Well, not for everyone. Generally the news has been pretty dismal, but on a personal level I got a raise, and some adjustments to my job, and some other good news hopefully tab. So that’s something. Then this past weekend Josh visited, which meant John played a LOT of boardgames and was very happy. We played the last on an Unlocked box, which was an excellent Sherlock Holmes mystery. So a good month so far in that sense. We also finally have a date for getting our bathroom re-done, it’s a few months away, and we’ll have to sort out …
Beyond the Brotherhood
So far 2020 has been chock full of culture for us, we’ve fitted in two museum visits and a movie trip and the month is not over yet. First Saturday of January we took the train into the New Forest to see an exhibit at the St. Barbe Museum and Gallery in Lymington. The idea behind the exhibition was what would Romantic art look like today, and while it was a mixed bag there were artists and pieces I liked a great deal. Primarily we were there to see a big intricate piece by local Southampton artist Greg Gilbert, who …
2020
Well here we are in the far-flung future of 2020! We had intended on a relatively low key NYE at Unity Brewing’s taproom, but both of us had sore throats so we scaled it back to a couple of pints at the Butcher’s Hook, where I had a lovely marshmallow porter and we had a nice chat with some strangers at our table. Back home we played a board game, ordered Indian food, watched the first half of Point Break, and were in bed just in time to wish each other a happy new year snuggled up with the cats …
Coxon Christmas
We headed up to Peterborough on Monday, everything went nice and smoothly and the trains were not too busy so we got there in time for dinner. This year was a lower key Coxon Christmas, mainly John’s parents, his aunts, and us two – with guest appearances by George and Kathryn, and by his grandmother on Christmas day. We were also only there through the end of the week, so no panto this year. All in all it was very chill, we ate lovely food, drank wine and beer, saw old friends, watched quiz shows, and generally relaxed. John and …
Turkey and burritos
On the weekend of the 23rd, we had an early Thanksgiving with John’s parents, George and Kathryn. I had made two practice pumpkin pies with the Halloween jack-o-lantern and although the third attempt was with canned pumpkin I was pretty pleased with the results. John’s turkey was very good indeed, and John got to open some early birthday presents, so a good time was hopefully had by all. On Thanksgiving itself we were on a flight to San Francisco. We lucked out and had a row to ourselves, we watched the first ten minutes of Hustle, which was disappointing, How …
Food, cats, more food, more cats.
Yesterday we walked up to Wickes to find out about bathrooms (spoiler; they’re pricey) and had a lovely meal at Steak Bar, the little eatery attached to Uptons of Basset. They’re a Slovakian style butcher (I don’t know exactly how that differs from a British butcher) with lots of lovely things I had to restrain myself from purchasing. We shared the Butcher’s Block, which had pork pie, brie and stilton cheese, sliced meats, piccalilly, lovely bread, some pickled onions that actually tasted nice (!!!!), and Scotch eggs with runny yolks. Nom. In the evening we caught up on The Good …
No Novacon, yes chilaquiles.
On the weekend after Halloween we had planned to go to Novacon, but a proper look at the budget suggested that actually maybe quality time with the cats would be better. As a consolation prize we did get to attend an excellent Mexican brunch birthday party hosted at the other Southampton fannish household. Nick Gibbins put on his chef hat and prepared an amazing spread, there was plenty of lively conversation, plus some tequila, so honestly it wasn’t a million miles off of the Novacon experience in the end. Besides that I learned how to make pumpkin pie and how …
Treats, mostly
Hot damn, it’s almost Halloween! (Guess who forgot to post her draft!?) Inktober got rudely shoved aside so I could get art ready for World Fantasy. John helpfully worked around me as I buckled down and spent most of the month working on that, and I’m reasonably happy with the results. Next up is Novacon, which I’ll do regular 2D pieces for, as much for the variety as for the feeling that November isn’t really folding fan season. We managed to get some fun in before and after I disappeared into all-fans-all-the-time; firstly we went up to Bristol to visit John’s …
Inktober
The second half of September had two Coxon family visits in a row.; first George and Kathryn came down for a brief visit which involved pizza and beer and Into the Spider-Verse. The following weekend John’s parents came to visit, met the cats, and were kind enough to take us to IKEA not once but twice. As a result I have a corner desk and a kallax unit and my habitat is a bit more unfucked than it was. It’s almost, dare I say it… nice? I thought the storage would be the best part but honestly I didn’t even …
Weekends!
The last few weekends we’ve stayed in Southampton, but managed to have nice mini-adventures regardless. The last weekend in August Michael came over and we wandered across the bridge to Riverside Park and Trifest, a new crowdsourced neighbourhood festival. We arrived pretty late in the day, so we missed the food, and it was pretty small, but for a first year crowdsourced event it was solid, with musicians all day and some local arts and crafts, as well as a couple of local charitable organizations. I bought some upcycled jewellery from Sylvie Leost and some duck feed from a charity. …