Lost......again - No love, no hope, no glory, no happy ending?

Oh yes people, it's that time again, me to have a bit of a moan about me not having a clue what I want to do with the rest of my life again.

I've refered to it a few times throughout this blog but before July I knew exactly what I wanted in my life, I knew how I wanted to spend the rest of my days and I was content with where my life was heading then July 2011 came. During those 31 days my life changed considerably. I basically destroyed my ankle, meaning I had to retire from playing football, I went out of the UK for the first time in ages and I had a conversation with one of my best friends that changed my life, and it was the latter two that were the the prompt for my journey into a void of uncertainty.

All I've effectively done since then it try (being the key word in this sentence) and reassess my life. I no longer have anything keeping me here. I don't actually care that much about the local football club, so much to the point where I don't even react when we score, I just stand/sit there and don't clap and/or cheer, I am just past caring. I'm not close to a single member of my family, so much to the point where the closest thing I have to a family that I can communicate with properly are my best friends, and they all live in another continent.

Toronto - My future home?

This has probably seen me annoy these friends to hell as when I feel close to someone, I get a bit over-enthusiastic and I know I can test their patience quite a bit. These are pretty much the only people I care about. As harsh as it sounds, I genuinely couldn't give a shit about anyone other than about 5/6 people. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of acquaintences, but not many friends, and the fact the most of the friends I do have live in other countries, is one of the reasons why I am considering leaving.

I did recently get offered a job in America but didn't take it for various reasons but I would still like to move over to America or Canada at some point in my life, so much to the point where I have started applying for lots of jobs over there in various cities, mostly on this side of the Atlantic. I've applied for jobs in New York, Washington, Toronto, Ottawa and Burlington, amongst many others.... I found it unusual that in the latter three are all based in Ontario in Canada, an area where there are more English in the population than Canadians, how's that for a random fact. I think there's about 35 towns/cities in the right hand side of America and Canada where my CV (resume to any Americans and Canadians reading this) is currently in circulation.

Why can't life ever be simple?

I suppose whilst I'm talking about things where I don't know what I want to do properly, I might as well talk about something which I definitely have no control over, love. I've always been prone to fallen for people on a regular basis but the feeling has virtually never been recipricated with the same feelings.

I'm coming up on 27 and a half and in that whole time I have been not been in the relationship status of "single" for precisely 2 weeks and 6 days, spread across two girlfriends. Yes, throughout my entire live I have only ever dated two girls.

Don't get me wrong, I can survive being single, afterall I've been single for all but just shy of three weeks of my life, but it would be nice to have at least one serious relationship at some point during my life.

I did recently tell a girl I loved her and it wasn't recipricated, but I don't even know why I told her to be honest. I wasn't expecting anything to happen because of several factors, but it was nice to get it off my chest as the feeling had been building for quite some time. I suppose I'm lucky that me and this person had been friends for a long time because if it was someone who I had only just met then the chances of us communicating afterwards would be quite slim.

To be honest I'm not even entirely sure why I'm complaining about love, I suppose I would have to go outside and be socialable to meet someone. I can't remember the last time I went on a night out with friends and tried to meet someone. I suppose that would help.

You know what, I can't be bothered to moan anymore so will leave it there.

Later people.

Origins : The unusual email address

I often get asked about how some aspects of my life got started up so I figured I would start with a nice easy one, my email address. Now, I'm not going to reveal my full email address, in other words I'm not going to give what follows the @ sign, but what comes before it is bestfriendsbecomestrangers.

If I was to give the simple answer then I could just tell you that it's lyrics from a song. That song is "Say Anything" by Good Charlotte and that specific lyric is in the start of the second verse.

My reasons for choosing this were at the time, which was around 2005, I was having a few difficulties keeping ahold of friends, especially those close to me. I had lost Maz at the time, who went on what could best be described as "radio silence" and I was having a rough time, and then me and a girl who I have known for about 4 years at the time had a MASSIVE argument and didn't speak for about a month. During which time I created the email address.

Infact, at around the time I was such a fucking dick, I would have hated me. Looking back I was such an complete and total dick, I became "depressed" for stupid reasons and if I could time travel and meet myself from 2005, I would give myself a good ol' slap.

Anyway, yeah, I was looking for a new email address and I was really into Good Charlotte's "Young and Hopeless" album at the time, heard that lyric and thought it suited my mood at the time, and that is the origin of the email address.

The song can be found below and as I say, the lyric that sparked the email address is just after the chorus, enjoy.

Two weeks in.......

Before I start, please note that this blog contains a few references to the area around my genitalia, so for those who don't like reading about that sort of thing, or if the thought of me talking about that area of my body turns your stomach a bit, don't read on.


Well I'm two weeks into my diet and things are going reasonably. My initial rapid weight loss has slowed down and I think I'm not at that level where I'll lose 2 pounds a weight, give or take. It is disappointing not to see the weight go down rapidly but at least I'm not gaining weight, which is probably the most important thing. 12 pounds in two weeks isn't that bad afterall, average of 6 pounds a week, most people on diets would kill for that.

My main form of exercise at the moment is coming through biking to and from work, which works out at about 10 miles per day, all done within 60 or so minutes (3 miles to the train station, 2 miles from the train station at the other end to work, and then reverse for the return journey). The first two days I did it I was absolutely shattered, I felt physically ill on the first day, but since then it's got better and even though lactic acid is still prominent in any of my bike rides, I'm not longer shattered from the bike riding, which is a relief because I really did feel crap on that first morning.

The only problem I have with the biking is that (this is the bit where I talk about that region) it causes a lot of chafing and I'm starting to get small friction burns on my upper left inner thigh (basically right under where the penis/testicles are) and it fucking kills. Because my uppers legs are quite large they rub together on a regular basis, especially when walking, and I can't tell you how uncomfortable it all is at the moment even just walking upstairs.....might have to buy some vaseline.

Other than that I am struggling to get exercise in. I work in an office and don't regularly get the chance to get up and walk around, which means all calories I eat during the day aren't then starting to burnt off until I start the bike ride home. There is a gym opposite work but they appear to have minimal cardio machines....and I certainly don't want to be what would generally be described as "buff". I'd love to be physically fit, but not to the point where my it looks like I'm smuggling small inflated balloons all over my body.

Luckily weekends are quite good as I eat the same amount but I am relatively active on weekends and tomorrow I am going to watching Lincoln away at Kettering. The nearest train station to the ground is 6 miles away and I'm probably going to walk it........I must be fucking mad.

