Fondue Fairs Well

If I haven't said it before, fondue is a wonderful invention. Tonight was spent in the company of Eruntane and the Green One, enjoying the afformentioned, merrilly dipping things into cheese and then chocolate. It was all worth looking forward to, and look forward I did, all through my shift at work as I filled shelves and generally tried to find things to do on a night when, quite frankly, people clearly had better things to do than be at our store.

The day prior to that consisted of the usual internet based entertainments (another NFC - A post that didn't really take us anywhere but continued the set up for an event I have planned) and the watching of an episode of Last Exile. I haven't watched an ep of that for a long time as, until about a week ago (less actually) I only had volume 1. I couldn't watch what I had of colume 2 though as I was comitted to finally finishing my viewing of Series 1 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (more on that later). Anyway, it was a good ep, but it continues this series tendancy to be very slow and surpisingly limited in scale and scope in setting up what apparently intends to be an epic plot. It is very pretty and the characters are all very intersting and/or likeable, but I can't help but be concerned that it's taking it's sweet time. Maybe I'm just being picky, but I guess I want my airship adventure stories to all be like Skies of Arcadia.

As for the ending of Ghost in the Shell: SAC, I was a little disapointed. The Green One and Eruntane had already watched it all some time ago and they hyped the ending up ratehr alot. the build up to the finish was indeed fantastic, but the actual last episode was such a let down. It had one great, Oshii-esque conversation that left my head spinning and a nice opening centred around Togusa, but the rest just felt like a cop-out to me and the last minute or two was just pure, unadulterated, unsolicited Cheese (capital C intentional). Oh well, I still look forward to watching 2nd Gig when the Green One gets more of it (don't want to watch it in stalling segments like the first series).

Whilst we ate our fondue tonight, we were 'forced' to watch a program presented by that most random and likable of T.V. personalities, Tony Robinson, on the 'real' Da Vinci Code. I haven't read the cook, but I do intend to go along to see the film with Eruntane who has. (She is a fan of the book like most of the rest of the planet, but attributes it's likability to controversial topic rather than quality of writing, which is very reassuring for an aspiring writer, I don't think.) The documentry was most interesting, focusing on what evidence there was for the conspiracy and concluding that it was mostly based on hoaxes and imagining the possibilites of history. But, when they spoke about the San Greal/Sang Real distinction, I just found myself thinking about Robert Jordan's Sa'angreal and how much I love the Wheel of Time series. Go figure.

Another thing that I did today was play more 24. I came across the first few bits of 24 fan geek-outery at about 2/3 o'clock (can't say for fear of spoilers) and the first strong connection to season 3 which the Green One, having only seen season's 1 and 2 so far, will have missed out on for now, although I'm sure when he watches season 3 he'll be Ah!-ing in the appropriate places, probably.

Tomorrow afternoon, some time after Church, I will have my reading of Brass Petals and Holy War to do. I'm starting to get scared already. Reading your work out in front of people is a tricky thing for the best of people and I get stage fright very easily, still I survived my last such reading (the piece I read then was the first part of a trilogy, I may post it here if there's any demand for such) and so I'm sure I'll do fine with this one, after all there'll be even more support, people will actually be there to see/hear us read (the other reading was as an interlude to a student play festival) and the pieces I'm reading are really short and, I think (modest as I am :p) better for reading in this kind of situation anyway.

Wish me luck!