Since it has been half term I have spent the majority of my time playing guitar and watching Bleach, and I have just finished watching the Dorje livestream on Youtube, So I this post has been a little delayed, but while I wait for the Centered and One pre-order page to load I thought I'd quickly get my post in.
I think in this one week I've made a great improvement in my guitar playing, I say that mostly because I've learned quite a lot of new things, such as modes and two handed tapping. I've had quite a nice amount of fun using two handed tapping, and I've been enjoying the Phrygian and Locrian scales, I have also learned the Dorian, Lydian and Mixolydyian modes, I already knew the Aeolian and Ionian modes, but I didn't know those names for them.
I find there is a great satisfaction in learning new things, especially when it has something to do with what you love, and what I love is heavy metal. Don't get me wrong, I don't cast an artist aside just because they aren't a metal band, I am quite partial to blues, prog and even classical music, but my preference is metal. When asked what kind of metal is my preference I usually say extreme metal, because I love the four sub-genres it covers, and it makes the decision easier.
Unfortunately my playing has one major problem, which I presume time and practice with help me overcome, everything sounds samey, on top of that, the Black Sabbath influences are very prominent in what I write, so I could really do with breaking free of this, and adding a bit more variation into my playing. I doubt I'll ever be anywhere near as versatile as Guthrie Govan, but I don't want to be limited as a metal guitarist.
I have got one thing that makes me quite versatile, I've got a guitar designed for country and blues and yet I can get some incredible metal sounds out of it also, and I have both channels nicely set up to give me a different sound, the clean channel is slightly driven which gives me a nice sound somewhere between Rush and Joe Bonamassa. My crunch channel gives me an excellent metal tone perfect for pretty much every sub genre of metal, it doesn't work so well for hair metal though.
It helps that the Marshall Valvestate 80 combo I use isn't really a specialised amp, I wouldn't call it one anyway. I can get many sounds out of it, for many different genres, I just have to set it up right. I'd like to upgrade my amp, preferably into a separate head and a cab, The head I'd like to own is the Laney Iron Heart IRT60H, and I'd get a matching 412 cab. I've been looking through a lot of amps, and so far that has been my favourite.
As for guitars, my current primary guitar is a Dearmond M-75T, it's an incredible instrument, but it has one major problem: the last seven frets are hard to reach. This is because the singlecut design is very chunky, and also very heavy, and so guitar solos that take place past the fifteenth fret become very difficult.
This means a change in guitar is necessary, the easiest solution would be to use the ESP that I own, but I don't like it enough, it's an incredible instrument (despite the awkward bridge, which I'm starting to like a little bit more), but it doesn't fit as well in my hands as my Dearmond, my current thoughts are to buy a Chapman ML-2 and then customise that to get a tone worthy of me, but then I'd just end up with an over the top metal axe that I probably won't be able to use anywhere but my bedroom.
Either way it's a long road for a budding guitarist like myself, but if I'm lucky I might be able to make it as one within the armed forces. As they say, slow and steady wins the race.
Sunday 22 February 2015
Sunday 15 February 2015
Random Annoyances
As I might have mentioned in my last post, I had my army interview this week, I believe it went quite well, but I can't be bothered to talk about that again, I went through it in my Bronies UK post. I also went through my Valentines Day in that post, and so I won't be talking about that either. I also had my nineteenth birthday on Monday, which went by pretty much unnoticed, I'm not complaining, I hate the fuss and attention that birthdays usually bring.
So surely something worth talking about happened during the week, and in fact something did. A prime example of which is I realised just how much I dislike Floyd Rose floating tremolo bridges. I'm going to point out now that it's not because they are bad in any way, I actually think they're quite clever, and they hold their tuning extremely well. I do however believe that setting them up, and dealing with them is more effort than it's worth.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with that system, in order to change the tuning on your guitar you can't just play around with the tuning heads. Instead you have to undo the locking nut, providing you have one, which most guitars loaded with this system do, then you can play with the tuning heads until you get to whatever tuning you desire, after that you have to undo the back plate, and then you have to adjust the tremolo springs until the bridge is flat (for lack of a more accurate term), repeat those steps as long as necessary, reattach the back plate, redo the locking nut, and then you can finally fine tune.
