apparently, i post at a 5th grade scale. (put my website address in, if you want to check it)

hey, at least i beat tv guide.

so, i should probably update again, hm? yes, yes i should.

so the last few days have gone pretty well, there's been a barbeque over the weekend¹ which went really well, my brother's birthday was yesterday² and i went out with the family for a meal, and i watched the last episodes of sealab 2021, which was kind of an anticlimax. oh well, i have Darkplace to keep me satisfied tv-wise, at least for a little while, and ooh! new episodes of lost starting today! it's kind of ridiculous the amount of re-runs they show of that mid-season, but what can i do?

i have my paper tickets to america, and ohhhhh i just can't wait. july can't come soon enough. i really want to get rid of all this intervening time as quickly as possible, even if it does contain my birthday³. i seriously cannot think of anything i want more than to be over there right now. because it will be amazing. in so many ways.

it's renée's birthday today, and she's having a milf/dilf 70s party to celebrate, causing me to be incredibly jealous of anyone who's going to be attending. my birthday's on saturday, and i probably couldn't even pull in enough people for a party, let alone give it a costume theme. oh well, when's the next special birthday after 21? 40? i guess i have a little time then.

things that happen this weekend!

1) apparently going out "for a few drinks" on friday for my birthday, because the others are going out with gav for drinks to celebrate his birthday last weekend anyway
2) going out for another meal with my family on the saturday for my birthday, this time indian food.
3) judging all my presents against the packages buffy sent me and finding them lacking.

i guess i better start doing some proper work now. more updates soon!

¹ taking advantage of the sunny weather while it's there.
² thomas. he's 15 now.
³ april 30th! this saturday!

So I have my tickets booked for my summer excursion. There was a fair amount of hassle, but it's all done now. I'm glad! I've been wanting to go back ever since I left, and July just can't come soon enough. I'm really, really excited. I always make a big list of things in my head that I can't wait to do when I get there, and seeing Buffy smile is always right at the top.

Currently, I don't have anywhere to live past the end of June. This is hopefully going to change. We have a couple of houses lined up, with a couple more to look at. It'll get sorted over the next couple of days.

I found this amazing set of Nintendo papercraft models. It is WONDERFUL. If I had a working printer, I'd totally make a bunch of these. I love these sorts of things.

I made the mistake of trying to see what I'd look like with a goatee for a little while. I wasn't too sure about it, and after Buffy and Swifty mentioned that they didn't like them, I shaved it off. So. This is non-news, other than I apparently can't make style decisions. Also, apparently it's illegal to have a goatee in Massachusetts unless you first pay a special license fee for the privilege of wearing one in public. It's a good thing I got rid of it, then.

so my parents won tickets for the family to go to CHINA at this formal dinner they go to each year. it's ridiculous. they've won two other holidays at the same dinner in previous years too. the trip's in july though, which is when i'd be headed over to america again, so i won't be able to go. my parents asked me about it, then they said they appreciated that i wanted to go spend time with buffy, and that they'd pay for my ticket.

THIS IS A VERY GOOD THING.

i'm so pumped. i mean, it would have been awesome to go see china, but i don't think i could go any longer away from buffy. i need to be there pretty much the first chance i get. and now my parents are paying for it. i don't know how they can afford all this stuff, but hey. this is great!

other news! today we (the household) are making a sunday roast. this is a chance for me to home my cooking skills (ie gain some) and have a healthy meal. hurrah!

there was something else i was going to say too, but it's gone. i'm sure it'll come to me. i'll just sit and eat peanut butter cups until i remember what it is.

so i've been feeling pretty run down the last couple of days, as my bi-weekly cold comes on. i get sick all the time, it's ridiculous. at least it's clearing up now. i still havea mean cough, but what can you do?

there's a meeting today, which means everyone in the department comes here, we sit around the table, i listen to people talking about stuff that's not relevant for about an hour and then spend two minutes telling people what i've been doing. such is the way of meetings.

it's the weekend soon. i don't know what i'll be doing. i need to think more about my birthday, otherwise i'm going to spend it sitting around the house on my own like i do pretty much every other night. if there was anything else to do around here other than go out to a bar, or if i had a bunch of friends i could invite to a party, it wouldn't be so bad. as it is my social network in this country extends to the people in my house, and a couple of them annoy me. hm.

tonight there's a leaving party for one of the workers here (who actually left last week, but i guess this is when things are happening) where i think we're going to, quelle surprise, a bar. then maybe going for spanish food or something. this is right after work, i don't think i'll have time to go home and get changed. if i do, i might not be able to find the way to the bar. hmm. i'll make do. i wonder how long it is before i have to tell people i don't really like to drink. also i feel like i'll be hanging around a lot without much to talk about, but at least i'm pretty friendly with the worker in question, and my manager's not too bad either. all in all, as long as i can escape ridicule it should be fine.

i finished off my painting yesterday. buffy quite rightly pointed out how much it looked like a penis at first, so i changed it and now i'm a lot happier with it. i quite like painting (when it goes well) but i had to order myself some new canvasses before i can do anything more. i want to build up a collection of paintings and then maybe sell a few online. i'll have to see whether anyone will actually want one.

man, you can tell that i kind of get a little fed up at work, can't you? i feel stuck in a rut and that comes through here. good stuff happens too! i got two amazing packages from buffy, that's something to be happy about. i put them up on my flickr if you're interested. you should check out lanolin. remember, it's hand-made. amazing. i'm so pumped that she did that for me, as well as everything else she sent. seriously.

