Toys

The Kilkenny’s, St. Nick and Some Goblins

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20151203_215029Thursday Mom and I were going to see The Kilkenny’s perform at MartiniPlaza. The Kilkenny’s are an Irish folk group. I’ve got their songs in my Folk playlist on Spotify and I really enjoy them. They have a distinctive voice both as a band as well as individually and pick songs that aren’t all that traditional. Of course there’s always a few, but they also play original songs and traditionals lesser known outside Ireland.

Unfortunately, during the day Mom had to cancel on me as she wasn’t feeling well. She’s been having some flu-like symptoms for a few days now so it wasn’t completely unexpected, but still a bummer. I asked Nienke and Ingrid if one of them wanted to come along, but neither could make it so I went alone.

20151204_131211The concert was great. They were energetic, played fantastically and managed to get the room full of stodgy northerners to move. No dancing, but there was foot stomping, clapping and singing along when requested. I had a front row seat and managed to shoot some video for Mom.

After the concert and encore were over I checked the time. The bus back to the train station only came once every half hour. If I could catch the next bus, I had an excellent connection to the train. Then the boys came back for an extra encore. I wasn’t expecting that, and neither were a lot of other people as many had started leaving.

I stuck around for a while, but I had to slip away before they finished that song. If I didn’t catch the bus, the next one was half an hour and then I’d have to also wait for the next train and so on. So I grabbed my coat and picked up the pace. Walking as fast as I could I raced to the bus stop only to miss the bus by a minute. Because it was early.

20151204_221306I wasn’t really in the mood to hang out there for half an hour so I checked the map and ball parked that I should be able to make it if I walked. So I went, and I did make it! Even though my leg wasn’t in agreement with this. 🙂

Yesterday at work during the daily meeting we all got a present for St. Nicholas. Every one got a personal poem (mine about my Pikachu hat), plus candy. It was a very fun meeting and quite a nice surprise.

After work I found a package waiting for me. It was the Goblin Zeppelin of the Warcraft lego I had ordered. Of course I spent the next two hours or so building it. It is a beauty.

Monkey, meanwhile, enjoyed the box.
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Make It So!

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I have this one webshop where I usually order my Funko figures (they have a lot, and also other geeky merch). Their prices are good, as is their delivery, when they have the relevant figures in stock. They are, however, quite bad at giving adequate expected arrival dates, and communicating with the customers. I have learned this over a handful of orders there, so I now build orders carefully. I don’t combine in stock items with pre-orders, and when pre-ordering, I choose those with a similar date.

Generally this works, but they still only rarely make the listed dates. I have an open pre-order for Smaug and Deathwing in late December or early January. They were listed as being available end of January. I still don’t have them. I also pre-ordered three of the new The Next Generation figures. They were listed as being available as end of April. So I figured they might be here around June.

But! Last week I got an e-mail, they were in! So I paid and today they pretties came 🙂 They will be joined at a later date by Data and Worf. I’m considering Crusher and Troi but I’m not sure yet about them.

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There and Back Again

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20141120_22281020141120_222745Nico pointed out to me that the Action near where he lives had The Hobbit figures. However, after checking my two local-ish Actions, they didn’t have them 🙁 So Nico got them for me from his Action 🙂

They only had two different sets: Legolas & Tauriel and Bilbo & Gollum. They’re official movie merchandise, and of decent quality. The faces are close enough, but I do think Bilbo looks more like Sam than actual movie Bilbo. I am quite pleased with them, since they all have fun acccessories, too. Legolas and Tauriel each have a bow, a quiver and a pair of knives. Bilbo has Sting, a bag and some rope.

Pics are a bit crappy but well, phone and evening don’t match very well. To distract from that, a cat! Captain is learning how to sit on a lap 🙂

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You Are Not Prepared

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Illidan: “You are not prepared!” Arthas: “WTF dude!? I’m not the enemy here!”

Woohoo! Illidan & Arthas finally arrived today, aren’t they cute?

I finished reading the second and third part of the Maze Runner trilogy. I really like the world building, how the current dystopian society was formed. The science, and sociology, behind the whole thing is fascinating. I also liked how you could never quite trust anyone. That being said, the books do feel rushed sometimes, and the ending is too easy. I am, hoever, interested enough that I will be reading the prequel sometime in the future.

