I never got around to uploading my OCC/American Chopper picture that I made the other night. I was really just playing around with Gimp effects - although I did move Jnr and Snr so they were closer to each other and I'm quite proud with how good it looks. It's something I've never done before. I think it goes at least some way to demonstrating my obsession with the program.



I checked our joint account today and was greeted with a little good news. We have had our bond back. Or at least some of it. We have had something like £447.38 out of a total bond of £560 plus a few extra quid that they owed us as change. While being £100 down isn't fantastic we're just glad to have some of the money back and to not have to worry about it any more. We're finally done with Darlows! Well, let's hope we are. Considering we didn't even get our bond back from the place before losing out on £100 isn't too bad.

I failed to mention my watch problem. I think it was Wednesday night when I was taking off my watch and discovered it was saying 7:30 and wasn't moving. I shrugged and went to bed with the plan to get a battery at the weekend. But when I woke up the next morning and turned on my mobile phone so that I could be sure I was leaving for work at the right time, I discovered that the time on that had somehow unset. I ran upstairs to set it and was in a panic all morning.

I find it horrible not wearing a watch when I'm so used to it. Checking for the time every few minutes and finding that there's nothing on my wrist. The watch has removable faces so that you can change the cover and I'm always unscrewing it and playing with it. But of course I couldn't do that either. So you can imagine how eager I was to get a new battery.

It wasn't until trying a second battery that the people in the shop figured out that it was the watch and not the battery that was causing the problem. Their battery tester had been turned off and so was showing batteries as dead. So after wasting several minutes of their time I walked away feeling fairly down-hearted. I have this bad habit of buying (or getting other people to buy) new watches when the batteries run out. Watch shops are one of those things I fear and watches are so cheap from places like Argos and The Gadget Shop when it existed. I've got several dead watches lying around that I should get batteries for at some point. I'd decided this time to get a battery and save a bit of cash. I haven't had the watch for all that long really - it was far too soon for a replacement.

But a replacement it would have to be. Rather than getting the cheapest possible watch I opted for a £25 Sekonda that looks fairly smart and should last a little longer than an unamed £10 watch. The problem is that I keep trying to unscrew the face and for some odd reason it doesn't work!

The shopping trip also involved buying Rat (and me) the Guildwars Special Edition set in preparation for our broadband being sorted in the next few weeks. If there is now a problem with the line or anything I will be mighty pissed! But hopefully in a matter of weeks we'll be playing Guildwars. Huzzah! Unfortunately we have a load of trips semi-planned for our week off so we might not be spending much time online then.. but I suppose that's a good thing as we'd just be fighting over who would play the game. I'll have to investigate playing NWN online so I can perhaps play that while Rat plays Guildwars (and vice versa).

I'm just glad it's payday next Tuesday. And that money from Darlows will come in useful!