3 IS the Magic Number.

So. It's that time of the week again when I'd normally give a quick run down of what's happened over the past 7 days and my thoughts/feelings on those events....but this week is going be similar to a couple posts from a while back. I mean yeah I've had quite a busy week and there's a few things that I could really talk about today but they're all overshadowed by the fact I saw Iron Man 3 on Thursday with Christina, Katie and Ant.

It blew me away, it was totally fucking amazing! It was such an awesome movie and a fantastic way to round off the three dedicated Iron Man movies! Robert Downey Jr. delivered another brilliant performance as Tony Stark/Iron Man once again and possibly his best one yet. He didn't do anything different as such...just better, not saying that he's done a poor job in the past but this time around was just better than all the others. He seemed to be so much more at home as Tony Stark and made the character his own, although to be fair he's done that since day 1 but if in the future they decide to reboot the series (I hope they don't) then they're going to have to do something incredible to make it even better than it already is. He's come along way from just being a genius playboy billionaire philanthropist. His delivery of deadpan humour was fantastic as always, saying brilliant one liners that made everyone burst out laughing but with a completely straight face. And then when he has to do the serious parts when shit starts to go sideways he's just as great. As always he was by far the best character, not to say the others weren't great, he was just my favourite.

Saying that though, I have new found respect for Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts thanks to this movie. She's never been a particularly great character in the Iron Man/Marvel movies but in this one she got some pretty major and equally awesome character development. Instead of just being the love interest she actually does some helpful and awesome stuff in this movie and not just to make her seem useful, they're some genuinely good moments and help her look better as a character. I know she's never going to be a main character and she's mostly just a sidekick there to show Tony is still human and not just some bad-ass vigilante do-gooder but it's nice to see her doing something rather than just being a damsel in distress or a bitch.

The bad guys were even better in this one too. Don't get me wrong, I thought Obadiah was a complete bastard and I'm glad he got vapourised or whatever the hell happened to him on top of the original Stark factory. And Whiplash got what was coming to him too but the Mandarin was a cut above the rest. I mean yeah they all had their reasons to hate Stark but this guy wasn't just a bad guy, he was an asshole too (yeah they all are but you know what I mean).

All in all the movie was the perfect blend of the hilarity we've come to know and love with the Marvel Avengers movies and action packed fight scenes (there's a real nice dig at the Dark Knight movies too). It was almost a perfect movie....almost. I have one minor annoyance at the movie and it is minor. The lack of AC/DC in the soundtrack. There's no Shoot to Thrill or anything. Disappointing? Yeah, but I can let it slide because of how mind blowingly awesome the rest of the film is/was/forever will be.

Hopefully I've made you want to go see this film if you haven't already. You do kinda have to have seen Avengers Assemble before hand as they make a few references to that and seeing the first two Iron Man movies wouldn't hurt ya either, then you can fully appreciate how awesome Robert Downey Jr.'s performance is and how amazing this movie is!


As for the rest of my week? Had a fun night on Tuesday going on a group date with a few friends, was a good laugh, nice to relax before putting our noses to the grindstone and revising for the fast approach exam season....yay.....least we get a nice long summer right? Or at least what passes for a summer over here. Ah well.

Well that's basically it for now, got a fairly busy-ish week, full of lots of revision and all that jazz (who cares what immunoassays do anyways?)

Catch ya later folks

Back with the boys again!

So I'm back in Lincoln after a brief two week stint at home. Nothing much to report on the last week really. Had a couple nights out to see the folk back home before disappearing back into the great white north (Winter's coming after all). Thursday night I went out with Emma and a few others for a meal and a few drinks to celebrate her birthday which was a good laugh, found out about Holly's love of the underground which was kinda odd, I'd have never thought she'd be interested in that kind of thing, but hey ho.

Back into the swing of things in Lincoln for now, I'm only back for a couple weeks though, last exam is on May 22nd and then I'm off home again on the 25th in time for Mum's birthday and mine too. Speaking of the 25th, going to see Iron Man 3 on Thursday which should be freaking awesome. Can't wait to see it. First though I have to get an exam outta the way and deal with a couple assignments but then it's all good.

