3D glasses, new energy drink and some pink

Talking of the 3D in my last entry, do you remember those nasty red/blue 3D that you get on home DVDs? (before the current 3D TV's of course!) Well I've got a few of those namely Spy Kids 3D, The Final Destination and Coraline and the first two of those use red/blue and Coraline uses purple/green. Aside from the fact those films make you want to claw your eyes out after about 5 minutes, you have to wear these terrible cardboard glasses which are anything but comfortable. So when I stumbled across a plastic pair for only £3.99 on Play.com it seemed like a bit of a bargain (even if how much use they'll get is questionable!)


Yes I forgot to pull the sticker off the red lense before I took the picture, but pretty swish eh? :)

Onto other things, have you noticed how many different energy drinks are popping up these days? Although they are all insanely similar, there are slight differences and I like to try each new one at least once and whilst buying lunch on Friday I noticed a new one and I guess it shows that EVERYONE has now jumped on the energy drink bandwagon:


It's the same size as a regular can of Red Bull (250ml) and tastes similar, but considering it's a clone drink it's rather highly priced - £1.49! Although that's the sort of price that Red Bull itself usually costs, clone drinks are usually about that for twice the capacity! It's got the same caffeine as Red Bull (32mg/100ml) and I didn't think it really tasted that different either. I think Relentless Origin is probably my favourite of all time if you're wondering :)

Finally, October 29th was wear pink for breast cancer day and at work there was a bit of a pink related raffle to raise additional money. I bought some tickets and was lucky enough to win one of the pink prizes - Hurrah!


As you can see everything is pink and the contents are some raspberry jelly, candy sweets, popping candy, bubble gum and prawn flavoured corn snacks - Yay! :) If I remember correctly the raffle also raised £70 so that's good! :) I just ate the popping candy at the same time as drinking lemonade... thankfully I didn't explode or maybe that's just about to happen... :P

Despicable Me

I went to the cinema with my friend Richard this evening and we decided to go and watch "Despicable Me". I don't think either of us really knew much about it other than it was animated, it was in 3D and it had Steve Carell in it. We also assumed it was probably a comedy and we weren't disappointed! The story itself was a bit predictable in many ways, but I didn't really care and it was all good fun and I loved the little yellow minions, I don't think it would have been so great without them.

As mentioned above it was in 3D and it's the 3rd film I've seen in RealD 3D (Avatar, Clash of the Titans and now Despicable Me) and being as it was animated I wasn't sure what to expect, but I thought it actually worked really well. Avatar was very impressive, but I was disappointed with Clash of the Titans and it felt more like 2-3 layers than actual 3D. Despicable Me was probably the best I've seen so far and things didn't just float like layers, but actually felt 3-dimensional. Normally in 3D films they try and have something come directly out of the screen at you, it's so blatant, it's so obvious... it's so rubbish. Despicable Me didn't even bother with such cheap tactics... well... until the ending credits anyway, but I'll let them off because they were very amusing too! So yeh, if you get the chance to see the film, I really recommend it. I'm sure it'll still be great in 2D, but 3D for this one really is worth the extra! :)

Still talking of 3D, I saw upcoming 3D trailers for the animated film Megamind which also looks really good as well as the new Narnia film (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and basically it looked AMAZING. I need to actually re-read all 7 books because it's been about... 25 years... oh dear... I think I'll go and buy them on my Kindle now... hang on... and 3 minutes (and £29.02) later... done :) I love my Kindle! Anyway... yeh the new Narnia film looks really epic and I know that they're kids books, but I've read them once and it's so long ago now that I can't really remember any of the stories so I figure it'll probably be all new again. BUT I'm getting off topic... 3D... the thing that most impressed me in the trailers was the advert for Sky 3D and their sports. Apparently they can now do LIVE broadcasts in 3D and what we saw (Rugby game I think, although it might have been football I wasn't really watching the game) was really impressive and I know that it probably wouldn't be as good in home 3D, but still... they can do that live now?! Fantastic! Maybe I will have to buy a 3D TV after all! Even though I don't like sports... but meh... that's a minor detail... :)

In other news, my organic box arrived today and although I can specify likes and dislikes, it's fairly random as to what I get and this week it included this:


If you had asked me what this was a year ago what this was I would have no idea... but thanks to the awesomeness which is FarmVille... I knew straight away that it was an Acorn Squash! :) Of course I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it... but that's half the fun right? :) Being as it's Halloween this weekend I also decided to order a large pumpkin and I was not disappointed:


