Random thoughts

How I wish this ljapp effort would let me post pictures as it promises so Yahtzee can illustrate my bafflement.

I have officially washed my hands of today. I have utterly no fucking clue what is going on, where it's going on, and why.

I'm off to eat a corned beef sandwich in hopes that helps.

I've had enough of this foolishness - good day, sir.

Not been sleeping so very well at the moment so I'll keep this short before I catch an early night.

1. Due to Zombieland, I'm buying a box of Twinkies so a friend who's never been to America can try one. No idea how much they'll be as I'm muggy on postage, but if you want some, left me know and you can throw coiny shrapnel at me and I'll throw yellow cream filled logs at you.

2. Planning on going to see Sherlock Holmes sometime after it's out (boxing day if I can find a cinema) anybody fancy it?

3. Oh I'm attending Circe De Lune the Steampunk LRP next year. If anybody fancies it, let me know

4. Oh, Merry Christmas by the way.

Off to work without getting any sleep at all last night. Wish me luck!

Weekend was good. Despite a relatively low turnout, everyone pulled together and made the event really enjoyable. Had some really good character interaction during Rich's dungeon and major character defining moments, for me at least. Magpie is becoming more and more a complex and rounded character without (I think) losing any of her genuine inherent loveliness.

Phil made me physically vomit during Katie's monster briefing, following which we may have owned team scatter. The two may or may not be related.

There were also were-sheep. Again. I can't help it, I like my were-sheep. Some people were surprised that I have standard stats for them. Though the werewolf vs. were-sheep battle was one of my favourite moments, simply for the look on people's faces as the werewolf got thrown through the wall of the tavern.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, and less achey than normal (besides my right buttock, puzzlingly). I put this entirely down to vast quantities of chineefoo when we got home and sleeping through an entire DVD of American Dad.

Tonight I have pretty much finished wrapping Christmas presents (yay for stealing tape dispenser from work) and have eaten jelly to celebrate.

sos was fun despite the cold.. and it was cold. the dungeons went well, taverns went well.
Nipped off early on Sunday to go and see Ian. Was going to do it Saturday, but i was far too tired.

We botched our dungeon something nasty, Ultimately all caused by our healer deciding he needed to go immeditely after a ritual transport. So while he was releaving himself, the bad guy scout was badly hitten in a bush going 1... 2.... 3... 4... We didnt want to leave to take him out, cos we expected our healer to go and get snotted if we left him. After that, when we faced the next bunch, it was a bunch of really hard blokes. Who were waiting. This didnt go well, not least of which becase someone else misjudged spell ranges. Ho hum.
Like benny hill, the dungeon. It was in fact really funny :-)

David the goat herder now has a quest! All Madoly and everything! should be fun!

Morning all!

Well, a pretty good SoS all told. Pussied out of one dungeon for perfectly valid IC reasons (The character is a pussy) and then died a peasants death on the dungeon I did do. I was beaten like a Chipperfield monkey. Taverns were fun too, I enjoyed scheming as my dodgy necromancer, although from the sounds of things I drank faaaaar more than expected and was less than subtle by the end of the night. Ah well!

Work was mad busy, btu then again it is nearly Christmas, and the Police like as many of the burgling little shits to be locked up as possible to minimise the amount of presents stolen by unremittent cunts.

However: presents all bought, nearly all wrapped, tree up and shiny... it's all good! Two weeks to go!
Wheeeeeee!!!!

Okay I managed to stay away from Facebook for nearly 4 days. I'm still not going to do a great deal on it, but I wanted to check my inbox and once I'd done that, it seemed only fair to see what new pictures had been put up, Ignore a few friend requests. Make sarcastic comments on people's statuses and suddenly an hour had vanished.

But anyway, less Facebook from now on.

Off to sos shortly. Not entirely SOS, as i intend to spend some time with the familty this weekend as well.
Fortunately middlewood is only about 20 minutes up the road from South liverpool, so i can alternate beween the two relatively easilly. Probably skipping out of tomorrows tavern, and some of the afternoon.

This was posted on the Iron Sky blog. Its the matrix done as a silent film.
Apparently its from a Russian TV show called "Big difference"

Is it me, or is this week taking fucking forever? I spent all day yesterday and today convinced it was friday, to be crushed to realise that, in fact, it's not. I just don't get it.

Roll on SoS. A few beers and some unmitigated thuggery will ideally de-spack my retardobrain and I'll be back on the win condition.

Well i'm here.

On Monday, my brother detected a gas leak. After berating himself for a while, he figured out it was on the meter, so wasnt actually his fault. Unfortunately this meant waiting for two hours with the gas off for Transco to come out and fix it, so after dropping him in Liverpool and comming back, it was a late night.

So i now have working central heating. Its good. I am trying to get used to a system that has more heat settings than "Off" and "Sauna". I'm gradually getting the hang of it. Having hot water on demand rather than just at certain times of day is good however, as is the lack of a header tank in the back bedroom which drip drip drips..

The house is a state however. I'm slowly tidying up, but its likely to take a week or two as i am both lazy, and definately cant be bothered at the moment. As unfortuantely we had to destroy the back of the bedroom, which had loads of shelves, I am now dont have enough storage space for clothes. I need to nip to Ikea to get a wardrobe, which alas is going to have to go on the credit card.

I was debating whether to go on friday as i'm off, however, i could really do with a lie in at the moment. Especially as its SOS this weekend, and worry about after payday. With the Boiler, the car insurnce, fixtures, fittings, my previous trip to Ikea before my central heating stopped working, The reenactment fair, and other various costs, I have spent a gigantic amount this month, and my finances have gone from being quite good, to being distinctly scary.

