Misc

Christmas:

Generally good, spent the day between my parents as usual and skyped my cousin Pauline who is not doing all that well, but it was good to see and talk to her. Spent boxing day and some time between Christmas and NYE with special person which was great.

There was also the Christmas party at Rob and Caroline's on the 27th which was good, but the snow up there led to me nearly getting the car stuck when it came time to leave and I bottomed the front bumper out. The night was great fun and ended up with a fun 80's quiz competition between boys and girls which got quite competitive. Also lots of excellent food, conversation and petting of ancient, demanding cats.

Because of everything going on with the house and things, I didn't get presents for people, instead I got everyone Amazon vouchers, which seems to have gone down well.

NYE

Was at Rob and Em's which was really good as usual. Very good to see Jane and Wes as well, and even Xander who was hyped up on sugar. The night was really great, and we played Cards Against Humanity, which is a horrible game but very funny.

Archery

Only went twice since the last update. The first time we went, someone had locked up the gym so we were forced to shoot outside, but it was so windy it was a real danger to our arrows. Em broke three of her new ones because of the way they were hitting the target. My compound was incredibly difficult to hold steady in the wind and the arrows were all going right. After I missed at one point, I gave up. Fortunately the arrow was easily found.

On the 28th it was the Frostbite shoot, which happens every year and takes place regardless of weather. Fortunately it was a bright clear day but there was a good couple of inches of frozen show. It was a very cold long day though, even with the catered lunch in the middle. There was also some awards given out - and somewhat to my amazement I got three! The club record for shooting a Short Warwick with a compount (probably because I'm the only one to do it), a 3rd class for compound, and a Black WAA Indoor Classification. Surprising but good. And then Em won the Frostbite shoot and I came 6th! Not bad!

Misc

A few other things. The house has been torn apart to have the bathroom done meaning that I'm now unable to wash at home, generally scavenging showers elsewhere, usually when I'm with special person or at my Dad's house.

Yesterday I finally finished the main Skyrim questline. There's not much else to do now apart from the civil war stuff, but I think I'll do that anyway. It's been a hell of an experience...what an incredible game! I've logged 84 hours on it and reached level 34 - and that's nothing compared to what some people have done. I think for the £7 I paid for it, I got an exceptional amount of entertainment! Not sure what to play next, but I think it'll be the Batman Arkham games on the PC.

I've been tweaking the basses a bit by putting new strings on them and playing with the setup. I've also ordered a new project bass - a Squire Precision Bass TB, which is a reissue of the 70's Telecaster bass with a big fat humbucker at the neck. Not quite sure yet what I'll do with it but I've got some ideas. I'm also considering putting the Bass VI up for sale - it's a fun instrument but not really for me.

The car has been a bit troublesome as the headlights are playing up a bit. They have a levelling system which is a bit dodgy in both lights. The left light was missing the cover so water had got in. It constantly tries to keep going upward and the right one is mostly OK but sometimes just points downward. I also replaced many of the bulbs since the indicator bulbs had gone white and the dipped headlight bulbs were useless.

Otherwise the car is going OK. Now that fuel is cheaper I've been running it on Shell V-power which makes the engine run smoother and nicer, especially on the A55. Now that I've been doing more travelling on the A55 I keep considering changing the C3 for something more appropriate as it's not at it's best at motorways speeds. But I can't think what to get.

Still pleased with the gaming PC I got off Robert. It's stll running nicely and now has had an 8th hard drive installed, a 1tb one to back up the contents of all the others. I just need to get some more RAM for it, but that will have to wait until next payday. I've listed the Asus G73 it replaced on Ebay at last, hopefully it should still be worth something.

I'm feeling really fat and unhealthy at the moment...been eating a lot of shit and doing barely any exercise, so I need to get that in hand again.

Still...it's a whole new year, hopefully this one will be good. I feel quite optimistic for a change, and certainly less lonely, which is good. We'll see how it goes.