– Underworld was full by the time I got there. Admittedly this was about 1.30 after a late drink and a good chat with Budgie in the Scream. This meant no clubbing and a walk home in the rain 🙁

– A decent evening out. Left it till about 5.30 to get there and had fun. A good crowd all round.

– And this is really a case of practicing what you preach, but when someone pays you a compliment, just roll with it. They generally mean it, I certainly do.

– Tomorrow I have to do some cleaning around the house and I want to actaully watch some stuff. I need to clear some harddrive space aswell as having the urge to watch a movie or two.

– I just finished reading Jennifer Government and it wasn’t bad. Easy to read but well written too. Good fun throughout with some interesting characters and ideas.

– I really have to read Mark’s Zenith this weekend. I shall take one of them to bed to start reading shortly I think.

– Oh yes, Fuck you, America. I shall not be visiting you anytime soon. “Land of the Free” my ass.

Not sure where this one came from but I got it from the LJ of no less then Mr. Wheeler and Mr.Barnett. It’s a listing of “underrated movies”. Ones I have seen are in bold and some (Casino, Rules of Attraction) I would rate highly.

1. A Simple Plan (1998)
2. The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
3. Mr. Frost (1990)
4. Nightwatch (1997)
5. In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
6. Night Falls on Manhattan (1997)
7. The Arrival (1996)
8. Time After Time (1979)
9. Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
10. Gattaca (1997)
11. Dragonslayer (1981)
12. Equilibrium (2002)
13. Deep Rising (1998)
14. Mouse Hunt (1997)
15. Space Truckers (1996)
16. The Blob (1988)
17. Contact (1997)
18. No Escape (1994)
19. Frequency (2000)
20. Alien 3 (1992)
21. The Iron Giant (1999)
22. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
23. She’s The One (1996)
24. The Cable Guy (1996)
25. The Ref (1994)
26. Nothing to Lose (1997)
27. Living in Oblivion (1995)
28. Top Secret! (1984)
29. Antz (1998)
30. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
31. Fright Night (1985)
32. Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
33. Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987)
34. Cop Land (1997)
35. The Edge (1997)
36. State of Grace (1990)
37. Miami Blues (1990)
38. The Peacemaker (1997)
39. Ronin (1998)
40. Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)
41. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
42. To Live and Die in LA (1985)
43. James and the Giant Peach (1996)
44. Kiss of the Dragon (2001)
45. Nighthawks (1981)
46. King of New York (1990)
47. Heaven Help Us (1985)
48. LA Story (1991)
49. The Specials (2000)
50. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
51. Universal Soldier (1992)
52. In The Line of Fire (1995)
53. Liberty Heights (1999)
54. Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
55. One False Move (1992)
56. The Money Pit (1986)
57. Drive (1997)
58. Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995)
59. Rounders (1998)
60. Birdy (1984)
61. City of Hope (1991)
62. Stir of Echoes (1999)
63. Society (1989)
64. Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
65. The Mosquito Coast (1986)
66. Ed Wood (1994)
67. 13 Days (2000)
68. Big Night (1996)
69. A Midnight Clear (1992)
70. 25th Hour (2002)
71. Jackie Brown (1997)
72. Super Troopers (2001)
73. Beautiful Girls (1996)
74. Casino (1995)
75. Clean and Sober (1988)
76. A Perfect World (1993)
77. The Rules of Attraction (2002)
78. Point Break (1991)
79. Jesus’ Son (1999)
80. A Knight’s Tale (2001)
81. The Tailor of Panama (2001)
82. Testament (1983)
83. Home for the Holidays (1995)
84. And The Band Played On (1993)
85. Zero Effect (1998)
86. Deterrence (1999)
87. Candyman (1992)
88. Last Boy Scout (1991)
89. Gods and Monsters (1998)
90. The Winslow Boy (1999)
91. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
92. Gremlins 2 (1990)
93. Pump Up The Volume (1990)
94. Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)
95. The Prophecy (1995)
96. Southern Comfort (1981)
97. A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
98. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
99. Breakdown (1997)
100. Falling Down (1993)

A few things then today before I head off out.

