Pretty Much Sick

So I'm pretty much sick. Woke up this morning with a few sniffles, nothing to write home about. Then by the time I got to work, I had started to get that horrific tickley feeling behind my eyes as I seemed to be in a perpetual state of needing to sneeze without any such bloody thing actually happening. The day dragged and all I wanted to do was go home to bed. Which I did. So my room is still a mess and I have managed to do nothing at all productive which sucks. What sucks even more is the thought that if this gets any worse, I'll have to take a day off work which I really can't afford after two holidays in one summer.

Anyways, being sick is a good enough reason as any to write a blog post. The picture is of Charlie McDonnell, aka charlieissocoollike and I just really liked it. Hope to have some videos up shortly as I now have a massive backlog of footage.

One more thing, I'm gonna pay by cheque!

Saving Eeyore

Things have been pretty hectic for me recently, a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and being a general pest to myself and others in my vicinity. However, I have finally finished moving all my crap into my new place and accidentally/on purpose managed to acquire an Eeyore stocking along the way. Be warned; this anecdote illustrates how mentally unstable I really am!

You see, I think it had something to do with the lack of caffeine. I drink a lot of coffee/energy drinks at work and on Monday, I was challenged by those at the desks around me to go one full day just drinking water. I knew it was going to be tough and I knew I was going to be cranky. By the end of the day, my mood was all over the place and I just wanted to go home to bed. The last thing I really wanted to be doing was moving the last drips and drabs of my stuff. Especially as it was "pishin it doon". I mean, it wasn't just a drizzle, it was borderline torrential.

It was as we pulled up one of the neighbouring streets to park that I saw it. Something on the road. Something that looked a little bit like a red towel. Then a pillow. Then it became clear! It was Eeyore! In the road! Abandoned and getting soaked! I can't really explain why I felt such a strong urge to "save" it because even now, I know it sounds gross. But that's what I did. I picked it up (it turned out to be an Eeyore Christmas stocking), took it home and bunged it straight into the washing machine. The photo came about due to my telling this tale at work. And then my deciding to share it with you.

I told you, this blog is ODD.

The Edinburgh NerdFighter Gathering

I'm procrastinating, as per usual. It's 11.40pm, I have a taxi picking me up at 5.30am and not only am I convinced that this is the opportune time to write a blog about the Edinburgh NerdFighter Gathering that happened on Sunday, but I also fully intend on catching up with all the episodes of EastEnders that I have missed over the last couple of days. I know, I'm crazy. I should really be focusing on making sure I have everything ready for tomorrow (I'm heading to Vienna!!) but it seems that no matter how many times I go over my check-list, I still think I've forgotten something.

But enough of that! Sunday saw a reunion of the Scottish NerdFighters here in Edinburgh. Back in February, I stumbled across a thread on the forum called "YourPants" (I know, right? A thread on YourPants) which saw Scottish NerdFighters organising a meet up just for funzies. This was amazing because I had genuinely never met a fellow NerdFighter and so I was pretty quickly enrolled as the unofficial photographer of the event (a NerdFighter being a subgroup of the YouTube community created by the AWESOME VlogBrothers). It was held in Glasgow back in April so naturally, the summer gathering was held right here in Edinburgh!

For those of you wondering, it's basically a giant picnic so thankfully, the weather behaved itself and as you can see, it was actually a beautifully sunny day! I even got a tad sunburnt!

Guitars always make an appearance and with Songsfrompaul strumming away, our soundtrack for the day couldn't have been better!

Alistair, aka 8bitglasses takes a break

And last but not least, ME!

(You don't usually see me because I'm the one

pushing the button on the camera!)

A Thank You

Firstly, wow.

This is a big thank you to my friend Morven over at Cats and Rocking Chairs (as in, my first and currently only follower) who has very kindly given me a shout out in her blog. She told me this today while we were at lunch and I felt a little sorry for her poor followers who are used to her stylish fashion blog and who may have understandably assumed that this was also a stylish fashion blog...

