The Games

No, not the awful celebrity TV show where has-beens try and kick start their careers by doing pointless things on TV but my obsession with these kind of pastimes. I just love games! The most obvious manifestation of this (as in evidenced by my multiple posts on the subject) is video games. Sometimes I just can’t get enough of them. My passion for WoW has been re-ignited when I finally finished of a string of Mage quests which resulted in me getting a swanky new wand, but that’s not what I want to type about today.

I’m talking classic games, board games if you will. Now I have a friend who proclaims to absolutely hate them (although I’m sure it’s all a front) to the extent that whenever he gives one to me as a present it’s on the condition that he never has to play it! But I just love ‘em! I currently have in my house 4 versions of Monopoly (I think, it might be 3 actually) including Nottingham and Justice League of America. The problem with these games is that they have pretty complex rules and no-one (except me) wants to play them as they can take ages. Although the only time I am able to convince my mother to play, she beats me every time!

Current game favourites at the moment are Perudo , no complicated rules, no boards, just some dice. This was a present from R&R and everyone we’ve had play it, really enjoys it. It’s about bluffing, lying and odds.

Milles Bourne is another favourite. Originally we were introduced to this by the chap above (which seems odd given his aversion to games, it’s all a front, I tell you) who would only let us play with his ancient set if we washed our hands first. It’s essentially a team game about traffic and its all in French! Pretty good though one you get the hang on it!

Another one I want to get (as soon as I'm paid) is called Fluxx. Its a card game where the cards that are played chane the rules of the game! Sounds like there only one rule to learn at the start and then new rules are introduced by playing certain cards...sounds like fun! This same company makes one called Chrononauts as well, which looks pretty good.

A bit bored

Feeling a little bit bored this evening...I had assumed with the concert out of the way, Kath would be in of an evening and we could perhaps what a film or something. Turns out the rehearsals just carry on ready for the next one!

Tiring of World of Warcraft...getting to a high level and running out of stuff I want to do. There are some other games to catch up on, on the DS or the Cube but I can't really be bothered tbh.

Found these on the web today, pretty cool attempts to recreate the public information films. The pantomime dame one is great!

This is great as well for any Simpsons fans.

Another day

Another day of writing lots of reports and manipulating data…am I starting to get jaded? I don’t know but my upper arms ache, that I do know!

Spent some of today looking at frying pans on the ‘net, god, isn’t my life just chock full of thrills? Anyway I do want to get a new one as the non-stick is starting to go a bit funny on mine. In hindsight we should have put more expensive pans on the wedding list, but we didn’t think anyone would want to buy them. As it was the whole list went and we ended up with loads of vouchers as well, maybe next time….

I can’t decide between the Circulon 2 or the Anolon Professional. What I did find surprising is that almost all the different pans I looked at are made by the same company! Meyer UK. The ones we have at home and both of the ones mentioned here are all made by the same firm. I wonder if its like washing machines where they are all the same inside and just look fancier on the outside to capture a different market? I’m not sure that applies to frying pans though. It’s a shame there’s no way to try them out before hand. Anyway not sure why I’m looking as because of my furious spending I’ve got no money left until pay day.

BT shares seem to be doing bizarrely well at the moment. Usually whenever we announce results they take a nosedive but they’re hovering around £2.30 at the moment. This is good as I own a few shares outright and significantly more as Options at £1.99. Hopefully they’ll keep on rising!

Mondays

Work was deathly dull today, I hadn’t realised quite how much time I spent on the phone to my colleague. She’s off and now I’m languishing a bit. You can tell we’ve managed to get more organised as this week is supposed to be the busiest of the month but I spent a lot of it doing admin-y things like responding to very old email and checking out links I should have looked at ages ago.

It’s frustrating because it’s clear that I thrive on the havoc of setting something up from scratch and find it hard to get motivated about the documentation and stuff. I want problems to fix! The big problem is that the problems I want to fix are most definitely the responsibility of another team and I have to keep my nose out!

Had a great if very tiring weekend. Three birthdays in March (Emma, Paul & Rachel) and we hadn’t bought a single thing. Up early on Saturday and trawling the shops, we had to buy something today as the main reason I’m so tired is that we went to Nottingham to see the aforementioned birthday people. The presents were all bought and Kath had managed to find a top to buy to wear and I was mooching around trying to get enthused. The shirt I wanted to wear is bizarre and just won’t get clean! Each time it goes through the machine it comes out dirtier!