But anyway, until next time, peace out.

My 5 Favourite Albums of all time

Hello all

I've recently been trying to get back into music that I used to like but had forgotten about, I figured I would combine this by also talking about my favourite albums of all time, you lucky devils.

So, in not particular order, my top five albums are.......

BLINK 182 (2004) by Blink 182

I first got into Blink 182 when I heard "All the Small Things" on the radio in what must have been the late 90s, early 2000s. I bought their "Enema of the State" and "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket2 albums and you always got the hint from songs like "Adam's Song" and "Stay Together for the Kids" that they always wanted to release a more serious album, and that's what happened with this album in 2004.

I bought the album from Asda after finishing work and listened to it on the bike home. I really didn't like it at first, I thought it was ridiculously dull and didn't sound good at all. I left it well alone for 2/3 months before giving it another go......and I loved it after that.

There are some brilliant songs on there and they link up so well. Whether it's the singles from the album, such as "Always," "I Miss You" and "Feeling This," or the ones you will probably have not heard of unless you've own it, such as "I'm Lost Without You," you will be hooked on the songs. It is as near perfect as an album gets.

MUTTER by Rammstein

I first heard of Rammstein on the soundtrack to Mortal Kombat Annihilation in 1997 and found their style to be quite unusual, but an enjoyable unusual. Skip forward four years and I am really starting to get into my rock music, saw the album "Mutter" on the shelf and bought it.

Instantly I was hooked to the German lyrics, even though I had absolutely no idea what was being said but I loved. Songs such as "Links 2 3 4," and "Ich Will" still feature on my list of favourite songs and all around the album has an excellent array of songs, all of which get the heart racing, with the exception of the closest thing they have to a ballad on the album, the title song of "Mutter".

Skip forward another 10 years and I have five Rammstetin albums but none have even come close to being as good as "Mutter" ..... although "Liebe ist fur alle da" (2009) has probably my favourite Rammstein song of them all, "Frühling in Paris".

To say how much I love this album, I once found it in my car snapped in half, the first thing I did was

Playing My Game - Lene Marlin

Those who know my usual music choices will be surprised that I have a Norweigan pop album in this list, but I do, so get used to it.

Lene Marlin was popular in the early part of this millennium but is largely unknown now. To be honest, I don't even remember why I bought this album, at the time I liked her, but not enough to buy her album, or so I thought, but then I needed something to listen to on the way to Mansfield, so went into the shop and bought this.

11 years on and I still love this album. There are a few typical poppy songs on there such as "Where I'm Headed," but there are also some beautiful acoustic songs on there and it's music you could just listen to in the bath and fall asleep because it makes you that relaxed. My personal favourite is called "Flown Away," a beautiful, slow tempoed song.

The real shame about this album is that it was her first and by far the best, the three albums that have followed have been largely disappointing in my opinion.

Thank You by Canterbury

Probably my favourite band at the moment is this four-peice from Basingstoke. I first heard of them when channel surfing after getting home from work. Their song "Gloria" instantly became one of my favourite songs and today I could still listen to that one song over and over again and not get bored.

Strangely that song isn't on this album but that doesn't make the album poor, quite the opposite infact. "Gloria" wouldn't really fit into "Thank You" as it's mainly fast past rock, although there are little, slower-paced gems on there such as "Hospital" and "Diver".

There are one or two songs on the album which I am not overly keen on, but for a debut album that hasn't been released on mass, it's very good, especially as you can get the entire album (and Gloria) for a free download off of http://www.canterburythankyou.com/.

I have seen Canterbury live and they are four of the most down to earth people you could ever meet. They're up for a laugh and their treatment of one of the support bands was hilarious, changing Not Advised's entrance music onto the stage to "YMCA", you should have seen the look on their faces, it was hilarious. I'm hoping to go and see them for a second time in a few weeks in Sheffield or Leeds.

They have since released two EPs and their second album gets released in the summer, hopefully it'll be as good as "Thank You".

HYBRID THEORY by Linkin Park

Before they sold out and started doing hip-hop songs with Jay-Z and others, I had a lot of respect for Linkin Park. They were probably the first band I ever fell in love with this was probably the first album I ever loved. As far as a debut mainstream album goes, this was near enough perfect.

You don't get an entrance to the album which "eases" you in, you're just straight in there with two of their singles straight away, "Papercut" and "One Step Closer." It doesn't ease up either with the voices of Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington bellowing in your ears, but bellowing brilliance.

On an album of 12 songs, there's only one which I don't like and some of them again feature in my Top 100 songs of all time list. My parents also used to hate this album because I would play "Crawling" at loud volumes, and let's put it this way, it's not a song that the older generation will like.

It's such a shame that they sold out because had it not been for that, I would probably still love them as much as I used to. I do still like a few of their songs that they release every now and then though.

Bands are just like buses

For 11 years I have waited to watch Blink 182 and after their show in Nottingham was cancelled last year and rescheduled for this, it will hopefully be worth the wait, but what has made me even more excited about this is that they have announced that the All American Rejects will be their special guests (a nicer way of saying "support band").

I saw All American Rejects live in Nottingham in late 2009 and loved it, it's one of the few gigs I've been to where I haven't been completely and totally bored by the mid-way point. I haven't actually been to that many gigs during my life and it's always something I want to do more of, but then any time I go I remember how quickly they become quite boring, and some that I was extremely excited about were disappointing.

Off the top of my head the aforementioned All American Rejects gig in 2009 was the first I ever went to. I had seen people sing live but only small time bands that aren't even well known where they come from, let alone on a national or international setting, making All American Rejects my first proper venture into watching music live.

Since then I have seen Rammstein, Canterbury and Bowling for Soup live, the latter of which was dreadful and I even left before the end. The Rammstein one was good but was also a bit of a disappointment in the sense that I had heard that seeming them live was epic.......a bit of an exaggeration. Finally, Canterbury, who I saw in November 2010, one of my favourite bands. They were awesome that night and even hung around with the fans after it had all finished.

There aren't many artists that I haven't already seen (or got tickets for) that I would be interested in seeing to be honest. Simple Plan are in the UK soon so might go and watch them, whereas I would also love to see 2Cellos, 30 Seconds to Mars, Sum 41 and Lene Marlin at some point, but they don't visit the UK on a regular basis, so might be a bit stuck with those ones.

