So this is it. I no longer have to write for the sake of writing. Whenever I do NaBloPoMo I always feel like some of my posts were written just for the sake of it, but some of them were rather good. Mostly the ones where I kept it to one paragraph, or had pictures of Jenny Lewis and Emmy The Great.

Either way I’ve realise that you have to keep blogging for it to be interesting. And for you to keep thinking of new things to blog about. Which was lucky that I saw lots of bands, bumped into people I hadn’t seen for a while and became a Marketeer.

With regards to being a Marketeer it looks as though I’m working for someone who went to my old school (although at least ten years before I went there) and also my friend from the Larry David Meal will be working there as well. Now this should be interesting as we’ve not really spoken to each other since the incident apart from the odd “Hello” to each other. At least he seems relatively happy to see me whereas a year ago he looked as though I had shat on his cereal.

So Marketeering promises to be fun. And I can always work in my old team if I really want to. Or even go elsewhere. The world is my Oyster card! Hoorah!

That’s it. I’ve had enough of Danny Baker. He was reasonably amusing on his All Day Breakfast Show, but the constant repetition of the same stories and anecdotes got on my wick. I also don’t rate Amy Lame and Baylen Leonard that much either.

However when I heard he had restarted his footy shows with Danny Kelly I thought I’d give them a go. And I enjoyed them, but again I’ve reached my limit. They had some nonsense where they were drawing teams out a hat and renaming them as another team (so Bolton became Man City). This went on for about twenty minutes and Baker found it hilarious. Kelly seemed to notice that it wasn’t actually that interesting and said “We’ll edit this”, but Baker overruled.

The thing is the punters he has on both shows have really interesting stories, but Baker just has to give his example of the story everytime someone starts telling their own. It just stops the flow. And there’s only so many times you can repeat one joke (“I agree” – A Escobar).

In other podcast news:

• I tried listening to the 1up yours podcast again. Managed to download the latest one. Was just under three hours. Got bored after 45 minutes after they’d spent half of that time going on about the differences between Manhunt and Manhunt 2*.
• Wrestlecrap radio is still excellent.
• My ann art entry got read out on onelifeleft. I was wrong as I expected.

* Something about story V plot.

Today was probably the longest I’ve ever worked for a long while. And what did I do in that 9 – 6:30 stretch? Erm, collect coats mostly.

I helped out at the Finance Conference which I meant I became a meeter and greeter, a glass collector, a cloakroom attendant and an official timekeeper (but not sponsored by Zurich). And I feel absolutely worn out.

It has made clear that what I’ve been feeling before when I’ve said I was tired is not proper tiredness. What I’m feeling now is worn out tiredness, every other time it’s been spaced out tiredness. I need a day off.

Although I guess you could have counted today as a day off as I wasn’t at my desk fiddling around with databases.

As well as still having bouts of exceptional tiredness during the day my teeth now hurt. I feel as though I have to clench them together to stop them hurting. I believe that this may be A Bad Thing.

I will see if I can book an appointment with my dentist sometime next month.

Tomorrow is pay day and I’m very happy for it to be so as I’m broke. Apart from the money I have saved in my ISA (which is to be saved towards buying a house/xbox 360). And the credit card I have (although I don’t use that apart from online purchases). And the
joint account (which I am most definitely not touching). And the savings account (which is to save towards the wedding). And the interest free overdraft (which I might have to dip into).

Anyway for this month and December I’m going to have to cut down on any unnecessary expenses. Which pretty much means no magazines for me. I never seem to buy anything else during the month.

Clothes? I still have shirts from when I was in sixth form so I don’t need any new ones for a while. CDs? I’ve put the new CDs I want on my Christmas list, and I think the only one I wanted was the new Donnas album. Games? I have about 12 games I still have to play & adding any new ones seems a bit silly. It’s for this reason I’ve held off buying a 360. Why should I get one when I can play TF2 on my PC*?

I think the main reason I’m broke is I’ve been paying for a few expensive unexpected things. The flight to Germany. The new ipod (which won’t update on last.fm). The trip to London. Hopefully the next few months should be easier on my pocket. Except my £200+ CIMA fees are expected by January… Bah.

* Answer: Because it keeps crashing on your buggy PC. Although at least my PC will reboot – I’m still worried about these red light of death the 360 has.

After my first ever go on Team Fortress 2 where I wandered around without really knowing what I was doing, but having a lot of fun nonetheless, I’ve played it two more times.

