The first Witcher game.

I love that game and I had the shittiest time trying to play it, the city textures didn't load in for me, so it'd be a bunch of floating people and Geralt running around in mid air and I memorized how to get around without being able to see where everything was while in the first area you get into in the city (the like slum distract) and where all the doors were and used the map to guess if there were stairs. The inside of buildings and every other environment worked fine but not the slum area of the city.

And I still love that game. It's stupidly irrational love of something I had such a hard and bad time playing but maybe my love comes from the stubbornness that game inspired in me, I refused to not play my bugged out as hell copy and learnt to love it.

@Ochi Thats more or less how I felt. I ended up in some weird fog like state that made the convention seem less real. After the convention I did meet up with friends and then we went to an after party at a near by club. There's something charmingly surreal about dancing around a Baymax cosplayer while the dj blares a dance remix of the Lion King theme.

I was a bit bored today, it being the weekend in Australia, and sometimes I like to indulge one of my hobbies aside from video games which is baking.

The first thing I made was a pie pastry, just a fairly plain standard one I make a lot.

Ingredients

• 400g or approx 14 ounces of plain flour

• 200g or approx 7 ounces of chilled butter

• 2-3 tablespoons of milk

• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder

First mix the flour and cinnamon in a large bowl, then add in the chilled butter (which can be cubed if you prefer) and the bit of milk and mix until it all forms a breadcrumb like mixture. Gently press this mixture into a ball before wrapping in clingfilm and placing in the fridge for about an hour.

At this point I cued up Bosman v Wozniak, and got to work making the filling, all while Kyle Bosman and Tetris kept me company. I also preheated my oven (which is fan forced) to 190 degrees Celsius so about 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

The cherry filling is the messy part, if like me you lack the actual tool to get the stone out of cherries and instead resort to halving them with a knife and fingers, at the end I looked like I had murdered someone and somehow had a streak of drying cherry juice smeared across my face. Anyway

Ingredients

• 4-5 cups of cherries, halved and pitted.

• 1 + 1/2 cups of sugar

• 1/8 cup of maple syrup (or golden syrup)

• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

• 4-5 tablespoons of cornstarch or cornflour

Put the cherries into a pot or saucepan deep enough to hold them, place the pot on a low to medium heat, add the maple syrup and vanilla extract to the cherries and then leave with the lid on for a few minutes. Mix sugar, cornstarch and cinnamon together and then add to the cherry mix once a few minutes are up. Keep on a low to medium heat and begin to stir until the mix thickens and the cherries are soft. If the mix is too thick add a little cold water. Then remove the mix from the heat.

Take the dough out of the fridge, separate it into two balls and then roll them out, using one half as the bottom of the pie by placing it in a greased pie tin, and save the other half for the pie top. Fill the pastry with the cherry mix, being careful not to overfill with excess syrup from the cherries before placing the pie top on.

Put in the oven for 45-50 minutes and hopefully you should have a cherry pie.

If anyone wants to try this recipe let me know how it turns out for you, it worked well for me, but I am just a simple gamer not an actual cook so I don't know if it was pure luck.

Anyway I enjoyed my Boz v Woz and Baking.

I wake up. It's 9:00 am. The doors will open at 10:00 am, I live about an hour from where the convention is taking place and I only have a one day ticket.

I look at the time on my phone for a long moment and then put my phone down and sleep for another half hour.

I wake up. It's 9:30 am. My cat decides to claw my hand so I decide to get up.

I make breakfast. It's eaten while I watch an episode of a cooking show. There's another episode on after so I watch that one as well.

I get ready. I decide to shave my legs since I plan to wear tights under my dress and social convention suggests I should since the tights are relatively sheer. I cut one of my legs with the razor and sigh.

I finish getting ready, shove items into my star wars backpack and try to get my cat out of my room so she doesn't pee on any of my stuff while I'm out.

I get to the train station at about 12:00 pm. I sit and accidentally wipe my face without thinking and then have to take a selfie to make sure I didn't smear make up on my face. I didn't and I have to smile because I do really like my pokeball dress.

I get to the convention at around 1:00pm. The doors will close and the convention will shut down at 6:00 pm. Any other year, here with friends I would arrive as the doors open and spend the entire day. But fate and prior commitments conspired to leave me with no one I wanted to go with and there's no celebrities I am a fan of so no need to spend hours waiting in line for a signing or photo op.

