Lathany

• OU Summer School - I'm about to disappear for OU Summer School; I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm really going to miss bateleur and the duo, miss my internet and miss my comfy bed (I sleep badly for the first few nights elsewhere and I'm only away for a few nights). On the other hand, it'll be a break from work and will therefore be more relaxing than the last few months and it'll mean I can get on with my project work (which this Summer School is all about). It's going to be odd to see who attends though. Previously, my literature Summer Schools were almost entirely populated by women older than I am (or was). However, tutorials of my current course are attended by students who are mostly much younger than me and about 50:50 men:women. However, I've read almost nothing (fiction-wise) since this course started so this may be a good time to pack some evening reading to fall back on if the social side isn't my thing.
• Battlestar Galactica series 3 - Having been repeatedly warned by chrestomancy that the third season was seriously awful, bateleur and I put off buying it until it had substantially dropped in price and then watched it with some trepidation. Fortunately it wasn't as bad as we were expecting. ( Here be spoilers )
• Indiana Jones - We saw the new Indiana movie and enjoyed it. It's nothing to write home about, but I felt it was a decent enough sequel to the franchise (certainly not as poor as some reviewers were suggesting) and it was nice to see the man himself once more. Were I to recommend an Indy I'd still go with Raiders, but it was a hell of a lot better than that Temple of Doom rubbish.
• Pathologic - I can't remember how I found this game but it's turned out to be as seriously weird as promised. To give you some background it's a Russian game with a fanatical following and it won all sorts of home grown awards. It's billed as a puzzle game where you play one of three characters trying to stop/contain a plague in a small, weird town. It's set (checks box), er.. last century, probably mid last century (some things are quite modern but What No Cars?). The town has a social structure rather similar to vampire clans (and I haven't yet ruled out vampires, werewolves or anything like that) and has a theatre with a masks play that you can see every night (I've missed one and seen one). Sadly the play is still in Russian. In fact, that's one of the problems. The biggest, I guess - as the translation is, err, brave, but somewhat crap¹. This isn't helped by the fact that the original Russian is also supposed to be artsy and obscure in places. The actual thing plays like a cross between a murder mystery (with first person shooter perspective) and real-time The Sims (although I've never played The Sims so I could be way out here). In fact it most reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes game that huggyrei and telpher brought over last year with the huge map of London on which you could go anywhere. Because you get that huge map in Pathologic and you can call at/break into any house (or shop) that you choose; although you have to do all the walking. And the walking in turn means I don't play it for very long at a stretch as I get motion sickness. You play one of three characters (I'm playing Batchelor, the easiest - which is short for "Batchelor of Medicine" and in turn says volumes about the language/atmosphere in this game) and they all have different roles in the unfolding story. In fact you can't play the girl (Devotress) until you've played at least one of the other two (the other is Ripper - a surgeon). The game has a fixed length because it's sort of real time (speeded up that is, an hour of game time is - at a guess - about 5-10 mins real) and, as the game reminds you at the start of each of its days, there are 12 days to survive. There's a bit of combat, but it's mostly a quest and story thing. With constant marching around the town (and examining trash cans). I might suggest it to White Wolf enthusiasts who can handle the translation (although I might wait until I get a bit further into the story - it's only day 3).
• Anniversary - bateleur and I have now been married for thirteen years (lace) and we celebrated the usual way - with a meal. Wrapped vine leaves, lamb in nice sauce (yes, I've forgotten what was in it) and then chocolate mousse with mango and clotted cream. This year we decided to do different wines with the different courses (Sancerre, Rioja and Muscat) which was rather lovely (and means we've been finishing the three bottles off all this week).

---

¹ ( This is an excellent example from the first page of the manual )

This must be one of the warmest Januarys ever. Having spent the first half of December staying in the office at lunchtime, I'm finding this month's mild weather very weird as I'm so used to it being the coldest month (or second coldest after February). It's definitely nicer like this, though.

