Christopher Hamilton

My buddy Keith and I have decided in a haze of beer to go to Vegas. Normally we would say lets go, but never actually go through with it. Well tonight we decided that we were going and we would book flights before we sobered up enough to change our minds.

So…. as of April 14th until April 21st I will be in Vegas playing cards and having fun. My birthday is the 18th so it’s a birthday present to myself

It’s probably the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever done but screw it..

It’s Vegas Baby

A few of us went out for lunch yesterday to a new bar that’s opened near work. The food was pretty good, and the several beers were pretty good too. We had an extended lunch and didn’t get back into the office until about 3.30, at which point no-one really wanted to do much work.

Then at about 5pm we decided that we’d all had enough and headed out to the pub.

Several hours, two bars, and a whole lot of alcohol later I was staggering home, listening to my iPod, and singing quite loudly in accompaniment to whatever song come on. It must have been an interesting experience for anyone who could hear me.

I was aware how off key I was singing, and I was trashed, so I hate to think how bad it actually was. The novelty of one minute singing a James Morrison song and the next minute roaring out an old Metallica track had me laughing half the journey.

I was very drunk.

I think I got home around midnight, although it might have been a little earlier, I’m not really sure. I do know I talked some gibberish at my flatmate for five minutes before going to bed, and then getting back up to talk more gibberish

I woke up this morning and surprisingly wasn’t hung over, I was fantastically thirsty. Now though, it’s taken a few hours but I’m starting to feel a little crappy.

The coffee and copious amounts of water are going to keep me going for another hour or two until lunch, at which point I can have a decent meal and top up my alcohol stream.

I need to take care of a few work related things and then play some more Stick Cricket before then though.

Have a merry X-Mas and a drunktastic New Year

We had our official flat leaving party on Saturday night. It started of as a deep stacks, long blind, poker tournament and we had nine players, which is a few more than normal in our game.

Usually we have several short poker tournaments which means there can usually be a few winners throughout the course of the evening. Since this tournament was meant to be special, we quadrupled the buy-in, and ensured that it lasted most of the evening.

We were going to buy a trophy for the winner, but in our usual badly planned way we didn’t bother, it’s going to be an annual tournament so we may still get one. We did manage to get a prize for the first player out though.

It was called the Mmmbop Award and was a copy of the first Hanson album.

My flatmate Dave was the winner of this unfortunate award, and for the rest of the year will now go by the name Mmmbop. What makes it even funnier is that he’s the most unbelievable critic of anything he doesn’t like, and he really hates Hanson.

I have to give congratulations to Barry who managed to win the 1st Annual Tournament, crushing Keith in drunken heads up play. Barry managed to wipe out at least four of the nine players, including Dave, and Myself.

It’s a very fitting win as the tournament was his idea.

So congrats again Barry

Technorati Tags: Home Game, Poker, NL Holdem

The title says it all really.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently making arrangements, canceling utilities, buying new utensils, opening new utilities accounts, and a multitude of other time consuming things relating to the new flat.

I don’t move in for four weeks but to make sure as many things are in place before I move, the last few weeks have been a to-do list frenzy, actually it was a Ta-Da List frenzy.

It hasn’t been made any easier with the constant workload I have at the moment. Most of which involves me being down in London a decent proportion of the time.

It’s all going to be worth it though. Soon I’ll have a place of my own to relax in.

The one thing I’m really going to miss though is the Telewest Broadband service. For the last three years I’ve had this uncapped, cable internet and it has been fantastic. Now I’m going to have to rely on a BT phone line, with Virgin, or BT ADSL. It’s a bit of a drop in quality, and I’m going to have to find a package that doesn’t put a download cap on the account. Those things suck.

The next four weeks are going to be manic, with work, Christmas, moving, and no doubt some more work thrown on top of that pile.

Moving once would be bad, but I essentially have to move twice. From the flat to my parents… aaaaaarrrrrghhhhhh…… and then 5 or 6 days later to the new flat. I won’t need to unpack much when I’m at my parents, and in fact I might be working in London for most of the week anyway, but it is such a chore having to load a van more than once to move house.

I really need to stop complaining about this.

In four weeks it will be over…. I just need to keep telling myself that.

Technorati Tags: Moving House, Ta-Da List

My results for my course came back this afternoon.

They weren’t as good as I’d hoped, but I received an okay pass, and was close to the grade above the one I received.

To be honest I was so sick of the course towards the end I’m just glad I managed to pass it at all.

Thankfully that’s the results in and I can forget about the open uni for some time

I’m off down to London for work again this morning. It’s far too early in the morning, and the internet access on the train is playing up. Luckily for me I use Ecto, so I can happily create this entry offline and post it when they fix their shit.

It’s strange not being able to access the net while I use the laptop and have my first coffee of the day. I’ve become unbelievable dependent on the web in the last year. A few years ago not being able to get on the web really wouldn’t have bothered me too much, but now I need my daily fix from Bloglines, and a quick scan of various news sites to kick start my day.

I suppose the dependency really started when I created this blog and made more of an effort to keep it updated. In doing that I began to read more sites, and become more interested in blogs and the web community in general. In fact because of some great writing, especially here, here, and here, it inspired me to stretch my own capabilities and sign up for the Open Uni Creative Writing course earlier in the year, and to have a go at this years NaNoWriMo.

All of these things have helped me improve my writing ability over the last year and have helped spark my creativity again. It was becoming frustrating not having a decent creative outlet, playing the guitar was my release before, but as I mentioned in a previous post, it’s difficult to play when you share a flat with other people, neither of which play themselves. At least with writing I don’t disturb anyone, and they don’t throw a spanner in the works by asking me to turn down the volume, or do it in another room because some shitty tv show is on.

