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August - Another job ends
Sep. 3rd, 2014 11:14 amAugust, a month I largely remember as being depressingly grey and miserable. I once again find myself between jobs (or 'practising for retirement' as someone described it. My contract came to an end at Espresso Education after almost a year, which given I was only supposed to be there 2 months, isn't bad going! So I'm having a bit of a break and then back to job hunting.
Most of the month was focussed on that, so I haven't really been up to that much. I did make it to Cambridge for a couple of visits, and got a trip to London Zoo to visit the baby tigers in at the end of the month (I'm still sorting photos, so watch this space), but that was about it.
Baking
One of the things I miss most about work (other than the lovely colleagues and the pay cheque of course) is the willing guinea pigs for my baking. Without an office full of hungry mouths to feed, I'm forced to consume more calories than I should and force feed my housemates until they think I'm trying to kill them with cholesterol.
My going away gift to the office was a lemon curd swiss roll (loosely based on this GBBO recipe, but with extra lemon zest in the sponge and a buttercream to bulk out the filling) and a chocolate orange loaf (this recipe - I didn't need the orange juice as the mix was already runny enough, so I added some orange essence and it gave a really nice, strong orange flavour, I left off the icing). We've had a big crop of apples from the garden so I made an apple, sultana and ginger pie (I pre-cooked the apple, blind baked the pastry and put a layer of sultanas to absorb the moisture and actually managed a non-soggy bottom!) and an apple, ginger and syrup upside down cake which was almost more of a pudding due to sogginess, but was spectacularly tasty. I also made my first banoffee pie which was more 'asembling' than baking and was pretty catastrophic, in a very very good way!
Reading
Not a great month for reading, I was down 147 pages on my target of 40 pages per day, but I'm still up on my target for the year, so no harm done. Now that I'm not working, I'm getting a bit more into a pattern of going out for a coffee and reading, which is helping me hit and exceed my daily targets a bit more.
I finished off Hugh Howey's Wool trilogy with Shift and Dust. I felt the middle book suffered a bit being built of multiple threads of flashbacks which left me a bit bored because I knew where they would all end up. The final book though picked things back up and barrelled along. Overall I think the trilogy didn't quite live up to the polish and readability of the first book, but I'll certainly look out for this author in the future. I also read The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes which was a really fun idea poorly delivered due to amateur mistakes by the author such as overloading introductions and very poor editing.
I will say that all those books I felt actually suffered from being read on ebook. I really missed the easy ability to flick back and forth and double check things, particularly in the Wool series where each chapter is set in a different place and time and not being able to jump back and double check the time differences was very frustrating. Mind you, I'm staring at a two foot high pile of books that I have no space for on my shelves, so having spent the last 6 months reading mostly ebooks has at least meant the pile hasn't been added to!
I briefly tried reading History of Histories by John Burrow, but after two chapters I was bored to tears. It's a lot drier and more academic than I really wanted to read and also I felt spent more time talking about the actual history than how the historian was reporting it. Also I was extremely frustrated that the author didn't question whether someone writing about a war that was still ongoing was in fact a journalist rather than an historian.
Films
Two cinema trips this month and they could not have been more different films! Guardians of the Galaxy was a pure joy of a film to watch, completely hilarious and just really good fun from start to finish. The soundtrack album (Awesome Mix 1) is enough to make me smile. Lilting meanwhile was a small indie film that did have moments of humour, but was mostly about grief and heartache. It was pretty well done, but one of the central elements about translation became extremely tiresome after a while. I saw it at the new Curzon in Victoria though and it is a truly wonderful cinema to see even a mediocre film in.
I'm somewhat disappointed that Lovefilm's dvd delivery service is deteriorating now that it's been integrated to Amazon. I'm finding the site harder to use, delivery times slower and more things not available. Guess I'm just old fashioned wanting things by post. Still, I managed to tick off four more Disney films. I coincidentally watched Aladdin just a couple of days before the heart-breaking news about Robin Williams and I'm glad I did, because I wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate the lightness and brightness of the film afterwards. The Lion King is another film of that period that's holding up stunning well and is still a vibrant and original work. Surprisingly the same can be said of Cinderella which I really enjoyed, particularly appreciating the spunky heroine. Pinocchio sadly broke the trend and although I liked the warmth of the opening scenes I thought the story was just too unfocussed.
Other films were:
Television
I went through the Emmy nominees just before the awards explaining who should and shouldn't have been nominated, who should and would win. My predictions were pretty far off, but then so were most people's it would seem. Maybe the critics have moved on from Breaking Bad, but clearly the voters haven't. I was very happy to see Julianna Margulies win and all the awards for Sherlock, but most of the other awards left me a bit uninspired. The ceremony itself (or the edited down version that Sky Living showed) was fine, the opening monologue made me laugh, and at least these actors can read an auto-cue which is more than the people at the BAFTAs ever manage.
I've also been trying to polish off some pilots in advance of my end of year round-ups (hopefully coming this week). So I plodded through various teen offerings: Reign (going to endlessly trip over historical problems, and too uneven in tone), The 100 (potentially interesting story and characters) and Star-Crossed (25 year olds pretending to be teenagers and bodging together old ideas in a not very interesting way).
Most of the month was focussed on that, so I haven't really been up to that much. I did make it to Cambridge for a couple of visits, and got a trip to London Zoo to visit the baby tigers in at the end of the month (I'm still sorting photos, so watch this space), but that was about it.
Baking
One of the things I miss most about work (other than the lovely colleagues and the pay cheque of course) is the willing guinea pigs for my baking. Without an office full of hungry mouths to feed, I'm forced to consume more calories than I should and force feed my housemates until they think I'm trying to kill them with cholesterol.
