It's beginning to look alot like Christmas.

So I'm a week late, excuse me while I give a fuck. Had an all day practical on Monday followed by LaserTag with the Frisbee guys and Ant and well it was a very busy day so I didn't exactly get time to write my post.

So I'll start with this Monday as I can't honestly remember much of the week before. Like I said, Monday was a busy ass day. Electrophoresis practical in the labs took all day and wasn't exactly the most fun way to spend a day. Electrophoresis is used in DNA sequencing and matching. It was interesting but did it really need to take all day? Anyways that finished without much of a hitch.

Then it was on to Laser Tag with the Frisbee family and Ant because the more the merrier right? Laser Tag was awesome last time we played it outdoors, tiring but I absolutely loved it. This time was indoors which was new, I've always wanted to try something like this indoors as I've only paintballed outdoors and the Laser Tag place back home is kinda small and lack-luster so being let loose in an area not designed for it was new and exciting. So you add laser beams and 12 ultimate frisbee guys (plus Ant making 13) to a big room full of inflatable obstacles and you're set for an awesome evening. Admittedly the "map" was kinda unbalanced and required better cover/spawn placements but other than that it was a great laugh. Then I spent the night with Christina, which was awesome as always (not in that way....), I think we watching Madagascar 3 although I think I fell asleep during it as I remember next to none of it other than a knife throwing tiger that literally jumps through hoops.

Wednesday was great as I was in a Mario Kart tournament with the Frisbee family, 2 socials in a week? What is going on? It was fun anyways, we played in groups, top two go forward and so on until the final 4. Guess who got into the final 4? If you guessed me then give yourself a cookie, you earned it champ. It was set to be a laugh riot anyway, you put any of us Frisbee folks together in a room and hilarity will ensue. Add Mario Kart to the mix and you don't need any other entertainment. It was hilarious watching everyone get over aggressive about it and the cheers when things heat up, who'd have thought that Mario Kart was a spectator's sport? We ordered pizza and played some heated Mario Kart. I didn't deserve to make it to the final 4, not by a longshot but there you have it. I got lucky, massively lucky. I used to be amazing at Mario Kart, but I swear Mario Kart Wii hates me. I would do well then get absolutely annihilated and end up in 12th then have to climb back up through the ranks again. Somehow my luck held out and I managed to scrape into the final 4 and take 3rd overall. However I was in danger of being taken out of the running entirely when I got screwed by a technicality and a tiny time difference by Jack, although I had the last laugh as I won the knockout round and kicked Jack's ass for almost knocking me out.

Oh speaking of Wednesday we had an absolutely awesome outdoor training session. Recently we've been hammered with some insane rain here in the Shire and it's become a little ridiculous. However with rain comes mud and mud is always fun right? So West Commons got turned into a mud bath, literally. It was insane, the disc caused water to splash up from the ground whenever it hit and it got slowly more and more covered in mud making it harder to throw and catch. The session was hilarious fun because you couldn't really play properly and because of my lack of football boots I was sliding all over the shot. Needless to say I went over at least once, it was great, my combats have mud caked up one leg and the long sleeved t-shirt I was wearing was a brilliant white before I started, it's now a lovely brown colour.

Christmas lights

The Christmas decorations in Lincoln city centre got turned on Thursday evening and now I feel completely justified in singing Christmas songs and wearing my Santa hat. I'm loving the fact everything's getting all Christmas-ified, yet some haters are still saying it's too early for songs and for the hat. Yeah the hat is back, you think I'd lay off my Christmas crusade just because I'm at Uni? I didn't last year and I don't plan to next year, it's pretty much tradition now. For readers that haven't known me since 6th Form won't know what I'm talking about, well it all started in Year 12. I noticed that no-one was really in the christmas mood even as december started so I took to wearing a santa hat everyday in an effort to spread the Christmas cheer, as you can imagine I got ribbed intensely for it and well me being me, I didn't give a fuck. Christmas is my favourite time of year as it should be for everyone but hey ho. I didn't and don't care what people think of me and my hat. I enjoy wearing it and trying to spread the joy, you got a problem then good for you, I couldn't give a fuck. I apologise for all the swears but I get passionate about Christmas okay?

