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.

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.

Party Number One & Party Number Two

This week hasn't been a very eventful one, however I did get quite a few things done, and my weekend was actually quite exciting. So why wasn't my week exciting? Well nothing happened, I went to college, I played guitar, and then I went back to bed. But come Friday, all the fun things started to happen.

Friday did start off slowly, I went to college, I did college things and then I came home, where I sat around doing nothing while I waited for a message over Skype. That message came just as I sat down to eat my dinner, and I was halfway through my post on Bronies UK. Things were about to get interesting, and so I scoffed down my food as fast as my tiny mouth would let me, and quickly typed up my last paragraph to my latest post.

Before I could finish doing all that, Nathan had arrived at my door, he was wondering what was taking me so long, and rushed me the rest of the way through. Once that was done we set off for party number one: his uncle's Birthday Party. Nothing much happened at party number one, and we bailed as soon as we had the chance. I did see my ex-girlfriend Tiegan there, who was looking pretty in her dress, and doing everything in her power to avoid eye-contact with me (which was to be expected), it was no surprise that she was there though, she lives at that house.

Once we bailed we ended up standing at a bus stop for about 40 minutes, it was boring as smeg but much more interesting than party number one. The bus came, and the mood soon lightened up and after about 20 minutes in the buss, and a 10 minute walk, we had finally arrived at party number two: the Greedy Pigs Christmas Party!

Annoyingly we arrived at party number two a little too early, the Piggies were all still finishing their desserts. A few of the Piggies had finished eating and so we mingled a little bit, but we still had to wait about 15 minutes before the main event kicked in. An AC/DC tribute band called Dirty Little Touch, they stuck to performing the Bon Scott era AC/DC stuff, and with me only being a casual fan of AC/DC, I didn't know much of that era, since the Brian Johnson songs are what they predominantly play on the radio.

Just before the band kicked in I started the first of what became three pints of whatever pale ale was on the tap. I've never really been much of a drinker, and so those three pints made me quite tipsy, and for the first time, I got myself drunk. I wasn't completely wankered, but I was still drunk nonetheless. And so, I don't remember much of what happened at the party, other than the fact I was actually on the dance floor, and judging by my neck in the morning, I must have been headbanging like there was no tomorrow.

We got back in from the party at about one O'clock in the morning, and the first thing we did was order a curry. I have to say, there is nothing quite like a Vindaloo at that time in the morning, It went down a charm, but when I woke up to do my papers at half-past-six, I regretted it, I got about two houses into my round before my arse started to build up a lot of pressure. It soon became hard to concentrate on walking in a straight line, delivering the right papers to the right houses and not shit myself.

Thankfully I managed to hold myself together long enough to get back to Nathan's house, where I was grateful to find that the downstairs toilet was right by the back door, and more importantly, unoccupied. This is where I realised that it was a very bad idea to choose a Vindaloo, magma was spewing from my arse, and tears were flooding from my eyes, but I didn't think that through when I decided what curry I was going to have, I should have just stuck with a Masala, something that wouldn't hurt coming out, but no, I had to be an idiot.

The pain didn't last long at least, I walked upstairs with stiff legs and flopped onto the bed Nathan had set up for me. I was fast asleep the second I had fought off the last of my clothes and by the time I woke up most of my pain had gone. I still felt groggy, and my neck was still stiff, but my arse felt great, that is until just before I went to bed that night, when I needed another dump.

Today was also quite entertaining, albeit, not particularly eventful. One event of today did strike me as odd though. A few weeks ago I went into B&M to buy WD40 (well, a cheap rip-off of WD40 which does the exact same things), I was ID'ed before U could buy it. Yet today I bought two bottles of beer, using a different cashier, and I didn't get ID'ed. can you see the problem there? I look fourteen and yet I wasn't ID'ed to buy booze? That was quite confusing, but it made me smile.