Doing that was far too much effort when all I wanted to do was set it for C# standard (1 1/2 step down). I also gave it a restring so thankfully the locks on the nut were already removed, but in order to restring you need to cut the bullets off the end off your strings, unscrew a small block from the bridge, insert the string into where you pulled the block from, replace the block and tighten the screw. I'll give it one thing, at least I don't have to hold the string in place at both ends like I do with the Bigsby on my primary guitar, but it's still too much of a pain for my taste.
I shouldn't really complain about it too much though, I've been given a damn good guitar, and so it's worth maintaining, it needed a cleaning, and it also needed a pick-up ring replacing. I might as well change the strings while I'm at it, and if I wasn't awkward, and I was willing to use .010 - .046 gauge strings and keep it in standard tuning, a nice portion of the setup could have been avoided.
I was also nicely annoyed when my precious .011 gauge D'addario string snapped whilst retuning my primary guitar, to make matters worse, I only had a .010 gauge Rotosound string to replace it with, a .010 gauge E string sounds weird when it's attached to a set designed for an .011 gauge E string.
Another annoyance of the week, I was able to start working on that Vintage Metal Axxe bass yesterday, everything had finally arrived. There were two problems, one of which has been solved. the one that has been solved involved one of the screws holding the P-style pick-up in place. It was worn down to the point that a screwdriver would do anything. I sat there for what felt like an eternity with a dull saw (all I could find) turning the once-cross-headed screw into a flat-headed screw. It worked in the end, but I wasn't happy about the whole ordeal. The other problem has put me at a bit of a standstill, the pots I had ordered were too small, so now I need to order some long shafted pots.
I have also been annoyed by things that don't involve guitars. Mostly a few of the things that occurred to me this morning while delivering papers, and the happy memories that keep popping into my head. Yes, happy memories annoy me, this is because of the nature of those happy memories. I'd rather not go into the nature of those memories, but my realisation this morning that the biggest mistake I have made in my life as of yet was going to Sixth Form.
I don't now where I'd be without Sixth Form, But I still firmly believe that that was my biggest mistake, and I reckon it'll be awhile before I make a bigger one. I might be wrong about that, but I don't fancy making another huge mistake any time soon. So those of you year 11 students thinking about staying on for Sixth Form, I'd strongly advise against it, go to a college instead.
So surely something worth talking about happened during the week, and in fact something did. A prime example of which is I realised just how much I dislike Floyd Rose floating tremolo bridges. I'm going to point out now that it's not because they are bad in any way, I actually think they're quite clever, and they hold their tuning extremely well. I do however believe that setting them up, and dealing with them is more effort than it's worth.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with that system, in order to change the tuning on your guitar you can't just play around with the tuning heads. Instead you have to undo the locking nut, providing you have one, which most guitars loaded with this system do, then you can play with the tuning heads until you get to whatever tuning you desire, after that you have to undo the back plate, and then you have to adjust the tremolo springs until the bridge is flat (for lack of a more accurate term), repeat those steps as long as necessary, reattach the back plate, redo the locking nut, and then you can finally fine tune.
Doing that was far too much effort when all I wanted to do was set it for C# standard (1 1/2 step down). I also gave it a restring so thankfully the locks on the nut were already removed, but in order to restring you need to cut the bullets off the end off your strings, unscrew a small block from the bridge, insert the string into where you pulled the block from, replace the block and tighten the screw. I'll give it one thing, at least I don't have to hold the string in place at both ends like I do with the Bigsby on my primary guitar, but it's still too much of a pain for my taste.
I shouldn't really complain about it too much though, I've been given a damn good guitar, and so it's worth maintaining, it needed a cleaning, and it also needed a pick-up ring replacing. I might as well change the strings while I'm at it, and if I wasn't awkward, and I was willing to use .010 - .046 gauge strings and keep it in standard tuning, a nice portion of the setup could have been avoided.
I was also nicely annoyed when my precious .011 gauge D'addario string snapped whilst retuning my primary guitar, to make matters worse, I only had a .010 gauge Rotosound string to replace it with, a .010 gauge E string sounds weird when it's attached to a set designed for an .011 gauge E string.
