~~~~~~~ Friday 17th - Ducks, Doughnuts and Drizzle ~~~~~~~
Friday, well the first part of it was taken up by catching up on a little sleep. We both needed a bit more and Dan didn't have to work until 2pm so it seemed like the best plan even if it wasn't the most exciting option. So we had a snooze, got up, had coffee and I walked with him to his work then headed up towards Nelson's to meet Wez. I'd suggested we hang out for a day sometime because we were both bored at home a lot of the time and it just seemed to make sense that I go to town on Friday when Dan went to work.
We spent a short while in pub chatting then went down to get some food, because that half a fryup had worn off already and I had some major munchies. I suggested Morrison's, so I could stalk Dan while he was working, but sadly he was nowhere to be seen. I bought some nice cheap croissants and doughnuts as a sort of unhealthy alternative to brunch and we wandered off through the carpark to sit on a bench by the river.
Silly as it seems we had a good laugh just feeding the ducks and gulls that were gathered there, so when we ran out we went back to Morrison's for some more. Dan was there this time so we stayed a short while to talk to him while he didn't have much work to do, and arranged to meet him during his lunchbreak later. Wez bought doughnuts, cookies and bread so we went back down to the river for a while.
After all that we did go for a fairly long wandering through town, looking in every charity shop for a shirt I really wanted, but alas no luck. Instead we went all the way over to Tesco and back across the fields to meet Dan at 6pm. It was a nice day, walking and talking, it did rain a little but not for long which was good. When we were going to meet Dan, Wez called home for his lift back. I think he felt like he'd be a third wheel which is a shame it would've been nice to hang out with both of them for a while. It is a difficult balance to work out, especially when you're in a fairly new relationship it is so hard to enjoy each others company and not distance yourselves from the others there or make anyone awkward. Oh well... I spent a while with Dan then when he went back to work I headed home to chill out before going back to Blannie pub. I didn't stay long because I was meeting Dan from work at 10pm so we could go back and get some rest before the next day, but it was still nice to see everyone and catch up a little.
~~~~~~~ Saturday 18th - Changed Plans and a Perfect Man ~~~~~~~
Saturday was a family do at mum's. My stepdad's 60th and everyone was invited. Dan had the day off work so we'd arranged for him to come with, amazing as we'd only been going out a week and a half by that day but it's just another reason why he's so perfect. We had arranged to be picked up at about 12:30 at Tesco, which is literally out the door and through a gate, but my stepbrother was running a little late. This wasn't too bad a thing when you consider how long it can take Dan to get ready. Hard to believe a guy could spend so much time!
We met Paul and his long term boyfriend Andy in the carpark when they eventually called to say they were there, then had to make a stop at Andy's brother's so he could get his hair done by his sister in law. When we arrived we found we were some of the first to get there, and mum was in the kitchen working her usual magic with a spread of food. Various step-family arrived, and to be honest I didn't know them well, in fact some of them I'd only met once or twice at christmas gatherings so I felt a little awkward at times. Pint of cider helped there I think!
It was a nice day, though on and off raining, and we had barbecue burgers and a few drinks, then my stepdad went to walk the dogs in the evening and mum did the cake for when he got back. It was insane to try and do but she had 60 candles in a huge flat carrot cake and tried to light them all - by the time we got 2/3 done the long lighter had run out and we were frantically using matches, trying not to burn ourselves and watching as the first candle lit burnt down halfway. I was tasked with handing out the champagne when birthday boy got back, then the cake when it was cut. It was brilliant carrot and walnut cake, and the rose bubbly was rather delicious too, but after all that and the food earlier I felt completely stuffed!
We spent a lot of the day sat in the garden talking to who I think are step-cousins or something like that, and it was just so nice. Dan was doing more talking than me, and everyone liked him and approved of him. In fact, when we walked through the door, mum took one look at him and said to me "you've got the wrong one, this chap looks normal!" - a funny joke but with the slight undertone there of approval because at family gatherings my ex would either not attend or sit there and say nothing. He had a bit of an extreme fear of people, social getherings and anywhere outside his house really. Agoraphobia is nothing to be laughed at. Anyway enough about him, Dan was the opposite, confident but not cocky and just generally nice and friendly with everyone. Perfect!
Mum and my half brother David
My stepdad, Dave, blowing out 60 candles on a huge cake.
Dan and I outside at the drinks table.
Watching the candles being lit, wondering if it's contributing to global warming...
