15) Paint a painting

On the 11th of September me and Brandi decided we would paint. We bought a couple of canvases, some paint and a set of brushes. We readied the table with cookies, knives and sink scrubbers (for effect), forgetting any newspaper. We set the atmosphere with alcohol and 'trippy music' and began painting.

We decided to go abstract, for obvious reasons.

I was ready to attack the canvas with akimbo brushes

Brandi prepares her mind

This sort of thing can't be done wearing trousers.

Brandi's complete painting.

My complete painting.

I am willing to admit that Brandi's painting looks a lot better than mine. Hers looks like something you could possibly buy in a shop, and mine looks like something your child brings home from primary school. BUT... mine has a lot more meaning. I shall go into detail.

A) A big 1.

B) A big 'V'. Roman numerals for '5'. With the '1' before it, it becomes '1 5', number 15 on my list. It isn't 4 in Roman numerals, or it wouldn't be overlapping the 'V'.

C) C in Roman numerals, meaning '100'. This is for my 100 things to do list.

D) My 'life line', running right through the painting. This attaches to my 'C', 100 things to do list, as that helps spur my life on, keeping me doing things.

E) F) G) H) My family initials, when using the huge 'V' becomes 'JACK V', an old password we used to use for family things.

I) A sign for infinite, which again comes from my 'C', 100 things to do list. This is to symbolise me not dying.

J) A planet, also coming from the 100 things to do list to symbolise my travelling.

K) The colours of the Captain Vestman vest. The colour is the background to C, I and J, as they all relate.

L) Clearing coming off my Life Line, is a 'B', making the initials BV for Brandi Vogstad.

M) To show my immature side, I have drawn a big long abstract penis in blue.

N) My favourite colours outlining a corner of the painting.

There are a few other things to do with different colours, but an artist shouldn't reveal everything.

And here is the magnificent piece of art in all it's high resolution glory. 

They are currently both hanging on the walls in our house.

Night Ninja Wasp

Last night I had a dream about this game (it was with pans, you split up different kitchen pans and knives, and then one person would put down a pan, and the next person had to put one down that was bigger. It made sense at the time). Then, a guy put the knives in the dishwasher, but they were sticking up. In the dream I then went to push them down, but one of the knives got stuck, and stabbed me in the finger. I said "ahh, that hurt", but I couldn't see a mark, and he said "yeah, I saw that coming".

Then, still in the dream, I walked to another kitchen to get more pans to play again, and suddenly I heard this buzz and jumped up in pain. On the bed lay a wasp, and I must have rolled over and put my hand on it and it stung me. In the dream I must have quickly thought that it was a sharp knife that hurt, and all happened fast enough for the dream to briefly continue before the pain fully hit. How bizarre. I didn't want to get revenge on the wasp, so I got it in a glass and threw it outside.

I had recently said I wanted to know what a wasp sting felt like now, since the last time I was stung I was very young, and it was on my toe while I was on the swing, bare footed, in the garden. It actually hurt a lot more than I would have thought.

The rest of the night was spent having nightmares that the room was full of wasp nests.

Online Gaming: My Memoirs

I like to play computer games. This started when my parents had an oldschool game thing that apparently only worked when the TV volume was at a certain level. They then bought a Megadrive when I was 4. I played a few different PC games as I got older, but I didn't start properly playing until I was 10. Here are my memoirs:


Microsoft Ants - 1998 (Aged 10)

First real online gaming. Me and Leigh became a good team (for two 10 year olds that just started playing the game). We made a clan called 'PTDC'. Until this day I don't think I had told anyone what it meant. I didn't quite realise what clan tags were, but knew it had to be initials. All I could think about was (and don't judge me, I was 10) the initials of my 4 main teddy bears, Panda, Ted, Dog, and Cheekaboo. I only remember one other person in our clan, PTDC_OAKER2000 (maybe 3000). Back then I was known simply as PTDC_Andy. I wasn't every imaginative.


Quake 2 Demo - 1998 (Aged 10)
Since Antz was on the Microsoft Zone network, I spent most of my time on that. I noticed another popular free game, which was the multiplayer version of the Quake 2 Demo. Me and Leigh occasionally went on this and it was fun. This was where I first learned how to use console commands (much to my moms amusement), such as sv_gravity -10, followed by sv_gravity 3000.


Worms Armageddon - 1999 (Aged 11)
Looking for other games, me and Leigh started playing Worms Armageddon. We actually got surprisingly good at it, and as PTDC we became one of the better known clans. We had a big rivalry with another clan, known as XMEN. We were generally better than them, and had another guy named 'PTDC_Nameless', real name Omar Sultan, an Egyption.

