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B1 d t k- s- u-- f- i- o+ x e- l+ c

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Electric Guitars

Leccy guitars are cool. They just are. Jon and I were wondering around town last week, and he was after some new strings and to sell his bass, so of course we went into the local guitar shop and I had a browse. I've never learned to play one (although I have grade 6 at piano) but they do hold a fascination and a power that's hard to resist.

Happy New (Chinese) Year

Happy Chinese new year to anyone reading this who respects it (slightly late - it was Thursday), in particular my mate Jon. We went out last night to watch The Last Samurai to celebrate. Ok, so we just went to see it really. Not to celebrate or anything. And I had a cheap curry on Wednesday as preparation for it.... (my regular pub was doing a deal - £3 for a curry, rice and naan - not bad).

Anyone got a pool table I can borrow?

My regular (pub) is having a pool tournament Tuesday week (27th), and if you have a pool table at home I can come and practice on I'd be very grateful if I could borrow it for a day between now and then...

Not really that serious a request and there's not a snowball's chance in hell I can hope to win the prize of my own cue, but should be fun to play - if I can win more than one or two games. Otherwise I'll just sit back and watch Adam (my mate) play, cos he's a decent player.

Sporty car + tipsy girls = pull?

Does it? I've never yet tried it, 'cos I don't want to attract the sort of girl who'd go out with me just cos I have a fast car. But in the absence of any other happenings, and probably being close to when I have to sell my Scooby, a last ditch attempt to make use of it may be called for and just say sod-it. I'll have to get Adam along and pull up outside a club or something around chucking-out time. Or just be in there and happen to mention I'm driving home and could offer lifts, and oh yes, I've got a Subaru Impreza Turbo (although the ladies are half as likely to say "what's that then"!). It's not quite the same as having a BMW, Porsche, or Ferrari etc. although very nearly as quick.

Should sort the tyres out first (might need new rears) so there's no worries over the car's handling especially if it's wet.

Valentines Day

Realised last night that it's coming up for Valentine's Day again in only a month or so - will be my 2nd consecutive one as a single bloke in ages. I'm trying to remember whether I went out or stayed in last year, will definitely be out this year - it's a Saturday so I'd most likely be out anyway. I hope Adam'll be coming out too. It'll probably just be an extra reason to feel lonely. If I get a date then or before, I'll eat my hat (well, ok, first I'd get hold of a hat made of bread or cheese or something).

Fillings

Well, the dentists, went ok apart from one thing; I've got a couple of small fillings that need to be done so I'm booked back in early February. But while in the chair being checked up and having the usual teeth clean, I got chatting to his (new?) assistant, a rather attractive girl so that helped ease the distress.

Dentist appointment

I'm booked in tomorrow, let's hope my teeth pass with flying colours (or with "pearly white", anyway). Some people really hate the dentist and will do almost anything to avoid going; I don't mind 'cos going regularly concentrates the mind as the appointment gets closer so you make sure you make extra effort to clean your teeth well and often. This also means that if there's any problems, rather than not knowing until they get bad and very expensive to fix and causing you grief and drilling; they are picked up more regularly. Just a basic check-up as usual (and maybe a clean) isn't horrendously expensive.

Under-chin shaving

Do I suffer worse than other blokes from sensitive under-chin skin? It makes shaving there into an annoyance (a sore, red, annoyance), so a lot of the time I just give it a miss as long as it doesn't look really bad - especially if I'm wearing a shirt and tie (as I do for work) which helps hide that area.

I use creams after shaving to try and keep it from getting too dry, but they aren't magic. It's just that area - shaving the face doesn't cause any problems at all.

Tube prices

Just heard from a mate that the price for a single one-way journey on the tube is going up to £2. That's atrocious. You could almost buy a pint for that. I think I'd rather sit in a pub somewhere sipping a nice cold pint than pay £2 for a trip on the tube.

