Long Time No Sea

It's been aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages since I went to the seaside. At least a few months. And not quite as long since I last updated my blog. I can't really be bothered to tell you everything that's happened since then. I've been praying and thinking a lot about Something mostly - suffice to say that if I want you to know what Something was, then you'd probably know by now. I hope I made the right choice.

Right, anyways, back to other things. A brief summary of my life since Friday November 19th:

Bomberman: Played it, enjoyed it, handed it over to Youthclub.

Home Alone: My parents are in Kenya!!! Two weeks of being home alone. With Owen.

What game is this again? I've discovered that the phrase "Oh yeah, this is checkers" can be very funny in the right situation.

Scab: I burned myself on a soldering iron while trying to help fix a Gamecube joypad. It looked fine, but it's scabbed over now. Tom says it looks worse every time he sees it. This is it today...

Worship Practice: Last Monday at worship practice was amazing!! We worshipped for a bit and then stuck a worship CD on while Nick/Jen/Mark/Nessa prayed for everyone. While I was waiting to get prayed for about Something, I was just lying there in God's presence - it was amazing!! Haven't just relaxed with The Man for a very long time. I was great. Can't say that drugs or alcohol are better in my experience :-P

IT Staff: The IT staff at a company can be very frustrating and cause hours of extra work when they think you don't know how to install Windows XP properly. Grrr.

Prison: I volunteered to go to prison. On Boxing Day. To help lead a bit of worship. Ah ha..had you worried there for a minute. You thought they'd finally found out about The Incident With The Table Bracket. But nobody will. Ever. Except you. Who just found out. Maybe.

Food: Parents cooking food is great. Cooking for yourself sucks - though it does mean eating out a little bit more often...yummmm.

Ferarris: I pretended that I'd won a Ferrari and sent the pic to Loz. She sent me a very funny pic of her 'with' Michael Schumacher, but I accidentally deleted it last night, so I can't show you that. Here's me with a Ferrari, and the Ferrari by itself:

Well, 'till next time: Ta Ta.

Listening To: Nothing - still keep forgetting my Mp3 player. Grrrrrrrrr.

The Update Not-So-Extrodinaire - Part II

Whooops - never managed to update you with what happened that day :-S

In the immortal words of the Lemmings - "Let's Go!"

Friday the Almost 13th (the 12th in fact)
Apparently there's something strange about me taking photos that I will have to try to get Tom to explain to me in person :-P After taking lots of photos and stuff I did the computer room, and later on had some youth (well, they're probably about 16/17 now..hardly youth any more) giving "Brian" grief on the door. It was past 8:30pm and they wanted to come in. When we said "no", they got a bit funny and started kicking/chucking stuff at the doors. We just ignored them and they went away. Youth are funny! LoL.

When I got to youth, Simon gave me the long awaited photos from the monumental "Alton Towers" trip a few weeks ago. However when I opened them up, it turned out that they were "other" photos. LoL - I didn't really want pictures of girls on the dance floor and posters on Simon's wall thanks. Hopefully he'll bring the right ones tonight.

Okay, so on to the weekend! Had the "Creative Expression" day at church which was organised by Adam. I did the photography in the morning and song-writing in the avo. Somehow we (Tom and myself) got a song written that avo! God is sooooo cool. It's kindof a praisy/youthy song and it'll be interesting to see how it sounds with a full band and not just my guitar playin'! We didn't have a dictaphone and we thought that just writing it down would do until Tom realised that my new phone could record sound! So a copy of the song is now on my phone. Technology rocks (when it works).

Oooookay - sorry about the conciseness of the blog - I'm trying to do a catchup! (mmm, ketchup).

That (Saturday) evening we went to "Brian's" house, at LOADS of food ("Brian" is far too generous!) and watched Bridget Jones's Diary (the first one).

Sunday was church - Tim and myself went for a pub lunch. Can't really remember what we did after church in the evening - nothing I think. Oh wait, no, we went to Adam's.

Monday was work and then in the evening worship practice. We recorded 4 new songs for "Harriet", Mark and Jen to listen to, to see which one(s) we might use in church. That was quite cool - it's always really exciting on recording nights to see what new songs people are writing!