My brother has had some interesting news, Not good but not really bad, although its annoying.
I am tempted to skip out sos and spend a weekend with the family. I dont have a huge enthusiasm for it at the moment, and was planning to monster most of it anwyay.

Work is for a change being reasonable, however, one of my collegues is off sick, and i am dreading something going wrong in his service areas which i cover. Ah well.

... you handle your snake and it's considerably warmer than you are. Fnar fnar. :D

Yes, well, been a bit frosty of late. Not that I'm complaining. Give me cold and rain over damnable sunshine and heat any day of the week, month or year.

Work's been passing busy. Well, extremely busy, to be honest. I suspect the Police have stepped up their competence because there's a whole lot more chav scum coming my way than last year. Well, I prefer to think that over the other prospect, which is that there's just more criminals around. As that's altogether too depressing a thought I'm letting that one go.

Coming close to Christmas, hooray! Have got nearly all our presents, just a very small last few to get in the next week or so then we're all done, so that's all good.

Was our works do on Thursday, which wasn't too bad. Very nice curry and a laugh with my cooler workmates. Then a load of us went to Manchester235 to crash the Lincoln House Chambers Christmas do. It was well good! Got a great deal of free alcohol off barristers and solicitors, was scowled at by QC's for wearing a Hawaiian shirt and very light chino's at a formal do... it was all manner of good :D Was quite restrained and came home fairly early and sober, so also felt proud of my restraint :D The fact I had an early start and a well busy day on Friday was no incentive either :D

Friday night we went to see si_lloyd and prod him with the friend stick* which was a great deal of fun. Watched Let The Right One In, which is a well good film, and The Cat Returns, which is about as good and surreal as you'd expect from a Studio Ghibli anime.

Have been increasingly retarded over the last few days with regards to leaving things at people houses. Left my glasses at Si's yesterday, left my ring at my folks earlier today... getting a bit concerned and keeping a close eye on my phone, keys and wallet!

Doo doo doo, that's about it really. I'll bugger off for a few days now.

Oh, SoS this weekend and it's promising to be an entertaining one. I intend to be an offensive viking at people and potentially cook some fools. Huzzah!


*not that one

The weekend was mostly helping my brother sort my central heating system. This was less onerous for me than it was for me. However, its now more or less done. Its working, and i have heating and hot water.

There is some neatening to do, and cleaning, but thats all for tomorrow. After two days of freezing cold, i'm looking forward to a nice warm night. Ian is currently watching stuff on the Wii. (Using BBC Iplayer)

You know, its amazing how little i have in comomon with Ian, although we really do get on, and i really appreciate him comming down at such short notice. Ah well.

Plan for tomorrow is for him to finish off and me to go to work, followed by me taking him home.

My brother is about ready to turn the central heating on. There is work to be done still, cleaning, plastering, tidying, and my brother wants to label the pipes because he's spent days figuring out what they do and ripping out some of the duplicates and doesnt want to have to do it all again five years down the line. He's doing something called "Commissioning" which involves making sure theres no gas leaks before he turns it on, which involves pressurising the gas pipes and making sure it maintains the pressure.

It seems my house has about twice as much piping as is actually required. Some of it is closed off, we've found a significant amount of lead piping that was actually in use, some that wasnt. A bunch of redundant wiring, which i'm going to pull out when i have the time, and the house in general needs the pipework re-done. However, as its in the depths of winter, i've persuaded him that what i really need at the moment is heating, and he can sort out the piping properly when its a bit warmer.

I've also found out that half the Chimney breast in the back room has been ripped out by whoever put the old central heating system in. Ian says it doesnt look load bearing, but i should get a structural engineer in just to make sure.

Oh, I also found a telephone cable that apparently isnt in use, so thats one less bit of random cable under the floors. We found this by accident when we accidentally pulled it out with a pipe. I had to frantically go around and check all the phones and teh internet.

Has been a good weekend so far. Spent Friday night with Uncle Si and the new hound, Quip. Watched some very good films, drank some beer, ate some junk food and did some important character research by hugging and playing with the big girly wet of a labrador.

Yesterday was mainly a chill-out day. The most interesting thing we did was go up to Viper and Vine to pick up some more food for Token. It is possibly one of the most awesome shops in the world and, like me, Adam has picked up the reptile love. Though he's more one for the lizards where as I'm more for the snakes. However, they have hundreds of baby bearded dragons (that Adam now wants. I'm inclined to agree) which are soooo cute. There was also an albino spotty version of Token that I fell in love with, plus a tri-colour hognose that was just stunning. It looked like a milk snake, but with the hognose stubby face and body. So very cute. Plus many boas and pythons that are incredibly pretty but I'd never have. There was also a siamese coloured mouse, which may come home with me if I can find space for him.

They also had pit vipers. I was slightly disturbed by this.

Today we're off to the in-laws for food and filmage. Huzzah.

Last night, i managed to spack myself and land badly on my hand. The middle finger is now a bit swollen. THis is annoying.

As far as the hot water is concerned, To speed up stuff, I'm doing the Electrical stuff that needs doing (Which ian is then going to inspect) and he's currently plumbing in the boiler, which is proving to be a more interesting job than anticipated, as there appears to be twice as much pipework as required and he's trying to figure out what is what.

Ho hum.

My brother has turned up with a new boiler and lots of pipes.

When he turned the central heating on, Flames started comming out and not in a good way. Unsuprisingly, we turned it off again.

He's put the replacement boiler on the wall, and tomorrow is plumbing it in.
Were not going for a full replacement of all the pipework, cos its in the depths of winter, and i would like it to work sooner rather than later, although some of its going to have to go cos its lead, and lead piping has to be replaced wherever its found by law.

He's currently busy playing Wii Boxing. I personally avoid anything with "Sports" in the title on general principles :P