The season two finale of Battlestar Galactica was a thing of beauty. While some of the events I saw coming did happen, they were just plot points in the episode rather than the basis of a cliffhanger like I'd suspected. What actually happened at the end took my breath away. BSG felt like it was floundering a bit around the middle of this season, compared to the tightness of the first season I was worrying they might be losing it. But safe to say this week's episode has restored my confidence that BSG is the best thing on telly featuring spaceships, ever, and one of the best things on telly full stop.

In case anyone was worried due to my previous posts, yes I did manage to get some kung po sauce in the end. I did a stirfry thing with quorn pieces and very nice it was too.

Speaking of cooking, I've had a few nice catering-related evenings around Lancaster since my last post. Christian made us all pancakes on Pancake Day, and Dave cooked for us when we went round there to play Diplomacy. Will of Feedback fame provided the game, which I'd never played before. It was kind of a Risk type thing (based on my distant memories of Risk) where you tried to conquer Europe using little army dudes. But the game's quite cleverly set up so that you have fuck all chance of doing it by yourself, you pretty much have to make deals with other players to get anywhere. This weekend we were all round Sian's where she cooked us fajitas. I love fajitas, they're so tasty but so easy to make (not that anything's easy when you're catering for eight people of course, but I mean on an individual level). I like how they're "customisable", it's like having a sandwich at Subway or something (but you feel like you've actually eaten a meal rather than just eaten a big sandwich). Sian's soiree started off quite civilised, though by the time it got to midnight quite a lot of booze had been guzzled down by everyone there (shock horror) and there may have been incidents of bad rock karaoke, "urban" dancing, and Dave waltzing with a wooden cat.

I had a bit of a flashgeekback this weekend and somehow ended up lurking around some Call of Cthulhu sites. Don't judge me! I think I got weirdly excited at the idea of listening to a podcast featuring Sandy Petersen. It was quite cool actually though Peterson himself sounded like a slightly hysteric nerd. I don't know what I expected of a roleplaying game designer really, some sort of James Bond? Props to him though for creating such a lasting and (still) original game though. It made me worryingly nostalgic for my (now disturbingly distant) Uni days of rolling dice and avoiding any contact with fresh air or girls. Of course I still manage the fresh air and girls part these days though. Anyway while perusing the site I came across this short story by Charles Stross (author of scifi-laugh-a-minute-novel The Atrocity Archives), which I heartily recommend to anyone who has a passing interest in Lovecraftian stuff (though it won't make much sense if you haven't). A look at Stross's site reveals that he has actually put an entire novel of his up for free download as well, which is pretty cool. Much as I hate reading anything longer than a magazine article off a screen, I may well grab it and then print it off or something.

Heh, I've got into the habit of using the LJ spellcheck before I post an entry due to my spazzy typing style, and apparently "podcast" isn't a word. Good to know they're keeping on the cutting edge of the internet there.

Today's mp3 is by Islands, a nice Canadian band made up of two-thirds of the sadly defunct Unicorns. While the album isn't as good as The Unicorns' mighty WWCOHWWG it's pretty cool, you should probably buy it.

Islands - Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone