Yo,

Just a quick one to say two things:

1. My brother David is running the London Marathon this weekend
2. MY BROTHER DAVID RUNNING THE LONDON MARATHON THIS WEEKEND

Fecking awesome, I’m so impressed with how well he’s done in training for this (not least the lack of alcohol since the start of the year and, oh yeah, the occasional MASSIVE RUN (most recent was about 18 miles!!))… go David!

He’s running for Down Syndrome Extra 21, a charity which helps to promote equal opportunities for people with Down syndrome and offer support to them and their families. It promotes public awareness of Down syndrome and encourages and helps local support groups.

If you want to help this great charity through sponsoring my brother to do this amazing feat then please head over to his JustGiving page and donate:

http://www.justgiving.com/davidscullion

Anything would be appreciated. Thanks in advance from myself, David and those with Down Syndrome across the UK.

Toodles :-)

Pat

Yo peeps!

Well, something that’s not happened since I went to Oz in 2006… that’s right, I’m leaving my department at work! Goodbye Technical Services!

There’s one key difference:

Last time, despite actually leaving the company outright and going to the other side of the world, I came back to the very same department (albeit in a different role). This time I’m permanently leaving the department! *

What’s more is the distance involved in my move. I’m not just going to the other side of the world, oh no: I’m going to the other side…. of the corridor!

I KNOW!

Literally 6 metres from my current desk, the change of environment may be too much for me to take but I’m hoping I’ll be ok. Basically, I’m moving to another department to do some cool stuff for a funky and very useful web based system designed to help our customers. The cool stuff involves Oracle, WebLogic, funky web front end stuff and Linux/Unix. I’m looking forward to it!

Two days to go in TS, then I start next week (as I’m off on a long weekend to go to see Jersey… in Jersey! Sam and Spence from Oz, who’re On Tour at the mo are coming over too so it should be an awesome weekend!).

Right, that’s all really. Just an update from my world.

Toodles,

Pat

* Probably.

Ok, so I’ve got lots of updates to do regarding the awesome snowboarding week with Jimbo in the French Alps (photos here), a new job role, falling over barriers, driving home to Christmas songs, having fun at Lev and Jess’s, a new PC and other stuff!

I’ll get round to it I promise! Got lots of other things on at the mo but I promise it’s on its way…

Anyway, I’m writing this post to say that I’m actually doing Squage Radio live shows again (only occasionally, mind). From now on I’ll be posting a new note about each show – including a link once the recorded version’s online for you to download if you miss it.

I’ve recently done three shows – two party shows and one chillout show.

They can all be found here: http://www.squage.com/liveshows/, which is where all recorded live shows will sit in future.

Hey peeps,

Well, it’s been a good weekend and a bad weekend this weekend (wow, there were a lot of “weekend”s in that sentence weren’t there weekend weekend weekend?)… let’s start with the bad:

• Ate take out pizza, a fried breakfast and lots of popcorn

• Drank 3 bottles of beer on Friday and 4 on Saturday

And now the good:

• Ate take out pizza, a fried breakfast and lots of popcorn

• Drank 3 bottles of beer on Friday and 4 on Saturday

Yep, it seems the “no alcohol” regime fell on its arse this weekend and frankly the diet seems to have popped out of the window for a couple of days. I’m feeling rather guilty and annoyed at myself on one hand but on the other hand, but on the other hand I did go to the gym 5 times last week – plus with boarding in a week’s time I think January 2008 will be an overall “WOOH” as far as losing weight / getting fit’s concerned.

