I had my first ever driving lesson a little while ago. I started to get really nervous this afternoon while I was at work. I don’t know what for now I’ve had the lesson. I didn’t stall, make any mistakes, crash the car, hurt, or kill anyone. 😀

I got a beginner’s guide to a car, which was kinda condescending, but ok. I only drove a little bit along an empty road, so I actually drove more in Germany, twice, than I did today.

My instructor is a nice guy. Lots of stories to tell, very helpful. I can already tell he cares about his pupils, so that’s good. I wouldn’t want to be learning from a blind guy. (At least you got the joke, Dave.)

Now I’m back at home I really want to go out driving again. Blah. I’ve got to sort out my license and a bunch of other crap as soon as possible because I can’t sit a test with my old address on it… I also have no clue where the paper part of my license is. A trip to town is in order on Saturday morning. Any takers?

I booked my first ever driving lessons today. Every Wednesday for 10 weeks starting in 2 days. 18:15 is the start time, so it might be a good idea to stay away from the A60 around that time. 😉

I can’t fricking wait. I better pass pretty soon.

I went to B&Q again today to buy some more locks. I bought 2 small Master locks, a medium-sized Master lock, and then a proper ERA door lock.

So far I’ve picked the two small Masters and raked the medium one (video). I haven’t opened the ERA one yet, but I’m feeling lucky! 😀

Today at work was mostly spent playing little jokes on James.

First I played around with his MySpace account a little bit, then–when James was out of the room–Adam sent an email from James’ account to a co-worker of ours confessing his undying love and asking for a date. She turned him down. When he got the email it was absolutely hilarious. He actually chased me around the office with a screwdriver in his hand. Forget, of course, that it was Adam. Nobody _ever_ believes me. 😀

After work James and I went to Il Rosso for the first time. The last time I went in there it was called The Plough, that was quite a few years ago. It’s the second-closest pub to my house, too. It’s quite nice in there, actually. I picked (haha, geddit?) up my new lock-picks on the way to the pub and they’re fricking coooool.

I’ve spent all evening on the computer playing about with a little bit of web design, updating sites, fixing my RSS feed, and listening to music in between lock-picking failures.

Sandra spoke to me at one point and told me about a guy who was hitting on her a lot at a party she was at last night. He has a girlfriend, and Sandra has me. He knew this, of course, so I decided to send him a message. About 5 minutes later I had his details and I’d sent him a message. Now he’ll just have to translate it into German. I hope he gets the point and learns to think about what he’s saying, at least to Sandra.

The message I sent was god-damn _polite_ compared to what I had in mind to start with, but let’s forget about that. 😀

the co-worker I’ve had since I started at college–but have never actually met–is going to be coming back to work from the 5th of February, meaning that James will probably only be at college until the end of February.

Adam is also looking at moving departments within the college. If they both leave then it’ll be totally lame. Hopefully Adam will get the job he wants, and then James will be able to free the open spot at work, but who knows how it’ll work out?

Today I picked 2 locks. One was the one I picked twice yesterday and the second was a single-pin lock that was being used to make our jobs slower at work. Well, _no more_!

I picked the lock in about half a second, and didn’t even notice because I heard someone coming into the centre, so I jumped down quickly. When I looked back up I noticed the lock was open. Ridiculously simple.

I got home from the pub a little while ago. When I walked into my room it was strangely quiet. My computer wasn’t making any noise. “Oh crap.” I thought to myself “My computer’s broken.”

A few seconds later I remembered that this was pretty much the first day in _forever_ that I hadn’t actually left it on all day while I was out! 😀

I got a little lock-picking set today. My mum brought it up to work for me.

Within 2 minutes I’d managed to unlock one of the padlocks I’ve been unsuccessfully trying with an alan key and a paper-clip for the last 2 days.

Awesome stuff.

It’s snowing outside right now and has been doing for a while. It’s actually settling on the ground this time though. It did snow a couple of times on Sunday, but not for long enough to settles, plus the ground was wet then. I’m hoping it keeps this up all night and there’s 6 feet on the ground and I can stay at home, but I doubt that. 🙁

I’ve been watching Heroes for the last few minutes and the guy called Mohinder just said to the guy who plays Mr. Bennet:

“And who are you to judge? In fact, who are you period”

So the first person to comment below explaining why that’s a stupid thing to say wins… Respect.

Yesterday was a busy day for me.

It started off kinda slowly. Before too long I decided to go to B&Q to buy some padlocks and some alan keys (lame tension wrench) so I could learn to pick locks. I totally forgot my dad was meeting me at 2, I got a call wondering where I was while I was still browsing in B&Q. My dad picked me up from the car park a few minutes later and I explained my purchases.

I had lunch and then my dad suggested that we go to the garage, get a mallet and a chisel and take one of the padlocks to pieces. The hammer and the chisel didn’t really do too much, so my dad got his angle grinder out instead. Sparks were flying everywhere and it was awesome! 🙂 Eventually we managed to take one of the locks to pieces. I’ve now seen how some of the parts work, and how it all fits together. I still haven’t managed to pick one of them, but I haven’t spent much time trying.

My dad dropped me off at home for a little while, and then I headed off into town to meet Adam and James. We had a drink in the Wheatsheaf and then headed to Chicago Rock which was pretty much empty. We spent the entirety of our time in there putting coins into a little slot in a machine and getting nothing back for it. Quiz machines can be bastards! I want one. 🙁

After Chicago Rock we were heading towards the town centre when we bumped into about 10 or so students from college out celebrating a birthday. We all went to The Widow Frost together for about an hour or something and then to Martha’s Vineyard (a pub, for any remaining American readers of my blog) for a little while. Most of that time was spent with me and Adam trying to get James to dance without doing any such thing ourselves. It _almost_ worked.

From Martha’s we went to a place called Bar 19, where I had never been before. The cola was apparently some really horrible kind, so I only had one drink in there. James was quite wasted by this point. He had a fair amount of trouble ascending and descending the stairs the 4 or 6 times we must have done so.

After Bar 19 we headed over to Liquid and I covered the £3 each to get in, then had to pay another £1.50 to hang my coat up, even though I didn’t want to hang it up. 🙁 Adam got away without hanging his up by telling the guy that his T-shirt was crap and he didn’t want to be laughed at or something.

Liquid was quite empty to begin with, but soon got a lot busier, especially considering the roof blew off on Thursday. By the time it got really busy James was absolutely paralytic and had no idea what he was saying or doing. He walked into the female toilets by mistake at one point, much to the amusement of Adam and me. After that trip he managed to completely lose us, despite walking into me twice. He made 4 or 5 laps of Liquid (it’s a circular club) before resigning himself to a corner. He did manage to find the birthday girl on every one of his laps though…

Several times he would have just fallen face-first to the ground if Adam and I hadn’t caught him. Once he managed to fall off a stool and knock it over at the same time. Not quite sure how he managed it.

Adam dropped one of the students, James, and me back off at our homes and then got off home himself. He was in quite deep trouble when he arrived as he’d had 9 missed calls before his phone “broke.” People had apparently been calling around the hospitals for him… He must have quite a reputation with his family for that to be the first port of call. 🙂

I’m glad I didn’t have to be up this morning, but based on what I’ve heard it might have been worth it just to see James try to cope with everything. 🙂

Well, that was my Sunday. Good stuff.

I just want to take a few seconds to say good morning to James and Adam who will probably read this at work in … 6 hours and 43 minutes! 😀