Dan and I in the kitchen, looking "normal"So Saturday night then, well we had planned on the usual DHIBBS night, but we got a message from Zac that he had other plans involving a girl he met in Salisbury. We had already arranged to be dropped off at the pub when we got our lift back so we chilled out there for a while. After a bit, everyone else there decided they wanted to go to the Milldown to carry the night on. We were a bit tired from the day, and as we'd been drinking earlier hadn't had anything at the pub and subsequently sobered up. I was also still in a dress and heeled boots which lead to me having a slight slip in a pothole in the road. I twisted my ankle a little but jarred my left hip and shoulder painfully and we ended up using it as an excuse to leave. I didn't want to ruin the night for Dan but he was more insistent than I was about getting a lift and leaving not long after we got to the Milldown. Being sober isn't as fun when you're around tipsy people who are still drinking and hanging out in a dark park. I think we both felt a bit let down by the lack of DHIBBS too so weren't really in the mood for much.
Dan called his sister to give us a lift home, and I stayed another night with him to the Sunday. It was nice to be able to relax when we got in, I was very grateful to be able to sit down comfy and take off boots - I'm not used to wearing them too often so they can have a habit of rubbing and making my feet rather sore.
~~~~~~~ Sunday 19th - Blissful Balance ~~~~~~~
Sunday we slept in a bit, went in to town to find out when Dan was working Monday and spent the day relaxing. He bought another XBOX360 controller and CoD4 in town and went up to his sister's for a cuppa. He had intended to play some games with her but she had other things to do, so we had tea and coffee with some conversation then got a lift back to leave her to it. Before we left, Dan borrowed a few of her games for us to play when we got in, so we had an evening of gaming and chilling which was just perfect. We pondered going out but we both agreed we'd been out the night before and it's just as nice to be in some nights as it is to go out - a perfect balance.
First of all, we played Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, fantastic! He's a comic fan, and I'm more of a MK girl so we chose the characters correspondingly. I wasn't too good at first and got my ass handed to me but after a short while I was picking up the moves and controls easily and getting in some good wins with Raiden and Kitana. After that we moved on to CoD4. I had great fun, being the more experienced player here, and even switched from my usual run and gun tactics to outsniping the sniper on his favourite maps.
When he got a bit bored of being beaten, we went on to Left4Dead. I have been in love with this game since I first played it on the top of a bus on a PC at the Leipzig Games Convention last year, but hadn't played it since. We played through co-op on the story where you are trying to find the airport. So many amazing moments! The first time I saw a tank I ended up screaming a quiet warcry and unloading an entire clip or 2 of assault rifle rounds into its head before it died. The first witch we came across got disturbed by one of the 2 AI controlled characters and killed Dan, leaving me with little health when it was dead to go and find him. Boomers puked and hordes piled in on top of us, but together we beat them back.
The AI were incredibly irritating though. One time, we saw a witch in the distance and had a plan. I stood next to Dan and trained my sights on her ready to shoot at a second's notice, he had the plan to throw a bomb to damage and wake her then we'd fire and hopefully take her down before she reached us. Well, that was a great plan until just after he threw the pipe bomb, one of the AI ran right in to my line of fire so I couldn't get a shot off at her. Stupid artificial "intelligence".
The other classic moment was in the baggage handling room of the airport. We could hear a tank but couldn't see where it was until Dan poked his head through a small hole in the wall and saw the bastard. It ran towards this really small hole in the wall, and we were shooting thinking it'd be fine, it could never make it through a hole that small...well, we were wrong. I ended up running backwards facing forwards with the tank coming straight after me unloading clip after clip into its mangled head, desperately reloading until it went down at my feet. Epic.
We completed the level and moved on to some Army of Two, which wasn't bad but it washardly special. We didn't have enough memory to save though, so when the system rebooted itself we just couldn't be bothered to do the whole tutorial all over again. By this time, it was getting fairly late into the night so we decided to get some sleep as Dan had to work the next day. Admittedly not until later but still needed some rest and I was fairly tired too. Such a good night though, finding that balance between going out and staying in and knowing we could have as much fun together either way. Perfect!
~~~~~~~ The Week ~~~~~~~
There really wasn't much interesting in the early part of the week. Dan was working and I was staying home making videos from DHIBBS and getting them online. We had a good few games of Metal Gear Online with some of the minions one evening, which was meant to be a special game for Alex but it turns out he was going out or something and I was tired so only played for an hour - sorry guys!