Oh yeah, plus this weekend was great fun! I was at Lev and Jess’s place in Laaandan and had a great laff as ever – Lev and I played an awful lot of Mario Vs Sonic on the Wii and finished many a 4×100m relay or 400m hurdles by falling onto Lev’s sofa and trying to get our breath back for a minute or two. Mental, knackering fun :-)

We also saw the excellent and very harsh Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, which is well worth a watch – superb performances from all involved and a real emotive thriller all the way through. Great stuff, and it also made us think of how funny it would be if the credits had “We Are Family” played over them. Not really sure why, it just seemed so inappropriate to be hilarious at the time. See the film and imagine it playing over them and you’ll see what I mean :-)

Aside from that we did some recording of some bits and pieces for a potential upcoming project (using this amazing professional studio):

What with Squage being left at home for the weekend, Lev couldn’t do a SQUAGE FACE so had to find an alternative:

Basically, twas a great weekend with lots of catching up and chatting about all sorts – always a pleasure to see you two :)

Ok, off to do some ironing… if that’s not living the dream I don’t know what is (NEWS ALERT: Pat has no idea what living the dream is – Squage). Oh ha ha.

Bye!

Pat

YES! That’s right!

That’s right, following my 3 hour lessons in Milton Keynes snowdome, I’ve decided to up the ante a little for the remaining lessons: Jimbo (from work) and myself (and Squage, natch) are heading off to the south of France in just over a week for a week of Snow Boarding fun amoungst beautiful scenery! In the words of Peter Griffin, it’s going to be freakin’ awesome:

The Chalet.

The Resort.

This is the connected (massive) Les Arcs

Fortunately James and I have been down the gym 5 times this week and planning at least 4 next week too, so we’ll be in some kind of fit state to give it a go! I’m still gonna ache like a bastard but you know what: I don’t care. It’s going to be SO worth it.

Expect a full report on my return :-)

On in the mean time, today is the return of the Daily Photo. Today it’s of two stuffed toys on Reg’s desk at work:

Ride ‘em, IUM * Monkey!

Toodles,

Pat

* IUM = Image Utility Model. Basically it’s a printer leasing scheme, but as it’s at my place of work it needs to ensure it’s got a TLA **

** Tasty Lumpy Artichoke

…and it’s off to a great start. Both James and I managed to coordinate efforts to be up and ready at 6:05am for him to give me a lift into the gym for 6:30am.

What a winner! We were impressed that we’d both managed to achieve this, given that the earliest time either of us had been awake for the 2 week preceding had been about 9:30am. And that was early.

Even better still, as the schools are still off the roads were almost empty – so we bombed it in and made it to the gym at bang on 6:30am – just in time for it to open and give us maximum time in there before work!

Just in time for it to open… on a normal day, that is. For it is this, the week starting the 1st of January 2008, that the guys at the gym have decided to open at 9am for the next 3 days.

So that left James and I sitting in his car in the pitch black, dressed in gym kit and (myself anyway) unshaven and messy looking, wondering what the hell we should do now.

Luckily there are showers in our work’s building itself, so we went to the work car park and made our way to the building entrance… only to find that I’d not brought my pass.

A diversion later I got myself signed in, visitor passed up and in the building.

I’m now showered and a bit more alive than at 6:30am… but given that I’m at my desk over an hour before I should technically be starting work, without a pass and feeling rather tired given getting up far earlier than I would’ve if I were just coming into work today, that’s not much consolation.

Things, as D:Ream once rightly pointed out, can only get better.

Hey all!

Happy New Year!

As you have probably noticed there’s not been much in the way of blogs coming from me these past few months. It’s not because I’ve been doing nothing, it’s just because I’ve been too lazy to sit down and write about what’s been happening.

So, in summary:

• lots of work

• (one set of) snowboarding lessons
• designing and making Squage mugs
• saving money
• eating too much…
• drinking too much…socialising lots
• going to the gym… a bit…
• …putting on weight
• making a Christmas tree out of cans
• presenting a show on SGR Colchester
• starting to learn guitar again

I’ve probably missed lots off that too. But hey, you’ve now got an (at least vague) idea of what I’ve been up to in Nov/Dec 2007. Overall, it’s been a good year, helped largely by the whole “traveling in Oz” bit for the first half :-)

2008’s going to be a great year. I’m going to do the following:

• Drink less (maybe not at all, we’ll see how it goes)

• Get to a good weight and stay there
• Make money with art
• Be less stressed
• Get really good at the geetar
• Do something good for the world (somehow)
• Stop being bitter and single :-)

That’s the plan. Hope you’ve got a good list of things you want to achieve – and good luck with them!

Here’s to 2008!