I also read If I Stay. It’s a good book, well written, good characters and the story is well done. I was a wee bit disappointed, though. This because the story is really a romance and I was expecting a bit more supernatural elements besides the obvious one.

20141007_202529Started watching Resurrection on TV. It’s a show where an eight-year-old, American boy is found wandering in China. After he is returned, he is placed in the temporary case of an immigrations officer. He tries to figure out where the boy is from, and returns to his hometown with him. There, it turns out he is the son of a local couple. The catch, though? He died 30 years ago…

DNA testing and the like proves that he is in fact their son. The rest of the series deals with how the family and the town people (once they find out) deal with this, especially as more resurrected people show up. I find it really interesting, and it features Omar Epps (Dr. Foreman on House) as the immigration cop.

The first season is only 8 or 10 episodes, and they show 2 an evening, so it should only take a few weeks to finish.

Ooh, and miracle of all miracles, Nienke suggested we play a board game, the other day 😀 So we played Rummicub.

The Angel of Oz

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24-09-2014Had a needed lie-in this morning. Last night I went out for dinner with my aunt and uncle, their kids and grandkids, and my parents. All in honour of my uncle’s 80th birthday. We went back to Yankee Doodle, where we’d also been with them last March. Had a great time, but didn’t sleep well. I woke up around three and lay awake until seven. I entertained myself playing iPad games and messing with the cats.

20140925_121146When I got downstairs, I found Captain had slept on the sofa 🙂 So much progress in just a few days!

And in the afternoon my new Pop Vinyls arrived. Special ordered from Australia a few weeks ago, which is not something I’ll probably repeat soon. The shipping charges are atrocious. I picked the cheapest option and it still was half of the cost of the dolls while taking weeks and offering no tracking or anything. I figured it would be okay, but it is still weird waiting for it. Ah well, winged Castiel and the mystery item I bought for Nienke for December gift giving make up for it.

Now I have to go and get ready. I’m off to the Oosterpoort tonight for my birthday present to myself: a concert by the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir singing the Vespers of Rachmaninoff.

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Funko’s, Faults & Food

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Funko'sI discovered Funko’s Pop Vinyls recently. It took a while but I finally found an online retailer in this country with good prices that seemed reliable. So, after giving it some thought and compiling a rough wish list of sorts I ordered Illidan and Arthas from Warcraft. However, these were backordered, so it will be a while before they finally come 🙁

To curb my impatience I ordered some more from their in stock collection and yesterday these arrived: Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet), an Andorian (from Star Trek) and Dr. Whooves (from My Little Pony). They will make an excellent start of the collection 🙂

20140827_193012In the afternoon I headed for the city to meet up with Gert. We went to see The Fault in Our Stars. I’ve read the book a little while ago, and liked it. It was a good movie, nice treatment of the book, and hits the feels where and how it should. I cried.

After, we went to IKEA so Gert could buy a wardrobe (and have it delivered, there’s no way we’re dragging that through the city public transport…) We stopped at KFC for some food. I was pretty pleased with that, since the KFC there is the only KFC in the city and I’ve been wanting to go for years now!

We then went back to the cinema to watch Guardians of the Galaxy, again 😀

20140828_155453Today, I hung out with Gert again. We played some games while awaiting the delivery of the wardrobe. He’d said yesterday that he would then put it aside, so it was no trouble at all for me to hang out. But of course, as it is with new things, and especially things-to-build, it itched. So, rather apologetically, he asked if I’d mind…. And since building together is not only more fun, but also faster, especially with big pieces, we built a wardrobe.

After we were done, Gert went out and got us gloriously spicy Thai food, so we would be refreshed and ready for that night’s movie. This time we went to see Magic in the Moonlight. It was pretty good. The storyline was interesting (1920’s medium debunker falls in love with the girl he’s supposed to debunk and falls for her ‘gift’, too). The scenery was beautiful and I liked the actors playing.

In and Out

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I’d asked Mom if she wanted to go to Bedum with me yesterday for groceries and Action. She said yes so we headed there yesterday morning. We decided on groceries first. When we got there I noticed that the shoe store in the same building was having a sale where, if you bought two sale items, the cheapest would be €1. We’re always in for sales, so we checked it out.

