Hi All! Yes it's been a zillion years since I last posted, so I'm slack, ho hum. For those of you that haven't seen me in the intervening period I am still alive.

Am currently having major dilemma. Exactly half of me wants to play the next Serenity event and the other half wants to crew it. For anyone who has an opinion on which I do please express it now in the traditional voting stylee.

Many Thanks

P.S I'm sure I've done loads of stuff, will try and come up with a summary soon(ish)

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 85% Spider-Man 65% The Flash 65% Iron Man 65% Robin 62% Supergirl 62% Batman 60% Catwoman 50% Superman 50% Wonder Woman 47% Hulk 35%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Worked 74 hours last week. Which is mental. But at least I'm getting my bonus!! (Links to frivolous spending plans here and here).

Not done much else, other than enjoying a lovely lazy day with jenna_elise on Saturday. Am now revising camera manual in order to be fully versed in advance of my course starting in a few weeks time.

Well, since I'm now officially a student of photography at the OU, I decided to start a photo blog, initially for the length of the course but I will probably carry it on afterwards.
I've decided to keep this seperate from my normal lj account, for various reasons, one of which being avoiding peeing you all off with continuous wittering and filling up / crashing your friends pages with lots of photos...

For those of you who are interested the link is http://choccoweeble.blogspot.com/ , not on lj as it means 1/ Not constantly logging in and out and 2/ Most of the other people on the course I've found so far seem to be on blogspot.

Have also put a link in my sidebar.

In other news great night out Sat, sorry I didn't get to talk to you all more, and work is tiring

Is what I will be doing between now and next Friday. I may have a small amount of sleep in there somewhere... and a brief foray to congratulate cuthrose on getting another year older. Sorry if we had any plans.

Oh how I love year end.

Hugs Required

( Long and Long and Rambly - Thursday and Friday )

The rest of the event was much more interesting. Most of Saturday we hardly left the tent for the number of vistors we had (sometimes several at once). Come the evening we were treated to an IC visit from kneeshooter and his fellow abusive Kamakuran noodle boy. The noodles were extremely good, and not long after the wind decided to finally drop, lifting everyone's spirits considerably. We enjoyed the raucous sing song from the next tent (including a very amusing filched version of "Bye Bye Miss Fidelian Pie") and a story from wiserabbit followed by a failed communal attempted at a story about George, a mokosh who wanted to be an avian. The evening ended late, with just myself, jenna_elise and Jeramiah Mason (Tom) remaining up until time out, talking about country music IIRC...
Then off to toasty bed again (I am spoilt rotten).
Sunday more was accomplished, including us getting another lovely NPC visit which caused both amusement and panic all round. This was followed by evacuation due to various threats, so a few enjoyable hours were spent by myself and a few others at the Rukhi encampment, enjoying a number of rousing songs, including the memorable "If you see a man in a wig, kick him in the nuts" which I'm sure I'll regale most of you with at some point when I've had a little too much to drink (although I suspect it's unsuitable for Artificer...). Then off to the refugee tent after various events (sorry, FOIP), via the First Aid tent for theraputic redhillian cuddles after having an argument with a tent peg. After most people had toddled off to bed, it was lovely to see elektrobard and ammos in the bar, plus Ant (for a rather dirty chat), Kate and psion_x.
Then a lovely long chat with Jackie (spelling!?) who is part of the Amici, and almost falling asleep in the car waiting for kneeshooter to finish up in GOD.
Not much transpired on Sunday, mainly due to the cold and tiredness finally having set in good and proper, although it was nice to see Chiara and Morgan and catch up with James again, after last seeing him in the bar Thursday night.

All in all a great time despite the weather, I know many people bailed early but I'm glad we stuck it out to the end. Managed to get a few decent pictures, not as many as I would have liked but never mind. Also fab to see so many lovely people, I think the only 2 I missed were Sonza and lupercal, who I saw IC a couple of times but never OC despite particularly wanting to catch up with him. Maybe next event?

Quote of the weekend : "D'ya wan' some f%*&in' noodle?"

This evening I have successfully achieved nothing. Aside from watching some shite TV and messing about on Facebook. This is not good. Especially as I'm sure there are a million and one things I want to / should be doing.

