It’s been a long one, but I think Pat’s come out of it feeling pretty good (Aside from this cold I’ve got, just in time to go away! - Pat) - stop being a pansy! (Oh, ok, no problem, you can enjoy your flight in the hold…- Pat) Er, I mean, oooh dear sorry to hear that!

(We’ve started this post with a side-comment extravaganza - Pat) Yeah probably not the best way to begin is it? (Nah, makes you look a little scatty and odd - Pat) Makes me, eh? This blue alien blob who somehow lives with you and is currently typing onto your keyboard, yeah? I’m the one who’s scatty and odd? (Um, shall we move on? - Pat) Yes, let’s. Take two:

Hello!

This past week has been a long one for Pat, but despite being a bit ill towards the tail end of it he’s not had too bad a week. Let’s have a look at the past few days’ worth of photos:

Monday

Yep, this has really been the theme of the past two weeks. Amazingly, Pat’s surpassed his usual lame level of gym attendance and, even I have to admit, has done pretty damned well this past two weeks. 5 times to the gym last week and 4 times this week (he was sniffling and snuffling last night so made some lame excuse about needing a lie in this morning (Boy did I… - Pat). He’s already down from 30 stone to 28 stone! (Oi! - Pat) ok ok I’ll be nice this once… he’s actually managed to lose a few kilos since the start of the year. Hopefully the snowboarding will help it keep coming off!

Tuesday

Pat’s been busy using my beautiful looks to create some custom “Squgs”, which have been dished out to some of his friends and have been making people happy (at least Pat’s hoping they have been - the reception’s been good so far, which is not at all surprising - I mean, who wouldn’t want a mug with my face on it? Eh? EH? Exactly). Pat has said cryptically that this is just the beginning of something big this year - maybe he means he’s going to be drinking lots of beer from Squgs and get back up to 30 stone again… (Yep, I think if I take a couple of T-Shirts from the suitcase I can put Squage in the hold… - Pat) I mean, er, yes! Pat’s going to do exciting things art wise this year!

Phew.

Wednesday

Ok so there’ s not actually a daily photo here. If there was one it’d probably be of the odd painting in Prezzo that he and Ruth from work were pondering over for a while. Here’s an “artist”’s impression:

Doesn’t quite do it justice somehow. (I dunno, looks about right… - Pat). Man, I think I’ll try to do some artwork this year too if that sort of thing can get bought by restaurants…

Thursday

Packing for BOARDING! Yep, as Pat ended up feeling crappy yesterday he ended up not going out to London (which was sucky as he was looking forward to a decent catchup with Andrea and Sinead (We’ll def. meet up on my return, ladies! - Pat)) he decided to make the most of his evening by packing.

As a shocking result, he actually managed to get 95% ready for a holiday with a full 36 hours to go! First time for everything… (Oi… actually, no, fair enough - Pat)

And yep, that is me indeed. And yes, I need a bath. Gonna have a snow wash next week :-)

Friday

Pat’s definitely not gonna be missing the journey to work.

So, right now… Pat’s all packed (aside from a few technical items - he’s still charging one of his camera’s batteries and is about to sort out the music on his MP3 player) and really, really looking forward to tomorrow’s day of traveling, starting at about 8:20am and ending about 12 hours later via a bus trip, an airport, a plane ride, another airport and another (long) bus ride to the picturesque resort, 2,500ft above sea level, ready for some serious boarding, chilling out and fun having. And maybe sitting in a hospital bed. (Oi! Don’t jinx it! - Pat) Hey that’s not jinxing, jinxing is saying something like “Pat will definitely, definitely not get inj”(-Ok ok ok ok ok - Pat). :-)

Have a great week and we’ll see you on the other side - plenty (and I mean plenty) of photos to come!

Toodles,

Squage (And me! - Pat)

Yo,

Pat’s been really busy (or at least that’s what he tells me… quite how “watching lots of 24 and Firefly” constitutes “being busy” is a mystery to me) so hasn’t had time (see previous comment in brackets) to blog anything.

