What a great Christmas.
Lots of snow (without the need to go out)
Great food
Great presents
Great TV, especially Doctor Who
No family arguments

Amongst my favourites presents were:
ScotteVest
Chillow Plus
Lots of Blu-rays/DVDs
Lots of CDs
Lots of chocolate

Shock, horror, time for a new blog post.

Loads has happened since my last post, not surprisingly since I'm not a hermit. Here's an outline.
Good
Holidays: SGUK trip to Amsterdam. Fantastic city with some fantastic people
Festivals: Download, Glastonbury, Sonisphere - All amazing with amazing bands and amazing friends
Gigs: Rolo Tomassi, Between The Buried & Me, Dandy Warhols, Bad Religion, Senser, SG Bands Night - I can't say a single bad thing about any of those, apart from maybe my inappropriate crush on Eva Spence
Classical Concerts: The Planets, The Proms - I'm becoming cultured in my old age and throughly enjoying it
SG (Related) Meets: Birthday curry with Mark_plus_Beer, Download meet, Fireworks with Mark_plus_Beer, December SGUK multi-birthday meet, last nights SGUK pre Christmas meet - Lots of drinking in first class company
Food & Cinema: Bodeans 3 times, twice with cinema (Inception and Harry Potter). Bodeans always makes me very happy and both films were splendid
Christmas: Team meal, company party, Badminton due - All marvellous, and the first 2 were free
Other: My cousin's wedding - Bringing out the emotional side of me, but we'll leave that there.

Bad
SKOFF: This stopped happening and I really miss it. To this day, I can't work out why it stopped
Money: Or lack of it. Partly caused by 3 said festivals and my generally love of buying things. But hopefully this will be sorted soon

The Future
Christmas Carols at the Royal Albert Hall tomorrow
SGUK Prom Night
Download 2011
That's all I've got planned so far, how sad am I

Sorry about my last blog. I am eternally grateful to those few good friends I have

What is the point of life? All I can see is that it's about getting through one day ready to struggle through the next. That is a shit existence

In between Christmas and New Year, I went out in Bristol with 3 of my cousins and had a great time but got very drunk. Unfortunately I sent a drunken text to a good friend saying that I love her. Fortunately she understood and we are still friends, in fact we have communicated a lot more than normal since. However, it will be hard the next time I see her knowing nothing will ever happen between us. I think the sooner I realise I am destined to be single for the rest of my life, the better it will be for me and the people around me and I can be a better friend to everyone.

Also as a friend, I often feel I don't really fit in. I hope this is me just being paranoid, but I see so many of my friends doing stuff together when I only see them every so often. I know it's probably not personal and I do live quite a long way away, but it can get me down, thinking why I am not included.

And before so of you nice people say I shouldn't put myself down, I'm just taking the facts into account. I'm almost 37 years old, I'm not the most attractive bloke around, far from it, I've got a stutter, which can be very bad, I'm socially awkward, not making conversation easily and I've got a joint mortgage with a friend who I have slept with in the past (many many years ago). I have been told I should get out of this situation but that is very difficult. Firstly neither of us can afford to buy each other out. Also I've got a dog and lots of debts which make me renting somewhere else very difficult. So I'm biding my time for that situation but that doesn't make the other things any else of a factor.

But anyway enough of my problems, now it's about looking forward to the future.

I don't make new year's resolutions per se but here's things I am going to try to do in 2010

• Be a better friend and family member. I'm almost 37 and I still rely on my parents for birthday/christmas cards/presents. So from this year, I am going do my best to change that.


• Cut down on my spending dramatically. This is my reduce my debt and so I can start saving for a big holiday- see later in my blog.


• Make sure I continue with Some Kind Of Food Friday. This is something NickyR and mat8drb started last year, going out for a meal on Friday a month. It's one time I do feel like I fit in.


