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Bleak... Hankley Common, location for James Bond's Skyfall, also the army training ground near me. I was caught in another crossfire of blank cartridges the other week. Lucky to escape with my hearing unimpaired.

What a miserable lot we are. No-one's posted: SEASONAL GREETINGS

Ow?! Hope that heals up quickly and well, Twi! 🙀 Spent literally one and a half movies (call it 3.5 hours) backing up iDevices, upgrading them to latest iOS updates and then transferring everything from my mom's old iPad to her new one. On the bright side, did get to hang with my mom for an evening and enjoy some decent movies…

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett — I got triggered into checking this out by some Best Of list that described it as cyberpunk meets Thieves World, or something like that, and ended up reading it in a single day. Really, really fun! The "cyberpunk" aspect comes into play because Bennett has developed an extremely intricate magic system based on something called scriving. You scrive special runes onto the wheels of a carriage and they think they're on a downhill and roll down it accordingly, even though they're actually on level ground. Control how steep they think the hill is with a lever and you have speed controls for a horseless carriage. And so forth and so on. A thief commissioned to steal a box discovers it has a magic, sentient item inside and hijinks ensue as everyone and their their ninjas pursues her to get it back. A lot of "hacking" of magical scrivings takes place as she has to get out of tight spots or into highly guarded areas. As I said, just huge amounts of fun and perfect post-Christmas reading!

We had a quiet Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with just the four of us (and the cats). Clam chowder for Christmas Eve lunch, popcorn and cocoa while watching a Christmas movie before bed on Christmas Eve. Pancakes & bacon for Christmas breakfast after stockings, ham dinner for Christmas lunch, and a trip to the ocean cliffs that afternoon rounded out our celebrations. Now TM's family is visiting from O'ahu for a week so we're swept up in their whirlwind.

Very cool! Nice performance there. Man i miss going to open mics and playing shows and stuff sometimes! Neofeud is super cheap right now, tell all your cyberpunk special someones who may be interested in it https://store.steampowered.com/app/673850/Neofeud/

We've been dealing with the Younger Minibot entering the "Broken Bone Club" for the past few days. (The Older Minibot, you may know, entered said club almost 5 years ago now by breaking both bones in her leg - a terrible experience for everyone that involved multiple re-castings). Younger Minibot had a fall a few days ago and in the process of falling both bonked his head and hit his arm. We were much more concerned initially with his head, as you are, and after the crying stopped and we confirmed that his face/head was okay, he seemed pretty much fine - so we decided to keep an eye on his arm. It didn't swell immediately, and he seemed pretty good over the next while. Any time I asked him about his arm, he beetled at me through his brows and muttered that he was fine (yes, our 4-year-old is actually a grumpy 84-year-old in a child's body). But yesterday we were talking and realized that he was still favoring that arm, and then he tried to open a sliding door with that arm and burst out crying - so off we went to get x-rayed. I'm pretty sure that the ER register nurses and the first RN we talked to thought that TM and I were being overprotective helicopter parents because Z was laughing and talking and being a perfectly normal little guy, even using the hand to hold things, etc. And then they x-rayed it and the nurse came back with an icepack to put on his arm so he'd hold still because yep, we were right, it was broken! Luckily it's all in place and will heal up great. His cast appointment is tomorrow!

Not logged into this forum for aaaages, and find some great film suggestions. Cheers

On season 2 now, it reminds me a lot of Christopher Guest's psuedo documentaries. Really funny.

Back yesterday for a shit back workout, after 3 weeks I know not to push myself too hard mentally or physically. That goes double after 2 weeks in Florida abusing my body with booze and fatty foods. Legs today, feeling better but I still cut it short after squats and leg presses. I am not drinking through April 1 to try and cut my belly down a bit. That sucks though

I was a little disappointed by A legacy of Spies. It seemed a little like a potboiler, and to get full value from it, you had to be familiar with the Smiley canon. I still haven't embarked on Archangel. I bought the hardback in April after a disappointing experience with downloading the first two episodes via Kindle. They just didn't FEEL like a graphic novel.

I remember tortured Christmas dinners. We're too old for them now. Beryl and I ate alone... Tournedos Rossini*. We didn't have room for the Xmas pudding afterwards. * Toast, a layer of pate, a fillet steak, all covered in caramelised onions and a brandy and cream sauce.

Thanks for the heads up. picked up the 2 YHL and 2 FE books I was missing. Suspect there will be a load of these kind of deals over the next few days. Probably end up costing me a stealth fortune! Since my last post I've mainly been reading short stories and graphic novels. Though hoping I can still finish a novel or two before I head back to work.

