Project Lose An Olsen Twin Week 1

So, I’ve managed one whole week of better eating and conscientious exercise. And I’m already seeing the benefits! What a great start! It’s all part of the Philip DeFranco inspired project ‘Lose An Olsen Twin’. In other words, lose 65lbs. This may seem like a lofty goal, but I always like to aim high. My starting weight for this is 200lbs (14.5 stones), whereas for my height, my ideal weight is somewhere in the region of 155lbs (11 stones). This is something I really want, so I’m going to go for it!

Now to clarify, this isn’t some kind of fad diet, where I’m only allowed to eat watermelon, orange peel and cabbage leaves steamed under a full moon. Rather, I’m simply counting my calories while reducing my intake of negative dietary components. You see, the crux of losing weight is consuming less calories than you expend. You do that and your body begins burning your stores of fat, thus you lose weight. Additionally, eating slow burning carbohydrates (long sugar chains) gives you energy that keeps you going and doesn’t get immediately stored as fat. Conversely, avoiding simple sugars (short sugar chains) means you don’t have to worry about doing exercise straight after eating a mouthful. The same goes for swapping out saturated fats (hard to break down, thus more readily stored as fat deposits) for unsaturated fats (easily broken down into fat acids, thus not stored as fatty deposits) helps. I’m still getting to eat what I like, including the occasional burger, or even kebab. I’m just eating in moderation.

As for exercise, I have a simple routine. I do a period of cardiovascular exercise, good for getting up heart rate, followed by reps, one rep for every minute of cardio. This mix of endurance and intense exercise covers all bases and is more enjoyable than just running or just lifting weights.

Now for my progress. When I started out a week ago, I was doing 10 minutes of cardio and 10 reps. Within a week, I’m up to 30 minutes of continuous cardio and 30 reps, in my case, 30 sit ups. I’m hoping to reach 60/60 by the end of the month and maintain that for the long run, adding some additional routines or varying my reps to including push ups, once I’ve got my upper body strength up a bit more. The fact that I’m doing 30 sit ups a night daily is amazing me, I never thought I’d be able to do that.

In real terms, I’ve not been able to monitor my weight due a lack of bathroom scales. Instead I’m monitoring my progress in three ways. Firstly, as I mentioned above, I’m tracking the improvement in my stamina and endurance, which is very encouraging. I’m also starting to enjoy that sense of being worn out afterwards, which is very satisfying.

Secondly I’m observing my appearance, which is the primary motivation. I want to look healthier, and already it seems to be working. I’ve lost a bit of weight from my face and arms and my ‘love handles’ are beginning to reduce.

Finally, I’m using my wardrobe to see how well I’m doing. As I’m sure a lot of people do, I have a few articles of clothing that range from ‘snug’ to just damn well don’t fit. My goal is to not have to buy new clothes, just fit into the stuff I haven’t worn in a while. And it’s working already. A shirt I bought about a year ago that got to tight for me to comfortably wear around Christmas is already fitting better. I have a scale of various tops that will let me gauge my progress in real, practical terms and also serve as excellent motivation.

I plan on keeping a photographic record (which won’t be posted on here you’ll be glad to know) so I can make better comparisons of my progress. This is a long term thing for me, so I’m not expecting to hit my ideal weight any time soon. Wish me luck!

What? He’s Back? (I honestly didn’t care)

Hello all 3 people that read this. As you’ve probably not been caring about, I haven’t posted a blog entry in fucking ages! This is because…..

dum dum dum

…I really couldn’t be arsed. It was mainly due to the fact I started doing these 365 Da(v)y(d)s, monthly summaries of last year. It seemed like such a great idea at first and I was enjoying myself. But I have this horrible mentality that the moment I’m ‘forced’ to do something, I immediately hate doing it with a passion. That’s the main reason why I don’t play games like Resident Evil. The whole mentality of playing between save points makes me feel ‘forced’ to play, so I just stop playing. Today I was going to get a book out of the library, but it was on 7 day loan only. Now I knew I could read not only this book, but the book I’m currently reading, easily within the week, but being forced to would mean I’d absolutely hate it. Well back to the blog. So I was feeling very forced to complete each entry, but I also felt that it would be a terrible sin to publish any other blog entries before I completed my 2009 summary, ‘breaking’ the chronological recap of my year. So my blog became covered in digital dust as I tried to recapture the desire to finish my ‘09 recap. In the mean time, half finished blogs on other subjects built up in my drafts column, until today. Today I decided that I just needed to blog what I felt like. I’ve been dying to blog some of my dungeons and dragons exploits because I know at least 1 person who reads this (I’m talking about you Will!) will find that interesting. So sorry if you were remotely interested in my coverage of last year, that’s old news!

