Once More Unto The Breach

Quote of the moment:
You'll all be up at the boatclub tomorrow because I've got a lovely suprise for you... a 5k test! - Rowing James. Woohoo! Pity I haven't done any rowing, even on a machine, since... about 10 days ago. I claim illness. Lesser mortals (thats YOU, Steve) wouldn't have even gone to circuits with flu/cold/sore throat etc.

Could have gone this weekend, but the gym shuts early and I wasn't really up in time. Oops. Still, I prefer doing a half hour to a 2k, so hopefully it wont be too bad. Must remember to leave myself plenty of time to get there, so I don't do the test knackered like my last 2k.

Claire lent me a skirt for the next 2k. I've worked out I can get away with rugby shorts underneath it, so I can have something with pockets. Still to need to bodge some pom poms. I think the excitement may be getting to me.

Daddy Darcy or Chips Muffins?

Quote of the moment:
"...from our correspondent Mark Darcy" - heard on Radio 4.

LOL. Cue mental image of Colin Firth in long black coat and big woolie scarf standing outside the houses of parliament with a microphone and a texan actress in her underwear sheltering from the snow inside his coat.


Come the f*** on, Bridget!

I then checked the BBC News site and arrived at an article written by Mohammed Allie!

I had a 3 hour session this morning on how to give a presentation. How exciting. I'm due for 3 hours of watching other peoples' presentations on Friday morning. Yay. On the plus side, Claire brought in homemade chocolate muffins today. Mmmm. I also went to an hour-long careers talk after lectures because it had a free buffet. Obviously the food was only available afterwards, to make sure the students stayed put. Mmmm, free food.

Stonedeadwithboredomhenge

Quote of the moment:
"Don't let him in! He insulted my mother!" - Drunk Steve last night. He admitted today that he had absolutely no idea what made him think that. Congrats. Round of applause.

Today was completely unenergetic. Didn't go to the gym. Didn't do my washing. Did do a token bit of weights stuff, made an attempt at my thank you letters (only 5 weeks after my birthday) and watched 7 episodes of Family Guy. Some of that was concurrent.

Made no progress with my bridge design, other than some more unworkable ideas. We haven't done enough maths etc yet to do anything interesting. It's simply supported beam (eg a Stonehenge arch) or a truss (the same, with the rocks replaced with a framework of straws).


Dull, dull, boring and dull

Eurgh. I found myself wishing for lectures today just as a reason to force myself out of the flat.

The Grim Rapper

Quote of the moment:
Amerike's coat of arms can be seen in the Lord Mayor's Chapel on College Green in Bristol as part of the Poyntz crest, a relative having married into that wealthy, land-owning family.

- BBC History Article on a new theory claiming America was named after a Bristol merchant, whose Welsh surname Ap Meurig had become mangled into Richark Amerike (much as Poines became Poyntz).

How rare! That appeared when I googled Poyntz and "coat of arms"... triggered by looking for the Van Mildert College one. I only noticed last night that the shield that Vince has had as his messenger picture for ages doesn't actually have swords on, but scythe blades...


SNK. SNK. SNK.

Met most of the rowing team in the union club tonight. The novice boat came 5th and the fresher boat (obvs meaning only novices in their 1st year) came 12th.

I returned to my flat about an hour and a half ago to discover that my room door was open and the lock was hanging off... apparently I left it unlocked when I nipped back in to dump my jacket before going out and one of Dai and Johnny's Welsh friends, merrily celebrating beating Australia, charitably slammed it shut. Unfortunately the actual moving lock part was out and when it hit the door frame the lock popped half off. D'oh!

Some crafty screwdriver work and application of the Mark 1 stamping device to straighten the backplate had it working again though, as well as sobering me up completely. I was so sober I did my stack of washing up. There's responsible, mature behaviour for you.

Little Miss Hobo

Quote of the moment:
"Will! Come into town with me! I'll buy you lunch..." - Paddy. I correctly sumrised he had his BOGOF BK Whopper Meal vouchers on him and was happy to oblige. Mmmm... free food :D

Claire met the K3 (and K9) boys while out last night and her flatmates went home without her. Since she lives (2+) miles away in Uni Hall and didn't fancy walking home alone she spent the night on Steve's floor. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, to be sure! Since they apparently went to bed around 6.30am she missed our tutor group meeting today (which lasted 2 hours and covered all the maths for our bridge design project (on our tutor's module) - unlucky) and when she got up around 2.30pm she dressed in Little James' t-shirt and jeans. Bearing in mind he's 6'2 and she's 5'7, they fit quite well! She then wore Steve's shoes home:


At least the jacket is hers!

