Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Taking over the world

There's something about sunny days that makes you forget all about your responsibilities and you feel like you just want to spend the day outdoors.

Today we played Risk. It's a funny game, a game where you have to shed any sense of moral decency and friendship in order to pursue the (very satisfying) goal of taking over the world and destroying everyone else in the process. This kind of board game really tests the fabric of friendships. Your boy (who's supposed to have your back) attacks your weak iceland from greenland and you lose control of europe. And your cool. Gets quite hectic at times, with a lot of backstabbing and broken promises, but once the board is put away things generally tend to go back to normal. Until the next time.

After a couple of big battles, i finally gained control of north america. Coupled with a few card sets, i was getting stronger by each passing turn. Pretty much set for world domination. But then the whole thing was interrupted by the beginning of the barbequing process.

Damn it.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Late night, rough day random

The remote control for the digital box is fucked. Not only is it consuming batteries like no tommorow, but the power button is also messed. So i still have to manually get up off my derriere and walk over to the television. I thought the whole point was to eliminate this very tiring and annoying process? I should order a new one, but i know they'll charge me something crazy like 200 euros for it. Goddamn NTL.

Have to pay more money to the damn phone/internet/monopoly-on-everything company. Passed the allowed download limit, which is costing me 3c per megabyte. That's what happens when i rip off hollywood by downloading movies for free. I get ripped off by some corporation. It's a vicious cycle.

"siiiic, that's what i like to hear =)" ..

I'm in trouble. Deep trouble. Leave it up to me.. i wonder what that meant? I can't take another sint as a clay pigeon. Goddamn target practice. Very ironic that i'm saying this just as i reload my own rifle and line up the sights.

Very, very confused.

Friday, May 21, 2004

Pizza

Ahh, the staple diet of the college student. Not only does it taste good, but it's also so damn convenient. The local pizza delivery place has a "buy one, get one free" offer we've been abusing for the past while. It makes the whole thing so much cheaper when you've got 6 or 7 guys chipping in for the price of one large pizza and getting two in return. Really, a good feed minus the damaging blow to the bank balance.

Today was the day we overused the coupon. This coupon has been alive for the last 4 months, as the drivers never ask for it. But we had to push our luck. When we called for two seperate deliveries using the same coupon, they wouldn't give us the second batch of pizza unless we handed it over. And that easily, it was gone.

I've got so many pizza boxes around me, it's scary. It doesn't help matters that i rarely clean the apartment.. but seriously.. stacks and stacks. There's a good pile in the kitchen, but there's no more space in there so there're a couple of stacks just sitting in the middle of the living room.

Maybe I should build a little fort.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Where's the beef?

Just on my way down to the grocery store to get some pasta, passed this guy with a stick of french bread in one hand. Initially, i thought he might be taking it home to make himself a sandwich.. or maybe some garlic bread. But no, he broke it open right there and started eating it plain. Thing is, that's not the first time i've seen that happen. On a number of occasions i've seen office workers having lunch outside around this area eating plain french bread, unaccompanied by anything. Not even cheese.

I don't get it. How could you eat just plain bread? Butter i'd understand, meat or cheese would be optimum. But plain? It makes no sense to me.

Finally got some new lights to replace the busted ones in the hallway. Looks so much nicer now that i've got more light in there. It was kind of annoying having to use the living room light to navigate around. At least now i can see what shoes i'm putting on. Although i do believe that little period without light has markedly improved my sense of touch. Maybe i'll blindfold myself next week to improve my hearing?

hmm.. limitless..

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Beep, Beep, Beep.

2:43am.

Should really wake up and do something tommorow. Something productive. Something that would make me feel better about my week. So far it hasn't been progressing too well, it's just been day after day of doing nothing. This blog has added to my list of possible things to do, but then again there's only so much i can post up. The weather was killer today, not a single trace of cloud. Quite warm too, would've been a perfect day to go golfing. Hmmm.. that's right, i was supposed to do that today. I wonder what distracted me from that plan.

My (very disused) burglar alarm recently got reset as i was playing around with some circuit breakers. It went off for a solid 45 minutes (during which i lost all sense of hearing in both ears), but then it quit and just remained armed.. now all it does is beep whenever the front door is opened. It was kind of nice at first, like an electronic welcome of sorts. Beep, Beep Beep. I felt loved by the apartment.
Now it's purely annoying. Every single time i open the door it startles me.

I don't understand the purpose of it being armed, but not going off at all. Being the lazy person that i am, the harmless periodic beeping doesn't warrant the hassle of fixing the problem. It'll just stay that way until i move out, i guess.

