Tomorrow is Rebecca’s birthday. How come that always happens to me? I meet a girl and *BOOM* it’s her birthday! o_O

We’re going to go out in Notts with a bunch of her friends. Anyone else is welcome to come along or whatever. 🙂 Just give me a call or something.

Tonight we’re going to go to Chico’s to have a Mexican meal. They don’t do quesdaillas. 🙁 Looks like I’ll just have to make do with enchiladas instead. Oh well.

I made the mistake of telling Rebecca what time we’re supposed to arrive, when I should have told her half an hour earlier so we’re actually on time.

I went to get some more stuff from my mum’s house today and found that Justin has hit her again (Sunday morning and last night). She has a black eye, a cut on her head, a cut by her nose, a bloodshot eye, bruises on both arms, both hips, and under her right arm. He came to the door while I was there and Carly took the baseball bat off me this time. Justin didn’t hang around either.

I’ve convinced my mum to get it sorted once and for all. A police officer should see her in the next couple of days and we’ll get this problem solved once and for all. I hate the guy. If she doesn’t get this sorted I won’t be able to see her any more because I’m so close to just finding him and killing him it’s unreal. I’ve never been so angry in my entire life. Ever. If I do anything to him I’ll end up in prison, losing my job, etc. etc. So I can’t afford to be knowing it’s happening any more if she’s not doing anything about it.

Aaanyway, happy thoughts. Put on a brave face and continue. 🙂

I went to my dad’s for lunch yesterday and ended up clearing out some boxes of stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years. I condensed about 5 boxes into 2 small boxes of stuff and put them up in the attic at my dad’s house. I only have a few boxes of things left there now. I threw away my old Amiga 600 and all the games, a bunch of Spectrum ZX games that I still had kicking around despite not owning a Spectrum ZX any more.

I also found a bunch of school merits, which I don’t remember getting, certificates for stuff, tickets from concerts and sports events. I kept all those. 🙂

It’s quite good going through all that stuff. Nice to remember certain things. For instance: I’d completely forgotten that I’d been to Nottingham Arena to see System Of A Down. I totally forgot that I’ve seen them live, in fact. Weird. 🙂

Just a few more boxes there, and a ton of stuff at my mum’s left to go through. 😐

I’ve been living here for just about three weeks, pretty much. It’s awesome. I’m properly settled in now, I think. Still got things at my mum’s house, but not much that I need. I’m used to the whole journey in the morning and afternoons. I’m not missing many parts of living in Mansfield. It’s weird being away from my friends again, even though it’s only 14 miles, I kinda get the feeling it’ll end up being roughly equivalent to living in California in its effects.

It feels like everything at work is changing. People are leaving, no new people seem to be coming in, and god knows what next year will be like. I’m hoping to get the forms for my teacher training sorted by my manager in the next week, then work out some assistant teaching with a member of staff or two. 🙂

Last night was a good night out in Notts with a whole load of people from work. Waqas, Vlad, the Emmas, Paul, and Marc all turned up for varying amounts of time. I also met a couple more of Rebecca’s workmates, Phil (from Mansfield: Mansphil), and Martin. I met Rebecca and her friends in the Malt Cross, then we met all my workmates in the Pit and Pendulum, then headed off to Rock City. Everyone got in this time. 🙂 I saw Will in there again, so that was cool, until he asked if Rebecca is Bexx… Smooth.

We got a taxi home, but managed to get totally soaked anyway because of the lovely English summer weather. 😐

We’ve just had our shopping delivered by ASDA, so that’s saved a bunch of pissing about, and carrying bags on the bus and stuff. I love that it’s an option. 😀

I had an urge the other day to see if the numbers I always used to use on the National Lottery would have ever won me anything big since I stopped playing it.

Luckily for me “the drawn numbers”:http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/results/resultsHistory/resultsHistoryDownload.do since the beginning of the lottery in the UK are available on the website. 🙂

I wrote a Perl script that put the numbers in a database, then another script to see how many times I got 3 or more numbers. I’d be almost £1000 down if I’d played every lottery since it began in 1994. I’d never have had more than 3 numbers in over 1200 draws!

What a waste of money it is.

For the last two weeks I’ve been living in Notts. Rebecca owns a keyboard and I’ve spent a few hours playing around over the time I’ve been here. I’m actually quite surprised and pleased by the results. 🙂

For those of you reading this on Facebook where Flash doesn’t get added to the notes “this YouTube video”:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LK8zq345K-U is above on “my blog”:http://essteeyou.com.

Obviously I’ll have to get better than that, but the mistakes were just due to nerves. :\ I’d played Damien Rice – 9 Crimes perfectly before “the recording” began.

I got a set of bump keys yesterday. I used one to open a front-door lock that I bought from B&Q in about 20 seconds a little while ago.

The toughest part was to get the spring that I used to reset the key automatically. Turns out the spring in a hole punch is more secure than your house. 😛

I actually bothered writing a new comic strip for “PlainsStupidity”:http://plainsstupidity.com the other day. 🙂 Take a look and leave a comment there or something. 😀

I catch the bus from the closest stop to where I live, surprisingly. Unfortunately I catch it at 08:02 on the way out of Nottingham, meaning there are usually 2 other buses arriving at the same stop at the same time. Mine never seems to be the first one in the convoy either. This morning I stuck my hand out to signal the bus and, obviously, the fist bus indicated and pulled in. My bus driver decided her best course of action was not to slow down and see if I wanted to get on her bus, but to drive right by without another thought.

Luckily for me I expected this, because it happened on Monday too. I ran and caught her attention before she’d gone too far by the stop, and she let me on. On Monday the driver wouldn’t let me on at all, even though it’s his fault he didn’t stop. Instead of waiting around I legged it down the hill, around the roundabout and to the college bus stop before the bus covered the same distance and then he let me on.

I really do think there has to be some better way of signalling the bus you want than the old 1800s method of sticking your hand out and hoping they get what you mean. Perhaps a button that corresponds to a destination that you press to change a signal on top of the bus stop or something… I don’t know, but there has to be a better way than this.

One of the students here is on his last day for the summer, at last. He’s been here annoying the hell out of me every day since term finished.

As I type this he’s leaving the building not to return until September! It’s such a relief!

A minute ago he asked me what the new windows would look like when they’re fitted in the IT Centre. I said “Mostly see-through.” 😀

I’ve moved to Nottingham. It became official when I brought my computer over here. I can’t leave now. 😉

It’s been great so far. There are still things to sort out, and this may well only be a temporary place to live for a few months, but I’ll be making the most of it, I think.

Rebecca and I went to do our first shop the other day at ASDA. It’s strange doing all of this stuff again. Strange, but very very good.