Rule 34 by Charles Stross. This is a re-read for me, but the first try I wasn't able to really follow it for some reason. More than Halting State, Rule 34 requires some attention to follow a fast moving plot that shifts between viewpoints fast. Still, its great sci-fi. Head On and Head On: Locked In by John Scalzi. Decades after a horrific illness has left millions of people 'locked-in" and paralyzed these people engage the world in robot bodies called threeps, in homage to C-3PO from Star Wars. The protagonist is an FBI agent and essentially this is a buddy cop action/mystery book, with all of the nuance and complexity of a Michael Connelly storyline. Fun and escapist, just ignore the massive plot gaps and shit worldbuilding.

Back in Tampa for the holidays, and we hit Ybor last night. Like a couple of whores, the Girl and I wound up making out with several other people before ubering home to pass out. My conversion to creepy middle aged swinger is nearly complete!

Got a big blue cast! This kid, though, we're going to have to watch him - aside from immediately following the actual fall when he cried for a good 20 minutes and needed help calming down, he has been basically normal. Building Legos, playing outside with his sister, running around the house in circles, eating (even ramen and soup!) with his left hand no problem. His pain tolerance is higher than we knew!

D'awwww! Yes, I always preferred to go the "fracture it and pretend nothing happened for a couple days" route as a child too.

Movie of the year right here. Also, Upgrade had some interesting ideas. Along the scale and similar creative energy to Hotel Artemis. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6499752/

...pation:

So the last year has been interesting. I still like lifting weights and added a lot of size on in 2017, not all of it good. I topped out at 252lbs around January. This was also the time when my sleep apnea was at its worst. Essentially, after 2 years or so of not really sleeping I was starting to deteriorate. I was using stimulants to keep moving during the day, lifting, and eating a lot of protein. I had started to hallucinate during the day and was not able to drive by the time my wife finally cornered my neurologist and yelled at him until he figured out the problem with my bipap machine. I sleep now, don't require anything like the level of caffeine I needed before just to function and my weight has dropped to 240lbs, which is comfortable for me. I still lift 2-3 days a week, today was the first leg day I have had in some time though. I was squatting a whole 135lbs (basically nothing for most guys my size) but I was happy with how I felt. I was next to a young guy I see in the gym a lot. He had about 400lbs on the bar and was all suited up, compression gear and straps. Then he moved to deadlifts and was pulling about 800lbs, dropping the weight to the floor with each rep. I joked with the owner, a former bodybuilder himself and about 10 years my senior that I was going to see if I could "work in" with the guy, meaning do sets with his weight while he rested. He laughed and said he hated it when people dropped the weight. From my point of view if I could lift 800lbs off the ground I suspect I would drop it also rather than hurt myself gently lowering it. Anyway, feeling pretty great most of the time. At 43 years old I think that is OK, I am strong and healthy and most days nothing falls off, which I am very thankful for.

I got one of these tonight https://www.kia.com/us/en/vehicle/niro/2018 We lease. Since moving to Maryland we realized that we drive very little. Unlike Florida the density here is so high that the car rarely strays more than 2 miles from the house most days. Thus, leasing makes a lot more sense, especially since I am not a "car guy". I can change the oil, the tires, headlights etc as needed but I am not enamored with the process like many people. Leasing lets me have nothing "in" the car, not worry about repairs or maintenance and I get a new car. We just finished a lease on a Prius but Toyota were a bunch of dicks about getting a new one and the Niro had similar stats. I still hate the process though. After a few weeks of one dealership failing to honor the lease deals offered on line another dealership I corresponded with via email was more receptive. They still tried to tack on a ton of fees to the deal though. Fees they "couldn't change". We were almost back home when they called the Girl and miraculously "found a way" to make the numbers work. Seriously, I get that some people love to haggle. I don't. Also, my credit scores run in the 740s and the Girl is now over 800. We don't struggle to get financing because we are really frugal in most ways. In the end we got our way, but it would have been much simpler had they just done what we asked via email.

We've just bought what will probably be our last car. Traditional petrol/automatic. We're out in the sticks, don't have a bus service we can walk to, very poor cellphone service, no sign of public electric charging points in our area. It all hardly matters. We do very few miles a year. I think I filled the tank a max of 6 times last year. Just shopping, and doctor visits. The golf course is 4 minutes away. We've started using grocery home delivery, so that reduces the pressure on shopping. The car we're trading in is 18 years old with 108000 on the clock, and most of that was when I regularly commuted to London in the first 10 years. I think we'd be cheaper with taxis, but they have 6 or 7 miles to come and most of them smell awful.

If you should happen to have once downloaded a pic of Trogdor’s wife with a beagle pup from the old board, can you share? he can’t find a copy of it and said pup has just passed on.