Welcome back to the second instalment of Etoris. Read below the harrowing tale of my weekend. Okay maybe not so much harrow (technically correct but sounds odd to me. Making a note for a future rant on Proper English vs The Real World) but definitely a weekend.
Books
Into the Fantasy section, on the weekend I finished reading The Liar’s Key, book 2 in The Red Queen’s War, by Mark Lawrence.
This is the second book in the author’s second series; if you enjoyed his Broken Empire Trilogy I highly recommend you give this a read.
I don’t want to give anything away, nothing worse than having a good book spoiled for you before you read it but Prince Jalan Kendeth and Snorri ver Snagaon have another action packed adventure.
Lawrence’s post-apocalyptic world is humorous, grim and a wildly entertaining place. He manages to take characters that in any other book would be loathed and makes you care about what happens to them and cheer for their victory.
A great read. I am eagerly anticipating the third in the series. If you haven’t done so I definitely recommend giving Lawrence a go.
The Red Queen has set her players on the board…
Winter is keeping Prince Jalan Kendeth far from the longed-for luxuries of his southern palace. And although the North may be home to his companion, the warrior Snorri ver Snagason, he is just as eager to leave.
For the Viking is ready to challenge all of Hel to bring his wife and children back into the living world. He has Loki’s key – now all he needs is to find the door.
As all wait for the ice to unlock its jaws, the Dead King plots to claim what was so nearly his – the key into the world – so that the dead can rise and rule
Plumbing
The next part of my weekend adventure involved plumbing. Who in their right mind messes with the plumbing in their house most people would be asking themselves about now. The smartass in me wants to say plumbers. The realist in me wants to say idiots. I’m not the former and I like to think I’m not the later. What I am is sick of doing dishes.
My wife and I recently bought our own house. Like many first houses bought by people with little money it is in need of significant work. We are slowly making plans for a large scale renovation and one of the priorities will be a new kitchen.
Now the plumbing was not undertaken due to any large scale or catastrophic failure but rather to enhance the facilities we currently have available. Like I said I am sick of doing dishes.
A couple of months ago my parents gifted us with a bench top dishwasher, about half the size of a regular dishwasher it screws into the sink tap and water drains into the sink via another tube. Compact, easy to use and easy to set up. Sounds perfect, right, we certainly thought so, that was until we discovered that in order to attach it to the sink tap we would have change the tap. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was a nightmare.
Multiple trips to Bunnings (if you are not Australian, read gigantic hardware store) to source materials and tools, a leaking first attempt and numerous other problems including taps that don’t want to come apart and have to be removed completely. Amway, four hours later and I have finally managed to attach a new tap, not as aesthetically pleasing as the last one, but I can screw the dishwasher into it, so yay.
Hopefully I haven’t caused any major problems and at least I won’t have to hand wash anymore dishes. See the photos below.
Puppies
The final item on my ticket for the weekend was Puppies or to be more specific a Puppy. My wife and I are getting a puppy. We received the email Sunday afternoon that the breeder had shortlisted us for a puppy. I had to jump through hoops for this puppy, including writing a mini essay on why we wanted a puppy, how we would care for it, so forth and so on. I wrote the hell out of that essay, my wife cried when she read it.
Anyway we finally found out we are going to get a puppy and my wife was ecstatic. It is a Cavoodle, half Toy Poodle and half Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, I think Americans call it a Cavapoo, which is awful and mean. See picture below, it is one of these four, super cute, only two weeks old at the moment so stay tuned for updates.
Now I just need to find a way to tell the cat. He is going to be so cranky.
Thanks for reading.
etoris 