I need a kick up the arse

Hmm, seems I've managed to do it again. Lots has occured since last update.
Had a lovely day at Dunham Massey with shazrasha and jenna_elise a couple of weekends ago, although the weather was crap and managed to foil both our walk around the deer park and my attempts to photograph Tufted Ducks. Hmm... A few pics may have made it, have not put them on comp yet. The evening was a lovely lazy chat followed by a trip to the carvery where we became utterly stuffed.
The weekend after that was elektrobard's Bond Birthday Bash, at which I had a little too much booze (what's new), and did manage to get some reasonable pics which will hopefully hit Flickr before the end of the weekend. This was preceeded by helping batelf to move, although not much help was required him being ruthlessly efficient, and a trip to Ikea with cuthrose and jenna_elise for food and furniture. Good to catch up with foul_temptress, areteus, sarahlascelles, kingandy, trevor_davies and the lovely Lesley.
Home on Sunday afternoon to the first Grand Prix of the season which was more than a little exciting, with only 6 drivers out of 22 finishing!

Then it was time to start getting ready for Maelstrom which I will cover in a seperate post.

Meanwhile, in other news I've signed up for my OU photography course which starts at the beginning of May, and I thought you would all be amused to hear that my new workplace deals with a company called "Chicken Bazooka"

First of all apologies for being majorly shit at updating lately. That is of course if you’ve noticed (I do like to think I have a plethora of avid readers desperate for the next instalment but I’m sure that’s not the case). Anyway…

( The weekend before the weekend before last )

( Then ensued my week of busyness + 5. )

( The weekend before last )

( Last weekend )

So now it’s Friday again and another weekend upon us. Where is this year going? Obligatory round up of yearly goals to come now that it is March (bloody hell!), but in a separate post as my wrists are starting to hurt and I’m impressed I got this far.


Quote of the Day (with a little more context than normal):
“Why do the men in this room insist on dismantling the upholstery?”
“Dismantling? It’s a little more like ripping violently apart in blind anger. Dismantling makes it sound like flat pack furniture”
“Angry dismantling! “I was so pissed off I packed it back into the box””

That was the busiest week in the history of the known world. Am currently knackered. Proper update on the last 2 weeks in a few days when I've had chance to recover.


Quote of the day : "Everybody needs a Malcolm"

Today's fetish : Chainmail Gloves

Interview with Finance Director went really well. He seems like a great guy, and although they have to see one more person tomorrow and couldn't promise anything, he said he thought I had "Every quality he was looking for".

Hopefully will hear tomorrow after they've seen the other person, failing that should know by Thursday. Now have to try and stop twitching.

I have been asked back for a second interview after the really positive first interview I probably didn't mention... Now it's just between me and one other person.

I like the place, the woman who will be my boss seems lovely, the job is almost exactly bang on what I'm after, salary good, holidays good, they offer full study support with 3 days paid leave for each exam and it's a 25 minute commute in the opposite direction to the rush.

Fingers crossed for me everyone!

Description of weekend here and here as I'm sure none of you require a third version and I'm too lazy :-P

My contribution to the photo fest

So back to work today and I am feeling pretty grotty. I fear the snot goblins* may have beset me again. Yeurgh.



*Credit to grampus

Are Westlife just butchering their way through every decent ballad in the history of music?

It began way back with "I Have a Dream" and "Seasons in the Sun". Moving on through the travesties that were "You Raise Me Up", "The Rose" and "I'm Already There", and to top it off they've now done "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

All completely deadpan, airbrushed and totally devoid of anything even vaguely resembling emotion.

IS NOTHING SACRED???

The nail in the coffin is the fact that the "souless corporate machine" I work for seems to have no other music whatsoever, therefore I have to listen to it during my lunch in the canteen EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!

The downloader for BBC iPlayer now works with Firefox. A little rude they didn't make sure of this before launch, but at least it's sorted (wonder how many complaints they got?)

After the dancing weekend I am absolutely chuffing knackered. I have aches on my aches and will not be doing anything strenuous for at least a week. That will teach me to do the Irish Dancing lessons...

Quote of the day : "Have you got any more of those pretty boys in the freezer?"

Thursday was (flexible) cinema night, and this visit, I am Legend. Good atmosphere, nice special effects and enough adrenalin moments to keep me happy.

Saturday dawned bright and early with a trip to Monmouth for shazrasha and midnightoak's Gran's 90th. Food nice, company nice, travelling, not so nice. Photos on Flickr.

