angharad_gam: (Default)
 I suppose we had a couple of weeks reprieve between 'aaargh, the whole country is on fire' and 'omg, we're all going to get coronavirus'. 

So far the instructions from work are 'only stay home if you're sick or in an at risk group', but the office was half empty on Friday anyway. We're pretty well set up for working from home (and I have been doing that three days a week for a couple of years now), but I think they are still concerned about load if everyone tries to do it at once. That means, for me at least, things are continuing more or less as normal for now, except for the things that aren't. All the gardening and craft fairs [personal profile] dirtygreatknife and I were planning to attend have been cancelled. There's a good chance the yoga classes I have been attending on Mondays since 2006 will be cancelled. My parents were planning on visiting in the Easter school holidays, and it seems like that will probably not happen. Ashwyn's parent teacher interview this week will be done over the phone.

Erin managed exactly two weeks of university before they put all her lectures and tutes online. Despite the horrible commute (her uni is on the other side of the city) I think she has been enjoying getting out of the house, and now she is stuck inside. 

I have, after doing some reading and investigation, decided I am not in an at risk group. There is no evidence that auto-immune diseases put you at more risk from COVID-19 apparently,  unless you are taking immune suppressants to manage them (which I am not). In fact it seems like an overclocked immune system means more likelihood of having a mild version of the disease. All the evidence suggests that unimpaired immune response is helpful, and the symptoms (unlike those of colds) are not driven by the immune system itself. This does leave one danger from the illness - the chance of triggering another auto-immune disease. Viral response is a very common trigger for auto-immune diseases (that's how I ended up with the one I have - thanks to the Hawaiian flu). But the evidence is not very clear on the likelihood of this. There is some research that suggests repeated exposure to viruses mutes the overreaction (ie over time your immune system gets a little smarter at distinguishing between stuff that is you and stuff that isn't - even if it does still go a bit nuts if have the audacity to inhale a pollen grain or rub a bit of grass on your skin). So in other words, being old and having gotten sick a lot may actually be helpful for once!

To cut a long story short, I am not too concerned about this whole business for my sake, more for my old and/or unwell friends and relatives.

I am more concerned with the fact that on Monday I reinjured my dodgy ankle by the simple means of stepping on a large pebble at the bus stop. I had hoped that it would settle down after a day or two, but no such luck. Now I am back on the 'has it healed enough to start strengthening work? Nope not yet' wagon, which from experience I will probably be on for months. Funnily enough just last week I was thinking 'you know, the ankle's been stable for ages, maybe I could occasionally wear heels again'. But nope. Which is frustrating because all this talk of stay home and make do is making me want to go outside and dig up the vegie garden,.

In other news I  have gotten back into garb making lately (just in time for the SCA to cancel all events for the next two months. For the moment I am trying to finish off a couple of projects I started ages ago, but I went rummaging in my fabric stash the other day and I have some rather lovely wool and silk I had completely forgotten about.  Of course, what I really need is a couple of new chemises, but who wants to do boring stuff like that...

I also got a new toy - a Scandinavian style band weaving heddle. It's currently in the process of being sanded and oiled, so I can't use it just yet, but I will have to start planning some weaving patterns. Hmmm, maybe some of that wool could be a nice bliaut with hand woven trim. *wanders off doing yardage calculations in her head*

angharad_gam: (Default)
 We went to see Sisters of Mercy last Sunday night. We have had the tickets for months, but the closer the night got the more I started getting the 'I'm getting too old for this shit' jitters. I mean - going out on a Sunday when there's work the next day and kids to get to school; loud rock music when the ears have lost their youthful resilience. But we went. And it was really, really good. 

