Jon, Roman, Simon, Simon's wife (oops, forgot her name), Matt & Connie - so we bought tickets and got some lunch at Buongiorno's nearby (one of the few places open on 1/1, and Hungry Jack's just wasn't an option).
Then, of course, the movie. Wheee ! Very good :) It took a while for "thinking-brain" [see below] to switch off and "going-with-the-flow" brain to take over, but once the pace picked up a bit, away I went. My favourite parts ? I certainly liked the way Legolas took down the thing-which-isn't-an-elephant-but-I-can't-remember-the-proper-name-for, I was moved to tears at the end when everyone went down on their knees in Minas Tirith to the four hobbits, and I thought the ghost army was pretty cool too. I'll let it digest some more, and maybe even see it again (although we must see Master and Commander first, it looks really good too), and then try to write some more coherent thoughts about it.
After that, we returned home, ate a yummy roast, went for a walk on the beach, had ice-cream for dessert, and generally spent the evening lazily, and here I am, browsing random LJs and updating mine.
While randomly following friends LJ links, I came across these two parodies, and was very amused.
First, a parody of The Two Towers , then a parody of Return of the King .
Finally a random thought I had while the RotK credits were rolling - is anyone likely to remake LotR for film again ? If there's one thing Hollywood likes to do, it's recycle, but in this case, I just don't see it happening for a long time. For a start, it would cost a huge amount to do, would have to overcome all of the hurdles this trilogy overcame, and ... it'd have to be better ! Not very likely, in my opinion.
So, I should go to bed shortly (just a few more pages of Quicksilver ), since we're flying back to Melbourne tomorrow. Yargh. Being back there will almost certainly remind me that I'll be back at work next week, and I've been blissfully enjoying not being at work for the past two weeks. Oh well.
Footnote : "thinking-brain" ? Well, it seems that I have started to watch movies while thinking a bit like a critic - the problem is that I don't have an English studies or even much of an Arts background, so I don't have the theoretical background or critical vocabulary to properly express what I'm thinking, so I end up saying "gee, that bit was really neat", or "hmm, that bit could have been ... better" without being able to write essays on the details. Compounding this is my sieve-like memory for details, quotes, etc - if I were to properly critique something, I'd need to have the DVD in front of me and make copious notes while working slowly through it. Since I'm lazy, I don't bother, and ... well, see above :-)
Current Mood:  happy
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