It's Difficult To Use Survival Untrained, But Apparently It Is Doable

Today has been, I would have to say, a fairly good day - and for a variety of reasons. First of all, I didn't have to go to work today. Now, don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy my job - but there is just some little...thrill (I suppose) that I get when I'm not at work, and it's a weekday. I know that everybody else is also not at work (well, at least, those who don't work at, say, Woolies or something) but that isn't the point. If I wanted to watch bad daytime TV, or something like that, then I could. As it stands we have been watching Heston Blumenthal create dishes out of animals that are increasingly bizarre, and feed them to celebrities who rave about the wonderful tastes and presentation are. The man is some kind of genious - as Spud said, he could probably roast two guinea pigs, ejaculate into the sauce, and serve it as some kind of medieval fertility ritual, and it would be as t'were ambrosia itself.

This Is Heston's Ejaculating Cake - It Is As Close As We've Come To Having Him...Uh...Put His "Personal Touch" Into His Dishes...Yet...

The second reason that days off are the (as I have been banned from saying out loud) bomb diggity, is that I get to spend the entire day hanging out with Spud, Squiggles, Lydia, and Emma (and today, Laura, her daughter Alexis, and her boyfriend Johnno.) Now, regular readers of my blog would probably thinking two things rights now - the first would be that Andy is missing from my list of people I get to hang out with, and the second would be that I hang out with Spud, Squiggles, Lydia, and Emma all the time (so what makes today any more special?) Well, to field your first question, people of the Internet (and loyal readers whom I love like squishies) Andy has (alas and alack) gone back to Sydney to live and work, and so I now only see him at irregular intervals when he has to come to Bathurst (read: very very rarely) or online in DC Universe Online (almost nightly.)

Why Does Every Friend I Whip Leave Me?

The second question, however, is...well...more difficult. I mean, yes, I do spend almost every waking hour (when I'm not at work) in the company of those particular people. But that, to me, isn't a bad thing - not in the slightest. In fact, I consider the time that I spend with them insufficient - they are, just...the coolest people I know. Seriously. We had a spectacular sextuplet, and now that, even though we've lost Andy, we're still at a...er...a...quality quintuplet? I dunno, it was either something starting with "q" or something starting with a "p", and pentuplet isn't really an accepted word.

Today's reason for not working is, for those of you not currently up with Australia's public holiday system, Australia Day. It is basically a celebration of the day the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove in 1788 - kind of like Thanksgiving, but not really, but sort of. I dunno - it's our national day, and is the day to celebrate all the things that Australia means to you. In my case, it means not going to work, and (currently) being too hot for comfort.

I Couldn't Find An Image That Summed Up My Thoughts On Australia - Searching For "Australia Day" Tends To Just Show Pictures Of Drunk People...Dunno Why...

The only negative thing that I have experienced today (aside from the blasted heat) is the fact that my barbecue has reminded me at just how inept I am when it comes to being handy. Now, this is certainly not the first time that I have failed at would could be called a basic household task (enters flashback mode) there was the time that I was shifting the TV a couple of years ago, and it decided to discharge into my hands; there was the time that I tried to clean out the shower head because it was filled with dirt and now the joint does funny things involving spurting water; and most recently today Squiggles and I attempted to light my barbecue. For those who don't know, my barbecue is one of those ones that actually require a wood fire, and not just gas or charcoal. It doesn't look too hard to light, and Squiggles and I are fairly smart guys - how hard could it be? Well, if it's any indication, we ended up cooking out steaks and sausages in a frying pan on the stove.

Bear Grylls Is, Ostensibly, Bizzaro Tiger

The moral of this story is that, in Dungeons and Dragons systems, the Survival skill should not be usable untrained. Well, okay, maybe it could be usable untrained, but still, you need a nice Wisdom score to counteract the fact that there are no ranks in it, and really, what kind of non-cleric, non-monk would put anything into Wisdom? I have enough points in charisma and intelligence that I can get by otherwise...And still I'm not a bard...yet...