Alex's even longer post thread.

[Alex]

Took a chance and bought some tickets for a concert in December. Here is hoping the whole virus thing lets it take place. Got the usual crew of motley companions I meet up with for these things interested, plus working on a few more. Anyway, we'll be going to see Alestorm with Gloryhammer and Aether Realm in support. I like the first two of those, but Aether Realm, while sounding like the diet coke of death metal are still more death metal than I care for. The growly vocals puts me off.

Got issued a laptop by work for doing work at home. Wouldn't you just know it though, the damn thing won't connect to my home internet.

Such a shame.

No doubt tech support will get it sorted out, but until then I am a free man. Not overly in love with the idea of having such a device at home. I am concerned about how that affects my work/life balance.

[Alex]

So the country is starting to come out of lockdown. Non-essential shops got to reopen yesterday. I am expecting this to last for the summer and have the feeling that come winter we'll have another wave and go back under lockdown again.

Hoping I am wrong there, but the world is full of idiots who think the virus isn't a thing.

Although stories have it that our 'beloved' prime minister has said he'd rather see dead bodies stacked high than go into a lockdown. Not proven wither he did or not and I suspect it never will be. It wouldn't surprise me if he did say it. He strikes me as being that self-centred.

[Alex]

I got word back from my med board review this afternoon. Both the doctors and my trade manager have recommended me staying on in my job.

I guess that's a relief right?

I would have been annoyed if I'd been kicked out this close to qualifying for my pension, but part of me would be so glad just to be over and done with it all.

[Alex]

Dragged the family out to Elgin this morning. We went out, had a nice breakfast and then picked up some flowers for Lilly. It was a good walk. Kristi picked up several new pairs of trainers for her increased exercise routine and I headed off to the local geekstore. Since my birthday is coming up soonish, I dropped a subtle hint about how much I wanted the Kraken model. I then picked out some other models and some paints for my monthly allowance on such things lol. We were planning a trip down to Glasgow at the end of the month, but with Covid restrictions remaining in place where we live it doesn't look like that will happen.

I also picked up Willy's Wonderland, a Nic Cage film I've been wanting to watch for a while now.

It was interesting just to get out and interact with people again. Kristi spoke to lots of people. I mostly just hung around wishing we were still back in lockdown. Still with a couple of outbreaks and this region currently having the highest infection rate in Scotland that is a wish that could easily come true.

I am going to try tanking Molten Core on my paladin tonight (not the main tank, one of the off tanks). Not something I'd overly planned on as pala tanks are a bit weak in classic. This is more aimed at when the retro servers move on to The Burning Crusade. I've ended up tanking quite a lot though so I decided I fancied trying a raid.

[Alex]

So I did the Molten Core run last night. As the other tanks were a lot better equipped and more experienced on tanking than me I didn't get to do much, but I did win all the plate healing gear that dropped. No use to me for tanking, but hey it was free loot. Shame none of the tanking gear I could have used dropped, but hey ho.

We had something happen in D&D that hadn't happened before in over 30 years of gaming. One character turned around and just straight-up murdered another party member. No particular reason behind it. The pair were alone in a room, and he hit her with his axe. No provocation, or arguments between these pair. Thanks to the aid of some magical questioning the party knows that it was murder, despite an attempt to lie about what happened and has more or less accepted a promise from the killer not to misbehave again or else!

[Alex]

Just heard that my immediate boss at work is now a father for the second time, so big congratulations to him and his family.

I have one less kickstarter to keep track of as my gnomes turned up today. Of course, another project I am backing has released something else I'd like to back (and just to be even more awkward, it is a more expensive one (I class anything over roughly £75/$100 as expensive ones, often more because of the shipping costs involved). So far I've backed 9 projects on there, 4 of which I've received. No campaigns thus far have failed to deliver (and I don't know for sure, but my guess is that if they fail you lose the money you've put into it), and I would imagine if that happens it will doubtless dent my enthusiasm for the platform.

And of course all the figures will now add to my pile of unpainted figures I need to work on.

[Alex]

Trying to avoid being called into work today (either you know the reason why I want to not work today or you don't, its not really important though). Yeah, so far I've been in twice.

I should be sitting back, drinking a slow but steady stream of alcoholic beverages.