Beep, Beep, Beep. I swear i'm gonna break that thing someday.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Sun in the summer

It completely throws me off. I don't think i'll ever adjust to the added hours of daylight we get in summer time. It's 7pm right now and it looks like it's around 4.
It really messes up my daily schedule.. that sense of having more of the day left is completely shot once you glance at the time. In half an hour i'd have to go out and get some groceries to make some dinner and then eat it while the sun is still shining. I don't like eating dinner before the sun sets, it leaves me with an empty feeling in my stomach.

And when it does get dark at around 10.30, I find myself feeling hungry all over again even though i just had a monster meal.

Summer has got to be the best season to start up a food retail business.

Screw cooking, i'll just order some pizza.

Monday, May 17, 2004

American clothes sizes

I love ebay. Whatever you can think of you could probably buy, just try it. Just to test out ebay's randomness, i searched for a "garlic crusher" and found two listings. Maybe someday i'll be lazy enough to order a garlic crusher off the internet instead of going down the road to the local shop.
That would take some foresight though, since the garlic crusher would probably be delivered in 3 to 4 days if i'm lucky. That means i'll have to know 3 days in advance that i'm going to be indulging in some culinary experimenting that might require the crushing of a few cloves of garlic. If that was the case, wouldn't it be easier if i picked up the garlic crusher from the store as i'm buying the food? UNLESS i'll be ordering the groceries online.. then maybe i could synchronize it so that crusher would arrive at the same time as the delivery man from Tesco. Highly doubtful, since i never engage myself in any cooking that requires anything more than simple boiling of pasta or rice. So this whole dicussion was pointless.

I love ebay. i recently ordered an item of clothing from the american ebay website, and it was listed as XL. That is, more or less, the size of clothes that i usually buy from the UK. Unfortunately, American XL is around twice the UK size.
I'm glad McDonald's have decided to eliminate their supersize scheme in the States.

The three second rule

Today was a beautiful day. The sun was out, the weather was warm and all the ladies were showing a bit of skin. So we decided to have a barbeque.
Being that i possess the dreaded Y chromosome, i take it as my responsibility to man the grill as often as possible, and today was no exception. So we got some chicken, we got some burgers.. and we started the cooking process. Which brings us to the current topic: the three second rule.

For the uninitiated, the three second rule is when you drop food on the floor, and if you pick it up within three seconds.. it's still good to eat.
If it lasts longer, however, you probably should either throw it out.. or dust it really hard and then eat it, hoping that nothing too harmful got stuck to it.
Some people think the 3 second rule is wrong or gross. My honest opinion is that the floor should never be a reason why good food goes to waste. I was in india once a long time ago and i actually saw an old lady use the floor as a glorified plate. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but then again i was 9. The simple fact is, harmful germs just DO NOT have the mobility to catch on to food within 3 seconds, hence the beauty of the time window given to us by this wonderful rule.

Unless the floor is really wet or something. I think that gives the germs extra mobility, so the rule is null and void.

Sunday, May 16, 2004

The washing machine is broke.

Well, not exactly broken. But it might as well be.
It takes me a full day to do one load, since it gets stuck every step of the way for at least an hour before the dial clicks into the next step of the cycle. Kind of annoying, since it's hard to predict when it'll get stuck, and i don't like the idea of sitting in front of the washing machine all day acting as a safety net.
It might be a reason why the electricity bill has sky rocketed in recent months. I shouldn't complain, a friend of mine had a washing machine that loaded up on water with no clothes inside, and as soon as he opened the little door it all came flooding out. Then again, he washes his sneakers in there sometimes, so he had it coming. Sneakers in a spin cycle at 4000 rpm? I wouldn't wanna be his washing machine.

Best thing that ever happened to me throughout my washing career.. i found an unopened can of beer next to the laundry detergent in the cupboard underneath the sink. Wonder how that got there?
Happy day.

Can sitting on the couch for too long actually hurt?

I've been lazy for the last couple of days. Who am I kidding.. weeks. I haven't done much in terms of exercise and have been comfortable enough sitting on the couch, eating pizza, watching tv and playing xbox. But i'm starting to notice a little strain in my back and an unsettling rigidness in my neck. Whenever i lean forward to get close to the tv (usually when i'm engrossed in a battle of epic proportions on the grid iron of Madden 2004) i get this strange sensation of pain searing through my back all the way up to my neck. It's as though my body is screaming at me to get off my ass and do something with my life.
My couch is comfortable, I'll tell you that. But is it TOO comfortable?
Has it become so comfortable that the effect has done a complete 180 and is now the exact opposite? To be honest, i'm loving my slob lifestyle, and i find it quite annoying that excess comfort is becoming a painful detterant to sitting around all day doing nothing.
It's quite ironic in fact, and i'm hating it.