Armageddon Expo 2015

Oh my gosh where do I start! 
Yesterday I went to Armageddon Expo in Wellington and it was awesome! I'm still squeeing so bad that this post will be all over the show so sorry about that but comic con guys! Comic con!
Unfortunately I have a very dull friend circle so no one that I know wanted to go but comic con is so worth going to that I didn't mind going alone. Wellington is a three hour drive away from my home (usually just over two actually but there are so many road works atm) so I left early in the morning to make the most of the day.
The con didn't open until 12 and since I arrived early I went and checked out an art gallery where they had fantasy themed pictures. I'm not usually an art fan but when the paintings have dragons in them they can hold my attention longer! I didn't take any photos as I'm never sure if I'm allowed to take pics in an art gallery and I'm too shy to ask.
Anyway! After a lunch of cheap and nasty chinese food and a sneaky visit to a Typo store to stock up on notebooks (which you will hear more about later) I headed for the con!

I think one of the main attractions at comic con is the cosplay. I wish I was brave enough to dress up as my favourite character and I really admire the dedication that some people put into their costumes. Maybe one day I will. I didn't actually get many photos as it's hard enough to get a good pic in a crowded place when you have the guts to ask someone to stand somewhere to pose for you but I'm a wimp. I did jump in on this pic though. They were actually posing for their friend. Last year they did a cosplay parade on the main stage which I thought they should have done this year too cos then I could have got some good pics XD

The stalls are the second best attraction for me at con. I know that I should say the celebrities are a big draw but NZ is such a small country that they only seem to get vague secondary T.V characters to appear here and I usually haven't even heard of them. So stalls! I find it very hard to buy geeky stuff in my home town and even the bigger out lying towns seem to have little choice so I tend to go a bit crazy at con and do my whole years geek shopping at once.

 Can you blame me though when they have stalls like these?! If only I was rich I could buy so much more.

They also had some activity stalls and a whole wrestling ring. I thought this bash a knight was pretty cool. I didn't really fancy a go myself but I sat and watched for a while.

Just about all my purchases this year seemed to have a Lord of the Rings theme. I'm a sucker for it. I bought these two necklaces because the price was pretty good and although the quality isn't amazing I have wanted the key and leaf for a long time but have never been able to afford them in any form.

 And I've saved the best for last. I bought a sword! Meep! I've wanted one for years and tbf it's only a half size but that's ok because it's a Hobbit sword! It's Bilbo's sword Sting and I love it and want to carry it everywhere with me. Isn't it awesome!

I'm so in love with my new purchases and don't be surprised if they appear again at some point. Have you been to Comic Con this year? Did you buy some totally cool items too? I'd love to know what you got.

Mother's Day

Mother's day this year was a bit different for me mostly because my Dad was here too. Usually I take Mum out for a meal, cook something or I buy her a bunch of little gifts so that it's like a mini christmas. This year though I decided that we should go away for the weekend, Dad included, to Taupo which is known for it's thermal waters.

Taupo is only about 2-3 hours away from where we live, depending on fast you drive and how many stops you make so we set aside the whole day to get there knowing that we could do the tourist things along the way. Our first stop was actually on the side of the road where there was some driftwood art in the shape of a kiwi which I thought was not only amazing in it's own right but also well placed because along the way there were road signs warning about kiwis. We passed the main mountains of the north island on the way and although Ruapehu didn't have a lot of snow it still looked lovely. For those of you who don't know, Mount Ruapehu is actually used as the filming location for Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings. 

 

Our first main stop though was a little thermal town half way to Taupo where we stopped to have a bathe in a thermal pool. We also had a look around their thermal forest (which was free) where there are natural hot pools and bubbling mud areas. Me and Dad couldn't resist hopping the fence for a better look even though there are danger signs. We will get caught out one day but until then we will keep bending the rules. The water was so hot there that the local people use it for cooking, they put baskets of food into the water to boil or build wooden platforms over the vents to steam. I would have loved to give it a try but we didn't have any food with us that could be cooked!  

 

On the way past Lake Taupo, which is the largest lake in New Zealand, I managed to get stuck behind some slow traffic so I pulled into on of the rest areas and it just happened to have a family of black swans and an awesome crop of mushrooms.

The main highlight of the trip was the Wai-O-Tapu thermal area which we stumbled across while looking for another thermal swimming pool which we knew was somewhere on the outskirts of Taupo. Along the Wai-O-Tapu road was the most amazing boiling mud lake I've seen and I took so many pics and videos of it that I have more than I know what to do with. Unfortunately out of the 200nodd pics I took only about 4 are decent and even then they aren't anywhere near as impressive as the actual thing. Mostly I think the noise is the most fascinating and with out that it really is just mud!