Alas, it is not. I actually don't have a clue what this blog is other than a hotpot of crackpot posts! No, but seriously, it's called ODSOX87 and I welcome you to this merry-go-round of musings. I doubt many of you will stick around but here's a little treat for coming this far.

This video was taken today and is the first to be uploaded from my new Flip!

Enjoy :)

TEAM CRANK

Not much to report other than I WON MY FIRST PUB QUIZ!! Not much of a pub quiz goer, but have been on my fair share of losing teams (although not too shit that we actually win any form of booby prize). Tried to rally up some of the Barcelona crew for the new quiz that's just started at Aspen here in Edinburgh. Only two people turned up, not including myself. However, we somehow managed to stumble upon an ex pub quiz host who wanted to join our team. My highlight was the music round where we got 19.5/20! That, and the fact that I knew Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare's wife! I must thank Bill Bryson for that one, and my Mum for buying me the book!

Going next week as TEAM BOILED GOOSE.

Cassette Tape

This is going to be a relatively odd post because I'm still awake at 1.30am, have to be up for work in a few hours time and I just can't seem to bring myself out of my post-holiday blues, even though I've been back for almost a week now. I went to Barcelona for Sonar music festival and it was genuinely one of the best trips of my life.

Anyway, I'll hopefully get around to writing more about the trip later (when I'm not so depressed) but I thought I'd share with you my cassette image. I love cassette tapes. I used to make mixed tapes for car journeys when I was younger. I still listen to audio books on cassettes and have quite a collection stored away in my parents' house. I also practically wet myself when Threadless issued their Nostalgia t-shirt because I've done that loads!

Yeah, I told you this post would be weird...

In other news, I finished the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy and have moved onto Catching Fire. I'll give you my thoughts later but at the moment, I have to say I don't really see why people are creaming themselves over it... it's alright, I just don't think it's fantastic and the thought of there being yet another book to read after finishing Catching Fire is tiring me out.

Right, I'm off to listen to my Harry Potter audio tapes :D

Jekyll & Hyde

Jekyll & Hyde are two names that I genuinely just presumed everyone knew, along with others like Frankenstein and Dracula. Ok, fair enough you might struggle to remember who actually wrote the original story, but the tale is so ingrained in modern society, I find it hard to comprehend how someone could have lived life without gaining at least a basic knowledge of the plot (come on, CBBC even ran a series called Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde while I was still in primary school).

So when asked by a friend of a friend what my plans were for last Friday evening, I was slightly taken aback by his response of "What's that about?" when I told him I was heading (once again) to The Edinburgh Playhouse to see Robert Louis Stevenson's classic brought to life on stage.

In saying that, having read the book myself, I feel a reread is in order; I for one certainly don't remember the story having much to do with love at all. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, there is no romance in the original, yet the play features heavily on two lead female characters who are both in love with Dr Jekyll. This addition got to be quite boring as a lot of the songs seemed to revolve around their relationships and I'm just not a big fan of "woe is me" solo sing-your-heart-out style songs.

Which brings me to my next point: It's a musical.

Now, I like musicals, I do, I really do. It's just... I personally don't think Jekyll & Hyde managed to pull it off that successfully. I reckon if you're going to take a famous Victorian Gothic tale of human duality, you need an exciting, creepy score. I would have much preferred it if the songs were just scrapped completely and the writers focused more on the story because it's a very good story that didn't need to be tampered with in the first place.

HOWEVER, despite some of the songs being a bit wishy-washy for my personal liking, I did enjoy the performance overall and would definitely recommend anyone to go see it. I think Marti Pellow did a great job as both Jekyll and Hyde (I especially liked how his hair style was used as an indicator of which of the two characters he was portraying) and the set was fantastic. If, on the other hand, you'd rather spend your money on something a little more substantial, then I strongly suggest you purchase the book. Especially if you're one of those select few who have never heard of the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde...