Not long at all 'till hol's now, and I've actually hit the point where I'm beginning to worry I don't have enough time to sort out all the things I need to sort out.

I need to sort out my holiday money. Ok, this one should be reletively easy - Going Places usually have travellers cheques and US dollars in stock, so I should be able to pick those up, I'll try straight from work. Oh, and I need to be at the gym for 5 for my training. Not sure if I'll manage to get 3 sessions in this week, but I'll try.

Also need to get hair cut. After work today is out, so is Wednesday (training again) so I'll have to try and book in for tuesday or thursday. Need to pop to Vision Express to pick up contact lenses - thats an hour easy to drive to northwich, try and park, then get back. And they close at 5.. so that'll either have to be tuesday or thursday, whichever doesn't clash with getting my hair cut.
Really need to buy a new case, and probably some more clothes. At least I can do that one night, I'll pop to the trafford center or something. Which I can't do tonight, because it's halloween...

Oh, and I need to kill Rend Blackhand (again) at some point. Must remember to not give this as high a priority as getting holiday stuff sorted...

Halloween. Went shopping for stuff yesterday (candy apples, sweets, decorations, pumpkin, ect) only to find my local asda has sold everything off! All reduced, all cleared. As I entered (around 2pm) they were actually taking down the halloween decorations in order to put more xmas stuff up. I hate the way most retailers can't wait to get things out of the way yet, it's not even halloween until tonight!

It really bugs me when they do this at xmas - in the states you can go xmas shopping on xmas eve - try that here and you'll find nothing but January sale stuff in the stores. Xmas offically ends at about 5pm on the 23rd December according to most UK retail outlets it appears. I was actually told by the asda staff that 'we think most people will be trick-or-treating tonight anyway'. Try that at Zenith towers and they'll get a 'bugger off and come back at Halloween'.

Hopefully, can still get a pumpkin from a local shop (for local people) today.


Pb

Well, it's beer festival time again, however this time I won't be going. I'm on call, in work on the saturday morning, and I've promised to take one of my nieces out to watch Zorro, so I can't make it - irrespective of how much I really wanted to go :) Given the 'issues' with the last one, I don't think not going will be too bad a thing though...

Training is going well, although I had to spend most of yesterday evening with a bag of frozen peas on my hand. Not lost any weight this week although my trainer says this is normal due to the amount of muscle I'm gaining.

Still haven't sorted anything out relating to holiday, and tickets haven't arrived yet, so probably need to phone Virgin to pester them if they're not here by tomorrow...

We've getting a new starter on the team shortly, by the name of Mario. In an effort to make him feel welcome, we'll be taking him out for an introductory beer and giant red-and-white spotted mushroom this week, then I shall then climb up the scaffolding outside the building, and proceed to throw barrels down at him.

Apart from that, quite busy, hence the short post. Oh, and came in on the wrong shift today (3 hours earlier than I was supposed to), so I'm going to end up stuck in here for longer than usual. Ho hum.

Stay lucky,
Pb

As I'm starting to get seriously hyped up for my holiday, I thought I'd list a few things I'm looking forward to doing while I'm there..

Go to the top of the Stratosphere tower
Have a sourdough roll full of clam chowder at fishermans wharf
Have one of the worlds greatest steaks at the Luxor Steakhouse
Go out fishing for the day at SF (well, dangle rod in water and drink beer)
Have a chinese meal in chinatown (at one of the places that doesn't even have english menus)
Get one of those massive take-out pizza's you see in 'Friends' all the time
Enjoy* an alarming amount of football
Run up some bar tabs, and drink beer from pitchers
Visit the Cheesecake factory for lunch, and order nothing but beer and cheesecake
Get drunk at the 'dollar drink night' at Condor's Sports Bar in SF.
Try to find that Irish pub we found once in SF and have never found since.
Eat a frightening amount of Shrimp at Bubba Gump's.
Play a lot of Pai-Gow.
Extend my unbeaten video poker run.
Have sunday roast dinner at Sir Lancealots Pub in the Excalibur
Try playing Craps, as it looks so much darn fun...
Not play blackjack again, as I didn't find it fun at all.
Check the new Star Trek Borg ride at the hilton.
Drink lots of romulan ale afterwards in Quarks' bar.
Buy lots of packs of House of Blues cornbread mix


A rather alarming amount seems to involve eating and drinking..

hmm...