So what will be happening in the blogs to come? Well first off, I’m gonna talk more about personal stuff. I don’t really have anywhere to vent that’s as good as here. Secondly, there’ll be more dnd stuff. I’m gonna try my hand at summarising the adventures of my friends party in literary form, along with talking about my design process. And finally, whatever else comes to mind. For example, I’ve started a more conscientious weight loss ‘program’ called ‘Project Lose an Olsen Twin’. Inspired by my favourite Youtuber, Phillip DeFranco, the goal is to lose 65lbs (a little over 4 stone or 30kg) It’s a hell of a big target, but will put me in a much healthier weight bracket (borderline obese/overweight to ideal)
My game plan is the following: walk any distance 30 mins or less on foot, unless raining (I don’t want to get ill), 20 sit ups a night, increasing by 5 sit ups a week minimum, eat less than 1800 calories a day. Fingers crossed this should help me shed some pounds. I’m currently at about 200lb (14.5 stone/90kg), but don’t have any scales atm to keep track of my progress.

I think the next post will be my dnd post, so laters.

Scott Pilgrim in cubeecraft form. Ramona Flowers and Knives Chau to follow

365 Da(v)y(d)s - July

This month was the month of being made unemployed, two weddings, a funeral and a theme park, so a bit uppity downy for me (literally). It got off to a mixed start with my last day of work. I haven’t mentioned my work up until now really, so let me explain. I worked, up until this month, in a bureau de change in WH Smiths in Solihul. It was hardly a sensible business choice in opening it there, seeing as opposite/adjacent the store was 4 other bureau de changes. Needless to say, business was sloooooooooow, to the point where I’d take a book from the book department upstairs and read it in one shift ¬¬. So yeah, after working there for little over a year, they decided to close the branch.
It wasn’t all bad though. I got some nice redundancy pay and also would be getting student loan for my final year, so I wouldn’t need to work, although an income would be beneficial.

Following that final weekend of paid employment, me and Viv made our way south, to the sleep realm of Devon, home of farmers and hobbits! It was my dads wedding, third times the charm, and me and Viv had been invited.

We first made our way to Bicester, where my brother would give us a lift down to Devon. Viv enjoys big sofa + big TV whenever we are down.

The journey down was a bit hecktic, as on the way, my brother had a prang with another car. It looked a lot worse than it was and my bro was a bit shook up. It didn’t help that the husband of the driver in the other car kept getting up in Chris’ face, which was really intimidating for him.

We finally made it down to my dads. As is a tradition there, we made a fire and blew stuff up!

I’m not kidding. Whenever I go down to my dads, we always start a little fire in the garden burner and drop a can of something into it to watch it explode. I think this time it was a tin of kidney beans, which sprayed burning beans all over his (and his neighbours) garden with one helluva bang!

For all the isolation, the view was quite nice

When it came to the actual ceremony, all in all, it was quite a nice little affair. The whole thing was held at a post restaurant by the side of a river, and I have to say, I scrubbed up okay. My brother was best man/photographer, two responsibilities I was glad not to burdened with. I had to laugh at my dads reaction when trying to get round explaining that he’d asked Chris to be his best man, I interrupted and explained that a) I expected him too, as Chris spends more time down with my him than I do and b) I HATE speeches. I’ve never given one, but I don’t EVER plan to.

Chris gets his photography on while my dad posses.

Seeing as we were down for a few days, my dad paid for ‘us kids’ (me and Viv included) to visit Crealy Park. Think of it as a kiddy theme park combined with a petting zoo. It was a bit immature, but still fun. Viv had a lot of fun in the petting zoo part, especially around the rabbits, as this facial expression will testify:

Following our little day trip, me and Viv had one good nights sleep before the journey back to brum, for the following day, we would be travelling into London for a CHINESE WEDDING!