Following last week's (poor attempt) at Winnie the Pooh, next week's Wednesday rowing social requires everyone, male and female, to dress as cheerleaders... Any suggestions on where to get pom-poms, other than burgling Alie Lee?

It IS Snowing

Quote of the moment:
"DO NOT TOUCH THE FEDERAL AGENT - L.A airport official to a woman who tried to pat a sniffer dog" - A wholesale theft from the BBC News Magazine page.

It's now dropped to sporadic little flakes, but about 5 minutes ago there were big cornflake sized ones. None of it's settling though, so I don't have high hopes for waking up to whiteness.

It's Snowing?

Quote of the moment:
~ ViolentPanic~ :: "Yey its snowing" - Paddy is perpetuating the goverment conspiracy.

I opened my blinds to check and there was only some dripping from the leaky gutter. However, a minute later they had someone on Red Dragon FM, the local Essex FM equivalent, saying the same. It's all lies, I tell you.

Will No-One Rid Me of This Turbulent Cat?

Quote of the moment:
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?

- Theoden, King of Rohan, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Or perhaps Mr Floppy Roberts, upon news breaking of the latest mishap at Felsted (via Quill media inc.). A crackdown on housemasters holding parties will no doubt be the consequence, but Mr Gwyther can be smug in his retirement from housemastership. They did happen in Elwyns, although strangely enough not for winning House Shout...

Went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire tonight with Steve. It was quite impressive, really...

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Apart from the music video-style Beauxbatons entry (and to a lesser degree the march of the Durmstrang contingent: Brrrr!) it was pretty slick. The Durmstrang galleon was classy, emerging and departing like a soviet submarine, especially coming in with the crows nest out of the water like a conning tower. The story was pretty much pared down to the tournament, with occasional snatches of library or classroom.

Snape had a classic comedy scene, whacking heads while supervising prep. David Tennant was sadly underused as Crouch Jr, but Brendan Gleeson was awesome as Moody. Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) was suprisingly well done (the make-up/costuming, not the acting, that's expected of Amon Goethe) and reminiscient of The Mummy.

Did/will anyone else notice the slight slip in Harry's accent near the end, when he lets a bit of scots in? I've annoyingly forgotten what he was saying at the time...

Other than that, Hermione is increasingly similar to my younger little sister Sarah, right down to sticking her chin out when annoyed. Not sure of her stance on wearing fur though.

Drowned Rats

Quote of the moment:
"Students?" barked the Archchancellor. "Yes, Master. You know? They're the thinner ones with the pale faces? Because we're a university? They come with the whole thing, like rats"

- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures.

Aside from the rowing social shirts, which were ordered about 5 weeks ago and still haven't arrived, 2 weeks back on Thursday (or 12 days ago) our Novice Men's captain (James) took money for some novice squad shirts... he must have been plotting about it for a while, because they were given out in training today:


Red and Black (with white bits) are the uni colours for most stuff, so everything, including the lyrca competition leotards, are those colours...


Spanky crest


They're all the same on the back (hence the fast production, no doubt) apart from James (Captain) and his assistant Olly (Drill Sergeant)

How to Shop Like a Man

Quote of the moment:
"The requested URL was not found on this server..." - Podgy is missing (neither here nor here), presumed snatched by the Thought Police. I went to the extreme lengths of a comic strip to illustrate my theory.

In other news, Claire brought homemade flapjacks to our final lecture today. I had 4. This granted me "loved" status for appreciating her cooking. Lol. Might also have been to do with me losing abysmally in a Gair Rhydd Su Doku race with her. She's promised chocolate muffins next week. Woohoo!

I went hardcore shopping today, cycling to Tesco Extra armed with my CCF backpack:


How to shop like a real man: no quiche here...


There was a bag of apples that I omitted in my decorative unpacking effect and were lurking behind the Rice Krispies.

