What’s going on? Well, I’m glad you asked…

… and if you didn’t ask, well I’ll tell you all anyway. I’m just that nice!

Been doing a lot of reading lately. Can’t really put my finger on why. I just felt that more reading needed to be done, and so over the last few months I have made at least some effort to finish more books. Thus I have read:

• Star Wars: X-wing – The Krytos Trap, and Star Wars: X-Wing The Bacta War, both by Michael A. Stackpole.  Both great fanboy novels featuring lots of starfighter battle, blasters, aliens, and Wedge Antilles. Didn’t bother re-reading Wraith Squadron which is the next book in the series as I’ve read it about a dozen times already
• The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov. Despite being a big Asimov fan, this collection featured stories that I hadn’t even heard of, let alone read. It finally gather all his robot stories together in one place, including I, Robot which shows up the Will Smith film of the same name as the pointless, twisting of a well written story.
• Almost finished John, by Cynthia Lennon
• And about half way through Star Wars: Han Solo Trilogy – The Hutt Gambit.

I know, I know, more Star Wars fanboy nonsense in my reading list. In my defence, I did get a rather amazing bargain the other day – nine Star Wars books for £3.20, from St Claire’s Hospice charity shop – which has resulted in a flood of Star Wars books to my book case. Plus I know I can polish off on of them in a little over a week, so I can get through a lot of them n a relatively short time! I should probably keep track of how many books I read a year. I’d probably impress/distress myself with the amount of time I spend with my nose in a book.

anyway, aside from reading, I’ve also been playing Dungeons & Dragons (this blog is turning into a den of geekiness rather than cool….) with Onion Girl and a few others. I always figured D&D would be all about complicated maths based on the dice roll, whilst sitting ’round a darkened table talking in funny voices with people who couldn’t tell the difference between themselves and their characters. However, I was very, very wrong! I’m enjoying it so much, as is everyone else involved. Game nights are a lot of fun, and no-one takes themselves too seriously – we all have active lives outside of our D&D, and a sense of humour is much more important to our group than any skill in mathematics (I’m practically retarded when it comes to maths). Of course, I’m a geek, so I would say that…

Any other big news? Hmmm, lets see. Oh yeah, only two damned major things!

• First, we’re moving again! Yep, Onuion Girl and I are moving in with our chum Larter. We need to get out of our tiny little flat (Americans – read as apartment) into a real house with a garden, and Larter is sick of living at home with his parents (possibly not helped by spending copious amounts of time at our flat). So after realising we could get a bigger, better house with the rent being split three ways, we decided to move in together! Living with my friends is something I’ve always wanted to do, so this promises to be fun. we’re currently scouring the local papers and estate agent websites for a suitable place, since we’re looking to move in July, and we need to give our current agents two months notice… So if anyone knows of a three bedrom house in Harlow for less than £800 pcm available June/July, let me know!
• Secondly Requiem for an Empire are finally rehearsing/recording again! We’ve actually been doing so for a couple of months now,  but I’ve been too lazy to update the blog with the news. This time around we’re only a three-piece, and Goon is sequencing drums/bass/synths, whilst Larter and I add guitar and vocals. Our music’s heading off in some strange directions, but it’s so damn good to be making music again, and we’ve received some really positive feedback on our demo tracks. Check us out here, or become a fan of our Facebok page here. Apologies in advance about the awful sound quality of the recordings on Myspace – the Myspace audio player does terrible, terrible things to mp3’s when you upload them, and results in them sounding like they’re being played through a washing machine.

On an entirely different and much sadder note, I have had to sell the Duke. My beloved car needed repairs that I simply could not afford, and was costing me an absolute fortune in petrol (averaging somewhere around 15 mpg), so I had to sell him.

At least now he’ll get the work and servicing he needs, so he’s in a better place *sob*. This also means that I have a new car, which is somewhat smaller than the Duke was, and goes quite a bit quicker too, whilst being cheaper to run, and doing lots more miles per gallon! As yet she’s un-named, though I do have a few strong contenders…

Finally, so as not to end on a downer, we’re going ghost hunting! Yep, this Thursday evening will find me and an intrepid bunch of miscreants heading to Cold Christmas Church in Thundridge:

Cheerful looking place isn't it?

to hopefully spend the night being goosed by ghosts and spooked by spirits. I’ll let you know how that goes… Or alternately you could follow me on Twitter and get regular updates on exactly how cold/scared/bored we are throughout the night! The wonders of modern technology.

TTFN