I've spent the past week in the company of my partner,  hazelwolf. My latest submission is the gift he brought for me; I gave him a card, a DVD about wolves, discs with free-to-play MMO's we hope to play together, and a lovely sketch from  kaputotter (which I don't think she has put online yet; I'll try and get Hazel to upload it to his account.)

I'd also over-paid  sevas-tra a little for the beautiful painting she did for me; rather than refund a small sum, I asked if she would sketch Hazel as a wolf, based on his profile picture. She said that this was fine, and the result made him happy. (This is another I'll ask him to feature in his gallery.)

The last (physical) thing I got for him was rather on the spur of the moment; I saw that  allytha was offering locket commissions, so I showed him the link and asked if he would like one, as I happened to have enough funds to cover it. As you can see, it's rather lovely. It should arrive before too long, and I hope it will come before he has to go back home in about a week.

On Valentine's day itself, I took him to see a movie, Never Let Me Go. I had been misled about the film by the trailer and brief synopsis; Hazel had briefly read the book on which it's based while studying at university, and assumed I knew the storyline. I was mostly attracted by the director, Mark Romanek, whose previous work I'd enjoyed, and the fact that the adaptation was done by Alex Garland. Anyway, the film turned out to be good, but very emotionally harrowing; not what I would have chosen if I'd known about its content! Rather like Grave of the Fireflies, for instance, I'm glad I watched it, and it was very good, but I could quite happily live without ever seeing it again.

Before we went out to the film, I'd arranged for a delivery of food. Where I live, there is an excellent Japanese restaurant which delivers; we had difficulty for a while deciding what and where we wanted to eat, and by the time we figured it out, most places were booked up. I thought that if we ate at home, we could get more food, and we wouldn't have to pay out for drinks at a restaurant. The food was superb as always, and we both enjoyed it a great deal. I'd bought a bottle of sake for us as well, as I'm unable to drink wine, and we've been gradually drinking that too. Unfortunately the premium-quality stuff had sold out -- perhaps due to Chinese New Year, though of course sake is Japanese in origin -- so I was only able to get the regular kind. Still, it's a drink we enjoy, so maybe another time.

Today, we had planned to visit friends for some tabletop roleplaying -- Dungeons & Dragons -- that was due to go on for a couple of days. Unfortunately, I was not feeling at my best and didn't think I could manage to go out, so I'm staying at home. I have some obligations to take care of here anyway, so it's not so much a trouble. It's rather in my nature to need a bit of solitude now and then, though cuddling a plushie is not the same as having my partner in bed with me.

I've also got a whole bunch of creative plans. I am working on various kinds of machinima and video work, and I plan to get back into photography as well -- including trying out my old film camera once again. Furthermore, I'm planning to try out some digital art, first beginning with colouring some pictures, as I've recently bought a graphics tablet. I'm going to work on my music more as well, though that's a case of both re-learning software and learning physical instruments almost from scratch; in all cases, things are going well, though progress is a slow but steady.