also, i traded in a game for metroid prime 2: echoes, and it's a lot of fun. i love the scanning side of things in the game, it just adds that little bit more to things. instead of just running around shooting at stuff, there's more of an exploration aspect. the detail in all these scans is amazing. stuff that isn't important at all has information you can read about it if you want to, just change to scanning mode and look around. it's what i liked about the original mode, and i'm glad it's back. of course, i have to find time to play it, but when i do, i enjoy it. i've also been reading memoirs of an invisible man, which i picked up while thrifting with buffy. it's really good so far, better than the movie (though i do enjoy that too). on top of that, it is the weekend tomorrow. let's see what i make of it.

every time i walk to work i walk down a fairly long road that ends up at the main road through manchester, wilmslow/oxford road (it changes name partway through). anyway, i catch a bus down this road to work in the mornings, and while walking down the road to it i always see, without fail, two of the buses i could have taken driving by. every time. even if i got earlier, i see two of my buses pass by. it's sort of ridiculous.

i got an early birthday present from buffy yesterday! she baked me peanut butter cup cookies! she gave me a jolly lolly with a cool cat on it, she made me a card (which was adorable) and she even had a mug printed with photos of us on it! isn't that sweet? but that's not even all. she frigging HAND-MADE A TEDDY BEAR FOR ME. she embroidered a heart on it! and sewed and stuffed and did everything herself! HOW AMAZING IS THAT? uuuuuughhhhh soooo goood. all this stuff was so amazing that i actually completely forgot that my parents had paid for my new digital camera for my birthday, and i got all confused. THAT IS BECAUSE IT IS SO GOOD.

no matter what happens from now on with this birthday thing, at least i know i've gotten an amazing present already.

UGH. what is up with my nose running since around 7pm last night? and also my getting a headache? i shouldn't be expected to work under these conditions.

getting sick is crappy, i guess i've managed to do it again. it's not really a surprise, given the state of this house. i really think that my flatmates are ridiculous. yesterday i went downstairs to find that one of them had left the gas stove turned on, cooking pasta, while he was in the shower. the flames were pretty much running around the outside of the pan. and he didn't see a problem with it.

i just need to keep telling myself that it'll be over with soon. also i need to go get some juice because i feel kind of crappy and need to drink a lot. but mainly the moving away from the problem part.

so hey, remember how i got laid out a couple of times with stomach-punch hurtery? and how i didn't know what was wrong? well i went to see a doctor and he thinks (although he didn't do any tests) that i have mild IBS. so that's crappy. apparently there's nothing to worry about though. he said it's completely benign, just an inconvenience to deal with, and seeing as it doesn't happen too often (every month or two, i think) then it's not worth treating. i was a little "uhhhh..." about this, so i asked for some tablets to take to help relieve the pain. because it is really annoying. so yeah. go my body.

other things that have happened are that i have painted a new painting, and that i'm going to be painting more. who knows? i may even take requests. i have a couple of ideas for now, but i know that i'll probably end up painting cartoon or video game characters if i'm left up to my own devices. you wouldn't want that, would you?

i'm designing a new website for work. it's half finished right now, but i'll let you take a look at it when it's done. it's actually a lot better than the one that they have up right now, and that's not just me boasting, the old one was pretty basic. this will actually be useful to people, and not be ridiculous. so that's a first.

geeky part of the post: i've been watching the new series of doctor who, and it's quite good. i don't call myself a fan of the original series, but i tuned into this one to see what it was like, and i like it. next week's preview had a spaceship crashing into big ben! what more could you ask for? also, the ds linkup program, for letting ds users play wireless games online turned out to be a hoax, as expected. it's king of annoying that people do this. i kind of expected it though. oh well, at least the ds is going online by september. and then? animal crossing ds! whee!

okay, enough of that stuff. i promise to update this thing a little more and let everyone know what's going on. like if i get any more diseases or something. yay.

it's ridiculous how much i leave this thing. i don't know if anyone reads it though. i guess buffy does, because she just told me to update it. so here i am!

amazing time was had in america. seriously, it was just incredible. check my flickr account for a pictoral representation of some of it, including quite a few crazy shenagegans going on at swifty's place. i miss being there already. i'm sure partly it's because i can escape all the things that annoy me here while i'm there, but mostly it's because i miss buffy a whole bunch of a lot. and i just keep wanting to go back to her.

i have started downloading lots of episodes of sealab 2021, and it is good. it is very good. the episodes are only 10 minutes long though, which is weird. and sort of annoying, considering it takes a good number of hours for me to get them. still, this is what i get for being british.

i went looking for canvasses today, to do more paintings. the shop i've bought some from in the past don't sell the smaller size anymore, and only have huge 80cm by 60cm ones. i don't know if i'm ready to tackle those just yet, seeing as i've only made two paintings on canvas in my life. we'll see. i found some more smaller sizes in another shop, but they're much more expensive. i've seen some on websites for a lot cheaper, but it's an american site. maybe i should sell paintings for a living over there. except no one would buy them.

i've thought a little about making a comic strip, an online one, but i need a good idea. i've had one, but i think it's been done. i also have to learn to draw better characters, and stick to a project. hm. we'll see. i like to talk about doing things like this but then i get distracted.

i've had an idea for a redesign here. if i get time at work (note: this is very likely) i will do it and see how much i like it. also, i will have to finish the drawing i've been working on or it will be sitting in limbo forever. geez.

so yeah, i'm back and things are same as they always are. i don't like that. that's the thing i dread most while i'm away with buffy, knowing that at some point i'll be back home, back in work, back doing monotonous jobs. well, one day it'll be different.

my birthday is april 30th. i don't know how to celebrate it.