And I thought I might just get a chance to stretch out and relax this whole weekend – fat chance! Half day Friday again and although I hated leaving SAN Access behind, I knew that I would have to work on it during the weekend anyway. The afternoon started out quite nicely when C contacted me to let me know that she only needed to be at work a bit later than usual, meaning we could spend a little bit of time together at the flat before she jetted off to Gordon’s Bay.
I didn’t have all that long to myself before I got a message from Mom to let me know that my much-anticipated parcel from Take2 had arrived, which pretty much saw me fly down the stairs and jump into the car. The package in question of course contained my newly ordered Demon Chaos and the more important Dancing Stage SuperNOVA. After a nice chat with Mom I headed straight back to the flat, unpacked the dancing mat and started sweating it out like a pig. Of course, this is an activity that no grown man should ever be seen partaking in, much like knitting, and thankfully I could make a noise and look like a doos completely in the privacy of my own home with not a single witness around! :)
Not that I had all that much time to rediscover my old habit – Terrance was on his way over for a evening of gaming and pizza, so I managed to leave myself just enough time to hurriedly pack everything away and put on the more manly sounding Demon Chaos before the man arrived.
As always when just the two of us get together, gaming tends to be put on the backburner a little as we spend a fair time catching up on the news and just talking crap, though we managed to squeeze in two games of FIFA, the first seeing me win with an incredibly lucky goal thanks to an AI blunder while Terrance took the second game with a simply exquisite shot to the top right hand corner.
I had an extremely strong desire to eat Roman’s Pizza for the first time in months and months and managed to convince Terrance that that was the place to go – unfortunately the only catch in that is that the closest Roman’s to us is all the way over in Vredekloof. So despite the fact that Debonairs is literally a short walk away, we drove off to the Glengarry Shopping Village where we blundered into a rather packed Roman’s store. I didn’t realize just how popular they are and we ended up waiting around 50 minutes for our pizza!
Back home (eventually) we got stuck into the task of getting some gaming in (while devouring our pizza of course!) and ended up dabbling around with Dragonball Z: Budokai 3, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and FIFA 08 of course. Funnily enough, even though I kicked him out after only after 23:00, we actually ended up not playing all that many games after all – it seems that without Ryan there to spur us on, we really are more interested in talking crap than smack talking which is the usual norm :)
Saturday morning I caused it to rain over the Sahara desert by getting Terrance to join me for an invigorating gym session at 8 in the morning, making it the first time in months since he has last shown his face there. I didn’t realize just how nice it is to gym with together with someone because it really does make the time fly by. He had originally bargained on being there for less than half an hour – we ended up staying for almost 50 minutes in the gym without realizing it! So now I am definitely even more fired up to get Chantelle to come train with me…
Seeing as Chantelle was again on work duty, I spent my Saturday afternoon in pretty much the typical fashion: multitasking on five things at once and in the end getting nothing finished. As it was I divided my time up between cleaning the bathroom, defrosting the fridge, washing my clothes, doing Commerce IT work and playing my nifty new Dancing Stage SuperNOVA the whole day long!
This was pretty much perfect because just before the onset of cabin fever, 17:30 popped up and I headed off to Terrance’s place to attend the braai that Dean and he had organized. Ryan tagged along as well and so Dean, Terrance, Ryan, Zania and I passed a pleasant evening of chatting and chowing (I didn’t braai so the food was actually quite nice for a change – and even more surprising, Terrance had organized for salad. This must obviously have been because Zania was there because I think it was only her and me that ate any of the salad in any case!), made even more fun by the fact that we got to view Dean and Zania’s wedding DVD that had finally arrived.
It was kind of fun to relive the wedding and I was secretly pleased at how well my speech actually went on the day! The only disconcerting thing about the whole seeing yourself on television spectacle is that it really does seem to add some extra pounds on you! Tuck in that tummy Craig! :( Anyway, we had a good evening but I bailed on the guys when they pulled out …Blades of Glory’ for a late night viewing – I was way too tired to still sit through a movie!
On Sunday morning a fire broke out in the Antarctic circle from a penguin spinning around too fast – yes, Terrance did indeed show up for his second gym appearance in a row! I was genuinely surprised and we had another great workout. Truly this gym buddy thing works out much better than what I would ever have thought.
The rest of the morning was used up by finishing off the chores, coding a little and working up a sweat on Dancing Stage (again!). I also had to squeeze in the horrible grocery shopping trip which tends to steal all my money and give me back increasingly less grocery bags in return with every trip! And my God, shaving accessories are bloody expensive – R100 for 4 Gillette Mach 3 Turbo blades? They must be out of their minds! At least I dulled the experience ever so slightly by purchasing two tickets for Chantelle and me to Friday the 15th of February’s Larry Soffer the master magician’s show at the Pavillion Theatre. I’ve seen the man in action when he was the table magician at our staff function last year and he certainly has some amazing tricks up his sleeve! Should be good :)
On return from my money blowing exercise, I sat down to squeeze in some more frustrating Tomb Raider play before Chantelle arrived, managing only to frustrate myself further and at least reach the last leg of the Egypt stages in the process. I have put in over 9 hours of temple crawling akready and the frustration level is beginning to reach those unbearable heights that tends to push me away from a game. Truly the shorter and more action-orientated Tomb Raider: Legend was a far better match for me.
The evening was reserved for a delicious chicken potjie prepared by the Monty’s for the big family get together send off for Chantelle’s Aunt Debbie as she returns to America today. The usual gang plus two were there and we had a good night of chatter, chicken and …Strictly Come Dancing’ (don’t ask – Chantelle had just discovered that it is back on the telly). As always it was a fun night out, but with both Chantelle and I destined to wake up early this morning to go to work, we were both pretty happy to hit the sack straight away once we finally got home!