Mom didn’t find anything, either for her or for Dad, but I did. First I found a nice pair of black ankle-high sneakers. I had some trouble finding a second item to take advantage of the sale. Not that it was terribly necessary, the sneakers were cheap enough to buy as is, but I kept looking around for a wee bit longer. Which was just my luck as I found a nice pair of grey sporty looking loafers. I’d been wanting a new pair of those for when I just want to slip on something easy, plus these look nice enough to wear as dress shoes, too.

Only then did we go for the actual groceries. I didn’t need much, and neither did Mom, so we were done quite fast. Which brought us back to the car and on our way to the Action a few streets over.

My main reason for wanting to go there, this time, was Warcraft lego, again 😀 I needed only two more sets to have one of every set the Action had available. And Elune was with me, as the Night Elves say, for they had the sets I was missing. I’m now the proud owner of a Spectral Tiger and a Dragon Turtle to complete my Warcraft Lego shelf in the bookcase. I also bought a couple mandala colouring pads and a new mesh cup to hold pens.

Here, have a crappy iPad evening shot to show my WoW Lego shelf 😀

From left to right: a piece of Stormwind with a human warlock, a Worgen on a Gryffin, a Gnome in a helicopter, a Night Elf on the Spectral Tiger, a Pandaren on the Dragon Turtle, a Goblin on a trike, a Tauren on a Wyvern, and a demolisher with a Blood Elf wanting to break down the walls of Stormwind. Behind them is a row of solitary figurines: Gnome, Worgen, Human, Night Elf, Tauren, Pandaren, Orc.

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When we got back, I stayed over at the parents for lunch (nom, fries), built my new Lego sets, and left a while later to go home and put away the groceries and such. I spent the rest of the afternoon playing WoW, inspired and all 🙂

The evening was quickly designated movie night, although we ended up going back to memory lane by watching the first couple episodes of Charmed instead of a movie. All accompanied by copious amounts of popcorn and some cocktail shizzle 😀

This morning I slept in, played some iPad games and finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and didn’t get dressed and downstairs until near noon. Only then did I realise I was going to go to Pilates… Fail.

Had some lunch, then read some more, this time Tuf Voyaging. I had started it a while ago but then had to put it away after just a handful of pages so I just started over today. I really like it so far, although I wouldn’t so much classify it as a novel, but more as a collection of short stories/novellas as there is no over arching plot between the “chapters”. Each is a self contained, episode I’d say, in the saga of Tuf and his voyages. Tuf is a fun character, stoic, honest, and prone to taking things too literal. Plus he loves cats.

Around two I had enough of sitting around, and since Nienke went upstairs to study, I dove into the garage to tackle the mess there. It took me about four hours, but it looks so much better now. Just two or so garbage bin pick-ups to get rid of all the crap, a trip to the paper recycle container and the county recycle center to drop off a few boxes of old paper and an old TV.

That only leaves the old kitchen chairs, but they get to stay for now. I’m thinking of turning one into a flower bin with the left over planks from the garden privacy fence. And who knows what I can do with the rest 😀

Then I wokked some veggies in sweet chili sauce, hung out in front of the TV, played on the computer for a bit and put away the dry laundry. And now I’ve been spending the past hour or so typing this up. It would go faster on the computer, but the iPad is more convenient for typing in bed 😀

Night, night, folks!

Movies Galore! Also Lego! And Theater!

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Did a bunch of movies this week, by myself and with others. Monday after work I went to see Edge of Tomorrow. It was a much better movie than I was expecting. I really like Full Metal Bitch and I didn’t even mind Tom Cruise in the movie 🙂

I also ordered tickets to go see War Horse with Mom. We’re going January 14!

Tuesday I finally went to see The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. The movie is hilarious! It’s been a long time since I laughed out loud at a movie that much. It’s been compared to Forest Gump, but it’s better than that. The titular character, Allan, gets put in a home when he blows up his hen house. Then on the day of his 100th birthday he decides to escape the coming party and attention and climbs out the window and walks off. As he goes to buy a bus ticket at the station, he gets asked to watch a suitcase for a minute and decides to walk off with it. It turns out the case is full of money. Criminal money. Cue an awesome road trip where he meets all kinds of people while being tracked and followed by the criminals that want their money back, interspersed with flashbacks to Allan’s long life where he experienced important events and met important people all the while being mostly oblivious to the importance of it.

