My birthday was a pretty quiet affair this year. No-one could really afford to do much and I was still a bit ill with a cold I couldn’t shake. I met up with Claire and Tony at Zero Degrees (I know, not very original but they were meant to have a new menu!). When Nick and Rob arrived we headed for FOODS! It wasn’t until I got home I realised my weird pizza that was meant to have noodles on it was noodle-less. Hmmm that’s not fair! I think next time I’ll go back to the Goat’s Cheese one, I swear it’s the best pizza EVER!

C&T got me some more vinyl figures, I swear I need a display cabinet for all these cool little plastic beasts and N&R got me some chopsticks from their trip to Paris. They turned out to be the same kind I’d bought Claire a few years ago which wasn’t a problem for me as I’d very nearly not given Claire hers as I fell in love with their little faces Good timing too as I eat loads of stir fries and my chopsticks are getting old.

Paul & Chris joined us later at the Purtle and as if to prove how old I am, I went home early! I knew if I left before 22:00 I could get a train and then a lift home. After that and I’d have to pay out almost £30 for a taxi. Sod that! It was a good night spent discussing Venture Bros and films that make us cry. I do miss going out and having mad rants with people, it’s so unfair that no-one seems to be out any more. I can’t afford to go out on the off-chance I might bump into people now. Argh, I need a job! I need money! I want to have a social life again!

First off thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, presents, etc. I had a pretty good birthday this year. Dyed my hair stupidly bright orange and purple. Went to the Turtle, met up with some friends for drinks and then headed on over to ZeroDegrees for yummy pizzas. Checked out the new Rising landlords too. They’ve cleaned the place up a lot, but insist on having all the lights on full brightness all the time and they’ve taken the side shades off the strip light above the table football table. I spent most of the time blinded and my mates were all silhouettes.

Got most of my OU stuff through. I’ve managed to read all my set texts, in fact I only have the DVD of ‘Bhaji on the Beach‘ left to watch. Looked through my Assignment questions and got terrified! Looked at the student forums and saw almost everyone doing AA100 is equally terrified – felt much better! Got my Tutorial dates through as well, was a bit miffed at first as I’m meant to get to Oxford (for the record, bloody miles away) for 09:30 on a few Saturdays which is never gonna happen. Luckily an e-mail from my Tutor confirms these aren’t mandatory – phew! I’m hoping to OD on the on-line aids provided so I don’t miss out too much from not attending the day schools.

Went to listen to my iPod (5.5G 80Gb) on Saturday and it refused to play. It whirrs up but just sits at 00:00. Video seems to crash it completely. Reset it about 8 or 9 times with no joy. Did a full restore, still dead. Found quite a few others have had this happen since the latest firmware update (v1.3). Downgraded the firmware to v1.2.3, still no joy. Going to try putting RockBox on it and see if that works. It’s out of warranty and getting it fixed would cost as much as getting a new one. I don’t mind getting a new one so much, but I hate the thought of getting rid of this when everything except music/video works on it! Even if it’s just an expensive Mah Jongg player, it’s something!

Happy Birthday Paul!!

You’re almost as old as meeeeee :op