Beam me up, Scottie

Hey all.

Not getting the chance to blog so much lately, what with the internerd nasties at work making life difficult and all that. I mean, are they trying to tell me that my productivity would be better without the sanity saving occasional opportunity to catch up with my dear internet friends.

And very rarely, with you lot.

[I know, quite a lot of work to get to such a lame gag, but you didn't pay any money for this show, think of it as open mike at your local and give me some sympathy claps. Ok, you guys suck...]

So what has been ahppening? Let me think, among other things, in the last few weeks I have:

1. been abused by an ex at a professional function, where she cleverly decided to have our 'discussion' outside, on the far side of the glass walls of the bar the do was on at. Way to go with the subtlety, makes me look like Smoothy McSubtle;
2. met a truly stunning, funny, clever, nice IRISH girl with fantastic taste in music (ie she has heard of some of the crap I love, even likes it) who sincerely wants to be my friend. Yay, I have all manner of friends just now, not so much with the stunning, funny, clever, nice IRISH girls I think are the hottest thing since Ug fell into the fire wearing his best Sabre Tooth Tiger pelt;
3. met with my architect several times, where I think the point is to come up with some great design ideas while seeing how many multiples of my budget we can hit; oh and
4. today I scored a gig for 'work' at Derby Day this weekend, where apparently I get my flights, accomm, meals and our marquee in the birdcage sorted for me.

Life aint so bad folks. What is news. And no, I don't ask that cos I can't be arsed to read your blogs, indeed some of you have even locked me out of your blogs, but I just need to invite some comment here. Lordy knows we needs the traffic. I gotta put kibbles in the doggies bowls. Ha mercy, gimme some traffic, just some spare traffic..

Ok, stopping that now. Sorry.

The motor show

Evenin all.

I went to the motor show on the weekend. A mate of mine and I have made it an annual event (somewhat fortunate as it is only on once a year), so we dutifully headed off.

One slight change is that he now has a wife and a 5 month old little girl. Good news is that his missus is more than happy to come along, no doubt partly humouring we boys, but also cos she doesn't mind checking out the motors. Anyhoo, we wander around, taking in the best of the Mercs, Bimmers, Hummers, Lambo's, TRD's, Veedubs, and of course, the ovlovs.

Last year at the motor show was the first time that I saw the C30, and now, as you all know, I got me one of those suckers. This year of course I wasn't in the market, but it is still fun to see what is coming out soon. Or even never, which seems to be the case with the 'concept' cars. Sadly this year there were not all that many interesting cars to check out, other than not-so-fascinating numbers like the latest Commodore and the Ford Mondeo. Wow.

Then (and yes, you were waiting for this) there are the pretty girls. Now we all know that these poor things are paid to stand around in outfits varying from rather fitted lycra bodysuits (such as the Bufori girls, whose g strings were almost as obvious as the pimply teenagers taking their photos) and cleavage showers like the Mitsubishi girls who seemed to have to spend most of their time with far-too-excited boys, while the self-same girls sported barely disguised disgust. Then you move along to the Audi girls dressed by Collette Dinnigan, who are usually awesomely gorgeous. Actually, they weren't so hot this year, although they weren't what we would call beaten viciously with the ugly stick, but their dresses were really nice.

So we found ourselves at the Volvo stand. I was looking over a tricked out S40, when one of the lovely Volvo ladies came over and asked if I had any questions about it. Now the Volvo girls were dressed quite casually, wearing nice shirts and jeans. Don't get me wrong, they looked mighty fine in them jeans (name the quote). She starts chatting with me, after I explained that I didn't have any questions, and that I have a Volvo C30. She then asks me about it, how I like it, I mention that I took it for a drive down the coast last weekend, turns out she spends a lot of time down at Gerroa...

About 5 or 7 minutes later (but for some reason clearly not 6) I am getting a little concerned about my friends and their slightly restive 5 month old. They have wandered off, but I felt a bit slack stranding them like that. Another minute or 2 later, I excuse myself to go and find my friends. I tell my new friend (let's call her Jess, cos that is her name) that it was lovely to meet her, and she reciprocates. By this time I am wondering whether it is cool to ask a woman who is probably hit on about 50 times a day for her number.

Did I mention she looked to be in her mid to late 20s, she had amazing hazel eyes, and was quite capable of having a conversation. Yep, I didn't ask. So my friends, immediately upon my catching them up, ask if I got her number. Nope. They were disgusted.

So let me ask you - this girl is paid to be nice, if not flirt, with silly buggers like me so we will buy the cars they are flogging - so despite the fact that she clearly continued to chat with me for some time after she knew I had just bought one of the cars she was flogging, is there any chance at all, and I am willing to consider something akin to a snowball's in Hades, of:

1. this very attractive girl doing anything other than her job, and
2. it being cool to ask her for her number?

And if not, would I not have received that look had I asked. You know the look, the one that is a combination of pity, horror, abject denial, and wondering what a barbarian in a loincloth possibly wants with a Volvo...

Sometimes, I just don't get it

Hey there folks. Welcome back, please remember to close the tent flap behind you so others can make out the screen.

I won't complain again about how crap it is that my workplace have cut access to both facebook AND blogger. oops. Ok, next time I won't complain - about how much that sucks.

Oookeydoookey. On to other things: sometimes I just don't put 2 and 2 together. And not just when I want 4 of something. Sometimes I just don't figure stuff out.

Case in point. Some of you may have noticed that there was a rather large release in the last couple of weeks - Halo 3. So far, it has sold in excess of $300 MILLION worth of games. For those of you who didn't know, welcome back from your month long ocean cruise to hell, I hope you tanned but didn't burn.

Now I have hidden it well, but I am a bit of a geek deep down, and I have an XBox 360. Yes, it is hooked into my surround sound system and my LCD TV. Yes, it sounds and looks freakin hawt. I also may have pre-ordered Halo 3, and been quite looking forward to its release. I justify this by the fact that it was actually $10 cheaper if you pre-ordered. Yep, that is my excuse and I am sticking to it.

So a few days out, I was getting rather keen. The store were running a midnight launch, however seeing as the launch was on a Tuesday, I am far too old and sensible to go and pick it up at midnight, cos I know full well that had I done that, there would have been no sleep, and then WJ would have been a rather unhappy camper for, oh lets say, about forever.

Finally the big day came, and I went at lunchtime and dutifully picked up my copy. I got home from work, and then went to trivia at the pub, as friends are more important even than Halo (ok, so I had to think long and hard about it - nothing wrong with that, I am human after all. Massively ripped barbarian yes, but also human). I came home from triv, went straight to the tv and loaded it up. turned on the X Box, the surround sound, and the theme music started pumping. Not as much as me though, I was psyched to kick some alien butt.

I picked up the controller. It was at this moment in time I remembered that I have a BUSTED THUMB! For the uninitiated, you use two thumbs on the controller, one to control which way you face and one to control movement (wake up! this is interesting and important!). In other words, you can't play Halo with one thumb. A few words come to mind, most of them involving between 3 and 5 letters (not inclusive), but others such as 'gutted', 'idiot' and 'if I cut it off will it grow back faster than this bone will knit?' also featured.

I still haven't been able to play. Er, much.

Why don't I get it?