Tuesday was going to be cinema, but I hadn't got my mum's pressie for her birthday (Wednesday) so I had to go to M&S at Cribbs to get her what she wanted. Dan came along and we did a bit of window shopping while we were there to get ideas for Christmas pressies. Did invite a few other youth but they couldn't make it.

Wednesday - Ma's birthday!! Also halfway through the week now! Work was, again, work. Nothing eventful at all. At least I assume nothing eventful, because if it was eventful then I should have remembered what happened...good theory? Maybe. I was going to take everyone (Mum, Step-dad + Bro) to an early dinner at the Hungry Horse, but my step-dad was feeling ill. We just stayed in, watched a DVD (Farenheit 911) and had some pizza. Later in the evening was a leaders' meeting at church to go over the aims and goals for the next year. It was really cool, cuz we broke up into groups and brainstormed ideas for things we could do over the next year in various areas. Can't really be bothered to write them out here (you might steal them!), but it was great to see what everyone thought and to be able to give feedback.

Thursday - traditionally an unpredictable day..and...why break with tradition!? I made my first eBay purchase on this day (a Bomberman game for the Gamecube...how cool is that!?), gave Dan his first bass lesson (which was good fun). After that was meant to be a band practice because Timmay is leading the praise on Sunday night (yay!!), however that was cancelled. Instead I stayed up far too late at Nathan's (with visit to Asda) helping him attempt to install Windows 2000 on a friend's PC. It was being gay, so we ended up installing Windows ME on it instead. Grrr. Windows ME is BAD. Am I allowed to say that? Will Microsoft hunt me down? Will Bill Gates turn up at my house with an Uzi and mow me down in cold blood? Maybe.

Yay, that's all the catching-up done. Yay!

Now it's Friday. I was shattered this morning and have had two double-strength coffees. This was a bad idea because I did it on a pretty much empty stomach and now I'm having periodic stomach pains (maybe this period thing that Tom's started having is contagious?). Roll on lunchtime so I can fill my stomach with food to soak up the caffeine.

Ths week I have been mostly...
...playing with my new phone...bluetooth rocks. And infrared. And GPRS. Yeah!

Listening to : NOTHING - I forgot my Mp3 player and my headphones...grrr

The Update Extraordinaire - Part I

Sorry...
Wow, it's been a whole week since my last blog. My adoring public is demanding more, and so I shall respond! I don't know what's wrong with you people.

Tuesday - a night in, out, in, out, shake it all about...
It's been a pretty good week overall. Let's see, I had a night in last tuesday night because there wasn't really anything on at the cinema. Nights in rock, but I don't feel like I really accomplished anyth...oh wait! I didn't stay in. LoL, I just remembered what happened. My beatiful (acid-dipped) Nokia started dying completely on Tuesday by deciding to turn itself on and off again whenever I typed too fast. Sometimes it would be alright, but most of the time it would just die half-way through a text. So on tuesday night (when there was nothing on at the cinema) I decided to blag someone into coming to The Mall with me and I went phone hunting. I'd pretty much spent all day on the 'net looking and knew what I wanted. I then proceeded to spend half an hour on the phone to my phone company and managed to get a free upgrade to new phone and a better priceplan for the same price! Cool! Then went round Adam's and watched "The OC" (lots of lovely ladies in that - why did nobody tell me this before! Oh wait..I watched that on Sunday with him...can't be bothered to change the blog now though), "Stargate Atlantis" which was quite funny and some space thing which was scary because I knew a fair amount about some of the probes that they were talking about already. :-S

Wednesday - Devil's Advocate...
Right, so Tuesday was cool and my phone would be arriving on Thursday. Wednesday was work followed (in the evening) by a discussion/homegroup-type-thing that we're trying out for the older teens. It's a mixture of Christians and Non-Christians and the idea is to have some games, a bit of a laugh and some discussion at the end. It was alright, although the discussion was a bit random (it was about "Death and the Afterlife"). I went on the "I don't think there's an afterlife" side and it has now been decided that I make a great Devil's Advocate and that from now on I should be on the opposing viewpoint.

So that was cool, and there was muchness of doughnuts and cakes. Why is it that when there's loads of food like that going, you're never hungry enough to eat it all?

