GTA IV

My monday started at 12.01 AM in a queue in rhyl with all the other hapless geeks including two chavs who couldnt decide whether to buy a copy or just mug someone for one. They decided against it as their victim might have bought a different version.

Back home and back to bed in time for a 7AM start and gaming all day at the Flyattic. Heaven. We went briefly online and it was like gazing into madness. Our worst fears realized.
However solo or just the 3 of us it was ace! Highly recomended.

an excellent weekend

Took Em out for some beer and burgers friday night. Bumped into an old friend from work and spent a lovely evening talking cobblers. Saturday was shopping day followed by a tech-mex evening at some friends where we fixed computers and ate mexican food. I say we, i did all the eating and Llion did the fixing.
And last night was the simply joyous Indiana Jones fest where we watched all 3 movies in Eds cinema room and ate pizza till burst point.
With GTA 4 being released tomorrow its a beautiful time to be a geek!

Good Advice

Part 137 in our ongoing series 'Good Advice' : Never trust a man who says "Ha Ha!" instead of actually laughing

sock er

Had an odd footie match last night. We play on a pitch designed for 3 sets of 5-a-side matches width ways or one 11 a side game along the length. We were a man short with 9 men and so were the only other team there.
In the spirit of the WWII trenches a game was organised of us versus them. Its interesting to measure how good people i thought were ace actually are against real competition.

However the point of this was we drew 4 all and EVERYONE said what a great match i had. No goals, no glory just hard running at the back. Which is nice considering how nerevous i was about screwing it up.

Lunchtime. Beautiful weather. Time for a walk I think.

weird day

Unusal item one. The water hose on the sink in work came off with explosive force drenching the walls and flooding part of the office.

Unusual item two. I went into our archive storage and found out its a WWII bomb shelter! Complete with airlock, shower and escape hatch! How weird!

Cocktales

Take 1 measure each of baileys, creme de caco(or kaluha) and butterscotch schnaps add two handfulls of crushed ice and two scoops of ice cream(chocolate or vanilla). Place in that smoothie machine that you bought to get healthy and never used, and blitz until its turned into beautiful sludgy chocolaty goodness. Enjoy!

Oh and dont be temped to use cheap spirits. The reason theyre expensive is theyre much purer hence zero hangover. Remeber cheap = painful.

P-A-R-T-Y-

Was the badminton club xmas party last night. Beer was supped, dancing was done, laughs were had and no fingers will be pointed.

One of the interesting things that i havent been sworn to secrecy over, were the photos from the club party 15 years ago. 1993 doesnt seem like that long ago to my poor addled brain but it is. Now were free of that age looking back you can see the fashions and the hairstyles, oh my God the hairstyles, that made the decade.

Going for a walk this afternoon to clear our heads before the cocktails this evening. Thinking about walking the beach rather than driving anywhere. Got a fuzzy singlemalt headache which is to be expected after four of us raided the pubs excellent selection of fine whisky.

home

Rhyl is founded on dirty copper money. The wastefull 1 and 2ps that we throw away. Is it any wonder that nothing good can come from it?

filmy

Saw four films in this bumper weekend some new some old some ace some ok.

From dusk till dawn is just as fresh and weird and quotable as ever. "Did they look like psychos to you? Psychos do not burst into flame when daylight hits them, I don't care how crazy they are!" its tarantino best acting and Clooney is simply gorgeous in it. Not a word i often use about men but he deserves it in this.

Futurama benders big score. Theyre back baby! The show that Fox couldnt kill is returned in a series of feature length direct to dvd movies. The plot is near incomprehensible, the jokes come thick and fast and its simply joyfull to see it again.

Hanibal rising. Is not a film i was keen to see. The scariest thing about that kind of character is the unknown and more importantly, the unknowable "why?" However in spite of all of that it turned out to be okay. Not the "full on gore and brutallity" that the box promised thank God, but a slow and thoughtful revenge movie.

And last and by all means least, priates of the caribean two: legend of the stupidly long title. Now i ADORED the 1st one and was told that this was an abomination so avoided it. Its not that bad but its not that great either. And when youre calling a film of that budget meidocre, somethings gone wrong somewhere.

success!

Well, partial success anyways. Came third in our group of five, won two lost two and that could easily of been 2nd if my partner hadn't had the most unreliable serve ever.

Actually thats far too bitchy, I'm really sorry, He played really well and I was impressed with a lot of his long shots and the way he kept his head up even when we were up against it. Not everyone was so lucky with their draw for partners.

In other news:

Notfussed.com is back, sort of. Notfussed was a group of people I used to do some writing with and for for a couple of years. Its demise in 2003 directly related to me actually starting this blog. I had no vent for my random spleen so I had to start somewhere. Hopefully it'll be back up fully soon. Just working on a couple of pieces for it now.

The Enemy have been accurately compared to the Jam but with a spark and vitality that is definitely this century. excellent stuff.

Coffee is one of my primary treats, in fact I wrote a whole diatribe on it in a piece of fiction that will probably never see the light of day. In fact here it is;
"3: How do I get some coffee?

Coffee, for me, is the universal language of the morning. It does not matter if you rise in your exquisite flat in Pall Mall or in a rough Yurt in deepest Asia, the grinding of the roasted beans and the brewing in hot, not boiling, water is a mantra that steadies the nerves and comforts the soul. The mere running through of the ritual is enough to start you on the road to cope with what ever fate may strew in your path that day and then the magical properties of the draft will imbue you with the courage to at least begin the day in the correct frame of mind. "

I do feel the need to point out its written in the style of an 18th century writer who's just been dispatched to pre-seige paris while the Prussian hordes are massing. The main reason I haven't done anything further with it is I can't decide to make it fully historically accurate or turn it into a 'birth of steampunk' type work.

The history angle will probably win out as its a fascinating, and relatively unexplored period in history without steam powered robots and Zeppelins being thrown into the mix.

Got another weekend of rugby goodness today and that'll probably be it until the Wales tour of South Africa in summer. Its been quite a season even without the grand slam. Its cemented my support of Welsh rugby in general, I think its a fantastic game and much more eventful than a premiership match. IMOHO

tonight!

Tonight is the end of season badminton tournement. Last year, my first one, I came 3rd in my group stage hope to do better this year.

Everyone plays so its a mixed ability thing. Then its off dans le pub!

list of things.

managed to track down some butterscotch schnapps and creme de cacao (chocolate) so cocktail night is go!

Ran the payroll by myself this month which was great. Well find out how well when the payslips go out to the people.

Bloke on tv managed to make new york look interesting and unique. When we went it felt like an overdeveloped Milton Keynes.

posty

Back in the bosom of wales. Had a lazy weekend reading writing and not camping due to the deluge we suffered.

Really wanted to camp but judgement better than mine won out. Thank goodness! Id still be soaked even now! Sadly it will be past june before we'll be able to go again as the weekends are just heaving.

Rewrote switch 3 last week. Much happier with the length and pace of it. Its always something i have to concentrate on im too keen to get to the bits i find interesting!