Behold, Another Entry
Hehehe, figures, I don't post here for half a year then post twice in what, less than a week XD? Well there's a reason.
A few days ago, on Monday the 10th, I had a little adventure. See, I'm far from an uninspired soul, but generally speaking, I tend to go with things and enjoy them, throwing in my own ideas yeah, but it's not like me to make big, sudden decisions. People have told me I'm full of surprises, which is nice XD, but usually I'm not exactly cautious, just, well not highly spontaneous either.
Anyway, going on a tangent there. So, basically filling in the background, a close and old friend of mine, Mike, who has an LJ as it happens (
forensyx), although I don't know how much he uses it XD. Anyway, sometime just after September started, I was talking to Mike online, we'd never met in "real life", as it's known, frankly I'm dubious, we knew each other from a website, Neoseeker to anyone who knows it. Funnily enough, on Neoseeker my screen name is "Fyrestorm", and his is "iplaywithfire", a coincidence, but still amusing, hehe. So yeah, we were talking, and Mike seemed pretty down, and I thought to myself, you know, I'd love to visit this guy, cheer him up like. It's funny when I do things like that, cus it's kind of unlike me, but it's not like when a thought pops into your head as if from somewhere else, I'm very much aware of the process that leads to the idea, hehe, I guess I'm just strange. Anyway I suggested it to him, as he lives in a town near London, not quite close enough for casually dropping in, but not too far to visit at all, certainly closer than some friends I've visited XD. He said I shouldn't come just because he was down, and I'll be honest, it's what gave me the idea, but I had wanted to visit him sometime for a long time, we've been friends, really good ones, for a long time, so yeah, I wanted to see him.
Over the next few days we settled on Monday the 10th as the best day to visit. Now, recently my sleep has been yet again in absolute chaos. As I write this at, what, coming up to 4pm, I can feel the urge to sleep lurking at the back of my mind. I hope I can keep busy for 6 more hours XD. Hehehe, but anyway, since I couldn't stay overnight, I wanted to get there early so we could have a real full day of it. I hoped my wonky sleep might actually help, psh, fat chance.
I woke up, I think, about 10pm on Sunday, told you my sleep was screwed XD. I ended up spending that night doing work on part of Neoseeker I moderated, damn that was skull-splittingly tedious, but hey, it passed the time and got it out of the way. I avoided MSN, cus MSN is tiring XD, although I did get on for a bit before I left. I planned to get out for 6am, but ended up about half an hour late, but still, no biggie. Then the bus took ages, hmm, annoying, but I caught one eventually and got to my local train station. Now, I had planned this out without knowing quite where the station I wanted to get to was; I thought it was in Central London, but happily enough it was about halfway over to my side of the city, so that kinda cancelled out all my setbacks so far. However, then something really dumb and obviously the work of some Power That Be On My Case happened. It was so stupid, I've got a diagram to explain the stupid to you:
OK, this is part of the London Underground map. I was coming from the right on the pretty red line, the Central Line. I got to Liverpool Street, where the plan was simply to change onto the yellow line (Circle Line, I think), go two stops to Tower Hill, and that little box at the bottom reads Fenchurch Street, cus you walk like two minutes from Tower Hill to get to it, which is where I was gonna catch a train out of the city. However, the pretty blue splash you see represents a "discharge", they may have included the word "electrical" before it, I can't remember, but there was a discharge of some kind XD, aroundabout there, temporarily closing the line. Of course, I don't find out until I'm on the Circle Line platform at Liverpool Street. So, I walk back to the platform I just left, catch a train to Bank, walk (that black and white line with bumps in it indicates an underground on-foot connection between stations) to Monument, and then get a train going the other way on the Circle Line to Tower Hill. Ever heard the saying "going three sides of a square" XD?
Anyway, I finally get to Fenchurch Street, and after fumbling around get myself a ticket (£11.00 return, not bad). I get to the platforms, and I knew from looking online (which was a nightmare in and of itself) some trains that left later than other trains arrived earlier than them. They skip some stops I think. But by the time I was there I was just like screw it and jumped on the first train pointed in the right direction. After asking someone to check if it was right, which it was, as after he said he thought so an announcement confirmed it, I sat down for the ride. Not too much later, we were off.
