Grumpy Louis

Spent most of today laughing at how grumpy Louis was after he developed indigestion and how he managed to put off all his homework until Sunday evening. Work went in a flash and I am hopefully going to start watching more films in the meantime, my watch-list has expanded an all I have done is ignore it.

First Driving Lesson

Again, last night I was under the effects of my recent cold so I had a Night Nurse after returning from Chris' house for some editing. Today, Mark and I were up at a local recording studio filming a young rockband similar to the Mini Band. We watched them play their instruments and the drummer especially was very loud indeed, it certainly wouldn't be the place to be if you had a hangover. Mark then rushed me home for my first ever driving lesson since I got some for my Birthday. I drove around many a road and speed-bump, I was even lucky enough to go into 3rd gear at one point. Had a wee bit of difficulty steering the car as I'm not overly confident at making turns larger than 45 degrees but I'm leraning; I only stalled twice!

Pondering a podcast

Yesterday, Mark, Dan and I attended a Community Radio meeting to register interest in doing a live local show about films, coming away from that meeting we found out two things. 1: We need to start making a weekly podcast show for the website where we could easily keep people posted about our new updates and plans but also to enthuse about films we have seen and just generally have witty banter that we could share with you guys. 2. I have a very bad cold.

Had one of the worst nights sleep I've had in a long time last night, despite nearly falling asleep on Chris' floor while I was there I couldn't fall asleep for the life of me when I jumped into bed. It got so bad that I didn't even want to look at my watch to see how much sleep I was missing as that would have really scared me Just been generally feeling sorry for myself, about to take some Night Nurse to help me out. Here's to a good nights sleep

*Takes shot of Night Nurse*

Pasta alla Vodka

Just another day today, my eye feels much better and work was samey as always. Made an interesting pasta meal for dinner tonight which involved setting fire to vodka which was pretty fun and quite tasty.

Eye Eye

Had Mark round early this morning after dropping Lucy off at her new job to watch What ever Happened to Baby Jane? A creepy movie similair to All about Eve but with a much darker tone, Mark certainly felt the tension as he was frequently talking to the characters, telling them what to do. Then we picked up Dan and Jamie for some fish and chips and games, I managed to shoot myself point-blank in the eye with a nerf gun, nothing serious but my eye just hurts like hell. I was also just having a cheeky look on IMDB before I went to bed when out of the corner of my eye I saw a big-old spider crawl across the wall, took me 10 minutes and a whole lotta swearing until I finally plucked up the courage to get him. Luckily Jamie was playing with my spider catcher earlier so it was in arms reach, with it I could nab the bugger and chuck him out the window; good riddance! 

Happiness is cake

Work was no where near as busy as anticipated and we actually had a very nice party at the end of the day. The parents of the kids really enjoyed themselves and were so pleased with the party that all the working staff working there were offered a piece of Birthday cake! Success there then. My girlfriend also took some time (and some serious cash possibly) to give me a call all the way from Nepal, she sounds like she has gotten over the initial home-sickness stage and is starting to properly enjoy herself.

Calm before the storm

Spent most of today playing through more of Borederlands 2 and some Torchlight 2 with Louis and a chum where much banter was had. I am however, dreading work tomorrow as I know that we are gonna be really busy indeed. Weather forecast for tomorrow is practically Hell on Earth. Guess I just need to man up and take it on head-first!

Geocashing

Not only have we released our new sketch viewable here:

The Boyfriend

...But we also all went Geocashing as a team. If that word confused you, like it did to me this morning allow me to explain. A team of people have gone around the UK and dispersed small containers pretty much everywhere. They are designed as a kinda modern time capsule thing as this started early last year, but you download an app and go in the rough location it sends you to but then you're on your own to look around the spot for the elusive box. We found two of them and signed the small time sheet within each.