Just for starters, the cider (on offer, w00t!), excluding cans, weighed 10.5 kilograms... another 3.5 for the tins, 3 for the squash, 6 for the apple juice... all in in all it was about 35kg, plus a few bits (bread, eggs, salad(!) etc) for Steve. In exchange I was using Steve's bike (my back wheel needs spanners, it's so out of line it's lodged against the frame) which was set just a touch low for me... At least I worked out where the icy patch in the carpark was on the way in, by doing an awesome (unintentional) motocross-style slide round the corner it was on!

Pave Afghanistan and Put Up a Golf Course

Quote of the moment:


What really struck me about it was the obvious ability of the person who drew it. The picture doesn't seem particularly martial, but perhaps it's by a soldier nonetheless, just showing the real main features of life there.

Blogger picture uploading. After investigation it seems to create a linked thumbnail of one of 3 set sizes on your blog with a link to the full sized picture. Handy for putting up large pictures, especially since the lagest size of thumbnail fits the width of my post column exactly. However, for some reason the ratio (normally 3:4 or 4:3) isn't kept and the thumbnails become 308x408 or vice versa. How rare!

While using my test blog to work this out, I noticed my test blogroll was showing Harry had recently updated. It was in fact the updating of his blog post by 10 new golf-related comments that triggered it. It puts the private road construction person/bot to shame! A sample:

At 9:41 AM, golf putters said...
Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!

I have a taylor made golf club driver site. It pretty much covers taylor made golf club driver related stuff.

Come and check it out if you get time :-)

TAILOR MADE. As in made by a TAILOR, not someone called TAYLOR.

A final and random addition to this piecemeal post: MIT proves that tinfoil helmets do the opposite of protecting you from government mind rays, as found on badallbad.blogspot.com. For once a random comment that seems to come from a human!

Welcome To My Underground Lair

Quote of the moment:
"How do they recycle toilet paper? Wouldn't it be all wet and dirty?" - Little James. No, recycled toilet paper is NOT made from used toilet paper.

CBA to go out again. Little James granted me the use of his room, so I camped in K3 playing on his Xbox, with provisions for toast'n'jam. Singleplayer Halo 2, then joined by Big James for Dead or Alive 3 and WRC racing. The fun increased with the arrival of Matt around 1, who provided pissed racing commentary.

Eventually bummed off home around 2.30 and randomly decided to take photos. CBA to tidy up first, although did make the bed. The floor's not really visible, but is reasonable apart from the heap of sports stuff and the unassembled shelves.


My desk, complete with cunningly placed towel rail


My pinboard (is lurking behind there somewhere)


My bed, with pr0 duvet cover and random hatch for fire escape from room 5


Faking it: could I be a bouncer? (haircut necessary, bouncer or not)


The rubber duck from Rubber Duck, because Prill thought it sounded cute

Yes. It seems I have issues with going to bed. I'm physically incapable of it. On the plus side, no test on Monday, so I don't have to get up til 12 even then!

Return of the Pictures

Quote of the moment:
"No food or drink allowed" - signs posted inside and outside the "drawing office", the room with all the turn-over tables with drawing boards on the bottom, like the DT classroom at Felsted but the tables are double the size...

Paddy ignored it in our session this afternoon and spilled Pepsi all over his table. Fortunately for him he didn't have anything important out at the time.

I did actually make it to everything today... I was even nearly on time for my first thing, my weekly tutor-group meeting. That actually counts as good, since only four out of eight turned up at all!

Stayed in since still not feeling 100%. After losing a protracted game of Age of Mythology (which I haven't played since coming here) I started an attempt to clear a bit of memory on my laptop by sticking my blog pictures that I salvaged from my Felsted account onto Blogger. Work in progress.

Dr Whom?

Quote of the moment:
BLEURGH.

Not feeling great. Spent another day curled up in bed. Couldn't get to sleep for ages last night, and kept being randomly semi-awake, aware of stuff but at the same time still asleep. Was very weird. Tongue's lovely and furry. Face was weirdly blotchy when I eventually got up. Did the glass test, just for the hell of it, but it was inconclusive.

Went to see the Christmas lights being turned on with K3, since the "civic centre" is in the same "park" as the main uni building, 5 minutes away, and "Dr Who and Rose" were doing the honours. That was as far as I got from my flat today, since I wasn't really up for circuits.



Has David Tennant ever been a "Featured Fittie" on Prill's blog?

These Romans Are Crazy!