Also, it doesn't help that Lincoln is virtually in the middle of nowhere, meaning no-one big (at the time of them coming) will come here.....or at least no-one that I want to see.

I'm fine, thank you for asking!!!!

"Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with your's"- Mary Schmich, later turned into lyrics by Baz Luhrmann.

This morning I have been quite disheartened by recent events with various people, more to the point, the way some of my so called friends act.

I've always been the type of person who will need friends to keep me going for various reasons, so I always make sure that I treat the friends I have with respect, honesty and openess. I try to be there whenever my friends need me and with a lot of them, I will drop everything that I am doing if they need my help or advice. I don't get the same in return.

I know it's only a small thing but when I enquire as to how you are, it hurts when after you answer, you don't actually ask me how I am. The thing is that this isn't just confined to a few friends, this is spread across several people. The thing is that if it only happened once or twice then I wouldn't actually complain, you might forget on occasions but every once in a while would be nice, I can think of at least 10 people who I always ask how they are, they respond.........but then move onto another subject. I'm fine, thank you for asking!

I think I seriously need to reassess who I consider a friend because I'm getting sick of bending over backwards for people who treat me like shite all of the time. I know I have both fond and bad memories of Marinda, but at least she had the decency that whenever we did speak, she would always ask how I was after I had enquired.

As I say, it's only a small thing but it just fucks me off. It fucks me off how much time I dedicate to my friends, spending our conversations helping them with stuff but they are seemingly unprepared to return that consideration when I have something I would like to talk about.

What I wish I was.....

I am Nathan Jackson (although I may occasionally incorporate my original last name of Wood into that).
I am 27 years old.
I am English.
I am a Virgo.
I have brown hair.
I have brown eyes.
I am a fan of rock music.
I can't stand R&B/Hip-Hop/Rap.
I own an Atari, Amiga, MegaDrive, Playstation 1, 2 and 3, a GameCube, a Wii and a high-spec laptop.
I have been in Zoo Magazine.

THIS IS PROBABLY WHAT MY THOUGHT
PROCESSES LOOK LIKE. BASICALLY A COLLECTION
OF "WHAT IF" DECISIONS

Those are ten facts about me, ten things I can say are well and truly me.....one thing I can't say about myself is being what people would describe as a "free spirit", or to put it bluntly, those who live in the moment. The weird thing is that I attract plenty of friends like that, I've had plenty of friends who are like that, such as Marinda, Megan and Charlie, three people who seemingly live by the moto of "dance like no-one is watching."

It's always something I have admired in people, people who don't plan stuff on a day to day basis, they just do whatever feels right at the time. I wish I was like that. Don't get me wrong, I do like random stuff and doing things I hadn't planned on, for example, I recently went up to see the aforementioned Charlie just a few hours after talking to her on the phone, that despite not having it planned, that was quite unusual for me. I don't even usually phone people unless it's pre-arranged.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes I do do stuff that isn't planned, but it's only stuff like going into the city centre, but nothing major. I read stories of people just randomly waking up and deciding to go onto a plane to another country, I just couldn't do that, it'd have to be planned.

I would just love to be one of those people who look back at the end of the day and go "I had none of that planned whatsoever". I think the happiest people are those who plan as little of their day as possible......or even just those who have a rough idea of what they want to do.

I'll give you an example.

I want to go to the cinema to watch a film (as opposed to all those other things you do at a cinema....). Here is my chain of thoughts......

1. What's actually on that I would want to watch?
2. If there is something on, what showing do I actually want to see?
3. Ok, what should I actually wear?
4. Should I shower before hand? When was my last shower?
5. Should I drive or get the bus?
6. (after deciding to drive as I don't do the bus) Ok, it starts at (for example) 8.20, I want to get there quite early so let's think about this.....
7. It's a 20 minute drive to the cinema



LINCOLN'S ODEON CINEMA

8. Which car park do I use? (there are two within a few minutes walk of the cinema)
9. I want to get there in time to be able to sit down rather than having to stand up before being let in.
10. Should I go to the shops first?

Let's put it this way, that could go on much all night long and I'd end up leaving my house at about 7pm. The people I have described that I want to be like would have the following thought process.

1. What's on?
2. What time?
3. Ok, let's go.

I wish I was like that.

Oh well, I suppose I should go and plan what I'm doing for the rest of the week.

I need a long, well earned and most of all, overdue holiday



SKEG VEGAS BEACH - IT ACTUALLY MANAGES TO LOOK
NICE AND RESPECTABLE IN THIS PICTURE

 It's August 2004, I am 19 years old and it's time for the Jackson family holiday.

Every year the family went somewhere along the Lincolnshire coast for a week for a holiday. In 2004 myself, my parents, my brother and sister, their partners, the neices and the newly born nephew all went to Skegness (nicknamed Skeg Vegas). It was a decent week but little did I know that it would be the last time I would go on holiday, at least to date.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've had trips since then and stayed in several hotels, but I've had nothing I would consider a holiday. I think a holiday is where you go somewhere and just completely relax for all the time you're there, all my breaks since the 2004 holiday have seen me either only in the area for a football match, or doing something all of the time without any time to relax.

Now, for all those who read this and are thinking "But Skegness is only 50 miles from where you live, why not go there for the week?" Good question is my response, the reason being that Skegness is not the place you really go for a holiday to relax. Skegness is a very popular destination for families, meaning that you're always surrounded by families and their kids, if I'm going to go on holiday I want to be somewhere where I don't hear screaming all day long. I know I could easily just go at a time of the year when kids aren't going to be there....i/e during the autumn, but Skegness, and anywhere along the Lincolnshire coast for that matter, is a bit of a shithole with sod all to do.

I'm unsure where I'd want to go, I'd like to go travelling maybe and I do have an option to go on this thing called "Complete North America -  Route 66" where you drive down Route 66 in America and see all the landmarks along the way, that is something I am extremely interested in, but the person who I am potentially doing this with isn't going to do it until mid-2013.

So where to? Where to indeed? Well that all depends on what's happening with my career. I recently got offered a job in America. I'm not sure whether I'm going to take it yet, but if I do I'd love to go and see some of my friends who live over that side of the Atlantic, in both America and Canada.....although the latter I would certainly have to wear multiple layers for for reasons I mentioned in a previous blog.

I suppose I should stop moaning, but I do need a good, long break after nearly 8 years without a proper holiday.