A CHINESE WEDDING is worthy of ALL CAPS for one simple reason; the food! We were only going to the banquet, which is simply the best part.
I can’t remember all the courses we had, but there was easily more than six! I had roast piglet, fish, crabs, prawns, beef, sticky rice, *drools* and it was all so good. I think the piglet was my favourite, prooving the following graph true

Viv and I had a lot fun in London and at the banquet, but we were both glad to get back and relax a bit from travelling. Well, my relaxation would be short lived. A little over a week later, my gran passed away. She had been suffering from cancer and to be perfectly honest, it was a blessing for the suffering to be over. I’m not really the kind of person that dwells on or is bothered by death. My approach to mourning is that you shouldn’t. Celebrate the persons life instead. So, back down to Devon, this time for much less cheerful reasons than my previous visit.

Just to prove that this truly was my month of epic travellings, the day after getting back up from Devon, me and Viv were heading down south again, this time to Guildford for Viv’s resits. I was going because it would be a chance to hang out with some cool peoples and offer Viv moral support (not that she’d need it. Viv is most awesome with exams) Little did I know what awaited me!

You see, Will and Hannah were planning and driving to Thorpe Park! And I had some BOGOF vouchers courtesy of my mum! So me and Viv got to go to Thorpe Park with Will, Hannah and Annie, for free! And it was AMAZING! I’ve been to Alton Towers before, but there was something better about Thorpe Park. It had similar rides to Alton Towers, but they were bigger, fasted and higher. Here’s a little summary of the rides we went on:

Samurai – A three on three spoked ride with chairs on each arm and the arms swivelled. Not very long or fast, but quite dizzy making.

Colossus – A long, standard type rollercoaster featuring the most number of loops of any coaster in the UK. This was definitely lot of fun and a good description would be Quiddich as a ride.

Nemesis Inferno – Much like Nemesis famous at Alton Towers, a feet loose coaster, but faster and higher, and long I think.

X:/No Way Out – A backwards facing rollercoaster, in the dark. This one wasn’t too fast, but very disorientating.

Vortex – 6 sets of inward facing seats on an arm that swings through an almost 360 degree arc, this was the first ride we went on, and a bloody good start to the day.

Stealth – This was an incredible thrill of a ride. Basically, you accelerate STUPIDLY fast (0-80mph in 2 seconds), then travel straight up (over 200 feet). After that, you pass over the outside of the arc at the top and plummet downwards. I had to close my eyes for this one, only to open them at the top and all I saw was sky, until the car when further round the arc and I saw the whole park!

SAW – This was a ride based on the popular film series and was probably the best ride there. It featured stops, starts, loops and vertical drops. At one point it looks like you’re going to drop straight into some blades, but the car dips just underneath them. A great ride.

All in all, the 5 of us had an amazing time. Annie didn’t like Stealth so much, actually turning green in the queue as we waited to get on, but she loved the other rides.
All things considered, I think this was a really great month, even with my Gran dying. But in a way, that was a good thing too, because it meant she didn’t had to suffer the cancer any more, so there’s always a silver lining.

Number of Updates: 28

First Update: “Davyd last weekend of work is fast approaching (Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:46:06 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd is tired (Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:43:13 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd is bittorrent an example of quantum mechanics? The speed seems to drop whenever I observe it! (Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:56:29 GMT)”

365 Da(v)y(d)s - June

So, here we are, or were more accurately, in June, the start of summer. And it was a true start to summer as Viv and I were both completely done with university for the year. Now was time to chillax and enjoy ourselves. And we got off to a great start, with one of the first days out a trip to the cinema with my Viv. We saw Terminator Salvation which was better than Terminator 3 (not saying much), but not as good as Terminator 2 (again, not really saying much).

On Thursday something happened that I have been dreaming of for years! I saw Blue October live for the first time ever! It was easily one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. It was a very intimate affair with a great set list and Justin built up a brilliant rapport with the crowd. It was also another first, it was Viv’s first live music gig and she really enjoyed it!
I would’ve brought back some pictures from this amazing experience, but I decided not to take my phone (which doubles as my camera) so I had no way to take pictures. This is normal for me as I generally don’t like to risk my phone getting damaged, lost or stolen for the sake of taking some pictures.