Further along the road we saw a sign for a geyser but when we got to the end of the road it turned out that you had to pay to go in to see and being the cheap skates that we are we didn't want to pay, especially because we had been told they put chemicals into the geyser to make it perform at certain times of day which didn't seem right to us. There's no point going to see a natural wonder if it's not natural after all. Feeling a bit disappointed we carried on down the road until we saw some more steam and pulled over to have a look. Turns out we had found a thermal stream where the temperature was low enough to bathe. It was a balmy 38c we reckon which was lovely and hot but not burning. After a hasty road side change into our bathing suits we got into the water and really enjoyed the atmosphere and the fact that once again we had found something so amazing for free! The pools that we had been aiming for would have cost us $15 each and are usually quite busy. Bathing in the stream was not only nicer on our pockets it felt far more special knowing that the water was pure thermal, no temperature control or ph checks, no infrastructure, just the trees and the bird song. It was truly magical. 

 

After our bathe and slightly awkward change back into clothes between the doors of the car we decided to go and have another look at the geyser area. This time when we got there the gates were open so we wandered down and had a look at what all the fuss was about. It was actually amazing in it's natural state and although it wasn't consistent it was still rather impressive which made us wonder if they really needed to put chemicals in to impress the tourists. Again we took far too many photos and even played the camera settings to get a group shot of us. We had the place to ourselves as the sign had been removed from the end of the road which made us feel dodgy about the company that runs the area, almost like they didn't want people to know it was there unless you were going to the paid show. They had a whole area fenced further down the road that you could pay to go into but it cost $32 a person and from the look of the brochure had nothing more amazing that what we had already seen for free, so needless to say we didn't go into the complex.

It was an amazing weekend in so many ways and the fact that we managed to do so much without destroying our wallets really made it all the better!

Book Haul!

So I may have to admit to having a bit of a fetish when it comes to books. I like to read them of course but also I just like the feel of them, the smell, they way they look, the sound of turning pages... I've got it pretty bad.
As much as I love reading books I think I actually like to shop for and collect them more. I'm quite happy to let books sit on my shelves unread for months while I go out into the world and explore because I know that they are mine and they will be waiting for me when I do decide to spend time indoors.  I suppose I am a book collector first and a reader second. Saying that though, there are days, especially in winter, where I can read solidly for 10 hours only stopping for toilet breaks or food and even then the book usually accompanies me on my forays!
For a long time now I've had the dream of turning one of the rooms in the house into a library but since it isn't my house I haven't really pushed the issue. It's been difficult though as there are just the two of us living in a house that has four bedrooms and even an office area off the lounge. For some reason Mum has insisted on having the two spare rooms set up as guest rooms even though, I swear to whatever deity exists, we have someone stay maybe once every 5 years. And even then it's usually a singular person, not plural...
I may have managed to convince her otherwise though since almost all available space in my room has a bookshelf crammed with books. If she won't let me go ahead with the idea of giving my books a room to themselves then I may just have to look into getting floor to ceiling bookshelves installed in my room, which is a 10 foot span. Mwahaha
So onto my haul! I've got a real solid love of Tolkien and being an op shop scrounger I come across his books fairly regularly so I have decided to try and collect as many different editions of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as I can. On this trip alone I found four that I didn't have! Two of them are only part 1 or 2 of the collection they were released as but that's ok. It will be a challenge for another day to find the rest.

As you may be able to see in the top pic I also managed to find a few books belonging to series that I need for my set. Some sets I think will take me years to complete just because they are so large or because they are so popular. Terry Pratchett for example is one my favourite authors hands down but he is loved by so many other readers that his books rarely make it into charity stores and even less so in an obscure town and the bottom of the world! I do occasionally see one or two but invariably I already own it or they have marked them at such ridiculously high prices that I leave them where they are.
That's the one big condition of my collection, no book should cost me more than $10 and preferably not more than $3. I get almost all of my books for just $1 which makes haul shopping extra fun because you feel like you can treat yourself to an absolute mountain of books knowing the cashier won't be asking you to empty your bank account. If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen that I bought four books recently that at full price would have cost me nearly $100 but because they came from the bargain bin I only parted with $8 at the till. That's $92 that I can spend on other books, hopefully 92 more!