Only 11 months until Christmas!!!

Howdy readers, and already we are in to February...

I wil begin this chapter of my on going adventure by going back to last Monday. After finishing work and coming home I had a phone call off Marcus asking me if, instead of going to the pub, a night of Bowling would be of interest. Yes, was my response so Me, Marcus, John, and Adam (No Jenny this week, she was studying for her police thingy) all went up to Rubery. Adam had a special voucher that gave us a free game, so a good time was had by all...

... Except me who ended up losing both games.

After taking my losses on the chin, I dropped John home and drove back to mine with Adam and Marcus, who jumped in to Ad's car and went home. Another sucessful evening.

On Tuesday I left work slightly later than usual and shot home to watch a bit of TV before going to pick John up and shooting over to Adams. We never know what we are going to do, we just sort of wing it. We ended up in the Field House but only stayed for one drink because of the amount of smoke. Honestly, it was thick and horrible. The air actualy felt greasy from it! We wandered back to Ad's and stuck the telly on. (We will probably do pretty-much the same thing later)

Ah Wednesday... I went to see father who had returned from his skiing holiday with the lads (or "The laaads" as they call themselves) in Lake Tahoe. It is the 20th year running for the lads ski holidays. I have been on 3 of those 20 (as well as the big ski holiday every year at Easter) and they are usualy quite manic, but I suspect that being the 20th aniversary, it was bloody mayhem. they stayed in a Hotel/casino, and i will try to post some of the photos when dad gets his film developed (film? What the hell is film?)

Thursday was Swan night... Except that it wasn't. For reasons I won't go in to (or even fully understand) Swan night became Packhorse night, and will probably remain Packhorse night for a while.

Friday (sorry readers i'm rushing through this because I'm A) hungry and B) want to play on my new bit of software which I will blog about in a moment) Friday after work, no one went to the pub, instead we all went home. I ended up having chinese for tea, and while I was chomping away on a chicken fried rice when my mobile rang. It was Marcus asking me if I fancied joining him and Jenny for a meal... D'oh! I declined but said that a drink would be spot-on so I phoned Adam, who shot over to mine, and we went to pick Marcus and Jenny up. In the car going to Weatherspoons in Kings Heath (which is where we decide to go) I decided to have a little bit of fun. Jenny was going on about her studying for her police training and said that she had been doing arrests....

heh, heh... So I made a big point of saying something like "would you have to arrest someone for, say, a traffic offence even if you weren't on duty?" like a mug she said "yes" so I dropped the Mondeo in to 3rd Gear and stood on the gas. I got the car up to 50-ish on Haunch Lane where Jen' tried to actually read me my rights!.... She got it wrong, however, and so I politely helped her out... Technically I was under arrest but didn't give a shit and parked by the old church in Kings Heath. We sat in the non-smoking section, about 2 feet from the actual sign. when Jenny lit a ciggarette a barmaid told her to put it out. Jen went and stood a couple of feet away so that smoking was allowed... Crazy. Afterwards, I went home to bed as I was feeling quite tired, and new that Saturday was going to require some energy...

... So I got up Saturday morning and waited for Selena and Kieron to come over because we were going to the snowdome. I shot down to fathers to pick up my ski boots (I hate rental ones) and stuck some petrol in and, when Sel' and Kie' arrived I set off for Tamwaorth. We were going because Selena had bought Kieron a ski lesson at the Snowdome for his Birthday (which was last week.) Me and Selena paid for two hours recreational skiing and watchd Kieron begin his lesson. All-in-all he was very good. He only fell over once at the end because he hit a pile of powder with one ski, and a compact bit with the other which can throw you off balance (I've done it myself many times, the trick to saving it is to turn with the slide. If your left ski hits a patch of ice, and your right ski is in thick snow, it spins you to the right. if you turn to the left the ski on ice wont bite and will slip from under you, turning with the spin, the ski in thick snow will carve properly, and you should regain balance... There we go, you've learned something! Who says my blog isn't educational?)

... Hang on where was I? Oh yes. So we will forgive Kieron for his little"touchdown" as I like to call them. I think he has now caught the bug and will go again. Afterwards we went to a pub (The Ladybridge. Go there! Now! The food is very good. Not the cheapest, but very good.)

In the evening, Adam came round and we went over to Sel' and Kie's, Adam had never seen my sisters place before and i think he was impressed. When we arrived, Kieron was watching season six of Smallville which, apparently, isn't out in this country yet. We decided to go bowling, but rather than trek over to Rubery, we decided to go to Stirchley. I haven't bowled there in years so off we went...

... We should have gone to Rubery.

We waited an hour for the lane so we killed that time with some Pool. When the lane was ready, we got our shoes but soon realised that there were no balls on the racks, only on the lanes themselves. Not a single ball that we could use was on our lane. After going on the scrounge we eventually found a 10lb and a 12lb with finger holes that we could just about get our fingers in to, but not comfortably... In fact at one point, Kierons hand started to swell with the squeeze of the ball limiting the blood supply to his fingers! We started the game but lo-and behold, it broke so we were forced to change lanes (they migrated our scores though so we wouldn't have to bowl again from the start.) We had two games and I lost them both (just like the Monday previous) by a few points. After the disapointing evening we went back to Sels' and put the Wii on. Adam enjoyed Wii sports but then we upped the stakes and put WarioWare: Smooth Moves on. It was hilarious to watch! Adam got in to it though and gave it a damn good go. If you have never played it, find someone with a Wii and rent it. It will be the wackiest night you will have in a long time. At 1:00am we decided we should leave and so I came home and went to beddie-byes.

Sunday was boring. Sel' and Kie' came round for Sunday lunch, and i downloaded BamZOOKi to my PC. basically, it is a program (distributed by CBBC, but we will ignore that for the moment) where you can build and animate creatures in full 3D. After building, you assign movement properties to the limbs and just like magic the whole shabang comes to life. now I suppose "Animate" isn't really the word because you have no say in the specific way a leg works, other than how you designed it in the first place. the fun starts when you exports your creatures (called "Zooks") in to the arena program, where you have no control over them. The computer pits them against each other in various contests, and you can watch to discover, say, which zook is the fastest, or the strongest, or the best at jumping hurdles, or taking penalties. It is a bizarre program to have but strangely addictive at thwe same time. I have always like the idea of 3D modeling but have never learned the advanced skills required to do it with serious, complex software...

Actually, since I've just about finished blogging and have now bought you up to date, I might have a quick build-session...

TTFN readers.