...was better than I'd expected it to be. About a month ago my brother suggested we should check it out, so a few weeks ago we went to the Playhouse Theatre at South Bank via CityCat (which I haven't been on in years) to see if it was all it was cracked up to be. My life is starting to feel like an episode of Frasier! The cast of 12 (unsurprisingly) was filled by well-selected Australian actors who are probably better known for their work on television than on stage, but who undoubtedly provided a performance of greater depth live than can be achieved through the broadcast medium. Among them, Peter Phelps, Marcus Graham and George Kapiniaris gave excellent character renditions.

That same day I also checked out the movie Donnie Darko, which was an interesting watch and a movie which you'd benefit from seeing a few times.

Moving from the small screen to the big, I saw Collateral this weekend and in a rare occurance for me it exceeded expectations. The biggest mistake the film industry continues to make is giving too much of a movie's plot away in its trailers, so I was happy to not again experience the all-too-familiar "I know where this is going because I saw it in a preview" syndrome.

Work is keeping me very busy; I'm involved in a mix of projects dealing with the web, special media, print and advertising, all of which have tight deadlines. My first magazine ad with national distribution has been proofed and will appear later this month, and I'm now contracted in a weekly print project where I design a series of posters and newspaper ads, with the occasional billboard or other special medium project. Part of the ongoing weekly project is early morning meetings on Monday and Friday, which is obliterating my sleeping routine. All of the print work has meant that I've had a greater need to do colour proofs of designs with quick turn-around times. In response to that I've invested in an Epson colour laser printer which arrived last week after it was temporarily lost in transit - eep. Although it's considered compact for a colour laser printer, which are traditionally very large compared to black and white lasers, it still weighs approximately 30 kg and takes up a 50x50x40 cm block of room space. The output quality and the convenience of having a colour laser inhouse is definitely worth the price tag.

In the name of diversity, a large order of coffee mugs should appear on my doorstep tomorrow for another client. The order has been tricky to organise because the mugs have a steeply curved surface (limiting the amount of usable space), there are multiple colour screens (which doubles the number of things that can go wrong) and the base colour is matte black (which does weird things to the screened colours when the mugs are fired, particularly for red paints which often oxidise slightly in the firing process). *fingers crossed*

On the kiteboarding front, different designs continue to be selected by customers for their boards, so each week I get to see another one of my designs in its final form. The most recent were Absolute, CB, Overflow and Sakura, all of which look great in the flesh. One of the boards headed overseas while the others were for Australian customers. It's funny to think that right now someone on the other side of the world is carrying around a board with my designs on it.

On the concerning side of life, a friend of mine is in quite a bit of pain at the moment and it's suspected that he's suffering from Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an immune condition that causes the production of antibodies which attack the myelin coating of nerve cells in the spinal cord. The degradation of the myelin sheath (which acts as an insulator around the nerves) makes it difficult for electrical impules to travel correctly through axons, which results in paralysis and all kinds of other problems. To put it simply, suddenly you find yourself in pain and unable to walk, and eventually it can advance to complete paralysis and organ failure. Hmm...