Arrival back in Chester was accomplished at 6ish, followed by takeaway and then off to Sale for elektrobard's housewarming. Much fun and chat was had (although not alcohol as I was driving), and great to see cuthrose, ephrael, redhillian, foul_temptress, kardrath, wiserabbit, kingandy, masati, psion_x, and everyone else I've forgotten. Then home again home again jiggity jig in the wee small hours.

Sunday started lazily with "Transformers" at the abode of shazrasha and midnightoak's brother, followed by shopping in town (grr my jacket pr0n was out of stock, 3 weeks until I get it!), dinner at Frankie and Benny's, then home and zonk on the sofa!

So the weekend was mostly a blur. And it's already Thursday? Jesoos!! Ah well, should have thouroughly danced my socks off by this Sunday (whilst everyone else I know is having fun at Waypoint - Grr).

I've also decided to take a leaf out of maviscruet's book and give you a monthly round up of how I'm doing with my 2008 goals.

( Round Up )

...it's only money

I'm going to Soho's to buy myself some Jacket Pr0n

The reason being I want to.

At least that is my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

I'd like to say that it's busyness that has kept me from posting my WIDATW until Wednesday, but mainly just apathy - and I'll come to that later.

Firstly I must mention that shazrasha and I went to see The Golden Compass last Thursday. Won't inflict a proper review on you, as my opinions on visual media tend to be far removed from the general consensus, suffice to say that it was pretty, there were airships, gadgets, fluffy animals and Nicole Kidman. Therefore it got the thumbs up from me.

The weekend was enjoyable with a foray to the abode of midnightoak and lucian_albrecht in Leeds to be Steampunk'd and enjoy the company of trevor_davis, liz_ddraig, pi_per, wiserabbit, kardrath, jenna_elise and cuthrose. Although the LARP never actually happened there was the perpetual joy of costume pr0n and riotous conversation (mostly instigated by myself it must be added). Pictures are here here for those not already on my Flickr

Then to Wendy House for some of us, which was fun, if the DJ left somewhat to be desired. As always lovely to catch up with lady_pyra especially since she was looking utterly gorgeous. Then home and chatting until the wee small hours, and up on Sunday morning at that unreasonable hour after a late night that only Larpers know. Hmm...

Sunday was a lazy day of chatting, Snapphanar (Swedish Film) and endless tea. Then home, and suddenly I starting feeling pretty crappy. In the mood sense that is not the health sense. This is rather worrying as I've been good for quite some while, but will put it down to LARP withdrawl, work uncertainties and something that's irritated me that I won't bore you with. So roll on Easter Maelstrom and hope I cheer myself up.

Unfortunately, Monday compounded the problem as the 6 mile drive home from work took over an hour and a half. Grr... Needless to say I got home in a foul mood and allowed it to ruin the entire evening.

Yesterday was better though, as I returned home at the alloted time and waved my magic wand over the kitchen for an hour, consequently it shineth like the sun itself. Most pleased with myself we toddled off to RP Soc and had an entertaining evening of general pointless, smutty yet amusing chat. So I now feel much better, lets cross fingers it was just a momentary blip :-)

Quote of the day : "Hob-Nob me bitch!!"

Later WIDATW, but for now enjoy...

http://tashian.com/multibabel/

Oh and please post any particularly amusing results below :-)


Quote of the day : "Where is my pen of permanent decisions?"

Who'd have guessed that John Barrowman snogging James Marsters was my ultimate fantasy?

(probably best not to ask, and apologies for the TMI...)

EDIT : For those other voyeurs amongst us, if you're testing the new BBC iPlayer it's 10:21 in. (Just 4 days remaining, but you can download - only in IE though which is frankly rude!)

Quote of the day : "Excuse me, have you seen a blowfish driving a sports car?"

Was a lazy bint for most of Saturday actually. Well, not entirely true as did manage to get the house looking reasonably ship shape before calling in at Toys R Us to purchase Cranium on the way to wiserabbit and kardrath's house birthing.

Was an entertaining night, with games, alcohol and orb juggling (probably best not to ask). Then up in the morning to a yummy breakfast, followed by numerous trips to and from the old house with assorted boxes (hence me feeling much less lazy than the day before). Pause for lunch prepared by the ever-spiffing jenna_elise (we love you Mummy Jenna!!) and apathy seemed to set in, resulting in departure before we all fell asleep...