Quote of the moment:
Will says: some midgets tried to start a fight with me
Will says: and a weird female bouncer told me off
Will says: and I was like wtf?!
Will says: 4 starting on one... just because they're all 5'6!!
Will says: sigh.
Will says: heh
Will says: spent rest of night kind of wishing I could have had a big asterix style brawl
Will says: with me as t3h obelix0r
Will says: smacking some puny roman heads together

If only. Would have been class. Rather pants night after that, was rapidly sobered up and adrenaline buzzed. All I did was fend them off when they were jumping manically around hugging each other... wasn't my fault they fell over, although it was very funny...

Dance like no one's watching...

Quote of the moment:
Dance like no one's watching, grin like you're hammered, fall over like you meant to...

I've made myself a little mantra. Woohoo! Ah yes, you have to love Shipwrecked... £1 all bottles... had 4 when I arrived to attempt to catch up with the others who'd been drinking while I was having fun at circuit training. Played stuck-in-the-mud after the hour of pain though, since there was no-one knowledgeable there to take charge of core strength. I think it should become a club tradition. When we go to meets/regattas, when other unis are having serious warm-ups, we could run around playing stuck-in-the-mud. It'd be awesome.

There's a small meet next weekend, but the 8-boat's worth competing in it managed to ram the novice girls 8-boat training at the weekend... LOL. Apparently the novice men's boat has some slight damage around the bow, but only enough to impede the hydrodynamics a bit, not like the hole in the other one!

Oh yeah: custard wrestling for cash in Liquid tonight (Shipwrecked is the name of the Tuesday student night)... competitive undressing too, one girl in the final had her top off so the other one followed suit... then halfway through them splashing around on-stage in a paddling pool of custard, a bra flew into the audience... LOL. She did win £100, so maybe that'll help make up for the awesome "I did WHAT last night" moment she's in for!

No lectures tomorrow today. Hurrah! Might go to gym in the afternoon if I CBA. Other than that, I need to work on my Winnie the Pooh costume...

Aggressive Redecoration

Quote of the moment:
w: may I ask why you become a goths?
b: yes!
...
b: go on then.
w: oh, sorry. why have you become a goths?
b: because I depressed about not having pie!

- new Weebl & Bob: Gothic. Go watch, it's the canine's testicles.

I attempted to tidy my room this evening. I'm quite impressed with the results. Building on last night's careful rearrangement of my cupboard and drawers to accomodate the washing I finally did, I cleared the shelf above my bed so that I can actually put my alarm clock and reading light on it, sorted my (broken, frontless) underbed drawer so it now contains my (large ccf) backpack, assorted bike accesories and other stuff that was filling the floor under my desk, filed the paperwork on my desk and am now attempting to pack away the various bits of gadetry that go with my laptop and are currently unneccesary. I also hoovered for the first time since arriving. I give it til Thursday morning to return to normal.

As a minor diversion, Johnny, Dai and I had a waterfight with the girls in K2, using waterbottles with "sports tops". Twas mostly firing through the holes in our doors where the peephole glass is missing. We then "stormed the front" and took up positions around their door before enticing them out for a soaking. Mwahaha. We also knocked their stack of tins for recycling off their kitchen window and sprayed them when they came to investigate the noise. They started it, we just beat, nay, p0wned them at their own game...

Known Unto God

Quote of the moment:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen.


From BBC News "In Pictures"

SAS beret. Too young for the Falklands or the first Gulf War. Perhaps the helicopter crash at the start of the second.

Their Name Liveth For Evermore

Quote of the moment:

In Memoriam
Private D Sutherland - Killed in Action in the German
trench May 16th, and the others who died.

So you were David's father,
and he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

Oh, the letters that he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year gets stormier,
And the Boches have got his body,
And I was his officer.

You were only Davids father,
But I had 50 sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call,
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your father's,
For they could only see
The helpless little babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed 'Don't leave me, sir,'
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.

If I manage to wake up in the morning, which is by no means guaranteed, I'll be going to the first and foremost of my three religious services of the year.

