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Right, it’s done. Assuming I can curb my spending just a tiny bit (although not that much to be honest) I can last until August 2009 if I keep my loan and February 2009 if I pay it off. Cutting my expenditure quite drastically will only buy me another month or so so it really seems a little pointless and I’d be missing out on things like cleaners I’ve already reduced my mobile phone tariff, got a cheaper package with Sky (and lost a load of channels I don’t watch), stopped paying idiot tax and canceled my season ticket. There’s quite a lot of leeway with the spending money as I don’t really want to have to alter my lifestyle and hopefully I’ll save money each month. We’ll see. I suffer involuntary separation from payroll in a couple of months and by then I need to decide what I want to do about the loan. I’ll probably pay it off.

So Cat, being drug up proper like, left me a thank you card after our alleged weekend of drunken, drug fueled debauchery which she obviously wants me to share with you, so without further ado I give you Scan Of Card:

You know how sometimes you wish you could so something, and you rehearse that something in your head but you know it’s pointless because it’ll never happen? Sometimes it does. And it’s very strange when it does. And, no, I will not clarify, explain or anything like that. Those who need to know do. (Wait’s for rather predictable deluge of emails asking for an explanation).

Today is going to be bitty and annoying. I’ve got to go all the way into London for a meeting with HR to get through the formal “we’re serving notice” thing which will last all of 15 minutes which, for a 2 and a half hour round trip, just seems a tad pointless. On the plus side I’ll be catching up with some friends for coffee (or in my case hot chocolate) which should push the stay in London into something more worthy of the trip. At some point I should really go to the gym too (especially given I’ll be having at least two hot chocolates today ) and a trip to the supermarket may well be in order as I’m out of milk and I really need to replace the flowers in the living room which are not even on their last legs any more. Hopefully tomorrow will be slightly more productive

So the photo’s I put up earlier today were emailed to me be a friend from the pub. Her email address reminded me of a song by Ash which reminded me of someone I hadn’t seen for an awfully long time and had lost contact with. Two hours later and I had a Facebook message from that person as they’d just managed to track me down. Got to love it when life works like that

One of the things that really used to drive me nuts was the people who would go on about how they used to smoke and just decided that one day they wouldn’t any more. For those of you who do/have smoked you’ll know that feeling of intense hatred and jealousy as you think back on the may failed attempts to give up, remember how bad it was and continue with your vow of giving up giving up. Annoyingly enough I am now one of those people.

A little over two years ago my then girlfriends sister gave me Alan Carr’s ‘The Easy Way to Quit Smoking’. In this volume he tells you there are two things you need to do to quit:

1. Stop smoking
2. Be happy about it

Point one seems a little obvious. Point two isn’t explained in any great detail, or it is, but attaining this wonderful state of nirvana isn’t. Still, he’d got my interest so I bought ‘The Only Way to Stop Smoking’. Bigger book, more detail, hideously badly written. So bad in fact that I still maintain I stopped smoking on the understanding that he stop pontificating at me, but stop I did. Two years ago today I walked out from a hospital appointment [unrelated], sparked up took a couple of drags and thought ‘what the hell am I doing?’. I gave away the rest of my cigarettes, my lighters, my zippo (and I think that was key) spent 3 days being a miserable sod, 2 weeks feeling crappy [yes, I know he says it can be done without withdrawal symptoms, but I still think he's talking out of his butt there] and never really looked back. I still have the odd craving, but no worse than ‘ooh, I fancy a curry’ type ones and they quickly go. What I do know is that if I ever try smoking again I’ll probably be back on 20 a day within about… oooh… 0.5ms of the first drag so I’ll never consider myself a non smoker, more a relapsed one Still, I never actually intended to quit and was reading the books more out of interest than anything else (I was extremely skeptical of his claims) so the fact I did proves that something he said stuck. I’d heartily recommend the books to anyone who smokes. Worst case you’re down the cost of 3 packets of fags, you have to read some naff books and you get to whinge here about it. Best case you can annoy the crap out of your smoker friends once you stop too

May, the latter part thereof, sucks. Throughout this month there are 14 anniversaries, some good (6 birthdays for example), some not so good, some really quite bad. Anyway, one of the good ones (borne out of one of the bad ones) is I’ve now lived in Colchester for 1 whole year. While I bought the flat a year ago last month I didn’t move in properly until a year ago today.

During that year I’ve:

• Almost completely furnished the house to my exact specifications. The ceiling lights are still all bare bulbs, I’m waiting on delivery of my new computer desk, I’d like to replace my hob, I want a chest at the foot of the bed, I really need to get my photo’s printed and hung on the wall and I’d like a small cupboard in the en-suite bathroom, but that’s all pretty minor.
• Made a stack load of friends. It’s got to the point where I can now just toddle up to the pub and not have to worry if anyone is going to be there as there will invariably be someone I know and can talk to, even if it is just the staff.
• Given John Lewis an awful lot of my money (I was wondering around there last week and saw some things I’d really like, but lacked the many hundreds of pounds it would cost to get them all).
• Failed completely to have a house warming party. I think this should be organised for very soon.
• Actually come to realise I no longer live in London and have come to think of Colchester as home (in fact, in many ways I prefer it to London).

Not bad if you ask me

I finally managed to get a good nights sleep last night… which was promptly interrupted by the postman delivering sweeties and meece (well, trackballs, but hey). Still need a few more nights like that until I’ve caught up with sleep, but I don’t feel quite as wiped out as I have been the past few days.

Anyhoos, not really got much to do at the moment so I decided to have a day off and relax so I’ve played some Guitar Hero II, watched The Omega Man (which isn’t as good as I thought it was going to be), done a little bit of tidying round the house and now I’m just watching TV until Tai Chi tonight. It’s been great

I’ve finally got round to setting up the Mac Mini again It had been bought to play DVD’s, watch TV and play music but had been made somewhat redundant with the laptop, sky box and PS3. Anyway, I’ve copied my iTunes library to it and will probably use it to play tunes purchased from ITMS, noodle about with Google Earth and show people piccies when they visit.

Cute girl on train lives in Colchester within walking distance of the station. Will have to keep an eye out for here. And I can’t get my ring off. Going to try some soap and if that doesn’t work I’ll just sleep with the bugger on.