And then the next day I got really sick. As best as I can tell it seems to be a combination of irritation from overuse of the smoke machine at the concert, on top of existing hayfever inflammation and a cold that Liam had a few days before and my upper respiratory tract went a bit nuts. So here I am a week later flat on my back on the couch, stuffed full of steroids and antibiotics and feeling like I've been run over by a steamroller. Yay. 
angharad_gam: (Default)
 It's been a dramatic few weeks, with one thing and another. Andy and I both got a rather nasty virus. The lymph nodes in my neck swelled up so much I was worried I might have mumps. I did have mumps as a child, or maybe I did - I often had such mild versions of childhood illnesses that it can be difficult to say for sure what I have and haven't had. 

Just as I was starting to get over that I got a toothache, which rapidly matured into a large abcess on my gum. I went to the doctor for antibiotics, and then the dentist. I am not super fond of dentists (some hint at the dental trauma I suffered as a young person is indicated in the fact that I  only have 24 adult teeth), but apparently gum infections can be indicative of underlying problems with the teeth or jaw, so I thought I had better. The dentist cleaned out the infection (I  will leave you to imagine the jabbing and scraping this involved), and discovered a foreign body inside the gum (too far gone to determine what it was), so it was probably a good thing I went. But it was not fun, and I fainted in the reception on my way out. The fainting was mainly just a response to the unpleasantness - I have nearly fainted before after eg slicing my finger open with a carving knife at a feast, or stabbing my hand with a pen. My blood pressure is on the low side and, like those fainting goats, my body's response to stressors (especially those that make holes in me) is frequently to decide I need to have a little lie down. Andy was waiting for me, and leapt out of his chair and caught me, so at least I didn't bang my head on the floor or similar.

Meanwhile, my dad has been having trouble with his back, where trouble means excruciating pain. The same day I was fainting at the dentist he was having an MRI, which showed a bulging disc. He and mum were supposed to be coming to visit us last week, but they had to cancel as he cannot walk far or sit for long periods in an upright position (ie a two hour plane flight with an hour drive at either end would be pretty much out of the question). He had a cortisone injection last week, but that only helped for a couple of days, so now he needs to have surgery.

Two days after the fainting at the dentist was GSG. I was a bit touch and go as to whether I would actually go, but I was feeling much better, if a trifle fragile, by Friday morning, and I didn't want to pike on my classes, so I went. We had just gotten to the site (it was up in the Riverland about two hours drive away) when I got a text from dad - he was on his way to hospital because the pain was so bad. The more texts saying they were keeping him there for a bit because his blood pressure was so high. High blood pressure is not normally a problem my dad has - his is pretty normal for a man his age. They got his pain under control, and eventually released him. As best we can tell the high blood pressure was a response to the pain. 

Other than that, GSG was really good, and I had the rest of the week off work, and was pretty glad of it, and hopefully everything will be normal for a while now...
angharad_gam: (Default)
 So, I am laid up on the couch with a rotten cold, which is probably going to stop me from getting the 'flu vaccine at work this week. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but apparently we are having a flu epidemic here atm, and there are shortages of the vaccine. As you might guess from the title, it's been an eventful few weeks, and since I have nothing to do but sit around and feel sorry for myself, I thought I might pop in here and complain about it. 

It hasn't all been bad, mind. We had a nice Easter lunch with Andy's family - I made a gluten free carrot cake which came out rather well. Baking is always a bit hit and miss without gluten, and this was actually the first time I've ever made carrot cake. And I took the week after Easter off work, and we had a very pleasant week with nice weather and a bit of pottering around in the garden. I dug 3-4 years worth of compacted compost out from underneath the compost bin and promptly planted some peas in it, and the plants I acquired for the courtyard when [personal profile] dirtygreatknife  and I went to the ABC Plant Fair are doing really well. 

But the week before Easter Erin got up one morning and noticed that the ceiling in the lounge room was falling in. To understand this, you should first know that Adelaide is built on big chunks of reactive clay which expand quite substantially when wet, and shrink just as drastically when dry. It's a problem all over the place to some extent (at our last house 0.5cm wide fissures used to open in the back garden during summer and then close up again in winter and that was a relatively stable area). Houses getting big cracks in the walls or ceilings because the ground is moving under them is a pretty standard problem.

