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Me, my new shoes, my new cargo pants and my new t-shirt [which all constitute my temporary new look since the ‘B’stard ‘ard thrash metal‘ look is hard to buy in 1 hour when you don’t know the shops and the ‘I work in IT, listen to metal, but have to make some concession to looking smart’ look would probably get me laughed at] are off to Nottingham Rock City for a night of …er… sober debauchery, which is like drunken debauchery only it doesn’t involve booze (for me at least)… and probably won’t involve any debauchery…

Who am I kidding - I’m off out to a rock club to remind myself that I am old and I shouldn’t be going to these places any more .

Toodles

I always wanted to fly to New York on Concorde and return on the QE2. It was something I was going to do when I was older… and then the French went and bent their Concorde (well, technically they leant it to the Germans and they bent it). Shortly afterwards and Concorde was no more, I’ll never fly on one.

Not long after than Cunard announced that the QE2 was being pulled off the transatlantic run, being replaced by the QM2. Great though the QM2 looks, its a cruise ship. The QE2 is the last of the great liners; the distinction is small, but important. It was pretty obvious the QE2 was not going to be cruising for much longer so I made damn sure I got to go on her before she was retired. I actually managed two trips, both weekend jaunts, but well worth it.

Recently Cunard finally announced they were selling the QE2 to Dubai where she will become a floating hotel. A sad end for such a great ship, but up close she really needs refurbishing and with the QM2 and the Queen Victoria (which looks like a stunning ship) in the fleet the poor old QE2 was no longer the flagship.

I’m sat here with an invitation to one of the last farewell season voyages, 8 nights, April 2008. The kind of Cabin I’d want means it would cost something in the region of 4 or 5 grand (for two people with a special early booking rate for being a gold Cunardier - oooh, get me - it’s more like 8 grand full price), but I’d be willing to pay that for one last holiday on her. Unfortunately I don’t have anyone to go with I’m almost tempted to book it anyway and ebay the chance to go on holiday with me in one of the top cabins on a grand old liner. I won’t though as a lot can change between then and now and I’d need the name of the other passenger to book it.

Hey ho…

So Blue has got herself a nice shiny new camera and is now feeling intimidated by all the button, dials, doohickies and gizmos on it, not to mention feeling slightly overwhelmed by the lingo. To try to solve this she’s asked me [the Alpha camera geek among you lot from what I can work out ] to give her a lesson or two in using her new toy. Personally I’m all for people getting into photography so happily agreed to meet up for a day of fun and photography one weekend at somewhere photogenic and easy to get to; like Kew [assuming you live in the South East of the UK ]. From reading other people’s comments on her blog thought it seems like she is not alone in her being afeared of moving off the green ‘idiot mode’ setting and there also appear to be other camera geeks out there too so I thought: ‘why not throw this open to everyone and organise some kind of London Meet type thing’. If you’re interested give me a shout. If not it’ll just be me and Blue

Got back from the gym, slung stuff into the machine (along with some other washing) and went off to watch House and do internetweb stuff. When the cycle finished I suddenly realised I hadn’t put any liquitab things in the machine so all I’d done was got all my clothes to smell like chlorine Have redone the wash and am now 2 hours late for bed time. Think I’ll have to do a late start tomorrow (which I prefer not to do) as I don’t think getting up at 5 is going to happen.

OK, so we were a bit naughty on Sunday choosing to just swim rather than doing anything on the machines. That said, I got somewhere between 40 and 50 lengths (810 meters-ish) before I lost out to cramp. The irony was I was going to try and do two very fast lengths, waited for the second hand to hit 12, pushed off as hard as I could… and then got severe cramp in my right leg. Ended up doing the two lengths with one leg (I wasn’t going to let people know I had cramp) at a much slower time than I was hoping for. Also put the kibosh on doing any more.

Today was more productive, managed to seriously up the amount of time on the machines (mainly by not killing myself on the cross trainer in the first 5 minutes - isn’t pacing yourself wonderful ).

Todays stats are:

Cross Trainer: 0.5km
Bike: 5km (+2km)
Pool: 50 lengths  (900m - +20 lengths)

Since everyone has been pointing out how crap the figures my scales give me are we’ll stick to just weight:  84.2Kg (down 1.7Kg )

Getting Acquainted: Blatantly stolen from Hoverfrog

1. What time did you get up this morning?
5am… OK, 5:10 am (the alarm went off at 5 though

2. Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds. Pearl can look so… well… naff sometimes

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Transformers. Very silly film, loved it.

