Seeing as my birthday was during the week, I decided to have my birthday celebrations at the weekend. When I first raised the idea with Rach we joked that it would end up with just me her and my brother George sat down the pub. As it happened the turn out was quite healthy with Ginger Matt coming up from Wales, Nice Andy driving over from Chester, deputy_dug (who put up the aforementioned rascals for the night), George, maviscruet, bitvacuous, Mike of my masters course, keefybabe and Rach, who all turned out for the meal at Hansas, and grannyannie and Rich who joined us at the pub.

I got an impressive amount of presents, which quite frankly blew me away. Thanks guys 🙂
Present list

“Treasure the love that you receive above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished.” Og Mandion b.1923 American author”

So I was 7 yesterday. A day despite the odds was fun.

Took the day off from decorating and anything else productive. The morning was spent blissfully playing computer games and updating my Lunar HeroQuest play by email. I had a lovely cooked breakfast of eggs, sausages and fried potatoes topped off with gallons of real coffee from our coffee machine (which I’m usually too lazy to use).

The afternoon was spent in town, buying myself presents. Got Quake 4, the latest Steven Saylor paper back “The Judgement of Caesar”, and two Cohen Brothers films, “The Big Lebowski” and “O’brother where art thou?”. It was pouring down with warm rain, and I felt great. Partially because I’ld been couped up in the house for 3 days solid, but also because by law I always feel great on my birthday.

Then I went to the Duck and Drake for a pint. Now my birthday is always special to me, because I always make time to reflect upon what has happened in the previous year and where I’m at with my life story. This is worth more to me than all the cards, presents and pints of beer down the pub with my mates (which is one of the reasons why I’m publically celebrating this weekend) This year’s magic moment was truly mind blowing. Me and the DnD have a history going back to my first days in Leeds, 15 years ago. As I sat there supping a pint of Old Mill, it hit me like a flash. Suddenly the room seemed brighter and the other customers on the edge, who up to this point had be loud noisy and drunk, faded into the background. Then all the people who’ve I’ve known in my time in Leeds started materialising at the bar. Starting with the 1st wave, people who I went to Uni with , going though the 2nd Wave , people who I met in my post student days and finally the third wave of people who I’ve met in the last five years. Some of them were people who I have decidedly mixed feelings about, especially in wave 1 & 2, which made me realise that if I knew what I know now and was a tad more patient it would have worked out better. Not perfectly, since these were people at a crisis point in their life and determined to take it out on the world around them, but with less drama an angst on my part. This was cool in itself, but it didn’t end there. This minor revelation lead to a much greater illumination, one which I can’t put into words or adequately explain. Perhaps the nearest I can get is that I suddenly felt very connected with everything in my life, and then very quickly in a snowballing effect everythinh beyond. It has brought me back to a warm place in my self, that has gradually becoming colder over the last year as I physical traveled to Manchester everyday, and solidly rooted me there.

Got home and crowbarred Rach off the computer to play Quake. Had a few quality beers, but otherwise a very nice quiet night in with the missus. Looking forward very muchly to the weekend 🙂

Not crossing the Rubicon yet, but the house is now up for sale.

Be nosy and have a gander on Houseweb

Or take the virtual tour on my website

Ok so I’m exaggerating just a touch here.

The weekend was fairly non-descript. Involved a great deal of cleaning, playing on the pc and sorting out the house website (which is going up later today). Also allot of watching of episodes of HBO/BBC historical drama series Rome. Very much a personal drama thing, the 13 or so episodes dealing with the Pompey/Caesar war and the end of the Roman Republic, seen through not only the eyes of the nobles but also the commoners. Very good and has had me gripped over the last couple of days. Each episode runs at about 50mins, it will be interesting how much gets cut for the BBC2 broadcasts which start on Nov 2 since it is very no holds barred towards the violence and Roman ‘pragmatic’ view of sex. If you want a preview of this visual treat go http://www.hbo.com/rome/

Yesterday was day one of decorating the bedroom. A bit bitter-sweet because we’ve discovered that the window wall has been slightly damp at one point and needs the backing paper rehanging. Not the straight forward “strip the covering paper, paint it magnolia” job I was optimistically hoping for. Rach being the pessimist on this one, was oh so slightly smug. When the in-laws are back from their hols, father in law is being called in to hang new backing wall paper while I act as his young apprentice. Silver lining though is that since I only have to do the wall paper striping and some sanding of wooden door frames (currently painted a shade of pink called “YUUUK!”), I’ll probably finish the job today. Which means I get the rest of the week off. Huzzah!

So today is day 2 of decorating, marlarky. Something I’m currently putting off by arsing around on the pc. As you do.

That time of year has come round really quickly again. Its been a busy year for me and Rach, with her finishing off her midwifery course and me working in Manchester. But sometimes you’ve just got to stop and enjoy the finer things in life.

So on Saturday 29th September I’m celebrating my 34th Birthday.

Scedule for the evening is as follows

6pm Hansas Resturant (http://www.hansasrestaurant.com/index2.htm) a cracking vegetarian Indian, well recommended even if veggy food isn’t normally your thing. As Ford Prefect once said to Arthur Dent “Eat this your tastebuds will love you for ever”
72/74 North Street Leeds. LS2 7PN is the address.

9pm Pubbage, meet up at the Templar’s Arms and take it from there.

If you are coming to the resturant please let me know by return, since I need to book the table.

I must be growing up….or at least going happily insane.

I’ve spent the good part of 7 hours cleaning the house. I won’t bore you with an exact list of cleaning tasks completed, but surfice to say a good half the job is done. Part 2 tomorrow. Then I take pictures of our clean and decluttered house, use them to finish off the house web page I am creating and on Tuesday Chateau le Newtport goes up for sale.

This was not the sort of weekend I would have happily engaged upon a year ago. Incredible things are happening in my head 😀

Not 100% cold free, but allot perkier. More together, flitering out the noise at work to focus on what is really important. On the homefront it the last push of decluttering and tidying before it we put it on the market.

So life is good. Lets celebrate!!!