Another annoyance of the week, I was able to start working on that Vintage Metal Axxe bass yesterday, everything had finally arrived. There were two problems, one of which has been solved. the one that has been solved involved one of the screws holding the P-style pick-up in place. It was worn down to the point that a screwdriver would do anything. I sat there for what felt like an eternity with a dull saw (all I could find) turning the once-cross-headed screw into a flat-headed screw. It worked in the end, but I wasn't happy about the whole ordeal. The other problem has put me at a bit of a standstill, the pots I had ordered were too small, so now I need to order some long shafted pots.
I have also been annoyed by things that don't involve guitars. Mostly a few of the things that occurred to me this morning while delivering papers, and the happy memories that keep popping into my head. Yes, happy memories annoy me, this is because of the nature of those happy memories. I'd rather not go into the nature of those memories, but my realisation this morning that the biggest mistake I have made in my life as of yet was going to Sixth Form.
I don't now where I'd be without Sixth Form, But I still firmly believe that that was my biggest mistake, and I reckon it'll be awhile before I make a bigger one. I might be wrong about that, but I don't fancy making another huge mistake any time soon. So those of you year 11 students thinking about staying on for Sixth Form, I'd strongly advise against it, go to a college instead.
Sunday 8 February 2015
Another Rally: Frozen Nuts! (And also some other stuff)
In case the title didn't give it I went on another bike rally, and I have just finished sewing the patch onto my cut-off. The Frozen Nuts patch was one of the three rally patches I wanted, meaning I now have the Another Piggin' Rally patch and the Frozen Nuts patch, the third patch of the three is for the Last Wolf Rally which I'll hopefully be going to this year.
Patches and rallies aside, for the time being t least, I have also been up to quite a bit this week. To be perfectly honest, this week didn't have the best of starts, self-doubt kicked in, and I spent the first half of the week thinking I'd get nowhere in life. Thankfully that disappeared on Wednesday, and the week could return to normality, which was good, especially since I had the first part of my army interview on Friday.
Thankfully it wasn't the real deal, it was a pre-interview in order to sort out my three job choices, since there is only a slim chance of me getting my first choice, I need to have back-up options. I'd also like to point out that I don't exaggerate when I say slim chance, in-fact I think a slim chance would be bigger than the chance I have. I say this because I plan to be a musician in the army, and I plan on entering as a bassist (but I will happily go for guitarist if need be). with there only being three army bands that require a bass guitarist, and each band will only need one bassist, there are only three potential jobs for me, that could be boosted up to nine by adding six guitarist slots (two for each contemporary band), but there are jazz bands which I might be able to slot myself into.
I now have two back-up jobs, I had to change at least one of my original jobs because the staff sergeant interviewing me, didn't want to send me into one of those job choices. This meant he gave me a nice big pile of job briefs to take home, sift through, select three jobs from and rank them in order of preference. The end result (in order of preference) was Musician, Combat Medical Technician and Military Policeman.
Army aside, the day before I restrung my bass. I used the thicker four strings of a five-string set (leaving me with a spare G string), and after about twenty minutes of playing part of the nut shot off making a satisfying ping sound. I literally busted a nut. I made a few quick measurement and ordered a new nut from eBay, while I was measuring I noticed that there was enough nut left to raise the string, but not enough left to hold the string in place. I decided to use my engineering prowess and I wrapped duct tape around the strings to hold the thick B string on the remainder of the nut.
The duct tape idea works quite nicely, but I had to put a bit more tape on not long after taking the picture, because the B string only stayed in place for two minutes of playing, I now get fifteen minutes of playing before I have to adjust it. At least I now have another nut on the way to replace my current on. Hopefully my new nut will be stronger, I order a graphite one to replace the original plastic lump.
That bass has a few more problems with it, which should be fixed by the next post. as it stands it an active on-board pre-amp which has died. I don't really know much about electronics, but I do know that the wiring is a mess, and it makes no sense to me, or to Nathan, and so I have decided to remove all the wiring and the pre-amp, and replace everything. I'm even going to replace the pick-ups with the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound P-J set. This will leave me with a pot connected to nothing (I'll ground to that) and an empty hole where the battery should go which I'll fill with a block of lead hopefully adding enough weight to counteract the headstock heaviness of the stock bass. I will at some point also add a set of Schaller Strap Locks, and buy a decent strap.