The next day, me and Viv made an epic trip to the ice cream paradise that is Morelli’s! Let me make this is as clear as possible. They make the Best Ice Cream In The UK (if not the world!). I will demonstrate with pictures:

I’ll explain what you’re looking at. That is vanilla ice cream. That is chocolate ice cream. That is REAL HAZELNUT ice cream. That is a cup of chocolate hazelnut sauce, with real hazelnuts SERVED IN A CHOCOLATE CUP! And it’s topped with real whipped cream.

Here’s another picture that really gets the point across. This is honestly the only ice cream I would pay £10 for and feel I’ve got a massive bargain. If you ever come to Birmingham, UK, you have to go to the bullring, visit Selfridges, and buy something from Morelli’s in the food court. It’ll be the best ice cream experience ever!

Little note of interest, Saturday the 6th of June this year gone was the 25th birthday of Tetris! Now you have the Tetris theme in your head!

Exactly one week into the year, I got my second semester grades and was really pleased to know I got a high 2.1. For those of you not familiar with the university grading system, it is a bit weird. The highest grade is a 1st, followed by a 2.1, then a 2.2 (known as a Desmond) and finally a 3rd. A 2.1 is effectively a B, which is quite good IMHO.

There weren’t many highlights until the middle of the month, when me and Viv travelled south to the barren wasteland that is Bicester (it isn’t that bad I guess) to visit for my brothers birthday.

OMG Train

We were only there for the weekend, and went to what Bicester passes as an ‘all you can eat’'. Now let me explain the ‘’ marks. You see, in Birmingham, all you can eat means fuck loads of food that you approach with the singular intent of creating a pile as big as possible on the biggest plate you can find. You then proceed to insert said food into your mouth, regardless of your actual level of hunger.
Now in Bicester they do things a little differently. They have a menu of say 20 items (a third of the Birmingham AYCE menu). You then proceed to order up to 3 items each or something like that. Once you’ve ordered, they cook the food and bring it to you, which you then eat in a civilized fashion. Once finished, you may order another serving of different items, should you be so inclined.
Needless to say, me and Viv, who are seasoned AYCE veterans found this all rather quant and amusing. The food was of a better quality than what you usually get in a brum restaurant, but the selection was where it was lacking.
Oh god, now I want Big Wok (the best chinese AYCE in brum, IMHO)
It was quite nice visiting my brother and meeting his girlfriend for the first time. All in all, it was a nice weekend and a bit of break from things.

Viv looked STUNNING for the meal btw!

Apart from a few ‘witty’' tweets and status updates (Animals have rights: Animals have the right to be TASTY), there wasn’t much eventful happenings until me and Viv went to the cinema for the second time that month to see Transformers 2.

Now I want to say something. Transformers has never been the most interlectual of concepts. I can imagine the design meeting back in the day going something like this:

Guy 1 “Well, what do boys like?”
Guy 2 “Hmmm, cars and planes and guns”
Guy 1 “True, but what else do they like”
Guy 2 “Giant robots?”
Guy 1 “So how can we get these two together? Giant robots racing cars?”
Guy 2 “How about giant robots that turn into cars?”
Guy 1 “Brilliant, start designing the toys”

So when it comes to watch a film about giant robots, well nothing goes better than giant explosions and giant boobs, I mean Megan Fox! I really enjoyed the more global setting and the bigger, badder robots. Overall, it was an amazing film and I really have enjoyed both films.

Following this cinematic experience, I didn’t really do much else during the month. I did though pick up two brilliant photos.

Giant metal Freddy Mercury will ROCK YOUR WORLD

Legs 1, a strip joint for amputee fetishist

So overall, a brilliant and busy month and as such, less status updates. It’s always a good sign when you’re doing too much about to actually comment on it. Here are there statistics.

Number of Updates: 18, that’s almost half as much as previous months.

