Well here we are its hit Tuesday once again and this time I'm not too tired to keep up to my blog schedule, though by the end of the day I might be.

So the weekend…

Saturday as I posted the blog you know what my general plan was, pretty much just sit around and die in a very general fashion while watching DVDs. This was pretty much all I did I will have to be honest now until about 1 o'clock, I sat around on the couch watching The West Wing and trading comments on Model Mayhem for kicks. Once again got some really good feedback and I was quite pleased.

At 1 I dragged myself up and got some food as I was getting perilously hungry. I wasn't in the mood for anything too complex so I simply shoved some soup on and shredded some bread in a bowl. Now it was Oxtail soup which is not the best for doing this, the best by far is packet Asparagus, which is just yummy!

The afternoon proceeded apace about the same as the morning until around 6 when LostSoulParry arrived. I finished off the episode of the West Wing I had been watching while twittering on my laptop and to him. This might seem a bit rude but I needed to as someone I desperately needed to talk to came online for the first time in ages.

In case you were wondering this was Tiggie, so we sorted out what we were doing next weekend to a point but I was a touch disappointed to find out she hadn't booked the tattoo appointment, so no tattoos for Geoff. But I still am really looking forward to seeing her on Friday, hopefully xZombiePrincessx will come to hang out too as I haven't seen her since May and I misses her.

Anyway we jammed in Nacho Libre as LostSoulParry hadn't seen it can you believe. As this was going on we had sorted out ordering food using JustEat.co.uk which was something new for me. We couldn't get it from where I wanted so in the end we went with the second option rather regretfully, LostSoulParry wasn't too impressed with them from the start but I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

While we waited and waited and waited for the food I got a call from EvilTony. He was lost on his way to us and so I tried to give him directions to us. These didn't work and a few minutes later we got another call and after some more attempted directions he realised where he was and was in fact nowhere near us whatsoever. He got it reversed and arrived a short while later amongst much hilarity.

The food arrived a short while later and so we got down to some serious eating and chatting while rounding out the end of the film. It had taken ages to get here the food had and to be honest I wasn't terribly impressed as it was a bit naff over all. The pizza was a little cold as it had taken ages to get here and on top of this the chips were going cold by the time we got to them.

But anyway I stuck on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace as neither of my compadres had seen it the poor sods. While this was starting up I quickly dashed into the kitchen to put the chips in the oven for a bit. Stupid me of course didn't know that the packaging would melt in the oven so one batch of chips got chucked away right off and then I had to use the other batch. Well they were shit anyway so it wasn't much of a loss and we struggled to eat the others. Notes for the future don't whatever you do buy food from them.

Anyway both the guys loved Darkplace but we only watched one episode through as it was now clearly time for some rocking out. So me and LostSoulParry dragged the bits down to play Rock Band. I gave LostSoulParry the microphone, I took guitar and we let the virgin (EvilTony) break himself in on the drums. Now this might seem a bit harsh but we are pretty secure in our band roles in Ph@llus so we had to go with what we could. We worked our way through some pretty fun songs too.

I'm mightily impressed with EvilTony he is a pretty damn impressive drummer for a first timer. We played through about six songs before we ever came near to requiring the use of the overdrive to save his arse. He gave the best first time performance on the drums I have ever seen and this from a guy who claims he is rubbish and can't do it. I don't ever want to see what he can do at something he is good at, by the gods he would destroy us all.

EvilTony toddled off home at a point later on and we watched some more Darkplace until it came to a clear point that we were getting too far into mucking about on computery entertainment and SG Chat. So we packed up and headed for bed where I stayed on chat for an hour or so and eventually called it sleepy time, or lung coughy outy to muchy time and rolled over for sleep.

Come the next morning I dived out of bed raring for action. Well lets be honest that's not strictly true, I lay there until I could be bothered to get up and do something truly effective. So I managed to drag myself up and drag myself downstairs. Not a lot I could think of doing, too lazy to put another DVD in and so I just picked up Rock Band again for a bit and played on that for a short while rather loudly belting my way through some of my favourite songs.

When done I went upstairs for a short while to sort out some more net related business and then lo and behold LostSoulParry awakened so we came downstairs and got into some serious Rock Band. Onto career mode we went and we rocked our way through several venues. We worried a couple of times on the random ones but we usually managed to carry it off which was cool. We even survived the "Scenester" one which I thought was gonna be full of all the crap songs and turned out to mostly be Weezer and the classic punk tunes.

We kept this up for a while and then turned our loving attentions to food and the quest for enlightenment. Well maybe not enlightenment per se but we certainly watched a large mess of Nick Frost's Danger 50,000 Volts. It's such a fun show and there are some absolutely cracking bits. I made us some lunch of chicken in a creamy sauce with pasta that really filled me up something chronic and we watched the special extra Danger 50,000 Zombies that was made to accompany Shawn of the Dead.

Now this was just bloody hilarious with Simon Pegg as some special Zombie expert from Australia who is basically completely nuts. This also makes them both look incredibly gay let me tell you as they kiss at one point and then walk off together holding hands and talking about how amazed they are to have found each other. Thought the Zombie advice was practical and as a person who has a Zombie Apocolypse plan it really helped me hone my ideas.