A memorable time was once, during a clan match with XMEN (I believe it may have been our final ever clan match with them), we were drawing 1 game each, and towards the end of the game one of our own players suicide killed our final worm. In the lobby chat after he laughed, and revealed he was actually the deputy of the XMEN clan. They got the last laugh there.


TFC 1.5 - June 1999 (Aged 11)

While on a caravan club rally I bought an issue of PC Gamer, which had a huge feature about Half-Life in it. After playing the Quake 2 demo, I decided to give it a go. The Half-Life multiplayer wasn't that fun, but I tried 'Team Fortress 1.5', which a shortcut to was sneakily added to to my desktop when installing Half-Life. I loved it, and played it for quite a while. I originally had the name PTDC_Andy (not realising the correct format was [Clan Tag]). I then dropped the clan tag, since I wasn't in a TFC clan.

Later on I met a guy named 'Dazz', who was the leader of a clan and he let me join his. Later on I was in a game and a guy asked me about the clan, and what I thought of the leader. I said he seemed like a really nice guy, he then realved himself to be Dazz, and was testing me. I still speak to him occasionaly on Facebook, 12 years later.
A while later in TFC I decided to make my own clan. While in a public server 2 other guys said they wanted to make one too. One was called Jeff, who suggested we be called Dark Knights From Hell, or [DKFH]. I still have [DKFH]Jeff on Facebook, but I didn't ever get the ICQ name of the other guy, and never saw him again.


Counter-strike Beta 5.2+ - February 2000 - 2004 (aged 12 - 16)
While playing TFC, it was noticable that more and more players were leaving to play Counter-strike. This was a lot more realistic shooting game, so I didn't warm to it right away. After giving in I started to play. My first game was with Dazz, and I think it was either on de_dust or cs_747, andt my score was something along the lines of 0 - 34. I distinctly remember not being able to kill anyone. Eventually I picked it up more and became addicted. This was the first time I would say I became obsessed with a game, playing every day. My first name was Assassin2k, though I went through many.

My friends soon started playing this, and it quickly spread to lots of people in the school. The growth of Counter-strike was phenomenal. Since I'm no longer in school I can't compare it to Call of Duty, but when I look at the games now I think "pah, it will never be like counter-strike was". Everyday after school we all played together. We had many clans, such as RR (Russian Revolution), and a monkey one, where we were all named monkey names. My name was "Funky_Monkey", which it stuck at for a while, my friends had names such as "Lumpy_Monkey", and "Spunky_Monkey". Leigh was called "The Monkey of Chaos", but made it a bit better later with "Chaos Monkey".

During this time we frequented servers such as Shady (where I hated most people), and Mr Kitty's (who had a really nice admin that I used to speak to on MSN). We later got our own clan server, and always abused our powers with 'slap'.

Towards the end of my Counter-Strike times I joined BP, and was known as $kill$hot, later Skillshot, and left BP settled in WA (Whoopass) with a clan leader DaFunk (a Northern Irish guy name Kyle Byrne, also on my Facebook). Other memorable people were Sami and Emmanual. Leigh stayed in BP, and went on to run TheSGL with the leader of BP.

Counter-strike was the first game that we started to go by the name 'omgLAN', later 'omglan', when we went to each others house and set our clan tag as such and played on the same team.


The Specialists - 2003 (aged 15)
I feel like The Specialists should get an honourable mention. I used to play many mods. One that I loved was The Opera, a mostly single player mod where you could shoot while diving, using akimbo guns (also taught me what akimbo meant). Later on I played The Specialists, like The Opera, but multiplayer, slow motion, you could run up wall, stop bullets, etc. It was amazing. Me and Neil played this quite a lot, and I got known as one of the best kung-fu people in the game, being able to top score lists without even using guns. My equal was known as "Bruce lee", not a very original game name.


World of Warcraft Dec 2004  - July 2007 (aged 17 - 20)
In the second year of college, Liam introduced me to World of Warcraft. I've never been into fantasy things, but for some reason I instantly decided I wanted to play. This was either a great idea or a huge mistake. World of Warcraft is the most addictive game ever. My character was called Trionell Blackspeed, named after my computer, though I had to drop the Blackspeed initially since you can't have spaces.

By this time, Leigh, my original gaming partner, was spending most of his time working on TheSGL and not playing games. I had convinced Neil to play, though it was a bit after I had started so we rarely got to work together, since we were different level (similar to Me and Liam, who aside from seeing him once, I had never played with). Some weekends Neil would come over to my house with his laptop and we would play most of the night.

I wasn't very good at the game initially, getting to level 60 and still not really knowing how to play. Still upset that my name didn't have the 'Blackspeed', I started a 'guild' (new word for clan, apparently) called 'Blackspeed', so my name was full. I decided to invite as many people in the server as I could, and Blackspeed instantly became one of the biggest (far from best) clans on the original Burning Legion server (same as the original Nihilum guild). One memorable person from our guild was 'Niffer', infamous for ninja-looting one of the rarest items in the game, the Barons horse.