The demoralising realisation of my inaccurate diet

Hello all

I trust your Saturday evening is going well?



THIS CAN NOW BE FOUND IN MY LUNCHBOX
 ON A REGULAR BASIS

 I've written a bit about a diet that I've been on and at first I was doing well, I had lost a fair bit of weight...or at least I thought I had. It turns out my scales were wrong all this time and I actually started this diet weighing four pounds more than I thought I did. You have no idea how demoralising it is to actually realise that when you've been weighing yourself and getting excited by your new weight, that you should actually add four on to get your weight.

After going through all my weights on myfitnesspal (the app I'm using) and changing all my weight entries, it turns out that I'm now what I thought I was several days ago, that is quite disappointing to say the least. Don't get me wrong, I've still lost the same amount of weight, but I'm just that little bit further from my goal than I thought I was, and I don't like it.



Another issue that has started to come up is that I've started biking a lot and am burning calories like no-one's business, I burnt well over 1,000 the other day just by biking to and from work, as well as the general walking around during the day, however, constantly working my muscles didn't quite have the effect I hoped it would and my weight now seems to be stablising a bit. After losing a lot in the first few days of the diet, now my weight loss has slowed down, that despite doing more exercise than when I was losing more weight, and my diet hasn't changed.



ANOTHER REGULAR ADDITION TO MY LUNCHBOX



I know I was in this for the long haul and that there will good weeks and bad weeks along the way to reaching my goal of 200 pounds, but it is just a bit demoralising to think you're one weight, only to then be told you're heavier than you thought you were. I know it's only four pounds but it feels like a major set back on my mission to lose weight.





Don't get me wrong, I still weigh less than I did at this point last week and I love that. I love that now I don't feel constantly bloated and a slight bit fitter, but it's just a bit of a blow.

It's not all doom and gloom though with regards to my diet. I may not be losing weight as quickly as I lost it initially but at least I'm not putting it back on, and I've taken steps to try and get more accurate readings of how many calories I am burning by buying a pedometer on my phone which gives you steps taken, distance, time taken and calories burnt based on my height and weight, as well as a cycling app, which allows me to do pretty much the exact same thing, just on a bike rather than my feet.

I am determined to see this through to the end. Too many times I've said to myself that I'll lose weight and then not done it, so this is the time to do it. Granted, none of my clothes will fit properly if I do see if all the way through, but a new wardrobe is a small price to pay for being happy with the way I look......well, in terms of being thin(ish), I'll still be stuck with my ugly mug at the end of it.

I am pleased to see that my "Fitness Buddy" is on the way to achieving her goal, at least I'm doing on thing right and helping her successfully :)

Oh well.

Eternal Sunshine of the Curious Mind

You know what RadioLab is good for? Inspiration.

This morning I listened to one of their podcasts called “Memory and Forgetting” and it was an extremely interesting hour of radio. In it they talk about how it becomes possible to erase memories and create them. It was an interesting concept because it makes me wonder what I would personally erase, if anything.

At first I was a bit sceptical as to whether it was actually possible to do something like this, but then they mention an experiment with rats. They got rats and sounded a buzzer at random points before then shocking the rats, making rats associate the buzzer with being electrical shocks. They notice the rat’s reactions physically, i/e bracing itself for the shock. What they do to erase the memory is inject the rat with a drug immediately after the buzzer, meaning that they are injecting the rat whilst it is preparing itself for a shock, i/e remember the association. The next time they sounded the buzzer, the rat did precisely nothing before being shocked. It had forgotten the association because of this drug.

It was speculated that this actually fully erased the memory of the rat, rather than simply erasing that specific memory, so what they do is they do two different buzzers, both still sending an electric shock into the rat, but now it associates two different sounds with being shocked. After a while they decide to sound one buzzer, then inject the rat in a similar way to before. The exact same thing happens, the next time it doesn’t remember. They then sound the other alarm but the rat shows the physical signs related to that shock, meaning that they successfully erased the memory association of the first buzzer to being shocked without effecting other memories.

They can also create memories by getting a subject to talk about certain people and experiences, seeing how the brain reacts to each word and then somehow creating a memory from that, usually of getting lost in a shopping centre as a young child.



Eternal Sunshine of the Spotland Mind (2004)



In a way it’s not too dissimilar to the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” where Jim Carrey’s character gets his memory erased of his former girlfriend (Kate Winslet), and you go through the journey with him as he is gradually losing his memory.



It does make you wonder if you would volunteer to get anything erased.  They give examples of someone being raped and several other similar types of memories and in that sense, I think it would be a good thing as you could easily erase traumatic events of your life. However, it’s not something I would do.





I have had a lot of events in my life which still haunt me today,  stuff like losing friends (mainly through my own fault), getting run over when I was 4/5 years old, and stuff like that. Despite that, I would not get my memory erased of these events, they have made me who I am today. Without these memories I could easily not have gone on to do things in my life that I am proud of, or make friends that I have made. For example, if I hadn’t stopped being friends with Faye in April 2002, I would never have become friends with Marinda.

It’s very similar in a way to how I have spent most of my life having a body image issue (but not anymore though) as up until July sort of time, I had always had a specific thing I wanted to change about my body. Now, I’m not going to mention what the thing is (although obviously some of you already know what it is) but whenever I was asked would I have preferred to have been born that way (i/e being born with my body being the way I want it to be now), I always say no. Had I been born that way then I wouldn’t have made the same friends I have now, I wouldn’t have had the same experiences growing up (either positive or negative) and I’m always of the belief that is effectively “better the devil you know.”

A thing my mind can't comprehend and another that scares the crap out of me

Hello all

Firstly, happy belated birthday to Hannah, a girl who I work with who asked me to mention her.....and I'm nothing if not generous.

Anyway, this blog is about two things that I have heard today, one of which took me a tiny bit by surprise, and the other scares the crap out of me.

So we'll start with the thing that took me a bit by surprise. I talk to my best friend Jodi on a regular basis, our conversations are quite varied but one thing that never usually comes up is temperature. For those that haven't read my other blogs, Jodi lives in Canada, I know Canada's cold, even at the best of times, but in our conversation today we got onto the weather. I had mentioned that I was losing a bit of weight because I was able to bike and Jodi mentioned that she couldn't go biking because it was -36 celcius over there at the moment. Minus 3FUCKING6!!!!