It's huge! See the bottle of water next to it? It was only £3.49 as well - bargain! :) So assuming it'll survive until the weekend (I hope so?!) I shall have to attempt to carve a face/pattern/something into it. I would ask for ideas, but since I think this is my first time carving a pumpkin (I know... 32 and never carved a pumpkin!) I'll probably go for a nice "safe" face... but you never know... or rather you probably will because if I manage to make anything I'm sure there will be a picture of it! I've Amazon Prime'd a metal ice cream scoop to help with the emptying the inside of it and that should arrive on Friday... watch this space! :)

Bits and bobs

To be completely not a heck of a lot has actually happened since the last time I wrote, but I figured I'd throw in some random pictures and try and make look like my life was a 24/7 party - Is it working yet? :) LOL. Right okay so the biggest news I probably have to tell you is that my triops (as mentioned in the previous entry) are... ALIVE!


Except there's no way you can see them amongst all the starter stuff I have to put in there, I barely noticed them myself, but at least they are alive and there's 6-8 of them (at least!) Hopefully they'll keep growing and I'll take more pictures if they do! I've moved them into the kitchen now so I can keep a better eye on them (and there's generally more light in there too). Someone told me that it wasn't very hygenic to keep them in the kitchen, but meh... they're only little! :)

So that was the biggest news and therefore you know everything from this point onwards will be downhill... oh well! :) I did get a rather cool DVD today though...


Awesome! I bought the triple pack so if/when I ever get an HD TV I can watch it in all its glory! At least I assume that's the plan otherwise I have no idea why I bought a Blu-ray player and I've been buying everything new on Blu-ray... :) So yeh... Iron Man 2... best film of the year easily and if you didn't think so... did you not see the bit with his suitcase armour?! THAT WAS SO COOL! :)

Moving on... I've not cooked a lot of strange stuff lately, but I did re-make "Ultimate baked potatoes":


Technically it wasn't really baked potatoes because they're only littles ones (and lots of them), but two cans of beans and some cheese amongst all the potatoes... who cares :) Hmm I see to be rather excessively using the ...'s today *shrugs*

Let's see what else can I write about... oh the plants at work. I bought a bonsai kit to try and grow some bonsai trees and I gave some to the other guys at work too, so I'm trying to grow 3 bonsai's and Chris and Rob are trying to grow one each (hey it's my kit, that's why I have 3!).


It seems like a complicated process though (at least it does to me) because I need to have them inside plastic bags for three weeks (with a slight airhole) and then put them in the FRIDGE for 3 weeks. No really... Apparently this germinates them or something... hmm well I don't know how long it takes to actually grow a bonsai tree, but so far I've managed to kill an Xmas tree, strawberry plant, venus fly trap, pitcher plant... and probably some others I've since forgotten. Sooner or later one of them has to work right? :)

Here's some good news btw... I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Fantastic and I think probably my favourite so far. I've also watched the movie too and thought that was rather accurate too and very enjoyable (and it's on Sky all week so I've watched it twice already so far!). With the new film coming out in just over 3 weeks I need to get a move on with the 7th book, or at least I need to get the first half read. Shouldn't be too hard although lately I haven't had a lot of time for reading :(

On the same theme of Harry Potter I wanted to also mention my kitchen because you see I have a cupboard which desperately needs sorting out and kitchen tools are literally pushed into it and the door slammed so they can't fall back out. However, I've recently noticed that whenever I open the cupboard the exact item that I need always falls out and so I would like to present to you:

The Cupboard of Requirement!

Haha brilliant eh? :) And finally I leave you with something that was in my email today...

The weirdest spam EVER received!

Bizarre... :S (and yes that was the entire email!)

Horrific weekend

I seem to be really late with all my posts lately... oh well! Anyway, Carrie came over last weekend and despite the title which I'll explain shortly, we had an awesome time, although it worked out a bit more expensive than planned! First of all we trudged drove down the local Tesco and proceeded to fill our shopping trolley up with sufficient junk food to last us the weekend. True to my usual form I went overboard and ended up with a £92 bill and looking at the receipt later we only actually used £26 of it, but I suppose I still have other food left now right? :)

At least my fridge looks good? :)

Anyone want some sweets?

The title of my entry comes because we watched a lot of horror films including Mirrors 1 & 2. I've never seen either before, but found them both really good, even though the 2nd one is quite obviously a TV movie and didn't have Kiefer Sutherland like the 1st one, it was still really good and I think there were more deaths too... always a bonus :)

The other film we watched was "The Human Centipede: First Sequence". If you haven't heard of it, it's a film about a crazy doctor who wants to create a human centipede by attaching 3 humans together so their digestive systems are all lined up. Yes... food would go in the mouth of one person... out the usual place and straight into the mouth of the next person who is literally attached to them... gross eh?