I have also had a bit more misfortune with guitars this week, this time it was my primary guitar. I've had her tuned down a step-and-a-half for six days, and so when I decided to tune her back up to E standard the 0.011 gauge high E string snapped and struck me on the infected scab on my right middle finger. My finger hurt enough as it was, that string really didn't help. Thankfully the Rotosound set I bought awhile back for another guitar came with a spare 0.010 gauge string, which will suffice for now.
I have now also decided it was time to restring the guitar I got off my brother. I've been putting this off for awhile because the Floyd Rose Floating Tremolo bridge seemed like it would be a ball-ache to deal with, I've also decided to replace the busted pick-up ring holding the neck humbucker in place, I'd like to replace both pick-ups at some point, but I don't really want to do something that will annoy my brother since I don't fully consider the guitar mine. That guitar is now back in her box after a vigourous cleaning, and there she will remain until her new pick-up ring arrives.
Hopefully I can get both of those guitars finished and theoretically, I should be done working on my guitars until June, when my Epiphone and Harley Benton basses get restrung. That is, of course, unless I buy a rolling tune-o-matic bridge, which won't take long to fit.
Anyway, as some of you know, this weekend was the weekend of the 29th annual Frozen Nuts Rally! Naturally as soon as we arrived some woman with a very hoarse voice came up to us and gave us a tongue lashing for something that happened six hours prior to our arrival. One of the lads from the Greedy Pigs started a very loud argument at four in the morning and kept everyone awake for the next three hours while they all shouted and screamed at each other. If you were one of those unfortunates who were affected by their arguing, I have a very strong feeling that disciplinary action will take place at the next meeting, but since I'm not a member of the Greedy Pigs, I can't say anything with any certainty.
Other than the bad start, the rally was quite enjoyable, I was only there for the Saturday, and so I didn't get to the the Jalepenos perform, but I hear they were good. I did however see half of Disturbin' the Peace's performance. I say half because I went outside for a breather during there interval and all the booze, the cold and the fact I had been awake since six O'clock that morning all struck me at once. I just couldn't continue, and so I dragged myself to the tent and slowly drifted to sleep.
I may have missed the half naked sexy girls, I may have missed Disturbin' the Peace cover a Rush song, but I did witness the worst proposal ever, which naturally took place in the middle of a hen party. I then saw (about five minutes later) the newly engaged woman fall over on the dance floor, spilling booze all over the singers pedals and the monitor by his feet. I reached out to help her up, and she gave me a really dirty look.
The bride-to-be from the hen party also randomly gave me, and a few other confused looking dudes, a big hug, while someone followed her with a camera. As soon as she stepped away from me, Dion (Nathan's dad) walked up to me and said "You lucky git, I've been eyeing her up all night." I on the other hand was eyeing up another member of her party, that entire group were wearing corsets, and one of those corsets looked like it was about to pop, so I was eyeing up the owner of that corset.
At some point between the proposal and the band kicking in, the bride-to-be had a male stripper, I get the feeling that he was her soon-to-be husband, judging by everyone's reaction. He didn't do the full monty, but it was still funny as hell to watch. Shortly after that I went to get me and Nath a drink, and on the way back from the bar I congratulated the newly engaged lady, turns out she has a voice that can break glass, I don't know if that's normal or just because she was drunk and/or excited.
I am also aware that none of this post is in chronological order, but the rally has thrown everything out of perspective and so I don't actually know what order anything happened in, I just know within two hours of getting to the rally I had had four different beers in three different pubs, one of those beers was a can I had bought with me, which I drank by the fire.
Patches and rallies aside, for the time being t least, I have also been up to quite a bit this week. To be perfectly honest, this week didn't have the best of starts, self-doubt kicked in, and I spent the first half of the week thinking I'd get nowhere in life. Thankfully that disappeared on Wednesday, and the week could return to normality, which was good, especially since I had the first part of my army interview on Friday.
