Blue Chamber

No, don't get excited, this is not me coming back to blogging. I just needed somewhere to post this 'cos Facebook is rubbish.

LASTS
1. Last beverage→ Cup of Tea (How British!)
2. Last phone call→ The GF
3. Last text message→ The GF, which isn't unusual as only about six people have my new mobile number, lol.
4. Last song you listened to→ 'Sounds from the Past', by a chap called Mindthings. Look him up on Jamendo.
5. Last time you cried → Oct last year, When I thought my GF and I were breaking up. Big softy that I am

SIX HAVE YOU EVER:
1. Dated someone twice → No
2. Been cheated on?→ Yes
3. Kissed someone & regretted it? → Yes
4. Lost someone special?→ Yes
5. Been depressed?→ Once or twice...
6. Been drunk and threw up? I’m Scottish – we’re born with Whisky glasses in our hands and vomit on our little pot-bellies.

LIST FOUR FAVORITE COLORS:
1. Blue (Dark)
2. Blue (Light)
3. Indigo (Blue with a bit of red mixed in, also a fab line of Fantasy novels)
4. Azure (Another word for Blue)

THIS YEAR HAVE YOU:
1. Made new friends → No (Don’t need any more, ta)
2. Fallen out of love → Love? no. Bed? yes.
3. Laughed until you cried → Yes
4. Met someone who changed you→ Yes, thank god: my nappy was a bit ripe that day.
5. Found out who your true friends were→ Yes, and got rid of the falsies.
6. Found out someone was talking about you→ No
7. Kissed anyone on your friends list→ Err, one?
8. How many people on your [Facebook] friends list do you know in real life → Most of them (As it should be!)
9. How many kids do you want to have→ Kids? *Runs*
10. Do you have any pets → No. I'm not good at keeping living things...living.
11. Do you want to change your name→ Yes. To “Megatron”.
12. What did you do for your last birthday→ Not much, actually. Just another day.
13. What time did you wake up today→ 7-ish
14. What were you doing at midnight last night → Sleeping / dreaming my trademark odd dreams
15. Name something you CANNOT wait for → Software updates. I know, GEEK.
16. Last time you saw your father→ Xmas.
17. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life – Being poor. Money would let me explore some ideas I have and design my perfect dream house with its very own AI housekeeper.
18. What are you listening to right now → Stuart at work being very American (He’s Scottish, or so he tells us)
19. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom → Yes. He’s good people.
23. What's getting on your nerves right now? → Stuart (see above)
24. Most visited webpages → Digg. RockPaperShotgun. Hotmail. eBay.

ABOUT YOU
1. What's your name? Grant.
2. Nicknames→ Depends on who you ask. “Granty” seems to be the most common one (girls, tsk)
3. Relationship Status → Happily entwined, but not yet in a legal sense
4. Zodiac sign→ Gemini
5. Male or female or transgendered→ Omnigendered. I am ALL genders. At Once. Fear me.
6. Elementary→ Coldstream Primary
7. Middle School → eh?
8. High school → Milnes High School
10. Hair color → Black, growing whiter by the week.
11. Long or short → Short
16. Height → Not quite 6 ft
17. Do you have a crush on someone? – Not currently, which is unlike me...
18: What do you like about yourself? → Everything. Nearly Everything. Some things. My ability to mimic voices and accents.
19. Piercings → Not any more, thankfully!
20. Tattoos → No, thank you
21. Righty or lefty → Politics, or my physical handed-ness? Left for both.

FIRSTS :
22. First surgery → Removal of 1/3rd toenail bed from big toe of left foot, to prevent more Ingrown-toenails.
23. First piercing → Ear (I know, but all the guys were doing it at the time!)
26. First sport you joined → Golf. I was rubbish.
24. First best friend → Steven
27. First pet → Smudge, a rabbit
28. First vacation→ That I can remember? Isle of Skye
29. First concert → Never been to one. No, seriously.
30. First crush → The lovely Shona Borthwick, who ran a mile when I told her. I later learned what a close escape I’d had.