Green-ray!

However, other than a rather twisted idea, we both thought it was very disappointing and had expected so much better. There wasn't even that much gore in it either (both Mirrors 1 and 2 had more in it and if you've ever seen any of the uncut Saw movies, I swear they're worse!). Still... there's a sequel due out next year, "Full Sequence", which apparently promises *12* people so perhaps that'll be better? :)

Carrie had bought a hard drive with her that she wanted to recover some files from, but it soon became very clear that the drive wasn't even spinning (or at least it WAS spinning, but only for a few seconds and then powering back down again). As such the only real fix is the expensive data recovery people or write it off completely. She decided that it'd be more fun to open it up and so I broke out my tools and dismantled it:

Shiny!

I can't remember exactly when, but at some point we decided to have nachos, but instead of "just" cheese, we decided to make chili to go with it! I also had some fresh chili peppers from my organic box last week so I decided to put some of those in my portion and wow they were zingy! (is that even a word?) :) Turned out really good and in fact I'm thinking I should make them again right now, that's how good they were!

I know the picture isn't great, but trust me, they were epic!

Last birthday I was given a "Triop World" kit thing which I hadn't yet used so we decided to give it a whirl. You basically fill the container with water, put in the eggs and watch the triops grow. They're a bit like sea monkeys (or at least the principle is), but SHOULD be better because they look prehistoric. I say should because I followed all the instructions and it said I'd see movement within 48 hours... well 6 days later... nothing. I'm still crossing my fingers though!

Carrie willing the triops to life!

Oh and as always we played some Mario Kart, we've kinda killed that game now though. :)

Cardiff

I'm a bit behind here, but I need to write about last weekend. Laura invited me up for the weekend to spend time with her and Leah and we all had a great time. I was rather late leaving and so didn't get there until late afternoon, but we spent the rest of the afternoon playing video games (mainly Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands) until Leah came home from work and then we all played the card game "Fluxx" for a while (it's a crazy card game, but we all love it!). Oh and we also played their new Eco Fluxx too, I didn't like that one as much though, but it's still pretty cool :)

We had a table booked at a local Cantonese restaurant for 7.30pm so we walked down the road (it was literally 5 minutes away!) and deliberated over the menu. For starters I had satay chicken things and some sort of spring rolls and for the main course I had Chicken Kung Po with fried rice with shredded BEEF in it. Yes I had beef fried rice and CHICKEN main course all at once, haha :) More amazingly though, I ate the entire meal with chopsticks! I'm sure I was probably cheating though, I developed a "rail" system and glomped the food together and then sort of scooped it up on the two rails I'd made with the chopsticks (even "blobs" of rice!), but it worked so hey :) And besides, picking up every single grain of rice... that'd be crazy! :)

After we'd all eaten tons of food we headed back home and jumped in Laura's car to go to the Cardiff Bay area to get ice cream from a place that they were describing as being the most awesome ice cream in the world (or something like that...). Sadly after parking and putting TWO HOURS on the meter... we found they were closed, go figure! :) So we walked around the bay area for a bit (involving me dragging them to Torchwood in Roald Dahl Plass - Woo!) and then followed my being very disappointed as it was "closed". The basin area was setting up for some event so you couldn't even walk in it and the Torchwood fountain was turned OFF! Apparently they do that at night to save electricity or whatever, but I grumbled and pointed out that in the show that it's seen many times at night and it's always ON! Bah. No there aren't any photos, I hadn't bought my camera with me and my phone just doesn't cut it with complete darkness :(

So we went back to the car and headed to Tesco to find some dessert and OH MY GOD that had to be the world's biggest Tesco. I've never seen anything like it! Walking in the entrance I was looking left/right down the aisles and I swear I couldn't even see the end of the shop - honestly! Very impressive! Still despite its size we found the desserts and ended up going home with a chocolate trifle type thing, some sort of chocolate thing you heat up and a raspberry cheesecake - nommy! :)

Back at home we tucked into our desserts whilst playing Fluxx until 1.30am in the morning... and then it was time for bed. Well... I went to bed, but I didn't sleep. Stayed up until 3.30am reading "The Da Vinci Code" and I was loving it. I've now finished it and I can't wait to start on "The Lost Symbol"! :)

The next morning there was a totally yummy cooked breakfast and then Emma arrived, we watched an episode of X-Factor from the previous day (my first ever!) which I was sort of getting into... until I found out that they weren't even going to reveal who was getting booted off and I'd have to watch the next episode that evening to find out - forget that!!! After it finished I said my goodbyes and headed back home! :)