THIS WOULD BE ME IF I WAS WHERE JODI LIVED RIGHT NOW

 My brain can't even comprehend that level of cold. The coldest I have ever been in was -22 and that was in a freezer at a company where I used to work. I couldn't survive more than 5/10 minutes at a time without needing a small break in the warmth......and that's 14 degrees hotter (it seems bizarre using the word hotter and -22 in the same sentence) than what Jodi is having to put up with at the moment. I can't even begin to imagine what -36 must feel like, I really can't. I respect Jodi for a lot of reasons, and that has just been added to the list. It feels almost ridiculous moaning that it's only 4 celcius over here when that's 40 degrees hotter than what she is currently having to put up with.

So that's what surprised me, but what scared the crap of me?

Again, this relates back to a previous blog, more specifically the one where I spoke about a radio podcast I listen to called RadioLab (which by the way, is still the most awesome thing that has been introduced to me in recent months). I started a mass download of all 113 of their podcasts last night and there was one of them was that entitled "Talking to Machines."

It starts off very similar to all their previous ones, a short story starts, so on and so forth. The first story is about a guy who started communicating with a woman in Russia and they share romantic emails, become good friends and the guy wants to meet up with her, even mentioning he would happily go over to meet her, but she keeps ignoring him. At one point he even mentions to her dates he would like to come over, but the email he then gets back doesn't acknowledge the dates he's sent and even asks him to send dates of when they can meet.

He keeps sending her emails but various bits are ignored and so at one point he decides to make up pure and total nonsense in his email, putting letters together to form a word that mean nothing, something like dhghohsodhfoh. He sends and she responds without referencing it and it's at this point.........he realises he's been talking to a machine all this time.

YOU COULD HAVE SEVERAL FRIENDS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS

It turns out that there's an computer algorithm that I knew nothing about where you can have full on conversations with computer programmes where they seem so realistic, you could never realise you are talking to a computer. There is one in particular called "Cleverbot"  where it learns from what previous people have put into it to give it a better response to conversations you have with it.

The thought of that just freaks me out. It does make me wonder how many people that I have communicated with down the years that I haven't met in person or spoken to on the phone aren't actually real. There are those that I know for a fact are real just by how they respond and that I have received stuff from them, stuff that a computer certainly wouldn't say, but then there's others who I have only communicated with by email where thinking about it, they could have easily been a machine.

It's a proper mindfuck.

So there you have, two points of my day that brought about completely different

Friday morning = Crap, Monday evening = Loving it

As I've said in a few blogs I have started a diet recently and I am absolutely loving it.

This is the first time I have ever been on a diet (shock! horror!) and to be honest I had never really wanted to. That's not to say I didn't want to lose weight, but I certainly went about it in the extremely lazy way, I even once just contacted a plastic surgeon about liposuction.....stupid thing about that was that I would only get back to my original weight anyway.

So what encouraged the diet? Well reaching 18 stone 7 was certainly a start, not to mention that some clothes that I bought two years ago when they were baggy started to get a bit tight and I finally had the encouragement from Jodi, my good friend from the country of the Maple Leaf (Canada to those of you who are geographically challenged). I was quite surprised that she was wanting to go on a diet, I personally think she looks like fine, I would never describe her as fat or even overweight, and that made me look at myself and what my body have become.

So anyway, I started it on Friday morning and I've surprised myself with how much I am actually enjoying it. After 72or so hours, I am down to 18 stone 1, I know it's still big compared to a lot of people but I can't even begin to tell you how good it feels. I feel fantastic to be on a diet, eating healthily and getting in some exercise......I can't believe it's taken me 27 years to do this.

I've been eating healthily to the point where I am literally looking at the calorie count of EVERYTHING I am about to eat, and weigh up whether it's worth it....and since I have done this I have just been really concious about everything. Normally before a Lincoln City home game I would go to KFC and buy a large fillet meal with a popcorn chicken....which turns out to be a total of around 1,200 calories......no wonder I put on all this weight. Instead I walked two minutes down the road to a shop and instead bought a ham bagette, which was only 170 calories, and was just as filling.

I calculate that if I continue losing weight at the current rate that I will roughly reach my target weight of 200 pounds by the end of February. That's a bit unrealistic because obviously as I lose weight then the calories I burn in the exercises I do now will go down significantly, but I can be 200 pounds by the end of May then I will delighted.

I've finally found a use for dance/trance/electronic music

Back when I was a child and was earning (well, I say earning, more like given) pocket money, I decided I would try and get into music. I was about 5/6 at the time, give or take, and I had no interest in music at all…..and that is not an exaggeration. I didn’t have a single CD, didn’t listen to music and just wasn’t at all interested.

Like most kids, I listened to the radio and based my opinions on what was good music from that. My parents were convinced I would turn out to be gay because my first four CDs were “The Best Dance Album in the World Part 3,” 2 Unlimited’s Greatest Hits, an Eternal CD (can’t recall the name) and a CD by Wham………I can’t say I really blame my parents for thinking I was gay at that age…..infact it took until my late teens until they stopped asking if I was gay (that’s a story for another blog).

But anyway, as I grew up I became more aware of other types of music and around 16 I started to listen to rock music and it became my preferred genre of music by quite some distance. Dance/electronic music took a bit of a backseat, I didn’t hate it to be honest but I had no real need for it.

Skip forward to right now. I’m 27 years old and currently dieting to try and lose at least 1/3 of the 257 pounds I have accumulated so far in my life. Now the problem with liking rock music is that if you’re aiming to lose weight, it’s not the best music to exercise to, hence why dance music has crept back into my life like a stalker in the dark.

Now, I would stress that I still don’t like dance music much. I don’t dislike it but my main problem with dance music has always been that it is EXTREMELY repetitive. A lot of DJs seem to create five seconds worth of track and just loop it for 3/4/5/however many minutes. I never thought that would prove useless until now. Music like this is similar to a metronome in many ways, having a regularly repeated beat helps regulate you and you can pace yourself so efficiently that you can go much longer.

Rock music is not like that at all, so despite loving rock and having a passing indifference to dance music, I am now finding myself downloading dance music onto my iPhone, let me give you some examples, as well as some songs I had before hand anyway;

Anomaly by Libra Presents Taylor (although to be fair I did always like that song)

The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang (a rock band that produced what is effectively a dance track, go figure)

Breathe, Smack my Bitch Up, Omen and Voodoo People by the Prodigy

Flux by Bloc Party

Hello by Martin Solveig

House if Falling Down by Hadouken

No Ordinary Morning by Chicane

Operation Blade by Public Domain

Poppiholla by Chicane

Teardrop by Massive Attack

And that’s it. Ok, when I say I’ll give you some examples, I didn’t imagine I’d list them all, but figured I might as well as the list isn’t extensive.

