Drowning In A Sea Of Boxes
So, we're getting the keys to the new place on Thursday, which is uber-exciting! I've re-arranged things a bit so I can help Ronnie move her stuff in over the weekend before nipping down to my parents house for a couple of days. And I'm in the midst of packing. I don't even know what I'm doing half the time, I just seem to get up in the morning and put things in boxes, or pack them in suitcases or whatever. All I know is that there are boxes everywhere and that my flat is suddenly seeming very small! Luckily I'm not moving my stuff until next weekend (the bank holiday weekend) so I've got another 10 days to finish, but there just seems to be so much stuff! I'll never finish! PANIC!
In other news, a glazer came and fixed the windows we couldn't open, and some guys from the garage came and took my car away to be fixed. It's weird to look outside and NOT see my Focus sitting there. Still, at least tomorrow I should have my courtesy car so I have transport. Reckon I'm gonna need it to get more boxes!
Packing frenzy!!!
Always In Motion The Future Is!
Wow, after the utter dullness of yesterday, today's been a wild ride!
So, the big news is we've got the house! Yay! We've been approved, so all that's left is for Ronnie to sign the contract, and we get the keys to our new life! I've already been and handed in my notice on this flat, I've looked into van hire (the best I've seen is £112.50 for three days, which is pretty good), and I'm trying to work out where to even start packing everything away! There's a part of me that thinks the packing is an almost insurmountably vast task that will take forever, and another part of me that thinks it'll only take a couple of days, if that. Whichever, I need to get my swerve ON and get packing!
Ronnie was also pissed off by her bank AGAIN today, so that's it, they had their chances and she's closed the account. Tomorrow we're gonna open her an account with Barclays (I went in today to check with them what we need to do, and they were more than happy to have a disgruntled customer from another organisation!), and open up a joint account for the two of us too, so we've got somewhere to pay the rent and bills from.
I've applied for MORE jobs in Peterborough, and... it's all just bloody exciting! I can't believe that after all this time it's finally happening, and happening so fast! I guess that's the way of these things though, you plan and prepare, but when it's actually "go!" time it always takes you by surprise! I know I didn't want to count my chickens on this place, 'cos I didn't want to get my hopes up, which is probably why I haven't actually done anything yet! I just didn't want to be getting all excited for us to lose another place.
Still, that's neither here nor there. What's important is that as of right now, all systems are finally go! Our new life together is finally in sight.
Dull Day, E3 Wreckage
Well today was a fairly ordinary day, after all the excitement of the past week. I did laundry, took the car down to the garage to book the repairs, applied for jobs. Not a lot of thrills there eh? Good news though, is that Ronnie's passed all the security checks and references and stuff, so now all we're waiting for is the landlords final approval, and we'll have our new place! That IS exciting. I may even hand in my notice on this place tomorrow, just to have it done, and so that my rent payment on Saturday will be the last one here!
It has been suggested that I should talk a little about E3, so here goes.
Firstly, there's still remarkably little about the Xbox360 that interests me; for all the talk of second generation games for the 360, it's still the same old games, but in a higher resolution. That said, it's light years in terms of interest beyond what Sony seem to be doing with the PlayStation 3! That must be the longest and most expensive resignation letter that any member of that company has ever written... I mean, seriously! A price of £400-500, lumbering the system with blu-ray discs which in all probability nobody wants, and stealing all the competitions ideas (no, the online service isn't anything like Xbox Live is it? And that motion sensing controller, never seen that before!), being last to market and... where are the games? God knows I've never been a fan of Sony in the video games market, I've always felt they've diluted it by being a populist consumer electronics firm, but I honestly have no clue what they think they're doing with the PS3. It's almost enough to make me think I don't care about video gaming anymore. But it's not all doom and gloom, one company has decided not to bother with all this hi-def madness, and they've decided to do something crazy: make games fun! Obviously, that company is Nintendo. Despite renaming the Revolution as Wii (uh huh, I know, I struggle to imagine playing with my Wii), everything I've seen out of them has been uniformly exciting! New ways to play, new control methods, the backwards compatibility of the virtual console... it's all looking incredibly exciting! Add to that the return of Mario, Link, Samus and strong third-party support... I know where I want to play and its not in Microsoft and Sony hi-tech, hi-def, hi-cost playground. Long live the revolution (okay, Wii)!
It's A Mini Adventure!
Wow, so much to say! As ever, I'll try to be chronological, but I can't guarantee anything...
So, Thursday I went off to meet Ronnie for our camping holiday! I got to the campsite a few minutes before her as she'd gone to a local chippie to get dinner. We checked ourselves in, ate our lunch, and then assembled our tent!