4. What’s your favorite TV show?
Scrubs, closely followed by House. You’d never guess that I hate the sight of blood and medical dramas have me hiding behind my hands cringing

5. What did you have for breakfast?
Alpen. I’m old, single and miserable, leave me alone.

6. What’s your favorite cuisine?
Thai, closely followed by Thai, then Thai and, of course, not forgetting Thai.

7. What foods do you dislike?
Mushrooms (it’s fungus grown in cows poo), parsnips (the food of the devil), sweede, turnip, marrow, pumpkin, broad beans, sweet potato, plantain, squash… the list is rather large

8. What is your favorite [crisp] flavor?
Flaming Hot Monster Munch. Crisps of the Gods.

9. What’s your favorite CD at the moment?
Erm… probably Under Reprisal by Threat Signal, although I’m still listening to a lot of Fear Factory (Archetype and Demanufacture). Of course my CD’s are purely used as physical backup of tunes bought using S-Commerce, tunes are listened to either from my laptop or my trusty iPod.

10. What kind of car do you drive?
Drive…? bwahahahahahaha - you think I have a license? I’d like to drive an Aston Martin DB9, but if I ever did learn to drive I’d probably aspire to a more sensible Ford Focus.

11. Favorite sandwich?
White bread, lightly toasted, butter, marmite, ham, salami, cheese (mature cheddar ), prawn cocktail flavour crisps (essential sarnie ingredient for anything involving ham and cheese) lettuce and cucumber with black pepper. Seriously, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

12. What characteristics do you despise?
Hmmm… tough one. Let me get back to you on that.

13. Favorite item of clothing?
My full length leather coat. Or my shades. Or both together (yes, it does look like a cliché )

14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go?
Barbados. Or perhaps Iceland for the photography… I’d need a guide though, Barbados I could do by myself.

15. What color is your bathroom(s)?
White. But then so is my entire house (and beach, with a hint of oak, glass and stainless steel)

16. Favorite brand of clothing?
Looking at my wardrobe it would have to be a tossup between M&S, Gap and Austin Reed, although I don’t really bother with brands, they’re just shops that did stuff I like.

17. Where would you retire to: beach, or wooded retreat?
Beach, preferably in Barbados.

18. Favorite time of the day?
Hometime

19. What were your most memorable birthdays?
28 (I think) - big impromptu part with loads of people. Was cool.

20. Where were you born?
Hospital.

21. Favorite sport to watch?
Bating PC World shop assistants. It may not be a televised sport but its one I enjoy participating in and watching

22. Who do you least expect to send this back to you?
Pass

23. Person you expect to send it back first?
Pass

24. What fabric detergent do you use?
Arial liquitab thingies, they’re great (or is that Frosties, I can never remember).

25. Were you named after anyone?
Don’t think so (not my first name anyway, second and third were Dad and Grandad respectively - yes, I’ve got a lot of them, blame my parents). Could argue I was named after an island (I’d have to confirm this)…

26. Do you wish on stars?
Occasionally, not that I believe it makes a farts worth of difference.

27. When did you last cry?
I plead the 5th.

28. Do you like your handwriting?
I type. I don’t do pen based technology.

29. What is your most embarrassing flaw?
Where to start…

30. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you?
God no, I’m a mean, evil, miserable, manipulative, sarcastic, grumpy old git.

31. Are you a daredevil?
Nope, I am a wuss.

32. Have you ever told a secret you swore not to tell?
I…er….yes

33. Do looks matter?
Yup (I’m shallow )

34. How do you release anger?
I sulk. Sometimes for days. I blow things up on computer games. Oh, and the occasional angry blog post.

35. Where is your second home?
Cromer I guess. Kind of up in the air at the moment.

36. What were your favorite toys as a child?
Lego, and the family BBC Micro (got me the job and the lifestyle I have today so I think it deserves a mention despite the fact it turned me into even more of a geek)

37. What class in high school do you think was totally useless?
CDT (or, since we’re talking Yank here ’shop’) - I still can’t do anything remotely resembling DIY.

38. Do you use sarcasm a lot?
What do you think? (hint: I have two levels of sarcastic: sarcastic and ultra-sarcastic. I don’t remember how to do non-sarcastic any more.)

39. Favorite movies?
The Princess Bride, Weird Science, Dune, Blade Runner, The Shawshank Redemption… that’ll do for now.