Closer look at the lights

Brings me to my next point, what the hell is up with Christmas TV? I remember back in the day all the classics were on every year. You know all the greats? Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? The Santa Claus? Shrek? I know Shrek isn't exactly a Christmas movie but it was always on around Christmas and now it's not and it sucks! Christmas TV is just like any other freaking day of the week, 'cept in Eastenders some one will inevitably get killed or arrested or something equally as stupid. It's ridiculous...kids today don't know the great Christmas films aside from Muppet's Christmas Carol. It is and will forever be my favourite Christmas movie because it is absolutely flawless, I genuinely think it would be a crime for it not to be shown on TV over Christmas.

Blurry but you get the idea

Me and Frank

Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls

A while back we found out that Frank Turner was playing a gig in Lincoln and Alex being the fan that he is suggested that we all buy tickets. That gig was last night and it was fucking fantastic! We started queuing around 18:15 and got given some free cookies by two girls next to us in the queue, then we went inside for what turned out to be an amazing show. Both of the support acts were great and Frank was just something else. The crowd roared when he came onto the stage and started playing. I know its the done thing to sing along to the songs you know at a gig but never before have I seen anything like this, it was incredible. Everyone was singing/shouting the words at the top of their lungs and it was amazing. It was such an energetic concert from both the band and the crowd. Being the first time that I'd seen him live I was blown away, from never having heard of him before moving into courts last year and meeting Alex I wasn't sure what to expect as I'd only heard his studio albums but he was amazing live. We went to the bar after the show for a drink to rehydrate before deciding to hit the road and head for home, but before we did that Alex insisted on seeing if Frank was about outside signing autographs and stuff.....which he was and we all got to meet Frank and the band, have our photos taken with him and our tickets signed ('cept for Dolbear-o who forgot about it....). We massively jumped the queue and after taking all the other guys photos with Frank I felt kinda bad saying "Is it my turn now?" just as some girl stepped forward, but both her and frank were happy to let me go and after a technical mishap with Mack-o and the camera, I got my photo with Frank as well as my ticket signed. We then headed for home after what we all agreed was an awesome night. Pretty sure Alex is going to have his Facebook photo as him and Frank for at least a year now.

Woke up this morning to find pictures like this on my Facebook news feed:

Courtesy of Shrink (Alana)

 Lincoln is slowly being invaded by the Brayford....I mean yeah it was pretty bad when I went to sleep, only a foot or so from bursting but wow.....things really went to shit over night. Apparently things are only going to get worse for a while. Living in Lincoln seems to have been a bad call right now....although I live halfway up a hill....on the second floor so I think I'm safe.....famous last words right?

Well that's pretty much all for now folks, just glad I got some photos to add to this week's post as it's been quite a while. Next week will be back to working properly I guess as I have a lab report due in just before I leave....it's not all fun and games.

Catch ya later

So that's what Sam does....

Went to see my first lacrosse match this week. It was definitely different. I don't really understand all that much about it and if you asked me about it I wouldn't be able to tell you much other than the scoreline....other than that? It's been a pretty standard and uneventful week.

The match was good to watch, it's nice to finally know what it is Sam spends most of his time doing. It seemed pretty brutal, I can now understand why Sam is always so battered and bruised after a match. It was fast paced in places but when you get nearer the goal things seemed to slow right down and take ages to get moving again although I guess that's the same for every sport with similar play. Like I said it was good to watch but I would never think to pick up a stick and play it properly. I've thrown about with Sam and co. a couple times but nothing particularly organised or serious. Think I'll be sticking to Ultimate, it seems faster paced and well much more suited to me. I wouldn't be able to play lacrosse without constantly apologising to whoever I hit. Sadly Lincoln lost the match but it was hard fought, or at least seemed to be pretty hard fought.

Oh! I just remembered went down to the river on Sunday to watch Dan race. Well I say watch Dan race, there was about 30secs of him and his crew rowing past and us shouting encouragement and that was about all there was to see really. Dan looked absolutely dead which is understandable since we were about 300m from the finish line when he went past going hell for leather. From what I've heard his boat did really well, didn't win but was up there in the rankings so that's good. 

Christmas is slowly creeping closer which means I get to break out my Santa hat and start singing Christmas songs again. They've already put up most of the lights in the town centre which is awesome, can't wait for them to be lit up. I can't wait for it to finally get here, it's my favourite time of year. The nights draw in and the morning air seems kind of crisp and fresh. You don't need more than a step outside to wake you up in the morning although it's a chore to get out of bed....Although thinking about it Mum, Dad and the rest of the family will have probably put all the decorations up by the time I get back home...that sucks, it's one of my favourite parts. However I do get to walk in to see the place all Christmas-ified since the last time I saw it was the end of Summer where things were no different to any other day of the year so that'll be nice. It'll also be great to see everyone from back home again and catch up. It's been far to freaking long since I saw everyone.