The train ride took about an hour, which was the average I gather, the fastest being around 40 minutes. It was a fairly uneventful ride, as I was tired and hungry, having failed to eat anything before leaving or during my trip, and this train had no snack car, I checked XD. The most eventful detail was, and don't ask me to make sense of this, cus I just do not know, but the guy I asked about the destination when I got on the train kept playing with himself. I could be wrong here, I was hesitant to look, but every few seconds he was rubbing something in the front of his trousers, and it didn't look like a phone, by position or shape. He kept it up (no pun intended), for at least half the trip, after that I got up and looked for the snack car, and sat down where my search ended elsewhere when I found none. Completely bizarre...
Anyway, got to Mike's station, which was where the train terminated anyway. Got off, got a snack from the shop, that did me a world of good, and called him. Not much later he and his mother arrived in her car and picked me up, and I'm a little gutted I wasn't more together, and less sleepy, cus I usually get this surreal sensation whenever I do this kind of thing, meeting people I really wanna meet but for a very certain, limited time. Still, we said hi and it was cool.
Mike is a wonderfully sardonic person, full of humour at the expense (not in a malicious way) of its subject, even and often himself XD. As a result I got to hear a wonderfully negative introduction to his town XD, all delivered with smiles and laugher (yes you smiled and laughed Mike, a lot, I'm an eye-witness, you'll have to kill me to silence me XP). We stopped for one thing but I'll cut to the fun stuff instead XD.
So, once we got to his house, the first truly memorable event after actually meeting him happened. Mike has a cat, by the name of Patch, whom he is extremely fond of. So I finally got to meet the legend in the flesh and fur... And despite literally bowing to the feline I became the first person in history to be rejected by him. I wept theatrically, it was fun XD.
We headed up to Mike's room (for the record I arrived about 9am, which is what I had aimed for, awesome XD), and we spent the day chilled out playing games and such. I'd brought a few PS2 games and DVDs I'd offered to, and we got through almost all of them. First off I showed him Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, as he has the normal version but SE has some extras, so I showed him them and let him try them out too, as well as getting to show off my skillz, heheh XD. I wasn't on top form, but I wasn't too far off and he was impressed, hehe. We spent a good while on that, then watched Over The Hedge, which Mike hadn't seen and loved. After that was Soul Reaver 1, which he'd played a demo of, and he enjoyed playing it despite some minor problems with the disc, it is a PS1 game XD. Then, we took a break and watched Ice Age 2, Mike having seen the first. but not this, and again, it got love. He played some more Soul Reaver after, got to the first boss, died and caused a glitch, classic XD. We ate sometime about here if I recall right, I was gonna pay for a delivery of pizza, but his mother made us some, so it was good, thanks to her :D. Next, I got to amuse Mike with my ineptness at a wrestling game of his, which sadly, due to lack of a second controller, we had to take turns. It was fun, if difficult, and then he played some Armored Core 2, which he owns the sequel to, but he'd never even played this one. He enjoyed it, from what I recall, but after a while, having been up for over 20 hours by then, I managed to pass out on his bed, which we were sitting/lying on to play games. According to him he didn't playwithfyre, guess I'll have to take his word for that one XD.
I didn't get much sleep though, as I was awoken I'm not sure how much later. This part wasn't so fun, unfortunately. Since my body had been in bad need of sleep, and then had it taken away far too soon when it finally got it, it wasn't happy with me XD. I felt really ill, and dizzy, since I forced myself to wake up and move about, and was willing myself not to throw up. I didn't say how bad I felt, cus it wasn't anyone's fault but my own, and I knew I couldn't sleep over, or anything, so I didn't want to trouble or burden Mike and his family, not like they could help anyway. I came up with the excuse of dehydration at the time, since we'd been in a stuffy room all day and I'd drunk nothing but Coke, but funnily enough, judging by how parched I was on the way back, I think it was actually true on top of the sleep deprivation XD. Anyway, yeah, I kept how bad I felt to myself, and they gave me a ride to the station, it was about 8:30pm by then, and the cold night air helped, a little. I slowly felt better, and by the time I was back in London I still felt uncomfortable, but not like I was gonna vomit XD. I ended up finding a shortcut, and got home a bit before 11pm, and slept shortly after.
Anyway, it was a really great time, despite the shaky ending. So yeah, thanks for the enjoyable time Mike, it was great to meet you, I just hope you enjoyed my company too ^^. And remember you were worth me feeling sick, so there XP.