First Update: “Davyd is looking forward to cinema 2moro and then BLUE OCTOBER ON THURSDAY!!! WOOOOOOO! (Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:47:33 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd can't wait to get the N97 (aka the iPhone killer) (Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:42:10 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd If you ever think "everyone is shit but me" than you're a double bacon shit with fries, Mr Shit-Face (Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:59:27 GMT)” A tough pick again this month, but this brilliant Yatzee quote wins hands down.

365 Da(v)y(d)s – May

There are two key themes that dominated this month – pokemon and raging at people (and things). I will begin with the evil that is pokemon!

It all started with some left over birthday money and a certain offer on Game.co.uk. Basically they were offering pokemon diamond AND pokemon pearl together for £35. Considering their individual RRP’s were £25 each, that seemed like a good deal. I’d have one myself and give one game to Viv and we could play together
And it started out innocently enough, but soon I was racking up some scary playtime hours. Now this wasn’t a new addiction for me. Several years ago, I got the poke-virus BAD. We’re talking the first six games, all 251 pokemon (including mew), the entire first series of pokemon cards. I had it baaaaad. And now I was relapsing.
But I wasn’t the only one, Viv was also getting into it in a big way, which made me glad. She was more attached to her pokemon than me which was cute. She wasn’t trying to min/max her ‘mons like me, she was keeping the ones she thought were cute or she had grown attached to. It was such a great approach and was pleasantly refreshing to see.

I had another computer crash this month, I can’t even remember how many I’ve had with this system. Luckily when this happened, I had a second computer ready to receive my hard drive so I could back up all my music, videos and documents, so all was not lost. It was a tiresome experience reinstalling everything but it did mean a nice, smooth running computer afterwards. This really made me rage, but not as much as the following:

• People smoking in public. These people are douche bags, and doubly so for those who think they’re so fucking special that they can smoke where it’s illegal to do so, such metro stops, on busses etc.
• Homeless people who have dogs. I’m sorry but where the fuck do they get these animals? Does one come free with their first stack of big issues? “Hi, here’s 20 copies of Big Issue and your sympathy dog….” I think it’s so cruel that these animals have to be subjected to the same conditions as the homeless that ‘own’ them. Sometimes I want to give a can of dog food to the dog and nothing to the owners.
• Knives – I cut my hand pretty badly by trying to be too manly. I was cutting electrical tape, with a box cutter, one handed, while on the phone. It all when badly and I had to bandage my hand with a pair of boxers! Needless to say I now have a sweet scar!

It was around the middle of the month that my two flat mates/close friends; Paul and Aaron moved out. You see, one of my flat mates is frequently a prick. He gets very aggressive, acts like he owns the whole house and barely lets anyone use the living room. This got too much for Paul and Aaron, so they found a nice place really nearby to move into with a third mutual friend. Now this would be a sad situation in anyone's books, but for me it was even more so. You see, apart from Paul and Aaron (henceforth PA), I have no friends in Birmingham. In fact, I’d go to say I have no friends, ie people I share a common interest or interests with and have a mutual exchange of respect with, in the entire west midlands, lol. ‘But why is this a big deal? You said they were moving nearby?” Well it all comes down to the mutual friend they’d be living with, or more accurately, his family. You see, he happens to be the brother of a girl I went out with for a not-inconsequential amount of time, the end of which was quite messy, due to her actions. Now this was many years ago and I couldn’t give a damn about what he or his sister thinks, I’d go hang with PA anyway. The problem would be that if they were handing out awards for maturity and consideration, I doubt this girl would even be entered into the nominations ¬¬ Basically I was banned from even coming over to say hi if she was there, something I could not, and still cannot, comprehend, seeing as it was so long in the past, why would it be a deal? Ah, never mind, I was sure that me and PA would still get to hang out (and if you keep reading the blog, you’ll find out that we did. See, happy ending!)

Towards the end of the month, I headed down to Guildford to help my Vivvy get back from uni. And this is were the fun pictures come in.
You see, there is something important you should ALWAYS remember: Never fall asleep in the same room as people who played Buckaroo as a kid!

Ooh, good score so far

Lets Get Serious

Ooooooh, how high CAN we go?

Not any higher apparently. Lol

Seeing as this was the end of semester (and the year) for Viv, everyone was getting excited and there was a lot of drinking. Well, a lot more drinking. And some of it was even at parties.