Thursday - Thanks for the phone, Jesus!
Right, so that was Wendesday, which means we're on to Thursday which was when The Fone arrived. I went home from work at lunchtime to plug it in, charge it and to get it registered on the network. When I got home, I got a lil time to play with it before heading out for a band practice with Tim, Tom, Mark and Joe. That went pretty well - was a good laugh and I even managed to play the song through without getting confused with the stupid sheet music!

Friday - part of it...
Okay, then Friday...(ooh, that reminds me, I've got to prepare something for youth this Friday)...Friday was youth in the evening which was just manic. I spent the first half taking photos of youth for Nige. It was good fun cuz it meant I went round pretty much everyone and had a way to start chatting to them! Ahh the subtleties of youth work. Or something. ?...

Right - I started writing this last night, but got into a conversation and then had to sleep. I will post the rest later (when I get round to writing it)

"NOOOOOOOOOO!" I hear you cry. Please don't cry...your mascara will run. "So run baby, run baby, run baby, run baby, run..." Sheryl Crow rocks.

Listening to : Sheryl Crow - "A Change" (Sheryl Crow)

Weekend Quote I

I just remembered something from the weekend away.

Luke Radford and myself were looking out of the bedroom window because I noticed there was a field full of sheep there! I promptly took the only action I could; I opened the window and cried a "baaaaaaaa" of greeting to our neighbours....one of them even looked up!

Luke: "Heh, heh, heh. One of them looked up; the one with the green on it's back.."

*laughter*

Luke: "Oh, they've all got green on their backs!"

That was really funny at the time.

Bye.

Aber-Ga-Venny!

*deep breath*

Disclaimer: What follows is mostly true - I may exagerate some aspects slightly for humourous effect. Any similarity to persons living/deceased is purely because it's about them. Based on a true story.

Well, it all started on a Friday night. I had a bit of a sleep after work and then got up, packed, phoned this girl that I'm seeing and then drove to meet with everyone that was going on the weekend away.
Got up to the church around 18:15...traditionally the minibus is the best place to be on a trip cuz it's the most fun, but I would have to say that driving is quite fun too. The minibus was driven by Nigel and all of the bags were put on the roof-rack and secured by Luke (Radford). His expert knot-tying is second to none, and legend has it that his father passed down the secret of "unbreakable knot" to him when he was but a babe, and therefore young master Luke has been practicing for many moons.

*back to reality*

We set off and just before we went over the old (rusty) Severn Bridge, we got a phone call from the minibus requesting that we follow a bit farther behind. The reason being that Nigel had been transporting some kind of mattress earlier in the week (without the expert knotting of Luke) and it had fallen off of the back. farther back indeed we dropped and we carried on over the bridge. As the motorway re-joined the M4 (which goes over the new (shiny) Severn Bridge) we noticed someone jumping from the top of the minibus...

"Nooooooo" I cried.

Then I noticed that it was (in fact) a bluey-coloured duffel bag, which exploded into a cloud of clothing as it hit the motorway. I dutifully checked my mirrors, and my blind before indicating and changing lanes in a timely fashion. If I hadn't dropped back a bit more it probably would have been a wild swerve into other cars/lanes/minibuses/ducks as I tried to get out of the way. Anyways, it turned out that nobody in the minibus noticed the bag falling off of the back, so there was an abundance of hysteria when we phoned them a mile later and informed them that a bag had fallen off. Nigel and myself disccussed the situation (and laughed a bit because it wasn't either of our bags!!) and decided it was all Luke's fault. Luke went on the roof and declared that a rope had snapped which is the only way to break his legendary "unbreakable knot". We let him off. In my car was Lauren and Wendy, and we drove back down the motorway to get "the stuff" that had fallen off. Unfortunately, due to motorway regulations, we weren't allowed to drive the wrong way down the motorway, so had to go back to a previous junction, turn around and come back the way we came to get on the right bit of road. The involved going back to Bristol over the new (shiny) Severn Bridge because I forgot to go back the way we came. We then returned over the old (rusty) Severn Bridge and had to pay *again*, even though we had a reciept. Grr. Then we drove to the place where "the incident" happened and picked up various bits of women's clothing. Fortunately the police had spotted "the stuff" and dragged it over to the side of the road for us, so there weren't really any tyre marks on "the stuff".