Thankfully it wasn't the real deal, it was a pre-interview in order to sort out my three job choices, since there is only a slim chance of me getting my first choice, I need to have back-up options. I'd also like to point out that I don't exaggerate when I say slim chance, in-fact I think a slim chance would be bigger than the chance I have. I say this because I plan to be a musician in the army, and I plan on entering as a bassist (but I will happily go for guitarist if need be). with there only being three army bands that require a bass guitarist, and each band will only need one bassist, there are only three potential jobs for me, that could be boosted up to nine by adding six guitarist slots (two for each contemporary band), but there are jazz bands which I might be able to slot myself into.
I now have two back-up jobs, I had to change at least one of my original jobs because the staff sergeant interviewing me, didn't want to send me into one of those job choices. This meant he gave me a nice big pile of job briefs to take home, sift through, select three jobs from and rank them in order of preference. The end result (in order of preference) was Musician, Combat Medical Technician and Military Policeman.Army aside, the day before I restrung my bass. I used the thicker four strings of a five-string set (leaving me with a spare G string), and after about twenty minutes of playing part of the nut shot off making a satisfying ping sound. I literally busted a nut. I made a few quick measurement and ordered a new nut from eBay, while I was measuring I noticed that there was enough nut left to raise the string, but not enough left to hold the string in place. I decided to use my engineering prowess and I wrapped duct tape around the strings to hold the thick B string on the remainder of the nut.
The duct tape idea works quite nicely, but I had to put a bit more tape on not long after taking the picture, because the B string only stayed in place for two minutes of playing, I now get fifteen minutes of playing before I have to adjust it. At least I now have another nut on the way to replace my current on. Hopefully my new nut will be stronger, I order a graphite one to replace the original plastic lump.
That bass has a few more problems with it, which should be fixed by the next post. as it stands it an active on-board pre-amp which has died. I don't really know much about electronics, but I do know that the wiring is a mess, and it makes no sense to me, or to Nathan, and so I have decided to remove all the wiring and the pre-amp, and replace everything. I'm even going to replace the pick-ups with the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound P-J set. This will leave me with a pot connected to nothing (I'll ground to that) and an empty hole where the battery should go which I'll fill with a block of lead hopefully adding enough weight to counteract the headstock heaviness of the stock bass. I will at some point also add a set of Schaller Strap Locks, and buy a decent strap.
I have also had a bit more misfortune with guitars this week, this time it was my primary guitar. I've had her tuned down a step-and-a-half for six days, and so when I decided to tune her back up to E standard the 0.011 gauge high E string snapped and struck me on the infected scab on my right middle finger. My finger hurt enough as it was, that string really didn't help. Thankfully the Rotosound set I bought awhile back for another guitar came with a spare 0.010 gauge string, which will suffice for now.
I have now also decided it was time to restring the guitar I got off my brother. I've been putting this off for awhile because the Floyd Rose Floating Tremolo bridge seemed like it would be a ball-ache to deal with, I've also decided to replace the busted pick-up ring holding the neck humbucker in place, I'd like to replace both pick-ups at some point, but I don't really want to do something that will annoy my brother since I don't fully consider the guitar mine. That guitar is now back in her box after a vigourous cleaning, and there she will remain until her new pick-up ring arrives.
Hopefully I can get both of those guitars finished and theoretically, I should be done working on my guitars until June, when my Epiphone and Harley Benton basses get restrung. That is, of course, unless I buy a rolling tune-o-matic bridge, which won't take long to fit.
Anyway, as some of you know, this weekend was the weekend of the 29th annual Frozen Nuts Rally! Naturally as soon as we arrived some woman with a very hoarse voice came up to us and gave us a tongue lashing for something that happened six hours prior to our arrival. One of the lads from the Greedy Pigs started a very loud argument at four in the morning and kept everyone awake for the next three hours while they all shouted and screamed at each other. If you were one of those unfortunates who were affected by their arguing, I have a very strong feeling that disciplinary action will take place at the next meeting, but since I'm not a member of the Greedy Pigs, I can't say anything with any certainty.
