2009, Week 2

The fuzzy happiness of the christmas holiday has worn off, leaving irritable tiredness. Most of the week was spent trying to catch up on sleep by going to bed earlier than normal and then playing round after round of expert suduko on the iPod. Unfortunately this meant I ended up getting to sleep later, annoyed that it took me 50 minutes to complete a game when it takes Jen 20.

Jen was off ill one day this week, which meant I didn't have her driving behind me before I get to the M1. When I take the exit onto the motorway I normally frantically wave at her, and I very almost did it to whomever was driving behind me that day.

Waving at strangers seems to get me in trouble. A few moths back I was driving, minding my own business when a kid in the car in front started giving me a damian-esque stare. I'm guessing it's just British Reserve, but I always tend to avoid eye contact in these situations, hoping the kid will go away. Unfortunately avoiding eye contact meant not looking at the road, which I'm pretty sure is frowned upon. Therefore, despite my 20 years+ experience of looking at things, the little bastard was winning. Not wanting to be outdone, I decided that If I waved at the kid he'd probably get embarrassed and play his evil Derren Brown mind games on someone else. Unfortunately, this slightly backfired as far from embarrassing the kid, it clearly freaked him out. I then had to spend the next 2 minutes not making eye contact with the kid and his concerned mother.

We got the new TV this week, replacing our CRT with a sexy HD TV, which makes our virgin TV signal look even more shit. It's like watching TV with the adobe 'water colour' filter permanently applied. Progress! It does make 'Dead Space' even more scary though. Who every did the sound design on the game deserves an award, or preferably someone jumping out of their cupboard's shouting 'boo' at every opportunity. Let's see how they like it! This is the first game I've played since I was a kid that clearly had a physical effect on me. I'm always quite shakey after I've played, my body clearly pumped with adrenaline. I think the last game that got to me anything like that is 'Alien Trilogy' on the PS1, and that was only the first few levels before it turned into a derivative FPS. Oh, and Sabre Wulf on the Spectrum, that had me running out the room screaming whenever the titular wulfy appeared.

We stayed over at Becky and Matt's on Saturday. On the way down Jen and I were working our way through the family tree as far as we can remember. I was slightly embarrassed that I couldn't really remember my Grandmother's name, on my Mum's side. I don't think the fact that I never met my grandmother is a valid excuse. I think her name was Christa, although this an educated guess based upon that fact that it's one of my sister's middle names. The only interesting thing I know about her is that she was in 'The League of German Girls', which was the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth (this little nugget won me a £10 book voucher for a year 9 report on world war 2, so hey, some good did come out of the Nazi party). You'd think this fact would lead me to ask many more questions about her in the past, yet I didn't. I also know that my Grandfather was a tank driver in the war, so I'd imagine there's a quite interesting story to be told. I'll find out more this week and follow up.