Bitch be tripping snowballs!

According to the BBC weather page, we're looking at sunshine all week, maximum of 4 degrees Celsius. It never mentioned any more snow. Currently it's blizzarding once again. I imagine that every other country in the world is looking at the UK and thinking "pffft, that's pathetic", but I love it! The prospect of actually having a white Christmas is just overwhelming, now that we're so close, it can't melt! Thinking about it, this is the first time I've mentioned Christmas on this blog, so I might as well mention what it means to me: I love the social aspect of it. The fact that arguments are dropped, if only for a few days, it's almost magical.

Anyway, what I'm here to post about today isn't Christmas, it's actually birthday related. My weekend's been very eventful, so I'm going to split it into three very exciting sections, the first is named:

Day one:
Friday the 18th of December, it meant many things, last day of term, panto day, but most importantly, Eleanor's birthday. I've always found it strange that my two best friends' birthdays are within one day of each other, but I kinda like it that way too. Unfortunately, I woke up late, so had to figure out a quick route to Eleanor's house. I tried the number 6 bus, found it, got on it, asked to go to asda (a perfectly reasonable destination), but the bus driver told me the closest he could get me was the bypass. In other words, they'd changed the route due to the snow. So yeah, I trekked the rest of the way to Eleanor's.

As I reached the park next to her house, I found before me a rather epic snowball fight. It consisted of a number of teams that slowly fell apart before my eyes. I started stockpiling, I knew this was the kind of war you had to be prepared for. So, we fought for a while, then my stockpiling plans started to overwhelm the others, sides were taken, I had two willing fighters by my side and they had five or so cowards. We ran into combat, mercilessly tearing apart the opposition. Then they decided to turn, and I lost a man. Soon after our two factioned joined together to mourn the loss of this once great warrior, then all of them went home for tea and slippers and other warm things. I headed back to Eleanors to present her with presents and to play some scrabble.

In my defence, I'd only ever played Scrabble once before, against my Grandma (she tore me apart). It was intense. there was a time where I had a Z, a K and a W. Another moment had me looking at "zookeeper" as a word. In the end, I came third in the first game and second in the second (beating the birthday girl both times). A pretty decent day if I don't say so myself.

Day Two:
This was intended to be my "resting day" of the weekend. It was James' birthday, but his plans weren't going down until the Sunday, so I had pretty much nothing to do. I sent a couple of texts around, all with different intentions: one to James to wish him a happy birthday, and one to Nat (she'd offered for me to go to hers the day before, so I was checking to see if the offer was still open). One thing led to another, and I found myself walking to the bus stop for the second day in a row. I missed the bus by like 10 seconds, and the bus stop was practically an ice rink, so I decided to not wait for the next one and play one of my favourite games:

Beat the bus!
Rules: the aim of the game is to get as far as you can before the next bus comes after missing the previous one. This includes many risks, the biggest of which being that the bus could pass you while you're between bus stops, the big upside of the game is that you could significantly reduce your bus fare.

My destination was somewhere on the other side of the bypass, so I got walking. I don't remember it snowing the previous night, and due to all the busy, busy pedestrians the ground had become really icy. The sound of ice cracking beneath your feet is a really sinister sound, even when you know there's only concrete underneath it. I think I can safely say that I beat my bus, I got to the bypass and had seen no bus at all. Eventually, I got to Nat's and met a guy called Owen, who was pretty cool. We just sat and talked for a couple of hours, it was nice to just sit around in a comfortable social environment and "chillax" for however long (3-4 hours).

Day Three:
Today was the day I was probably the most psyched about, so much so that I'd set 10 alarms the night before. Poker day. I had no idea how many people were coming, or how long the game would last, all I knew was that today would be a game that was properly finished. I made this clear at the table, I was perfectly aware that people would have to leave early, their chips would either be scrapped from the game or split between the remaining players. All I knew was that I wasn't really due home at a specific time and it was James' house, so there would be at least two players left to finish.

As predicted, two players had to leave before the game really kicked off (a mere hour and forty minutes in). Leaving the three most experienced players (Eleanor, James and myself) to it. Only a couple of hands later, my run of bad luck ended with this hand:
For the people out there who don't play poker, it's a royal flush, the best hand you can get in poker. More importantly, there's a good chance I'll never get one again. The queen of hearts was my card, the cards above are James', he had a mere straight. To be fair, I didn't win many chips from the hand, it was the pride to have such an amazing hand that got me going. I was ready to get my poker face on, and to remove any predictability from my playing style. It worked. Eleanor received a phone call telling her she was leaving in 15 minutes, I took her out about 2 minutes before she left. She wasn't really playing properly because she knew she'd be going, and I know it. But hey, winning's winning (at least, it is when it comes to poker). James and myself soldiered on, and blinds (minimum bets) continued to raise.

I dropped my playing style soon after blinds hit 100/200, I wasn't prepared to shovel out bets worth 200 for the sake of a poker face, because it wasn't working so well anymore. I split my technique into two techniques, to disguise my predictability a bit. My luck had changed a while back. I was getting quite a few high hands, especially straights. It was getting tense and I was beginning to lose more chips than I was winning. I started placing higher bets than normal when I knew I was onto something, and won myself chips worth 2500 twice, eventually swinging the game back in my favour. In the end I won it on a pair of 10s, he had one too, so really I won it on a high card. Either way, I was just happy to have finished a game properly (we hadn't done that since the summer). After that, we played out our normal tradition of watching BBC3 until about 11pm, and then I made the short but Ice walk home.

Overall, I think the weekend was 90% success, obviously missing Eleanor's birthday plans was a bit of a downer, but I made up for it, Kind of. A good start to the holiday, I sense many happy times a' comin'!