• Get my bike working and start cycling to work. I got a puncture last year and I couldn't fix it and it's been very hard to find a replacement inner tube (the shop that sold me the bike can't get them ). But I will get replacements and start cycling. Which leads me onto


• Try and loose some weight. I wouldn't say I'm obese but I do want to loose some weight just to make me feel better. Unfortunately I find the gym very boring and I get home so late, it's too late for classes. I might try and join a gym close to work

Also, I've decided to go to Australia in a few years time. I have to go in a few years time so I can save both money and holiday. I can bank 5 days a year holiday in work which is useful as I want to go out for at least 4 weeks if not longer. And being the music lover I am, I am going to base it around the Soundwave Festival so it will be around February/March time. Closer to the time, I'll start asking advice on places to go.

It's been a quiet week apart from seeing Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction in the O2 arena last night so that's what this blog is about.

How was it? A bit disappointing really. I did enjoy it but not as much as I should have given those 2 bands.

Don't get me wrong, this had nothing to do with the bands. I've seen both of them before and they are amazing live. So what was wrong? It was partly my fault. I stupidly bought tickets for the upper tier not realising quite how far I was going to be from the stage. The bands looked maximum 5mm tall. Not a problem you say since I could see them on the screens either side of the stage a venue that size has. But there were no screens. Which is a shame because the acoustics in the arena are excellent. Would it really have been too expensive to put the screens in?

If it had been just that I probably wouldn't have minded but there were quite a few other things that spoilt it.
A pint of beer was £4.30. I thought Download festival was expensive at £3.50 but £4.30 is taking the piss
It was a nightmare getting out. Why not let people outside the dome, rather than forcing tens of thousands of people through narrow streets inside? It took over 15 minutes from the gig finishing to get outside.
Then it took ages to get on the tube. North Greenwich station wasn't designed to cope with lots of people at anyone time. There should be more routes down to the platform. It took another 15 minutes to get from the entrance to the station to get to the platform.

Sorry about this whinge. I so wanted last night to be awesome and it just wasn't.

Shock horror, 2 blogs in a week. I might become a regular blogger again, but I doubt it!

From now on, I'm not going to have a whinge about my life in general as there is more good than bad, but that's not to say that I might not bitch/whinge about specific things.

I've had a good week, outside work at least. On Thursday I was cooked a very nice meal at rdpixie's. There were a few of us there and we ended up chatting for ages and drinking wine so I missed my last train and ended up sleeping on their sofa. It was nice to have a short commute in the following day aswell.

Then on Friday it was SKOFF (Some Kind Of Food Friday). This was something that developed from Curry Friday, which was started by mat8drb and NickyR at the start of the year. We all work close together and decided to go out for a curry one Friday a month, but then curry's started to get a bit boring so it expanded into Some Kind Of Food Friday. So far we've had Thai, Movies & Takeway & Japanese (ok Wagamama but close enough!). This time it was a carvery which was nice apart from a few people (but not me) having a burnt Yorkshire pudding. Like the previous evening copious amounts of wine was drunk so I went home not particularly sober.

First whinge of the blog. South West Trains are fucking useless. I caught the last train home after SKOFF and we were stuck a Feltham for almost 30 minutes (ok not that long but it was the last train and I was so tired) but what pissed me off most was the lack of announcements. It would have been nice to know what was going on and how long the delay was expected to be.

On Saturday, I had to work which wouldn't have been the first choice of things to do but I did volunteer so can't really complain. But then in the evening, I saw Leonard Cohen supported by Suzanne Vega at Mercedes-Benz World in Weybridge. The concert was excellent but it was Leonard Cohen who is such an amazing yet humble performer and it was great to see Suzanne Vega perform Luka and Tom's Diner. Also there was an opportunity to look round Mercedes-Benz World. It was good to see all their old cars there and look at new cars I know I can never afford.

But I do have a second whinge. The facilities at the gig were atrocious. I agree it was outdoors and it did rain a bit but I knew that so I didn't mind, but there were so few bars, food places and toilets, all the queues were massive. I go to big festivals like Glastonbury and Download which have much bigger attendances and there's never queues as big as last night, not even close. So do yourself a favour Mercedes Benz, the next time you have something on at Mercedes Benz World, get someone to organise it who's not a fucking moron.

OK, on that rant, I'm going to leave it here and look forward to nice relaxing Sunday.