A few days ago, on Monday the 10th, I had a little adventure. See, I'm far from an uninspired soul, but generally speaking, I tend to go with things and enjoy them, throwing in my own ideas yeah, but it's not like me to make big, sudden decisions. People have told me I'm full of surprises, which is nice XD, but usually I'm not exactly cautious, just, well not highly spontaneous either.
Anyway, going on a tangent there. So, basically filling in the background, a close and old friend of mine, Mike, who has an LJ as it happens (
forensyx), although I don't know how much he uses it XD. Anyway, sometime just after September started, I was talking to Mike online, we'd never met in "real life", as it's known, frankly I'm dubious, we knew each other from a website, Neoseeker to anyone who knows it. Funnily enough, on Neoseeker my screen name is "Fyrestorm", and his is "iplaywithfire", a coincidence, but still amusing, hehe. So yeah, we were talking, and Mike seemed pretty down, and I thought to myself, you know, I'd love to visit this guy, cheer him up like. It's funny when I do things like that, cus it's kind of unlike me, but it's not like when a thought pops into your head as if from somewhere else, I'm very much aware of the process that leads to the idea, hehe, I guess I'm just strange. Anyway I suggested it to him, as he lives in a town near London, not quite close enough for casually dropping in, but not too far to visit at all, certainly closer than some friends I've visited XD. He said I shouldn't come just because he was down, and I'll be honest, it's what gave me the idea, but I had wanted to visit him sometime for a long time, we've been friends, really good ones, for a long time, so yeah, I wanted to see him.
Over the next few days we settled on Monday the 10th as the best day to visit. Now, recently my sleep has been yet again in absolute chaos. As I write this at, what, coming up to 4pm, I can feel the urge to sleep lurking at the back of my mind. I hope I can keep busy for 6 more hours XD. Hehehe, but anyway, since I couldn't stay overnight, I wanted to get there early so we could have a real full day of it. I hoped my wonky sleep might actually help, psh, fat chance.
I woke up, I think, about 10pm on Sunday, told you my sleep was screwed XD. I ended up spending that night doing work on part of Neoseeker I moderated, damn that was skull-splittingly tedious, but hey, it passed the time and got it out of the way. I avoided MSN, cus MSN is tiring XD, although I did get on for a bit before I left. I planned to get out for 6am, but ended up about half an hour late, but still, no biggie. Then the bus took ages, hmm, annoying, but I caught one eventually and got to my local train station. Now, I had planned this out without knowing quite where the station I wanted to get to was; I thought it was in Central London, but happily enough it was about halfway over to my side of the city, so that kinda cancelled out all my setbacks so far. However, then something really dumb and obviously the work of some Power That Be On My Case happened. It was so stupid, I've got a diagram to explain the stupid to you:
OK, this is part of the London Underground map. I was coming from the right on the pretty red line, the Central Line. I got to Liverpool Street, where the plan was simply to change onto the yellow line (Circle Line, I think), go two stops to Tower Hill, and that little box at the bottom reads Fenchurch Street, cus you walk like two minutes from Tower Hill to get to it, which is where I was gonna catch a train out of the city. However, the pretty blue splash you see represents a "discharge", they may have included the word "electrical" before it, I can't remember, but there was a discharge of some kind XD, aroundabout there, temporarily closing the line. Of course, I don't find out until I'm on the Circle Line platform at Liverpool Street. So, I walk back to the platform I just left, catch a train to Bank, walk (that black and white line with bumps in it indicates an underground on-foot connection between stations) to Monument, and then get a train going the other way on the Circle Line to Tower Hill. Ever heard the saying "going three sides of a square" XD?
Anyway, I finally get to Fenchurch Street, and after fumbling around get myself a ticket (£11.00 return, not bad). I get to the platforms, and I knew from looking online (which was a nightmare in and of itself) some trains that left later than other trains arrived earlier than them. They skip some stops I think. But by the time I was there I was just like screw it and jumped on the first train pointed in the right direction. After asking someone to check if it was right, which it was, as after he said he thought so an announcement confirmed it, I sat down for the ride. Not too much later, we were off.