So back to work, which seems to be going well, especially since upon telling my supervisor I had an interview this morning (Tuesday) her reply was, "Oh we don't want to lose you!". I'm taking that as a good sign. Also a good sign is upon returning from a meeting with her boss she came down to see me and asked if I could add several things / reformat / change some of the sheets I'd been working on, I preceeded to open a mutitude of additional worksheets she hadn't seen yet encompassing almost everything she'd just asked for. And the fact that she can't stop saying "Thank You" and has complemented my Excel skills several times. Hmm...

Interview went well, was a bit of a surprise actually as I was only put forward for the job on Friday. I seemed to impress, but not sure I'm quite up to the job, ah we'll see if I get a second interview. I'd rather stay where I am TBH, but there are no cast iron guarantees of me being made permanent. Ho Hum I'm sure it'll all come out in the wash...

Is worky. Getting my email set up seems to be an impossibly challenging task, but aside from that, it's nice to be getting stuck in at last.

It's quite difficult moving from a company with about 80 employees over 2 sites where everyone knows everyone, to one employing 4500 in this site alone and lord knows how many worldwide. Everything is a bit big, scary and impersonal at the moment, but I'm sure I'll settle down.

Being able to walk from my desk to a cash machine and then to a large restaurant with lots of inexpensive, tasty choices without having to go outside is an interesting and enjoyable novelty.

By the way, on a safety point, take care when driving on cold mornings. This may sound obvious, but I discovered something quite scary yesterday. I got up, went to the car (which was to my relief not iced up despite the forecast) and left. Then about 800 yards on I decided the windscreen was a little dirty and used the washer. A bad error as, despite having almost 100% concentrate washer fluid in the tank, it froze instantly upon hitting the window. Fortunately I was somewhere I could easily pull over and defrost, unlike the poor sod who'd done it on the 70mph approach to a large roundabout slightly further along my route, and had been forced to stop in the outside lane with his hazards going!!

There, you have been warned, freak conditions but still worth considering. I certainly won't be making that mistake again.

Well Christmas was quiet but enjoyable. It was nice to spend some time with my brother and his girlfriend which is a rare event these days. Also great to finally get hold of Season 3 of Lost and the third part of Kristen Britain's "Green Rider" trilogy, which has been a long time coming.

Then on returning to Chester on Boxing Day, proceeded to spend the next 2 days watching the whole of said Lost boxset. Contrary to popular opinion that it went downhill, I really enjoyed it, but then I do tend to have interesting opinions... Did, however, have a panic moment and had to go and check that there definitely was going to be a Season 4 after seeing the ending, which could have been THE END and if so would have been >(shitness of ending of Xena + shitness of ending of Angel) x 15. So relief ensued.

Saturday held an amusing day of covering myself in paint at the new abode of kardrath and wiserabbit. Of course everyone else was painting the walls and/or attempting to fix the electrics. But it was fun, and conversation increasingly descended into smut, which seems to be a theme of our recent trips to Manchester... Anyway this weekend coming will be the housewarming and I'm pretty sure we will manage to lower the tone even further.

Then I scooted back to Chester, leaving shazrasha to enjoy the rest of the weekend and jumped into early bed. Sunday was up at a sensible hour and throw things into a bag in time to catch a 9:25 train to Birmingham, in order to spend 2 lovely days watching DVDs, eating curry and petting rats with kneeshooter. In fact the DVD list was quite long and varied, encompassing The Muppet Show, Unbreakable, Hero, Children of Men, Kung Fu Hustle, Brotherhood of the Wolf and probably some others that have slipped my memory. Must award myself culture points for 2 of the above 6 being subtitled.

Then on to areteus and sarahlascelles New Year bash which was most enjoyable, nice to see quite a few people - particularly trevor_davies and ephrael who I haven't seen since Artificer, meeting Trevor's lovely wife Lesley, and redhillian who I haven't met OOC except for when he checked my arm out at Serenity. Rather too much mead and port apparently preceded some interesting boob conversation and groping, which is probably the best behaved I've been whilst that drunk for quite some while (no really). This then culminated in me stating my New Year's resolution was "to have more sex" which seemed very popular and was taken on board by so many other people it seemed no others were required.

Monday was a really nice lazy day of chatting and being thoroughly entertained by David and Sarah's dog Eddie, who is ace. It was also very nice to see Chiara who popped in for a short visit with Morgan. Then home, and back to work today to discover I actually finally have computer access. Huzzah!!