The end of my time at Guildford was truly epic. We went out onto the beautiful area by the lake, started drinking, and kept drinking ALMOST ALL NIGHT! There was even an all night music performance!

The next day, we made the slightly hung over journey back to Wolverhampton. And so would begin me and Viv’s first full summer as a couple ^_^

Number of Updates: 32 (I seem to averaging this number)

First Update: “Davyd is loving pokemon diamond. takes me back! (Fri, 01 May 2009 15:15:19 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd has his Vivvy back in brum! Shame I have to work today tho (Sun, 31 May 2009 06:54:25 GMT)”

Favourite Update: Okay, straight up disclaimer, I don’t have 1 single favourite for this month, so I’m having 3! Ha!

1. “Davyd In america everybody wants to be the best, and if they can't be the best, then they make some fucking shit up to be the best at (wiki Cupstacking) (Sun, 03 May 2009 17:09:39 GMT)”
2. “Davyd It should be legal to squirt smokers in the face with super soakers (Sat, 09 May 2009 07:26:56 GMT)”
3. “Davyd rose mcgowen, as a one legged stripper, with a machine gun for a leg......guess the film (Wed, 20 May 2009 20:46:20 GMT)”

And that is the month of the May! Woooo

365 Da(v)y(d)s – April

April, otherwise known as Davetober (at least to me) is the month where everyone cool commemorates my monumental birth! Combined with the fact Viv and I celebrate our anniversary on the third of this month, it is pretty much a given that this fact would make April ‘09 a busy and eventful month. Well let us see, shall we?

I started the month playing what most would say is my favourite game; Rock Band 2! I do love this game, simply for it’s replay value. The constant dlc means that game constantly grows and expands. I love waiting for Friday to come around to find out if a song I love is going to be available on my favourite game.

For mine and Viv’s anniversary, we decided to have a nice, hand cooked three course meal. It was a most delicious success! For our starter, we had Thai salmon fish cakes with rocket salad. This started my love of Thai red curry paste as a wonder-ingredient.
For our main course, we had rare rump steak with breaded mushrooms and cheesy-mash potato. The steak wasn’t the best cut seeing as we got a slightly incompetent butcher, but as a meal, it was amazing.
For the desert, we had pecan brownies a la mode! (i.e. with ice cream) I love the brownie recipe that I used for this because it produces beautifully gooey brownies with crunchy outsides! We made a fair bit of brownies, but they were all gone by the end of the night!

One of the amazing random things that happened when we all went into Wolverhampton. There were FUCKING OWLS!

Fluffy white barn owl! Viv wanted to take him home!

Three days later, I heard news that almost literally blew my mind! Blue October were playing in Birmingham Carling Academy later in the year. I was so excited that I even started hyperventilating a little and came running down the stairs!
The following day I was up stupidly early, took the metro into Birmingham from Wolverhampton and bought myself two tickets for me and Viv to see my favourite band on the 4th of June.

As well as purchasing tickets for Blue October, we decided to do some window (and possibly real) shopping. We had a lot of fun as these photo’s are testament to.

Viv found a hat that, in her own words ‘makes me look like a pink jellyfish”

 
Oh yea, I’m so cool

Viv freaking loves giant tea cup!

Am I doing it right?

We even found a place that does Japanese style photo stickers! And in the top right is our Blue October Tickets!

While out and about, we visited Urban Outfitters, a store that in my opinion, tries far too hard to be hip and alternative, and just seems fake. Their worst flaw is that everything is OVERpriced! I’ve seen headphones that are £30 in Dixons being sold for £50 and £10 necklaces for £20. But this is what made me rage the most. I was almost incandescent with tangible WTF-ery

 

In case you can’t quite make it out, that price tag says £50! That’s £50 for a watch that looks exactly like the kind you can get out of £1 toy vending machines in supermarkets. I spent about 5 minutes looking at trying to decipher what made it worth £50, but I failed. Sure, it had an alarm and told the time and pretty much the standard features found on watches 1/10 the price, but nothing else. It didn’t set the time automatically by radio. It didn’t have a pulse monitor or gps for sport tracking. It didn’t have Bluetooth (Bluetooth always makes things better). I just couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t even stylish. I mean, if it WAS in fashion to wear watches like this, why by fake overpriced ones? Why not buy the real naff watch for a literal fraction? Davyd’s brain hurts!
Overpriced watches aside, me and Viv had an awesome time in town

