Week 20: Back on the up

(May 14 – May 20)

Do I finally get my internet working again? Read on and find out …

Monday

The saga of my faulty nbn continues nice and early, with the telephone company coming out to repair my phone socket—which has left me without any internet at all since they first ‘fixed’ it on Wednesday. My attitude in these situations is not to focus on the mistake–since we all make mistakes with reliable regularity–but to look at the fact that they’ve acknowledged there was a mistake made, and they’ve come out at the soonest possible opportunity to fix it.
The icing on the cake is that I plug my modem back in once the work is done and find that I’ve acquired a potential 20mbps speed boost since connecting it to the main socket!

Tuesday

I start writing a story inspired by a nightmare I had on Sunday night. I don’t have nightmares very often, but this one was intense enough for me to wake me up and leave the light on for about 20 minutes before re-attempting sleep.
The resulting story is more or less a straight translation of the nightmare—slender on the narrative, heavy on the imagery—but I’m hoping it will make for decent read when it’s done.

Wednesday

It’s Late Start Wednesday, which means two things: I have time to finish writing the first draft of my nightmare story, and we get to have breakfast at Macca’s. This is either a treat or a punishment, depending on how you view Macca’s breakfast foods.

Thursday

I start the day with a three-hour workshop, which is far from my ideal vision of how to start my day. In the end, it’s not bad at all.
When I get home the Elderbeast and I start planning a podcast we want to make together. I’ve been researching audio equipment, and he’s been planning out the shows. I’m hoping it’ll be fun, but it’s mostly way of giving him a project to work on, and devising something creative that we can do together.

Friday

A friend lends me his mic to test out—one that comes highly recommended, but is out of my price range for this probably-not-going-to-go-anywhere podcast project. I’m very excited. The Elderbeast is even more excited and immediately takes it to the PS4 to set it up for his online gaming. He has a few false starts, but his persistence eventually pays off and he is somehow able to get his gaming headset and shiny new mic to work in concert for him. I’m impressed while also being largely unimpressed.

Saturday

The Elderbeast seems determined to spend $450 on a new gaming headset (for his birthday, later in the year). I am, inevitably, determined that he doesn’t. As a compromise he finds a $40 headset, and then impresses me even further by finding it for $30.
We head to the shops to pick up said headset. On the drive there we find ourselves talking about heist movies, mostly inspired by the Elderbeast’s love of Ocean’s 11. I suggest we should look up a list of the greatest heist movies of all time and watch some of them. I do so, only to find that we’ve already seen many of the candidates. One that does jump out, however, is Inception, which I’ve only seen the once and am keen to watch again. I tell the Elderbeast about it, and the conversation goes something like this:

Me: “We should watch Inception. It’s basically a heist movie.”
Elderbeast: “Okay cool. What’s it about?”
Me: “Well, the premise is about these people who can get inside other peoples’ dreams—“
Elderbeast: “Oh dear …”

Despite his understandable reservations, primarily concerning the imminent state of his brain, we watch the movie and it is much enjoyed. I’m, again, impressed that he can sit through a 2 ½ hour movie, especially one as mentally demanding as Inception, and follow the concepts perfectly.

Sunday

We all head off to a friend’s a house for a tabletop gaming session. The kinderbesten settle [mostly] quietly with their iPads, while we adults try [and mostly fail] to work out how to play a new game about saving books from the burning Library of Alexandria.
The kinderbesten, once again, are so good that I end up staying later than planned. As a consequence I get home too late to put on my slow roast beef. Never mind. There’s always tomorrow.
The Elderbeast has been asking about the answer to life, the universe and everything of late. So, naturally, I introduce him to The HItchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. It’s a trepidatious moment—I love the show, and have been meaning to give it a rewatch for a long time. But will the Elderbeast shrug and therefore need to be escorted promptly from the premises?
The good news is he loves it, and nearly dies from laughter during the extract about poetry. He demands more after the first episode but is half asleep by the time the second one wraps up.
I do enjoy getting to introduce him to all of this

Watched

Read

A little bit more of The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, but not very much more.

Eaten

For some reason I failed to note down my menu choices for much of this week, so this one will have to remain a mystery for the ages.