I went off to meet up with my Sis and Viv in Swansea on Thursday night, the drive out there and around the bay was fantastic, beautiful scenery in wonderful weather that I don’t often get to see around Cardiff. I think the comparison was made between the bay and Roath Park by Viv, but to be honest, there isn’t much of one. After a full on carvery meal and everyone feeling like veritable fat jabba’s, we drove over to the mumbles to munch on ice-cream (follow the logic there). I unfortunately had a bit of an accident involving a bit of toffee however, which meant I had to make the trip back to Somerset yesterday in order the remedy the situation with the help of my dentist.

My parents were just about to leave for the bank holiday weekend when I finally managed to visit them and they requested my help to shift their caravan. This proved to be a bit more taxing than it sounds, due to the large bog that had now formed in the general vicinity of where the caravan is stored. After a lot of wheel-spins, a domestic between my parents (a trip to Yeovil wouldn’t be a trip to Yeovil without) and a swift handbrake application on the caravan by me, they were on their way.

I had hoped to make the Bass Invaders show at the union last night, due to it featuring the mighty Q-Bert, for whom it was the last night of his UK tour. It probably would of been amazing, but tickets were not going to be about and I was far too tired.

One good thing did come of the trip though, I finally managed to get some new vinyl boxes which my dad had made up for me. This now means I have a three-tier system for holding my records and my room has a scent of fresh cut mdf. It also means I need to be about 2 ft taller to have easy access to my decks. Oh well…

Every time I visit UGC Cardiff it brings back terrible memories of when I went to see ‘Matrix Revolutions’ last year. A bit psyched by the fact that it may of be able to redeem the tragedy which was ‘Matrix Reloaded’, I went to see it with some of the Glamorgan crew on its day of release. All was going as well as could be expected, until when 3/4 way through we were treated to a bit of a fight sequence and aerial acrobatics, which didn’t really seem to fit with what we had been watching, but could of been some sort of trendy ‘dream sequence’. It became a bit clearer after 30 seconds or so of this show that this really didn’t make any sense and in fact when people started breaking through walls, talking backwards and walking upside down it was downright obvious what had happened. However, we were subjected to a further 1-2 mins of it before anyone bothered to sort it out, which took 20 or so minutes. Obviously we already knew what was going to happen when the scene was finally shown – we knew it back to front (ho ho). It’s just as well the film was rubbish or else I would of been really annoyed.

This evening however was a good experience at UGC, there’s a first. I went along to an advance screening of ‘The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’ with Jon, Cathy and Katie. Keeping true to the original radio show, book and tv show’s got to be a hard job by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it was pulled off rather well. I like the way that we expanded on what we knew of the Vogon’s (“You’re supposed to Stop!”) and revealing Deep Thought was a bit of a couch potato, this always appeals. Marvin was also fantastic – though I disagree with the fact that some people seem to think he was under-used, anything more would of been too much. Admittedly it did feel a bit crammed and I agree that if you hadn’t read, heard or seen any of Adams’ stuff before you would probably be fairly lost. I wish in fact I hadn’t read the book so recently, it spoilt so much of the film as a lot of the script was word for word from it.

After this I went off for a housegroup social in the Crwys’s skittle alley..which was ever so slightly disappointing. I spent five minutes in the pub trying to find it (which involved pretending I needed the loo), as it was absolutely rammed to the brim. I guess I need to play it with mates back home who enjoy the more vicious version whereby throwing balls is permitted when skittles are being arranged or the balls are still being placed in the other end of the run. Much more exciting….

Here’s some interesting information I found about fellow Cardiff Vineyard’ers*.

• Jon Mathais was the producer of the New Romantics and was cut from the Sony Open in Hawaii on the 2005 PGA Tour.
• Jonathan Morgan holds both a successful ‘modeling’ career and since 1999 has also been a Conservative Assembly Member.
• Zoe Morgan once featured in a Dr Who Episode (Season 25, Episode 152 -’ Remembrance of the Daleks’) as ‘Girl’.
• Sarah Louise Moore graduated the University of Ulster with a 2.1 in Sociology in 2004.
• Neil Morgan was a veteran editor and columnist on the San Diego news for 54 years, before being fired in April last year.
• Amy Larkin plays high energy contra dance music upon her fiddle.
• Viv Nicholls is a department of conservation biodiversity officer and plays violin for Finn McCool on the side in New Zealand.
• Joe Belcher was in ‘An American Werewolf in London’ as a truck driver and more recently featured on ‘Last of the Summer Wine’.
• Mark Evans is a baritone and qualified vet who writes wildly about pet care.
• Rob Smith is both a software engineer at OCI and a reporter for BBC radio in Kent.

*Disclaimer: These are all actually lies….do you believe everything you read on the net?

I’ve been running around a bit like a headless chicken recently, not content with spending lots of time at uni working, I’ve been partying pretty hard as well.

Spent Friday going to Kez’s 21st birthday for a meal at Old Orleans, which was rather tasty. Bombed back to hang out with Vineyardites at Marty’z Kitchen, which we were duely moved on from to Cafe aroma, and back to mine (after a few choice insults were uttered by me) for a nice cuppa. After that, decided to go on to Sumo at the Welsh club with Aquasky and Masterblaster, once again having a fab time on my own and dancing about like a loon with drunks I don’t know. Bit of a late one was that – arriving back for 4.

After project meetings on Saturday to discuss our trip today with the other half of the PASOA project in Southampton, I didn’t have time to attend a bar-b I’d been invited too, and instead went straight over to Jon and Cathy’s for rather random games evening with lots of lego and frustrating “Guess Who” games. I was a tad upset to find that after nipping to the loo, all my passengers had defected to the dark side by going back with Jennie – the cheek! After confronting her on Sunday she also announced she’d stolen my aerial off my car! Gah!

All in all a fab weekend, though I don’t think I could keep it up every week.

Note to self 1: Games where I (or as a member of a team, ahem – Rob) lose, are rubbish, especially played against girls. That’s probably why I enjoy playing shoot-em-ups offline (or against Tim).

Note to self 2: Don’t go calling the children of your Church leaders names, not even in jest, it has a habit of getting back to them.

There’s loads of places on the net where you can view silly or stupid signs. Most of the ones I’ve seen aren’t from the UK though, and I can’t imagine them any kind of scenario, which I think would make them all the more funny. This place has loads, so many I can’t afford to look through all of them. I can’t believe I’ve missed it before.

If I had something interesting to say I would say it, but I don’t really so instead I’ll hit you with a few ebay bargains I’ve picked up of late. Currently I’m holding a rating of 166 positive, I reckon thats pretty good. Anybody else bought anything interesting off the net lately?