After that hour-long distraction, we continued to Abergavenny (ish) to Fedw (the place we were staying). When we got there we found a lost (and slightly crazy) Simon who had been searching for the past hour, but couldn't find Fedw. We got (vague) directions from a very helful welsh guy in the local garage, drove half-way up the mountain and found the place! We found a really old converted farm house which was massive! It had a big lounge area, bunk beds, kitchen/dining area and outside toilets. Everywhere was stone floors and there were thin rugs placed over them. Paper might have worked better. We didn't have any firewood, but luckily there were electric heaters in the bedrooms. We ate food and then had some praise-and-worship. At this point it was about 11:30pm, so a bunch of people decided to play Uno. I didn't, but did attempt to teach Luke (Dean) and Tom (Turrell) a couple of chords on the guitar (pronounced gooey-tar).

01:30 - Bed time!
Yay, some sleep. Our room (Tim, Luke R and myself - male leaders) was right next to the lads' room and could hear *every single word that they said*. It was most revealing I can tell ya ;) LoL

Wakey wakey
At about 8am we were woken up by the lads. They (mistakenly) thought it was 9am and that they should be making brekkie and made a heck of a noise waking up, freaking out, and then complaining when they found out that it was too early! They got up early anyway and we had an early breakfast. Mmm, toast & (Asda Cheapy) coco pops. Then we went to Abergavenny for a bit and had food/tried to get into the fully-booked leisure centre. When we left Fedw my car was stuck in the mud! I had parked facing down a slope, and when I tried reversing up, the wheels just span! It took all the youth getting covered in mud, and Nigel's ingenuity to get me out of it. I thought my car was a-gonner!
The idea for the afternoon was that we would split the youth into two teams, and get them to do some dramas later. The dramas would be Christian versions of some TV shows (soaps, reality TV, talk-shows, etc..) and had to include three scriptures.

Chat Show
The first team (Team Abergavenny) did a chat-show and interviewed the characters from the book of Esther. Sam played a bimbo Esther, Dan used my bogey-coloured hippy-hoody and was Mordecai, Alicea was the chat-show host, and Justin was Haman.

Quotes (in no particular order):

Duane: "..untimely death of Michael Schumacher.."

Dan : "beeeeeeeeeeeep"

Sam : "What problem? Look at me, I'm beatiful; I don't have problems."

Sam : "Ohhhh, *that* problem."

I'm A Finger, Get Me Out Of Here
Last year they did a talent show and there was a puppet/finger show which (I hear) was very funny. This year they (Team Jebus) did a mick-take of "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here". It was great...had us all in stitches.

Quotes (again, no particular order):

Luke : "Luke Eighteen, Chapter Four...uh...verse four."

(all fingers) : "Nooooooooooooooooooo"

Fat Andy (wandering in the jungle) : "I need chips"

(all fingers) : "Awimba-wa, awimba-wa..."
Fat Andy : "..in the jungle, the mighty jungle.."
Nami : "...aaaa-OOOOOOOOOOOOOO..."

Classic. You *definitely* had to be there. Or you could watch the video we took of it, LoL. If you could get your hands on a copy!

The weekend was generally great fun - lots of laughs and stuff. Too much to put here really, so I'll just leave you with some quotes (for many of thme YHTBT)...

(Loz is interviewing Luke R with a video camera)
Luke: "Apart from the shower - it was freezing!"
Loz : "Yeah, it was really cold when I got in too!"
(outside voice) : "You and Loz were in the shower together?"

(Tristan grabs camera from Loz to interview her)
*Tristan zooms in on her nose"
*laughter from those that can see the screen (Loz can't)*
Tristan: "This is 'Up Close and Personal' with Loz"
Loz : "Tristan, have you zoomed right in on me?"
Tristan: "Uhh. No?"

I'll add more as I remember them in future installments.

Stayed up till about 12 and then went to bed because I had to be back early for church. This meant leaving at 8am.
Apparently after I went to bed, the girls invaded the lads' room and covered them in toothpaste and other such things. I didn't hear a thing! Yay! Sleep!

Got up early the next day, drove back to Bristol (via Maccies...mmm...Maccies brekkie + muffin *dribble*), and got to church *just* in time for the sound check...phew!

Sleeeeeeeeepy sleep
In the afternoon I went to Adam's for lunch. The idea was that I would go there, eat lunch quickly and then go home and sleep. Lunch didn't end up happening until 1530! This meant we didn't finish until 1630, by which time it was almost time to go back to church! D'oh.