Well that pretty much covers it for the week...been up to my usual stuff other than those couple things. Hopefully this week will have a little more in store but only time will tell I guess.

Catch ya later

Regionals!

Yeah I know this is a week late but I was waiting on Skip to upload the photos from the weekend but he hasn't yet so they'll follow at a later date (when I can get hold of them).

The highlight of my week kinda lies in this weekend. Not alot really happened this week so I'm just going to  go ahead and talk about the weekend.

So if you've been reading this regularly (or recently) you'll know that I spent last weekend at a Frisbee tournament in Wolverhampton as a warm up for the regional tournament this weekend. To sum up the weekend in a word? Awesome. I could use several other one word answers to describe it but I'm going to stick with that one. Although before I start on the actual tournament I should tell the story of how we ended up arriving 3hrs later than we had originally planned.

The plan was to get the half 7 train from Lincoln and arrive in Wolves around 10/half 10. We all arrived at the train station and caught the half 7 train out without a problem...however we got about 30yards out of Swinderby (I'd never heard of it either) which is about 10mins away from Lincoln when the train stops. Thinking nothing of it since trains occasionally stop so that others can pass or whatever we all carried on doing whatever til you hear the driver say something about a cracked rail and we'll have to go back. So we get off the relatively warm train and step into the arctic cold (the first snow had fallen the night before) and walk over to the next platform and wait for the train coming the opposite way to head back to Lincoln which took a while to arrive. We headed back into Lincoln where we were told we would meet a bus replacement service for us....there wasn't. So we waited around and told to go to Sheffield then to Nottingham to Birmingham to Wolves, which we did without any further problems but arriving at 1 instead of 10. We got there after our first match but literally just in time for our second match. We literally had to jump from a moving vehicle and sprint onto pitch two in order to play and minimise the head start our opponent, Fling 4, would get for us being late.

So we make it onto pitch and Fling are always great teams and despite this one being a fourth team with a 2-0 head start and us without warming up they really gave us a good run around, however we managed to come back and win something like 9-4. It was one of those matches where things were intense and people had unlucky drops/throws on both sides but in the end we came out as either the luckier or more skilled of the two.

We then went on to win our next match, I can't remember much about it....might have been our game against NTU 2. Despite being a team of freshers led by one experienced player they put out a very strong game however I think we won 13 - 4 or something like that.

Our last game of the day was less successful...I think....pretty sure it was our first real loss. This might have been our most poorly played game of the tournament....I honestly don't remember, all I know is we lost.

Coming into Sunday we were reasonably confident. Our cross over match was the most important of the day and we went out to win. We played well but the other team played that little bit better and so we lost.

I remember winning our match against seed 25 holding our position in 24 but losing our last match against 23 so ultimately we finished up 24 and maintained our seeding for the tournament.

I have to give massive credit to the 4 freshers we brought with us, Tom, Amy, Will and Dan played fantastically all weekend. Amy had a way of sneaking into space just when you needed her to, saving you from a stall out. Dan had some fantastic D and brilliant end zone grabs, backed up by Tom who could seemingly gain an extra 2 metres in the air somehow. Will came on leaps and bounds as a handler, now learning to use Hammers and Blades to go over or sometimes through his mark. He said a number of times that he keeps forgetting they're a pass since the fresher's had spent the first couple weeks not being told about them...

Of course I have to say thanks to our skipper Lex who did a fantastic job keeping us organised and generally being an awesome captain, I hope I get to play with him again some time soon. Sayer gets credit for sideline motivation and shouts when needed. He was also a great help on pitch with some great offence and long range discs.


This week? Not much really happened. Went to see the Lincoln fireworks display with Christina (My girlfriend for those that don't know) and then went to see Skyfall on Sunday with her too. Added up to a pretty awesome weekend really. The movie wasn't too bad, not exactly what I'd call a Bond movie but I've never been a fan of Daniel Craig as Bond. Admittedly after the travesty that was Quantum of Solace this was a step back in the right direction which is good, lets just hope they get back to Bond being Bond and taking on diabolical plots from masterminds in secret island bases with badass henchmen...you know like the good old days.

If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned Christina before it's because we've only just made things "facebook" official. She's great, met her a couple weeks back. One of those chance encounters really. Sat next to her in a lecture one time and things kinda went from there. Not much to tell really, we've got alot in common and get along really well so that's that.

Catch ya later folks