The month kicked off with the Melbourne Cup Day long weekend - only if you take a day of leave on Monday of course. This "holiday" basically put me back to zero days of annual leave once again! I spent the regular weekend up in Bendigo for the Bendigo Bank Fun Run and various other activities, which are described in more detail here. So, the Monday and Tuesday was the replacement weekend to relax and not think about work. As a bonus it nicely lined up with the big NFL match between Denver and New England.
Besides the Bendigo run, I have somehow managed to get in a good month of running by dealing with pain and having a few injuries subside - 243km in total is a pretty good effort. Later in the month the City2Sea was also on, I was a little bit disappointed with my race strategy, but otherwise it was a good day.
I'm a bit unhappy that I haven't done much baking again this month, I think there are several factors that contribute to that - 1: need to find some good new recipes, 2: been too exhausted and short on time after work during the week, 3: buying too many groceries! and 4: trying and failing to lose a few kilograms to get back down near 70 kg again.
Some planning I've started but not reached any conclusions on again, but I'm happy to be making progress. I think I have researched all of the countries I would like to travel to during an Easter break, now I just need to see what flights are available and make a decision on the countries and dates - then hurry and get my passport renewed. I also spent a few hours making a short list for a "new" car to buy, I was originally intending to complete this goal in 2014, but since I drive my car so little there is no urgency in it - also it will be a bit sad to see the first and only car I've owned, the Mitsubishi Lancer, sent to the scrap yard (so to speak). My short list at the moment is:
- Honda Civic 2008+
- Mazda 3 2008+
- Mitsubishi Lancer 2007+
- Peugeot 207 2010+
- Peugeot 308 2008+
- Subaru Impreza 2009+
- Subaru Liberty 2010+
- VW Golf 2008+
There has been no big changes at work this month, I went from running out of work to being overloaded at least a couple of times, which is not so ideal. However we do finally have a carpeted office now, so that's something to celebrate... I had to be on standby for a network upgrade, which meant being alert enough to read text messages at 3:30am one Saturday, and then got a false alarm at 6:30am another Saturday while doing on-call duty - I'm starting to hate that thing. If I had good sleep patterns this stuff would probably have been a lot worse than it was.
I normally leave all of my entertainment notes to the end, but a couple of other things were worth mentioning. Firstly, I bought my first concert ticket in months - not due to apathy as much as nobody seems to tour Australia anymore. The ticket is for Spoon, but it's not until April next year! Another sort-of-music note, I've been enjoying the Serial podcast which I stumbled across - I think I can claim to have found it "just" before it reached massive popularity. It is a really well presented review of a criminal trial - at first I was pessimistic that it might just be a fictional scam, but it seems legitimate, I just don't know how they are possibly going to conclude the series. It's definitely worth trying out in any case, so far I've listened to the first seven episodes out of the nine that have been released.
A few days ago I went to the Noodle Market just before they finished for the season. It looked pretty interesting as there was a large number of Asian food stalls set up - even with some good vegetarian options. It was a bit of a let down though, due to 1: too crowded and no seats, 2: bright and sunny with no shade, 3: most meals were pretty expensive given they were mass produced.
After the market I went over to Hisense Arena for the NBL match between Melbourne United and Adelaide. Melbourne had a couple of big leads, but as is the case for most basketball games it all balanced out by the end, Melbourne managed to hold on for a three point lead. Each team had one good American import player, but I was a bit disappointed that Brock Motum didn't seem very motivated, I thought he would be better since he just missed out on making an NBA team this year. There was a minor delay due to someone turning off the arena lights just as the players were lining up for free throws in the third quarter - somehow it took ten minutes to boot them up again!
That's all there was for November, now for the rest:
- Books
- Duma Key by Stephen King
- About a guy who discovers a rare painting ability after having an accident
- Very similar main plot to The Dead Zone
- Was quite interesting throughout, but the ending was a little odd
- 7 out of 10
- Cell by Stephen King
- About half way through so far, apparently they are making a movie for it in 2015
- TV
- Puberty Blues
- A great show for an Australian series, really authentic 1970's reproduction
- A good range of diverse and relatable characters
- The second season was a bit of a let down, less focus and no conclusion
- 8 out of 10
- Black Mirror
- Kind of like a future technology version of the Twilight Zone
- Some episodes were much better than others
- My favourite was "White Bear" in season two
- I wish there was more than just six episodes
- 9 out of 10
- The Big Adventure
- A pathetic Australian reality show that did no live up to the hype at all
- 1 out of 10
- Video Games
- PlayStation 3
- Gran Turismo 6
- The install took forever, but at least it worked without a catastrophic error
- The first batch of races very boring
- A little bit more variety than Forza
- Some challenges are infuriating, almost impossible to get gold
- The licenses aren't quite as hard, but still very difficult to get gold sometimes
- Yet the races are really easy by comparison
- 7 out of 10
- XBox 360
- Saints Row 4
- After playing the whole game I found out you could turn on music while walking around!
- Finally finished the game with 100% completion
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