Later on I started taking the game more seriously, and lost almost every waking hour to it during college. It was pretty much the reason I did badly. I joined a new server, Ahn'Quiraj, created a Gnome mage (also called Trionell), and the top PvP guild and quickly became Grand Marshall on the server (top PVP rank). This is when I would class myself as a hardcore game. The guild started doing PvE (fighting in top instances) and I started leading the raids and organising everything. I had some good friends, such as an Italian couple.

I mostly lost interest after this became I realise I had spent ridiculous amounts of time playing the game over 2 years and didn't have much to show for it. I finally broke myself away from playing it, but often have flashbacks.


Playstation 3 - August 2007 (aged 20+)
This was the point that I stopped really playing games as much. I went to University (I can't really say I had less time...), but always stopped myself playing WoW, because I knew it would mean I would completely fail.  My days being a 'hardcore gamer' stopped, and I became casual.

92) Eat noodles in London

I spent Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st of July in London. I was going back to retry a failed trip I had back in April. I had arranged it so that on the Saturday I would see Neil and go to a party at Amy's house, and on the Sunday I would meet Jane, a fellow blogger, and Australian Kellie.

I woke up Saturday morning confused, in someone's bed (alone..), in an almost entirely empty house in Camden. I left the house and decided to make my way to the centre of London. Along the way I got bored of walking and paid £1 for the use of a bike for a day. I sat in the part for a couple of hours learning to do the Rubik's Cube, and then set off to one of the undergrounds to meet Jane.

I have spoke to Jane through the blogging world for over a year. Being someone who has read my list, and also has her own list (with some pretty funny things on), she offered to help me cross of my number 92, 'eat noodles in London'. So at about 1pm the short woman with the messy hair, met the homeless looking guy with the messy hair.

I followed Jane, who knows much more about London than me (having lived there, amongst many other cities of the world), and went to China Town, which I think was near Leicester Square. She decided on a really nice Chinese restaurant and we went in and sat down. I, like always, found Jane to be really interesting and funny, and she has many stories, and is constantly doing new things, so the conversation was flowing.

I had no idea what to order from the menu, so Jane ordered lots of different Dim Sum things. I can't remember what many of them were, but it was interesting trying them all. She also ordered the all important Shanghai Noodles (which were very nice).

We finished the food and walked around Covent Garden talking, while I made my way towards meeting Kellie. We said our goodbyes near Leicester Square, and made sure to have a proper photo (which proved to be more difficult than I'd hoped).

A big thank you to Jane for helping me to cross another item off the list!

The day I parked in a disabled space in a hurry

This week I had a really embarrassing moment. I was driving past the supermarket and decided to quickly rush in (mainly just to use their toilet, though I did do a polite 'once over' one of the aisles). As I walked out to my car I was horrified to see that I had accidentally parked in a disabled spot. I have never done this before, but the people walking past me didn't know that, and they stared at me angrily the whole time they walked past. There was also a man sat in his car giving me evil looks too.

I put my head down, like a criminal leaving court, and hastily got my key out. I could feel the eyes of the judging people drilling into me as I fumbled to open the door, which seemed to be impossible. And then it clicked. It was impossible... since I had walked over to the wrong car. The car of a disabled person.

With the judging people still staring I had to quickly walk past the car to my own, get in, and speed off. I don't know if it is worse to park in a disabled space, or to be seen to be trying to break into a disabled persons car.

53) Join a riot

I am very, very pissed off with these riots, and would just like to start this by saying that I have not participated just to cross it off the list.

The riots apparently started when a drug dealer was shot and killed by the police when he pulled out a gun. Since then, some twats have just used it as an excuse to rampage throughout the country, stealing and breaking stuff. It started in London, then spread to Birmingham, then to Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Nottingham, Leeds and now there's reports of all other places too.

These are just opportunist thugs, with nothing to actually protest. They say different things like it is because society, or police aren't respectful, and annoyingly the BBC are/were actually calling them protesters.

What the country needs now are some vigilantes (which I have always agreed with), to come in and make an example of some people to show them that they can't just ruin our society. These people obviously have no standards or morals, as you can see them trying to rob closed sandwich stores, McDonalds, and pound shops. Wtf.

These riots made me think about my number 53 on the list. When I added this I was thinking about a more peaceful riot, if there is such a thing. I see a protest as people standing being mostly ignored, and a riot as people making more noise, using slight force, but non-violent and nothing to actually damage things, just disrupt.

Although I had vowed to not take anything off the list, I am considering taking this off, since rioting sucks. I was hoping for something that is actually worth 'rioting' for, but I don't know...

