Age Of Empires, Snow & Sleepover

A couple of weeks ago, the snow suddenly started to kick into our lives with a very weak sprinkling spread around, as if to tease us, saying 'Hah! Not enough to keep you out of school, but still enough to give you false hope, and allow people to annoy you with snowballs!'

Then the term ended, and we all lost hope, the conversations of 'There's going to be snow tonight!' came to an end. Then the very first day of the holidays, without warning - well, it depends whether you consider the weather forecast warning - heavy snow finally hit Abingdon! It was the usual initial reaction, 'Oooh, it looks so pretty!' which soon turned to 'I want snow to DIE'

Recently, Jack came round to mine, and we decided to play on Age of Empires, a rather fun game of war between different national colonies set in the... 1700's? Well I don;t really know. But we decided to challenge ourselves, and put the game on expert mode, us vs the computer; we knew we wouldn't win, but we wanted to see how long we'd last. (the area we were in was coincidentally snowy)

Our initial colony was wiped out in 20 minutes, as we'd just advanced age and got to about 125 points, the other team had advanced 3 ages and got to around 800 points. But despite this, we still soldiered on! We managed to salvage 3 villagers from the wreck, and sent them off to the end of the world map to try and build afresh. And once the enemy had finished destroying our town, we sent a villager back to rescue our explorer.

Time had been kind to us, it was about 30 minutes in, and we had a new Town Centre and had just built a mill. But the next thing we know, an invasion starts! But this time, we were down to 2 villagers who were on low health, they happened to be woodcutting at the time away from the small wreck of a town. So as they fled this time, we had a new plan, this time, instead of building a colony, we decided to build an incredibly thick wall, but, to cut a long-ish story short, by the time the enemy got to it, it didn't seem so threatening.

Finally, only 1 villager escaping this time, we tried the wall again, but this time, we didn't even finish one layer before we were bombarded with cannons and soldiers. But, we'd managed to survive for 47 minutes and 5 seconds!

After this game, we decided to go back to his for a sleepover, and invited Danny aswell. We brought with us the films 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, it turns out that the latter was better. But it was more difficult to get scared, as the zombies were more agressive rather than creepy.

But once the films were over, it had gotten to about 3 in the morning, so as true lads *cough* we decided to play on GTA for a couple of hours. This was pretty fun, as we decided to have a 'Who can die in the best way' competition, now as a relative newcomer to GTA I was pretty good at dying - even if accidentally.

Then we decided to walk Jack's paper round, which was kind of my idea. But I can tell you that a walked paper round in the snow is not a particularly pleasant ordeal. It got to a point where there was a house to deliver to that was on the bottom of a slope, and both Danny and Jack said that I should deliver it. The thing is, the slope wasn;t just snowy, but very icy aswell! And so when I stepped on it, I almost went straight to the bottom. Then began the ascent.

Right, well this has been a rather long blog, I'll let you go.

Michael Mcintyre and The Space/Genesis Christmas Party!

Now, for those of you who say the title and thought that maybe Michael Mcintyre made a guest appearance at a party... sorry, you're wrong.

I've had a relatively busyish weekend the last couple of days, I've been Christmas shopping, filmed a scene for my new video, and attended a couple of Church Christmas parties.

Now, the Michael Mcintyre part of the title is about the videos, I shall explain. After recently realising how much I adore MM (I'm just going to call him that for the moment so I don't have to keep typing it out, although writing this bit in brackets is probably waaay longer than just typing out Michael Mcintyre a few times would have been... ah well) But yes, after realising how much I adore him, I have tried to attempt his voice a few times. The attempts haven't been brilliant, but they have been numerous in number.

After all these impressions, I decided that I needed to get this idea into a Christmas special video that me and Jack were going to make, but instead of Marley warning Scrooge about the three ghosts, we have MM introducing his three ghosts on his comedy roadshow. I know what you're thinking, amazing script writing.

Now, I'm also rather pleased with myself, as I managed to get Jack to come along to the Space Christmas party, because then I thought it would be easier for him to go to Space if he got to know the people beforehand. It turned out to be pretty awesome! There was organised 'fun' but it was all good, there were a few games such as a Christmas pudding eating race, blindfolded present wrapping, throwing baby Jesus competition, and stuffing multiple balloons down tights. Now, at the Genesis party the night before, we did the tights game, and I knew what was coming; so as the lovely friend that I am, I persuaded Jack to volunteer for it.

But yeah, it was a great night, and it's getting closer to Christmas!

I'll let you go.

Logan's Adventures in the Medical Room

I've been ill(ish) for the last few weeks; and the other day at school it got particular bad, to the extent where I didn't think I could carry on, and so went to the medical room. This is my tale of what happened.

I'd arrived at the office and waiting in front of the reception desk as the receptionist was on the phone. I was just waiting there, coughing away. Eventually, she appeared to notice the dying child in front of her and gave me her attention. I asked her if I could go to the medical room, and she said that I could, but needed to let some one of the office staff know.

Now, when you're dying of coughing, you really don;t find pleasure in waiting in queues. Eventually, I got to the office, I spoke to one of them and was allowed into the medical room.

The problem now, was that there was someone in there by herself that I didn't know, and the medical room isn't particularly large, and there is nothing to do in there; so I focused all my energy on trying not to make eye-contact in this rather awkward situation. And to be honest, I think she was probably doing the same.

Time had passed, she'd left, and I'd been sitting there for about hlaf an hour, getting increasingly bored. I began to think that they'd forgotten that I was in there, and so decided that I needed to get their attention. Fortunately, I remembered that the room is monitered by CCTV, and I'dalso recently learned in Art about the rule of thirds - where things stand out in a picture depending on where you place it. Because of this, I carefully moved my chair, and tried to get into the right position in the camera as to try and get noticed as soon as possible.

More time passeed -about 50 minutes- my rule of thirds plan wasn't working, and I was slowly descending into madness. Eventually, one of the staff came in and said that she was sorry , but she didn't realise that I was in here. Great. And then the rather awkward conversation began about whether I should be sent home because I have a cough. To be fair, it was a pretty bad cough, but still...

Eventually, she asked if I'd like her to call my parents, so I said 'Yes please.' And she went away. She came back a few minutes later and asked if I could have a word with my mum. So she dialed the number and handed me the phone, and the conversation went a bit like this:

"Hello"
"Hi, Mum, I'm feeling really ill!"
"Now I know that's not true, you were fine this morning!"
"No I wasn't, I was feeling bad this morning too!"
"Look, I know you're not feeling ill, why are you doing this? Have you got homework due that you haven't done, or is Adam bullying you again?"

I was confused, and so handed the phone back to the receptionist saying 'I think you have the wrong number' The receptionist spoke with the person on the phone for a minute, and then turned to me to ask 'Are you not Dominic Stickley?'