Good weekend; bad morning

[triskellian]

The weekend was lovely... Roleplaying on Saturday with lathany, bateleur, chrestomancy, ao_lai and smiorgan, during which chrestomancy had to periodically perform emergency surgery with knitting needles on the air conditioner, to extract pencils and ribbons (air con units with slots do not mix well with toddlers).

When we got home, we watched Doctor Who, for which the not-a-Tivo seemed to have got over its aversion to changing channels in our absence. Judging by other comments on my flist I'm quite unusual in thinking it was a good episode (but I wish they'd get over the schoolboy-humour monsters. Although, as pointed out on sarcaustick's journal, this one did actually come from a create-a-monster competition for children). And I don't like Peter Kay at the best of times. But I loved the video diary format, and the ordinary person POV, and I even liked Jackie Tyler, for a change.

On Sunday, smiorgan, secretrebel, a_llusive and I drank pimms and played Mah Jong in the garden, with a soundtrack of various assorted mumbles, grunts, songs and rhymes (no, there were no toddlers around that day - that was us. Or perhaps I should say "them"). smiorgan won by a very long way indeed, fuelled by an initial reign of terror where we thought no one else would ever get the chance to be Jong*.

Then in the evening, we headed out to South Park to meet _yakumo_, a_llusive, bluedevi and assorted other poisters and jugglers, and, assisted by bluedevi's marvellous new flag poi, I finally 'got' not only the move I've been trying to learn for ages (alternating reels), but its reverse, too. And now I'm lusting after flag poi...

*Note for people who don't play Mah Jong - Jong is the 'chief' player, who both pays double and loses double when scoring. If you win as Jong, you remain so; if you lose, it moves around to the right.

This morning, on the other hand, sucks. I forgot to set the alarm last night, slept really badly, and wasn't awake enough by the time smiorgan left to realise that I needed to steal some of his money. I bumbled around the house, bumping into things and tripping over things, and was just about alert enough to realise that I needed to wake up a bit more before getting into the car to drive to work :-(

When I finally did get to work, I realised that my jeans are dirty, and my nail varnish is far too chipped to be allowed out in public, and I started off by getting annoyed and swearing at an office-mate, which is never a good start to the day :-(

Comments

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Note for people who don't play Mah Jong - Jong is the 'chief' player, who both pays double and loses double when scoring. If you win as Jong, you remain so; if you lose, it moves around to the right.

Ah, I've always come across that being referred to as "East Wind" - the other players are therefore the other three winds, and everything rotates round when East Wind loses. Once everyone's been East Wind round once (i.e. when the last person to be East Wind loses), that's the end of one round of the game. In theory, the game itself has four rounds, themselves named for the four winds...I don't know many people who play the full version like that though, because that's a minimum of 16 mini-rounds, longer if whoever's East Wind actually wins...

[triskellian]

I'm aware of that version too. The way we play is that, to start with, East and Jong are the same person, but winds move round regardless of who wins, and Jong doesn't, and it's the movements of winds (rather than of Jong) which determine rounds and games, so theoretically it's possible to play an entire 16-hand game with the same person being Jong the whole time.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I quite liked Love and Monsters. It was fairly gentle and fun.

But there were bits of poor humour which RTD just can't stop putting in. The Scooby Do chase sequence at the start was just naff (although I've seen other comments deriding its post modernism, or pointing out that we're seeing Elton's retelling of it), and the end reference to Elton and Ursula still having a physical relationship was unnecessarily tasteless.

(There were a few odd continuity problems with the Doctor having met Elton as a child: why does it have to be this Doctor, why does it have to be in his past, and, more relevantly, why on Earth should he still recognise Elton when he's twenty or thirty older? But, to be honest, these are picking at the details around the edge.)

[triskellian]

I enjoyed the Scooby Doo chase sequence - I was interpreting it as Elton over-simplifying his retelling, which I liked. (And it reminded me of the Buffy episode "The Zeppo", which is one of my favourites, and does a similar thing with a seeing a the edges of a big plot through the eyes of someone who isn't involved in it.)

But I agree about the continuity bit. I was really hoping they'd have got Eccleston in for a guest slot, and was disappointed when it was just Tennant again.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_yakumo_/]

I forgot to try the flag poi dammit :(

thanks loads for coming :)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Good to see you on Saturday!

drank pimms and played Mah Jong in the garden

We have a Mah Jong set and the idea of combining it with Pimms sounds great! Maybe when you next come over?

I realised that my jeans are dirty, and my nail varnish is far too chipped to be allowed out in public

I suspect no-one else noticed, though. Hope Tuesday is better anyway.

[triskellian]

We have a Mah Jong set and the idea of combining it with Pimms sounds great! Maybe when you next come over?
Ooh, that could be a plan :-)