This is my fourth day off work in a row, which has been great. In order not to spoil it I’ve been ignoring condo corporation emails, though from the snippets that are visible in my inbox it appears there’s a bunch of sniping going on at our property manager. I have no desire to get in there at all. I’m enjoying the end of my weekend. Tomorrow.
Friday I watched Battlestar Galactica in the morning and then went to get tattooed in the afternoon. I didn’t know I was going to get tattooed. I was fully planning to go down, make an appointment and then wander in the village a little while. But the kid behind the counter asked if I was free, and I was, and so was an artist, and now I’ve got twice as much ink on my arms as I did before. (Still a very small quantity of ink, all told.)
Friday night was a party at Michael’s. I showed up late but had some really interesting conversation. A big conversation about the Mental Healthcare system went on, which isn’t something I know very much about at all. I stayed on the sidelines, acting a bit as an audience, but that’s a role I’m good at filling so yeah.
Saturday was Unrau family Xmas and I saw my cousins and played video games with my once-removed cousins. Oh, they had a karaoke Xbox game, so after people had been mumbling through Christmas carols (and I’d been hiding in the kitchen) for a while, Austin and I closed the singing off with U Can’t Touch This. Done really quite poorly. But it was fun.
The Danny Michel concert on Saturday was super. Danny Michel has actually spoiled me for basically every other live show ever. I want everyone else to be as funny and not taking himself super seriously but also sincere and not stagey as he does his inbetween song bits. The fact that he builds these great soundscapes with his loop pedals and shit is icing. They were recording the show (along with the Friday night edition) for a live CD so he paused to redo lines sometimes. In Tennessee Tobacco he explained that everyone clapping along was probably going to be a problem, recording wise, because he doesn’t actually play in time. I loved the songs where he sat at the piano. My favourite of the evening was his piano version of Valley of Doom, which was sad and dark and a lot creepier without any guitars.
Then off to Sean’s, where we ate burnt ochre velvet cupcakes and stacked chairs and generally had a good time drinking whisky. I may have been the only one drinking whisky. But I didn’t tell anyone off so it counts as a win.
Sunday Kate was in town before heading off to Europe in a couple of weeks and we went for lunch to a Portuguese restaurant, and set up her blog, and then off to my Mom’s for dinner, where Kate was a very good conversationalist. There was a big thing on why/how people make judgments about people, which was a sort of voluble discussion about race. Mom tried to head it off (in an “Agh! Don’t get angry!” kind of way) but the academics kept charging forward, and actually agreeing with each other more than you’d think from the volume. Good times.
And now here I am. I’ve got a book review to write, and Traveller to play this evening. This weekend was pretty much the part of Xmas I was most looking forward to, so I’m glad it met expectations. Go me.
