The Ramblings of Octavo

Ibis is a cat lover… I on the other hand am more of the opinion that the only good cat is a dead one. Of course in truth I’m not really that callous - cat’s can be cute, but they’re really not my sort of animal. Anyway, we seem to have a cat living in the complex who has taken a liking to us and is always trying to get in. Last night was particularly hot and muggy so we had the back door open in the kitchen while we were cooking and obviously the cat decided it was his time for supper too. Ibis took some cute pics of him before we shoo’d him out so we could eat in peace…

Hey again all you strange people!

Well Ibis and I certainly had a pretty cool weekend! AS it turns out Ibis had never bothered with the Blade series figuring they were just action movies. Of course when I mentioned that they were actually Vampire movies, she decided we had to watch them! So Friday night we watched Blade and went to bed fairly early for a change.

Saturday morning was spent cleaning up the apartment and various other such tedious activities. I had promised Ibis we would go shoe shopping for her this weekend, so after a late breakfast, we headed out to the shops. I endured the seemingly endless shoe browsing and Ibis eventually came away with 2 new pairs of shoes! YAY! Since we were in the vicinity we decided to drop in on my parents (besides, I had a few things I needed to give to my Dad). We also borrowed a few things from my brother (Badass) so that I could start on the TIE Interceptor model I got from Ibis for Christmas.

Once home, I drove pretty much straight into the model and painted the pilot and his console. I couldn’t really do much more until the paint dried, as I still needed to dry brush some of the finer details on the pilot, so I put it all away and we watched Blade II. Sunday morning I got back into the model and dry brushed the pilot (he looks pretty damn awesome) and gave the console a second coat of paint. While waiting for that to dry, I decided to paint the frame of the clear cockpit window which I did very carefully. I pottered around for a while and eventually decided that it was now time to assemble the cockpit structure. Silly silly silly me. Of course during assembly the cockpit window hadn’t finished drying and I managed to smudge some paint on the window. No problem I thought to myself (while demonstrating an amazing lack of thought) and dipped the brush in some thinners to simply remove the offending smudge. Thinners tends to melt plastic you see and instead of cleaning off the smudge, it simply made the window opaque as the plastic top layer melted. ARG!!!!! The model isn’t exactly ruined, but it was a pretty major fsck up. Anyways I put the thing together and I now need to paint the main body structure and the wings before continuing.

Disgusted with my handiwork, Ibis and I decided to take a drive to see if the local mall was any good. We browsed around for a bit and got back in the car. Then we decided to drive around a bit and explore the area some more. A couple of hours later we were having ice-cream at Hout bay which was great fun, but quite a deviation from our original plan. ahh well it was fun!
Ok, photo time:

The photo here is of a fire alongside the road I took on my way home on Friday. We’ve got a bit of a drought on with water restrictions and the whole deal. The wind has been terrible lately and we’ve had loads of fires.

There are more photos here. One of a rather out of focus spider in my brother’s garden and a few of Hout bay! Enjoy!

Cheers

EDIT: Thanks to Craniac for pointing out that although we wish we were having a draught, we are in fact having a drought.

Something I just stumbled across which I thought was pretty funny is a pimp name generator. Yes that’s right - Now you can pimp your name!!

— Cop-killa Octavo Macktastic

The latest craze sweeping through LiveJournal, Xanga, and other blogging communities involves people posting this message on their blogs:

A girl died in 1933 by a homicidal murderer. He buried her in the ground when she was still alive. The murdered chanted, “Toma sota balcu” as he buried her. Now that you have read the chant, you will meet this little girl. In the middle of the night she will be on your ceiling. She will suffocate you like she was suffocated. If you post this, she will not bother you. Your kindness will be rewarded.

It obviously seems to be inspired by the movie The Ring. Other than that I don’t know much about this (such as who started it, etc.), though I do know that I’m now safe
The weekend party: Well, this weekend Ibis and I had a little housewarming for the family which was pretty cool. My parents and brothers all came over and we sat around having champagne and wine and pizzas. Saturday we had to go and exchange a few items at canal walk and Ibis and I decided to do some shoe shopping. Never in my life have I bought more than one pair of shoes at a time, but obviously Ibis has somehow infected me with her shoe fetish and I walked away with no less than three pairs. Firstly a pair of sensible work shoes, then a really 1337 pair of nike tekkies and lastly a more going out kind of shoe. We then proceeded to Cool Runnings and got merry on Vodka and Redbull for the rest of the night! Sunday Ibis spent studying while I got back into SW:KOTOR (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), which I’ve neglected terribly for too long.

Poor Ibis is terribly stressed at the moment and working hard - she’s busy with summer term and has two very important exams in the next two weeks, so I’m trying to do as much of the housework as possible to help take a load off her. Anyways…

I better get back to work - those deadlines aren’t getting any further away
Cheers

Woohooo! I’m back and ready to get blog again!

Ok, so there’s loads of news and a couple of photos as well. Let’s not waste too much time shall we? My birthday was w00t - Ibis and I spent the day at a local theme park doing all the rides and having photos taken with various wild animals. That evening we got together with some family, got drunk and played 30 seconds all night! Good fun indeed!

I drove up with my brother on the 24th to spend Xmas with Ibis’ family (a mad bunch). They have a holiday house right on the river in sedgefield and we spent our days canoeing or wakeboarding up and down the river (yes, I learned to wakeboard - I was quite proud of that actually). Ibis and I drove back down to Cape Town on the 28th to pick up the keys to our new flat! YAY!

We spent the rest of the holiday basically shopping and slowly moving all our stuff in. We bought all sorts of fun goodies (like a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner etc.) and I realised I would have to actually buy tools now.

For an IT geek like myself tools are NMCD (not my class, dahling). A screwdriver to take off the case is all that’s allowed. Socket wrenches, pliers etc. are all way too mechanical for me. Anyway I realised that if I wanted to be able to actually do anything around the house (like bolt a bed back together) I’d need some decent kit.

Ibis’ folks dropped off the last of her stuff last night (a big fridge and her bed) and we made them supper. I had decided I wanted to try out a roast chicken on them, so Ibis and I set to it. It actually turned out pretty damn well! The chicken was great (I was worried I had undercooked it) and the roast potatoes were f**king awesome too! A good time was had by all, so it all went off quite well (I’m sure the wine helped too).

Anyways, I’ve got to wrap this post up, but before I go may I point you to the latest batch of photos from this recent holiday! Check out the links on the right, or just click on the picture below!

This little guy was on our balcony the first day that we were moving in — a good omen I think!!