– Despite meeting and chatting with a group of student nurses in the queue outside until we got into the club, we failed miserably to speak to them again throughout the night. Good job us!

– Dancing for hours and drinking lots of water is a really good way of sobering up. Of course this helps in not having a hangover the next day either.

– I believe I have been out clubbing more times in the past 3 months than I have in the past 5 years. Last night was more pop 80’s then alt. 80’s which wasn’t as good but had some good tunes in there and of course some GNR for the ROCK quota. I did laugh and bop a bit when they played the theme tune to Ghostbusters towards the end of the night.

– As it turns out, I have no idea why no-one mentioned anything on the V. Fairly grateful too but I was informed the other night that way more people than I had thought had picked up on something. Oops

– I had a word with the health and saftey manager yesterday about my desk setup. He had a couple of things so some small changes to come there. He also pointed out that these days, most people taught themselves to type and so the positioning not so much on their fingers but on their wrists is wrong. This is quite true, I tend to move my wrists alot more than I should. So a new rest coming up and hopefully I’ll just be more aware of it.

– On the good news front I lost a stone in about 2 months which is quite good. Added a little with the Dublin weekend (it was fairly debauched) but a good start I think.

– The non-drinking officially comes into play on Thursday. Yes, right before a 4 day weekend but ya know I really want to do it and stick with it this time. The plan is for a month, at which point I’ll be in Dublin and can have a weekend then and then off again until the festivals start.

– I have a cut on the bottom of my right leg. I woke up with it last Saturday. I have no idea what I did to it, I imagine I ran into something while drunk on the Friday night. It’s not bad at all, bled a bit but is clearing up now.

– I’m tired but I suspect I’ll go clubbing again tonight and I’m looking forward to it a little. Shall have to see who is on for it and if we can convince all of the naysayers to come along 2 nights running.

– I am no longer going to see Shaun of the Dead tonight. I have given up my ticket in aid of a good cause and shall see it next week with the V instead.

– Tis a tight month for money with that Glastonbury ticket being £120. I have two more festivals to book for too 🙁

Anyway off to the pub

I’m not even sure where to begin…as usual.

The having a quiet one until the work party next week has failed miserably. I’ve ended up out drinking and clubbing tonight and looks like the same again tomorrow night after a preview of Shaun of the Dead.

I want to type but I don’t really have much. I’m annoyed that Alex and Lawrence were unable to get tickets this evening. The organisation shown by Aloud/Glastonbury was really poor. They must have known the site would take millions of hits within minutes. Had this been something we had been doing, we would have been load balencing for weeks beforehand and the bloody emails would have been staggered.

Andy and I were booking together. So we shot off to the pub at 6.00 to have some dinner and a drink and then back to the office. Couple of computers with a good network and headsets on the phones to let us ring and use the interwebnet. So we chatted with the lads and then headed back to the office for about 7.45. By 7.55 the phone line for tickets was out of service, a BT error message. Then at 7.59 I got the email from Aloud with the link in it. As it was loading, I IM’d it to Andy and others. At 8.01 I had a ticket booked and about 20 minutes later got the confirmation email. Andy was seconds behind me

I have again come to some decisions and I am slowly acting on them. One worked out wellish previously but then it all fell apart in the end I want to fix that. The other just needs me to actually do something but I really really hope to be a student again in October. More on that as it develops.

I really wish that some people would take even some responsibilty. I know that I don’t always take as much as I should but at least I fucking take some. It’s just one of those things that comes with the job….that’s just reminded me I owe my boss an email doing just that. Note to self time.

I hate spam. It’s getting pretty bad of late. My filters are not the best but they do a decent enough job. I need to actually create a block list and set that in place but it takes effort that I don’t really want to go and put in. I will not however change my email address as a result of it.

