December 2006

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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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