Not Much of a Collection

So... Collectormania London, eh? Where did it go wrong?

Well... the entrance was via Pizza Express at Olympia. Up the stairs, though a massively empty room in which the tickets were sold, then through the doors into... what looked very much like a completely empty industrial lockup.

Empty, that is, apart from the first row of 'star' guests... evidently not thought of highly enough to actually be inside the main show area.

Beyond this tragic scene was possible the most poorly laid out retail area, boxed in by some of the most weirdly-placed stage areas, and even more blocks of star guests basically crammed into whatever spare corners they could find. I was vaguely amused to see that Mercedes McNab was "unable to attend due to ill health", because she was in the crap horror movie I saw last night, Vipers, in which she was eaten by a pack of snakes. I wonder if the 'ill health' was brought about by the appearance of this film on television the weekend she was attending the show...

There was a 'Japanese Culture Area' which could politely be described as 'sparse', or more accurately described as basically nonexistent beyond the sign, and a robe hanging on a partition.

The retail area was pretty dull - for me - but fairly standard Collectormania guff - lots of autographs, photos, posters, cards, DVDs (some of which looked pretty darned dodgy). Only a couple of stalls were selling TransFormers, and those were a good £5 over average retail, so I elected to save my money until these later waves hit the UK shelves.

I did buy a Christmas present for my mother, and one for my companion... and a purple, cat-shaped neck rest for myself. Other than that, I suspect my companion bought more than me - mostly from Genki Gear, who complained about being lost in the back of the hall, to the point where it seemed that no-one was coming to their stall and, in fact, the poor folks allotted the space behind their stall packed up an left the show yesterday. We didn't even feel the need for a second turn around the place. I doubt we spent much more than an hour there before leaving, rather disappointed with the whole thing.

I dropped in on my folks for dinner - an Iceland three-bird-roast, which was pretty tasty - and much chattering, and picked up a few nicknacks before heading home by bus, thanks to the engineering works (not even the tube strike, which started this evening!)

I really shouldn't be up this late, considering I need to be getting up for work in just over five hours... but I'm not exactly tired right now... That said, I'm only still up because I decided to watch another shit horror movie featuring snakes, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, which was on straight after Beowulf. What is this, Serpent Movie Weekend?

Not A Snow Day So Far

Had a very strange experience this morning: I woke up at about 7.30am having had a dream where I was woken up by my computer going 'bong' (as in 'standard Windows error bong'), went into the lounge to check it out - because I surely switched it off before bed last night - only to find it had been stolen. Just the computer, monitor and keyboard, nothing else in the entire lounge, let alone the rest of the flat.

Leaving the lounge, I noticed my front door was ajar... So I opened it fully, and found a team of three guys disassembling various ill-gotten gains from all the flats, my computer included. The one closest to my front door warned me off: it was their stuff now, and I didn't want to risk trying to take it from them, did I?

But they were unarmed... and he was the only one who was not completely distracted by their deconstructions... So I slipped back into the flat and called the police.

Waking up from that I knew in my head that I had not really been burgled... And I had no trouble going back to sleep for another hour or so... but, having lived here now for, what, a year and a half at least?.. Having lived here for that long without incident, and having only once before been woken up by the sound of a slamming door (which turned out to be downstairs) why on Earth would my subconscious throw up the image of burglary?

No sign of the threatened snow so far today... Though I must admit that, when I first saw the light creeping in past my curtains this morning, it seemed so bright and white for this time of year that I assumed I'd been completely snowed in overnight. Not so - only a very thin layer of cloud in the sky, so it's undoubtedly cold outside, but the weather reports are now suggesting a 'chance of snow' from Tuesday.

So I'm waiting to hear from the friend with whom I may be heading to Collectormania London... depending on whether or not she's been snowed in where she is...

Activity

After this morning's mopey angst-fest of a posting, I've started taking Kalms again. Remarkably good results, so far...

I realised fairly early on that I had discussed with a friend the idea of popping down to Collectormania London, running at Olympia 2 this weekend. She'd forgotten as well but, assuming we're not all snowed in tomorrow, we may pop down then.

Of course, that means I have to reschedule popping over to my parents for the afternoon/evening, rather than lunch. Thankfully, since I'd be relying on buses to get there and home again, the impending Tube strike will have no effect on that plan.

So, what have I been doing with my 'today'?

Well, probably not a massive amount, in the grand scheme of things... But I did, on a whim, decide to finally bake the Betty Crocker brownie mix... with a couple of added ingredients. Of course, I didn't already have these 'in stock', so to speak, so I had to pop out into the cold and go on a hunt for some specific confectioneries. In this regard, I'm actually lucky enough to have an old style Confectioner on a corner down the road - shelves full of jars of sweets priced by the quarter, and everything!

Not being entirely certain of the name of the product I was hoping to find, I was glad to see exactly what I was after the moment I walked in the door. Except it wasn't quite exactly what I was after... Pop Rocks, yes... but not Cola flavour. I asked the girl at the counter if she knew whether they stocked any flavour other than Cola, and she replied in the negative so, having wiped out with the strongest contender, I picked out a Plan B (chocolate coated toffee bits) and went on my way to the Supermarkets. Tesco let me down completely (though I did pick up a copy of Total Film with a TRON Legacy mousemat as the cover-mounted freebie - adding further warm fuzziness to the ongoing geeky joygasm of expectation), Iceland had part of what I was after and Sainsbury's filled in the most significant gap in my nefarious plan.

The thought I'd had, you see, was that I could add something like Pop Rocks to the cake mixture prior to baking, and thereby and an element of surprise to the brownies. Going by the piece I've tried, it's barely noticeable, if at all - the stuff was popping like crazy as soon as it made contact with the moist brownie mixture - but I still have 24 pieces to take with me into work on Monday... Someone might get lucky. The mixture was also topped off with the 'Volcanic Popping Candy' Terry's Chocolate Orange, just to see how that turned out.

Well, turns out it adds at least five minutes to the cooking time... But I got there in the end.

There's still a frankly awesome pile of washing up to do... Not least from Friday night's efforts to make Sushi in my own kitchen, but I think I've cleared up the worst of it (or, at least prepared the way).

Fairly soon, I shall be settling down to watch a crappy horror movie about genetically engineered, man eating snakes... Crappy horror movies are cool... sometimes...