The train ride took about an hour, which was the average I gather, the fastest being around 40 minutes. It was a fairly uneventful ride, as I was tired and hungry, having failed to eat anything before leaving or during my trip, and this train had no snack car, I checked XD. The most eventful detail was, and don't ask me to make sense of this, cus I just do not know, but the guy I asked about the destination when I got on the train kept playing with himself. I could be wrong here, I was hesitant to look, but every few seconds he was rubbing something in the front of his trousers, and it didn't look like a phone, by position or shape. He kept it up (no pun intended), for at least half the trip, after that I got up and looked for the snack car, and sat down where my search ended elsewhere when I found none. Completely bizarre...
Anyway, got to Mike's station, which was where the train terminated anyway. Got off, got a snack from the shop, that did me a world of good, and called him. Not much later he and his mother arrived in her car and picked me up, and I'm a little gutted I wasn't more together, and less sleepy, cus I usually get this surreal sensation whenever I do this kind of thing, meeting people I really wanna meet but for a very certain, limited time. Still, we said hi and it was cool.
Mike is a wonderfully sardonic person, full of humour at the expense (not in a malicious way) of its subject, even and often himself XD. As a result I got to hear a wonderfully negative introduction to his town XD, all delivered with smiles and laugher (yes you smiled and laughed Mike, a lot, I'm an eye-witness, you'll have to kill me to silence me XP). We stopped for one thing but I'll cut to the fun stuff instead XD.
So, once we got to his house, the first truly memorable event after actually meeting him happened. Mike has a cat, by the name of Patch, whom he is extremely fond of. So I finally got to meet the legend in the flesh and fur... And despite literally bowing to the feline I became the first person in history to be rejected by him. I wept theatrically, it was fun XD.
We headed up to Mike's room (for the record I arrived about 9am, which is what I had aimed for, awesome XD), and we spent the day chilled out playing games and such. I'd brought a few PS2 games and DVDs I'd offered to, and we got through almost all of them. First off I showed him Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, as he has the normal version but SE has some extras, so I showed him them and let him try them out too, as well as getting to show off my skillz, heheh XD. I wasn't on top form, but I wasn't too far off and he was impressed, hehe. We spent a good while on that, then watched Over The Hedge, which Mike hadn't seen and loved. After that was Soul Reaver 1, which he'd played a demo of, and he enjoyed playing it despite some minor problems with the disc, it is a PS1 game XD. Then, we took a break and watched Ice Age 2, Mike having seen the first. but not this, and again, it got love. He played some more Soul Reaver after, got to the first boss, died and caused a glitch, classic XD. We ate sometime about here if I recall right, I was gonna pay for a delivery of pizza, but his mother made us some, so it was good, thanks to her :D. Next, I got to amuse Mike with my ineptness at a wrestling game of his, which sadly, due to lack of a second controller, we had to take turns. It was fun, if difficult, and then he played some Armored Core 2, which he owns the sequel to, but he'd never even played this one. He enjoyed it, from what I recall, but after a while, having been up for over 20 hours by then, I managed to pass out on his bed, which we were sitting/lying on to play games. According to him he didn't playwithfyre, guess I'll have to take his word for that one XD.
I didn't get much sleep though, as I was awoken I'm not sure how much later. This part wasn't so fun, unfortunately. Since my body had been in bad need of sleep, and then had it taken away far too soon when it finally got it, it wasn't happy with me XD. I felt really ill, and dizzy, since I forced myself to wake up and move about, and was willing myself not to throw up. I didn't say how bad I felt, cus it wasn't anyone's fault but my own, and I knew I couldn't sleep over, or anything, so I didn't want to trouble or burden Mike and his family, not like they could help anyway. I came up with the excuse of dehydration at the time, since we'd been in a stuffy room all day and I'd drunk nothing but Coke, but funnily enough, judging by how parched I was on the way back, I think it was actually true on top of the sleep deprivation XD. Anyway, yeah, I kept how bad I felt to myself, and they gave me a ride to the station, it was about 8:30pm by then, and the cold night air helped, a little. I slowly felt better, and by the time I was back in London I still felt uncomfortable, but not like I was gonna vomit XD. I ended up finding a shortcut, and got home a bit before 11pm, and slept shortly after.
Anyway, it was a really great time, despite the shaky ending. So yeah, thanks for the enjoyable time Mike, it was great to meet you, I just hope you enjoyed my company too ^^. And remember you were worth me feeling sick, so there XP.