Plodding

Well it's nice to settle down into a plod. Still doing a fair bit of freelancing, but managed to work my way through a pile of deadline Post-its during the week (and I was sick for most of it).

Nothing of interest happened until last Friday when I went to the Opera House to see 'Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy' with Stuart (my ex if you recall).

Boff and I met at Customs House and took a look at the Galapagos photo exhibition, then had dinner at Young Alfred, then wandered around the quay for a bit and had ice cream at Royal Copenhagen (I really need to remember my Entertainment Book vouchers, lots of 2-for-1s that will expire in June) before wandering up to the House. They met briefly.

I'm not sure that time has been kind to Stuart. By that I mean it has given him nothing. Apart from the fact that he has longer hair, he's still the same person he was when I last saw him, when we broke up, when we were going out. When there's no progress in your life you become a boring person. So what is he doing now? He works at a plastics factory in Warringah and still rents a share house in North Manly.

The concert was good: it had visuals and we had decent seats for viewing the screen. I wish I knew more about Final Fantasy games, though. The narrative is very interesting and obviously people play it for the whipping monsters and the like but I would expect the saga of it was just as key.

On Saturday I went to high tea with some friends and had a disappointing experience. Then I went home and bought some clothes from overseas over the internet (man this high dollar is just encouraging the UK and US shopping...) before Boff came over. We broke in my new Scrabble board and also played some cribbage.

Yesterday we, and pretty much everyone we knew, went to see Sir Terry Pratchett speak with Garth Nix at the Opera House. It was supposed to go for one hour but it ended up being about 90 minutes including the time it took for Pratchett and Nix to throw fistfuls of fake teeth at everyone and for us to sing Happy Birthday to Pratchett (it's on 28 April).

There's a good review of the event here, although the author missed out a key joke about fantasy writers. "Fantasy is allowed to come indoors with the mainstream so long as it wipes its feet and takes its meals in the kitchen," said Pratchett wryly.

The pic is by Boff's friend Ian Woolf who wasn't sitting anywhere near us. We were actually in good seats, box 10, right behind Nix's head looking right at Pratchett. But without a good camera between us. Unfortunately I'd have to agree with Boff that the Q&A was like "a goodbye". I think Nix was a bit overawed too, to be honest.

Today I spent the best part of daylight hours doing some Sydney Writers' Festival volunteer work, which was reading hundreds of short story entries to the WriteNow! school competition, which will be decided tomorrow.

Good bunch of people and a lot of laughs from the entries too. Next year we are considering drawing up a bingo grid for categories such as vampires, werewolves, ninjas, things with tentacles, Nazis and zombies. I didn't see my other boyfriend Chip Rolley.