Other than the bad start, the rally was quite enjoyable, I was only there for the Saturday, and so I didn't get to the the Jalepenos perform, but I hear they were good. I did however see half of Disturbin' the Peace's performance. I say half because I went outside for a breather during there interval and all the booze, the cold and the fact I had been awake since six O'clock that morning all struck me at once. I just couldn't continue, and so I dragged myself to the tent and slowly drifted to sleep.
I may have missed the half naked sexy girls, I may have missed Disturbin' the Peace cover a Rush song, but I did witness the worst proposal ever, which naturally took place in the middle of a hen party. I then saw (about five minutes later) the newly engaged woman fall over on the dance floor, spilling booze all over the singers pedals and the monitor by his feet. I reached out to help her up, and she gave me a really dirty look.
The bride-to-be from the hen party also randomly gave me, and a few other confused looking dudes, a big hug, while someone followed her with a camera. As soon as she stepped away from me, Dion (Nathan's dad) walked up to me and said "You lucky git, I've been eyeing her up all night." I on the other hand was eyeing up another member of her party, that entire group were wearing corsets, and one of those corsets looked like it was about to pop, so I was eyeing up the owner of that corset.
At some point between the proposal and the band kicking in, the bride-to-be had a male stripper, I get the feeling that he was her soon-to-be husband, judging by everyone's reaction. He didn't do the full monty, but it was still funny as hell to watch. Shortly after that I went to get me and Nath a drink, and on the way back from the bar I congratulated the newly engaged lady, turns out she has a voice that can break glass, I don't know if that's normal or just because she was drunk and/or excited.
I am also aware that none of this post is in chronological order, but the rally has thrown everything out of perspective and so I don't actually know what order anything happened in, I just know within two hours of getting to the rally I had had four different beers in three different pubs, one of those beers was a can I had bought with me, which I drank by the fire.
Sunday 1 February 2015
The Giraffe, the Booze, and Wardrobe
Sometime back in August I came up with an idea, and now, just over four months later, I have finally started to work towards it. The plan was to remove my slide out wardrobe that is under my homemade bunk bed. The wardrobe has always been pretty much useless, it's always been filled with junk, and so I have spent the day emptying it, and sorting through all the junk.
Before I get on to the many terrors of today, I've actually had a fairly interesting week. It was Nathan's eighteenth birthday, and so we all got plastered, and went to a nightclub. Getting plastered was nothing new to the rest of the group we were with, I was the only one who wasn't used to consuming vast amounts of alcoholic beverages.
Nathan's birthday came on the Thursday, along with what us Brits call a blizzard. I was able to use this "blizzard" as an excuse to get out of college early. A good job too, but I just missed the last bus back to Biddulph, and so I was stuck in Hanley bus station for an hour before the nice chaps at First Buses decided they'd send a bus to Biddulph. My D&G return ticket may have been wasted, but at least I made it home in one piece.
As soon as I got home though, I got changed and then left again. It was boozing time, and so we went on a pub crawl around Biddulph to celebrate Nathan's coming of age. I made the mistake of having the hottest curry served after already having three pints (which was three pints more than I'm used to drinking). That didn't go down too well, and I ended up "marking my territory" outside the pharmacy. The night continued without a hitch, but I was off the booze and I stuck to drinking cola.
The next night was the night I had been dreading for a very long time. Thankfully I didn't mark any territory this time around. That night was spent in a nightclub called Bunker 13, and we went up on the Extreme Metal night, which was awesome, I drank more than the previous night, I danced more than the previous night, and I loved every minute of it.
Saturday was spent recuperating, and I had to bug out of Nathan's house early otherwise his dad, Dion, would drag us to the pub again. I made a very good call, but it wasn't the pub they went, it was another birthday party, and so they got plastered. I on the other hand was at home, with two of Nathan's female cousins, I was flirting with one, and teaching the other guitar.
Then of course it came to today, I had already decided earlier in the week how I would spend today, and I actually stuck to my plan for a change. I did all my papers in the morning, and as soon as I got back home I was busy tearing my room apart. It took me about an hour and a half to clear my desk and empty my wardrobe, there was a lot of crap to move.
I uncovered many strange and lost treasures, such as a crappy ukulele, and a smelly turtle thingamajig. I found Magic cards, a toy Jaguar XKR from the film Die Another Day. I found drumsticks, and a set of Tangrams. I even found a papyrus bookmark which I lost about five years ago.