Went to the gym today to try and make up for this week. Ate almost all of the junk food that my rents bought me when they visited, didn't go to the gym because of pulled muscle in my leg. My bad. The suggested gym program has changed from 3 sets of 10 minutes with 10 minute breaks to a solid half hour. Apparently it'll "build our mental toughness". Not convinced. Apparently I should have broken a pain barrier somewhere in the middle 10 minutes, but it never really kicked in. 7678 metres at the end, which meant I passed 5k in 19:53, in the midst of the times listed on the gym "leaderboard" for just the 5k. Mwahaha. I suspect I may be more of a 5k than a 2k race person.

Escort LAN

Quote of the moment:
"We can connect to anyone else with an Xbox in Senghennydd Court." - Little James.

8 players is the most achieved so far, with 5 on two machines in K3 and 3 more upstairs in K9. We also discovered two other people online earlier when we first tested it out. Awesome stuff.

P.S. Escort = Senghennydd Court, aka the Senghetto... boom boom... the equivalent cheap shared non en-suite accomodation at Talybont North is known as the Talybronx.

You have been warned. I'll be a gun-toting rapper soon.

Go Stevey Matt...

Quote of the moment:
"Will... I'm really hammered... I'm going home..."

That was the birthday boy, just before midnight. We'd been out since half ten. Admittedly he'd had 8 shots of flaming sambuca in the previous half hour, but still, a poor showing! He just yelled that in my ear and ran for the door... oh dear! Never mind, stayed out anyway, along with the 15 or so other people who he'd summoned out for the night (flatmates, course-mates, school-mates etc)... It was pretty impressive really! Despite a couple of other losses there were still 12 of us left to come home at 2...

His door was duly banged on and found to be open, so one of his school-mates jumped into bed next to him and I took pictures on his (Matt's) camera. LOL. Awesome. There's one where he's actually cradling his head on this guy's shoulder, it's ace.

Almost as ace as circuits tonight... while the others were drinking, myself and Ruth managed the slightly damp ride and were rewarded with a special program... Stuck-in-the-mud, a netball tournament, dodgeball (in which I caught the novice men's captain a beauty on the ear which he was rubbing for the next half an hour) and more stuck-in-the-mud. Brilliant, but still knackering!

The Empty Feeling in the Pit of my Stomach

Quote of the moment:
Come on in
I’ve gotta tell you what a state I’m in
I’ve gotta tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign

When the truth is, I miss you
Yeah the truth is, that I miss you so
And I’m tired I should not have let you go

- Coldplay, Warning Sign.

Vaguely appropriate, although who did the letting go is debatable.

Decidedly tipsy, had a reasonable time in Rubber Duck, could have pulled but declined (she was so hammered she nearly pulled me over, so it wouldn't have been fair anyway). Went into "the duck" and necked a fair amount to try and eliminate the kind of empty missing-you feeling. Tis weird. Was only 2 weeks, but I did actually miss the pulling of funny faces, the "who me?" shrugs and other daft stuff she does. Sigh. Doubt it would be a great idea to email/text/whatever and say so though. Ah dear.

Saw her earlier at the normal pub/bar rowing social meeting, talked to her a little bit even, but just in a "I'm perfectly fine, are you?" kind of way... then she went home cos her mate backed out due to work placement in the morning (apparently) when the decidedly small band (seniors racing at the weekend so no theme so loads of novices cba) headed to Rubber Duck. Hmmm. Over use of decidedly.

Miss the "I'm doing something random" text messages too, and the goodnight ones, and the other ones. In fact, just all of them. I think it was Saturday that did it really... wandering around, chatting random bollocks, going to the cinema, exchanging stupid looks throughout the film, etc etc...

Sigh. I'm drunk. In case you hadn't noticed, I miss her. Night.

Foot In Mouth Disease

Quote of the moment:
Mates then?

Serves me right for getting all over-excited about it... kind of expected it to happen, but was hoping it would all turn out fine. Silly me.

I wasn't planning on throwing myself into a "relationship" straight away either, but perhaps I'm just more suggestible. Tis a shame really, that we weren't just mates to begin with, since it'd be cool but slightly odd. Door not entirely shut, just opened as far as it will for the conceivable future, which shouldn't be one of straw-clutching. Wants to get settled, work out her real close friends here (and not be restricted in doing so) before getting into anything serious. Fair play, and unfaultable honesty.

No More Emo-Messenger

Quote of the moment:
"GABORA!" - the first thing I said (to Prill m8) after getting onto Messenger on my laptop for the first time in a year.