Pb




*Not appliccable to Rob, who is an Oakland fan...

I'm thinking I need to make a new design for my website. It's still using the current theme which I basically stole (for want of a better word!) from Keith Szlamp's old site. I originally did it as a sort of homáge, and to give anyone who remembers his site a bit of a wry smile. Keith, if you're reading this, I'll change it to something original soon, honest :) I think the main reason I haven't changed it is that I'm hanging onto the idea that The Dice haven't really gone away forever, and while they're still lurking on my homepage, some of the magic is still alive.

Not ecstatic at work at the moment, as I've had to be wearing my project manager hat for the past week, and haven't feel like I've done anything technical for ages. Think I'm going to play around with one of the as/400 systems this afternoon before I forget how to actually do anything.

Have you ever had a relationship where you start to realise that you've just completely grown apart from that person? I've been thinking a lot about some of my relationships lately, and I've realised that with some either myself or the other people (well, ok, me) have grown into slightly different people, and we don't seem to have the things in common that we did. One of the resolutions I made to myself in the last couple of months is that I'd start concentrating more on myself and what I want to do, rather than my old habit of doing everything anyone else wanted even if it's not what I wanted to do. I've also conciously avoided doing or saying I wanted if I think other people might not agree or be upset.

A downside to my easy-going nature and constant desire to not have awkward or confrontational situations has usually meant in the past I'll always end up putting myself last. I think a small part of this was also the universal desire to be liked.

Something I've realised recently is that I can be more honest, and true to what I want, and people will still like me. Hell, some people actually respect you more for it.

Of course, some people won't like you for it. As I've seen from some of the comments I've had from my Q4T posts, some actively dislike you for it, but at least you get an emotional response, and it allows you to filter out the sort of people that you like to be around.

This kind of brings me back to my point - Now that I've adopted this slightly more selfish (I dislike that word as I don't really consider myself selfish, it's just I wasn't really selfish enough I suppose) attitude, I've realised that some of the relationships I have just aren't really working. I think some of the things I think we had in common were just probably a facet of me wanting to please everyone. That, and the fact that the people in question don't seem to have changed at all in the last 10 years, and I find myself not content with the same things I used to be.

I suppose I'm growing up..

Pb

Well, I've been well and truly laid up for the past couple of days, so I'm really behind on everything. I'll try and sum up..

Started feeling a bit under the weather on Friday, and by Saturday and sunday I was completely flu'd up to the eyeballs. I didn't even make it into the office yesterday, mainly due to the inhability for me to stand upright for more than 5 minutes presented potential risks driving down the M6. I'm better now, albeit not still up to full speed, but completely dosed up with Beechams I am at least operating at base efficiency. (I'm only surfing half as many websites as I'd normally get in on a normal working day.)

Training has fallen slightly behind due to aformentioned illness. Pressups present a greater challenge than normal when it's taking all your time and effort to stand upright without vomiting. Managed to do some basic excerises today, so I'll try a full circuit tonight then back with my trainer tomorrow for more punishment.

Also haven't really had time to finish off my 2nd HoZ puzzle, "The Missing Book". It's all more-or-less done, I just need a bit of work on how I'm taking the picture. I'll try to get to work on it this week, but can't guarrentee anything.

Less than 3 weeks to hols now and I'm still frighteningly no where near organised. I still need to get money, clothes, probably new luggage... this weekend, I'll get it done.

Bugger, nieces coming this weekend, and I've promised to take them out..

Ok, next weekend. Definately next weekend.

On the plus side of being laid up for a couple of days, I have managed to work through my entire Scrubs season 2 box set, which I must say, is worth the entire cost if only for the outfit Elliot wears in the Turk 'sex dream' scene. (shamelessly reproduced below)

Fantastic.