Over the month I have:

• Played Infinity - Yesterday saw the start of the second min-arc of the campaign and a new team in play. Our group of experienced Guardians spent ages choosing super-powers before Plus One (sense and nano-tech), Cam (hitting and sneaking), Regent (our version of Face), Stone (hitting and hitting) and Moth (summoner) headed out and promptly drove our land vehicle into a lightning force field. The rest of the session involved a hidden city, a few "gods" and a lot of worrying history that suggests we may not be retiring in a couple of months after all. I want session two already!
• Read Small Island and Gifted - The former won Whitbread Book of the Year and the Orange Prize for fiction and is set primarily during and after the Second World War. It focuses on the position (for want of a better word) that Jamaicans held; welcomed to fight in the UK army (although not above a certain rank), but then expected them to go home and not come back. I found that it suffered from a lack of plot; the author was really just describing the historical situation. Which is OK I guess, but I'd rather read a historical account on the subject than someone's fictional account if there's no further story to it. The latter was shortlisted for Best First Novel in the Costa Book Awards and is an account of a girl, Rumi, who was mathematically gifted and ended up at Oxford at fifteen due to the efforts of her father. It's an interesting account although, again is rather lacking in plot instead it is all about the author's set-up playing out. It did leave me wondering what experience the author had or had heard of an upbringing like this as it seemed very plausible.
• Watched three Amazon DVD films - The first of these was The Prestige from the makers of Memento, it is about stage illusions and is one of the creepiest films I've seen in recent years. Angier's final scene in the film is plain disturbing and for an hour afterwards bateleur and I were talking about what had happened and why. The second film was Pitch Black and creepy in a very different way. It's a horror movie where the characters get picked off one by one on a strange planet. It owes a lot to Aliens and the like and it suffered somewhat from loving one of the characters far too much. However, it's not bad if you want to see that sort of film. The final film was The Bourne Ultimatum which I wanted to see in order (having only seen the second film last month) and was a decent end to the trilogy. Much of the action and special effects were amazing, although the plot was simply OK - it's more or less what you expect it to be. Definitely recommended if you've liked the previous two, though.
• Cooking with Bea - We've made orange cheesecake, orange and chocolate battenburg (my person favourite because it actually worked), profiteroles and another vanilla sandwich cake. Ryan is coming to watch every time now; in a couple of years I might be able to cook with him too.

Plus there's been much work and a bit of OU Economics. The latter has started OK; but I'm still glad it's only a two year course.

Saturday was the day that bateleur and I attempted a three course meal for my parents and chrestomancy (who arrived on Saturday evening to join us for Xmas). It was also the day that we finished the Christmas food shopping in Tesco. Despite a fairly early start (09:30) the place was still packed out when we arrived (no parking spaces, no trolleys) and complete murder to tackle. I got bateleur to leave his cooking ingredients for the evening meal until the end and then park me with the trolley in one of the huge queues whilst he went to get those final things. Twenty minutes later he was back - and I had barely moved (although the queue shifted fairly promptly after that). However, we got it done and got out again with still some morning left.

The afternoon involved Granny Iris and the duo playing railway in the playroom whilst my dad read the paper and I finished wrapping presents. Come evening we fed the duo their tea and then packed them off safely to bed before laying the dinner table for The Meal. The first course was giant-sized vol-au-vents, in this case salmon and cream cheese in puff pastry. The second course was a meat and vegetable stew with rice (which was much nicer than it sounds) and the dessert was chocolate pots, partly because they taste wonderful and partly because they can be easily prepared earlier in the day. White wine was Sancerre - which I'd tracked down in Fortnum and Mason after we'd been given a wonderful bottle of it and red wine was a fine Rioja from chrestomancy with gold wire netting (for some reason).

Sunday lunchtime, my parents took us all out for a meal and so we got to watch Bea tackle adult-sized portions of pizza and ice cream. The afternoon then proceeded with the Hornsey part of the family heading off to the park with Ryan, whilst bateleur stayed in with Bea. My small son seemed very pleased to have four adults to himself! The evening involved the rest of my family disappearing off to Feltham cineworld to watch Casino Royale. Back at the house, bateleur and I bathed the duo, put them to bed and then I broke out Shadow Hearts II (a birthday present that I was meaning to get into right after I finished Final Fantasy X again - and I finally did that on Thursday evening) whilst bateleur watched. Then the cinema crew returned for mulled wine and bread maker bread before we headed bedwards, with a brief pause to sort out Bea and Ryan's stockings.