(Look, if you must know I’ve been doing more than that - and not feeling at all creative enough to write anything of interest - Pat) This blog might not be very exciting then. (Oh, er, yeah, good point. Erm… best keep it short - Pat) Yeah…

Pat went for snowboarding lessons at the Milton Keynes XScape centre with James and Leanne from work, plus two of James’ mates (Becks and James “Riggs” Brown) last week. To cut a long story short:

• James, Leanne, Becks and James are great
• We had a great laff
• PAT CAN ACTUALLY SNOWBOARD QUITE WELL (ok, so it was only a beginner lesson but oddly he learned rather quickly… unlike his lame Surfboarding attempts (Hey, I got on the board in the end! - Pat) Yeah but you spent more time on your back end… (Oh, amazing work. With great wit like that you can hardly tell I’m stressed and tire-er… I mean that you’re stressed and tired - Pat)
• James, Becks and Riggs went on a huuuge climbing wall whilst Pat and Leanne watched on - both having injured themselves doing the boarding (at least that’s Pat’s excuse)
• Pat ended up on a mental bungy ball ride thing, that only that day he’d stated he’d never do because “they’re the sort of things just set up by some dodgy outfit in the middle of a carpark”. A believe the phrase “Best £10 EVER!” was uttered by him, whilst upside down about 200ft in the air (Other “select” phrases were uttered too… - Pat)
• Pat and the gang are keen to go and do the more advanced snowboarding lessons ASAP (well, aside from the two James’, as they’re already pros :-) )

Snow boarding dude and dudettes (Pat, Becks and Leanne at the end of their 3 hour lesson):

Leanne and Pat back on safe ground after being catapulted 200ft in the air:

Awesome.

Since then Pat’s been at work, a bit ill, in Colchester catching up with Gary, Sarah and Sally via the medium of curries, a mental back-garden firework display (including the obligatory “massive rocket that doesn’t quite make it out of the launcher quickly enough and explodes at the height of the house covering the entire garden with pretty colours as everyone ducks for cover” moment) and some on-air cohosting of the Sunday Hitcall on SGR Colchester… and is now back at work.

He’s pretty tired and stressed and generally cheesed off today, but he IS pleased that he’s doing a certain something tonight:

Going to see Kevin Bloody Wilson at the Cliffs Pavilion in Saaaffend.

Bring.
It.
On.

Toodles,

Squage

“Yep. That’s it. I’m not longer a Systems Engineer. I’m unemployed.”

The above is what I’d written 365 days ago. Yep, it was a year ago that I quit work in order to go on the Big Adventure. To be honest, it seems like longer than that.

Not sure how I feel about it to be honest. I think I feel a little sad that right now I’m stuck in an office and definitely not heading on a plane to the other side of the world in the next couple of weeks, but on the other hand I feel really happy. Happy that a year ago, despite my feelings of concern, I did it. I buggered off around the world. And what an amazing time it was.

For the record: I’m definitely doing it again. I just don’t know exactly when :-)

Aaaannnyway, onto more recent times: in the past month I’ve been doing the following things:

• Working
  It’s been two months at my former-and-now-current employer and I’ve finally settled into the swing of things - and despite the occasional rocky day (where I wake up thinking “Aaah why am I not traveling the world right now instead of working in an office?”) I’m finding things ok. It’s really not too bad.

• Gyming
  Amazingly I’ve kept up my gym visits over the past two months - probably because I’ve been going before work and not after work (which rarely used to happen through spending the day convincing myself of reasons why I shouldn’t go). Despite the occasional bad week, I’ve definitely been doing well. I just need to cut down on eating and drinking quite so much!
• Socialising
  Lots. Gary and Sarah’s wedding (which was lovely), visiting Paul and Em (hilarious weekend in Ireland), visiting Kate and Jen from traveling (awesome weekend in Nottingham), catching up with Lev and Jess (and recording some rather amusing audio bits and pieces (more info to come on that one), to eating some damned fine home made curries round Gary-from-work’s house with some of the work lads. Photos are available in the usual place, of course.

Tonight I’m going Go Karting for free. There are definitely benefits of being a member of my gym…

Toodles,

Pat

Hey there!

A couple of weeks have gone by and Pat’s not been writing any blogs.

Is it because he’s really busy? No!
Is it because he’s had nothing to report? No!
Is it because he’s lazy? But of course! (Oi, it’s been my first few weeks back at work, I’ve been tired! - Pat) So are you saying you’re not lazy? (Well… - Pat) Thought not.

Anyway, I thought it was about time a blog was done, so allow me to fill you in on the highlights of Pat’s past few weeks:

• Being at Work
  After the initial shock to the system, Pat seems to have got back into the swing of things - getting to know his job role properly and remembering all the company processes etc, etc.