Our street has a bad case of the reactive clays (if you have ever driven down it you would notice how remarkably bumpy the road is). This manifests in all kinds of ways, including weird bulging spots in the driveway and courtyard pavers. The house itself is pretty solid, except for one narrow spot where the lounge and dining room meet. To add to the 'this small part of the house could easily be snapped off the rest' effect, there are a couple of vents for the heating and air-conditioner in the ceiling in this part. Not long after we moved in the ceiling started cracking from this corner to one of these vents. We got a guy in to fix it and he did a pretty good job. But for a while now there has been another crack creeping across to the other vent. We have been ignoring this for probably longer than we should have. Add to this the driest start to the year since the 1880's and the weight of the vent, plus the weight of the fancy cornice tore a dirty great hole in the ceiling. 

We propped it up with a bit of wood, and the same guy who fixed our previous crack has come around to have a look at it. The ease of the fix will apparently depend on whether they can cut out the broken bit of ceiling without breaking the fancy cornice along the top of that wall (if they do then the whole length of cornice will also need to be replaced). Anyway, they will be starting late this week or early next week, so that will be fun. 

I also ended up having an ultrasound just before Easter because I have been having some rather unpleasant pain in my right breast. The ultrasound showed nothing to be concerned about, which is always a relief, and apparently breasts just get that way sometimes. I can't help but wonder if this is some sequelae to the terrible case of mastitis I had after Liam was born (I had a 3cm x 3cm x 2.5cm abcess in that breast - that was some fun I can tell you). If there's scar tissue of some kind in there the sonographer didn't say anything about it. I had some pain on and off in that breast afterwards, but not really anything since Ashwyn was born.

Our local greengrocer also closed over Easter. We have been going there since we moved back to Adelaide (nearly 15 years ago - yikes!), so that was a bit of a blow. I do not like buying fruit and veg at the supermarket, so we are experimenting with getting our fruit and veg at the Central Markets. It's difficult to go to the Central Markets and just buy fruit however. There is a great temptation to splurge on fancy cheese and smallgoods and beautiful pastries. We got some amazing asparagus there last week, and this is what I did with it:

Pasta primavera (yes it is autumn here)
1 small onion, finely diced
2 bunches asparagus (16-20 spears) 
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup of shelled, peeled broad beans
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup cream
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
1 generous tblsp fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
black pepper
olive oil

Set some pasta to cook. Wash and trim the asparagus (the best way to do this is just flex the stem gently - it will snap off at the point where it is too woody to eat). My theory on asparagus, btw, is that the skinnier it is the better. 
Heat 1-2 tblsps of olive oil in the bottom of a frying pan. Add the onion and saute on high heat until it is beginning to soften. Add the asparagus and continue cooking until the asparagus has turned a much brighter green colour. Add the broad beans and then add the wine and let it boil down until there is less than a cm left in the bottom of the pan. Stir in the cream, then add the peas. Once this also begins to boil, turn down the heat and add the cheese and sage. Season generously with pepper (and salt if you're into that) or according to taste. Simmer gently for 10 mins or until your pasta is cooked. Toss the sauce through the pasta and serve with additional parmesan. 

This is still pretty nice if you don't have any broad beans.  
angharad_gam: (Default)
 And that name is neuroma. 

It's an inflammation of the nerve that runs between the little bones (well mine are little bones) in the ball of your foot. It's usually caused by pressure on the foot, and the treatment us at least partly to remove that pressure. No more pointy-toed shoes for me. Also, for this week at least, I have a piece of foam taped to the bottom of my foot. This is to help spread out the bones and reduce pressure on the nerve.