There was more rock band playing as the month progressed towards my birthday, and as it did, I grew more and more ambivalent towards the idea of celebrating. This was partly due to the fact I found no significance in my 23rd birthday and partly due to the fact I felt the actual fact it was my birthday was being sidelined. I know this sounds selfish but everyone was like “oh, it’ll be a great chance for you to do this” or “I can pick this up and do this”. I am aware of how selfish this sounds, but I didn’t just want people to sit around and praise me, I wanted people simply to come together with only the intention of having a good time, not thinking about running errands and the like.

In the end though, things worked out well for everyone I think. I had a quiet day which was what I was more hoping for to be honest. I believe everyone is allowed to throw one birthday wobbly every once in a while, and that was mine.
I spent my birthday with Viv at her place and there was cake. Not just any cake, but Chinese cream and fruit cake, the best cake in the world IMHO. For lunch we had fish and chips, with me having a really nice fishcake! It was a nice day in the end.

 
Nom Nom Nom Nom cake, it even has my name in on it!

I want it now!

I need no spoon!

 

 

 

 

I even shared some!

Three days later, me, Viv, Vince and Wessie decided we’d try something amazing and possibly suicidal. We would attempt the get the Rock Band 2 achievement ‘Bladder of Steel’.
For those of you who haven’t heard of this achievement, I shall explain for you. Rock Band 2 features something called the ‘Endless Set list’. While not actually endless, it does involve playing every song that comes on the Rock Band 2 disc. That is 84 songs ranging in difficulty from “playable on expert with your eyes close” to “on easy but is still raping my fingers”. There is an achievement for completing this, depending on the difficulty at which you do it; Silver Artist for Medium, Gold Artist for Hard and Platinum Artist for Expert. Bladder of Steel takes this and turns it up to eleven! You must do the endless set list, on an difficulty thankfully, but you cannot take any breaks at all! No pausing, no pressing the Xbox guide button, no disconnecting instruments, no having instruments run out of battery, no failing. If you do anything that interrupts the continuous set list, you fail the achievement. That’s over 6 consecutive hours of fake plastic rocking out. This would be epic. This would be hard! And so began the first attempt!

And we failed a song! In the first 20! OMG. I threw a big tweeted wobbly, but thanks due to the awesomeness of Viv and her family, we attempted again.

And failed again. This time a guide button got accidentally pressed, meaning we wouldn’t get the achievement. But seeing as a couple of us were hyped on energy drinks, we went for a third try.

And failed for a third time, due to me striking the drum kit guide button with a drumstick. It was at this point, realising we wouldn’t finished until midnight if we restarted here, that maybe we should leave it for another time. It was probably for the best as there’s a good chance it would’ve been very bad for our health! Lol!

Later that day, I came to a funny revelation. My dad had actually forgotten my birthday. Now I’m going to cut him some slack with this because my Gran was very ill with cancer at the time, and in all fairness, it took me a week to realise that he had forgotten, so we’ll call that even.

The next day, Viv went home and I was left all lonely with work to do. So I did what anyone would do, I sat down with some ice cream and Jack Daniels and got to work. This proved to be a surprisingly productive combination and within a week and half I had all my work done and submitted! There was some Rock Band 2, computer crashes, printer smudges and even a bobble head of Viv in the intervening time, but it all got done.

Overall I think April was really good looking back on it. I do regret being so immature with regards to my birthday, but we’ll forget about that. Shall we look at some statistics?

Number of Updates: 33 (That’s more than 1 a day)

First Update: “Davyd is playing ROCK BAND 2 (Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:02:58 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd HAS HANDED IN EVERY BIT OF WORK! (Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:39:50 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd "chinese people don't dunk their babies in water unless they're making soup out of them!" - Viv's responce to being asked if she's been baptised (Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:30:12 GMT)”
That is an actual quote and how could it NOT be my favourite for the month? There were some close contenders but this one wins out!