Wednesday night I went sailing with Dad, not much worth mentioning, it was a fairly breezy day so I was out on the trapeze while the boat leaned further and further out of the water in the strong gusts, but no injuries this time! We came 5th out of 15 in the race which was fairly good, and I had fun with Dad which is the most important thing really. After that I had decided to go down to pub see what was happening, I had no idea that Dan would be there in fact I thought he'd probably be at home, but then he didn't have work Thursday so went out instead.
He was surprised to see me, despite the fact I'd sent a message to tell him I was going pub if he was around, but I think it was a nice surprise. We went to his sister's that night and stayed there instead. We were up fairly late though with her and Tristan playing Rock Band. I played drums for the first time on medium and got 89%! I kept forgetting which thing I was hitting sometimes and the pedal, but didn't do too bad apparently. We played some CoD4 as well with all 4 controllers, and I can safely report I wiped the floor with the lot of them :) sniping, knifing, running and gunning, I won all matches apart from 1 where Dan only just beat me by a couple of kills. Incredible fun but I think I win a prize for being most hated!
Thursday morning we woke early to Dan's nieces, bless them. One's 8 the other's 5, both girls and both full of energy in the summer holidays. After a few hours keeping them amused while Dan's sister slept in, we left to go to Poole/Bournemouth with Zac. I didn't know they'd made plans beforehand to do this but they were happy enough for me to join anyway. We started by going in to Poole to go to the comic store for Dan and a few other places. We had a quick pasty from Greggs too which served as a fair enough breakfast!
When we were done in Poole we moved on to Bournemouth and sat in the sunshine in the park with ice cream. Zac left for a while and went his own way, we both felt a bit bad because he was being more of a 3rd wheel again despite driving us down there and us both enjoying his company as well. It's even more difficult to juggle the 3rd wheel effect when the 3rd person also has completely different interests and would rather go clothes shopping when all you want to do is go to Game, bookshops and the odd music shop.
The good thing was though that we did meet up again, and though we briefly seperated after that we generally stuck together all having a giggle and ending up in a couple of shops to suit everyone's taste. Dan and I went in to Game as well, because I saw a sign for staff wanted, but then we got distracted by Guitar Hero Metallica. I wanted to try out some more drumming, but standing up didn't help. I lost concentration a couple of times and accidentally hit the stand instead of the kit! When we turned around though there was a cute little kid watching us in awe. We did try to get Zac there to play the bass, but sadly it seemed like the connection on it was broken, so we turned around and handed the plastic axe to our little fan who looked like he'd just been given a real guitar by his heroes, bless his little cotton socks we were only playing on medium!
Still, Thursday night came around and we were invited to Dan's friend's housewarming, a small gathering in their new flat. We went over a bit late, and didn't stay long, but again had some fun gaming there. They had a PS3, and were playing MotorStorm. I'm not usually that good at racing games but after watching 2 of the guys fail one ticket badly (it was a bike race, and they were dreadful) I took up the controller and won an easy 2nd place to earn him the next race. We didn't play for long, because after the Wii went on with MarioKart and a couple of the guys enjoyed some old school balloon matches on there. We went straight back after that, Dan had agreed to let me stay over if I could make sure he was going to get up and be at work by 7am. Early shifts are a bitch.
Friday morning I went on home, and caught up with the blog I posted yesterday as well as spending a good portion of time watching the entire first series of Spaced on DVD. Time well spent, but spent all the same! I did go over to Dan's in the evening, as I mentioned then, and we played some more games. I was a fairly even match for him now on MK vs DCU, but still mopped the floor with him on CoD4. He was tired after a while and we went downstairs for a coffee. We agreed I'd go pub for a couple of hours while he got some rest there, then he was going to let me back in if I sent him a message when I was outside. Worked out fairly well, except his coffee kicked in while I was out and he was still awake and reading when I got there. We planned on sleep again with an early start for him, but ended up not sleeping until nearly 1am!
For once, this morning, I was the one who found it hard to wake up. We were warm and cuddled and it made no sense to leave that...but, well, I had to get up and he had to work so I'm now back home, finally caught up on blog and ready to finish videos and prepare for DHIBBS tonight.
Oh and one thing I forgot to mention, when I turned up yesterday I was led upstairs then told to put my hands out and close my eyes. Bless him, he'd been to town and bought me one of the Star Wars comic compilations. The Sith War, the 3rd in the compilation series following the stories of Exar Kun, Ulic Qel Droma and Nomi Sunrider, was one I'd already read but greatly loved. I will have to get the others so he can read them. As he said to me, it's where our 2 passions meet in the middle. His love of graphic novels and comics and my love of Star Wars. Not that I don't like graphic novels and he doesn't like Star Wars, that's far from true, but we each have our area of expertise and geekdom which in these we can share. If he gets any more perfect I'm sure I'll wake up and realise this isn't real because nothing so good could be true, right?