How did we get here? I got really bored of my foot seeming like it was starting to get better only to get worse again. So I went to see a podiatrist. Apparently, aside from the neuroma, I also have really bad rolling of the foot when I walk, which may be contributing to this and the ongoing issues I have with my ankle. I have long suspected I had an issue of this sort because of the really uneven way I wear through shoes, and the fact that I can't keep both my feet and my knees straight in certain yoga poses (eg dandasana). Or it might just be that I have very small, extremely high-arched feet, which can cause both problems. Regardless, there is a strong likelihood of orthotics in my future. Orthotics and new shoes. The podiatrist recommended Doc Martens!

In other news, work has been keeping me pretty busy. I have pretty much planned out the menu for the rapier weekend I am cooking for in September. It will include a 15th century Italian feast, for which I might post the menu later.
We had a short visit from Mum and Dad in the school holidays.
We have had some rain, and finally some autumnal weather, and grass is now sprouting everywhere in the garden, but the freesias (which start growing leaves in autumn,  but won't flower until spring) are coming up too. Hopefully the foot thing will be sorted out soon as it is definitely getting into garden work season.
Andy is planning a holiday to Hawaii and Japan with his dad and his brother in July, and is now thoroughly alarmed by all the volcanic activity going on in Hawaii, even though they aren't actually going to that island. Andy's brother is a geologist,  and is highly delighted.
Andy is still coming to grips with the business of being gluten free. Erin is the most reluctant vegetarian I have ever encountered. She actually said "It's not fair that I can't eat ham and pineapple pizza" last week.
angharad_gam: (Default)
A few weeks ago Erin decided she was going to become a vegetarian. A peculiar choice for a person whose staple food is toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, but there you go. 

And yesterday Andy was diagnosed with coeliac disease. This seems a little peculiar to us, as his only symptom was iron deficiency, and he probably wouldn't have noticed that except he kept being told he couldn't give blood. Since chronic iron deficiency is pretty unusual in men I prodded him into going to the doctor, they did a heap of tests, and lo and behold: coeliac disease. I suppose he might have other nutrient deficiencies that we haven't noticed because he has never been tested for them, but I was under the impression that coeliac patients had lots of gastro-intestinal symptoms, and he's had nothing like that. Anyway, Andy is currently in mourning for pies and beer. 

It's going to be interesting reworking our household diet to deal with these developments. The rest of us might actually get a lot healthier...
angharad_gam: (Default)
 So, after my last post my foot got worse and worse, to the point where I hobbled off to the doctor. The doctor promptly sent me off to have an x-ray and ultrasound,  but this being the Friday before a long weekend, I couldn't get an appointment until the following Wednesday. Cue a lot of sitting around with my foot on a cushion. 

Wednesday came and I limped off to the radiologist. I spent about an hour there all up, between both scans and various waitings around. But at the end of it, they found no obvious problems with my foot. That was good news in some respects - it's not broken, and there is no major soft tissue injury. But it didn't shed a lot of light on why my foot hurt. It could be a soft tissue injury too minor to show up on a scan, but I am pretty talented at inflammation, so that seems fairly unlikely. Another option is inflammation of a nerve (which doesn't require much inflammation before you start to notice it). Regardless, treatment is the same - basically more sitting around with my foot on a cushion. The good news is that it does seem to be settling down in the last few days.

What's up?

Mar. 4th, 2018 06:56 pm
angharad_gam: (Default)
 Life has been pretty quiet lately, divided mostly between work and video games, which is not entirely unusual in summer, when I tend to bunker down against the heat. Now that Autumn is officially here I am going to try and tear myself away from the screen a bit more. The last week or so has not been a good start, delivering in approximate order - three new staff at work, a cold, and a foot injury. I don't know what I have done to  my foot, only that it hurts when I walk on it. There's no causal event I can remember , there's no bruising or other surface sign of a problem, the pain feels different from a soft tissue injury, and it's not located at any obvious joint, and I seem to have exacerbated it doing the grocery shopping yesterday. Maybe this is like the time my knee swelled up for no reason. 

