domdavis.com

So I’ve decided to see what all the fuss about stats is about and installed a plugin that allows me to see the same kind of stats that users of wordpress.com get (bathgirl, see email re: your blog). Personally I’m not overly fussed who reads what, I work on the premise that what I write is out there for all to see and if people want to read it then great. It’s more for me than anyone else. Random lurkers will either make themselves known or not and if I’m worried about anyone seeing something I write I don’t publish it Still, it’ll be interesting to see what these stats say. I know I get a lot of hits per day, and not all from the known robots, so maybe I’ll be able to start working out who reads what when If anyone has any recommendations for other good stats packages let me know and I’ll have a play.

So regular readers of my blog will know I like katana. To me they are wonderful works of art as well as fantastic weapons. My current dream is to comission a Shinken (custom made sword from a master Japanese sword smith). The fact I sort of know how to use these things and had several live blades delivered to the office means that I was voted the person most likely to go postal. I think they would have been even more worried if they saw me last night.

One of my good mates needed to do some test cutting (basically chopping rolled up straw mats with real katana) for one if his gradings and I was invited to come along and have a go. Now, bearing in mind I’m largely self taught, I was very surprised I was allowed to play but apparently I gave a good account of myself. The fact I was using a brand spanking new sword probably helped but it’s not all about swinging and letting brute force do the work. There is a lot of technique and skill to do it properly.

Being cack handed I decided to hold it left handed. I know I’m supposed to be learning right handed but this was a couple of hundred quids worth of someone elses razor sharp steal. I did not want to ding the blade or, worse, let go of the sword and injure someone. If you bear in mind these things will easily chop a man in half from neck to groin in the right hands you’ll understand the caution.

The cut itself was over the head, down to the left on the way down so the target is struck at an angle, then pulling back slighly to give a slicing action. I hit the taget square on and got a great clesn cut. My technique needs a bit of work and the angle if the cut was a bit off but for a first go I thought I did rather well. What scares me is that was the equivalent of cutting through soneones arm and I barely felt a thing as the swords passed through it. Going to see if I can organise another session and bring my sword along

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).

Parents, read this: Tonight was fun, I went out for a few hours, had a few waters and then went home at a sensible time after eating a healthy mixed salad. I said my prayers, donated some money to charity and then went to bed content that my life was a happy one. The end. Now stop reading.

Everyone else: OK, so part of the reason I stopped drinking is that my surfeit of kidneys meant I could process alcohol FAST. They had to work hard, and in combination with smoking they ended up producing stones, however, a single nights drinking isn’t a problem. Yes, I’ve probably produced a small stone but we’re talking grit here and it’ll pass harmlessly in the next week or so. It’s only when I place the kidneys under constant strain that we produce the 11mm x 8mm x5mm monstrosities that I’ve had in the past. 23 drinks (2 WKD blue, 5ish vodka redbulls, many apple sours, a lot of them doubles) I got to drunk, bordering on wankered. That said I did cheat. I had a half of water before hand, 2 pints of water during, a half of water directly afterwards and 3 pints before bed.

Anyhoos. CBT claimed not to be scared of me. That changed by the end of the night Got three hugs off her. My friends are all brilliant. Even the ones who didn’t turn up. I seriously wish Sedition was on tonight. Got to wait for the 6th and the Darkside in Leeds. Oh, and I’m no longer caffeine immune, but I’ve had an awful lof lot of redbull so me and a pair of glowsticks are going to dance the night away in the spare room until I get tired and fall asleep

Tonight is bought to you by:

• Grendel
• Blut Engel
• Carfax Abbey
• Combichrist
• More Grendel
• Ultraviolence
• Fear Factory
• Dulce Liquido
• Threat Signal

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