Eye implosions, moochy cat, knee surgery and cheese

Yay !! The holidays ! Man – I’m gonna play video games till my eyeballs implode! Oh yeah !

Perhaps I should clarify that last statement. I have not played a single solitary game of anything for the past ten weeks. Yeah – it’s this thing I do .. I try and get myself focused on work, and also try and get myself doing some more creative things too, by removing one of my most hideous addictions from my life for a short while. I started doing it a few years ago when I was working at a Catholic school. One year in the lead up to Easter someone was talking about lent. One of my female colleagues was giving up chocolate for the time of lent ( how long is that again ? I know it’s not ten weeks .. or is it ? Hell – I don’t remember at all ! I wonder if that means the Catholic police will come and bust my door in or something. … Errr – nope, it seems not ). I scoffed. “That’s easy ! I could go MONTHS without even thinking of chocolate !”.

So, when my colleague stopped screaming and trying to remove my eyeballs with a teaspoon, I quickly realised that chocolate means so much more to those of the female persuasion than most guys. Hmmm.
Anyway, she hits me with “What would YOU find really difficult to live without for awhile?”

My first thought was to quip back “Oxygen” – but she had that dangerous set to her eyes, so I actually thought about it for a moment. TV ? Yeah – that would be probably be hard to manage. Movies ? Oooooooo – ouch. That would hurt. … Video games ! Oh god – the humanity !

So after I said that I was pretty much honour bound to follow though and give up video games for lent ( my previous scoffing leading me, yet again, to painful destinations of horrible pain ).

And yeah – it was pretty hard. But I did it.

The following year I thought “Hey – I wonder if I could last a whole TERM ?”. And so my first-term-video-game-abstinence was born.

Funnily enough – one of the few actual creative things I’ve been doing is the weirdest drawing I could muster for a video game store competition. The irony isn’t lost on me.

So – what have I been falling off the wagon with ? I was kicking back and enjoying some “Psychonauts” on the ole PS2 today – and I have “God of War” cued up for some carnage later on tonight. There’s some pretty obscenely nasty violence in that game … but – y’know – it’s set in the towering mythology of Greek legends and such, so that must take the curse of it a bit …

I missed video games.

***

My cat has decided that it would be fun to lounge across my wrists while I’m trying to type this up. She is also taking offence to me moving as well – biting me in the wrists whenever I disturb her too much.

Freaking moochy cat. It’s not that she’s being friendly or anything – it’s just that I’m warm and she’s leaching heat off me.

Now she’s stretching herself over the touch pad. Gah.

***

I was very stupid yesterday and consequently have a bit of a sunburnt head. Ouch. Luckily it’s not too bad though. What IS bad is that there is a white line of still pallid skin where my sunglasses were shielding me – so that looks petty stupid. Who freaking expects to get sunburnt in the middle of autumn though ? I mean really ! It’s just not fair !
Viva ( my lovely wife ) and I went for a drive to see my folks. We were going to try and keep my dad entertained. He’s recently had some knee surgery to try and fix some problems, which were making it fairly painful for him to be moving about the place. Not cool. So – I thought he’d be bored out of his skull with having to stay pretty static throughout the day. Jeez – how wrong could you be ? The nutcase is hobbling around outside, continuing to build this Italian styled BBQ and wood-fire pizza oven. What’s MORE – he starts getting me to haul around sacks of cement, and get tools from various sheds and such – which is pretty much how I got my head burnt ( well – that and the outdoor lunch we had … ) ! He just can’t keep still. Still – he did say that it wasn’t his knee that was aching so much, more his back. Apparently he had some wicked injection in his spine or something as part of the anaesthetic process. Eeeesh. Forget THAT stuff !

The wood fire oven is pretty damned amazing though. He’s sculpted it out of river stones and bricks. I think I’m going have to head up the coast a bit more often to try and use that sucker !

We were going to go up and spend the day there on Friday when he was supposed to be leaving the hospital – but his knee started bleeding on the Thursday, and the surgeon wanted to keep him in for observation. I managed to get in to visit him that night – in the end. Things were just not going my way that night. First of all – I forgot that he wasn’t at Wellington hospital ! Argh ! It took me ages to drive around and find a park – the hospital is undergoing some major construction, and ALL its car parks were closed. I had to park somewhere in the hills of Newtown. Then I was trying to find some kind of reception area where I could find out where dad actually WAS in the warren of corridors and rooms. I’m not sure that there is one. After about fifteen minutes of looking for a map, trying to decipher where an information area might be without success, I thought that maybe I should ask someone. I was directed to an orderly station – where some long suffering guy seemed to run some kind of room by room algorithmic search routine – before telling me that there was no one in the hospital by the name of Mr. Seraph. It was at THAT point I remembered my sister saying something about how he WASN’T going to be in the Southern Cross Hospital this time. I mentioned this to the orderly-guy. He told me that the best bet was Wakefield Hospital – and gave me directions.

On making my way out the hospital – I gave my mum a quick call to tell her I had got the wrong hospital – but I’d soon be at Wakefield. Oh – how she laughed. BUT – as she talked she described how to get to Wakefield – directions which seems to be in stark contrast with those given to me by said long-suffering orderly.
I was confused. But who are you going to trust ? Your MOTHER – or some guy who didn’t seem to be too thrilled to be helping you out ? I took what I thought to be the directions my mum had given me.

So I ended up in Kilbirnie – with NOTHING in the way of the assured signage that would tell me that Wakefield Hospital would be around. It was at this point that I decided to try out the LSO’s advice. Which proved to be a winner. My mum later tried to argue that she had told me some OTHER directions ( which has a strong chance of being true – it WAS the last day of term, and I was pretty wiped out … mishearing things is not too hard a stretch ).

So when I finally got there ( grapes and marshmallow Easter rabbits in bag ) – I couldn’t stay too long, as I had to go pick my Viva at seven. I got to hang around for a half hour or so though.

***

Funny thing happened at the rehearsals for the school production last week. One of the students was supposed to say “Pretty please…” in this request that was being made. Instead of that – she said “With Cheese…”, which I thought was nicely surreal.