Had a fantastic day with my sister and her kids the other day. I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to her, it’s great to be a better brother and uncle than I was years ago. Most of the time we do end up discussing our oftentimes difficult parents and upbringing - glad we turned out okay despite it all. Did a bunch of gardening over Easter. We took out most of the stone bricks and I started repaved parts where we want to extend the brickwork. Quite fun actually to lay down brickwork like that, it’s easy to do but a bit of a physical challenge as I’m using shouldering back muscles that almost never get to work. I’m hoping the weather helps a bit the coming weeks so we can get the garden plant-ready asap.
just watched the redone cut of alien 3 and it was better than i expected - kind of odd compared to the other two and clearly the inferior to both, but it had its own something to it honestly the biggest negative for me was all the stuff with the alien which is kind of funny - i liked all the convicts and their weird behaviour, and the little thing with the doctor and ripley was cute even though there's never been a lezzier character to make straight - but there's no mystery to any of the horror elements and the action is really repetitive. i feel like it's a knock on the movie to have the best part be the character interactions when the writing is not standout great at any point the cgi and the compositing is pretty bad but it was the era for it and the practicals were pure and true like they needed to be i dunno, people make it sound to be awful and the director hates it, but i thought it was alright. i guess if you're grading on the curve of the first two then it's not good though
I recently read Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time, as I somehow managed to avoid any exposure to Vonnegut in school. What a book! It's sad to be reading this 55 years after it was written, in the midst of another ground war in Europe. There's a lot of timeless lessons to be learned from this book, and it's a shame we haven't absorbed more of them. So it goes.
Sent a couple of chapters from my latest experiment in novel writing to an agent. Haven't heard back, which may be par for the course. I'll keep going with it regardless and try again once it's closer to completion. Had a great long weekend visiting Beechworth, land of Ned Kelly and the place where I was raised but haven't returned to in years. Perfect weather. Excellent wine. Great food. Astonishingly friendly people.