Its a fun little thing to do if you got a free afternoon and there were at least 20 of them within a mile around Newbury so you can check out the site for yourself to see if there are any hidden around your neighbourhood:

www.geocaching.com/

The Boyfriend

After various trails and tribulations, our new sketch stumbles out of editing and onto your screens. This one isn't very family-friendly, so watch out for various expletives. We would also like to thank Newbury Police Service for their concern as Olly was shoved motionless into the back of a car.

Out with the old and in with the new (Dishwasher)

After going 2 months without a functioning dishwasher at work we finally inherited a new one, or rather a second hand one from another branch while they get a brand new one. The one we go came with some serious limescale too, spent 40 minutes cleaning it all out with a sponge and a knife to get all the crap out of the jets. Now I have 2 days off though, and with Borderlands 2 coming out early tomorrow morning I have my weekend all planned.

The second coming of Eddie

Did a massive re-jig of my room to accommodate my new computer set up. All my games consoles have been neatly put away in a cupboard but still readily available if I need to plug any of them in. Did all this before heading to work where I got to be the cat for the second time and this one went much smoother than the first. The children were younger and less skeptical about 'The man in the suit,' I gave them all hugs and tussled the Birthday boys hair so I think I did a good job.

I want to ride my bicycle

Louis came home with a massive gash on his hand after spectacularly falling off his bicycle this afternoon, he ripped his favorite pinstripe trousers too; couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy.  Went over to Chris' house to give moral support to the team as Mark edited parts of our new sketch, destined to come out soon. I also picked up my cable from Mark so I am now running my PC off my television at the moment, still figuring out if I like it or not, text is a bit hard to read at times but aside from that, it looks pretty boos! Work was another typical day but I found out 3 things about my Manager today:

1. He didn't know York existed
2. He didn't know what the equator was
(Saved the best til last)
3. He thought that Pepperoni was a vegetable...

'Nuff said.

Adios

Today was our last day with the Spanish boys at our house, they spent the day looking around Newbury while I leveled up in Guild Wars 2. Went out to a farewell house party for the Spaniards in the evening after playing some Wii games for Louis' Birthday. Showed the guest 'PSY Gangnam Style' video, a Korean pop song which is suddenly dominating the charts in many countries, which is very impressive for a self-aware club hit.

See the video here:

Part-time English Breakfast

After treating our Spanish visitors to a full English Breakfast under the false impression that our household has one every Sunday I pootled off to work for what felt like a very long day. Nothing happened out of the ordinary but time just seemed to drag on, I was so knackered that night, seeing a roast dinner when I came home really boosted my spirits.

Camping in a freezer

Spent another night camping yesterday, suffered possibly one of the worst nights sleep due to my feet being very cold, along with the rest of my body. I need to huddle into the fetal position to regulate any form of acceptable body temperature but strangely I still really enjoyed myself at my girlfriend's camp-out. She also left for Nepal today with tears in her eyes as she will be away from home for 6 weeks, I will miss her very much.  

Coffee and Card

I was riven down to Stansted today to pick up a group of exchange students from Spain. I bought myself a meal deal and an espresso as I waited in the Arrivals Bay with my crappy hand-drawn sign for Carcaxient. We currently have two young lads living with us at the moment, I showed them how to play Left 4 Dead and we took them to our local castle ruins and they seemed to settle in quite well. 

'Bacon Hands'

We had a very quiet morning at Eddie Catz today, made a sandwich or two for some children but mostly the place was a ghost town. Early afternoon was a little bit different as a whole crowd of people came in to grab a coffee at the same time we had a massive delivery scheduled, yet we had virtually no room for any of the new stock in our freezers. This resulted in an ongoing, 2 hour effort between 4 staff members to re-jig the freezers. At one point I had to wrap up a whole lotta bacon in slices of four, I was about halfway through the process when my boss came in screaming 'Theo! Come quick!' Of course I happened to have 'Bacon hands' at this point so I dashed to the taps to wash off the bacteria and sprinted to he food cupboard where there I found, my second boss, who apparently was in an effort to clean out the back of a chest freezer, managed to fall behind it and get stuck there. It took three people to help pull her out of that gap amidst bouts of laughter from all parties.

