A long week...

Not updated this week much. It's been a week of ups and quite significant downs to be honest.

Work was meh, until Friday, when the news came that the guy I've been covering for over the last couple of years has finally had his contract terminated. It has been on the cards for some time but to be told it had actually happened was still something of a shock, and then I had to log onto the servers and disabled his access. I feel so bad for him, it's not his fault of any of it happened and it must be such a shitty situation to be in. Also on Friday we had a guy in to help with the backup system, which I always find a bit intimidating but fortunately is nice and tolerates my what must be to him rather stupid questions.

Thursday was the Rhuddlan badminton club Christmas meal, which was really good. Put off for some time because of the St Asaph floods, we had it at the recently reopened Trefnant pub. It was typical pub food but pretty good all round. Really good.

Last night went to Rob and Em's to hang out with them and Andy. We sat down and watched some TB and a movie called Looper, which was a really interesting concept, and pretty good. I think it could have been shorter in the middle, but otherwise it was pretty enjoyable.

Today was good. In the morning I posted another Atari ST off, this time an STE that only went for £10 - hardly worth it! I'm still surprised at how little interest they had. In the afternoon we all went round to Steve's to watch the rugby, consume vast amounts of food, engage in fatuous banter and watch people try to act in the Kinect film karaoke game. We also found the time to play with little Binx the cat, who is a tiny dainty thing who knows she is is a cute as she is. It was fun to load up a cat game on my phone and watch her try to get her head around a virtual mouse walking around the screen. Later on we got to gawp in awe at Rob P's new vehicle, a full size Range Rover Vogue 3.0TD. It's a few years old but in nice condition. It's the kind of thing I'd secretly love to be able to drive but I'd feel guilty about how much fuel it would drink, even if I could afford to run one.

I had a slight relapse in money over the last week or so. My plan to get a decent guitar and bass went hugely awry, due to lethargy at work and an itchy mouse finger. Unfortunately this led to a bit of reckless spending and the result that I've ended up with a few extra that I didn't need or want, and which I now need to get rid of. I started to feel really down at my lapse but decided that what's done is done and instead of beating myself up about it, come up with a plan to rectify it.

Fortunately I have found a nice bass to complement the Ibanez RG. It's an Ibanez BTB07LTD, which is a limited edition 'Wild X' model of a BTB200. It's pretty much a perfectly ordinary bass with dark green military paint job and a big X daubed on the front. There's a chip on the edge of the body and there's red paint underneath, so I reckon they had a bunch of BTB series basses lying around and made the special edition with a new paint job to get rid. It's got a pretty hefty body and a longer 35" scale neck than I'm used to, but I rather like it. It did sound rather dull when I got it but a new set of strings really boosted the sound.