Pb

Diet has been going really well of late. Apart from the football on Saturday which involved beer and pies, I've been spot on for two weeks now. No alchol, tuna salad for lunch, grilled chicken/pork/turkey with steamed veg for tea. Nothing else inbetween. I'm even managing to stick to it fine as well. :)

However, I realised recently I need to take it to the next level.

I need more excercise.

Having a job where I sit for pretty much most of the day behind a desk, coupled with my army of space monkies that pretty much handle all the day-to-day tasks at Zenith Towers means that I've ended up getting virtually zero exercise all day.

I've tried doing the gym before, but due to me lacking motivation in a large way, coupled with the fact I've always found the gym slightly boring, I've never managed to stick to it. So this week, I decided to start my new excercise plan.

I've taken up boxing.

Yep, from now on 2-3 times a week I'm paying someone to physically abuse me. And by heck, I feel like it's working. I honestly wouldn't have thought that repeatedly punching a bag for 10 mins would get you fit, but it's amazing what state I was in after my first hour with my trainer. (actually, I managed about 47 minutes before I collapsed, then threw up)

I've got my circuit training instructions from my trainer that I have to do everyday, along with my morning and evening excercises, and my next session 'with the gloves' is tomorrow.

The best thing is that as I have a (rather harsh) personal trainer, there's no 'I'm just going to have a sit down for 10 minutes' going on as used to happen at the gym. I must have had about 5 occasions that I thought "If I was on my own here, I'd have given this up and gone for a cup of tea".

Season 2 Scrubs box set should be here when I get home, so gives me an excuse to stick an Elliot picture in here. I've gone through the last day trying not to laugh out loud every 10 minutes when I keep picturing her saying "I'm a chunky monkey from funky town!". God love 'er.






Going the distance.
Pb

Well, off to see England this saturday, and due to the greedy FA trying to squeeze as much money out of fans as possible, I'm paying virtually double to sit in the same seat I normally sit in to watch Utd play every week. We're all heading to Manchester on the train for the day out though, so I'd expect for me to fall spectacularly off the wagon.

That reminds me, probably havent mentioned that I haven't had a drink since the beer festival. That's a couple of weeks now. It'd be a shame to break it really, but I feel I'd be letting the side down slightly if I didn't at least have one in the Bishops' before kick off. At least I'll definately stick to my diet (no fish and chips from the Lou Macari chippy) which has also been going well for the last week.

Got asked the other day to transfer my WoW character from it's current home onto one of the new servers, where the majority of the big guilds have migrated off to. All my old NGC mates are on there now, and want me to join up with them again. It's a bit of a difficult descision - I've got a lot of friends here now on Burning Legion, my own guild (admittedly, of just friends and work colleages) but it'd be a shame to leave them, plus BL is a very stable server now all the big MC guilds have buggered off.

On the downside, the server economy is a bit crap (due to the fact there are a lot less big guilds running the big instances). Also, it's a nightmare getting a group together, mainly due to the fact most of the high level Priest (who tend to be in big guilds) have left. I spent about 2 hours last night trying to get in a group for an UBRS run, and I know it's going to be a long time before some big groups build up to start doing MC/BWL runs. I could probably get in some runs for those pretty quickly if I migrated...

Decided to make a bit of a treasure hunt/puzzle the other day. It's as good as ready, just need to write the html and post it (you can keep up with it on Q4T, look for the HoZ section under puzzles). No idea how well recieved it'll be - the one person whos seen it says it's cool. I wanted to do something visual, but as I clearly can't draw or paint for toffee, I've resorted to making a sort of photo-puzzle. It'll be different if nothing else.

The theory is that I've hidden something in a box on my desk, and left several clues to the boxs' contents littered around on my desk as well. Of course, there is a lot of other junk on my desk, so some may be misleading. The first person to email me *exactly* what is contained inside the box wins either £25 of amazon vouchers, or a slap-up meal of their choice at Zenith Towers, with cocktails at Brandy's Bar afterwards.

Cheers
Pb