Anyways that's pretty much all I've got to say for now really. The pictures for LSD are up but there are very few with me in actually doing stuff (if any) so I'll just put up the team photo for now.

Yeah Team 2!

Catch ya later folks

I should really be better at coming up with titles....

So I've been home for a week now....well over a week if you wanna be all technical about things but still. It's been fun being back, having all those home comforts you have missed over the past couple months. It's been great catching up with people again, old faces that you haven't seen in what seems like forever then we you hang out again it's like you've only been gone a day or two.

Me and little Lexi

As I've said the week has been full of catch ups and time with friends really. Friday I met my newest niece for the first time....11 weeks after her birth....she's cute to say the least. Much like all other children that age she eats, sleeps, poops and cries about all three, but having two other nieces has desensitised me to it. She's a tiny little thing....I mean yeah she's only 11weeks old but still....you don't realise how small that is until you hold her in your arms and she's barely taller than your forearm. It's also crazy how much the other two have grown up since. Kelly's becoming such a little chatterbox it's unreal, alot like her mum in that way I guess and Stacie is going to grow up to have my sister's stubborn side which is never a bad thing...just means you'll never win an argument with her.

Christina came down to visit for the weekend which was fantastic. It was great just having her here, we didn't get up to much really. I introduced her to my sister and the kids and some of my friends and she still says she loves me so that can only be a good thing right? I hope she enjoyed her time here in Billericay, there's not exactly all that much to do but still I hope she enjoyed herself. Like I said, it was great just having her here and I can't wait to be back in Lincoln with her on Sunday....even if it means exams are that bit closer.

Well that's it for now really. Still don't have many pictures from LSD but when I do they'll definitely go up on here.

Catch ya later folks

That Monday Feeling....

So it's the Monday after the weekend before and holy hellfire am I in a bad way. Everything hurts. Everything.  I normally run up stairs 2 at a time but now it's a struggle to do one step, let alone 2. If you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, last weekend was tournament weekend!

LSD 2013 was absolutely awesome! I have to give a massive thank you first of all to Lincoln 2 for being a great team to play with for the weekend and to all the other players, friends and families that dropped by to show support, we couldn't have made it such a success without you guys!

I always have a laugh at tournaments and this one was fantastic, being on home turf and all. It was my first tournament as TD and even though I had alot of help from Cat and Chris, I feel it ran very smoothly and I did an okay to great job. Everyone I've spoken to/heard from that attended said it was a great tourney and they really enjoyed themselves. It was nice to see so many people enjoying themselves and having a good time there and hopefully we'll get to see some of them when our next LSD comes back around!

Saturday had some really awesome play from all teams that I got to observe and play against. We also put down some awesome play as Lincoln 2. My favourite match had to be against our Grads team, being ex-Lincoln players we all know each other and so it was set to be quite a fun match but at the same time we both really wanted to win as well so it became a brilliant match to play.  The fact that I scored 3 awesome points (awesome for me, my hands are never that good!) might be one of the main factors in why it was my favourite game of the not just the Saturday but the weekend. We may have lost 10 - 4 but I had a blast playing them all again.

As with all frisbee tournaments you normally have to find places for away teams to stay on the Saturday night and sometimes the Friday night as well. As I'd crashed on a couple other people's floors myself this year it was only fair I returned the favour, maybe not to the same team but still. Being my first time hosting a team I wasn't quite sure what to expect but the guys from RED were absolutely fantastic! I had a great laugh hanging out with them on Saturday and parts of Sunday. A bunch of really nice people who I'll more than happily have stay over again sometime. Me not being much of a party-er I was put through my paces looking after these guys, 3 of whom stayed out til the club closed, but I had a great laugh with them. I was a little sad to see them leave on the Sunday but  they've said I'm welcome to go play with them sometime which would be great!

Sunday had it's fair share of awesome moments too! We held an All-Star match in the middle of the day, where each team nominates a member of their team to play in the match. For some bizarre reason I got put forward for our team and maybe I wasn't the best choice but it was great fun to play in. It was just a fun game, nothing serious about it and no real rules. There was an award at the end for the most exciting player, so everyone was going out of their way to do stupid and ridiculous shit. I rarely got near the disc so I didn't do anything all that amazing but we had a great laugh doing some crazy stuff like rugby tackling the opposition or trying to steal the disc from someone's hands and run away, failing and getting carried over the endzone line....