I am free to do whatever I might wish, for whatever reason. There's a group of marvel cosplayers by the entrance and it's fairly easy to get my ticket checked and be given a wristband that I awkwardly struggle to fix around my wrist.

Inside the hall I walk over to the stall one of my friends is working at this year. I don't see her, but she appears moments later taking the opportunity to wander around on her break. I walk with her and pause by a stall as she heads to the bathroom. I make a purchase and when my friend reappears hand her a Chibi Sailor Moon necklace that I just bought, since it is her Birthday and Sailor Moon is the only anime she watches.

My friend thanks me and then has to go back to work and I am left alone, drowning in a crowd of too loud and too slow walking convention goers.

I end up at a stall full of dvds. Largely anime and foreign horror movies and I talk to the man running the stall for a couple of minutes before making a purchase. I buy a copy of Ichi The Killer since some movies can be hard to find out in Perth and I will always have a soft spot for hard copies for either games of dvds.

I walk for longer. Pause, stare at a collection of scantily clad anime figures spilling from a booth and wonder if there's any circumstance in which I would buy one. There really isn't so I keep moving.

I talk to someone who makes hand carved dice from gemstones. I can talk as long as I wish since there is no one with me and I have no where to be. I take a business card.

It becomes apparent there is a problem around an hour in. I have no real reason to be at the convention. There is nothing I am desperate to see and no friends with me. And while I do not need to walk around looking at things I have no interest in in order to be polite I also have nothing much to do other than wonder the convention floor looking at stalls and merchandise I won't buy since I'm trying to save money. Boredom sets in.

So does hunger and I buy an overpriced snack and an even more over priced drink from a kiosk, frowning at a stall that is selling "artisan ice pops", that appear to just be normal frozen fruit juice sold a ridiculous price.

I stop by where the large collection of pop vinyls is being sold and am bemused at how many Gerard Way pop vinyls exist. I tell myself not to buy a pop vinyl and end up buying an Ash one, from Army of Darkness, charmed by the little chainsaw arm.

I see a sexy Spyro the Dragon cosplayer and I'm not sure how to feel. I'd ask for a photo but I don't have a friend with me and I don't like the idea of asking a stranger to take a photo with my phone. I end up getting no photos. Though I do later find out a friend of mine was the one I saw walking around dressed as a parasyte from Parasyte as a promotion for the release of the anime on dvd.

I buy a dress. It has a galaxy pattern on it and I know the particular cut of it is flattering on me. The only other thing I buy is red licorice that I get at every convention I go to and that I personally feel tastes a magnificent type of horrible.

I wonder around the rest of the time, waving at one point to a friend who's working one of the stages, headset on and schedule in her hands. She waves back and I continue on my way, pausing at a VR demo that I would like to try out, if not for the fact I wear glasses.

I feel an odd sense of calm and boredom settle over me, a feeling of contentedness at not having to talk or adjust my plans to cater to a friend, while also feeling a sense of loneliness and isolation despite the crowd. The feeling lessens as the crowd thins out and the convention settles in to the odd emptiness that happens right before the doors will be closing.

There was such a lack of stress that it barely feels like the convention happened at all, the only proof I have the items I bought.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Most of the way through the game and then gone.
I mean plus side I had a reason to play through all of San Andreas again.

@Inustar Same, but I will say Iain Glen has always been one of my favorite movie Hamlets since seeing Ros & Guil.

@flower_arrangement I feel like everyone's entitled to being a pretentious teenager at some point. That game is so difficult to play, I tried with some friends as well.

I thought about recommending what my little quote thing ("Words, words. They're all we have to go on") at the bottom of each of my posts is from.

It's from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead which is one of my favorite stage plays and the movie adaptation is pretty awesome, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the title characters. If your looking for something a bit absurdist (technically an absurdist, existential tragicomedy) it's about the minor characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet who are stuck playing out a part and find themselves both unaware and unable to stray from the script that means they will ultimately die as a minor plot point in Hamlet.

The entire thing is full of some of my favorite quotes and monologues (one of which I have performed before as part of a drama exam), including "We're actors! We're the opposite of people."

If your in the mood for something different I think it's worth a watch. The actual play itself is also worth a read if you're into scripts.

I'd be interested if anyone's still looking for new members for a group or something.

In the middle of rereading Catch-22. That and Weaveworld by Clive Barker are probably my most reread books (not counting LotR of course.)