The last week has been a pretty good one if I were to look back at it. A week ago today of course was Love Day, or if you want to be all traditional about it, 'Valentine's Day'. Rather than waste money on forced gestures of affection, Stacey and I decided to put the money we would have spent on an assortment of chocolates (which we still have a treasure trove full of from Christmas), and cuddly toys towards something more useful and productive. So the weekend before last, we went shopping for home stuff. We bought tea-towels, cooking stuff, plates, and bowls. All in a bid to be somewhere near ready to move on out when the time comes along. We both felt a little strange about it at first, and it's safe to say that we were out of our depths, and our element (we had to exit the store, and re-enter with a trolley, as we're only used to picking up the odd snack). Now that we've taken the initial dive and first swim into the river or adulthood, it doesn't seem so bad, and has opened the flood gate for us to continue to do so knowing a little more about what we need and what we're doing in general. The shopping trip wasn't all serious business though, as in the Entertainment section of the supermarket in question, I found two remnants of my childhood, much to my boyish delight. For the bargain price of £4 each, they had complete boxsets of Duck Tales (woo-hoo) and Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers. I stood, jaw to the ground, holding both sets, one in each hand. But, Stacey sensing money wasting ahead, and remembering that we were trying to be mature adult-type people on this excursion made her voice heard.
'You can only have one,' she said sternly. 'so make up your mind and put one back.'
It was the toughest decision of my new adult life, but after much internal deliberation, I poor old Chip 'n' Dale back on the shelf and gave Hughie, Dewie, and Louie a new home. I thought I could introduce my old Disney friends to my 8 year old sister, but she doesn't care past the awesome theme tune. She won't watch it and instead opts to view the lesser kids TV of today.
Despite forgetting about presents for what I feel is actually a rather unromantic day (isn't romance about spontaneity?), we still went out for a nice meal at a local Indian restaurant, The Pepper Lounge. The great selling points to this establishment are that the price is very reasonable for the decent quality food on offer, while they don't hold a license to serve alcohol meaning that unfortunately, you have to bring your own... RESULT!
The rest of my last week was spent at work seemingly... I was treated to three night shifts in a row. Now, I'm not one to moan about working nights, it comes with the territory and I've been working them for two and half years now, so just get on with it, but three in a row is a bit of a bitch, and completely ruins my sleep pattern. Thankfully these night shifts weren't without incident, meaning that they actually gave me some form of entertainment, and an anecdote or two to mention at dinner parties for a while. On the first of these nights, a night that had been extremely dead to say the least, at about 9:30pm, when Tom and I were on the verge of suicide just to see what that felt like - as it had to be better than that sheer boredom - the police turned up. We were little taken aback, and the two officers asked what the problem was. we looked around the store, which aside from Tom, me, and the two policemen was completely devoid of life, and replied that everything was fine. Turns out that our panic button had been set off somehow and had called the police there. The officers had to inspect the store anyways to make sure that all was as it seemed, as for all they knew, we could have been saying it was fine, while someone with a gun hid down one of the aisles, or even worse, in case we were the robbers, and had stolen the shirts of the real employees and were posing as them while they were tied up out back. It was all very exciting and gave us something to talk about for the rest of the evening.
The following two nights were spent with Jason, and between us, we formed a formidable target hitting machine. Basically, if you were a customer walking into that store on one of those nights, you bloody well were going to be leaving only when you'd taken us up on one of our fantastic offers, or super deals. But, with the post-Christmas cooldown still in effect, it was rather quiet, allowing us to get stuff done, while making our own fun to pass the time.
I had Saturday off this weekend just gone, and rather than let something as pleasant and rare as a full Saturday go to waste, Stacey and I went up to the O2 arena to see The King's Speech on the giant cinema screens that they have there. I could definitely see what all the hype was about this film. The story - a true one - is actually very fascinating, and the cast is sublime. Colin Firth is fantastic, Helena Bonham Carter is brilliant, and Jeffrey Rush is genius. I would recommend this film whole-heartily and will be watching it again in the future. That all said, I still preferred Black Swan.
Not only did we go to the cinema at the O2 Dome, but we also ate there, and Stacey had a look at some of the latest phones in the O2 shop there as her contract is soon up for renewal. For food, we argued and argued, and fought and fought over where to go until settling on Gourmet Burger Kitchen. We'd never eaten there before, but it was absolutely delicious. When you order a blue-cheese burger, and the waiter asks how you'd like it cooked, you know you're onto a winner. Medium-Rare please! Not only that, but for desert, I had a Chunky Monkey Ben and Jerries, while Stacey had a Fab - FAB!
In the O2 store, Stacey was playing around with all the flashy phones she could get her mits on. The Samsung Galaxy caught her eye and imagination, and she decided to see what it was like to dial on it, typing in her own number and calling it. Turns out this display model was a full-working phone, and it actually phoned her. After coming out from the film, she had three more missed calls from that phone, as people seem to play with it constantly, but rather than typing in their own numbers, seem to just phone the last number dialled in the call log. We stopped by once again on the way out to delete the record of her number.
Sunday saw me at work once more, and in the evening I kicked it old-school by going round the old Passey house to watch pay-per-view wrestling. Something I haven't done in a long old time. And that leads me to now... I'm writing this blog. I've got work again in just over an hour, so best get moving I suppose. Although I would also like to mention that I've just finished reading a great book. Chris Jericho's newest book Undisputed was released on these shores this past Thursday, and thanks to my trusty Kindle, I was reading it immediately. Talk about you page-turners, I was hooked! What I loved the most though was the vivid description of a Fozzy gig at the Astoria in London back in 2005, a gig that I attended for free as a competition winner. Jericho recalls the gig not only because it was a big deal for him to play such a historic venue, but because at the time, it doubled as a club called GAY. The headline above the entrance to the venue read (and I myself remember this too) read:
TONIGHT
FOZZY
GAY
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