It took a while; we were in a nicely sheltered area but the ground was knotty with the roots of the leilandii that we were sheltering behind, so it took a good bit of effort to get the pegs into the ground. Nonetheless, we got it all sorted, and our little home from home took shape! That night we went out to HGs for karaoke night, but there was nobody there for AGES so I ended up doing about half a dozen songs (some of them Eurovision duets! hehe) to fill in the time until the rest of the crowd finally got there. We weren't out terribly late 'cos Ronnie had work the next day. Sleeping in the tent was cool, not that I slept much I seemed too fascinated by all the sounds of wildlife around us! I'm convinced there was a small family of ducks that spent the night circling us, although they probably had better things to do with their time...
Friday morning Ronnie left early for work, so I had a bit of a lie in, then a shower, then went on a mad mission to meet her for lunch! I'd only ever been to the place where she worked once before, and I didn't have a map on me, so it took me a while to piece it together, but I got there in time to surprise her, which was nice. After lunch I took my Ronnie-map (she draws excellent little maps) and went and explored town for a while, before going back to the campsite to sunbathe for the rest of the afternoon! We went out on a bit of a pubcrawl with some of her mates Friday night, Ronnie was drinking and I was driving! It was another good night, and we retired to our tent tired but happy!
Saturday we went to look at another house (the one with the brown windows and door here) which we liked. To be honest this one is a little bigger and roomier than the other one, and has a bit more garden to it, all for the same money. We liked this one straight away, it's nice and modern and I think we were both imagining living there! So we put in our application for it Monday morning... but that's skipping ahead. We went to lunch in Frankie and Benny's, then went to see Mission Impossible III, before hitting the pubs and clubs again! I was well hammered by the time we got to the Met Lounge that night, and apparently I alternated between dancing about like a lunatic and sitting in the corner complaining that I felt sick! All I remember was having a good time!
Sunday was the Dragon Boat race! Ronnie was crew in one of the boats. Her first race was at an ungodly hour, so we had to get up about 7.30 to make it there in time! It rained non-stop ALL day, but we still had a great time! We bumped into a mate and ended up hanging out with him for most of the afternoon, visiting the beer tent, watching the juggler, and playing laser tag, amongst other things! By four o'clock that afternoon Ronnie's team had been knocked out of the competition, and it'd stopped raining, so we figured it was time to go and pack up the campsite... After that we nipped back to her parents house to change into dry clothes, and then we went out for a lovely meal at the Peking Grain Barge, a floating chinese restaurant just a little up the river from where the Dragon Boat racing had been. I didn't really know what to order, so Ronnie picked a selection of dishes and we shared. It was a great meal, and I even learned how to eat with chopsticks! It was a perfect end to our little adventure, peaceful and romantic. It really had been like a little holiday, even though we were camped all of two miles from Ronnie's parents house! I'd almost forgotten that I didn't live in a tent in Peterborough, it seemed so strange to be back here again...
Not that I was for long. Monday was spent largely sleeping and doing tons of washing of all the things that'd got shockingly muddy over the course of our weekend away!
Tuesday was my Grans funeral. That wasn't as bad as I expected, perhaps because it'd been two weeks by then, and we'd all kinda got used to the idea that she was gone. That said it obviously wasn't a bundle of laughs. I'm glad Ronnie was there, it was nice to have her brightness around. I was surprised by how religious the service was, given that we're not a family of God, but I guess it's what she would've wanted. I didn't listen to the vicar anyway, I spent the time thinking about Grandma (and Grandad) and what they'd meant to me, things they'd done during their lives. Later, back at the house, going through old things Dad showed me Grandads citation for the Military Medal back when he was an ambulance driver during WWII. When he was stationed on Sicily, he apparently made eleven seperate runs under heavy shelling, bringing back a total of sixty-three casualties in that one day alone. That's something pretty incredible to think about, sixty-three lives saved because of him. I doubt that I'll do anything of such worth in my lifetime. Stu found a pic of them together and sent me a copy. It's how I always remember them, smiling.
Isabella and Harry Allen
Under Canvas
Well, bad news first I guess: we didn't get the house. Seems the landlord had it on the market with several agents and it was let through another. Ah well, we'll find somewhere neat soon enough. I think the agents feel pretty guilty about it, 'cos they've arranged for us to see somewhere on Saturday afternoon, which looks pretty nice. We will see, I guess.