I think it was probably installing the newest one that made the difference. It didn't work still, but I was on it while playing Halo 2 in K3 and I thought I'd give it another go when I came back. The error message had changed from saying I was behind a firewall to telling me I couldn't connect from behind a firewall via proxy server. I didn't want to! So I went into tools, connections etc and disabled connecting via proxy server (by removing a tick in a box). Hey presto, it worked!

Circuits tonight wasn't quite so awesome. A new format means a break in the middle (good) but running from side to side in the hall, like doing a bleep test (bad). Especially when I still had a pulled something-near-my-bad-knee from not stretching properly on Sunday. Silly me. Anyway, I preferred running laps around the outside. The new version has twice as many exercises as running slots, up from one to one. I'm undecided about that. Less cardiovascular but more strength stuff... meh.

Anyway, I ended up sitting in my own little space at the end just doing situps, pressups, bunny hops etc for a minute and a half each instead of a minute, to balance out the running that I'd abandoned.

Good news: My BMI (as per my clothed and shod weight on Saturday) is 25.7... So I'm lingering on the border of being officially not fat. Hurrah!

Go Stevey, It's Your Birthday

Quote of the moment:
"Oh no! He's got away again! Wait, I seem him! Quick, he's nearly at the bar!"

The poor boy (Steve) was so hammered that he didn't wake up when Rhodri blew a whistle in his ear. He just put his head up, then dropped it back onto his pillow like a sack of cement. It was so awesome we did it again and videoed it.

By that point he'd already lost an eyebrow and gained a large amount of facial artwork, but that was all before I arrived. Since her flatmates departed in a taxi shortly before she emerged from Creation, where they and we had been, I walked Rowena back to Allensbank House... which is the furthest from the city centre/Senghennydd Court/me. It's literally 5 minutes from Creation to our gates, about 30 to their door. Slightly faster on the way back since it was only me (and I don't wear heels).

Got email address and hence surname (finally!). Vice versa too, but I just said I'd email her so she wouldn't have to try and spell it. Lol.

Am off to bed now. First lecture at 10am, finish at 4pm. She doesn't have anything all day and she's not even an arts student. S'not fair :(

Name The Films...

Quotes of the moment:
I feel the need - the need for speed!

Say "hello" to my little friend!

You had me at "hello."

You can't handle the truth!

I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

Preferably without reference to the AFI Top 100 Film Quotes. Personally I'd have included:

"Oh Captain My Captain"

"I'm Spartacus"

"My Name is Maximus Decimus Meridius..." etc

"I shouldn't have told you that"

"If he pulls a knife you a gun, if he puts one of yours in the hospital you put one of his in the morgue"

"You may take our lives..." etc

and

"You have bled with Wallace, now bleed with me"

You can name those films too, if you want. Please note the last is not Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

While I'm here, Film Scores should be won by Last of the Mohicans.

Achtung Weir!

Quote of the moment:
"Bow pair, from backstops, row... No, ROW. BLOODY ROW!"

Went out in the boat today for the first time in at least 2 weeks. Was on the bow side again, which was fine, unlike the last time. Boat was "bow rigged" meaning the normal sides were swapped, which didn't help Olly, the vice captain, in his first attempt at coxing... we came a little close to going over the weir (see above) at the start, stuck the bow in the bank turning around and went close to the bank too early at the landing stage and ended up stuck with the oars in some reeds. Weather was good though!

Stayed behind to do some ergos and James and Olly came up to see one of the senior ladies who was in there too. They were suprised to find me doing a second 2k in 24 hours... until I told them I'd already done one with a ten minute break after. I did a third as well. Reasonable times too: 7.27, 7.25 (yup - I got faster!) and 7.38, compared to a measly stand-alone 7.15 in the test.

Met "someone" (aka Rowena - as in Ivanhoe). Toured around the shopping area, found out she has an xbox. How awesome. A chick with a console. Not unheard of, obviously, but I haven't met one til now. Went to see Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Cracking stuff :D

Went out to watch the fireworks by the castle from across the river (ie without paying) with Little James, the only one of K3 still here. Came back, played Halo 2, came back to my flat/room to read Going Postal. Big up the Pratchett massive. I agreed to go to the gym with him at 11 tomorrow. Am only 10 minutes over the recommended hour of ergos for this week, after all. I can do so much better than that!

P.S. Wales 3-41 New Zealand. Saw the crowds before and after. LOL.