I was caught by two April fools today. 1 before middday, the other after (boo!). First one was that Aloud had put Glasto tickets on sale early to members and to follow this link. I didn’t even think about it I just clicked. Doh. The second was far worse, it was something in work so not too much details but for a second the team were discussing pulling a product…then we looked at the attachement. Damn Canadians!!! I was really going for a second. It was really well done.

Right, guess I best leave it at that. Nothing else seems to be coming and I need to go and sleep.

I have a Glastonbury ticket. The organisation for it was completly and utterly shit and I was very lucky to get mine.

The Frames sound much much much better live and I’m hoping to see them at a festival or a gig again later this year.

I’m bored. It’s been a shitty day. I walked back into fuckloads of email and I worked through that for a while. For most of the day, I didn’t actually have anything that had to be done. I guess it’s a nice change but I hope it does not last.

It’s really amazing how much stress and worry comes back to you after a break. When I went to bed last night, I was sitting there thinking and worrying about all of the stuff I have going on that I wandered back into. It had been left alone for a few days, barely even thought of if at all and then boom. Stress just hit. It really dived in and here I am worrying about it all.

It’s really fucking nice to get a break like that for a while but at the end of the day, it’s just a break and it all comes tumbling back. Still it was good to have some people to talk to and more so to have more people now to actually talk to. All good.

Looks like after a couple of false starts I’ll be in Dublin for work in the middle of May…at the same time my dad is in London for work. Typical, but hopefully I’ll be able to get a weekend in there and see some folks again. It’s looking good from the exploratory email I sent my boss and we’ll see how it goes when everything is confirmed. That would be really good.

Spent a few minutes getting my calendar up to date aswell. There is so much going on at the end of May, start of June. Bristol, twice to see the Pixies and then the Download Festival in less than a week. Man I am going to be so shattered. I may well take an extra day after Download, thinking about it now. Still it should be good and I’m hoping for good weather and I know I’ll get good music and you know the rest will just work itself out.

I lost at chess today. Two games running and stupidly. I managed to win the third which pleased me a little but I guess the way things are going I really need to get on my game to keep winning.

Also slightly worried about RSI in my fingers/wrists. I’m noting that most days at work, my fingers feel stiff by late afternoon and it’s not very good. I guess I could try and type better, just realising that I don’t use my right ring finger at all. I should concentrate on that for a while and see what I can do. Ohh I have just realised that I tpye funny. I do use that finger but I have my right hand angeled slightly so that it’s not positioned over the right keys, but it gets the backspace and the enter key. Both of which I use a lot more than I should. I wonder if this is another habit I can break. I guessi I should try. They should be more little finger things. I don’t have a wrist rest I am happy with and have not for a long time, perhaps one of them or a “natural keyboard” which I usually hate would help some.

Anyway I guess it’s time for a quick trip to the local even tho I have set a goal of no booze till Thursday week for a catchup with the lads.

Hopefully this will be a better effort than the last time. Several of the keys on my parents’ keyboard take a good whack to actually work and it throws me off. I’m hitting mine too hard now and have to make up for that too but that should go soon. Also, I can’t figure out what it is, I think it’s the refresh rate but the screen hurts my eyes and I can’t use it for very long so all in all it’s not very good. When the writing frame of mind is fading, it’s a real killer.

When I came in late on Saturday night, it was close on 5.30 after the hour forward and well I was really tired (I fell asleep in the cab on the way home) and I had been drinking for most of the day. I wanted to blog. I had things to say, I even made a note of things to type out about. Of course when I came to try the next day there was just nothing there.

All in all it was a good weekend and then some. I’m quite glad to be back in touch with a few people and had a fairly good time with my family and as usual some interesting and some enlightening conversations with my dad.

This has been another one of those entries. I started it a long time ago and now I’m coming back to it. It has ended up being a rather shit day. Long story short, the kitchen flooded, there is a problem with the water in the building and none of it is good. So someone coming out tomorrow to look at it, the person we had tonight was an emergency on call and can’t help with a building wide problem, he does not know enough about it. Just great. So we just left it and have to hope it will be ok.