LostSoulParry bounced off a little while after this as he had to get home to his loving fiancée. Thus leaving me to deal with my rampaging parents and feeling pretty shitty, so I retreated to my room and watched the end of Sin City while tea was on the go. Chatted to a few models to try and finalise what I'm doing a week on Saturday with my big shoot in the hotel, I swear they are gonna wonder what in the hell is going on when I descend at this small family run hotel. But I think I have a good roster now. Two models who are doing standard shoots for the project and one model that is going to work on two nude studies for the project with me.

I think it's about time to get some decent nude work in my portfolio, I have to be honest back when I first started getting in to this I will admit a lot of my photo's were crap as I hadn't learnt what I know now. Not saying I'm perfect now but I will say I know I can make a damn better effort at it. I would even be tempted to shoot an SG set or two but I know of nobody that is near me who wants one or should I say that would want me to shoot one for them. C'est la vie.

Anyway tea was grand, nothing like a large pile of Yorkshire Pudding to keep any red blooded Englishman happy let me tell you. So I went upstairs happily ready to cough my lungs out for a while which I naturally did. Anyone who may at this point disbelieve me can take heart in knowing that there are witnesses to my cough as I had my mic on at one point in Chat and everyone heard it. But that was fun for a while except Mark_Plus_Beer's audio nearly killed me as my mic is too close to my speakers for that to work.

I decided after some rather amusing time in chat the time between my lungs making reappearance and going back in again was getting too short for comfort so I eventually rolled over and once again went off to bed.

Monday was a bit of slow day. It was the first day officially in my new office and I was a bit wary of this at first but I was getting on pretty damn well with Bob which is always good. I mean I know I can talk to anyone about anything as its one of my peculiar gifts but we were having a right old conversation about photography as he uses the same camera as me. I was still a little miffed about the key issue but it wasn't such a big thing at this point and I just dealt with it.

The day picked up immeasurably when I found out that I had in fact been granted another 6 months on the job so I am now in secure employment until July 09, hopefully this means I can ride out the recession safely and if we go the way we hope we will get more money in and I can stay here for the time being which will be excellent. I may complain but at times I really do enjoy my job, it has the right mix of politics, creativeness and relatively un-tight deadlines to suit me to the ground.

BB was pretty fun in the evening and I had a good old laugh with the lads though had to shout a bit as a couple of them were misbehaving. Had aw good old chat with Garry as he is a bit incapacitated at the moment due to having a knackered knee. He was saying he thinks I've lost more weight. Not sure I have but I know I'm now holding steady at 17 stone and I for the most part like the new me thought I'm not entirely sure its going to help me with any of my major issues.

For example I still hate my skin, this is one of the reasons I want to get some ink to cover the worse offending parts of my body that I really despise. I mean for example my ugly back that is covered in pock scars from having seriously bad spots as a teenager. As much ink as possible to cover these I think. But I digress this is only one of the issues I'm concerned with as you all well know.

But anyway the night ended on a stressful note as I got a call from Big Bad Jon of Vague in Manchester as I was needed to help him sort some things out with the Wargaming as Perry is proving a bit useless at it and he wanted my input on the key issues. I've also been sorting out my photography duties at the Nationals, basically I will tog it all the way round getting pics of all the sessions as they are ongoing and pics of all the closing ceremonies and whatnot.

Today has been a relatively full and busy day. Started off with my frantically trying to edit my scenarios to send to Big Bad Jon for the Nationals. Which I did, then I had to run around and check on the preparations for the meeting at 10, then I bumped into Tim our visitor and chatted to him a bit before dropping him off in the room and rounding up all the attendees and getting some extra chairs. Despite what they said I think they had forgotten.

The meeting was good and gave some good points but when the food I had ordered arrived it was fucking terrible. Not even close to what we had actually wanted and I couldn't eat anything. So I'm sat here now at nearly 6pm and I've had nothing but a biscuit or two since 7am. I am so fucking famished its not bloody funny. I put a complaint in about the food as I'm fed up with being fucked over by Leeds Met catering, wankers. They charge enough you think they could get it right.

Finished out the rest of the day sorting out some more shoots for a week on Saturday and organising tomorrow. I'm off at 6am for an all day meeting in Wolverhampton. Going to be long as I have to take three trains to do it and go through Manchester. But I will survive I think. Might see if any of my Manchester pals fancy coming and meeting me to get some food on the way back. Gonna finally finish Preacher tonight as I started reading Alamo on the way back home, its good!

In other news I'm trying to work out what I want for Christmas, now I know its a bit in advance at the moment but I need to work on these things so I can get it right in my own head. I'm thinking I might treat myself to one of the rather tasty new Nikkor 18-105mm lenses shown here:



Otherwise I'm at a bit of a loss and will need to think on it. I can't even seem to figure out what I'm going to get for my parents or brother. Well I might paint some models up for my brother, depending on whether he fancies doing the nationals again. He mentioned Cygnar and I really fancy making a Jermiah Kraye with custom gun slinging Sentinel. Might look into it for a laugh if nothing else. If I'm not careful I might end up buying some Khador and I can't have that, I should in fact be getting rid of models not buying more. Bad Geoffrey.

But I love this model:



Anyway I will leave you there and I shall give some more thought to present wrangling this week in between my massive photography planning. I mean hell I'm up to a minimum of five models to work with in the next two weeks alone. I'm a busy boy.

So what would you all like for Christmas?

Toodles

G