The other news is that I have signed up to run the kitchen at a weekend long rapier event in September. Still very much in the planning stages at the moment.
angharad_gam: (Default)
 This cold has been taking ages to get over.  It has been about three weeks now and I am still not quite 100%. The 'doing my job and my boss's at the same time' thing ends in a few days, so that might help. I have got most of my Christmas shopping and mailing things done, just food to worry about now. I am looking forward to taking a long break after Christmas. 

Still playing through the Mass Effect Trilogy. I finished the second game yesterday and started the third today. The first game was good enough, but not amazing. The second really puts you through the emotional wringer. The third - I can already tell it is going to rip my heart out, chop it into little pieces and stamp all over them. I have been a lot more successful about not spoilering these games than I was with Dragon Age, but I have still picked up enough to know some of my choices in the earlier games are leading to some serious pain. And that's without the whole 'the galaxy is doomed and I don't know if we can save it' plotline. The game does a really good job of making the odds of success seem extremely low...



angharad_gam: (Default)
I can see I may be falling into a pattern of only posting here when I am sick or bored or both. But life has been fairly quiet recently. Work has been keeping me moderately busy, with a trip to Canberra and sporadic filling in for my boss. Otherwise we are on the run down to the end of the year, and starting to think seriously about what we are doing for Christmas (which will be at our place this year - definitely no last minute rushings off *crosses fingers*). Maybe I will try and get in a food post about our plans between now and then. 

But, yes, I am sick. Liam had a bit of a cough at the end of last week, and I started feeling a bit tickly in the chest on Sunday. By Sunday evening I  had a raging sore throat and had almost completely lost my voice, which persisted through most of Monday. Ashwyn was highly delighted to discover that I couldn't speak when it came time to try and tell him he needed to go to bed. 'You sound terrible, Mum,' he said. 'Maybe you shouldn't try and talk.' Getting laryngitis when I have a cold is not terribly unusual for me, but having it persist for more than a few hours is. Anyway, fortunately that has mostly settled down, but I am back to coughing quite a lot, and poor Andy is sleeping on the couch so I don't keep him awake at night. 

Aside from this, I finished my completionist, imported world-state playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition, which ended up being about 125 hours long (I had skipped some of the DLC on my first play through, and skimmed over some parts of the game). I am still completely wrapped up in this game, and I am hanging out for the next one now. That there will even be a next one is still an unconfirmed rumour, and it is unlikely to appear before the end of next year, if then. I am glad I didn't get into this series in 2014 when DA:I originally came out!  Andy has convinced me to give the original Mass Effect trilogy another go. You may recall I had trouble getting into this when it was first released, but I found it a lot easier this time round and finished the first game yesterday (it wasn't a huge game). 

Stuff I have been reading lately: Provenance by Ann Leckie (set in the same universe as her Raadch books, but not about them - I liked this a lot), The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandemeer (I only just started the second book of this - it is very weird and somewhat unsettling. Andy liked it a lot, but I am still waiting for it to grab me by the throat). Also, I thought I would try the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy Sayers, as I have been on a bit of detective fiction kick for a little while now. I have to say that as far as 1920's detectives go, I prefer Phryne Fisher, but then she has the benefit of being written by a modern author for modern readers, while the Lord Peter books are nearly 100 years old now.

The Spring glories of the garden have passed on, and it's starting to get into the kind of weather where it is too hot for gardening, but that matters less because it is also too hot for weeds to grow. 