So that pretty much concludes the looking back, and now to the forward. These are too general to really call resolutions, but they are goals of a kind :

( 10 things I hope to achieve this year )

So a bit rubbish lately really, having not posted for a while. Riftworld was fun, despite my first ever character death. For more info : (In true laziness style this is a copy and paste of my forum post, so if you've read that already please ignore)

( Riftworld )

In other news I've started at my new job, but haven't really had chance to get stuck in yet and barring miracles of the IT department actually pulling their bloody fingers out and sorting our new logins I will not be back in until after New Year. So more news to come once I have it...

This last weekend we had a marvelous foray to Leeds, getting to enjoy the company of midnightoak, lucian_albrecht, psion_x, lady_pyra, liz_ddraig, ranovala and pi_per for a medieval banquet which turned into a giggly, girly Di Canto reunion. For photos see here http://www.flickr.com/photos/choccoweeble/ and here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10663&id=618983485 .
If visiting Flickr you will also see the results of my latest bizarre project "Hat-tastic". (Probably best not to ask).
This was followed up by a lovely trip to Wendy House for some serious Rocking like Badgers, and also nice to run into maviscruet for a bop.

Other than that I have mainly been ill which is the reason I haven't updated lately. Annoying as I don't tend to be ill very often, but after over a week I'm still barking like a dog, grr...

So Chrimbo beckons and we are off to the parental-units, as my brother is home for Christmas for the first time in five years. So that should be fun and entertaining.

Then off to Birmingham for New Year which should be even more entertaining... comprising of, amongst other things, a bash at the residence of areteus and sarahlascelles. Woot!!


Quote of the day : "The floodgates have opened, the bag is completely devoid of cats"

Am still utterly knackered, so Riftworld squeeage and job news will have to wait. However I cannot delay declaring that I am never buying Irn Bru again!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfiqrkV_ZqI

How very dare they bastardise such a classic!!

If I'm still alive... (well I imagine I will be in actuality, just my Riftworld character that may well not last the weekend). So all references in, just hoping I will get the nod from the agency tomorrow.

Meanwhile, my kit is completed, including shazrasha having an amusing time Nikwaxing every item of clothing we own (It's going to be a wet one). I have even managed to locate my waterproof overalls that have been reassigned as underalls (with cammo over the top). So I should be dry and warm on the inside at least. Just the waterproof fleecelined hat to find...

TTT news - stuck to buggery on level 27.

Quote of the day : "It's a grinning beard with an idiot hanging off it!"

Well I still don't have a start date for my new job. Grr! According to the agency, pretty much everything is done we're just waiting for the CRB check to come back (darn multi-national financial services), so I'm hoping on Monday. Then perhaps I will be able to free myself of the intellectual-superiority inducing guilty pleasure that is Jeremy Kyle. Although will miss Who's Line is it Anyway and Top Gear on "Dave".

So 2 days to Riftworld (boing!!) and I have one piece of kit left to be finished by shazrasha. Damn my inability to use a sewing machine (call myself a LARPer). Although I am hoping to increase my LARP 733+n355 score by researching fancy hairdos and becoming a medieval stylista! (mostly inspired by legolas-ifying 4 people's hair and 1 beard at maviscruet's b'day bash on Saturday). So if any of you would like to put yourselves forward as guinea-pigs...

In TTT news I'm on level 25.


Quote of the day : "Hey! I paid a lot of money for that head..."

Well today, rather stupidly for someone of as an addiction-prone and obsessive personality as myself, I clicked on a Facebook link entitled "TIM TANG TEST - The Longest and Hardest Online Puzzle in the World!" And boy were they right! 200 levels of sheer hell - well i assume so, since I'm up to level 8 after 5 laborious hours. However, the sheer relief and smugness of each completed puzzle is enough to keep me going - especially since apparently 60% of people who start the test never make it past level 4. Go me! If you want to have a go www.timtang.com go on, you know you want to, frustration can be shockingly entertaining...


Quote of the day "...and lo the smith did speak down from the heavens and say "and my children in Schaffhausen shall have the power to bake, and to sew and to authentically pot wash""

http://www.flickr.com/photos/choccoweeble/sets/72157603331892119/

...as are pigeons.

That is all.

Damn you kneeshooter you meme-whore!!

Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	54.72% Will kill for XP	53.5%
Sensitive Roleplaying	49.37% "But what's my motivation for this scene?"	54.7%
GM Experience	80.43% "Um... You guys are in a 10'x10' room..."	69.3%
Systems Knowledge	91.53% Played in a couple of campaigns	90.4%
Livin' La Vida Dorka