Relaxing Weekends & Hellboy 2 & Last days

The weekend was good and long, with the majority of it spent in the company of the ever lovely purplegirl23.

Friday began my efforts to see more people with a visit to see raiyden, Charlene & novisanima, and an evening of highly entertaining conversation. Also got to see raiyden's shiney MGB GT which is very cool. Saturday raiyden visited to get a good deal of information and advice about the MGB from my father. Taking advantage of the briefish spell of good weather, I spent most of the afternoon washing my car, and the pool car from work. raiyden helped me out with that (which was a great help thanks), and got a little bit of needed cleaning done on his car too. Of course being a bank holiday weekend, and with me washing my car it did start to rain before we were finished, but we did get the bulk of what we needed to do done at least. Sunday was all about the gaming, mostly Chocobo Tales. I've still have a few more micro-games to finish, and I've had a couple of ideas I want to play around with the cards battles, but after that it'll just be a case of trying to compete with purplegirl23 occasionally for highest scores. Or playing on her other DS games when, I'm not playing on the PS2 games I borrowed from her and her sister or games I actually own for that matter. Lastly, Monday went down to Weston-Super-Mare to visit a friend and actually went for a walk on the estuary-front for about the second time in several years of visiting there. The remains of the grand pier were more intact that I expected, with really only the arcade at the end having gone up. Considering the wreckage was just a blackened, mangled mass of steel girders I'm surprised more of the actual pier wasn't damaged (noticeably) too.

Overall a good weekend. Lots of time spent with purplegirl23, got some jobs done, gamed a lot, spent time in the company of good friends and rested.

Hellboy 2 was entertaining, better than the first film which while well done did leave me feeling somewhat ambivalent about it. With the sequel there's a couple of good action sequences, a couple of hilarious moments (locker beatings!), plus an interesting villian with proper motivations; however there's also a vague feeling that it was lacking something I couldn't put my finger on. Guillermo del Toro is definitely getting better as a director with time, and he's become amazing with his creatures, especially the angel of death like figure. If you liked or at least found the first film passable I think you'll enjoy this more, if you disliked the first I'm not sure this will do anything for you.

Right now I'm currently trying to chase up the few signatures I need, any last bits of work, so I can finish my last day in Newport. I'm so very much looking forward to about 2 hours less commuting each day.

Done with Newport

Pass handed in, official secret act signed*, pool car returned to my job and no more Newport.

Of course now I have training and that next project fear. There are worse places I could go than Newport, like Basingstoke where I'd have to live there 5 nights a week. Still for now positive thoughts, and hopes for Bath based projects, that run for a long, long time.

*I'm losing track of how many times I've done that now.

Also the absolutely amazing purplegirl23 bought me a card, book (The Penguin of Death) and chocolates for finishing Newport; this was of course great.