Erin is in the middle of exams. This is the first major exam period of her schooling (they seem less keen on them than when I was in high school), and she is stressing out a bit. After that she will be done with school for the year, and then she only has one year left (I swear five minutes ago she was a baby). Liam has now just slightly edged me out in height, and given that Ashwyn is already up to my nose I am still betting on my proposition that I will be the shortest in the house by the time he is 12. I am already the person with the smallest feet. 
angharad_gam: (Default)
I woke up on Friday morning feeling moderately unwell, eight days since Mum got sick (incubation period for whooping cough is 7-10days). So off I went to the doctor to stick a couple of swizzle sticks up my nose (this is how you test for whooping cough), and get a prescription for antibiotics. I find out on Monday if the test is positive, but in the meantime the antibiotics seem to be keeping me from feeling too horrible.
angharad_gam: (Default)
A brief timeline first to hopefully clarify things. Today is the last day of the South Australian school holidays, which are two weeks long. Preceding these two weeks (with no overlap) were the Queensland school holidays, also two weeks long. As I believe I mentioned last time I posted, my parents were intending to spend the last week of our school holidays visiting us  (as indeed they did and went home yesterday). Now to the drama....

Last Sunday, aka the day before they were due to fly down here, mum and dad rang up and told us my nephew had just been diagnosed with whooping cough. He was not terribly ill (he was vaccinated), but he had spent the entirety of the Qld school holidays staying with mum and dad. He had been ill while he was there (in the second week of his visit). They took him to the doctor just before he went home and it takes a week for the whooping cough test to come back, so they had only just discovered that he had it. 

We spent half the day going around on whether or not mum and dad should cancel their trip. Whooping cough is most contagious in the first few days you are ill, which meant that it was almost two weeks since mum and dad had been most exposed. Whooping cough has an incubation period of 7-10 days, although it can be longer. Neither of them were sick (although my sister, who had visited them during the relevant period, was). It seemed like if they were going to get sick, they would have by this point. In the end, we decided that they should come.

All went swimmingly for the first couple of days. Then Andy and I went off on the overnight trip we had planned to celebrate our anniversary (and which, to be honest, was a big motivator for deciding in favour of them coming - his family are much much more reluctant to kid watch, especially if it involves more than sitting around for a couple of hours). When we came back on Thursday,  mum was sick. The next day she was still sick, if not worse. On Saturday she went to the doctor to get some antibiotics. They don't help much with the illness, by all accounts,  but they do help to make you less contagious, which is probably important when you have to get on a plane. We won't know if it's actually whooping cough for another week. 

If it is, and I have caught it (and I have not been vaccinated against it - something my mother did not see the need to tell me until now) it might be two weeks before I get sick. But at least if I do get sick in the next couple of weeks I will know it is likely more than just a cold and not go randomly spreading it around. There is nothing to do now, but play the waiting game, and as Homer Simpson so sagely said "The waiting game sucks..."



angharad_gam: (Default)
 This evening was supposed to see Andy going out to dinner with his brother at their favourite yakitori place, while I took the opportunity of being alone with the kids to sort out some Father's Day stuff. Instead Erin is at the Royal Show with a friend and Andy is sitting with Ashwyn in the ED at the Women's and Children's Hospital. 

Erin has had a nasty cold all week. She gave it to Ashwyn and Liam (I suspect I am getting it too - yay!). In the former it seems to have mutated into tonsillitis as he has been feverish for a couple of days. Last night he threw up. Just lately Ashwyn has been getting a rash on his face when he throws up. He doesn't do anything by half measures, and I  think he throws up so hard and dramatically (he likes to bend right over and get his face as close to the floor as possible (he almost always throws up on the floor btw)) that he pops all tha capillaries in his face. Anyway, Andy took him to the doctor today as he hasn't eaten for two days, and he is such a skinny kid that he always looks like he is at death's door if he skips too many meals. The doctor saw feverish kid with a rash and insisted he go to the WCH for tests just as a precaution. I am sure he is fine (she says with her fingers crossed)...
angharad_gam: (Default)
 Last night I dreamed that the new doctor stepped out of the TARDIS  on her first episode and said "Actually, I'm not that good at maths."

And then I dreamed that I was annoyed with Andy because he had pulled up all the parsley and nasturtiums from the herb garden. 

I would lay these at the feet of something I ate or did yesterday, except that I know my brain is perfectly capable of all this and more without any stimulus whatsoever...