RIGHT NOW:
49. Eating → Nothing.
50. Drinking → Nothing
52. I'm about to → Explode (Just like NeoTokyo!)
53. Listening to → Nothing
55. Waiting for → DELIVERANCE / RESCUE

YOUR FUTURE :
58. Want kids? Not really, but I might enjoy it if one comes along and idolises me.
59. Want to get married? It’s not a great desire atm, no
60. Careers in mind? Writer / Galactic Overlord

WHICH IS BETTER WITH THE OPPOSITE (SAME) SEX?
68. Lips or eyes → Eyes
69. Hugs or kisses → BOTH
70. Shorter or taller – Shorter
71. Older or Younger → Younger
72. Romantic or spontaneous → Both – just one would be incredibly dull
73. Nice stomach or nice arms → Odd choice...arms.
73b. Breasts or Bottom? Breasts every time. Wheeeeee!
74. Sensitive or loud → Sensitive.
75. Hook-up or relationship → Relationships generally suit me better
77. Trouble maker or hesitant→ Bit of both is always fun
78. Comical or Serious: Comical. Gotta have a sense of humour!

HAVE YOU EVER :
78. Kissed a stranger → Only if he offered a lollipop/puppies first
79. Drank hard liquor → See: 'Have You Ever' No #6
80. Lost glasses/contacts → Yes. Little buggers!
81. Sex on first date → Yes. We Scots are sluts.
82. Broken someone's heart → Yes
83. Had your own heart broken → God, yes
85. Been arrested → No. But I'm always eager to try new things
86. Turned someone down → In what sense? I turned down a pair of bloody gorgeous Mormons girls once, when they wanted to come to my house and discuss the prophet, Joseph Smith. If only they'd suggested an evening of rampant 3-in-a-bed debauchery instead, I'd have cheerfully obliged them. Does this count?
87. Cried when someone died → Yes
88. Liked a friend that is a girl? → Most of my friends are girls

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:
89. Yourself → Yes, ‘cos nobody else will if I don’t
90. Miracles → Yes (My parents not having killed each other after 30 years of marriage)
91. Love at first sight → It’s happened to me twice, so yeah
92. Heaven → Yes and No
93. Santa Claus → Only when he brings cool stuff and quits judging me
95. Kiss on the first date? → If that’s what both of you feel like doing, then why not?
96. Angels → Yes and No

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY:
97. Can you see yourself with someone you know in the future? → I don’t know anyone from the future
98. Had more than one boyfriend/girlfriend at one time? → Yes, but it’s generally not a good idea. This is what some may call ‘Wisdom’.
100. Posting this as 100 Truths? Possibly...ok, yes

Ok, here's the sitch. I'm back at work after a fabulous 5-day trip to Paris, and 4 great days spent at home doing very very little apart from defrosting my freezer, spending a night with my GF and attending Austen's excellent 34th birthday soiree on Sat night. When I wasn't being social I had piles of comics to wade through, a loaned box-set of the much-funnier-than-Family-Guy American Dad and 90 odd episodes of the Justice League cartoon to keep me amused, all exactly what the Doctor would have ordered if he were responsible for keeping my soul happy, bless his corduroy jacket and comedy stethoscope.

Paris was WONDERFUL but very tiring. I was moving constantly for those five days and was accompanied for most of it, meaning my poor Introvert batteries were very low by the time I got back into Aberdeen late on Wednesday night: for someone who requires solitude to recharge spending five days being social is a big deal. Thankfully my hosts were the most charming and lovely people I could hope to have stayed with - Lucie is a darling and Ben did his very best to make sure I saw everything there was to see and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Cheers for that, Gazelle Boy! Much appreciated!

Oh yes I must mention the stress. I'm not a very relaxed traveller, folks; I tend to fret and angst over every detail, particularly when it comes to Airports/Trains etc, and there had been more than one occasion where panic set in during my trip....