Am I turning into a dance music freak? Fuck no! As soon as I stop exercising, whenever that might be, I’m dumping most of the above songs very quickly. As I started, they pace me and work like a metronome, whereas rock music doesn’t…..and let’s face it, certain rock songs aren’t exactly motivating at the best of times……I’m looking in your direction Blue October.

The many failings of the football club I support, summed up in one match.

I don't often write about football on this blog but yesterday pissed me off. Lincoln City could only draw 0-0 with Carshalton Athletic, a team that are two divisions below the Imps.

To sum that up in a quote, I am going to use one from the TV show "Dead Like Me." (a TV show I would highly recommend by the way)

"I don't like saying this in this hallowed place, but this is fucking inadequate!" : Rube Sofer, played by Mandy Pitinkin (right),

It takes a lot to piss me off these days, I'm far more laid back than I used to be but I am truly disgusted with my football club at the moment. I learned to accept a while ago that we're not very good, but even I never imagined we would struggle to even have a shot against a poor team. It was truly ridiculous.


I'm not sure what pissed me off the most about the performance.

• Everytime one of our players got the ball they just stopped. This isn't fucking netball, you can move with the ball once you receive it.
• When we broke two-on-one, three-on-two, etc, we wouldn't try and take advantage, we would always effectively stop and wait for the defence to get back in place.
• Set pieces. I don't know why Lincoln fans bother getting excited when we win a set piece.......when John Nutter takes a set piece, it always hits the first defender. No point winning set pieces if you're just going to waste them.
• Getting into the box and not playing balls across goal first time around, instead stopping, cutting back onto their other foot (ridiculously not even their prefered foot) and then playing a piss poor pass straight to a defender.
• The inability to complete a pass to someone who is more than five yards away.
• The lack of having a shot, even when the chance was available.
• Having all that possession and doing precisely fuck all with it.
• Players just giving up and not chasing down.

That's a brief summary of some of the things I hate about not only this game, but about Lincoln in general at these days, but then David Holdsworth did one of the most idiotic things I have ever seen in my time at Lincoln.

We're facing a team two divisions below us at home, we're struggling break them down with 2 strikers on the pitch......so what the fuck does he do? He takes one of the two strikers off and goes 4-5-fucking-1, one of the worst formations in football. It shows a lack of ambition, especially against a side who provided fuck all quality throughout the game themselves. 4-5-1 is one of those formations that basically symbolises you have given up hope of winning the game. You won't concede many goals but you won't score many either. It's a formation which means that it's very hard to get anything out of the game if you go behind.

It's not helped by having a revolving door policy, especially when most coming in are not better than those that are already here. Robson made his debut in the Carshalton game and kept playing balls into the box with precisely fuck all power on them, meaning they were easily cleared. He's no better than Tony Sinclair, and as Keith Alexander (RIP) always said, there's no point bringing in players that aren't better than what you already have.

Keith would also give a player a decent chance to make an impression before getting rid of him, Holdsworth seems to only give some one game before deciding he doesn't want them. Give them a chance, David.

I'm looking at the squad and although changes were forced becuase of the financial situation, how many players can I look at in the current general starting XI and say they are better than the player they've replaced? Not many. Conal Platt is better than Gavin McCallum, but other than that I don't think a single player out there that Holdsworth has bought to the club is better than the player they have replaced.

Following this football club is becoming more tedious by the minute and going to games it becoming more like a chore.

Day 1 of the diet : 259 pounds and a set of broken scales

I'll start this off by saying I weighed 18 stone 7 at the start of this diet.....or 259 pounds for those who live in countries that don't use the "stone" system. My target is to get down to 200 pounds by my birthday (September 12th), which I think is doable, that gives me a target of about 2 pounds a week....give or take. Given that I am hoping to move to either America or Canada this year to start a new life, I'd like to start that new life without looking like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers. That was only intended as a joke by the way, despite weighing so much, I generally don't look like I weigh that much.....at least that's what everyone tells me.

The annoying thing is that I don't actually generally eat that much, the problem is that I work in an office and unlike other jobs I've had, you're just sat there all day rather than moving around. I worked at McDonalds whilst I was going through college and you got free food and then got to eat what was left at the end of the shift, and I didn't put on a bit of weight because I was constantly moving.

It seems almost ridiculous that I weigh this much without actually eating that much.

Maybe I shouldn't have retired from playing football afterall.........

But anyway.....day one of the diet is over with and I think I've done a reasonable job.

The app on my phone gave me a target of eating no more than 1,700 calories and I only consumed 1,250ish, a good start. I say ish because I also had a home-made ham sandwich but that wasn't on the list of products that were on the app, so we'll say 1,350 just for argument's sake.

I was quite pleased with myself and decided to weigh myself already just to see if I had already lost some weight......a bit optimistic I know. That's when I realised I might need more than just an app to help me accurately measure my weight.

I got on my scales, waited.......17 stone 7.......that can't be right????!?! Don't get me wrong, I was pleased to have apparantly lost that much weight in just 24 hours......but I did find it a little unlikely. I weighed myself again and was back up to 18 stone 7.....a sad look went over my face.

I left it about an hour and went back.......18 stone 7.5......so despite not eating anythin in between, I somehow put on half a pound......so I gave it another go straight away......18 stone 8.....what the hell is going on??? Third time lucky......18 stone 5.5.

Now, I would have been happy with that after one day....but the problem is that I can't trust a set of scales that gives five different weights within such a short amount of time.

It sort of makes it all a bit pointless if I can't get accurate readings.

Don't worry, I'm not going to post every day about how I've been eating natural yoghurts and oranges.

Debating whether to buy an orange or not

In a previous blog I mentioned that I am very keen to start losing weight and this morning I have downloaded an app to help me keep track of all the calories I'm consuming.

Please note that these are NOT my feet

If I am to reach my ideal weight then I can only consume 1700 calories a day. I didn't really appreciate how little that generally is until I had my breakfast, a small bowl of Shreddies. At the time of writing that is the only thing I've eaten this morning and I've already 209 calories into my 1700 according to the phone app.