  He’s also managed to slip back into the old habits, with such things as the regular “lunch in the canteen, at the same table as ever, then a walk around the building” routine seems to still be very much in fashion! Still, he’s been mixing things up by doing such outrageous things as “getting a jacket potato from the shop across the road” and, even more crazily, “”lunch in the canteen, at the same table as ever, then a walk around the building on a SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT ROUTE”. He’s living the dream.

  Amusingly, as he’s a “new starter”, he was also taken through health and safety stuff and the fire evacuation procedure with HR today. It appears this featured such classics as “if you need to get your monitor moved, you should get technical servic-oh, right, yes, that’s you. You’ll need to do heavy lifting trai-oh, you did, 3 years ago. Oh, right…”. Hooray for beaurocracy!

• Going to the gym
  Amazingly, given it’s Pat we’re talking about, he’s been able to keep up the “go to the gym three times a week” thing for a full three weeks now. It’s not really started to show, yet, but that’s a) because it’s early on (Pat’s reason) and b) because Pat keeps eating crap and drinking beer (the real reason)… still, he’s not gaining weight, so that’s something!.

• Getting early nights
  Mainly due to the “having to get used to actually doing work again” thing, Pat’s been surprisingly good at getting to bed in good time for a decent night’s sleep on most evenings… well, apart from a few that are listed below:

• Going to see FAITHLESS!
  Something Pat had been wanting to do for YEARS was see Faithless. He’d actually given up on the idea, assuming that, well, they’ve pretty much had their day now and will probably never tour again.

  How wrong he was. And how damned happy he was too. He and Lucy (sister of Vanessa from Uni) had a rather amazing evening at Brixton Academy listening to the most fecking awesome concert ever, raising their hands in the air and dancing around like a fool for such a long period of time that they couldn’t actually walk following sitting on the tube for 20 minutes afterwards (ok, so that might’ve just been Pat)…

  In short: Faithless were f***ing amazing. Unfortunately, due to not wanting to destroy yet another camera, Pat decided not to bring his - but luckily he was able to capture the full scale of the amazing light show (lasers and all) with his BRILLIANT camera phone:

  

• Going to Wemb-er-ley
  Despite not being the world’s biggest football fan, Pat fancied seeing the new Wembley -sorry, Wemb-er-ley - staduim in all its glory, so he went to watch England play Russia. Bizzarely, Pat appears to transform from a “Person who really couldn’t give two stuffs about football” to a “chanting, shouting, clapping, cheering football fan” when placed in a large, fooball fan-filled bowl with some grass in the middle of it. Luckily he wasn’t out of place, unlike a bloke a row and a few seats away, who spent most of the night not watching the match, shouting at the crowd for not standing up all the time - and almost falling over in a drunken stupor on multiple occasions. Hooray!

  Pat enjoyed the match (helped by the fact that it was actually a game played by England that didn’t end miserably) - and the sheer size of Wembley stadium.

  He also forgot his proper camera. As before, THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN TELL:

  

• Partying Like It’s 1999
  Yep, drinking snakebite, going to Warwick University Student’s Union and wondering if the phrase “Party like it’s 1999″ will become really dated and sound stupid in a few years’ time. Pat’s been out “on the lash” a couple of times since being back at work, the highlights being:

  Paul’s wedding reception
  Set in the lovely surroundings of rural North Essex, Paul-from-work’s wedding reception was had inside a large white marquee, with an excellent live band, a bar with lots of beer and, well, a fair amount of drinking from various people:

  
  

  Obviously Pat remained sober throughout, and definitely didn’t end up chasing Elaine around the dance floor with a very frightening, drunk version of the walk from the “Amarilo” video. Definitely not.

  Elaine’s leaving do
  Pat assures me that Elaine leaving work was nothing to do with him chasing her around a dance floor (Not that that happened! - Pat) Oh, er, indeed. Elaine’s moving on to pastures new, and so fellow work mates celebrated / commiserated by having a lovely evening chatting, eating a delicious meal and, er, drinking. A lot. There are photos… but

  
  

• DJing
  Only the once - a couple of days ago, in fact. Pat wants to have a special rant about some of the “fun” that this entailed, so I’ll leave that to him in a future post.

That should just about cover it. Oh, also, he and his friends from home managed to come first in the pop quiz at his local pub last night. Live the dream.

Toodles,

Pat