As for yesterday,  I spent most of it wandering around the University of Adelaide Open Day with Erin and one of her friends, alternately beset by nostalgia and freezing half to death. The fact that I already had a cold makes me surprised I am not as sick as a dog today, but go figure. Also a professor of linguistics gave me a Toblerone, so there was that.
angharad_gam: (Default)
 Andy strained a groin muscle drying himself after a shower (no I don't know either).
And I popped my TMJ out again. I haven't done that for a while, and I forgot how much it hurts.

In other news, I  have decided to try and wean myself off Dragon Age with Mass Effect: Andromeda. I tried the first Mass Effect game when it came out, but I suck at shooting things, and after a certain point this became a barrier to making further progress. However, this newest episode in the franchise has a 'narrative' mode, which supposedly focusses more on story than combat, and I have become slightly more adept at using an Xbox controller since then, so I thought I would give it a go. It turns out I still suck at shooting things. And also I suck at driving the space tractor thing (on my first outing I drove it straight into a pond). So we'll see how long this lasts...
angharad_gam: (Default)
Two firsts for me recently.

A couple of weeks ago I got into the full version of mermaid pose for the first time.

And this morning I managed to synchronise coughing and swallowing in such a way that tea came out my nose. I can't recommend it as a method for clearing out the sinuses.

But hey, today is the first day of the year that the pollen count was forecast to drop to 'low', so I guess that's something (it's normally dropped way earlier than this, but note the unseasonable weather I mentioned a few days ago)...
angharad_gam: (Default)
I finally finished all the add-ons for DA:O yesterday, so I was going to start DA II today. However, it turned out the second hand game disc I bought was damaged and it wouldn't load. That's the only version of the game I have found (DA II was nowhere near as popular as the first and third games and us six years old now, so not entirely surprising). At least I bought it from a game shop, so I should be able to get my money back.

The cold has made a bit of a resurgence this weekend, although I may have only myself to blame. I sat up much too late reading Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (which, naturally enough, I recommend highly). As a result I have not done the front garden weeding that desperately needs to be done before the rain sets in next week. I have been doing a lot of crochet lately, however.
angharad_gam: (Default)
1. I am really bad at avoiding spoilers

2. I have a great talent for choosing the most tragic and least likely to have a happy ending of all the romantic choices in these frigging games. In my own defense, there are not many options that _do_ have happy endings as such, but I still seem to stumble into the worst of them.

In other news, this is the cold that never ends...
angharad_gam: (Default)
Still sick. I woke up this morning croaking like a frog.

Dragon Age: Origins is quite an elderly game now, as the life span of video games goes. It came out in 2009. The game play and controls have a few interesting quirks. The one that is amusing me the most at the moment is the combination of the 'select target for interaction' control being a bit too sensitive, and the companion characters having 'next time the main character talks to me, no matter where they are' as a trigger for 'enter the next personal plotline cut scene conversation'. So you can be trying to open a chest deep in a dungeon and suddenly find yourself having a D&M about someone's terrible childhood. Or similar. The best has been accidentally triggering the next in a romantic sequence of conversations whilst trying to loot bodies in the aftermath of a battle. Especially since the conversation was basically about how rare it was to find beauty in the midst of the carnage of war. Yes, that's lovely dear. Can we get back to ransacking the corpses now?
angharad_gam: (Default)
Andy and I are sick. I am hoping it is the mildish cold that Ashwyn had recently,and not the horrible thing that has been going around work atm.

We farewelled our exchange student last week, and managed to get in a day of mass pruning in the garden (prune in June - at least if you live on this end of the planet) over the long weekend before succumbing, so that's something I guess.

Currently reading: the last book in the Temeraire series
Currently playing: Dragon Age: Origins (yeah, yeah I know, I am asking for it)

Profile

angharad_gam: (Default)
angharad_gam

September 2021

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 10th, 2025 01:30 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios