Cheating

It seems that every sport I turn to has some news story of cheating. I am a fan of many sports but it's starting to become difficult to have the passion when you realise that so many people are attempting to cheat.
In no particular order:
a) Football - Diving is a major issue at the moment, but also match fixing (in the past), Chelsea's transfer ban, the occasional drugs issue
b) Cycling - EPO, and other blood doping reports STILL going on despite all the time/money/effort that has gone into fighting it.
c) Formula 1 - Renault's current scandal, McLaren spy-gate last year
d) Rugby - "Blood-gate" scandal - although I'm pretty sure this was the lamest attempt at cheating I've seen for a while
e) American Football - Patriots "Spy-gate" scandal although that was a couple of years ago. Actually Amercian Football seem pretty good at reacting to cheating.
and many others...
But the cheating that annoys me the most.... Wii Mario Kart online. WHY?!!? who sits down at a wii and thinks "I'll go online and cheat so that I can win every race by a mile, get a rating of 9999 and make all the other users games frustrating and ultimately wasted"? What is it they hope to achieve? at least with all the above sports you can say - there's a financial benefit to cheating or to gain noteriety or a win. But all the wii-cheaters are achieving: making me less likely to play online mario-kart. Thus eventually all that will be left are the cheaters and the eternal optimists.

I guess that at the end of the day my current 6900 rating doesn't reflect my ability and I'm OK with that :)

Update

I am back from honeymoon - it was good (that's all I'm saying here!)

Everything went well from our perspective and we both had a really good day!

Jenn is now all moved in to the flat - I've emptied some draws to accomodate her ever increasing clothing collection :)
It's still a little strange - I keep expceting to have to take Jenn to the station and see her go off to Bangor/Southport/up north somewhere but I don't have to anymore!

In other news - Arsenal are doing poorly, NY Giants doing well, Wiggo's still going in the Tour of Britain, and Button's form is back so all in all a mixed week for those I follow.
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I signed up with Lijit a few weeks ago out of curiosity mostly - so far it tells me that no-one is reading this. Which makes me feel kinda relieved - at least i'm not annoying anyone!

So to all those who aren't reading this - Blog On!

Media Blackout

I'm off to get hitched....

internet access may be patchy and so this might be a last blog for a while.

See you on the otherside!

The centre of attention

I have come across a major flaw in this whole wedding malarkey.
I sincerely dislike being the centre of attention. I get very easily embarrassed by things and when that happens I can get a bit tongue-tied.
But why? What is it that I get embarrassed about?
It's probably something to do with the fact that I don't see why anyone would want to look at me. Unless I'm performing onstage/doing something worthy of attention then I'm like a duck in water.
It's probably some deep-seated inferiority complex - if only I knew a psychologist.....

The Sofa Saga

Jenn and I are due to be married in 8 days. As such we have set about attempting to create a home in which we both can live. As part of this endeavour we took a trip to Ikea, supplier of many furnishings, in order to buy a sofa-bed.
They don't have an amazing selection, most of the "bed" parts are pretty shoddy and looked like they'd fall apart if Zac jumped on them (he's 3!) but eventually we found a sofa we liked and bought it.
Sofa - so good*
When we ordered it - Ikea told us that we should check that the sofa would fit - gave us the measurements of the sofa. Now I don't know a lot about sofa's but I do know that they are not regular boxes - they have curvy bendy bits. So with my meagre knowledge of topography I guessed that, although the published figures were a little too big, that with some wiggling we'd be ok.
The sofa was attempted to be delivered on Tues (18th) and although the guys who delivered it gave it a really good try there was no way that the sofa was going to fit - my doorframe is approx 3 inches too narrow. So close and yet sofa **
What to do? The young men took the sofa away again telling me; "You will be contacted about to discuss how to procede". Very mafia.
And so it was. Ikea rang me on the Wednesday to offer me a refund of 60% - pretty generous considering it was a made-to-order job. However loathe to lose approx £300 and still have no sofa - I asked
"can I get it re-delivered?"
to which the nice lady scoffed
"well I suppose if you removed a window or something"
"No I mean - can I get it delivered to my parents?"
"Oh yes, you can do that. We'll charge you for re-delivery though."
"How much is that?"
"About £30 pounds"
So yeah for £30 I can have my sofa (and eat it too? no) even though it won't be in my flat it will at least be in my possesion for use at a later date!
All in all it's a bit of a faff and a mess but at the end of the day*** I'll look back and laugh! Although probably not for a while yet....

*Sorry
**Sorry again
***about 10ish

Stag-gering!

First of all may I say "chapeau" (it's a french term, used a lot in cycling, meaning "respect to/well done") to my Best Man Andy for organising a very good, action-packed day. I really did enjoy myself.
Secondly to all who came - even to only one or two events: Thank you - it was you who made it such a good day.

Football, Bowling, Gourmet Burgers, Paintballing and finally crawling home slightly more alive than dead; do days get any better? Well the 28th might but so far so good :)
Just as an update, I have, to date, discovered at least 8 bruises from paintballing - the real beauty is on my arm. A nice purpley-red target.

11 days to go....hopefully the bruises will have cleared.

Twitter update

decision: Twitter is not for me

End of discussion.