Anyway I picked up some of The Frames back catalogue, it was dirt cheap at Euro prices compared to the £17 for a single album over here. I got 4 for close enough to that price. Anyway the first track from For the Birds; In the Deep Shade is really lovely and I’m going to listen to that a couple of times as I type this out.

I have no idea what’s changed. Looking back on Dublin, there was one person who was always very important to me and has been for over 10 years. I don’t think that one was a major secret, I know numerous people knew and I’ll just leave that one at I fucked up very badly and continued to do so and well that’s that. There was of course more than one, so here is the story of another. Well it’s not really cause I’m never doing to tell you lot that but here is some of it anyway.

Then there was another girl who was just one of the gang. I know I’ve mentioned about our Saturday nights out in Dublin here before. A group of us, basically sci-fi geeks who met over things like that met up, had some food and went to the cinema. It was a weekly thing and man I could probably go into pages on that one if the mood struck. Anyway it ran for years, literally years, I don’t think I’m far off in saying we did it for 5 years or so. Anyway we all ended up drifting off but there was a core group of 6 or so the whole time and then some blow-ins. I don’t remember how we all met, there was of course some of the friend of a friend and there was just people that we met and got on with and brought out. Man, back then other halves rarely made it a second time, not that most of us had ’em really. I very famously brought one along for a while but that’s a post for a whole other time and indeed a whole other me.

Anyway it was some of the people from that group that I met up with on Saturday night. One of them, Jean is the girl I got in touch with about 8 months ago and met the last time I was in Dublin. We were fairly close for a while (not like that children!) and I honestly don’t remember why we lost touch. I suspect an argument of some sort timed at when we were both moving around and dealing with things in our lives and so it just happened. Suffice it to say I’m fairly happy to be in touch with her again.

She was the one who I was meeting on Friday afternoon who said to come along again later that night and meet up with Liz. Honestly I really wanted to, but I was fairly hesitant. I think it’s fair to say I always liked Liz, but it’s certainly not fair to say we saw eye to eye all the time, most of the time we didn’t. Me and her use to have some real fights every now and again. I had sent her an email a while ago when I managed to find an address but never got a reply. As it turns out it was a dead address and she seemed genuinely pleased to see me and we chatted fairly late on Friday night over lots of drinks and agreed that we had argued over shit and all grown up since then. So she more than falls into the failed to appreciate category. We all ended up back at hers after some drinks in town and anyone who opens the cd player, see’s that it’s Jeff Buckley and then just hits play is allright in my book! The silence in the room as Hallelujah came on was just great.

Anyway we went out again on Saturday night as Jean and Liz had arranged to meet the other two from their group of girls in the gang, Mary and Emily. And ya know, it was a good night and I don’t know what’s changed but things have and well that’s really that. I don’t know, but sitting there chatting and everything else and despite some concerned looks and texts from Jean and Liz who I had told the full story to the night before, there was nothing. I did zone out for a while and it wasn’t for any real reason other than being tired and thinking. So for a change I’m not going to be dwelling on a girl and will however point out that there is nothing at all wrong with her as certain people assumed automatically earlier.

Speaking of being tired. Saturday morning, I cannot remember being as hungover as I was then. Friday I had met my dad for lunch at 2.00 and gone to the Porterhouse. We had 3 pints in there (if not 4). Then I met Jean for coffee. She had to run off to a work dinner for a couple of hours so I bought myself a paper (I really need to get Irish papers more) and sat at the bar in Messer Maguires read it. That was another 3 pints and then we went drinking for the evening. It was a full 12 hours of boozing and it showed.

Saturday, I had a ticket for the Ireland vs. Scotland Rugby match in Lansdowne Road with my dad…and free food and drink beforehand at a minor event thing the tickets came through. I had a couple of drinks there but it was well after 2.00pm before my stomach had calmed down enough. ‘Twas a bit of a waste.