Dead things...
I got home to change for church, and it was all dark. I stumbled down the hallway and flicked on the lightswitch. To my horror there were hundreds of little black things scuttling around my feet covering the hallway! I jumped back in fright and, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realised that they were feathers. The cat had killed a blackbird and dragged it into the house. I've seen our cat "playing" with its kill before, and it usually involves throwing it around the hallway. After I got over the shock of it, I stuck the dead bird in a black bag, threw it in the outside bin and got changed and went to church...I didn't have time to vacuum up the feathers, so I did it later when I got home.

Church...
Church was good; it was our monthy evangelsim evening - "Let Us Entertain You" where we do a few praise/worship songs, some testimonies/dances/drama and then a little bit of an evangelistic message. It then finishes earlier than our normal services and there's tea and CAKE afterwards! We chilled for a bit and then went to "Brian's" house. After getting hopelessly lost (Tom claimed to know the way..which he did until we got to the estate, but then got lost driving around an infinite number of cul-de-sacs) we phoned "Brian" and found our way there. We chatted for a bit, discovered that sucking your thumb gives you buck-teeth and then I went home. I had been a bad boy and forgotten to reply to a text from earlier, so I tried to call Jen who was away from her phone making tea at the time. I sent her a couple of texts instead and then went straight to sleep.

And now I'm at work!

I've got worship practice tonight. Praise God that the month of equippers is over..it means I finally get to practice at worship practice!! Yayyyy!

Listening to : Something Corporate - "As You Sleep" (North)

It's Monday. Great.

It's monday, I had a great weekend. I would really love to tell you about it right now, but..uh..I don't have time :)

I'll update you later, but suffice to say it was great.

Ohhh, and I got a new CD - Red Hot Chili Peppers Live in Hyde Park (double album)...it rocks so hard it hurts!! Amazing! Loads of extra instrumentals.......Soooooo Hot...want to touch the hiney (awww yeah).

Inabitinnit,

Listening to: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Californication" (Live In Hyde Park)

Abba Banana

Bob just came into work and shot me with a banana. Who says that computing is a boring profession?!? Come on! I'll 'ave ya! If you've been keeping an eye on your blogs (more specifically my/Loz's blog), you'll know I'm going away for the weekend with the youth to 'Fedu' in Wales. Don't ask me where it is, because I'll just tell you. Wales. Somewhere. That's as specific as I get cuz I don't know any more than that.

Right, where did I leave off? Maybe I should just leave you in suspense. Or just miss bits out? Or make stuff up?

I am in fact, a 13 year old girl.

There, that's my made-up 'fact' for the day [Nobody found that funny Tristan. Just shut up. Before I smack some sense into you]

Hokely dokely. On Wednesday night I went to this youth meeting thing where we came up with some ideas of some discussion/social stuff we could do for the older teens that they could invite their mates to. Should be good! After that was when I got totally and utterly conned. As you may (or may not) know, I have recently stepped down from youth homegroup so that I've got more time for myself and to some of the other stuff I'm doing at the mo (and yet I was at a youth homegroup meeting...hmmm...Con #1 methinks). So when I got to the homegroup launch meeting just after the youth, I suddenly wondered why I was there. I mean, I have no intention of using up my Wednesdays when I just got them free again (that was before Con#1 reared its head). But since I was there, I couldn't just walk out again and I felt obliged to sit there and find out about the homegroups. I was this close (shows small distance between fingers) to going to the cinema with Tom and Dan. But we decided to stay and have a gander. And, to cut a long (boring) story short, I ended up joining a home group. I mean, it was free will, and I am looking forward to it, but still. I guess the appeal of it is that it's going to be quite infrequent and maybe even have some early-morning prayer meetings (I have no idea why that appeals to me; it never has done before!). So then I went home and chatted to Jen for a while on the phone.

Sidenote
LoL - I just read a bit of the BBC news website about Yasser Arafat and his coma. There is a great quote on there by someone called Ms Shahid:

"He is in a coma, we don't know the type but it's a reversible coma,"

Sooooooo, you know the type is a reversible coma...but you don't know the type? LoL. I guess I shouldn't make fun really - life and death is no joking matter really. I mean Yasser Arafat is still a person, God loves him to bits and wants to see the best for him.

