Och aye - the news

Last Thursday, Caz and I jetted off to Edinburgh to put ourselves through two gruelling days of CA2. Once all those festivities were done, her and him came up for a weekend of seeing sights, eating food and drinking a drink. Then Caz and MD would fall asleep, as it is well documented that all (to be) married people are utterly useless when it comes to partaying.

Still, much fun was had by all. If I was to choose a UK city to live in other than good ol' Manc, it'd likely be Edinburgh. Despite not taking a camera, we still managed to get a few pics on my phone:

First off, a fox in the grounds of Edinburgh castle that Caz and I stumbled across, during a romantic stroll round Edinburgh on the Thursday night. The bit later on where I enticed Caz into an unlit graveyard, then ran away to leave her screaming at me in the darkness was sadly never recorded for posterity.

The statue of Greyfriar's Bobby, the story of whom I'm sure you're all familiar with.

Me in 'comedy' pose outside my sister's old gaff on the Royal Mile.

The might fine Christmas tree in Jenners (like a Scottish 'arrods, fine to look around as long as you don't want anything).

An excerpt from a sign at (another) cemetary, highlighting the various luminaries that rest there. Most impressive was Adam Smith, but that's not what caught my eye. Childishly, #15 had me giggling for a good five minutes after.

(NB #16 is also notable, if only for the reason that she's apparently famous just for shagging someone else more famous (I forget who) - and I thought that sort of 'celebrity' was just a modern day thing).

An obscure one - a fairly nondescipt building, but with an interesting story. In summary, due to a high incidence of people pinching corpses from the cemetarys and flogging them off, such buildings were put up so the resident guard could make sure no-one was leaving the adjacent graveyard in a non-conventional way.

And finally, a bit of humour - readers of Viz especially might get the reference. If you look closely at the sign it all becomes clear, but still - a piece of advertising genius.

Huh? Wha'? I've been following the sage advice on this site for a few months now, but suddenly it's all gone very theoretical and techy. Luckily my normal play doesn't get as in depth as this, else you'd have to wait a good five minutes each time for me to work it all out before I folded.

Oooh, that looks Saw

Well, I was kind of right. Stu got jack shit once again, Daniels spawned two wins with his usual tactic of folding for two hours, then trying to double up at the death. And to think I get called for tight play...
Gaz predictably had no clue what was going on - with comedy results as Mullock tried to use some extreme poker psychology on him. Given that Gaz's only concerns for the night were seeing the Everton highlights on Match of the Day, and knowing who'd been kicked out of Lame Academy (or whatever), the strategy kind of fell on it's arse.

A good weekend all round - pictures of the Friday will hopefully follow.

I myself rounded off the weekend by watching Saw III with my good lady. Not bad, if you liked I and II you'll go and watch it anyway, but it's the least shocking of any of the trilogy. So all those reports of people fainting in the aisles just goes to show what a bunch of jessies people are these days.
For the record, and to avoid looking like I'm trying to make myself out as some hardcore horror nut, I last watched 28 Days Later about a year ago, and I still get the heebie-jeebies if I'm home alone. Now there's a great horror film.

Some other miscellany - just discovered Corel 6 on my laptop (or a 60 day trial anyway) - quite impressed by what it can do. For example, a photo taken from last year's skiing trip:

And now the same photo, but having used the 'Quick Fix' tool in Corel:

Clearly, it's not perfect (for instance, you can still see Mike in the picture), but it impressed me anyhoo. The internal dilemma of whether to shell out 50 beans for the full version rages on...

Today, a video of one of my boarding tricks - I didn't let on about this before because I didn't want to show the rest of the party up. As you'll see, there's no boarding frontier left for me to conquer now, so bring on the skiing in Val Thorens!