Once the junk was all removed I then had to take apart my wardrobe. A task which was very hard, and very scary. It being hard was most likely due to my incompetence with most things involving manual labour, it also didn't help knowing I couldn't destroy the wardrobe because my dad wanted to use the wood elsewhere. It became very scary when I realized I was trapped inside my bedroom and I even ended up trapped between my wardrobe and my door. I couldn't even get help when that was the case.
I was able to free myself and, shortly before the wardrobe was completely disassembled, help had finally arrived in the form of Nathan's cousin Paris, whom I was teaching to play guitar the night before. Her help was welcomed, and it was also a lot better than I expected it would be.
Anyway after what ended up being eight hours of horror, I was finally able to make this room usable, it's still nowhere near completion, but it's good enough for now. I still have a lot of stuff to sort through and dispose of, but I can now comfortable entertain two guests in my room, instead of simply just just squeeze in a guest, and hope for the best.
Before I get on to the many terrors of today, I've actually had a fairly interesting week. It was Nathan's eighteenth birthday, and so we all got plastered, and went to a nightclub. Getting plastered was nothing new to the rest of the group we were with, I was the only one who wasn't used to consuming vast amounts of alcoholic beverages.
Nathan's birthday came on the Thursday, along with what us Brits call a blizzard. I was able to use this "blizzard" as an excuse to get out of college early. A good job too, but I just missed the last bus back to Biddulph, and so I was stuck in Hanley bus station for an hour before the nice chaps at First Buses decided they'd send a bus to Biddulph. My D&G return ticket may have been wasted, but at least I made it home in one piece.
As soon as I got home though, I got changed and then left again. It was boozing time, and so we went on a pub crawl around Biddulph to celebrate Nathan's coming of age. I made the mistake of having the hottest curry served after already having three pints (which was three pints more than I'm used to drinking). That didn't go down too well, and I ended up "marking my territory" outside the pharmacy. The night continued without a hitch, but I was off the booze and I stuck to drinking cola.
The next night was the night I had been dreading for a very long time. Thankfully I didn't mark any territory this time around. That night was spent in a nightclub called Bunker 13, and we went up on the Extreme Metal night, which was awesome, I drank more than the previous night, I danced more than the previous night, and I loved every minute of it.
Saturday was spent recuperating, and I had to bug out of Nathan's house early otherwise his dad, Dion, would drag us to the pub again. I made a very good call, but it wasn't the pub they went, it was another birthday party, and so they got plastered. I on the other hand was at home, with two of Nathan's female cousins, I was flirting with one, and teaching the other guitar.
Then of course it came to today, I had already decided earlier in the week how I would spend today, and I actually stuck to my plan for a change. I did all my papers in the morning, and as soon as I got back home I was busy tearing my room apart. It took me about an hour and a half to clear my desk and empty my wardrobe, there was a lot of crap to move.
I uncovered many strange and lost treasures, such as a crappy ukulele, and a smelly turtle thingamajig. I found Magic cards, a toy Jaguar XKR from the film Die Another Day. I found drumsticks, and a set of Tangrams. I even found a papyrus bookmark which I lost about five years ago.
Once the junk was all removed I then had to take apart my wardrobe. A task which was very hard, and very scary. It being hard was most likely due to my incompetence with most things involving manual labour, it also didn't help knowing I couldn't destroy the wardrobe because my dad wanted to use the wood elsewhere. It became very scary when I realized I was trapped inside my bedroom and I even ended up trapped between my wardrobe and my door. I couldn't even get help when that was the case.
I was able to free myself and, shortly before the wardrobe was completely disassembled, help had finally arrived in the form of Nathan's cousin Paris, whom I was teaching to play guitar the night before. Her help was welcomed, and it was also a lot better than I expected it would be.
Anyway after what ended up being eight hours of horror, I was finally able to make this room usable, it's still nowhere near completion, but it's good enough for now. I still have a lot of stuff to sort through and dispose of, but I can now comfortable entertain two guests in my room, instead of simply just just squeeze in a guest, and hope for the best.
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