She's like a new girl every day...

...and all the rest don't bother me. I'm far too busy loving her.

OK, well it's 1.12am, I should be asleep (or packing boxes) but my alcoholic housemate Andy is stomping up and down the stairs in a drunken haze and I doubt I'll be getting some sleep so I've put some Tommy Boyd on my mp3 player and started to write up my topics from previously. Oh and I've rejigged the look of the blog as both* of my regular viewers will know. I hope my weekly music chart comes in handy.

handle me with care:
Freya & I went to see the lovely Jenny Lewis in Manchester in the middle of February. As expected she was excellent and looked as beautiful as ever. We were right by the front and could hear everything perfectly.

What we weren't expecting was Johnathan Rice to be so good, or for him to have such a weird accent. He plays Bob Dylan in Walk The Line and Johnathan's accent sounds a bit like Bob's but even weirder. Farmer Dave and The Watson Twins were good as well. I should be adding pictures on flickr soon.

dolphins:
Whilst in Manchester (my brother was up for the gig as well) Tom tried to embarrass me in front of Freya with stories about me. What was bad was that he kept getting them wrong. For example, the story that I fancy dolphins.

What he said happened was a few years back we were in Sea World - Adventure Cove (I think that's what it's called), Orlando and we were going swimming with dolphins. My brother said when I came out of the water I had a rather large protrusion. Tom thought it was due to swimming with Martha the dolphin. But it wasn't.

What happened was this, I had just flown in (my family went earlier as they all worked/went to school) and I was getting used to the higher heat. Plus I was on a different time zone. So we went swimming (it was with the little fishes when this happened) and I think because of the heat, the water and that I didn't know what time it was I had a large erection.

The stupid thing was that I got out of the water with my erection not thinking that anyone would notice (Hey no-one had ever noticed it before - I mean in my life, not just in the pool) but my brother did. Luckily he warned me, but then told everyone else about it.

scary party 24th bisexual:
Xmas 2004:
Tom & I flew over to spend Christmas with our family in Osnabruck. Dad picked us up and drove us to the house. "Mum's at a party with the next door neighbour, but they're nice."

They weren't nice.

The Dad (Bill) had a really annoying Scouse accent. The kind that is quite high pitched and just digs into you. Plus he said my brother was wearing 'gay bands'. What my brother was wearing was the bands you get to let you back in at music festivals. How they make you gay I don't know. I've blocked everything else from this night out of my memory, I just know it was bad.

Xmas 2005:
Tom & I flew over to spend Christmas with our family in Osnabruck. Dad picked us up and as he drove us back we told him, "We're not going to any parties at Bill's Dad" "Don't worry, we won't be going there"

A few days later and Tom went up to Monchengladbach to spend time with his mates. Guess what happened in his absence?**

We went to the party (I decided I wasn't drinking so I could pretend I was ill - although drinking would give me a better excuse of being ill thinking about it) only to find Bill's wife's yokel brother was round.

He was well dodgy. For some reason he was slagging off Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne for them slagging off Madonna. Apparently they can't slag her off because Madge is a good Mum whereas they call their daughter a slag. This was bad for me & Tom as we call our Dad a 'tubby little titwitch' as a matter of course.

Then Bill came in. He was talking about how he hates Snowboarders and how he kills them. Apparently this is because one nearly ran him over.*** So Bill decided to interrogate everyone about what they did: Ski or Snowboard.

Most were Ski, but then it came to me. I could Ski rather well, but had Snowboarded as well. So I said "I've snowboarded, but I've also skied. I'm bisexual." Then I made my excuses and left.

It really was a shit party.

scary woman meeting room:
At work we were meant to be having an excel training course in a room full of computers. But when I got there with the projector (as I'm trusted, and possibly drew the short straw) there was someone in there saying they had booked it.

Cue running around trying to find out who had booked the room. It looked like it should be us, but we had a question mark next to us - they weren't on there though. We also had an external person coming over so I was having to placate her as well.

Then we went back to the room where I met a kind and helpful person where we came to a conclusion that helped both of us achieve our goals. Oh wait, this is the 'scary woman meeting room' topic. She was a really horrible person, the sort of person who just doesn't listen to what you're saying and only her opinion is correct. We were trying to be as nice as possible but said that as she wasn't on the booking for the room at all we had the right to kick her out. "Well OK as long as you are prepared to pay for the wages of everyone who I'll have to send home early because I can't train them"

Luckily as I am excellent I found a place where we could be trained and saved the day. Then I walked past the room at 2.15ish only to find that the other team had gone home for the day.

I bet we paid her a full wage for the day as well, the skiving miserable work-shy trumpet head.

flights are annoying:
I expect the US are good at this, but the brits are crap at connecting flights. To get to Germany this time I took a flight from Manchester to London Stansted then onto Osnabruck. Unfortunately I was assuming that when I got to Manchester I would wait for half an hour then onto the flight.

I wasn't expecting getting a bus journey on arrival then a monorail only to arrive about 50 meters from where I'd first got off the aeroplane. The idiots. And then there was about a two hour wait.

It was even worse when I flew back at 6 in the morning. And then the connecting flight was delayed for an hour. Grrrr.

PC trouble:
As befits me I have been having PC troubles. My broadband modem decides to cut out after about 9 minutes of working. So I'll have to spend £80 on wi-fi. Hurrah! Oh wait I can't afford it because I'm...

moving in:
with the lovely Freya. The date has been set, it's this Tuesday (the 28th) and it will be wonderful. I think I'm ready for this step and can't see how it won't work. I've told Freya that as a man we don't notice when things are getting dirty so I will have to be told & then I'll help out.

My Mum & Dad are coming to stay the first weekend when we're in there so that'll be stressful/fun. But at least they will be bringing bookshelves, lights and chests of drawers from ikea for us. Hurrah!

failed exam:
I failed my final CIMA exam again. With exactly the same mark as the last time I failed. This is annoying.

last.fmflickr.comdeli.cio.us:
These are all websites that show what I like & then you can work out what you like from it. It's web 2.0 apparently, which is a geek way of saying 'more interactive than before'****.

So here are my pages on them there websites:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268080@N00/
http://www.last.fm/user/uppi17/
http://del.icio.us/uppi17

I will put them on the right hand side of here now I'm getting used to how the template thing works.

david hasselhoff:
I like David Hasselhoff. This is wrong on so many levels.

Bis bald!
Benjamin Blumchen

* Both! That's a bit of a high estimate isn't it? (Yes - ed)

** I've just realised that this is wrong. Tom did go round to their house, but was away when they came round to ours. Bill's wife turned the conversation onto kids at the park (which their houses back garden looks onto) having a shit/piss in front of them while Bill & the missus were having a G&T. Not a good chat to be listening to.

*** So Bill caught him up and pushed him over. What a nice chap.

**** You can tell it probably shouldn't be called be web 2.0 as it's actually quite good. As opposed to the other famous 2.0's: Garbage's Version 2.0 and Jake 2.0