Because of this I’ve found that I’ve come to love writing. On the site recently, all the entries are quickly put together posts about whatever is on my mind at the time, but in my moleskine, and on various files scattered throughout this laptop, there are little short stories, ideas for things I plan to blog about in the future, the initial concept and frame for a novel I hope to start in the new year once I move house.

I’m not saying what I’ve written offline is great but I can see a vast improvement from my writing in January, to my writing now. The fact that I’m inspired constantly by those three above makes me want to improve my writing abilities further and develop the skills to craft an engaging story. I want to become a better writer, and in turn I want to make this site more interesting, and entertaining.

It also has the added bonus that by spending more time on this site I’ll get to up the dosage of my web fix. I am an internet junkie after all.

I really hope this internet connection comes back up soon.

**Update***

That sucked. There was no internet for the entire trip down on the train.

**Another Update**

Now that I’m in the office we have a net connection again. Woo-Hoo. Now if only I could get some time to use the damn thing.

I installed the New Parallels Beta earlier today and I’m in the process of installing my copy of XP.

Without question the new feature, Coherence, is the coolest thing about it. It allows you to run windows apps in their own window, on your mac desktop. Basically it lets you have the Windows and Mac apps running alongside each other, making them appear as if they belong on your OSX desktop.

Added to that is the feature that lets you drag and drop files between these windows. So if you have a file in your Home directory and need to copy it to your Win XP image all you do is simply drag and drop. It makes transferring data so simple.

There’s a great review of it over at LifeHacker here

If you have an Intel Mac and need to run Windoze for work, or use W$ only apps then I can’t recommend Parallels enough. It is awesome.

Does trying to find something for a Secret Santa at work piss you off as much as it does me?

Trying to find something that’s not complete garbage for £5 is a damn nightmare. I have the problem that, well I’m not really sure what to get this person, and also what the hell can you buy for under £5 these days?

……

An idea just came to me…… I must investigate.

It’s a strange and very annoying feeling when you’re stuck, unable to move forward, and frustrated almost to the point of screaming.

At the moment there are lot’s of things I want to do but for one reason or another I don’t.

One of these is to finish and re-write my NaNoWriMo novel. It’s no where near finished, since as soon as I hit the 50k I stopped writing. I want to go back and redo large sections of it, but I keep on running into roadblocks. The main one is simply that I feel completely creatively stifled in my current flat. It’s not a great environment for someone who wants some piece and quiet to think.

More than that though I have another few ideas I want to write, but short of taking the laptop to a cafe, or a pub there’s no way they’re going to get written any time soon.

Another itch I can’t scratch, is playing the guitar. I haven’t played in months because every time I pick the thing up the thought that I’m going to be asked to play in my room, or not at all because there’s something on TV, goes through my head and I just decide to leave it.

In short, living with other people has begun to piss me off. I have no problem with making certain sacrifices to make living with friends an easier and more enjoyable experience, but sometimes you just need to be selfish and do what the hell you want.

Thankfully, there’s light at the end of this tunnel. I’ve made the first few adjustments to get myself moving again.

Yesterday I put a deposit on a new flat in Edinburgh, still renting unfortunately, where I’ll be able to do whatever I want. I can sit in the living room, with music quietly in the background and write without interruption. I can pick up the guitar and fire out a few songs without bothering anyone watching TV. I can watch and listen to what I like without having to okay it with other people first.

I can’t wait.

If/When the reference checks are finalised and come back okay it will mean that on January the 12th I’ll finally be in a place of my own.

It’s close to work, so there will be no traveling issues. It’s near a lot of my friends so it’s easy to meet up with them when I want, but with the extra special bonus of being able to go home, kick back and relax in peace.

In five short weeks I expect to be much more relaxed, and hopefully that feeling will filter through the rest of my life and allow me to finally do the things I’ve been putting off for some time.

I’ve been trying to think what I’ve been up to recently. The answer is not much.

Since Wednesday’s news about my uncle, I’ve spent Thursday afternoon finishing my NaNo, then Thursday evening I spent at the hospital visiting the aforementioned uncle.

Friday was a normal torturous day at work and then afterwards a few of us went to our local for a beer or two. The usual merriment was underway, until about 10pm when I got a call from my sister with my uncle’s test results. While they were what we thought they would be, to hear exactly how bad, and how close things had been to fatal, left me in a bit of a mess and I spent the rest of the night…. well about an hour….. trying to keep my shit together.

I managed it until the evening wound down and I had to go home. I had to come back to the office to pick up my stuff and it was at that point, when I was finally alone for the first time since I heard the results, the emotion and the booze over-rode my restrained and I crumpled.

It took me a few minutes to get myself back under control, and once I had, I made my way home to have a few more beers with my flat mate and feel like shit.

I was given an update of his condition on Saturday morning and he is much much better than he was. So far he has steadily improved over the last few days and we’re hoping that all goes well and he can get home for Christmas.

The rest of my weekend was really just sitting at home, writing a little, watching DVD’s and the NFL. The cool thing about the NFL this week was, not only did the Falcons finally get another win, (wooo), but my Fantasy Football team won the league for a nice $400. Sweet.

Tonight I’m off to the hospital again to see how my uncle’s doing and afterwards… well I’ve no idea. I doubt I’ll get home early enough to do anything. Plus I’m somewhat poor this month, with Christmas, my Sisters birthday, and the fact that I’ll be moving into a new flat/apartment at the end of the month.

Well I’d best get ready to head to the hospital…. oh how I hate that place. I’m grateful for it, but I hate having to go there.