So, what's happened to our weekend plans then? NOTHING! We'd planned to meet up with people, go drinking/clubbing and various other activities over the weekend (including Ronnie taking part in the Dragon Boat race on Sunday) and we'd planned it all round having the keys to the house so we could kinda camp there; not move in as such, just move enough bits that we could crash there. So we figured, we were gonna be camping anyway... and Ronnie's nabbed a tent for us, and we're gonna be spending the next few nights under canvas! It's pretty exciting, I haven't been camping since I was a kid, and I always like snuggling up in confined spaces with Ronnie... hehehe. Excuse me, was that my evil laugh?
Finally got myself a suit for the funeral, although from the sounds of it they are not de-rigeur for this occasion. That said of the blokes going, I know that at least three of us will be wearing a suit, so maybe they are...
Rogue Trooper, the game. Yeah, I know silky smooth linkage but, okay here we go. Finished it last night, and as a big fan of the original Rogue from 2000AD (none of this Friday nonsense, and ignoring the bits where he was used by aliens as an assassin) I have to say: wow! No, seriously, as a fan, to wander around Nu Earth and see that setting brought so vividly to life was very impressive and entertaining. Everybody talked like they should (something that must be very hard to do to be honest, 'cos surely every reader will have an individual voice for the characters), and slaughtering Norts by the bucketload was awesome fun (I particularly enjoyed taking the Kashan Legion apart, fuckers)! Gameplay was super smooth and never irritating, which is pretty unusual, although I would say two things: it was a bit too easy on Normal difficulty, and the end is something of a disappointment, but other than that, top quality gaming and nostalgia! Would I recommend it if you've no idea who Rogue is? Probably not, but for fans, there's a traitor in Millicom and you're the only person who can avenge your GI brothers! Now if only Rebellion could do a Strontium Dog game...
The Day Of Rockening
I was totally right to be excited about Ronnie's visit, we had a great time! She was dea tired when she got her Saturday night (straight after work, so not surprising) and we just crashed. Sunday morning her sister Lisa came over to spend the day with us, and we all had a nice time: we fed her (Ronnie'd done a yummy vegetable bake for lunch-Lisa's a veggie too, but rarely gets veggie food just for her), took her down to Abington Park to feed the ducks and then noticed that there was a funfair on the Racecourse! So we headed off for that, and had a fun go on the waltzers (Lisa looked so pale I thought she was gonna die) and then hunted each other down mercilessly on the dodgems, and we were about to have another go on the waltzers when the guy who was running the ride was so incredibly rude that we just got off and walked away. I know we only deprived him of a few quid, but I hope the sight of three unhappy punters (one of whom was the cutest girl at the fair!) getting up and walking off his ride took a little of the spring out of his step. We didn't linger on that though, and went off to the Dragoon for a nice drink and a natter, then back here for a homemade (by Ronnie again!) apple and strawberry pie. It was very yummy, especially fresh from the oven and served with ice-cream! Nobody had a lot of energy left by the end of the day, and Lisa left for home before she fell asleep! Me and Ronnie stayed up long enough to watch the end of Labyrinth, but it wasn't long before we were ready for bed!
And sleep we did, until late into Monday morning! That was okay, there's no hurry on a Bank Holiday. We had breakfast in bed, watched Men Behaving Badly on video, and eventually got up and had a quick bath, before we nipped into town to do a few errands. Sadly we didn't get
any of those done (I still needed a suit for the funeral, Ronnie's awesome cargos from Spun Out still had dodgy stitching, and she still didn't have the jeans she wanted!), but we did have a nice snack in a coffee house. We pottered about in the evening, and 'discovered' Lordi, and frankly bonkers Finnish metal band. I'd noticed them because of their entry into Eurovision, and even though Ronnie is quite allergic to Eurovision, I convinced her to watch the video cos I thought she'd like it... and boy was I right! She spent the next couple of hours downloading tons of their songs, watching their videos and telling as many people who would listen about them! And she danced around the living room like a loon (in her monster feet!). We even had to burn a quick Lordi CD before she went home, and I let her have my old in car CD-player thingummy so she could listen to it!
Today was much less eventful, although my new washing machine finally came! Woohoo! Seemed to take them ages to get the thing fitted, and then I had to do a test wash to make sure it was all plumbed in properly and didn't leak everywhere (it didn't!) so it wasn't until this evening that I finally got to wash ANYTHING at all! Still, I've started on the towels now!
We still haven't heard anything about the house; Ronnie phoned the estate agents twice today, and they apparently haven't been able to get in touch with the landlord... although I'm not entirely convinced they've been trying! I really like that place, I think it suits us both down to the ground, so they better pull their finger out and make it happen!