(all pictures taken by me.)

Time For a Life Story

If you logged on today looking for a content, uplifting post, you're out of luck. Try my top 100 music videos or something. Today I'm going to talk about the past. In fact, I'm going to focus on one date, October 2nd.

I'll start as far back as I remember, year three. Let's see, it was 9 years ago, I'd moved to Abbots Langley from South Oxhey in April, finished year 2 at Oxhey Wood primary school and started year 3 at Leavesden Green. The kids in my class had been together since year 1, they were close. I wasn't made to feel very welcome by them at all, although my teacher did try. Throughout the year, I only made two major friends, one of which left in year 5, only to return in year 9 as a total prick. The other friend was the first friend I made at the school. As for the girls, they took pleasure in tormenting me for the entire year, so yes, I was bullied. Anyway, returning to our magic date: I only had one friend and as a child, I was extremely excited that my birthday was fast approaching. The day came, and my friend didn't, he was ill. I spent the entire day either alone or being tormented by my bullies. I can't remember which, but at eight years old, I'm not sure which is worse.

In year 5, I just wanted to invite the "cool kids", so they could use me for a good day out. In year seven, I only really had two friends, I can't even remember what happened.

Skipping to the end (or close to it anyway): Year 10, I had my first "real" girlfriend (meaning local and lasting more than a week), had my mates round for the day, and to be honest, we just played games and I got touched by some slut, not realising how I looked to my friends at all. Year 11: The girl that I was so tragically in love with decided to totally ignore the fact that I existed for the day, just to prove some twisted point. The following day, we all went bowling, but everything was falling apart: my girlfriend and two of my friends split from the main group and that was that, depression.

So, "how does this story end?" I hear you screaming, begging for a lovely ending. Although, I think you all know I've already set the tone for a tragedy. September 2009: Things couldn't be better. I had my best friends, all five of them. Nothing was wrong at all. Emma had her birthday on the 14th, leaving me to step up next. Everybody kept telling me "You HAVE to do something on your birthday!" and I believed them.

I started arranging, I'd been arranging everything else all year but it was decided that I'd have to arrange my birthday too. So I started. I decided what to do (a meal). I started looking at the places, they were either too expensive, not to everyone's likes, not vegetarian etc. Eventually we half decided on one, this was about two days ago. It had been hell, I was at the end of my tether and quite happy that we were sorted. Then I found out that everyone couldn't do Friday (October 2nd), some people still wanted Friday, others wanted Thursday. Today, on September 26th (which is a date I don't really like anyway), I cancelled my birthday plans.

Let's face it, half of my friends didn't even know what date my birthday was anyway, and I regret telling them. I didn't really want to celebrate it either, due to reasons revealed here, in this post. I'm sorry if you don't like it, I'm sorry if I'm being a selfish twat, but I thought my birthday was the one day of the year where it was about me, not about me going through hell arranging something for everyone else. I just want a break, and it doesn't feel right to have to arrange that break myself. If anything, I wanted a break from arranging plans. Sorry people, it's off, I don't want to hear anymore about it and I don't want anything from you. I don't even want to hear a "happy birthday" on the day, that's what will make my birthday a happy one. Thanks for listening, I hope you understand now.

Life and Times

Well, it's the name of the blog...and I've not really been focusing on my life lately. Time to bring you up to date.

First weeks of school are always really hectic, I didn't expect some kind of exception for sixth form. But there aren't normally as many pros, maybe it's because I have some kind of new positive mentality or something. Anyway, I've been hanging around new people, and it's been fun, I've not been bastardly antisocial about it. Although i've not enjoyed being taught by a few of my teachers in the past, I believe that I have a good variety of teachers so I can work to the best of my ability for all of them.

There hasn't been a top 5 songs this week, simply because I've not had time to listen to music ): But the good side of finishing my top 100 music videos is that I can post random videos whenever I please now (:

Also, I've started labelling my blog lately, I thought it was something that needed to be done. I'm also going to give it a makeover sometime after my 100th post (only three posts to go now!). Speaking of my 100th post, I've finally figured out how to celebrate it, more about that in the future (three posts from now to be exact :p).

I should be going out tomorrow (thank god) to see Emma. It is her birthday after all. It should be good.

So yeah, there you go, you're back up to date on the life of times of Adam.

Karolina's Birthday Blog!

Yes, it was indeed Karolina's birthday today, and as she's in Poland, I'm gonna announce it right here, happy birthday Karolina!

On the subject of amazing friends, I saw my second person this holiday (the first being Eleanor) yesterday, Emma. We decided to go bowling and then walk back to mine. For the record, I lost (twice) but then we played pool and I won, just to show that I can win at some games :p On the way back we knocked for David and we all went back to mine to watch Severance (a british horror comedy). Then after David left, I cleaned my desk and went through my CD collection. Fun fun fun.

After all that I went with Emma to wait for a bus because we gave up on looking for a timetable and just decided to wait it out (I figured it wouldn't be long on a Friday evening) and just sat and chatted for about 10 mins. I needed it really, to keep my mind off of other things, because my mind was beginning to obsess. So thank you Emma :)

In other news, things are going amazingly well in my life (surprisingly), I feel great! I feel better about myself, my trust with relationship related things have been restored and I genuinely feel that things are good :) I'm going to Eleanor's tomorrow to get a rabbit! (a rabbit!!!) I can't wait.

And now for the weather. In the Watford area there will be heights of 23 degrees celsius and lows of 15 degrees, with the chance of showers some time in the afternoon. This is Adam Batchelor signing off, thank you.