My going away gift to the office was a lemon curd swiss roll (loosely based on this GBBO recipe, but with extra lemon zest in the sponge and a buttercream to bulk out the filling) and a chocolate orange loaf (this recipe - I didn't need the orange juice as the mix was already runny enough, so I added some orange essence and it gave a really nice, strong orange flavour, I left off the icing). We've had a big crop of apples from the garden so I made an apple, sultana and ginger pie (I pre-cooked the apple, blind baked the pastry and put a layer of sultanas to absorb the moisture and actually managed a non-soggy bottom!) and an apple, ginger and syrup upside down cake which was almost more of a pudding due to sogginess, but was spectacularly tasty. I also made my first banoffee pie which was more 'asembling' than baking and was pretty catastrophic, in a very very good way!
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Reading
Not a great month for reading, I was down 147 pages on my target of 40 pages per day, but I'm still up on my target for the year, so no harm done. Now that I'm not working, I'm getting a bit more into a pattern of going out for a coffee and reading, which is helping me hit and exceed my daily targets a bit more.
I finished off Hugh Howey's Wool trilogy with Shift and Dust. I felt the middle book suffered a bit being built of multiple threads of flashbacks which left me a bit bored because I knew where they would all end up. The final book though picked things back up and barrelled along. Overall I think the trilogy didn't quite live up to the polish and readability of the first book, but I'll certainly look out for this author in the future. I also read The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes which was a really fun idea poorly delivered due to amateur mistakes by the author such as overloading introductions and very poor editing.
I will say that all those books I felt actually suffered from being read on ebook. I really missed the easy ability to flick back and forth and double check things, particularly in the Wool series where each chapter is set in a different place and time and not being able to jump back and double check the time differences was very frustrating. Mind you, I'm staring at a two foot high pile of books that I have no space for on my shelves, so having spent the last 6 months reading mostly ebooks has at least meant the pile hasn't been added to!
I briefly tried reading History of Histories by John Burrow, but after two chapters I was bored to tears. It's a lot drier and more academic than I really wanted to read and also I felt spent more time talking about the actual history than how the historian was reporting it. Also I was extremely frustrated that the author didn't question whether someone writing about a war that was still ongoing was in fact a journalist rather than an historian.
Films
Two cinema trips this month and they could not have been more different films! Guardians of the Galaxy was a pure joy of a film to watch, completely hilarious and just really good fun from start to finish. The soundtrack album (Awesome Mix 1) is enough to make me smile. Lilting meanwhile was a small indie film that did have moments of humour, but was mostly about grief and heartache. It was pretty well done, but one of the central elements about translation became extremely tiresome after a while. I saw it at the new Curzon in Victoria though and it is a truly wonderful cinema to see even a mediocre film in.
I'm somewhat disappointed that Lovefilm's dvd delivery service is deteriorating now that it's been integrated to Amazon. I'm finding the site harder to use, delivery times slower and more things not available. Guess I'm just old fashioned wanting things by post. Still, I managed to tick off four more Disney films. I coincidentally watched Aladdin just a couple of days before the heart-breaking news about Robin Williams and I'm glad I did, because I wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate the lightness and brightness of the film afterwards. The Lion King is another film of that period that's holding up stunning well and is still a vibrant and original work. Surprisingly the same can be said of Cinderella which I really enjoyed, particularly appreciating the spunky heroine. Pinocchio sadly broke the trend and although I liked the warmth of the opening scenes I thought the story was just too unfocussed.
Other films were:
- The Double - an ok film, but so deeply unsettling in tone that I came very close to switching it off.
- Captain America: Winter Soldier - boring. Just alternating fighting and exposition. Mind you I was completely spoiled on the plot.
- Calvary - Not exactly an easy or cheerful film to watch, but extremely good.
- Winters Bone - I was surprised at how easy and engaging I found this film, I was expecting something a lot more pretentious, but Jennifer Lawrence completely drew me in.
- Struck by Lightning - a good high school movie, capturing an interesting tone. But ultimately a quite depressing story.
Television
I went through the Emmy nominees just before the awards explaining who should and shouldn't have been nominated, who should and would win. My predictions were pretty far off, but then so were most people's it would seem. Maybe the critics have moved on from Breaking Bad, but clearly the voters haven't. I was very happy to see Julianna Margulies win and all the awards for Sherlock, but most of the other awards left me a bit uninspired. The ceremony itself (or the edited down version that Sky Living showed) was fine, the opening monologue made me laugh, and at least these actors can read an auto-cue which is more than the people at the BAFTAs ever manage.
The Honourable Woman - fantastic performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal, and fascinating stories and characters, but the plot got away from me and there were a few clumsy moments.- Fargo: Season 1 - on my first pass of the pilot I wasn't inspired, but I watched it a second time so I could write a review and I actually got hooked and compulsively watched the series through in a couple of days. Amazing performances, quirky tone and a twisty story drew me in and kept me gripped.
- True Detective: Pilot review - A second viewing of this pilot however only reinforced my lack of interest. A nice idea and a leading pair made in heaven, but the tone and direction left me bored and un-engaged.
- The Following: Season 2 - stupid entertainment, nothing more or less.
- Almost Human: Season 1 - a brilliant buddy cop series with a pretty good sci-fi skin on it. Sad that it didn't get more viewers.
I've also been trying to polish off some pilots in advance of my end of year round-ups (hopefully coming this week). So I plodded through various teen offerings: Reign (going to endlessly trip over historical problems, and too uneven in tone), The 100 (potentially interesting story and characters) and Star-Crossed (25 year olds pretending to be teenagers and bodging together old ideas in a not very interesting way).