*chink*

Pat

F*£king Legend!

“What the hell?” You might ask. Well, if you did then I guess you’ve never seen Kevin Bloody Wilson live, because if you’d seen him you’d know he ends up coming back to that song salute several times during a set.

You’d also know that he’s fecking hilarious!

Last Tuesday evening the Old Server Team Crew (consisting of Jimbo, Gib, Tony and myself) trundled along Saffend sea front and to the Cliffs Pavilion Theatre for a night of entertainment. And entertained we were.

After a long and taxing (for old man Tony anyway ;-) ) walk up the steps to the Cliffs, we made it to the bar to grab a nice chilled pint to start the evening off. Alas, it seemed for some reason the Cliffs figured it only needed 2 rather slow bar staff to cater for many, many beer hungry attendees so by the time I’d got served I ended up getting 2 pints each rather than one.

A quick necking later we were in the theatre itself, whereupon James revealed that he’d actually bought us tickets in the 2nd row! This was both great and worrying news:

• Great – We’d be right there in front of the action with an awesome view
• Worrying – We’d be in full “have the piss ripped all night” view

You might think that I’m being a wuss with the worrying (Yes, yes we do – Squage) but it’s with just cause: the last time I was close to the front of a comedy gig I had my face licked to death by a mental, sweaty canadian. Phil Nichol’s a frightening man.

Anyway I needn’t've worried as both Kevin and his support act were lovely and only ended up picking on one poor bugger who’s birthday it was (who was amusingly unimpressed).

Speaking of the support act, she was great. None other than Kevin’s own daughter, Jenny Talia (yes, Jenny Talia) was damned funny herself, following in her father’s footsteps of performing her own damned funny and clearly-not-for-kids tunes (highlight probably being “The Bastard Song”) with some great chatty bits inbetween to the great entertainment of everyone there.

We like her stuff so much we decided to buy two of her albums between us… and even got a photograph with her:

I was worried that my phone camera wouldn’t quite do the job in dim light, but as you can see this picture is PERFECT so that’s lucky!

After a short interval (and an obligatory pint) we sat back in our seats for the main event… who did not disappoint.

From “Do Ya F*** On First Dates”, through classics like “DILLIGAF”, “It Was Over”, “Five Seconds Of Foreplay” and “The Public Hair Song” to a sing-along version of “Santa Claus You C***”, Kev was definitely on form. That’s not even mentioning the great stand-up bits inbetween songs, or, of course, the ever-returning “Nigel” (who I believe is a f***ing legend).

The man himself, although thanks to the Nokia 6300 you can hardly tell…

All in all, an awesome night. It was their last date on the current tour so they’ll not be back in the UK for a fair bit, but if you ever get a chance in future, SEE THEM.

I’d not laughed that much in such a long time… we were all still laughing as we left the theatre, on the drive home and indeed I spent a good part of Wednesday morning laughing at my desk. The last bit was possibly because of the Kevin Wilson and Jenny Talia MP3s I was listening to, to be honest…

Jimbo: I salute you for booking those tickets. Tony: I salute you for driving us there and driving a drunk us back. Gib: I salute you for the awesome 5 litre barrel of joy you provided me yesterday – although that’s not really relevant to this post.

Right, lunch break over. On with writing envelopes and playing with Excel. Live the dream.

Tarrah,

Pat

…they really suck.

In particular when I start listening to songs that remind me of lying under the stars in the middle of Australia… makes me wonder what the heck I’m doing now.

It’s perfectly possible for me to just sod off out to, say, NZ and just work in a hostel / for a tour operator… or who knows what else.

I mean, it wouldn’t really solve the big “Hmm, what do I really want to do in future?” question, but at least it’d be good fun and chilled.

Heheh, you know, it only seems to be Monday mornings where I start thinking like this. Not exactly productive, but hey that’s Monday mornings for ya ;-)

I might have a watch of this again to cheer me up.

Toodles,

Pat

P.S. Twas a top weekend this weekend – DJed George and Stef’s wedding reception over in Gloucester, which was hilarious fun! Congrats again you two :-D

“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