Weekend Worth

Turns out stumbling home at 3am results in sleeping in, which results in less Saturday. That's some quick maths you can trust. I clawed back a bit of weekend worth by watching a film and by doing a big old declutter of my desk drawers and other places. Turns out I have a few out of circulation coins that might be worth a pretty penny online now, that's my inheritance knocking around in my desk drawers as it turns out. 

I couldn't spend that newfound wealth just yet though, but we did spash the cash a little bit at a local wine bar, supping reds, whites and orange wines until past the point of inebriation. Then when we got kicked out we found a new bar and drank some more. It's been a hot minute since I got takeout food in a drunken stumble home but Rebecca and I couldn't pass up some Southern fried chicken. A Saturday we'll spent,eta hope I get a head start on Sunday.

Lockdown Board Game Lookback

 Powered through the Friday by smashing out emails and phonecalls so I could start Monday afresh. Curveball job if the day was helping the locations department unloaded a bunch of shipping containers into a big old van. I certainly didn't expect to be shimmying a bunch of mats, EZups and pop up bins this afternoon but variety is the spice of life as they say.

 But I spent the evening doing something very familiar and cozy. A friend of me and Mark hosted another one of his infamous board game nights, they tend to go on late and this one was no exception. But it's such a historic and chaotic group we are all guaranteed to have a good time. We were howling with laughter at Zoo Vadis, a game facilitated entirely by negotiations which got wilder and wilder. But the best part of the night was at the very end. With a glass of whiskey we hopped onto his computer to look at a bunch of files on his Google Drive of all the old electronic board games he made for us during lockdown. He spent hours scanning in, cropping pictures and creating elements just so we could play an approximation of games during the height of the pandemic. I didn't appreciate it fully at the time but it was his lifeline and I remember those nights on Zoom calls so fondly. Tonight we laughed at the absolutely absurdity and effort of the whole thing, but that was his Fitzcarraldo. He built it and we came. And for that I am eternally grateful.

Tray 2

The further up the production ladder you get the more snowed under with emails you find yourself. I now find that I spend the first hour of my day responding to all the emails that came in since closing my laptop down. Thankfully I can maintain the pace of the rat race throughout the day so I don't get too bogged down but that initial hurdle is always present. Otherwise I was hiring forklifts, getting quotes for costume rails and generally doing all the usual bits and pieces, all in it was a fairly successful day where I tackled my to do list. The only thing holding me back was my new retainer trays which went in last night - boy are my teeth sore again! I guess this is what having braces tightened feels like, it's thankfully nowhere near as bad as the first few days, but eating needs to be negotiated once again and I'm re-learning where to rest my jaw. I just need to keep telling myself it will be worth it and it does get easier.

Parking Mad

When I rejoined the Production team I knew I'd have to do some ropey and stressful tasks and deal with some crummy vendors. I wasn't ready for it to come quite so early into the job though as a parking company let us down massively but leading us on then note delivering on any of their promises. So now the ball has unceremoniously landed back in our court for us to deal with and we're all out of time to sort it. 

On the upside, this evening was filled with games with some of my new colleagues. We hopped into a game of Lethal Company for scares, thrills and laughter and creepy aliens popped out of the darkness and sci fi delivery vans exploded because we forgot to take it out of 'park' mode... Oh the irony of a situation blowing up because of parking...

Pancake Day 2025

To bring a bit of sparkle to the office we arranged a little pancake bar for the titular day. Nutella, bananas, strawberries, maple syrup, lemon, sugar and little scotch toaster pancakes were all provided for people to pick at across the day. Anyone would have thought that I'd be sick of them by tea time but oh no, crepes are a big thing in our house so I got to mixing batter the moment I landed home. I was flipping all night, stacking pancakes high and chowing down on them, just as Jesus would have wanted. Best of all, it's about this time of year that my lemon tree bears fruit, so we got to squeeze some home grown citrus onto our dessert. Truly a day of indulgence, ready for Lent now as I dream of chocolate eggs.

 

A Fixer

Defrosted the car... In March?! I was driving in while the windscreen still had ice thawing on it when my Line Producer called to say that her own car wasn't starting. So it became my mission of the day to get that all sorted. Luckily we have some transport boys on the case and they did literally everything super fast. I somehow got all the kudos though and my Line Producer even gave me a massive hug for sorting it. I tell ya, deep down I'm just a fixer.

My new, but old coworker started today and for years we've been chatting about playing online games together. Well today we finally locked in time for a session and I couldn't be more jazzed for it. All the pieces are slowly coming together on this job and I can already tell that it'll be a hoot.

Better Call Saul

Sunday came and went, but not without Rebecca and me finishing up Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin off show which turned out to be pretty dang good. We got Bristol's own version of Los Pollos Hermanos as a take away and absorbed the final beats of the show. We laugh because Breaking Bad was a big initial reason why we got together, it was THE show during our first year of uni. I still remember watching the final episode with Jamie, then immediately going back to the first episode to show Mark. Now here we are, over a decade later all still united over our love of that show, and I guess, the world. It was oddly nostalgic to return to that flavour of TV show, the city of Albuquerque and how it's shot is so synonymous with Vince Gilligan's shows now, I daresay I'm going to miss it a lot now that it's all over... Again.

Wilds Weekend

All of yesterday I was dreaming about playing Monster Hunter Wilds with Louis and today was the exactly what we both wanted. Getting big damage numbers while wailing on a massive frog dinosaur with and oversized hammer is a great way to spend a couple of hours on an idle Saturday. Better yet was going over to a friend's house for board games in the evening. Armed with chocolates, beer and scotch we sat down and pawed over cards and tiny wooden pieces long into the night. I ended up pulling off a move that ensured Rebecca's win at the cost of our friends and I felt dreadful about it. Guess it's a war game though so some drama is to be expected.

Prospects Realigned

 Returned to the dentist for a very brief appointment to re-glue some blobs onto my teeth. They asked me how my alligners were working out and I was happy to report that I've grown properly accustomed to them now. If you'd have asked me a week ago it would have been a different story but I am once again in awe at how quickly the body adapts. 

I finished my day at work and all I wanted to do was dive into the new Monster Hunter game - I had just created my character and his little cat companion and was raring for some action. But I'd been invited to a house party by some friends from my last job, so I had to choose wisely about how to spend my Friday night, but one of my favourite quotes gave me a guiding light:

 No one on their deathbed ever said 'I wished I'd spent more time alone at my computer'.

I've spent my whole life wrestling with this internal conflict, and chose wisely tonight to go out to socialise. I drank and chatted long into the night, I'll probably be paying for it tomorrow morning but I'll be smiling at an evening we'll spent.