Well if last week was the big send off at the begining of the quest, cheering crowds, waving maidens, full escourts of strapping young knights in shining armour escourting us out  of the kings castle, this week has been entering the Dark Forest, with all its nasty goblins, trolls and scary ghosts. Woo hoo.

Work has been trundling along with a few scares along the way, of the uber boss enquiring about a piece of work that is overdue and a colleague breaking down in tears in front of us before going on a leave of absense due to stress.  I’ve also had wield the mighty blade of assertiveness to remind management types that work they asked to be done as a prority has been done and needs signing off to make live.Grr, it grinds but we are getting there.

Health wise, while I’ve not come down with a cold as is traditional at this time of year, last Saturday’s boozing has truely knocked the wind out of my sails and a general air of gloom prevails.

Slowly pulling the house together, whcih is going to accelerate tonight and tommorrow which I’ve got off, because my Mum is coming to stay to look round houses in our neck of the woods, with the aim of moving down here! Eeck!!

Oh well I’ll just plow on, can’t be stuck in the Dark Forest forever.

In short quite a fun one for Newts, but missing Rach badly because she’s just done four nights in a row. Tonight is an official snuggle night with presents!

Just chilled out and watched films on Friday night and played abit online, which was all a bit predictable.

Saturday ran around doing jobs and tidying the house. Definitely getting into the swing of things. My mate Stuart came round in the evening. Much feasting and knightly chatter about Glorantha & the ‘tribe’ ensued. He assaulted my ears with Journey’s greatest hits (arrgghhh!! Punch the air!). In retailation I made him watch about 20mins of the worlds worst Fu Manchu film (some crap from the 30s, wonderfully detailed sets, beyond dire acting).

Sunday far too hungover for it to be funny. I’ve decided now I’m officially a light weight booze wise. Just call me “three pints Newport” and I’ll “yup, yup indeed sir”. At least I wasn’t sick, but it prevented me whizzing around. Spent most of the day sorting out my computer, so I’ve now got Windows Xp back up on one harddrive, and Ubuntu Linux running on a second HD.  Windows took 2 hours to install (basic install + downloading latest drivers). Ubuntu was done in 20mins (with further hour downloading in the back ground to install all the updates, multimedia, + shed load of other stuff). Its now my primary OS and I’m loving it!!!  I also got all the ideas that have been buzzing round my head for the four new scenarios I’m writing for Furnace, which was a relief as well as intense fun since the con is under a months time!!!

Gah i hate windows xp. Every 6 months or so something craps out and i have to do a reinstall which with all the software i use takes flipin hours. Definatly installing that second hard drive to run ubuntu (a lovely flavour of linux) for everyday use and keeping Windoz for gaming.

Thankfully I’ve got this old latitude that i’ve been using this morning to surf n post which has been keeping me entertained.

Until my 35th Birthday!!! Woohoo!!! Must think of presents and beer…especially beer.

Also just under a month to the mighty FURNACE (rpg con I’m helping run 28-29 Oct) so if you are a roleplayer in the north of England, or a southern wuss who isn’t afraid to come up norff, get yer skates on and register!!!

I’ll be combining my birthday celebrations with Furnace, so a moderatly tipsy to drooling drunk Newt is on the cards that weekend 😉

Eccky thump I woke up in a pit of despair this morning and after rebuilding the city of  Convia,  realised on the bus to work I’m on a GrailQuest.

HOW WIKED COOL IS THAT!!!!
{we now return you to your mundane reality)

Well just to let all you fans of our BBC (Big Black Cat) know, the little tramp has moved out.  He joined our household in Leeds as a stray that invited himself in four years or so ago. At the time unknown to us he was living with the cat people (14+ cats in a 3bed terraced house) up the road, and ours was a better deal. Now hes found himself a better home at a farm up the hill behind our house.

On one hand I am very sad because when he’s in cute mode he’s a very cuddly black velvet cat.

On the other I won’t miss the following wacky catty antics;

• Hair ball cat puke first thing in the morning, that I was forever stepping in my halfawake state.
• Some sort of injury/illness every 3-6 months usually coupled with  late night trips to the emergency vet. When we took him on we got him insured 2 days before his first bout of injury (torn ear followed by cancer in the leg)
• Being woken in the middle of the night by a sopping wet BBC clawing me to wake up (NEWT’S NEED THEIR SLEEP!!)
• Him ‘humping’ jumpers/towels/my trousers, despite being done!!!
• The sheer bunny carnage that accompanied late spring/early summer. This will be especially hard to explain to any future Newtlets

While I’m not happy at how its come to happen, basically them up the hill encouraged him in my view despite me asking them not to,  its for the best in the long term.

After a day back at work nearly slipped back into the same old negative patterns.

i.e. Blaming others for my mistakes or problems.

This time its not as obvious as ‘incompetent boss syndrome’, but more the traditional software/web developer whine of “why is noone supplying me with the correct information!!!” backed up with a side order of  “I’ll rant and rave and get my way!!”. Fortunately I took a deep breath (its good to breathe) regained my sense of humour and saw a much more fun solution to the problem. One that lets them provide the info I need without loss of face with their boss or colleagues, due to a stroppy Software Developer, and me get on with my precious programming and not admin tasks!

So remember kids, SMILE 😀

THE GAME IS ON!!!

I’ve not been posting much recently, mainly due to me feeling very introspective in a life changing sort of way. One I didn’t want to bore you lot with my philosphoical meandering about the the furture of el Newt, second I didn’t think it was any of your pigging business and finally most of it didn’t make much sense to even me!!

To cut a story short I reached a nice ‘Happiness plateau’ apres le Continuum. Alot of things that I’ve been aiming at for many years ; fun job, nice house, stable relationship, respect from my peers (well the ones that mater anyways),all came home to roost pretty much within a three month period. After the joyous celebration of it all, there was that horrible anticlimatic feeling of that I had achieved all I wanted to out of life.

Hence a prolonged period of introspection (yawn)

I’ve now pulled out of it,with a whole new set of goals and exciting things (well to me anyways) to do.

Expect big things in the months to come 🙂