Routine is the Enemy of the Conscious Mind

It's easy to make your mind switch off by following a fixed daily routine. Things are likely to go wrong when you mess with that routine even with a few small details. For example my daily commute involves reading the free sheet, listening to the radio on the way in. When I get to town I drop the free sheet in the recycling bin and possibly drop of a DVD in the post box.

Today I decided to skip the free sheet to do some actual book reading on the Metro. I also had a DVD to return by post. I'm sure you can guess the rest.

Friday night was a boys night out with Lee and Mark (joined by Jeff, Chris and Chris). After a curry with what can only be described as an heroic amount if garlic in it we ended up in Ara. Lee had neglected to tell me to wear black but they are a pretty accepting lot there :-) I came home to the lovely surprise of finding Fliss back from her brief sojourn to London. She had decided that heading home before a Bank Holiday weekend was a little silly.

I had made drunken plans with Lee on Friday night to try out Caged Asylum but after canvasing for interest we decided to postpone until we could raise a larger pose. Instead we had Lee, Anne and Paul around for board games and films. We watched the rather dire Smokin' Aces. Overly complex and involved, the only highlight was watching Ben Affleck's character being killed in a random drive by shooting.

Sunday saw Fliss taking advantage of my car to drive us to Rich and Al's for (not) BBQ and chance to play with their Wii. I must say I like the controller concept. The jury is still out on if I should buy one for the social aspect. There is still an element of isolation of watching two people play console games. Maybe this would be different with 4 controllers? I has earlier seen a PS3 for ?299 in my local games store. It was a Japanese version but apparently the only limitation was it wouldn't play PS2 games as there was no region locking on the PS3. However I held off buying it until I get a chance to play with one. I can after all wait a year or so...

We also took a break during the proceedings to join some of the others down at the local cinema to watch Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's Endthe latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I enjoyed the film a lot more than the second instalment although would of preferred some more mass naval battles. I quite liked the film makers solution to how they could get more Johnny Depp into the film.

We visited Bolton again on Monday for Fluff's birthday meal followed by a few drinks at Ye Olde Man and Scythe before heading home to sleep.