Thursday onwards! Thursday (yesterday) was pretty cool. Work was work was work. Again. Oooh, Andy R (one of my various 'bosses') said that I could do an Oracle DBA (DataBase Administrator) course! Wicked! Should be quite interesting (I'm way too nerdy sometimes), and also look good on my CV. Oh and I'm sure work will benefit from it too :-O

Yeah, so last night I got home and basically chilled all night. I played piano and guitar, did two loads of washing, read my "Jeff" book and ended up staying up far too late.

I came downstairs around 11:30 and Mum and Nick were just starting to watch 'Memento' (class film..check it out!). I chatted to them briefly and went into the kitchen. As I walked past the patio doors my brain went through the following process in about 0.5 seconds...

Oh, some movement outside, must be the cat
Hang on, the cat isn't 6 foot tall
Ahh, must be Nick
Uhhm...I was just talking to Nick in the front room
Ohhhh, must be Ma...
...only Ma is in the front room with Nick..
..and she's not 6 foot tall..
..so who the hell is it!?
**Owen opens the door and jumps in making scary noise**
NAGH! I'm gonna di....
Oh, it's Owen.
Phew.

Then I stayed up for another 45 mins chatting to Owen before deciding that I should go to bed. When I walked past the front room, Memento was just finishing...and I ended up watching the end of that!! Ended up going to bed around 1am! Grrrrr. Stupid time..need more of it. I am seriously contemplating skipping lunch and having a 45 minute nap at lunch time...I mean I'm not going to get much sleep on the youth weekend away!

Random thoughts for today:

Oil Hypocrisy...
1 - people are (generally) against war in Iraq
2 - people (generally) think that the war is really about securing oil
3 - people think this is a bad thing
..and yet..
..people don't want to pay money for non-oil products/cars!

People are stupid.

Phones...
I wonder how many mobile phones the average Brit has gone through in the past 10 years? I think I'm up to....6? And that was since I was 17...so in the last 6 years! To be fair though, one of those phones was a temporary phone while I was waiting for another one to arrive in the post...so I guess 5. One a year? And I'm not really someone who goes and buys new ones that often! I usually wait until my current phone is knackered, or on it's way out (to a party?)!

Work...
I should do some work now. Maybe catch you later...

Elections

Well, here it is. Today is the day when they (try to) decide who the next nutter is that they stick in charge of the USA. Who will it be? Blag-a-War Bush or Kill-the-Krew-Kerry?? I don't really know what I'm chatting about, but as I type, the whole thing hinges on who gets Ohio. My Dad was born/raised in Ohio and I've been there lots - espeicially Cleveland the 'Brown Brick' place (That's for you Glenn ;-) ). But now he lives in Wisconsin which has gone to Kerry. I was wondering, do I get a vote? I mean, I'm a US citizen. Am I eligable? LoL - not that it matters, I probably wouldn't vote. Maybe they could give some electoral votes to the UK and I could vote for who the UK's electoral votes go to? No? Ah well, never mind.
Right then, my life. It may seem a bit selfish blabbing on about it, but it's my blog. If you want to hear about yourself on the 'net get your own.

Me, me, me, me, me.

Me too.

*attacks Neo*

Ahem.

Right, where was I? Ah yes, I got as far as sleeping on Sunday night. It's now Wednesday afternoon, and I'm just killing some time before heading home.

Mean Monday
Monday was just plain hard. At least the evening was. Work was just work as usual, nothing too bad happened. Anyways, when I got home (after work/before 1-1s) I decided to have a blast on my bass and have a go at one or two RHCP songs. I actually managed most of "Road Trippin' " a little bit of "Otherside" (the intro is easy) and a lil riff from the beginning of "Californication" which is just cool!

Then came the hard stuff. In the evening was the 'review' night for equippers where I had to give 1-1 reviews to all the PA guys. I was quite nervous about it, but it seemed to go alright!! I found it very challenging and learned a lot from it. All the way through I kept having flashbacks to the leadership training we did last year..it was really cool! I guess that means the leadership training they ran at church paid off! LoL. After the leadership training I went over the pub for a nice chill, a drink and some chatting wiv Rach, Ali and Nick. Nick had to go early to get to the supermarket, and I got home around 23:30 - 00:00.