Mark and Lucy also came round to deliver the last Birthday present, a mounted Big Lebowski poster! As I walked back up to my room with a white russian in hand I stood for a moment and thought to myself: The Dude abides. 

Happy Birthday Boxing Day!

Last night I didn't get a chance to do a Birthday blog unfortunately but I certainly had a good time with my chums as we BBQ'ed and partied long into the night. I got a copy of Maus which is a utterly fantastic graphic novel which is direct conjunction with Louis' gift of an ironic children's book  entitled 'All my friends are dead' which is wickedly funny. Spent today recovering after having a great nights sleep in a tent in my garden and staring at my new lava lamp in awe and sorting out my new phone contract, I'd better make the most of all those free texts! 

Grapes of Wrath

My day at work was booked with 5 parties to cater for, it was definitely a change of pace compared to what I have been used to recently so we had a few moments of panic when party food wasn't quite on time but we coped well. Louis and I decided to watch The Grapes of Wrath since he was a big fan of the book and I am a fan of John Ford and Henry Fonda. It must have been phenomenally good for its time with some great settings and a couple of nice little speeches taken from the book, it would have been nice if some of the more minor characters were better characterized but I guess that's what the novel is for.

Beer Festival 2012

After a crash course on how to iron, wash and hang up clothes from Mum I went off to the Newbury Beer festival to try some of their fine ales. To my surprise I came across some of the Belgians I met at Youth for Europe there who were just chilling and enjoying the lovely British weather. Off to supposedly hit the town now, however I won't be staying up too late anyways as I have work the next morning and apparently we may be very busy with a plethora of children parties.

Quiche, coffee and elbow grease

Work was dead again today, but this time, we were not just lounging around, no sir. For a long time now we have had a griddle that was supposed to be used for frying burgers if we ever included them on the menu, that idea never materialized and we used the surface for food preparation. So we decided to scrub it up real good and flog it for a fair price, the actual scrubbing process required me to pour boiling water on a hot stove and use a wire brush, safety gear of a pair of heavy duty gloves, an apron and eye protection was given; a co-worker observed keenly that I looked like one of these:

After shipping off that space we spent another few hours giving the kitchen a much needed deep clean and re-jig to boost efficiency in the work place and to make space for our new fridge. We got our hands very dirty in the process of the cleaning but it looked really pukka at then end of the day, there was even some broken quiche and stale cake to eat after close which went down very nicely with the newly found staff instant coffee. Seriously, the kitchen used to be cramped but now I feel like I could do acrobatics in the new space as I toast paninis!

Your my Rushmore

Work was predictably easy today, so much so that I was sent home early since there were no customers in the place after the 'lunch rush' of a single food order. Returning home I tided up my room a little bit for the usual crowd who came over to watch Rushmore, a film which has well stood the test of time and was much better than I remember.

Back 2 School

I was at work again today and the first thing that struck me was a massive ongoing headache I carried with me for the rest of the day. It felt like my head was two sizes too small for my brain. Luckily, today wasn't at all busy and tomorrow is looking to be a glorious day, and all the kids will be back to school as well so I will have a ridiculously easy day ahead of me it seems.

Trip to Marwell

Sorry again about the distinct lack of blogging over the past few days, this is because I was staying over at my girlfriends house which is situated in the countryside which gets internet at about the same speed as when you wait for the very last drizzle of ketchup to come out the bottle. Today we hit the zoo as a big group as we were all eager to do something before Jamie and Dan go back to school for their year 14. Undeniably the highlights were the Otters, the Anteater and obviously then Penguins which were very cute indeed. During the car journey we listened to an audiobook version of The Little Prince, Jenny's radio was broken and we had to resort to the old cassette tapes for entertainment, sadly, her car is also very noisy on the motorway so I didn't get to hear much of the story but I will definitely try to get the tape back to have a proper listen.