SuSe

Hurrah! Finally got a nice user-friendly Linux running on my main desktop PC. That would be Suse v8.2. The bad news is that I'm not using it the majority of the time yet, cos I haven't sorted out my broadband dial-up through anything else than Win98 on this box. Other things come first; at least I have a firewall on my Windows box.

Suse is one I've never dabbled with before. I've had Slackware (about 3 different versions over the years), Redhat, and Mandrake (most recently). Slackware's fine, but it doesn't really help you set it up beyond the basics. I needed to do some extra installs/work to get my Speedtouch USB modem running anyway, including copying the hardware over from my Windows drive partition.

I like it so far, very easy menus during the install and nicely configurable. Time will tell whether it's my preferred choice.

Life in the solar system

Planetary life on Mars/Europa; particularly after reading the full Odyssey 2001/2010/2061 series (or whatever the years are), it's something that's always fascinated me - those deep deep oceans on Europa in particular. Europa, btw, is a decent sized moon of Jupiter. So decently sized, in fact, that it's almost Earth-sized (which is a mere 6400Km radius at the equator).

Has life ever developed there - whether the most basic singular cell (or whatever equivalent) form, or even sea creatures the likes of which might remind us of early Earth life? I'm very interested to see what, if anything, the probes we've sent out return when they get there. Is it feasible to dig down through the ice (it may meters thick, several Km thick, or several hundred/thousand Km thick - we don't really know for sure).

Someone please tell me when we know.

That "new duvet" feeling

Remember the Crunchie ad's - the "That Friday Feeling" ones? Well, getting a new duvet cover is proving to have the same effect. It's just really nice to be lying under and on top of a new sheet and duvet cover combo, even though the duvet itself, and for that matter the pillows, are pretty old. Just that really fresh sheets feeling that still want to stay the same shape, plus new design that I chose myself (rather than use borrowed covers). Makes you want to stay in bed longer in the mornings, unfortunately; also makes it easier to get to bed/sleep at night though.

What is it about nice duvet's that just makes you feel so good when you're in bed? A human sandwiched in good quality cotton, cool and fresh against bare skin. Nothing quite like it. Well, not without involving more bare skin of whichever sex turns you on, anyway... ;-)

Online dating

Has anyone actually tried or succeeded at any of the online dating searches or even just used them to go to events with lots of single MOTOS? I'd like to hear your stories/opinions. Been seriously considering it recently; I already put up a profile on one of the UK sites (not saying which to avoid embarassment). Stems from me sucking at having the courage to do anything other than chat to girls (if I can even get that far) as friends. There are some I'm happy just to get to know as friends anyway. But at least if you meet someone through a specific dating forum or event, you know you're both there to try and meet people as potential dates; that should (??) make the whole thing a lot easier 'cos you don't have to try and move it that direction. Speed dating sounds a very tempting idea. Although I don't always (I'm sure) come across as a great first impression. Or just being invited to parties/hanging with friends and getting to meet lots more people - as I've mentioned in here before.

Mini-Glossary

MOTOS

Members of the Opposite Sex

Bedazzled

Saw Bedazzled (the newer Liz Hurley-as-devil version) again - well, hadn't seen it from the start. I know it's not that great, and the original is probably better (Michael Caine as the devil I think?); but Liz does look nice in most of her outfits.

Shoulda watched more movies over the festive season - just kinda didn't care enough to set them to record, or had seen them at the cinema/on DVD and wasn't motivated enough to sort out tape space for them. Which reminds me, I really need to sort out my tape archiving database so I know what the hell I have on what tape. Another thing to add to my to-do list...

New Year

Had a good new year. Spent (or lost - not sure...) way too much money, so probably going to be staying in for a few of my usual regular (but less important) nights out for a week or two. Been playing Quake 3 again - so much nicer on broad band but I'm out of practice. Been listening to internet radio stations - mainly a selection of the chilled out ones listed at Winamp.com, late at night (ie. 1am onwards).

Been a weird few days actually; what with recovering from new year (woke up at quarter to 11, didn't really move much till 2pm or so), and trying to do a few household things/room tidying.