It appears that today may be the day that I learn to make mulled wine from the spices rather than from convenient little "mulled wine" packets.

In other words, we had problems with our last Tesco on-line order.

killalla paid us a visit today. Bringing star topped nests from Marks and Spencer for us and presents for the duo (a Hello Kitty DVD for Bea and a car kit for Ryan). Hence much Hello Kitty watching (this was the DVD of Snow White). Bea is very much a Hello Kitty fan and approved of the fairy tale choice.

This was also the second installment of Making The Christmas Cake. There is now a large square cake cooling in the kitchen with a sealed box waiting (note to self - cake only goes in upside down) to pack it away until I have a chance to marzipan it. I've also bought mincemeat for mince pies - but they'll have to wait for another day (and I must get stuff for mulled wine as well).

Whilst I've done quite a lot this weekend (corner shelf, Christmas decorations, Christmas cake) I'm still feeling that it shouldn't be Monday coming next - somehow I seem to have mislaid a whole bunch of spare time. Oh well, last week. For me and for the duo.

Can anyone recommend a good Xmas pudding recipe? Preferably rich and alcoholic? About the only thing I know(/think I know) is that they are supposed to be cooked/prepared a good three months in advance. Oh, and I'm not an experienced cook - this may be relevant.

(Give me another couple of months and I'll be making a similar request for Xmas cake!)

Another week, another update.

Housework - I've mowed the garden, washed the kitchen floor and washed the bedroom windows. It all looks much better and I feel virtuous.

Dr Who - I've not been as impressed with this so far this year (and I haven't seen this week's episode yet). Perhaps it's because I'm now expecting more from it, perhaps it's because the episodes so far haven't really hung together properly. I didn't like the redemption of Cassandra because it was much too fast and last week's bad guys just didn't live up to their scary reputation (or appear to have a plan). I guess that leaves Queen Victoria; an episode I felt was OK, but not up to the standard of last year's "gas mask" two-parter.

24 - So far this season has been surprisingly good. There was a real tear-jerker of an ending to the episode before last when a main character died tragically (and, for once, I cared). The current bad guy is letting the series down somewhat (appearing to be super-human), but otherwise it's been really great. However, perhaps I'll wait and see what they do with the second half (slightly less) of it before I stick a "best ever" sticker on it.

Space Hulk - Friday night the Space Hulk set came out for the first time in ages. The Mission was number four (Cleanse and Burn) and I took the marines. I lost, sadly. In my defence, my command points went something like: 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 6, 2, 6, 2. I want to play more Space Hulk; possibly surrounded by a bit of a roleplaying campaign.

Chocolate Bible - After a long absence, out came Chocolate Bible and bateleur and I had a go at making "Chocolate Cinnamon Cake with Banana Sauce". The cake was a big hit (although it didn't taste of chocolate!) and will probably be made again some time. The Banana Sauce, however, was rather underwhelming and we probably wouldn't bother with it another time.

*The quote is from Lazy Town.

Yesterday evening, we had quiet New Year's Eve plans. We were going to bath the duo then settle down to a decent meal with a decent wine. We wanted a quiet evening and thought that we probably wouldn't stay up for midnight.

( Bath Time )

( The Meal )

The rest of the evening was spent gaming and chatting, but we were both tired by half-ten and decided to go up then. We thought we'd wake up for 2006 and this was true, but not the way we expected. Instead one of our neighbours had a huge, loud fireworks display at midnight! We wished each other Happy New Year then and went back to sleep.

The last few days has seen us try a couple more recipes from My Chocolate Bible.

( Both with long, impressive-sounding names. )

Tired of seeing me always order the chocolate thing on any dessert menu, bateleur bought me a copy of Chocolate Bible on the grounds that some of them looked pretty easy to make. Today we tried our first recipe, Chocolate Orange Marquise.

Twelve ounces of chocolate, eight ounces of butter and five eggs later, neither of us believed it would actually turn into a solid cake. OK, there was a bit of plain flour (three tablespoons) and sugar (a cupful) as well, but it's the first cake mixture that I've seen poured into a cake tin rather than spooned in. However, the requisite hour in the oven worked some sort of magic and the end result not only tasted wonderful, it actually looked rather like the picture.