Karma

Quote of the moment:
On...A...Roll. - me.

The yin and the yang? Boasting's bad for you? Anything I say comes back and bites me in the arse?

For whichever reason I got paid back somewhat for that extended self glorification. Got so knackered at circuits last night that didn't go do drawing afterwards, as I meant to. Circuits plus ergos on Wednesday combined to give me a stiff arse, plus the resistance stuff on my weak leg made that twinge all day. Failed to get out of bed early either, so had severe issues with my drawing. Attempted to do a Rolf Harris speedy "Can-You-See-What-It-Is-Yet?" version, but failed due to a miscalculation in scaling the dimensions (it was unhandily slightly too big to fit as 1:100, so I went with 8:1000). I then had to start again since I'd made such a mess, and as a result will have to slip it under the lecturers door by Monday. Tsk tsk, old habits die hard, etc. Also missed lunch/supper as a result, eating one apple all day.

Got back to my flat at 17.30 to find I'd locked myself out of my room due to my STILL unfixed lock. Had to wait in reception for a student warden to open it for so long that I only managed to leave for the rowing club at about 17.53... 3 miles and about 12 minutes later, I fell through the door of the club covered in mud from the waist down. Shortest way = path beside river. Path beside river = very muddy. D'oh!

Obviously in peak physical condition at this point. Got on ergo, did my 2k test, tried to keep at my target split of 1m45s per 500m, which with start and finish sprints would be under 7 minutes. Kept it up til about half way, then started dropping gradually off the pace... by the end I was managing about 1.55, which only improved to 1.45 for the final sprint. Bah. Got 7m15s in the end. 8 seconds better than my previous test time, but I've done better in the gym. Apparently the amount of time I've spent in the gym is actually well above average, so they were especially disappointed with me. Sigh.

On the plus side (fingers crossed no bad effects) I did collect my mail when forced to go to reception which included a belated monetary gift, I have plenty of scope for an impressive score next time which, since I should have taken the test a week ago, will be this weekend or next, and I'm meeting someone tomorrow afternoonish to go to the cinema or suchlike.

To balance that out a bit, I've got rowing at 11.30am tomorrow, which will probably be ergos since the river's still high. Bums. Or maybe my chance to shine? But probably bums.

Circuit Critique

Quote of the moment:
"If you didn't go to the gym on Tuesday beacuse circuits was cancelled, you should be ashamed." - Rowing James.

Went Monday and Wednesday, but apparently I should be doing that anyway! Easily on course to reach 60 minutes of ergo time this week, but "that's the minimum".

Wank0rs :p

Happy Birthday Podge M8

Quote of the moment:
a) you forgot HAPPY BIRTHDAY KOEL

B) I AHTE BEING DRUNK

c) get on msn bitchface

TWAS AN AWESDOME BURTHDAY

Doesn't it sound like she had fun?

Rabbit's Lucky Day

Quote of the moment:
Went to see the regional "Army Recruitment Adviser (Officers)" who was at his termly visit to the university careers centre. Wore the suit, tie, silver cufflinks, scholar's tie, the works. I was pretty much just transferring from the East Anglia one to here, but I still got a few questions just for good measure. Apparently I was the first person in a week to know Charles Clarke was home secretary and the only applicant he's ever met who knew that the Iraqi Kurds are actually Sunni, thus the balance of power in Iraq is held by the Shi'ite Arabs and Sunni Kurds, replacing the Sunni Arabs (eg Saddam Hussein). W00tage for me.

More importantly, as of this summer ACL injuries (such as mine) are no longer grounds for automatic medical unfitness for service, so if I reapply this year (or any time until the maximum age of 28) I will be eligible for normal entry, without the need for an appeal, provided I can pass the fitness assesments and have a letter declaring complete recovery from my surgeon.

GABORA!

W00t! Yes, I was very excited. VERY VERY VERY. GABORA AGAIN! That means I go from probable rejection to probable acceptance, unless I muck up my knee further or somehow mess up my commisions board tests. If only I'd known that at the start of term, I might be a TASO (Territorial Army Sponsored Officer) in the OTC by now.

D'oh!

Nevermind, I'm going to see if I can join late anyway. Mwahahah!