*waves hand in front of face* "Sleeeeeeeeeeeep"

Temperate Tuesday
Tuesday was alright. Had a good laugh at work...I really can't remember what about, and even if I did it would be a case of "you had to be there" to get it (i.e. it probably wasn't funny at all!). Ohh yeahhhh, we had free lunch too. I think a meeting must've been cancelled or something cuz there was a buffet left over that we munched.

Tuesday after work was quite busy and relaxing. Got home and went pretty much straight out to church to practice piano before my lesson. While there Lauren reminded me that I could come on the youth "weekend away" this weekend! Yay, should be a laugh. The previous ones I haven't been able to go (for one reason or another) to so I *finally* get to go! Yay. I had my piano lesson (I have to make a start on my third Grade 1 piece for next week so that we can start some 'other' stuff before starting Grade 2 after Christmas!) and then got home around 6pm where I just chilled out for ages. I had some of those new "Super Noodles To-Go". Didn't think much of them - I much prefer the normal Super Noodles...they're far more mushy and easier to eat. The "To-Go" ones were more like Pot Noodles (which I'm not that fond of!). Had a shower, a shave, and then went to pick up Tim. We went in Owen's room and watched "Lost in Translation" while I munched Doritos Dippas and getting my black t-shirt covered in red salsa sauce. Nice. I quite liked "Lost in Translation", but can see why a lot of people don't like it. It's a bit slow, there isn't really any point to the story line, and Bill Murray isn't much good at showing emotion in it. But I did enjoy it. LoL - that's the kind of weirdo I am!

Wednesday
Sorry, couldn't think of any suitable adjectives for Wednesday that began with 'W' (i.e. I couldn't be bothered to look one up in the thesaurus like I did for 'Monday' and 'Tuesday'). Today I've been to work and that's about it really. Tonight I've got to be at the bookshop for 6pm to have a youth meeting. Basically we're gonna start a discussion group for 14-18 year olds. I guess it's kinda similar to a youth Alpha. Anyways, we're going to get some of the youth together tonight to see what kind of issues they wanna chat about, and how best we can run it. Also the church is re-launching homegroups, so there's a meeting at church tonight to tell people about it and the different kinds of homegroups there are.
Right, it's almost 16:30 now! Yipes, could have gone home 30 mins ago. Well...here ya go people

Bush Wins - just found out that 20 mins ago Kerry conceded the election and Bush is back in. You heard it here folks. Nobody here seems too thrilled. I'm kinda indifferent...which is probably a bad thing.

Listening to: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Under the Bridge" (Blood Sugar Sex Magik)

Weekend - PARTY. ish. Not really. Fun though.

Thursday Night Thespianism
Wow, okay. Last you heard I was going to see Twefth Night. And yes, this I did. Nathan and Adam were there also...it was really really good! I managed to follow it for the most part, and even got most of the jokes...it was very funny. Especially the bit where they conned Malvolio to wear yellow stockings with crossed garters....amazing!! Before Twefth Night we went to eat at "Wagamama's". It's an oriental restaurant on Clifton Triangle and was very trendy. We were well surprised because we actually managed to get a parking space right outside it. On the Triangle! The food was pretty good (if not a little spicy), and we had fun 'using' chopsticks. Except Nathan. Who didn't try. I think. I can't remember - my memory is terrible [Nathan Says: Exsqueeze me?! I sat in front of you using chopsticks the whole time we were in Wagamama's, except for the end when I switched to using the ladle thingy which they provided to aide the consumption of the soup!. Then after that we went home and I went to bed. I've started reading a new Jeffery Deaver book ("Garden of Beasts"), and I can't remember if that was the night I started it. Anyways, it's pretty good so far. A bit different from Jeff's normal book - seems to be more of a spy book than the murder-mystery-thriller that Jeff normally does.

