Andy's Blog

As is traditional at this time of year it is time to start making vague promises about how you are going to approach the new year and ‘improve’ yourself.  In my defense I have already started on a number of these, but in true new year resolution stylee it’ll be interesting to see which ones last past a couple of weeks.

So I present the following, not yet fully thought out, resolutions;

Get Fit
Time to build up some upper body strength and finally develop a muscle, somewhere… anywhere will do! 

The membership of Virgin Active is already a few weeks old and things are looking OK so far; swimming nearly every day, and I have gotten over my initial embarrassment of only being able to weight lift the equivalent of the membership card above my head :/

Two Belts
Not entirely sure if this is possible, but gonna aim for two karate belts higher than I am currently…  Everyone needs a stretch goal!

Get Offline
Time to get offline a little more and give people a rest from my omni-presence on the Internet.  Not a full retreat from the series-of-tubes, no more train wrecks hopefully this year, just a lessening of the addiction

This is also connected to…

Get Out
Apparently there’s something called ‘life’ out there and some of my friends actually exist out there in a physical sense!  So methinks it may be time to get out and have a few drinks with friends, partake of life, stop the ‘stalking’ element and get a grip..

Hopefully getting out on the bike a lot more will help with this, which I find is helping clearing out the ‘ol cobwebs and gives me a great bit of personal time even for the short period of time I do get out there.

So there you go, a set of vague’ish promises that may die an inglorious death before January even ends!  As ever, you will be the judge..

After one too many conversations about life, the universe and everything including mid-life crisery the following popped into my INBOX from an anonymous email address (must find out how that’s done)…

A dream is something to keep me sane,
something to help ease the pain,
a dream keeps all my hopes alive,
a dream is all my memories revived,
a dream helps when life unravels,
and charts future roads in which to travel,
but no matter how real a dream may seem,
remember a dream is just a dream!

- Unknown

a nice little poem about dreamers, or a warning about just dreaming and not acting?  Probably both, but enjoy either way..

Three days, two parties, one mother of all hangovers!

That’s it I have had my fill of Indian meals for the rest of this year, and after the Karate Instructors meal yesterday, I have had it with drink.. for at least the next day or two.. maybe.

One fairly valuable lesson learnt during the party last night; when having consumed several bottles of Cobra, don’t attempt to MSN people from your iPhone.  The co-ordination required to select the right people and send intelligible messages is severely impaired!

Three more days of work and one afternoon of giving an armful (practically) of blood is all that now seperates me from the festive cheer. 

Now if you don’t mind, I have a keyboard which looks deceptively comfortable and inviting.  Zzzzz…

The Christmas party rush has started! 

This Saturday just gone was the GKR Christmas Party which, as predicted, was a somewhat drunken affair.  Of course all the Sensei’s conveniently forgot that we were due to do grading the next morning.  Next day; 3 hours of trying to perform flawless karate moves in front of 200′ish students AND assess them proved a little too much for some of us!

The party was good though, and I proved I still had the power to bore people in less time than it takes to knock back a short.  Ah, the old skills are still there

Department party on Friday afternoon, which will consist of Curry and copious amounts of alcoholic beverages and then the Sensei Curry and Beer night on Sunday!   Think I will look like a drunken telly-tubby come the Monday, Uh-Oh!

There are very few rules to be followed when visiting the toilet and these rules tend to be unwritten and, certainly for use of the men’s toilet, more in the form of an etiquette to be followed; such as which urinal you choose and where the eyes should remain focused, etc.

Speaking on the mobile is definitely one of these unwritten rules, and you have to wonder what the person on the other end of the phone is thinking as they hear the background noise to the scintillating conversation the offender is engaged in.

Unfortunately the toilets at my workplace only come in pairs, so I was slighly surprised as the big Indian chap waddled up next to me with mobile clamped between ear and shoulder and proceeded to ‘do the business’ in the toilet next to me…. and chat… whilst, disconcertingly, have his head angled such that it looked like he was having a damn good ogle at my splendour!

Actual Script;

Me       : "Excuse me!?"
Him      : "Yes?"... (moves head to look me in the face)
Sound FX : Plop!
Both     : (look down to see mobile in urinal being peed upon)
Him      : "Shiiiiiiittt!"
Me       : (laugh)
Phonee   : "Hello?"

My previous stated Atheism may have to be revised, as I now believe there *MUST* be a God after all

I am in a fairly chipper mood today, the weekend was a good one for more reasons than can be written here, and I was called the ‘poodles undercarriage’ at work this morning – which I am taking as a good thing! Please don’t pop my self delusional bubble if this is not entirely correct :-/

I also have the nicest of quandries to deal with at the moment too. It certainly came right out of the blue and has boosted my… confidence? ego? mojo? To be honest I am not sure what it has boosted, but it *has* boosted whatever it is and given me a certain spring to the step.

…and the quandry? Well it does mean that I have to take a very definitive step over a line that I have resisted stepping over before, and is something not done lightly or without proper consideration.

In other news: The weight is now done to 82kg, or 12stone 9lbs for the more empirical amongst you, and I am now looking like a “long streak of piss” according to a friend (again, the optimist in me is taking the self delusional route and seeing that as a good thing).

Karate is also going particularly well, although the last lesson I went to made more muscles than I knew I had scream in collective pain, at least I didn’t make the usual fool of myself whilst sparring!

Consequently, the current mood music is “Same Direction” by Hoobastank which needs to be played VERY loudly and preferably whilst driving/riding at speed to get its full effect… my taste in music is definitely on the heavier side of the tracks at the moment

Being without a car at the moment has seriously restricted my world, pretty much at a time where my contact with said outside world, via electronic means, has also seemingly contracted to a silent whimper.

Of course this is largely due to other people *actually* having a life and the seemingly headlong crash into Christmas.  Unfortunately a number of good friends are just too far away to visit for a good night out of beer, laughter and shared ‘mid-life crisery’. 

So I continue to sit at the PC, aware of the long list of friends on MSN, and wonder if there is anyone out there?

More importantly, is there anyone out there with a bloody cheap car I can lay my hands upon in exchange for a wad of paper bearing a promise from the Bank of England and a nice portrait of Queen Lizzie?

Addendum: Unfortunately due to the large amount of cr*p I carry around at the moment, the bike is not really an option