In other news: I was so happy afterwards that I went to the gym with Steve (the rowing runt) for a fair while. I was recognised again by Inger Nag, who yelled "POYNTZ!" at me across the gym, I felt power mad when telling Steve (who has been to TWO inductions because they didn't record his first in the computer) how to use stuff and I did a 2k ergo (poo due to stomach cramp) and 2 ten minute sets at the end. We were going to leave after the first but I was riding the adrenaline wave and would have done a third if possible. As it was I beat my distance for the first one, 2532 to 2481. Ownage.

I love the spanky new machines in the gym where you can get a "ghost" (aka a "paceboat") going along next to "your boat" which is based on a previous time you can select from the most recent 50, which are stored in the memory. It's like playing timetrial on Mario Kart, except sweatier. Thanks to that I kept my split time (how long to do 500m) below 2 minutes for the whole of the second one and downed my stroke rate to only 27 strokes per minute (up to 29 for the last 2 mins, because of sprinting at the end). That's down from about 34 and I did better, because I was getting the hang of the slow powerful stroke thing, as I need to, being a lack-of-finesse "engine room" (central four) candidate (based on size, mainly. Smaller people need awesome technique because that's more important at the bow and stern than power).

I was indeed on a roll. That roll continued into the evening, because since there was no rowing pub meeting due to the big night last night my young acquaintance + mates came to the Taf (the union pub) instead, which happened to be where I was. Cha-ching. Cue use of conversational skills - but I was on a roll. NP's mate, NP's. Went into Rubber Duck a while later, doo-doo-doo-di-doo, even managed to catch another free wristband (like the one I got in on tonight) but I obviously was a gentleman and gave it away. Well, at least I know where to go next wednesday :D

To top off the night's entertainment, upon returning home I got yelled at out of an upstairs window by Sian, one of the neighbours I know. Went up, found Matt from K3 and another Sian in there. Very confusing. When Matt and I returned downstairs I went to check if Steve had returned from Rubber Duck ok without me (I walked milady the first part of the way home when she left, then bummed straight back here without him) and we opened the door to their flat to see "Little James" (the tall skinny one, resembles a cross between Jimmy and Jim) curled up and passed out in the corridor outside his room. Apparently he'd lost his room key, but had said not to call security to let him in in case he barfed on them. LOL.

Pictures of that (that I took with Matt's camera) soon, hopefully.

Slightly drunk and extremely verbose Will, out.

[Edit 3:14am - I just checked my mark for my first drawing on Blackboard. Average was 13.9 out of 20. I got 18. On...A...Roll.]

"Greenpeace fined for reef damage"

Quote of the moment:
Their flagship Rainbow Warrior II ran aground at Tubbataha Reef Marine Park, in the Sula Sea, 650km (400 miles) south-east of Manila.

Greenpeace agreed to pay the fine, but blamed the accident on outdated maps provided by the Philippines government.

"The chart indicated we were a mile and a half" from the coral reef when the ship ran around, regional Greenpeace official Red Constantino told AFP news agency.

LOL. Oh, the irony. Imagine if a bottom-trawler had run into the reef. Would Greenpeace have been sympathetic to the fishing company protesting about dodgy charts? Methinks not.

I Ain't Fraid Of No Ghosts

Quote of the moment:
It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes,
You’re paralyzed

- Michael Jackson, Thriller.

Last song of the night at Metro's, "the stronghold of the alternative scene here in Cardiff". It was pretty cool, I must admit. The K3 boys bottled out of going with me, partly because it was raining and partly because they didn't wear costumes (even the two out of four who had them). Pussies. Had they gone on my little wander around the city center trying to find it, in the rain, in a cape and horns, with a trident, they would have been rewarded with a 20 minute wait just to make them appreciate the rain some more.

Once entry was gained however, there was ample compensation in the form of DOUBLE VODKA AND COKE FOR 99P. Yup. Uhuh. Absolutely awesome. I didn't actually have that many, since I didn't want to get too lairy/leery, but still. 99p, in a blue plastic cup that glows under the UV lights. Awesome.

The music was pretty cool, ranging from Greenday, Blink 182 and QUOTSA, through the Killers and the Kaiser Chiefs, through a couple of darker more gothesque songs to the cheese classics like the Ghostbusters theme and Thriller. It was Halloween, after all.

The company was acceptable too... A certain young lady, her flatmates and another handful from her block. Cat costume. Miaow.