Then I decided I would get rid of all the stuff in my lunch box that would significantly add to that number.........so all I have in there now is a ham sandwich, a muller light yoghurt and a natural yoghurt from Asda. It looks depressing seeing my lunchbox that empty.

I thought to myself "I fancy an orange," went to the canteen at my work, bought one and got back to my desk. All of a sudden I started thinking "I've probably only burnt off 3/4 calories by walking to buy it, but how many calories is the orange? Oh bugger, have I just been counter productive????"

This is going to be a long road to losing 57 pounds.

RadioLab, the most intelligent and thought provoking podcast you've probably never heard of

I feel like all I've done since starting this blog is talk about the female half of the species and their impact on me, my bad experiences growing up and my issues with trust and paranoia, so I want to write a bit of a different blog that is more positive .

About two months ago my friend Megan, a current resident of Nashville in America, recommended that I listen to a podcast called RadioLab from WNYC. She said that she had been driving for six hours and was listening to one of their shows called New Normal, and it reminded her of me, so I downloaded it, listened and was instantly hooked.

Being a podcast from another country, it's not likely that a lot of people in the UK have even heard of it other than when I may have briefly mentioned it on Facebook or Twitter, but I can't recommend it highly enough.

I've listened to about 10 of their podcasts, ranging from 15/20 minutes up until 75 minutes, and each has been thought provoking and interesting. I'm slowly making my way through all of their podcasts (there are a LOT), but it is well worth it.

"New Normal" was one of the most interesting things I have ever listened to, a podcast asking "What is normal these days?" It contains three short articles about acceptance;

• What happened to a group of apes/gorillas (I can't remember which) when the alpha-male was removed.
• How a town accepted one of it's residents (Stu Rasmussen - left) becoming transgendered and then even more accepting by electing Stu as it's mayor, not to forget how that community rallied around Stu when the religious nuts came to town to protest it.
• An experiment where they try to tame foxes and the foxes evolve over a short space of time, not only in terms of "personality" but also in terms of appearance.

It was one of the most thought provoking 60-or-so minutes of my life.

I can't recommend radio lab enough and would seriously recommend that you listen to it.

http://www.radiolab.org/

I have actually managed to surprise myself

It takes a lot to surprise me these days, especially my own reactions to things, but last night that all changed.

I have a history of not taking negatives said about me well, especially from friends, and even more especially from people who I consider to be my best friends. I tend to go into a mental pit of self-pity for a few hours/days and even years later that sort of stuff drives me crazy......but not this time.

I was discussing something with a great friend who I haven't really spoken to much in the last few weeks for various reasons........well, I'll reword that, I've sent this person communications on a regular basis but didn't get a response....which prompted more one-way communications being sent. This friend stated that was one of the reasons that they don't always respond, they feel like I am, to use their word, "bombarding" them with messages.

Now normally I would have probably gone into the aforementioned pit, but I was surprised by my reaction. I just accepted it and reacted in a positive way. I've always had issues with controlling my enthusiasm for communicating with people once I've started to really like them and I think that was one of the main reasons that my friendship with Marinda started coming to an end. I was probably one step shy of being a stalker with Marinda, I was completely in love with her, I've never loved someone that intensely and I can fully see why it had a negative impact on our friendship.....and that's the first time I have probably admitted to myself that it was my fault that that friendship effectively ended.

Seriously, you have no idea what I became like with Marinda, I can't even put it into words. I think saying "one step shy of being a stalker" doesn't even do it justice. At one point I even contemplated getting on a train (I wasn't driving at the time) to see her without even telling her. Looking back on the friendship, I can see that it was me that drove her away and all the lies that she told me (or at least what I believe were lies) were for a good reason.

I'm determined for it not to happen with another friend, a friend who I care about, so instead of doing my thing of going into the pit, I am going to act on what this friend said to me and react in a positive way. I am not going to have a repeat of the past, I am not going turn into the person I was when I was Marinda was in my life.

From this day on you are going to see a different me. No more paranoia, no more pressurising, no more being the dick I have been for the last ten years.

Why I gave up 8 and a half years of hard work

I would stress I originally wrote this about three/four weeks ago, this is just a copy and paste from my other blog.

 

Back in 2000 I started going to watch my local football team, Lincoln City, on a regular basis. I loved it and although we did crap in the 2000/1 and 2001/2 (my first year of having a season ticket) seasons, I was hooked. I loved the 2002/3 season after we made the Playoffs after being relegation favourites and three years after I first went on a regular basis I decided to create a website just after the 2002/3 season. It was my third attempt at creating a Lincoln City website and although it got off to a very slow start, it soon boomed due to me creating controversial articles and having a "no holds barred" attitude when it came to describing performances. Afterall, why should I bullshit and say a performance was good when it was shite?

Not that a large number of Lincoln fans could deal with that as a lot have been long deluded as to the team. For example, I consistently slag of the continuing decisions of managers to give Andy Hutchinson a new contract when virtually none of them play him when he's not injured, and when he is on the pitch he does fuck all, yet everyone seems to think that he has the sun shining out of his arse simply because he came out of the youth system. Just because a player comes out of the youth system doesn't mean he's good enough, and just 1 goal in 22 appearances for City as a striker says it all. People will say he has barely been given a chance but he came on for 30 minutes at Stevenage last season and didn't even touch the ball.

Infact, Lincoln fans are one of the main reasons I am giving up. I'm sick of some of them. I'm sick of sitting in the stand and having Lincoln fans not understanding the offside rule or seeing one of our defenders blatently handball in the area and being confused as to why the referee has given a penalty. If you're watching a defender hoof it forward and they see it land with a striker that's 20 yards behind the last defender, they automatically assume it was offside and berate the linesman. If only the fans would realise that because they were looking at the defender when the ball was played, they're not looking at the striker, and therefore the striker, if not flagged, would have been onside when the ball was played, but because no fans were looking at the attacker, they automatically assume that he was offside when the ball was played, whereas it's just not the case......and yes, I used to do a lot of linesman duty whilst playing in the Sunday League.

The worst part about that is that you try and explain that to them and they refuse to listen. It's impossible to explain to people who simply don't want to listen.

It's that sort of thing that does my absolute nut in. Lincoln fans are so ridiculously biased it's unbelievable. Some asked me why I am not part of the Lincoln City Banter page on Facebook and the reason is that virtually every single thread breaks into an argument with the usual people (who I won't name) always turning the argument into being about themselves rather than the original point of the thread.

