I've just got back from the gym having played the usual weekly hour of Badminton. I'm now thoroughly shattered. There were some great games though. I singlehandedly defeated John and a girl whose name I can barely pronounce let alone spell, with some truly amazing returns - even if I do say so myself. With it being nice and warm, and me being rather worn out, I am now ready to go to bed.

Went shopping after work. Decided to go to Lidl after my £30 Safeway horror last week. I bought so much stuff it was disgusting. There were people who were clearly buying for entire families who had less food than me. But then, I am trying to gain weight, and I did purposefully buy too much so that I've got plenty in ready for the typical end-of-month-overdraft-crash. The whole lot (about twice as much stuff as I bought from Safeway) came to just over £22. That's about £8 less for twice as much.

I went to the Endsleigh Insurance website earlier to get a quote for my car insurance and found the quote I really wanted to take them up on required that I'd held a full license for over a year. Damn. I noticed they had a "Ring Me" link, so started filling it out, but then decided it would be better to do this after work. 10 minutes later my phone was ringing and a sales representative was on the other end, seems the form submitted itself.

Although they couldn't get me as good a deal as the one I had been quoted by the website, they were still able to give me a vast saving on my current insurance, reducing my outgoing bill from £110 per month to £70ish per month. Splendid!

I can't get that ridiculous tune to "Hacker or Spacker" out of my head.

To Newbury and Back Again

I'm back from Newbury and am thoroughly exhausted as usual. Not a bad journey though, all things considered. Knowing the route makes it considerably less agonising to drive. Fairly uneventful too, apart from brushing a wall and being taken by surprise by a ridiculously sharp being without a warning sign.

Oh and of course there was the pillock following far too close behind me, they were practically in the boot so I decided to teach them a lesson. On a fairly steep hill I tapped the brake and then slammed my foot on the accelerator. Watching in the rear-view mirror I could see that they'd hit the brakes so hard they'd nearly stopped. They must have really bricked themselves. Funny, but they held back for a while then. Not long though.

Had an excellent weekend, as usual. I always do when I go down to Newbury. On Friday I weighed myself and found I was 10 stone! That's a weight increase of 7 pounds since last week! I was so chuffed. On Saturday we went to Swindon, which is a shithole. Personally I was somewhat pleased with my driving across the "Magic Roundabout". Most people end up totally confused by the whole thing. On the way there I wasn't entirely certain where I was going, yet somehow ended up taking the correct exit. Coming back I didn't even realise I had been across the damn thing. I was still waiting for the uncertainty and worry long after we'd past it.

I weighed myself on Saturday and found I was 9 Stone 13 pounds. This morning when I weighed myself I found I was 9 Stone 12 pounds. Still, it's a vast improvement. Today we were going to go for a walk, but we decided otherwise when the hail started pounding down. So instead we played a grunge-match of Monopoly which, somehow, I won. I was shocked I can tell you - I have the most unbelievably bad luck with that game.

Afterwards I made the usual checks on the car and came to the decision that it wasn't the coolant that was leaking from the engine - it was the windscreen washer fluid. Well that's one less problem to worry about then. I'm still making a point of carrying water in the car though, just in case such an emergency should ever arise again.

When I arrived home earlier I was surprised to find my electricity hadn't ran out. On the Friday I had been unable to buy some more as I could not find my payment card. After frantic searching earlier I eventually found it - on my desk. Under a receipt. So bloody annoying. Anyway, it's made me think and so I have made a point of storing the number on the card in my computer so that should this happen again I will have something to fall back on.

Right I think I've blathered on enough for now, so I shall have another beer and then go to bed.

Hacker or spacker?

This seems to be turning into a links archive at the moment, but I just found this so funny I had to post it here. Plus I won't be blogging over the weekend as I will, of course, be in Newbury. It's not very politically correct, but it is hilarious!

Hacker or Spacker?

Medion Electronics Limited

Don't buy anything from these people. They are a shambles of a company, don't know their arse from their elbow. My DVD player which I sent back to them just after Christmas because it didn't, well, play DVDs is still sitting in their warehouse. I've just got off the phone after listening to about 45 minutes of hold music only to find out that my details had gone astray. Eventually they were found again and I was told that the customer number I was originally quoted was wrong. Worse still, they can't get hold of any replacements of this particular model and the best they can do is offer me a full refund.

So I now have to make another copy of the receipt and send it to them - despite the fact they already had a copy of it. They will then send me a cheque for the amount paid, and I will need to get Liz's name put on it. All in all I am very disappointed in them as a company, but at the same time I feel relieved that I no longer have to have anything to do with them. Goods that don't work when you first get them out of the box do not inspire me with confidence that they would last even if I did get a replacement.

The moral of this story is that Medion Electronics are crap.

Really need to check the car's water, oil, brake fluid and fill up pwith some washer fluid...but I just can't be bothered. I'll do it tomorrow.

I've drank god-only-knows how many stubbies and yet I still feel perfectly sober. How weird. It's somewhat annoying actually because I'm bored out of my mind and quite fancy going for a drive, but of course I can't as I am over the limit now...

Sod it, I'm off to bed.

Ow, everything seems to hurt today and I have no idea why. My left shin hurts, my lower-right back, my upper right thigh, my head, my ribs keep twinging...I think I must have taken a kicking in my sleep or something.

Third blog of the day, I must be subconciously trying to make up for the few blogs I have missed recently :)

Today has been a boring work day, but this evening has been quite pleasant. Went to Surfr's for the twice postponed games and beer evening. Stopped off in the Spar to get some beer to fulfill my part of the bargain and got IDed as usual. The guy was looking at my driver's license for a good half a minute before he was satisfied it wasn't fake, I was over 18, and it was - in fact - me on the picture. Honestly I'm surprised he didn't also take my fingerprints, a retina scan and check my dental records while he was at it.

The games evening sort of fell on its arse a bit when it emerged that I was the only person who had turned up, and Surfr's MAME Cabinet decided it didn't want to play ball (or any other games for that matter). It got to the game selection menu and then decided it would kill the keyboard. The keyboard rather infuriatingly worked fine all the way up to that point. When we had exhausted all the possibilities we could think of we gave up, and so played a few games on the GameCube. Eventually it just turned into a beer and chatting evening and we just had a bit of a laugh before I headed off just after 11.

On the way back I was shocked to nearly stand on a small lizard-like creature. I'm still debating whether it was a lizard or whether it was a Newt (there was a drainage ditch near-by). Whatever it was it was a really funky little critter!

And now I'm off to bed, safe (actually, probably more unsafe) in the knowledge that once again I have failed to complete the basic maintenance my car requires, and done nothing on the other important things I really need to deal with at the moment.

More madness - I have nothing against women designing cars, but it seems plain silly to me to claim that normal cars are not designed with women in mind. The way I see cars they are designed as unisex vehicles, and there is an ever increasing number of feminine cars (mainly down to the styling and plush interiors) ... personally I think this is a step too far. My favourite line is:

And if you want to laugh at a religion that's gone one step too far, check out this