All in all the weekend was great. Coming away from it with muscle aches in pretty much every part of my body just shows how much effort I put in and how much fun I had doing it.

The week before was different to what I was expecting...I was expecting to be home alone all week and just doing the occasional bit of work, last minute prep for the tourney and all that but then I got one helluva surprise on Monday. I was laying in bed watching Green Wing when I hear some frantic knocking on the door. My first thought is it's the neighbor come to complain about the noise, even though I've been home alone and I've got my earphones in and he's been the one playing loud music at 2am for the past 3days....so I go downstairs, unlock the door and find Christina standing on the doorstep. I just stood there stunned. I wasn't expecting anyone, let alone her since I knew (or thought I knew) that  she was back home in Attleborough....when I recovered from the shock of seeing her there I let her in and we spent the next day and part of Wednesday just chilling out and relaxing til her train home Wednesday afternoon. It was a lovely surprise to see her and I'm glad she came up to see me, I'd been missing her quite a bit...

That's pretty much all I've got to say for now. I'm home for two weeks with a bit more work to do than I planned on having to do but hey ho. I didn't have time to take any photos of the weekend but as soon as I get the chance to steal them from people I will and put them up on here.

Catch ya later folks

Chocolate's over-rated anyway...

So I'm still up in Lincoln. It's Easter and it's lonely. Oh well.

I finally finished reading the Lord of the Rings! I think the reason it took me so long is the fact that I know the films so well and so I knew what was going to happen in the books anyway. Not that the films are 100% true to the books but they're pretty damn close in most of the key aspects and quite a few of the smaller ones too. As I've said before they're some awesome books and it's easy to see why they're so inspirational to modern day authors. I don't really have much else to say about it that I haven't said already really...

I have now moved on to reading Brent Weeks' "The Blinding Knife" which is the second book in the Lightbringer trilogy. This author is a fan of trilogies it would seem but he does it well so it's all good. Staying true to the writing style we've come to know and love he manages to juggle multiple character storylines effortlessly and combine them all so perfectly with a number of climatic events throughout the series. One of the things I love about his books is the plot that gets ever deeper as you go along and boils to a head so brilliantly at the end. You get to a point when you think "How can things get any more complicated?" and then boom, another layer of intrigue and depth is added to the story and you're left sitting there thinking "But I'd just gotten a handle on everything! You devious bastard!". I know its quite a common way of writing a story to add layer upon layer of deeper plot and intrigue to really grip the reader's attention but there's something about the way Brent Weeks does it that makes it special. The way he weaves all of the individual characters together so perfectly when they start having no connection to each other at all is astounding. The way the characters all start our completely isolated from one another but then come together in a binding event that none of them could have seen coming. I've read alot of books and I'm normally quite good at predicting plotlines and twists and stuff like that but the number of times I've been blindsided while reading one of Brent's books is crazy.

Some authors over use plot twists and just make the story too convoluted to follow and so you just get bored and give up whereas Brent puts them in with just enough space to keep you gripped but not so often as to make things too twisted and difficult to follow and they're never too predictable to make you think "Wow...really...?" they're always gripping and just pull you deeper into the damned book which is a real bastard when you've got work that you should really be doing but can't seem to put the book down. "Just one more chapter." is a thought that's crossed my mind far more than once while reading any of his books. I started reading The Blinding Knife about 3 days ago and I'm already 227 pages into it...kinda slow but I've had other things that have drawn my attention away from really burning through the story and it's a good thing too. I don't wanna read it so fast that I get bored and pissed off because the third one isn't out yet and I can't read it to find out how everything ends. That suspense is going to kill me as it did for the Night Angel Trilogy and I bought all 3 of them at once.

Bottom line is I'd recommend every one of Brent's workings as fantastic pieces of work. They grip the reader from start to finish and always leave you wanting to read more.

That's pretty much all I've got to say for now. LSD is this coming weekend so anyone in the Lincoln area feel free to come over to the university sports centre to see what it is we actually do in Ultimate Frisbee. The more the merrier and we're never shy to teach people.

Catch ya later folks