mrben

You'll all be pleased to know that I'm still a single man. My date on Thursday night wasn't quite up to scratch in a number of areas (notably the superficial and the intellectual), but the evening itself was quite good. Any restaurant that lets you draw on their paper tablecloths makes for a great date location. I may have to use this idea again...

Yesterday I went on a photo scav hunt, and it was such a mistake. Now I want to buy more lenses. Now I'm going to stop wasting my money on computer equipment and spend it all on camera equipment.

I recently spoke to my sister about various things, but mostly the trouble with our parents and their general unsociable natures. (Avid readers will recall that when I was between homes a coupla years ago I noted that they never went out and never had anyone over. This has been confirmed to be the norm.) I assumed that I was the only one of us not on the receiving end of their phone calls. Turns out Claire is in the same boat. I've been surveying people and I haven't come across anyone who speaks to their parents less than me. Can you do better/worse?

So it's with this sociability in mind that Claire has invited me up to spend Christmas with her in Castlemaine. This is great news! I won't be spending Christmas day with four old people! My parents, grandmother and uncle will have to entertain themselves without me!

I'm sure there's some kind of lesson in this for them. :)

I spent the weekend playing card games and UpWords at Teh Pat. We sat on the porch (sans swinging chair) and ate toasted "rustic" bread rolls with magnificent toppings of savoury delight. How good was the weather? We were out there in t-shirts, yo! T-shirts! I'm feeling so ebonic right now and I don't know why. When that wasn't happening I was watching Community, Futurama and Wilfred. I give this weekend high marks.

Before that it'd been a busy week. Random beers with a friend and Tuesday followed by a magnificent midnight screenings of HP7.2 (heartily recommended) that killed me for Wednesday. Went on a date on Thursday night that 1) like all my first dates went for about five hours (I have a problem) and 2) I was totally going to tell you about katydidinoz but you weren't around. So... this totally makes us even for me not being around for your Melbourne trip, right?

I knew it wouldn't be a good idea to watch a sci-fi horror film before going to bed. But I had a plan! After Pandorum finished I'd watch an episode of Community for light-hearted fun... but the halloween episode is a lot more scary than I expected. Sporadic sleep and unsettling sex dreams ahoy!

Y'know, I thought that AnnaSophia Robb would grow up to look like Susanna Kallur.
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I think I'm going to call this the Kristen Stewart Decline - or KSD for short - after observing her fall (although obviously not to the same degree) following Panic Room.

I'm sure there's a converse effect with other people and I'd dearly love to coin that acronym too.

I had grand plans to wear new cufflinks to a dinner I went to on Saturday night... however! *raises finger* Despite my expedited delivery they didn't arrive until yesterday. I'd ordered cufflinks with a spirit level! I'd ordered cufflinks with dice on them! I'd ordered cufflinks with 8Gb of RAM on them! But noooooo. Apparently that's not the sort of thing that I should be wearing. I had to be all sensible and borrow my uncle's cufflinks instead and my geek cred dropped three notches.

Thus, I need more excuses to dress up. Let's do it!

I took delivery of a new tiny compy on Monday. It's a barebones kit for use as an HTPC. It requires you to install RAM and a HDD. Last night, after walking through the freezing cold wind and rain to buy said hardware, I began the setup. It was then that I discovered that I don't actually own a USB keyboard, just a USB mouse. It's very hard to install an operating system without a keyboard, y'know. Very hard... but not impossible! By cutting and pasting individual letters using the mouse from some text files I found, I laboriously claimed victory.

I gave up when I saw what I'd need to do to install XBMC.

I do not know what kinda cold I've got misself, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere quickly. I've got the nasal decongestants happening and followed them up with some antihistamines for good measure. Sometimes I wonder why we have so many orifices.

I was inspired to clean the house yesterday... but only because I couldn't find the remote for the TV. You'd probably not be surprised at how little of the TV works without it. It turned up between the cushions of the couch, the place I always tell everyone else to look first. I am an idiot, but at least the place is presentable now.

I'm all for long weekends in which nothing more stressful than driving to friends' places is done. I've been fed soup, Mexican, meatballs and banana bread (anyone would think they were trying to fatten me up for slaughter), played board games and watched movies. I bought a suit. I'm six episodes into season 1 of Community... and my sleeping patterns are still crappy. But what weekend is perfect?

Cue wordynerd and her perfect weekend. :)