52 Varieties of No Ladder (part 1)

A good Friday night, there, with Dr Mr Bridger down for official post-viva success drinks. Despite the drunk woman at the table behind us nearly causing a security incident... Started in the Five'n'Thingy, and finished the drinks in the WH, where I had the lord conversation with Dr B. Took it in very generous spirit, especially considering his lady had tried to set me up with one of her mates at the BBQ earlier in the year... In the middle of all this, Ben II turns up unattended, waiting to meet RobOffOfBen. Then I get a 10-minute call from Neilo, a 1-minute call from Fletch (who's running it to the wire as ever, and about to be too late to get in for the extended drinking hours), then I try to talk the bouncing people into letting him in. They come up with some contrived way of getting him in, meanwhile Rob runs in past them to talk to Ben II, and promptly gets removed (all unseen by meself), but achieves his aim of making contact.

After the chucking-out bit, Dr B, Paul and meself go up to the kebab shop at the top of the Wrong Hill, while DrAbi makes her way up the Right Hill to go home (probably on account of the hen night she's to go to) unadvisably unattended, but mule-willed to the last.

After an ungodly wait for Paul and meself's chosen keeeebabs, we return to Aggy and commence the consumption of whiskey. All of it.

There ends the night's recollection, apart from recommending to Dr B that he sleep in the sitting room, on account of the dramatically increased apocalypse that befalls the back of the house every morning at 8am. Turns out to have been wise.

Saturday morning brought a World of Hangover. DrAbi went in and out of the hosue about four times in getting ready to go to this hen thing, which probably contributed to Dr B's later vomming. A trip to the cheapy shop resulted in me having a pack of jammy dodgers, a Guardian and a Yop. (Hungover?) Tea helped. Then watched some random telly for a couple of hours and caught up on some stuff in a slightly more sobererer environment.

After Dr B's departure, I went upstairs, salvaged some warm water from the evil plumbing system (must get that sorted today) got dressed all respectable-like, and walked out of the house.

Without my keys

Or a housemate in the vicinity

Arse.

The plan had been to walk over to the Uni to meet Ben II (finally) for some rugby-watching.

A new plan was suddenly required.... (TBC)

Walbums, Crawls and Digital Telly

Sure didn't I buy the Killers lastnight, post-Spectrum, in Tescos! I was all ready to make a very unwise purchasing decision in the form of one of those metre-long packs of Jaffa Cakes (which I wisely avoided in another late-night shopping trip last week). Sadly, although I'd finally worked out an excuse to buy them (for the office), they'd sold out. So I bought Hot Fuss instead. Which follows on from the pattern of doing the same thing with the Razorlight album last week.

It's been a very busy week-or-so. Friday, got drunk in the house, with three hooky DVDs (Welcome to the Jungle is now my favourite film that I'd never heard of. Usually a fleeting accolade, but earned nonetheless), Andy, Mr Scriv and DrAbi. Then Ben II called round just as we were reaching a hiatus (good word) in the drinking. Turns out he'd been clambering all around the house (including the back yard) but wouldn't ring the doorbell for fear of waking us if we were asleep. What a star. Think he was out there for half an hour... Anyway, this kicked off the dhrink again nicely. Even DrAbi stayed up quite late, which is almost unheard of in Aggy.

Much arm-wrestling</random suggestion from DrAbi>, plus a bit of poker with all the 2ps I could muster from the drawer of change, and a very badly played game of charades (drunk = bad at explaining things, amazingly). Then a rant about love life... best not remembered, really. About an hour after herself retired, I switched on the teletext to see what time the following day's rugby was to commence. At which point, Ben noticed it was 5:35 am. Hmmm... Despite slightly fragmented heads all round, and a return to recover eggs and bread from Aggy, he made it to his own sofa...


...and I made it to bed, slept for about 5 hours, and then made plans to meet Hoopah and Gav in the TUP for rugby-related drinks. Good games that day, too. With a hell of a lot of booze. (Abi actually called me a "monster" — then I explained that this was how I structured my weekend back in the 'Fast.)

Hoopah's mate Henry (plus his dad who'd worked for a few months at UTV!) joined us for the England game, and Haze'n'Frase turned up (post-shopping, then Hazel had to depart for the White House shift, after a quick catch-up chat). Fit Sam (apparently the official nickname) also joined the proceedings later, and a pub-crawl took hold. TUP, Pews ("Sorry, lads — private party" ha ha...), KH, Three Tuns. All made an appearance in my memory the next day.

Which was when I made the decision to buy a digibox. And it's a great thing! Although the reception's a bit on the dodgy side sometimes (dropped out a few times on Sunday, after installation, then a bit more permanently since Arrested Development on BBC Four lastnight). But when it's up, it's staggeringly good. A revelation, considering there's no subscription.

Anyway, better get on with this project...</slacking off>

Off to a Thanksgiving dinner tonight in Cheam! Hat's off to them for the invitation :)

Launch nooze

In other news, the Swift launch is off until tomorrow. Something about checking that they're able to self-destruct it remotely in case its trajectory goes haywire. Fair enough.

Off til the Spectrum again tonight, but need to sort out

1. shopping (urgh...)

and


2. kitchen (aargh...!)

Maybe tomorrow, eh....</procrastination>

Processing equals surfing

So that's how I ended up spending so much time surfing and writing web pages during my PhD: processing data takes forever!

It's been a while since I had a massive dataset to get my teeth into, and this one at the moment is a particularly large one</oo-er>

Sure that was a powerful weekend!

Started off with meeting Neilo in the now-traditional Reef Bar. A few pints of Grolsch to the good, we rolled onto the train after grabbing a tide-you-over can from the Whistlestop, and repaired to the Studio, where we proceeded to get a) a Chinese from the new non-Weakest management downstairs; and b) wrote. Very enjoyable, and somehow managed to pass out on the sofa. Must be a defective sofa, as that never normally happens elsewhere...

Anyway, Saturday night was The Killers' gig in Shepherd's Bush, so we spent the day doing relatively sober things, like going to Bluewater, which is a mighty place. And it will be revisited in the run-up to Christmas. We got there good and early, so there was time to browse around for (and buy) stuff. And book tickets to see The Grudge (a properly scary film, even with a wee drink before taken into account).

Post-fillum, Nandos was queued up, so we defaulted to La Tasca. "Would you like to sit inside or outside?" Moot point, as both were inside, but I liked the Las Vegas daftness of it.



Speaking of whom, the gig itself was absolutely fantastic. I couldn't stop grinning the next morning, and all because of a band! First time I'd been to a gig since I saw Coldplay in the Ulster Hall several years ago, I think... Blimey...

In contrast to the relative non-hungover-ness of Saturday morning, Sunday morning was the opposite. I woke up early, tried watching France v Australia at 90 degrees to the horizontal, but that didn't work and just made my head hurt a lot more.

Eventually, after attempts to wash/brush up, meself, Neilo and Stretchy went to Greenwich to the market and I got myself equipped with presents for Drabi and one of the sisters. Plus hungover shopping sweets (inc. baklava, just because it was there). Thence to the Tai Won Mein for a fet-knecker dinner. Can't beat the beef in black bean sauce with fried egg noodles, all for �3.40!!<HiThisIsWes>

Actually, it's curtains for Wes! I feel a bit bad for the guy — less than two years, after all. And in favour of JK and Noel, eh...?