My dad said something interesting on Sunday night when we were chatting which I thought was a good comment for here. We were talking about my little sister, Katie. I had gone for a drink with her earlier in the day so we could have a chat and I could see if she would tell me anything about college and that or if I would get what was the standard “I don’t know”. I was commenting that I didn’t get that and that I thought she was much improved on answering questions and information had to be dragged out of her a lot less. He agreed with me but then commented “Well, look at my three children, none of them are very forward” and it’s very true. Not much more information coming from any of us ever!

By the way, I’m aware that I’ve already covered some of this. It’s working better for me now and so I just went with it. I feel like keeping on but I don’t know what else I want to get down here.

I’m not in touch with many from the group mentioned above. It fell apart rather spectacularly at the end. It had been unravelling for a while, I don’t think it was anyone’s fault, I think it was everyone’s fault. We all just grew up a bit and were pulled in different directions by the fickle mistress that is life. Looking back, we agreed we had good times and we agreed that all of the fighting was over silly things and these days we could see ourselves sitting down and catching up with almost everyone. Just the one notable exception there, I wonder if any of you can guess who that is. I don’t think you would be surprised by the answer but anyway.

I have a quiet month lined up. Have to book some tickets for Glastonbury next week and that’s really it. Work only rang me once last week so I’m hoping for it to be a quiet one tomorrow. I’ll guess I’ll find out soon enough. Alex is staying home to look after letting the plumbers and that in here, I offered but ’tis handier for her I guess.

I found my copy of O, more precisely my sister gave it back to me. I should head to bed now, you should click through this:

Ghost Town: “my rides through chernobyl area”

Right, control + a, followed by delete. This just isn’t working. I think I’m going to have to go for a list here as typing sentences just isn’t working right now. I tried and I got no-where.

– Ended up at a friends house the other side of the city last night, the cd already loaded up was Jeff Buckley’s Grace. It’s so good that I want to cry, so very very good. It got us all a bit.
– Sitting in Messers Maguries having a pint or 2 with my dad before going out with people for the night and the England/France rugby match was on and I swear the entire of Dublin may aswell have been just outside of Paris. The French got cheered on so much and of course they won so that was great.
– I had been at the Ireland match earlier where we won and the atmosphere there was excellent. I’ve said it before but that’s not going to stop me from saying it again. It’s at things like that when you realise the benefit of big sporting events. It was great.
– I met a friend for coffee on Friday afternoon and she invited me out again later that night when she was meeting another friend, one who I had not seen in years and years. So I went along to the meeting place and I spotted her and the look on her face as I walked up to her was great. I don’t think I was expected 😉
– We went and got really drunk and talked about lots of things, old times, new times, good times and bad times. Looking back, I know I did not appreciate her as much as I should have. But then again that’s true for most of my friends. Man I’m an idiot.
– So we were sitting in The Bank on Dame Street (not fucking College Green) and we were getting very drunk and ended up talking about people we use to know and all that and I was interested to note that not a single one of them had twigged how big a crush I had on someone else. This was tho, shortly followed by notification of the fact they were going out with her on Saturday night, would I like to come along.
– Of course I did and you know, some things never change. Other things do. We were sitting at the front of the pub and she was late. I spotted her outside, on her way in and I think my stupid grin was noticed round the table a bit. Anyway the look on her face was good too. And ya know, things change.

I need to leave it at that now, it’s not coming.

In a mere 12 hours, location alone should improve the way I feel 100%. I am looking forward to it a hell of alot. I am of course not packed and I have to leave in about 7 hours. I shall go and see if I can sort myself out now.

Why is it always mere hours before I have to get up, when I should be sleeping that I realise I have no clue where my passport is?

For fuck sake. 20 paniced minutes later.

*sigh* Roll on that fresh Dublin air. The runway at Dublin airport with all the pollution that comes with it smells and tastes nicer than all of London. It’s really astounding.

Goodnight all.