Month: July 2004

Sickness
So, I finally drag myself out of my sick bed to write something. I’m feeling awful! I’m on antibiotics and lots of pain killers, both of which I generally try to avoid at all costs. I have an extremely nasty throat infection and I’ve had a blood test for Glandular Fever which is *not* good. It’s easy to get down when it hurts to eat/drink/swallow/breathe and I can’t kiss my girlfriend for risk of infection.

But before the lurgie set in lots of stuff happened….

Work
I’ve finally had some tech support work to do retrieving data from a badly broken hard disk and a web site job has come up. Sorry mchicago but the hosting fell through because the client has set up their own hosting and domain registration.

I went to the induction day at my new work place which was cool. Got to meet my new work buddies and have been warned about the political situation I may be starting off from! I must also be careful from here on in what I say in my blog in case workmates are reading 😛 (Hi Adam and Gary!)

I’ve been asked to work for two weeks during the summer holidays to help out setting up some new kit and getting used to the network which is good (extra money, won’t be such a shock in September) and bad (major panic about passing driving test in time which is looking increasingly unlikely). Driving is going OK but booking a test in time is proving impossible because the people I’ve got my lessons with messed me around.

Prom
The following day was Prom night which turned into an extremely romantic and memorable evening… and morning. The jazz band was very cool and the food wasn’t bad either. The room wasn’t fantastic but it didn’t really matter. Especially seeing as lauperr stole enough soap, shampoo, shower caps, tea, coffee, sugar, toilet rolls etc. to more than make up for the rip off price!

Cinema and Shopping
The next day lauperr and I went to watch Shrek 2 with my Aunty and her boyfriend which was really nice and the film was great fun. Had a relaxing evening with lots of pizza and shopping the next morning, and afternoon. A very successful shopping trip actually, a total of £2 was spent 😀

Propoganda from “Corporate B******s”
I’m getting increasingly irritated at the bollocks propoganda I’m being bombarded with at Showcase Cinemas and in Blockbuster about film piracy and how evil it is, funding terrorism, yadda yadda. I’ve found some of the video clips offensive, verging on threatening. “Corporate B******s” are not my words btw, but those of someone standing at the back of the Cinema who had nowhere to sit. The reason they had nowhere to sit is that the Cinema was breaking fire regs and had sold too many tickets to maximise profits.

lauperr‘s 18th
Yesterday was lauperr‘s 18th birthday which started with a Champagne breakfast with strawberries, cream, chocolate and roses courtesy of yours truly followed by presents and cards which I’m sure she’ll tell you all about.

After taking the dog to the pet shop for pampering and me to the doctors to have needles stuck in me (something wrong there, I’m sure) I treated lauperr to a meal at the Angel Hotel which was some seriously good nosh. Then we rented a couple of films (‘Identity’ (15) is a brilliant and clever film and ‘Love Object’ (18) is an OK film and also quite clever, not porn as lauperr‘s parents suspected!)

In the evening there was a birthday family meal at the Cantonese which was also seriously good nosh and extremely filling. After the meal we went pubbing with onelessmoment among others.

Today
And finally today my family was invited to lauperr‘s house for the afternoon to meet her family (lots of them!) which went suprisingly (I thought) well.

I’ve just realised that the flash memory card from my phone containing all my phone numbers and mp3s has fallen out and disappeared. Please oh please don’t let it turn up in the washing machine!!!

Hope djkoa is having fun in Holland.

Thursday

My first driving lesson in about a year and a half, went OK but stalled several times and didn’t enjoy it much. Navigated to Godmanchester and back and lauperr drove on a motorway for the first time!

Friday
Went up to Godmanchester again for lauperr‘s interview at the Woodgreen Animal shelter which she did brilliantly at!

At 6pm I travelled to London in Russ’s car to stay in the Columbia hotel overnight, drove past the Abbey Road studios and narrowly avoided crashing into a Ferrari. After seeing the Ferrari Russ tried to show off by accelerating quickly out of some traffic lights and nearly broke his car, there were some funny smells coming from the engine 🙂 We had some very interesting discussions about the future of the music industry and sachets of ketchup before running to the car in *pouring* rain only for the rain to stop as soon as we got in. When we got to the hotel all the engineers sat around drinking beer telling stories and I geeked a bit.

Saturday

Met in the foyer at 6:30am to get a taxi to the Albert Hall. Amusingly, because we’d asked for a taxi from the Columbia Hotel to the Royal Albert Hall the company assumed we must be important and sent a silver Jaguar with personalised plates and a chauffeur in a suit! We weren’t going to tell him otherwise and quite enjoyed the ride. Perhaps he thought we were something to do with Elton John who was on the next night. We’d been stood in the foyer for ages waiting for the taxi and Russ joked that the Jag outside must be for us and the guy at reception said “Yes, that is your car, it’s been waiting for some time” in a very posh voice.

We got the nice control room again this time with air conditioning, a fridge, water cooler, kettle, bathroom, sofa, mirror with lights etc. although the bathroom became out of bounds after one of the engineers was… ill in it and went home. We stayed well clear. The recording went reasonably well and we managed not to kill anyone with the new “safer” sling system for the flown microphones despite it being ludicrously worse than the old system 🙂 I did a lot of dangling off balconies with heavy objects and running up and down endless stair cases frantically with bits of rope, chains and cables.

After the usual amusing comments in the tape logs and pressing yellow buttons lots of times the recording was over and we got to rip it all up again, put it in boxes and ride them down slopes into a lorry. The journey home was uncomfortable because I was sat in the third seat of a two seat 7.5 tonne truck. When we got back to the studio we unloaded the lorry and by the time we finished it was 2:30am the following morning and we’d been working for 20 HOURS! In my half asleep state I started to wander home in the dark but was rescued by a beautiful fair maiden in a red carriage.

Monday

I took my driving theory test and passed despite being given zero for one of the hazard perception clips for “reacting inappropriately” or something. There was a frelling cyclist pulling out in front of the car!!

Tuesday

Today was the regional finals of the Young Engineer competitions at Rolls Royce in Derby. We were given a very long lecture about how gas turbines work from a wonderful eccentric guy who insisted on acting out the part of a packet of air very dramatically and singing a song about the cost of fuel relative to the amount of thrust generated! I didn’t win anything which was a bit disappointing, I could really have done with the cash 😛 Photos to follow.

We looked around some huge turbines before coming home with my Rolls Royce cap and balloon copter.

Phewf. Now we’re up to date.