In the first (second?) go it finally clicked. I started to play as the pyro and actually managed to steal the opponents intelligence and bring it back to the base. I even set some enemies alight and laughed heartily at their smoldering corpses.

I even got so good that for one round I became the best player ever. The only annoying thing was that the game never seemed to end. Apparently it was the first to three. But only in the darts sense of the word. Getting three only meant that you had won one ‘leg’. And you had to get to five legs. After half an hour it was 3-2 on legs. It was time for tea. But I couldn’t find the quit button. So I gave up and turned off my PC.

When I logged on for my third (second?) go I noticed that Steam hadn’t recorded my excellent results from when I was the Pyro. Bah.

And this time around I was much worse. Perhaps it was because my Pyro worked much better in the smaller map of the previous competition. Or maybe it was because this map was a capture the territory map rather than capture the flag. Or maybe I was playing much better people.

At least this time I had worked out why I couldn’t quit before. I hadn’t defined a quit key in the menu (thanks Valve for not giving this option in the first place!) so I chose ‘ . There wasn’t much point to have done this as my PC decided to crash. Which meant that my stats for this go weren’t recorded either.

So I’ve given up on TF2. Not because I’m rubbish. But because my PC is. Or Steam is. Or Valve are. Or Something.

Have I already used ‘Honeymoon’ as a Blog title? Who cares!

Anyway with most of our watabe wedding planned & booked (aside from the photographer who has yet to return our calls) we are trying to think of places to go for our honeymoon. We have four possible options:

• Lake District – Will be by the lake in a log cabin, with all modcons. Has a hottub. Is in England so weather is likely to be rubbish. Self catering.
• Isle of Wight – Has a four poster bed. Bed & Breakfast only. Will take a long time to get there by train. Perhaps not much to do there.
• Greece – Definitely will be hot. Some places offer good upgrades for honeymooners. Quite expensive.
• Turkey – Surprisingly cheap. All the holidays we’ve seen appear to be all-inclusive. Could make me very fat. Might be exceptionally hot (even for early June).

I still have no idea which one I want to go to. But I do like the sound of all-inclusive.

I'm writing this having just come back from a party. I've realised that I'm not terribly sociable.

Despite this month being the month of gigs* I’ve bought absolutely no CDs to listen to. Except I have just received a CD in the post that I had ordered, but can’t listen to until next month.

Of course I’m referring to Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas box set. I have no problems in recommending it as Sufjan has never let me down in the past. The other reason why I’d recommend it is the sheer amount of stuff you get with it.

The list goes like this:

• 5 CDs with 42 songs
• A CD liner with lots of Christmassy stuff (photos, notes, lyrics & chords)
• A Quicktime video on one of the CDs
• A comic strip
• Stickers
• Lots of Christmas cheer

Just by this CD arriving in the post has made me very excited for Christmas next month. And I don’t think I’ve been excited about Chrimble since last millenium.

Also it smells amazing.

* I even decided not to go to see the New Pornographers, the Warlocks and Scout Niblett because I’ve spent too much seeing bands in November

Ergh. That last blog was sent via hotmail and I apologise for how it looks. Apparently formatting does count.

I went to Rilo Kiley yesterday and they were excellent. The new songs, which I’ve not been a huge fan of (although my brother and Freya like it immensely) sounded much better in a live environment when compared to the too pristine album.

It was also good to see Boris again as he wasn’t at the last gig in Leeds I went to (Los Campesinos! if I remember correctly), although he wasn’t able to get much pelvis thrusting going to many of Rilo’s songs. One thing that slightly upset me was that there wasn’t much chatting from the group. I always prefer it more when the band talk to you as it think it makes more of a connection.

The exception to the chatting rule was Blake. He’s just an annoying person. I’m not sure why but anything he says rubs me up the wrong way. I think he’s rather arrogant and that makes me not like him.

Other than that the best gig of the month in terms of music (especially the version of I Never, which is now a shoe-in to be our wedding dance song). Emmy was a close second, but she was better in terms of overall atmosphere.

And Jenny had cowbell which I think is to music what cake is to videogames:

The other other thing I noticed was that there’s a lack of bands that smile in their songs. The support band Grand Ole Party were very good, but all the singer did was scream her lyrics. I think I need a new band that smile whilst singing. The Pipettes are a good example of a smiling band (especially RiotBecki). But even pop groups nowadays frown rather than smile, Girls Aloud are definite frowners, and whilst Lily Allen sings about smiling she seems grumpy too. I’ve not really thought my theory through, but could you all cheer up please? KTHXBYE