My So Called Life…

And we’re in. The move went surprisingly well, all considered, hopefully we’ll get our deposit on the old place back soon and all will be well.

We even managed to host Christmas dinner for the folks, which was an achievement in itself, so all in all a pretty good December.

The boy is growing fast and got lots of nice presents, so he’s well chuffed. I can’t say I am after the annoying noisy toy his nanny got him though. Grrr. Mostly he’s just happy running around playing and giggling and exploring the new house.

He seems to have a lot of fun sat in his car seat under the stairs at the moment, although I’m not sure it gives out quite the right message. He’s never even heard of the Potter boy.

We’ve got under a week left at our cozy little flat before we move on to our own proper house. It’s done us well and I think we’ll all leave with some good memories of the old place.

Bring on the weekend!

It’s that time of year again so we’re moving again. This time we’re relocating to the ass end of Heavitree from where we are at the moment in St. David’s.

We’ve got a propper house this time instead of a flat, which is nice, although it looks like they’re trying to rent out where we are at the moment for the same price as we’re going to be paying for a full house. Ha!

I am now the proud owner of a new(ish) HTC Hero which I bought off eBay for a fair few quid. Was a bit concerned at first but all arrived OK and works like a charm.

The original plan was to end my contract and get the new shiny with a new contract, but that wouldn’t be until at least august next year, but as I’ve only had 3 phones in the last 10 years I thought it was about time. And besides I’m not tied in to an expensive contract for the next 18 months. Job’s a good’en.

You may have noticed the retro Milky Way advert has reappeared on our screens, but I can’t be the only one to notice they’ve changed one line in the last verse.

It used to go:

He’s looking for a treat,
that’s fluffy and light,
because he knows it won’t spoilt his a-pe-tite…

This last line is now mysteriously missing, replaced with something along the lines of “want’s a snack that tastes just right”. I can only think that they’re not allowed to say that a Milky Way won’t spoil your appetite any more, bloody political correctness gone mad.

They should have just added a voice-over at the end, mortgage style: “Warning, eating Milky Ways between meals may affect your appetite.” Far more acceptable.

Well, we moved back in to the flat shortly after my last post. Even got the rent back for the month which came in handy, that’s for sure.

The last month has been completely manic however. I was looking forward to a weekend off next week, but it turns out I’m actually working the Sunday, so I’ll have to get as much relaxing in as I can then.

Having been told we’d be without a home for 4 days you might be surprised to hear that we’re now approaching a whole month without a roof over our heads (Ok, so maybe I’m being a little melodramatic, but it’s starting to take the Michael).

Apparently the flat was plastered on Friday, which in this heat might mean they painted it on Monday and should be habitable by now, but having heard a resounding sod all from the agency this week your guess is as good as ours.

At least a months rent back will make my wallet a little happier, and we’ll finally be able to afford that new mattress, but it would be nice to be kept in the loop of what’s happening.

Well, Toni has actually spoken to the letting agency about the flat now, they were supposed to be letting us know the state of play lest Friday, considering they initially said we’d be back in by the weekend just gone…

They still don’t know when we’ll be back in the flat again, when I stuck my head in the door on Saturday the carpet was still up and we were missing a wall, so I doubt we’ll be back in any time soon.

To top it all off, the new Burnout DLC is out on Thursday and the PS3 is back at the flat still. Nooooo!

Yet again I’ve been neglecting the blog in favour of Twitter which is much easier to update on the move.

Well we’re getting ready to go to Richard and Natasha’s wedding do, Toni’s tarting herself up all pretty like whilst Roger and I watch a documentary on WW2. All very civilised.

I’ve been a fan of the Unreal Tournament series since it first came out (bring back the razor-jacks!!) and have played each incarnation with renewed joy and enthusiasm, but when the UT3 was released I felt it was somewhat lacking… Don’t get me wrong, I thought it looked amazing, but having played the rest of the series it seemed to add a little too much. It all seemed very busy and cluttered and far removed form the clean crisp lines of UT 2003/4. One way to look at it is that more clutter is more realistic, cracked and collapsing cement has a much more visceral look to it and it works.

Anyway, last weekend Steam had a free weekend to help announce the new titan patch and update to version 2.0. So I set steam to download the game and enjoy my weekend, waiting for the download to finish.

Around about 6pm on Sunday the download completed, and after letting it install and getting all the settings as I wanted them I played about 3 matches before the free weekend ended (at 8pm!) and I was turfed out of the game. Grrr. It’s only 8 quid now though, and as I already have it pre-loaded it might be worth a punt…

**Update**

Looks like Valve/Epic realised the problem and if you’ve still got your pre-loaded data this weekend coming will be free play as well!