40. What are your nicknames?
Like I’m going to tell you.

41. Would you bungee jump?
No. I have no desire to leap off any tall objects with nought but knicker elastic to rely on

42. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
Nope, I have velcro shoes (and, no, I’m not special)

43. Do you think that you are strong?
No.

44. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
Mint choc chip

45. What are your favorite colors?
Blue

46. What is your least favorite thing about yourself?
Teeth or my big gut I’d say. But I could go on for a while…

47. Who do you miss the most?
Pleading the 5th again. Those who know me well can probably guess

48. Do you want everyone you sent this to send it back?
Lets go wild - why not

49. What color pants are you wearing?
Black, except this is an American questionnaire thingy so they actually mean trousers which would be … black

50. What are you listening to right now?
The ticket inspector asking me for “Tickets please”. My iPod (now off as I am on a train) is half way through Blackened from …And Justice For All by Metallica.

51. Last thing you ate?
A banananananananananana.

52. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Blue. Surely the question should be “if you were a crayon, how long ago did you drop a bucket load of acid [and/or shrooms]?”

53. Last person you talked to on the phone?
My step dad. Then, before that, there was the nice lady at EOS magazine, the nice lady at AXA PPP health care before that and the nice lady at Scottish Power before that (I was having a bit of an admin day this morning )

54. What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
Figure. Shallow, I know. Deal with it.

55. Favorite Drink?
Pink grapefruit squash.

56. Do you wear contacts?
EEEK! Just watching other people fish about for them makes me cringe and the horror stories you hear about them disappearing behind the eyeball … well, suffice to say its causing me to shudder so lets move on.

57. Favorite Day of the Year?
Jif Lemon day - all those pancakes

58. Scary Movies or Happy Endings?
Happy Endings

59. Hugs OR Kisses?
Hugs (which are sadly lacking at the moment )

60. What Is Your Favorite Dessert?
Apple crumble, apple pie, or banoffee waffles.

61. What Book(s) Are You Reading?
Currently between books. Last one I read was Eats, Shoots and Leaves (it didn’t have any effect on my grammar )

62. What’s On Your Mouse Pad?
Hmmm, can’t remember, its a large one as my 2000DPI gaming mouse mit chav lights doesn’t work so well on a glass table. It’s sort of abstract, but I’d need to look at it to be more specific. Don’t use one at work. I do have two in a drawer, one with a picture of Buffy on it (mmmmm…. Buffy….) and one with a TFL style ‘£50 penalty for misuse‘ thing on it.

63. What Did You Watch Last night on TV?
Scrubs (1 and a half episodes thereof) and House.

64. Favorite Smells?
Cinnamon (odd, I know, but there is a reason for it)

65. Rolling Stones or Beatles?
They both suck. Mightily. (I appreciate this may fly in the face of popular opinion and may even enrage some people, there being far too much in the way of irrational behaviour when it comes to the Beatles and such like so lets just point out that I’m not going to harass, hassle, stalk, injure or assassinate you in any way shape of form for disliking my music [which the vast majority of people do] so I don’t see why you should if I dislike yours. If you can’t live with this then, please, feel free to get a life )

Right, second trip to the Gym [pronounced all night gime, with a hard g like in grime. Don’t ask :D]. Forgot to mention that they also don’t have one of those spinny thing that you can use to dry your trunks. I was really spoiled at my last place Anyway:

Cross Trainer: 0.5km (which nearly killed me, must be tired)
Bike: 3km
Pool: 30 lengths (540m)

And, just to prove this is doing me good:

Weight: 85.0Kg (down 0.9Kg)
Body Fat: 22.3% (down 0.7%)
Body Water: 56.1% (down 0.1%)
Basal Metabolic Rate: 1922 Calories (down 16)
Muscle Mass: 41.2% (up 0.2%)

So there we have it, an effect… or my scales are just really inaccurate For those who work in old money: 85kg is 13.4 stone or 187.4 pounds

I don’t know if it’s just me but it seems like it’s always bloody raining in Colchester. Not only that, it seems to rain when I am walking home from the station or, as it did last night, waits a couple of hours for me to be walking about without my umbrella and then drenching me. It’s a well known fact that I hate precipitation in all its forms so I find this propensity to rain all the time quite disturbing. I’ve even checked on the tinterwebnet; it claims (in terms of average rainfall) that I live in an area where there isn’t supposed to be that much. It drizzled on me tonight when I walked home. I do wish it would stop.

My shoulders are killing me. Not used to this exercise lark. Anyone out there any good at massage and in central london today?

So I’ve actually managed to engage in email conversations with two whole women since I’ve joined the online dating sites. I’ve still yet to actually meet up with anyone on anything that remotely resembles a date (although we are working on this) and the possibility would seem to be becoming even more remote as one of the two has emailed me to politely say ‘thanks but no thanks’ (although, if what she has said is true, its to online dating in general rather than me in particular). I think I stand at something like 30/0 at the moment. Not good stats. That said, I did get an icebreaker request from someone who only lives 150 miles away… what’s the betting that goes nowhere?