...which I'd love to tell you about here but I'm going to have to ask you to wait a little longer. Sorry.

Truth is, writing blogs has been about the furthest thing from my mind during my week off, and now that I'm back at work, worrying about the xmas presents I haven't yet bought and looking at a rather eventful social calendar coming up from now until, er, January there doesn't seem to be much time left for grand prose or breathless reports of my adventures. I also have 138 photographs sitting awaiting review, most of which I'd love to speak about but my goodness where am I going to get the time to sift through 138 jpegs, format and tidy them for upload and write amazingly witty captions for them all?



Ahem...Leaving aside my poor organisational skills I have another important, nay, life-changing piece of news I wish to share with the world at large. One of my very good Man-Friends has finally proven the potency and healthy functionality of his donated genetic material by initiating within his mate the most extreme period of biochemical manufacturing a woman can experience - the creation of another human being, typically assembled from raw material scraped parasitically from the poor mother and bolstered by double helpings of limescale-and-chips (washed down with beetroot vinegar). Yes, my long time drinking buddy Tony is going to become father to one of those mewling, screaming, puking, pooping engines more commonly known as a 'Child', ruining not only his health, his sleep, his social life and his bank balance¹ for the next 16+ years but also putting severe strain on his scalp's ability to produce dark hair. (Not that he has much of that left anyway - heh. ) Baby is already in its² fifth month of construction and is the proud star of some extraordinarily clear medical scans, another of which is due this coming Friday. If I can I'll try to get pics to show here on t'blog.

[UPDATE] Saw Tony tonight, funnily enough, and begged this off him:



Awe-inspiring, isn't it? Baby is around 16 weeks old in this pic. I gazed at this for a long time until I saw it, but now I'm absolutely convinced: Tony's girlfriend is giving birth to The Schmoo! I'm sure that once you've glanced back and forth at the pics above and below a few hundred times you'll have no option but to agree with me - the resemblance is uncanny:


I have no idea what's happening in this picture. None whatsoever. Caption competition?
Interestingly, I was the last to be told about this joyous event by a margin of several months, apparently because Tony's reading of my blog seems to be the same thing in his mind as us conversing in a two-way dialogue. He knows what I'm up to so logically the reverse must be true, which finally explains why he never calls...*sniff*.

Tony WAS very cute about it though, despite me poking him verbally for signs of Dad-Shock. His first question to me, amusing in its naked desperation, was "Can you change nappies?!". Thanks to my three younger brothers, and my mother's odd predilection for adopting pregnant teenage women, I am an old hand at nappy-changing and thus responded firmly and as comfortingly as I could in the affirmative, which seemed to relax him suitably. How lovely a thing it is to see the future, and to know that yellow-and-blue baby poo is waiting for me within it.

But let not my blatant irreverence cloud the sparkling wonder of this glorious affirmation of life, no! I, for one, welcome this new addition to Humanity's genetic pool, and will be checking for satanic numerals on the child's humourously large cranium as soon as it emerges into the gray light of our fragile little world. Hmm, come to think of it, I wonder if they'll be visible in the scan...

* * * * * * * *
¹Babies have a habit of doing this, and not just to their parents. My very first interaction with my colleagues this morning was Elaine frantically beckoning me over to her desk, NOT to debrief me on my fabulous week away but to beg £5 off me to celebrate the birth of another sprog little miracle fathered by one of our database guys. Bloomin' cheek. When baby Emilia turns 16 and enters a bar for the first time I'm going to be there waiting for her to reciprocate with a nice cool pint. Oh yes, we Scots have long memories when it comes to money...
²Gender TBA

An indication of how much I use my mobile phone: the £20 call credit I got with the phone on the 26th August has only just run out today...9 weeks and 4 days later.

This cheapness pleases my thrifty soul. As does Virgin texting me to say I now have Free texts [to all UK networks] all weekend thanks to my top-up! Hurrah!