Then there's not to forget the decision to not open the Stacey West to fans in some cup games this season. The childish reaction was ridiculous, you go to support the team, not the stand. I sit in the CO-OP Upper and do you hear me bitching and complaining that I couldn't sit in my normal seat? No. I just got on with it.

Anyway, so the website became quite popular and at one point average 19,000 average unique users a day......which I was exceptionally pleased with when you consider that the average attendance at Sincil Bank at the time was just over 5,000. I also started doing an away day video diary that also became reasonably popular, and even saw me featured in Zoo magazine one issue. In November 2007 I was named as the runner up in Virgin Media's Biggest Football Fan competition after being nominated by various members of the football club.

I will admit that all this relative success got to my head a bit and that, combined with the people who ran the Lincoln City Vital website poaching members from all the other forums, meant that hits went down considerable, only averaging 5,000 unique visitors a day.

It got to 2008/9 and I moved to Nottingham. After two months I decided that that would be that and I announced at the end of that season that I would stop doing the website, although due to popular demand I didn't in the end. Despite agreeing to stay, my passion for doing the website and the videos had gone.

When my Youtube account was forced to close in October 2010, I was relieved in a way, and although they did return, the passion for doing them wained. It became a bit of a farce because of the shit battery on an iPhone making it frustrating as I then wouldn't be able to use it on the way home unless I carried around my laptop for charging......it's a big bloody battery.

I have considered getting rid of the website and the videos for some time and in the last week I made the decision that they would finally be going. Three days without a single post being placed on the message board convinced me that the website was well past it's sell by date, combine that with a lack of passion for doing it anymore and I decided to call it a day.

I need a new challenge in my life and whilst I have received generally positive comments for the videos, I need more than that, I need motivation and I haven't had that for some time. If you read through the read of my blogs you will notice that I have often said that I want a change in my life and a new challenge. I've wanted to try various little projects for a few years but never had the time because of work, website and video selections.

The reason I have decided just to close the website rather than offering it to others is because everytime I have asked if anyone is interested in writing articles of a subject of their choosing, I usually get virtually no response and I figure that if no-one's willing to take just twenty minutes to write a one-off article, no-one's going to want to take up to ten hours a week updating pages, writing articles, etc.

Am I ruling out returning to website administration and video production in the future? No, not even slightly. For all I know this could just turn out to be a brief spell away from websites and Youtube, but for now it just doesn't interest me.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have helped out and offered their support during the last eight years. It has been very much appreciated.

Re-evaluation time : Goals for 2012

It's more than 2 weeks since my last entry and I have spent that time, amongst other things, reassessing my life. During the time it also turned in 2012, so I've started thinking about what I want to do in the next twelve months, and the future after that.

I have recently expressed a desire to leave the UK as I am becoming more detached from life in the UK. Over the last few months I have fallen out of love with a lot of things that were an integral part of my life a year ago. I no longer get excited by the prospect of going to watch Lincoln City play, or even football in general, so much to the point where I was able to just give up the website I had run for nearly 10 years without having any regrets.

I am not close to any particular member of my family and none of my best friends live in England. I do have some good friends in England, such as Ellen and Charlie, but other than them I can't think of anyone in this country who I would genuinely miss if I were to leave, not off of the top of my head anyway. I don't mean that offensively but I have 130 people on Facebook and how many do I talk to on a regular basis other than Jodi, Megan, Ellen or Charlie? Probably none of them, not a single one.....other than the ones I work with, but that doesn't really count.

I suppose one reasonf or that is that virtually none of my friends live in Lincoln, they all live a distance away and I rarely see them, or even talk to them on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong, some of the people I worked with at Showcase Cinema were people I loved working with, but as I say, I rarely see or talk to them, so it'd be hard to miss them if I moved away as it wouldn't really change anything.

I've always been a bit sceptical of Facebook in general anyway. I always found it to be a bit of a popularity contest. I was not a popular kid in school, yet the amount of people from school who added me to Facebook was ridiculous, especially given that most of them didn't actually talk to me at all during school. Despite that, I do find it useful for communicating with people and for that purpose it is a good tool, but again I've fallen out of love with it for most part.

So anyway, as we now enter 2012, I am going to start re-evaluating my future.

I have ruled out Norway as a place I want to live. I'd love to visit it for a holiday, but having looked into it a bit more, there's not enough justification to move therea and to be honest, I think Tromso was just a case of me thinking it was a beautiful city before actually doing sufficient research into it.

So my choices are America and Canada, and I have started to take it very seriously.

Although the image is a bit dark, I bought a book recently about moving to America, what to expect in general, how to actually apply for stuff like work VISAs, etc. The only thing it doesn't properly tell me is what the good areas to live in, and that leads me neatly onto Route 66.

Recently I started discussing with someone I know about a thing called "Complete North America" and it has a Route 66 drive. It's a 2 week driving holiday that goes down the whole of Route 66, which is a LONG way, it goes through a lot of different cities and areas, meaning I get a good view of America in a short amount of time. It's something I am seriously considering.

http://www.completenorthamerica.com/holiday-type/fly-drive-holidays/route-66-usa-fly-drive

I still want to see large amounts of Canada as well as I would still love to go there. Every time I turn on TV there is a programme on that references Canada and there are numerous other signs that are telling me it's the right place for me. My best friend lives there and it is a truly beautiful country........cold, but beautiful.

Changing subject, I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions but one thing I certainly want to do this year is lose weight. I weigh 18 stone (well, 18 stone 5 at the time of writing, but I figured I'd round it up) and it's not good. The problem with it is that I work in an office and burning calories and getting decent levels of exercise during the day is nigh on impossible, gyms cost far too much and I have problems with the back of my legs where the muscles tense up after just a few minutes, even when walking, and it becomes uncomfortable. I know that has nothing to do with my weight as I had that problem when I only weighed about 12 stone in 2005ish (I put the weight on after working in call centres).

I think my ideal weight at the moment would be anything under 15 stone. The lower the better but I'd be happy with anything under 15 stone. That'd be a weight loss of more than 40 pounds and I'd be delighted with that, especially if I end up getting back to the 12 stone I was a few years back.

So other than deciding about a new country to live, friends and weight, do I have anything else to talk about? Nope, not really, so for now, peace out!