Friday Night Fun
Friday was alright - no problems at work. Got to leave at 3pm (bonus! well, I guess it's in my contract, so not a bonus so much as a contractual obligation, but it still feels like it's a bonus!). Got home from work and...uh...can't rememeber. Oh yeah! I chilled out for a bit and then had a piano lesson at 5pm..though I got there at around 4:30. It finished at about 5:50, so I just stayed at church till youth cuz Nij usually gets there around 6:15, but he didn't get there till 6:30. I was practicing piano and putting some tables/chairs out and stuff up 'till then. I also had a blast on my bass and on the drums too...mwah ha ha ha haaaaaaaa. Youth was pretty good - absolutely knackering though. I was trying to get everyone to play in a volleyball tournament and I think all the enthusiasm I was trying to genereate left me pretty drained! When we finished packing away I was shattered! Most people went home (except for Tom, 'Brian' and Dan) so I just laid on the floor texing for a bit and noticing the echos that were being made by Tom/"Brian"/Dan when they chatted. Empty churches are cool. Even if ours is an old cinema/bingo hall...it's still echoey and cool. (((ECHO))), ((Echo)), (echo). Then we (Tom, Dan and myself) played Unreal Tournament for a bit while 'Brian' watched. It was cool...the first game we played the robots slaughtered us..so we made them a bit easier and then whooped them! Awwww yeah. Then home, sleep, etc...

Sudden Saturday Surprises
Ahh, nice looooong lie-in on Saturday. 'Twas great! No alarm...just sleep. Exept for the being-awake-for-no-reason-at-6am thing. But that was cool cuz I got up and moved the washing that I'd put on the night before into the dryer. Then went back to sleep...but not in front of the dryer..I managed to make it upstairs first. Barely. Then woke up at around 9:30 and got my washing out of the dryer whilst Ma told me that they were visiting my step-gran and that my step-uncle+aunt would be there with their daughter, Tulluhlah (sp?) and would I like to come. I said that I would but I was going to Devon at lunch-time. Mum asked whether I was staying overnight, and I replied that no, I was coming back that night. Mum said that that was a long way to go for the day and who was I going to see. A friend I replied. LoL - yeah..I'm really close with my parents sometimes.

Anyways, I phoned Nick [Turrell] to find directions to the PA place to pick up something for him. Went to pick it up (the PA place was sooooo cool. I could have spent hours in there. Alas, no time!). Took it to Nick, and we found out they didn't quite understand what we wanted and had given us something slightly different (we wanted cool head-mounted-fibre-optic-lavellier-clip-mic, but got a normal one - albeit a much nicer one than we currently have). We phoned them, there was some discussion and I didn't end up having to go back and replace it! However I was now about an hour late leaving for Devon, so I rushed down...speeding slightly :-S...and managed to only be late by about 20 mins! Bargain! Met up with my friend and her friend(s) at Micky Dee's, ate food, wandered around a bit, went into Wimpy, ate food, wandered around a bit, went to a music shop, bought the RHCP 'Californication' Bass book - YAY!, went to the cinema, saw AvP/ate Minstrels (mmm), went to Pizza Hut, ate food (salad + a sip of "Pepsi/Ice Cream Float"). Drove home. Overall I had a good time and met some mad people too! I like mad people...they're mad. Was a pretty darned cool day.

Sleepy Sunday
Sunday was a fine day. I got off to an amazing start because the clocks went back and I got an extra hour's sleep!! Yippeeeeeeeeee! Then went to church which was good. The clip-mic we'd rented was a billion times better than our old one - no hiss at all when Darren didn't talk - ~excellent~
Lunch was good. We went to the Van Dyck (Weatherspoons Pub) and I had my old favourites - Chicken Pasta Al Fredo followed by Belgian Waffles with bananas/ice cream/syrup. Awhhhhh yeah.
~~traditional Sunday-avo nap~~
Church in the evening was pretty good, and we all went to Jamie+Shaneen's afterwards where we stayed till about midnight.

Muddled Miscellaneous Mischief - Random Thoughts

• Found really cool 'Badger-Badger-Badger' wallpapaer last week - check it out here. BajaBajaBajaBajaBajaBajaBaja....
• Found out that there's evidence that hobbits existed. Apparently.
• Slap bass sounds cool.
• Slap bass sounds cool - though not in worship songs.
• Slap bass sounds cool - except that I need to practice a bit more first, otherwise I get told that my bass sounds broken instead of cool :-S
• 5-String bass is cool.
• Flea IS an amazing bassist [full stop]
• Have you seen the marvelous breadfish?

Listening to: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Road Trippin'" (Californication)