Got the new Rob Zombie album as well as Alice Coopers one (both on vinyl) and one of the Batman cartoon movies. After the one where Catwoman ripped his clothes off and made the beast with two backs, I am waiting until Ash goes to bed before I risk putting this one on. Especially since it is rated 15+. Where is the bloody postman, I want more packages!

The election results are slowly dribbling in. Looks like the tories (spit!) did well in England while the SNP has held Scotland, much as things were before really. It is still early days though and everything could change. My prediction is that the SNP will win overall in Scotland, although with a reduced margin from the last election. They did really well the last time and it's going to be hard to keep those numbers up.

Decided to binge-watch The X-Files. Never watched them all before. I did find out that what I thought was the first episode (the one with the stretchy liver eating bloke) wasn't the first episode after all. It was something I only watched intermittently back in the day. Monster of the week shows rarely do it for me and while the X-Files did have its longer-term plotline, it just didn't grab me as much as say Supernatural did. Maybe because Supernatural also had an element of fun that was somewhat missing from the older show.

I was thinking today about the first time I told a girlfriend that I loved her. I had just walked out of the toilet of the house I was living in and she grabbed me and told me she loved me. I said the same back to her, but the problem was I was lying. I wanted to love her, but I think I knew at that point it wasn't going to work out even as I was still trying to find a way to fix things. Looking back I have no idea why I was trying to. True she was an attractive girl (although where most women have curves, she more had straight lines. I could have used her as a reversible ironing board as she was basically flat, but oh man do I love a girl with dark eyes and hair to match and her body shape should never be the deciding factor in a relationship anyway). She liked to gossip where I don't care, she wanted to stay inside and play Warcraft, whereas (while I liked playing WoW too), She wanted me to dress and look a certain way so I'd fit in more, I wanted to wear clothes that say "Hey, I don't fit in". I wanted to sometimes take a break and do something else like go outside. I couldn't even base a short term relationship on sex because I found it to be boring with her.

No idea why I kept on trying as long as I did, but it was something of a relief when she dumped me one night. Later on, I did find out that she'd expected me to do what she'd wanted in an attempt to win her back. I really shouldn't have let things go as long as they did. Shame my first I love you was wasted and meaningless, but hey ho. Then again the first time I had sex it was with someone I didn't particularly care about either. I just did it because it was offered and she was a mixture of attractive and exotic. Neither of us expected anything other than sex out of that night. Still, things have changed on that front and these days I get to do things differently with someone I do care about.

[Trevor]

Trying to avoid being called into work today (either you know the reason why I want to not work today or you don't, its not really important though). Yeah, so far I've been in twice..

Happy birthday 

[Alex]

The results of the election in Scotland left the SNP one seat short of an outright majority, but with the Greens also having a pro-independence stance it does leave a majority of seats for it. So what happens now?

Well, Bojo the fat & incompetent down in London is saying that there will not be a second referendum on independence. The SNP are saying they have the legal power to hold one without a say-so from Westminster. I wonder who is right?

Me, I just want out of this s**tshow.

We've 'upgraded' our internet so it should give us the performance we were supposed to be getting before we upgraded. We now have a stronger wifi signal throughout the house. Here is the rub though, signal strength was not the issue. It was the upload/download speeds. Not convinced this will solve anything and that we won't have to just go and do what I wanted to do in the first place (move the connection upstairs and go hard wired), but we shall see.

[Alex]

Once again the weekend approaches and I find myself unable to take full advantage of it.

I am so ready for all this covid crap to be over, although I don't see it ending any time soon alas. Will the hoarding of vaccines in a small number of countries prove to be counter-productive when the have-nots develop new strains that the current vaccines don't work against? Well, that depends on if one appears before we share the wealth. My money is on new varients sweeping the world. Just have to hope they get less dangerous, or even stay at the same threat level.

Assuming the weather isn't absolutely terrible tomorrow, I'll go out with Kristi and Ash for a long walk around town, maybe paint some more models up and make a stab at the front garden. If the weather is decent I'll dig out the hover mower (or as my American friends refer to it "the magic lawnmower"), if not then I'll hack it down with the strimmer. I hate gardening, but its starting to look like a jungle and I need to keep it in some kind of order. Then it'll be weedkiller time and plant some new grass seeds.

Blergh, I'd rather concrete over it. There is no fence around the front garden so it isn't like I can even just let Ash go out and play there without watching him all the time to make sure he doesn't wander out onto the road. Shame half the backyard is half wasted space with the slope on it.