Wednesday I had my shot again. Had it done in my arm because I still had some movies planned. Am never doing that again, though. My arm hurts like hell now still, and it’s Sunday. A quick Google has taught me that arm muscle is just not big enough. The way T. shots work is that the fluid bubble sits in your muscle and is slowly absorbed over the three weeks until the next shot. A leg muscle (or your ass 😀 ) is big enough to stretch around the fluid bubble, but arm just isn’t.

I also went to Bedum and Uithuizen with Mom to check for World of Warcraft Lego (Megabloks technically) at the Action10173768_10152193319638155_281758145161566397_n. Nico had seen it there, they had a big Stormwind Demolisher Set, a smaller Goblin Shredder (which I already have), about six or seven mounts+riders and eight single character figures with a small piece of scenery. They didn’t have all of them anymore, but I got a fair bunch

At the end of the afternoon I headed for the city to meet Gert. First we saw Grace of Monaco. It took me a while to get into but that’s mostly because I had the wrong idea and expectation beforehand. I’d seen trailers of the movie before, and that gave me the idea it was more a biopic of her life from marriage on and further. Until her death basically. But instead, it focuses on a specific period (early sixties) and shows how it was difficult for her to get used to life as Princess, torn between acting (Hitchcock offers her the lead in Marnie) and her family and duties, and how she could influence people, both behind the scenes, as well as the general populace. Once I figured that, the movie fell into place and things like pacing made sense.

Afterwards I had planned to go home, but we sat and talked for a while and decided on a whim to also see A Million Ways to Die in the West. I won’t dignify that movie with too many words. Suffice it to say that it is a stereotypical American comedy that runs on sex and poop jokes. The basic plot is fun, and there are occasional good, clever, jokes. So if it had been more of that, it would not have been so bad.

Thursday I also had the day off since I had to work yesterday. Nico was off early, so we decided to go see X-Men: Days of Future Past. It’s a good movie, I really liked that we got to see the merging of the old trilogy and these new films. Even though the timeline of the old trilogy is fairly effectively wiped by the events of this film, I like that they didn’t just go fingers-in-your-ears-it-doesn’t-exist-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you 😀

Back home, I finally ordered my theater tickets. As I said on Facebook, it cost me three organs and some change. But I have seven shows (in addition to the earlier mentioned War Horse) to go see in the new season two of which Mom will join me for.

  •  Chamber Choir of St. Petersburg: Vespers of Rachmaninoff ( 25-09-2014)
  • Toneelgroep Amsterdam & Toneelhuis: Maria Stuart (10-12-2014)
  • Musictheater Transparant & Claron McFadden: Lilith (05-02-2015)
  • Sara Kroos: Van Jewelste (25-03-2014) with Mom
  • Toneelgroep Amsterdam: Koningin Lear (03-04-2015)
  • Various Comedians: Onceuponatimethegodfatherflewoverthecuckoosnest (29-05-2015) with Mom
  • Marrugeku: Gudirr Gudirr (dance performance) (06-06-2015)

Friday, after work, I spent the evening reading and avoiding football. Not very lucky with that as I sat in my bedroom with the window open so I could hear the whole street erupting every time we scored. And we scored a lot.

Then, yesterday. I had a late shift, which I can normally do at home. But I realised this too late and since Kim was also working, I came to Groningen. Got a message from Gert half way through, he was at the Action, did I need any more Lego? I was indeed missing some, so I had him take a picture and saw they had ones I didn’t have yet. He was so kind as to buy them and bring them to work for me. I took my break and met him at Starbucks. I had just enough time to get a drink and chat briefly, before having to head back.

Today I slept in, and just as I was gonna go to the Parents for Father’s Day, Mom rang the bell. Dad was out cycling, so she came to ask if I wanted to take a walk with her. I joined her, and then after went back to their place for coffee and merriment 🙂