In an effort to get excited about it picked up 5 things I kinda liked and went to try them on. 10 minutes later and I’d spent £220 on a jacket, 2 shirts, a jumper and some jeans! Eeek! My little early month spending spree (the clothes were just part of it…got a little carried way online) has wiped me out and so I’ll be buying very little at the supermarket this week. Kath seems a bit put out that my spending extravagance means we’ll be eating ‘Value’ food this week but my view is that it’s a good opportunity to use up some of the stuff that is bulging from my store-cupboard and freezer.

Went and had cocktails at Santa Fe at the Corner House in Nottingham. Mohita, Chocolate covered strawberry and Carrot Cake for me and lots of other lovely things for the others. Then had a great meal at a place called Punchinello’s (apparently the oldest restaurant in Nottingham). Made the mistake I always do of ordering too much wine and was very hungover. This in itself wouldn’t usually be a problem but we had to be up at 6.30am the next morning to drive back to Ipswich to get Kath to a concert rehearsal for 10am. Fortunately the roads were clear and we managed to squeeze in tea, toast and an episode of Arrested Development season 2 before I had to take Kath to the rehearsal.

Attended said concert in the afternoon with Becks & Ralph and spent most of the time trying to persuade Rebecca to go to the doctors/dentist to get her swollen cheek looked at (apparently calling her ‘Becky Big Mouth’ didn’t help). The concert was good and then it was home for a chance to sit on my backside and snooze. ‘Watched’ (tried to stay awake and missed 5 minutes of the finale) Elektra on Sunday evening and was a bit disappointed to be honest. Jennifer Garner was good (although can’t shake the feeling that she was just Sydney Bristow on a slightly longer mission) but the story was a bit weak and having Goran Visnjic playing an all American dad with his own eastern European accent was just odd. Can’t he do any other accents?

Went to bed and read The Ultimates vol 2: Gods and Monsters and was left with a massive cliffhanger, hope I won’t have to wait too long for some sort of resolution. Felt knackered this morning and going to a step class at lunchtime didn’t help!

Leigh’s Offline Blog

I’m writing this on what I’m going to start calling “The Dark Ages Day 5”. You see we are sans phoneline at the moment and that also means sans internet. I didn’t realise quite how much I relied on the internet for entertainment at home! From checking my email, to playing games, getting train times, checking an address and location and posting my blog. Well that last one isn’t really true as I’ve been remiss lately. In fact if I had the internet now I wouldn’t be blogging I’d be playing on World of Warcraft. That game has been described as World of Warcrack and I know what they mean! I was cross when I couldn’t get my fix on Wednesday and slowly coming to terms with the fact that I still can’t play it! Perhaps this is actually a good thing though…when I return to it my contempories may have levelled to such a degree that I have no-one to play with. After all that’s what happened to City of Heroes….

The reason we have no phone is that someone in the street decided it would be a brilliant idea to pull down a load of phone lines and not bother to report it. An engineer came on Thursday to make the street ‘safe’, but since all the cabnle was either looped around the lamppost or coiled in people’s front garden I’m not sure what he did exactly. Apparently a pole team are coming on Monday to have a look. They probably won’t fix it but BT are “very sorry”. Hmmmm!

Now this internet drought wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact I am desperate to plan my spending as I am about to get paid and for the first time in ages have no outstanding debt to put my wages onto. Also Kath has been little Miss Social and has been out almost all the time I’ve been here. To fill the time I’ve undertaken a number of other activities. I did some washing up, watched some TV, baked a cake, cleaned up a PC so we could take it around to a smelly woman, read a book and played on my DS.

Got the whole afternoon stretching out ahead of me and I don’t know what to do with it. Kath is off to a music group thing so I can’t spend it in her company. Already today I’ve finished a DS game (Mario & Luigi Partners in Time…not as good as the first one but a fine romp nevertheless) and thought about making a cake. The cake might not be such a good idea as we’ve still got half the orange marmalade loaf left from earlier in the week. I suppose I could try and mend my grapefruit marmalade. Its too runny at the moment and I can’t see any reason why I can’t just shove it all back in the pan and try to get a better setting point.

I was going to go and do the weekly food shopping but we did that yesterday. I could go and visit the garden centre for spring garden ideas but with no money I don’t really like browsing. I could go and check out sofas as we might be getting a new one (the springs on my side of the current sofa has finally started to give way). Anyway better go as I hear the front door going and no doubt the lunch needs making….