[Alex]

Got the first xmas present bought and ordered stuff to make Kristi a festive diorama. Going with a street scene from A Christmas Carol this year, but again using 28mm figures. Giving myself plenty of time to work on it this time around. Not that I was short of time last year, but I want to make sure I do as good a job as I possibly can.

Took our first trip away from the local area yesterday. Went all the way up to Inverness, once a trip we'd take every month or two. It was a nice sunny day and we had a good time. Being a US taxpayer, Kristi had received her stimulus check (and after making sure that she was entitled to it) so we went out and stimulated the economy a bit. We did buy some stuff that was made by a US company, so I like to think that its went to its intended purpose.

Not had too much sleep the past couple of days. I could tell it was getting to me this morning. Kristi wanted to talk, just making conversation I guess but I just wanted to be left alone and she got me on grumpy mode. I got out the house for a couple of hours, but I got to thinking about Lilly-Beth and my mood really did not improve until I got back home. I did manage to get another couple of presents for Kristi. Question is, can I wait the six months between now and when I am supposed to give her them?

[Alex]

The scorching weather continues. We are all rocking a nice tan, except for Kristi who just goes straight to the burn stage. You'd think someone from a desert would cope better with the Scottish summer.

Tonight is the final night of classic Warcraft as it moves on into The Burning Crusade era. Last time that happened I was in a relationship where my partner had decided she could live off my money, not do any housework or look for a job. Every day when I came home I got to listen to her tell me how I wasn't doing enough or that she was out of my league, or she'd talk about one of her five main topics of conversation '(Warcraft', 'Immigrants Are Bad'*, 'Gossip', 'Bad Things That Had Happened To Her' and 'How Much I Suck At Relationships').

This time I am going into TBC in a relationship with someone who loves and supports me and who I hope I love and support just as much. Got the feeling that this time it will be a lot more of an enjoyable experience than the first time around.

*And this from someone who wanted to move to Australia.

We went for a long walk yesterday. When we were down the harbour I saw some guy holding up an elderly man and he looked like he was struggling. Turned out the old man's knees had just given out. Anyway, between us we carried the man back to his house (which was pretty close by). It was a shame that no one else had offered to help the old man.

[Alex]

One of the guys I've been playing WoW with is having a hell of a bad year. He's lost all his father figure type relations and friends, I've had two periods in my life when lots of people around me were dying, one when I was 27, the other when I was 42. I'd have expected those to happen closer to twenty years apart as a generational thing, but apparently, life doesn't like to run things in orderly, predictable cycles. I hope he finds the strength within to get through it all. He seems a nice guy as far as I can tell from the internet interactions we've had.

[Alex]

We have been having a run of warm weather. I wonder if we will see water shortages in England again this year if it continues? Today we are having a nice break with some rainy weather.

Kristi has been looking a bit frazzled recently so if the weather improves tomorrow I'll take the little guy out for the day, give her a break. She is just worried about everything and nothing right now.

Watching AEW again tonight. They seem to be taking on a lot of guys and girls. Everytime the WWE lets someone go, I wonder if they will turn up there.

[Alex]

Glorious weather for a Sunday. Slight waste of a good day with everything being closed today, but it does mean that everyone gets a chance to enjoy it. I remember as a kid always thinking that Sundays were the crappiest day of the week because all the shops and places where you could go do something fun were always closed and the TV was filled with dull as ditchwater religious shows like Songs of Praise.

Bloody Thora Hird and Harry Secombe.

No wonder I rejected Christianity after a childhood being bored to tears with that crap every week with an extra dose of Sunday school and church on top.

Had some nice long walks outside this week. Kristi was tired yesterday so me and Ash took a long stroll through town and down to the harbour (via several playparks of course). I love just watching him play and have fun. He certainly loves to run. Going to say he gets that from me.

We've been watching some old WCW stuff recently, from the start of Nitro. Been feeling the whole NWO angle has been overplayed already. I only really watched it towards the end of the Monday night wars when WCW was desperately throwing everything at the wall in the hope that something will stick. Interesting watching Hogan in talk segments making sure no one else gets too much talk time compared to him. They also seem to have a pretty small pool of wrestlers compared to what I saw much later. I find it interesting to watch the evolution between those times though,