~~~~~~~Thought of the Day ~~~~~~~
Balance, trust and communication are the 3 most important things in a relationship. Without one the whole thing falls apart, but keep all three and you're on a road to heaven paved with gold.
Dan called his sister to give us a lift home, and I stayed another night with him to the Sunday. It was nice to be able to relax when we got in, I was very grateful to be able to sit down comfy and take off boots - I'm not used to wearing them too often so they can have a habit of rubbing and making my feet rather sore.
~~~~~~~ Sunday 19th - Blissful Balance ~~~~~~~
Sunday we slept in a bit, went in to town to find out when Dan was working Monday and spent the day relaxing. He bought another XBOX360 controller and CoD4 in town and went up to his sister's for a cuppa. He had intended to play some games with her but she had other things to do, so we had tea and coffee with some conversation then got a lift back to leave her to it. Before we left, Dan borrowed a few of her games for us to play when we got in, so we had an evening of gaming and chilling which was just perfect. We pondered going out but we both agreed we'd been out the night before and it's just as nice to be in some nights as it is to go out - a perfect balance.
First of all, we played Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, fantastic! He's a comic fan, and I'm more of a MK girl so we chose the characters correspondingly. I wasn't too good at first and got my ass handed to me but after a short while I was picking up the moves and controls easily and getting in some good wins with Raiden and Kitana. After that we moved on to CoD4. I had great fun, being the more experienced player here, and even switched from my usual run and gun tactics to outsniping the sniper on his favourite maps.
When he got a bit bored of being beaten, we went on to Left4Dead. I have been in love with this game since I first played it on the top of a bus on a PC at the Leipzig Games Convention last year, but hadn't played it since. We played through co-op on the story where you are trying to find the airport. So many amazing moments! The first time I saw a tank I ended up screaming a quiet warcry and unloading an entire clip or 2 of assault rifle rounds into its head before it died. The first witch we came across got disturbed by one of the 2 AI controlled characters and killed Dan, leaving me with little health when it was dead to go and find him. Boomers puked and hordes piled in on top of us, but together we beat them back.
The AI were incredibly irritating though. One time, we saw a witch in the distance and had a plan. I stood next to Dan and trained my sights on her ready to shoot at a second's notice, he had the plan to throw a bomb to damage and wake her then we'd fire and hopefully take her down before she reached us. Well, that was a great plan until just after he threw the pipe bomb, one of the AI ran right in to my line of fire so I couldn't get a shot off at her. Stupid artificial "intelligence".
The other classic moment was in the baggage handling room of the airport. We could hear a tank but couldn't see where it was until Dan poked his head through a small hole in the wall and saw the bastard. It ran towards this really small hole in the wall, and we were shooting thinking it'd be fine, it could never make it through a hole that small...well, we were wrong. I ended up running backwards facing forwards with the tank coming straight after me unloading clip after clip into its mangled head, desperately reloading until it went down at my feet. Epic.
We completed the level and moved on to some Army of Two, which wasn't bad but it washardly special. We didn't have enough memory to save though, so when the system rebooted itself we just couldn't be bothered to do the whole tutorial all over again. By this time, it was getting fairly late into the night so we decided to get some sleep as Dan had to work the next day. Admittedly not until later but still needed some rest and I was fairly tired too. Such a good night though, finding that balance between going out and staying in and knowing we could have as much fun together either way. Perfect!
~~~~~~~ The Week ~~~~~~~
There really wasn't much interesting in the early part of the week. Dan was working and I was staying home making videos from DHIBBS and getting them online. We had a good few games of Metal Gear Online with some of the minions one evening, which was meant to be a special game for Alex but it turns out he was going out or something and I was tired so only played for an hour - sorry guys!
Wednesday night I went sailing with Dad, not much worth mentioning, it was a fairly breezy day so I was out on the trapeze while the boat leaned further and further out of the water in the strong gusts, but no injuries this time! We came 5th out of 15 in the race which was fairly good, and I had fun with Dad which is the most important thing really. After that I had decided to go down to pub see what was happening, I had no idea that Dan would be there in fact I thought he'd probably be at home, but then he didn't have work Thursday so went out instead.