All I hope is that every single person gets caught, owned, and although they won't all fit in prison, I hope they all get house arrest/curfew for a long, long time.

19) Climb Ben Nevis

I hadn't even heard of Ben Nevis until I was about 22, but after doing some (very quick) research I read that it was the UK's highest mountain at 1,344m (4,409ft). It stands in the Scottish highlands about 10 hours from my house, so not something I can just pop outside to for a ramble. I instantly wanted to put it on my list, because living in the country there is no reason why I shouldn't have climbed it's highest mountain (especially since it doesn't require any major training). I had asked my friends a few times previously, and tried arranging things, but it never came about.

In April my mom and dad asked if I wanted to go to John O Groats with them. I thought that since we were passing by Ben Nevis it could be a good chance to save future petrol and have a nice family memory. My mom was all for it, as she is always up for a challenge and does a lot to help me complete my list.

We camped at the foot of Ben Nevis on the Friday night, and woke up early on the Saturday to climb. I could see the top of the mountain from the bottom, and didn't think it looked too bad. Maybe a couple of hours if I take it steady.

We got walking, and after only 100m into it we encounterd two young Scottish guys, holding a bottle of Vodka, incredibly drunk. They were really helping the stereotype. They asked if it was our first time, and wished us luck.

There were many groups of people hiking that day. Early on we were passed by what looked like some kind of army training team. We were then passed by a few hikers that were in full gear. I was in my long coat and jeans, and my mom and dad were in similar. We had one bottle of fizzy cream soda between us. Everybody else was wearing hiking bags, hiking boots, had water bottles built into their bags, and had walking sticks. Early on I silently mocked them.

After a while of walking we started to go around the side of the mountain, and the wind got very, very strong. I mean stronger than I have ever seen before. I literally couldn't stand up straight. It was blowing dust and debris in my face, which was making it hard to continue. It was also at this point, near the top of the mountain I had seen at the start, that we saw that far, far into the distance we could see people walking up a different mountain. We then realised that you climb up the first one to get to the foot of Ben Nevis. I died a little inside.

Nonetheless we carried on. I was encouraged by my mom and dad to go on ahead, since they weren't sure they would make it, given how far away we could see the people. I wanted to stay with them, but I also knew we couldn't spend all day walking and I was worried I would have to cut it short.

I made good ground over the new few minutes, getting to the top of the first, now 'little', mountain. I was amazed to see on top it had some kind of lake. I started to walk over to it, the wind still blowing incredibly hard, but the ground got more and more marshy. I decided to wait for my mom and dad so I could show it them and take a photo with them.

I then went off again. From here I could see what I again thought was the top of Ben Nevis. I was overtaking a lot of people, finding little need for a break. I was impressing myself with my walking abilities, though I had started to really need to pee. Along the way I passed a waterfall which was pretty, and got a really nice view over the Scottish Highlands. The terrain changed from being a rocky path to being a horrible rocky path. This encouraged me to hurry up.
The whole way I kept trying to look for mom and dad lower down the mountain, though everybody looked like ants on an ant hill. I was pretty sure that they would have turned around by now since I had again reached what I thought was the top of the mountain, to find that it actually extended much further, and it was a much, much more difficult walk than anticipated. I had already seen many people turn around.

I pushed on, and started to see more and more snow. I had to pass one section that was entirely walking through snow, which was difficult. I again reached what I thought was the top, to have my emotions crushed by seeing it go further. Towards the top there were rock mounds where people were encouraged to leave a stone on. I didn't do this. I felt like going along knocking people rocks off, so it was like they were never there, but that would have been mean.

As this blog post is getting longer than intended, I will skip to them moment that I finally reached the top. It was windy. And cold. The top of the mountain had ruins of an old observatory. It had an engraved stone saying that it was sent all the way from Dudley in the war, which is pretty much where I live. Black country people seem to get everywhere.

I waited my turn to stand on an elevated rock, which essentially made me the highest up person in the whole of UK for a few moments. I felt quite the achievement. I did feel a little more achievement when a few seconds later I had sneaked off to become to highest person peeing in UK.
I started walking back down the mountain, disappointed that I wasn't able to get any good photos of me on top (an average person taking photographs is terrible). About a mile down the hill I was really shocked to find my mom and dad still pushing on. I was certain they had gone back. I was incredibly impressed/proud, and decided to walk back up to the top with them (intentionally not telling them that what they could see as the top actually wasn't close).

We all got to the top, posed for photos, and started back down. I had pretty much no trouble getting up the mountain... but getting down was a nightmare. It was the most painful thing I have done. Each step killed my knees, ankles, and newly formed blisters. I couldn't wait to get down, and it seemed to be taking even longer than getting up there. I won't write any more about it, since it is a moment I want to forget!

At the bottom we celebrated with a meal, and set off to see the Loch Ness.