I’m going to turn 41 very soon. Here’s a gallery of the last five years of my life. All of these photos were taken during the same 7 day period, in Australia, in the last 5 years.
2013:
2012:
2011:
2010:
2009:
And, to see where I’ve come in two decades…
1992:
Excusing the crumbs that were on the photo when I took a picture of it… I looked pretty good back then eh?
Sadly, my parents cat Lucky died yesterday. He was 14 years old.
Lucky was my ‘cat-away-from-home’, and I looked forward to visiting him every year. He was a peaceful, relaxed chap, and lived a wonderful life in a loving home.
Unlike our cats here in America, Lucky was an outdoor cat as well. He used to love sitting on the verandah in the sun, watching the world go by. He also played fetch with his stuffed toy ‘Mocha’. Mum or dad would toss it out into the garden and he’d (eventually) fetch it back for them.
Sadly, we always outlive our pets. They are a massively important part of our lives, and losing them is always hard. But they live on in our memories – always happy and healthy and full of life – and in that regard they stay with us forever.
Farewell, dearest Lucky.
When I returned from Australia, for some reason I started becoming very aware of the piles of stuff that filled my house. Books to be read. Games to be played. Media to be consumed.
When I was young there was so much I wanted but couldn’t have. Now I can have it all, but – especially in the last year – have been accumulating it faster than I can enjoy it. The reasons are varied (work, World of Warcraft, age), but I’ve never purchased anything I didn’t really want to read, watch or play and, by Jove, it was time to do just that!
So, my first ever (?) New Years resolution: Consume more media!
How much am I talking about here? I will preface by saying we all have little ‘to read’, ‘to watch’ and (some of us) ‘to play’ piles. For instance, I know for a fact quite a few of you – SFL, AW, BS – certainly do. But mine had gotten quite large. As in very large. And it’s time to climb them.
I’ll revisit this resolution at the end of this year, but here’s the scope of what I’m tackling. All of this just describes what is in the house right now, not anything I expect to obtain in the next few weeks or months…
Books
That’s the English version of Monster Hunter Illustrations, which came out over a year ago and is jam-packed with all sorts of fascinating MH art. It’s on my pile with two additional japanese MH books including the sequel (!) and a different art book on TCG art. These share a shelf with no less than four additional art books (including Genzoman, Queen’s Blade and the recently released Hyrule Historia Zelda art book). I could probably look through all these in a long afternoon.
But that’s hardly all. There are some 30+ volumes of manga (Bleach, Bakuman amongst others), 16 novels (including some purchased five years ago when a local bookstore went out of business), 2 academic texts (one, on cryptozoology, is almost 800 pages long), about 50 comics and 20 odd magazines. This list doesn’t even include the approximately 100+ gamebooks from a collection of over 200 that I haven’t played through.
How much of this can I read in one year?
Movies and TV
I got the above for Christmas. It’s the long-awaited (by me, for one) second full Ultraman series finally translated into English. And it’s 19 hours long. It sits on a shelf right now next to DVD collections of all 4 series of Lexx (over 40 hours in total) and the first three seasons of the Keroro Gunso TV anime (20+ hours). Add to this list 22 more anime DVDs or Blu-Rays adding to more than 35 hours (including the full series of Claymore) and about another 28 hours of UK TV series collections and 30 more hours of (sometimes untranslated) Japanese or Korean series and I start to wonder realistically how we could watch all this in a single year? I haven’t even considered the movies…
Games
I currently have, unplayed and in most cases still shrinkwrapped:
– 8 PS3 games (including Hyperdimension Neptunia 2 and Resonance Of Fate)
– 6 Nintendo DS games (including Pokemon Conquest and Shepherd’s Crossing 2)
– 17 (!) PSP games, almost all RPGs, many of which look great (including God Eater Burst and Ragnarok Tactics)
– 11 3DS games, many of which were Christmas gifts (including Theatrythym Final Fantasy and Paper Mario Sticker Star)
That’s 42 games on my ‘to play’ list. With some embarrassment I’ll reveal I have already preordered about 6 more online, and yet right now much of my gaming time is spent playing Warcraft. I think I’ll have to be more disciplined 🙂
Will I succeed? Can I possibly consume all this media before getting overrun? Also, will I stop buying more until what I have has been enjoyed? I’ll revisit this post at the end of the year, and it will be interesting to see how effective my resolution has been!
Yesterday I did something I always do – walk into the beaches along the foreshore. The only difference was that it was oppressively hot!
I got an early start which was little help. By the time I got to Newcastle beach, it was well into the 20’s.
The Newcastle shopping district has gone to hell with the closure of the last department store, David Jones. Very few stores remain open and many that have are in the middle of closing sales. The most notable new thing I saw in the CBD was a big signpost showing people how to go somewhere else!
Frontline Hobbies mysteriously, hangs on. Who buys all their stuff anyway?
It was my last day in Newcastle today, and we went out for dinner to celebrate.
I’m writing this on the train back to Sydney. I just said goodbye to my parents for another year (longer actually). It’s always hard. I should be able to visit them whenever I like 🙁
Dad and I got an early start. Our destination was the first Broadmeadow farmer’s market of the year, and even at 8 am it was a hot and sweaty walk. On our way, we saw a swimming horse:
The market was good, with plenty of fresh food and drink to be purchased. Dad bought olives, potatoes, mushrooms, grapes, eggs, tomatoes and avocados.
One stall even sold livestock, in the firm of chickens (several breeds), rabbits and these guys:
Afterwards… well things got a bit complicated. I’ll spare the details, but the bottom line is that I ended up with an appointment at a clinic to see a doctor, since I’ve been ill over a week now.
Walking to said clinic took me through dangerous territory:
And past nostalgic locations:
Happily, the doctor gave me a ‘your sick but you don’t need antibiotics’ bill of health, which required a celebration:
And then an old dear friend picked me up for an evening of happy memories. But more about that later…