Buckle up, it's the new year post!

I must admit, the new year was much more interesting than usual, not because it was a new decade or anything, but because I found myself standing with strangers, staring up at the London Eye.

But first, let's rewind, my Christmas was pretty cool, and moderately white too!

I got socks, which was cool, among games and books and other mindbogglingly mind boggling puzzles and stuff. After the traditional wrapping paper tearing events, we proceeded to have Christmas dinner, always prestigious, but this one was a little more special. Apparently, the mysteries of butchery provide the law that if you put a bird inside a bird, the two meats somehow connect?! This dinner did that AND more, because the two combined birds had also been wrapped in ANOTHER MEAT! I've never been more in awe of my dinner (apart from maybe the cream of chicken and mushroom soup I had today, that was quite something). Later on we went to visit my grandma in hospital (she's out now) for more presents and fun family celebrations. All in all it was a good Christmas.

Which brings me back to new year. To be honest, I knew there was something going down, I just didn't know it was London. This threw me a bit, seeing as the last time I was in the capital my phone was stolen at Charing Cross (those bastards). Eventually, I warmed up to the idea (roughly 18 hours before we had to leave) and by 6.30pm I was on the bus to Aaron's house. It was there I met with Aaron (obviously), Eleanor, Callum and a girl named Charlie, who gradually reminded me more and more of a girl I used to know called Louise as the evening progressed. Then Daisy turned up and we headed out. Now, I'm not exactly rolling in cash, I'd done some research as to which of Watford's stations would be cheapest (I already had an idea) and so I knew roughly where to go. I led the 6 of us along a route that was still a little fuzzy in my head, which miraculously got us there! We then took as many underground lines as possible to get to the Embankment. Which looked like this:

Crowd included, we got out of the station and just couldn't move. Inevitably we got split up and met again towards the back of the park area, where we decided to head further outwards, for food. We never found it. We stopped and waited in an area in front of a large building (which i can't name) for a good hour and a half for the fireworks. I videod it, and I'll edit the video in whenever I can get it uploaded. The fireworks were good, especially at the end, I was pretty mesmerised for the majority of them.


Then the first snowflake fell, it was pretty magical, I mean, you would expect that in some romantic film or something :P Anyway, we started heading back, from Embankment to Victoria station, which for the record, is quite far. We got to the station at about 1am, where we stopped for food, then QUEUED for the right to enter the underground station. We were on a train by about 1:45am, I think. For some reason the carriage we were on was empty, so we actually got to sit down before everyone piled on. Either way, we were back in Watford by about 2:30. That was the moment we realised that we didn't really have any way to get home unless we all walked alone, which we didn't really want to do. Daisy's house was on the way back to Aaron's, so she got to go home that night. The rest of us stayed at Aaron's. He went upstairs to sleep at about 4am, I don't blame him, it wasn't planned that he'd have guests. I don't think any of us got too much sleep, but we got rest, which is what counts.

At 9am I was woken and Eleanor, Callum and myself left at around 10am, they planned to make a pilgrimage to asda before going home, I left them at the nearest bus stop. I suppose I waited about 45 minutes for the bus, finally arriving home at about 11am. Good times.

Thanks to everyone there, as always (:

And now for the year ahead, I'll try to get in some reviews and expectations and stuff before the end of the dreaded January month ^.^

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.)

Hobbies

I think I've found my new hobby. Stay tuned for Adam's cooking corner :p

I love cooking, but I never thought of turning it into a hobby, made omelettes today (really adventurous i know), will start experimenting now i've got the hang of it. I'm like the evil scientist of the catering world (and creator of "bessie", the marmite and pickle sandwich!).

On the random side of things, i found this picture of my uncle from new year's day. Now you see where i get it from :p He's awesome, and I feel sorry for my Auntie (left) who has to put up with him all the time. Classic.


In other news: Stay tuned for prom pics (when eleanor finally gets them to me!!!)

Preview:

(Sorry, I'm not the best looking cupcake in the bakery :p)