He was surprised to see me, despite the fact I'd sent a message to tell him I was going pub if he was around, but I think it was a nice surprise. We went to his sister's that night and stayed there instead. We were up fairly late though with her and Tristan playing Rock Band. I played drums for the first time on medium and got 89%! I kept forgetting which thing I was hitting sometimes and the pedal, but didn't do too bad apparently. We played some CoD4 as well with all 4 controllers, and I can safely report I wiped the floor with the lot of them :) sniping, knifing, running and gunning, I won all matches apart from 1 where Dan only just beat me by a couple of kills. Incredible fun but I think I win a prize for being most hated!
Thursday morning we woke early to Dan's nieces, bless them. One's 8 the other's 5, both girls and both full of energy in the summer holidays. After a few hours keeping them amused while Dan's sister slept in, we left to go to Poole/Bournemouth with Zac. I didn't know they'd made plans beforehand to do this but they were happy enough for me to join anyway. We started by going in to Poole to go to the comic store for Dan and a few other places. We had a quick pasty from Greggs too which served as a fair enough breakfast!
When we were done in Poole we moved on to Bournemouth and sat in the sunshine in the park with ice cream. Zac left for a while and went his own way, we both felt a bit bad because he was being more of a 3rd wheel again despite driving us down there and us both enjoying his company as well. It's even more difficult to juggle the 3rd wheel effect when the 3rd person also has completely different interests and would rather go clothes shopping when all you want to do is go to Game, bookshops and the odd music shop.
The good thing was though that we did meet up again, and though we briefly seperated after that we generally stuck together all having a giggle and ending up in a couple of shops to suit everyone's taste. Dan and I went in to Game as well, because I saw a sign for staff wanted, but then we got distracted by Guitar Hero Metallica. I wanted to try out some more drumming, but standing up didn't help. I lost concentration a couple of times and accidentally hit the stand instead of the kit! When we turned around though there was a cute little kid watching us in awe. We did try to get Zac there to play the bass, but sadly it seemed like the connection on it was broken, so we turned around and handed the plastic axe to our little fan who looked like he'd just been given a real guitar by his heroes, bless his little cotton socks we were only playing on medium!
Still, Thursday night came around and we were invited to Dan's friend's housewarming, a small gathering in their new flat. We went over a bit late, and didn't stay long, but again had some fun gaming there. They had a PS3, and were playing MotorStorm. I'm not usually that good at racing games but after watching 2 of the guys fail one ticket badly (it was a bike race, and they were dreadful) I took up the controller and won an easy 2nd place to earn him the next race. We didn't play for long, because after the Wii went on with MarioKart and a couple of the guys enjoyed some old school balloon matches on there. We went straight back after that, Dan had agreed to let me stay over if I could make sure he was going to get up and be at work by 7am. Early shifts are a bitch.
Friday morning I went on home, and caught up with the blog I posted yesterday as well as spending a good portion of time watching the entire first series of Spaced on DVD. Time well spent, but spent all the same! I did go over to Dan's in the evening, as I mentioned then, and we played some more games. I was a fairly even match for him now on MK vs DCU, but still mopped the floor with him on CoD4. He was tired after a while and we went downstairs for a coffee. We agreed I'd go pub for a couple of hours while he got some rest there, then he was going to let me back in if I sent him a message when I was outside. Worked out fairly well, except his coffee kicked in while I was out and he was still awake and reading when I got there. We planned on sleep again with an early start for him, but ended up not sleeping until nearly 1am!
For once, this morning, I was the one who found it hard to wake up. We were warm and cuddled and it made no sense to leave that...but, well, I had to get up and he had to work so I'm now back home, finally caught up on blog and ready to finish videos and prepare for DHIBBS tonight.
Oh and one thing I forgot to mention, when I turned up yesterday I was led upstairs then told to put my hands out and close my eyes. Bless him, he'd been to town and bought me one of the Star Wars comic compilations. The Sith War, the 3rd in the compilation series following the stories of Exar Kun, Ulic Qel Droma and Nomi Sunrider, was one I'd already read but greatly loved. I will have to get the others so he can read them. As he said to me, it's where our 2 passions meet in the middle. His love of graphic novels and comics and my love of Star Wars. Not that I don't like graphic novels and he doesn't like Star Wars, that's far from true, but we each have our area of expertise and geekdom which in these we can share. If he gets any more perfect I'm sure I'll wake up and realise this isn't real because nothing so good could be true, right?
~~~~~~~Thought of the Day ~~~~~~~
Balance, trust and communication are the 3 most important things in a relationship. Without one the whole thing falls apart, but keep all three and you're on a road to heaven paved with gold.
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