narshada

Blog attempt no2. (SG ate the first one.)

Anyone who knows me knows I don't really like Christmas. I don't like the culmination of crass commercialism, the gluttony, the one-upmanship of gift giving, the fact that a lot of people use it as an excuse to act like a twat and also the stigma that if you don't get involved, rather than being a rationally minded free thinker who refuses to get involved with it due to moral and ethical objections, you're a 'Scrooge'.

However, this year I participated and even bought gifts, "You don't buy gifts! Oh my god! Sacrilege!" ahem - and joined in the revelry.

We had our own version of Xmas lights...
My car got broken into. It must have been targetted, as they knew to go into the boot to steal my 6 CD changer and 2 amps. They left the sub woofer and the actual stereo, (I'd taken the front piece inside as always,) but prised the passenger side lock completely out. My insurance got me a courtesy car but it's a gutless automatic Corsa and I hate it. Better than not having a car though, so I realise I'm lucky in that respect. Rang the repair place today though and they STILL don't know when a new lock will turn up. It's been three weeks now.

We went to see the Miighty Boosh on my birthday! (Not sure if I've blogged about this but I'm doing a December roundup!)


We sat really high up but that didn't detract from the awesomeness that transpired on stage. Utter fucking comedy mayhem.


Next day we wandered around Camden and Covent Garden and went to the Natural History Museum. That T-rex was animated really well and it was supposed to only be a teenager!

We went for birthday drinks on the Friday with friends.

Christmas day we got up late, opened presents and then went over to my mate Dave's house for Xmas dinner. He's also a veggie and an ex chef, so we knew we were in for a treat. We ate a large amount of food and watched the Curse of the Were-rabbit on tv. First time I've watched tv in months. After demolishing a bowl of twiglets, another of pistachios and a cheese board, we waddled off home.


The last thing some poor vegetable saw...

Then we had a works dinner, which was nothing more debauched than a sit down meal in a pub, with half the people not drinking as we had to drive home! Previous years have been legendary apparently, (my predecessor took a swing at the MD while coked off his tits, for the latter trying to take a photo of the former while on the loo, so I've been told,) so we had to make our own fun.

Then it was time for a ROAD TRIP!
We drove up to see ReeRee and stayed with her on Boxing night. We didn't think we were going to be able to until Dave, (he of the massive dinner,) said he'd look in on the cats and feed them for us.
We got to meet Ree's lovely bloke, as well as her cats, ferrets, rats and geckos! An awesome evening involving another amazing roast dinner and tequila ensued.

Next day we went to have lunch with my Dad's side of the family and I got to see both my cousins and my youngest cousin's new boyfriend. All very pleasant. Plus this time I'd brought gifts! I got a cool Duffs knitted beanie from my cousins and a hoodie from my Aunt and Uncle. Nice.
Then we headed off and dropped in on my dad, who was working and so couldn't make the lunch. He got to meet the Pinkletmonster and we had a nice, if short, visit.
Then on to my mums place. Almost couldn't remember where they'd moved to and went the wrong way for a bit despite previously having lived in the town for 20-odd years.
Saw all that side of the family and Pinks became my step-niece's new favourite and was asked to be her helper when she sang for us.
We got beers and wines and stuff to take home and mum bought some Hello Kitty slippers for Pinks, which she is wearing as I type.

Homeward bound and back to work for Mon and Tues - not much happening so I spent most of my time looking at web development articles online.

New years the plans changed a few days before. Originally we were going to meet up with TheDuke and head to a friend's party. Then he decided not to have it and another friend suggested food at theirs and then pub. We suggested ours for Rock Band after pub.
As I came back from mum's I'd caught a cold so in the end, TheDuke came over with his lady and a friend and we just stayed at ours. Then the others to came over from the pub, with several friends in tow and it became pandemonium, in a good way.
Lot's of booze and a few spliffs. Lovely.
One friend of mine did give me a lecture on how, if I wanted to go freelance, I shouldn't learn everything, because that would make me a manager, because people don't learn everything, they specialise and get paid to do one thing.
Whatever, I'm sure it made sense in her drunken head at the time.

I'm still teaching myself lots of web design and development stuff. I bought books on PHP, XML/PHP, MySQL/PHP Javascript and one on how to become a successful freelancer, all from the same, very good web dev site. She seems to think you can't have someone who is a designer, coder and also handles the network side of things. I say I can. We'll see.
I'm going to redo my stepdad's site for his garage. It currently has a couple of good ideas, which are badly implemented.
I'm also hoping to eventually get around to doing a website for a band - members of whom may be involved in this very site! (SG I mean. Obviously they're going to be involved with their own site!)
As well as that, I've gotten involved with a 3D forum through a friend. I used to do a lot of 3D art and at one point I administrated a very busy forum on the topic.
I've been given full admin rights as well as server and database access and I'm hoping to develop some bits for them including a blog with a CMS backend.

Anyone wants a (very) cheap website, get in touch - although you might need to be patient as I'm doing mostly reading on the subject at present, plus the fact that I've been working my way through Bioshock AND I picked up Oblivion for a fiver, which is a mahoosive game AND my complete Blackadder boxed set arrived today, along with Iron Man on DVD AND THE COMPLETE WEST WING!!! ALL SEVEN SERIES!!! 44 DISKS!!!!

w00t!

Anyway then it was time for ROAD TRIP 2 - The Revenge! (Pronounced "reh-veng-gay". I'm not sure why.)
We bombed over to see Pinks' family! Pinks' dad predictably got me pissed on whiskey within hours of arriving, but not as badly as last time when I ended up farting in front of them.
It was one of her friend's 30th birthday, so we ended ended up going out to...
BINGO!
Oh yes. We dabbed like people possesed, sniggered every time they said '69' and almost hit someone with a champagne cork. We got more evils than a jewish guy eating a bacon buttie at temple. It was glorious and not even a badly-microwaved 'baked' potato could ruin it.

Finally we got home (I hate that 'courtesy' Corsa!) and the kids got their presents:

Hobbes was uncertain about the bell-covered-spindly-fingered-bobble-glove thing, (and frankly, who wouldn't be?)

and Mim had a pop at the weasel-ball.

Today at work we discovered that someone had stolen all the heating oik from the tank so it was freezing, because we are out in the middle of nowhere and it's pretty high up.
The boss decided that everyone could take work home at 12.
Except the warehouse staff, who had no heating at all.
And the call centre staff, (which includes Pinklet,) who had a couple of small electric heaters which warmed the room enough.
And me. I got to stay because there were people working on computers. I got a small electric fan heater to put on my desk. I almost went to work in the server room because even though it has a portable air-con unit in it to cool the servers down, it was STILL warmer than the main office.
So I got my revenge by spending most of my day reading web dev articles and looking at pictures of tits on the internet. Ha.