On August 21st this year, I shall be 35. Therefore, on August 18th this year I shall be having a birthday party. You are invited. I am aware that a large chunk of you are distant people who will not be able to make it to Edinburgh, and that numerous of you are distant people who don't even know me except for finding the occasional link amusing. But those of you who can make it are welcome to come by and see whatever flat I'm living in by then...

The party will have a theme. That theme is "Villains". If you can't think of someone evil you think looks cool then frankly you're just not trying. You do not have to dress up, however, if you have a note from your doctor reading "The carrier has a phobia of wearing silly costumes, and is thus excused from ever having fun."

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On that day

We've finally hit the end of another iteration at work - the bugfixes are all in, the things that aren't vital have been rolled over to the next iteration, the change requests are in to have things rolled out to the users on Thursday night, and we've started planning sessions for the next set of changes.  The final problem was discovering that half the users had Service Pack 1 of the .Net Framework, and half didn't - as we depended on a fix in SP1, this wasn't good.  Thankfully they've agreed to update everyone tomorrow night, just in time for us to go out, so everything should be working.

This evening was a tad hectic - my parents bought me an amp and speakers for my birthday - and tonight I dropped by Richer Sounds to pick up the speakers.  Lilian had offered to give me a lift with them on Saturday, but frankly I couldn't wait, so I taxied them home instead.  Erin came over too, and despite Ed's claims he was going to head out for a few hours, he decided to hang around, so I cooked some food, played Robo Rally (finally winning a game, albeit against two people who hadn't played a whole game before) and tried to attach the speakers to the amp.

This didn't go at all according to plan - I'd not thought about the fact that the speaker cables might not be cut - I have been given about 15m of wire, in a single piece - and so didn't have any wire cutters.  I also didn't have anything terribly useful for connecting the SCART box to the amp.  I managed to fudge half of this, but in the process managed to dislodge various other cables from the system, and mess things up to the extent that merely getting everything plugged back in and in the working state it was before I started has given me a fair chunk of satisfaction.  The cutting of wires to size, running of them under carpets, and actual setting up of speakers will have to wait until I'm next in, which is Saturday.

I'm sitting back at home, listening to the wind blowing through the window and a train passing 150 feet away, inching slowly towards a state of total collapse.

Today was a good birthday.  In fact, combined with the meal on Wednesday it was probably the best birthday I've had since I was too young to know better.

We all arrived back at Hugh's at 3:00, joined shortly thereafter by George and Nick, and then proceeded to play Poker and Robo Rally.  I went for the game of robotic destruction, and while I failed to win, I had a damn good time coming (a predicted) third.  At that point (6:00-ish) half the people leapt off to catch trains back to Bathgate/Stirling and the rest of us settled in for a quick hour-long Poker game, which was exceedingly good fun.

I then decided to quit while I was ahead, and retreated home, along with numerous small presents from people.  I'd told a fair few not to get me anything, but seem to have missed a few, who got me some very cool things.  For instance, Hal got me a lego version of the Anakin/Vader transformation scene, Adam and Bekka got me a brain-melting 3D puzzle, Jackie got me a Zaphod Beeblebrox figure and Lilian got me Nova Scotia - a collection of Scottish Speculative Fiction, which includes writing by Ken Mcleod and Charlie Stross, both of whom I like.

Anyway, have now collapsed, feeling entirely sociaised out, and plan to spend the rest of the evening doing a little tidying up and maybe brushing my hair...

We bowled - with Hugh, Meredith, Hal, Adam, Bekka, Rob,Claire, Jackie, Andy, Scott and Lilian. Beginners picked things up by the second game, Scott seemed to forget how to play between games, and I managed to score a creditable 94 in the first, and 141 in the second (with two strikes, three spares, two nines and three eights).

Now back at Hugh's, for board games. George and Nick will be here soon, although sadly not Ed, who isn't feeling up to it.

Now to see if I can also beat people at Robo Rally. If I do, then I'm going to see if I can finally win a game of Settlers of Catan - which I got for my birthday last year and _still_ haven't won a game of...

At 5 past midnight, halfway through an episode of Firefly(Ed and Erin rushing to finish it before Serenity on Wednesday), Lilian rang to wish me happy birthday, which was rather nice :->

I then wandered back into the living room, where Erin and Ed sang Happy Birthday to me, which was also rather nice :->

Now I head bowlingwards, to undoubtedly be badly beaten, which will be nice too :->

I expect a day of niceness.  Even the sun is shining!

Tis my Birthday on Sunday.  Today, however, was a teeny event with tisme, eduard_green, 0olong and diotina at Edinburgh's oldest Indian restaurant - Kushi's.  We ate far too much, and I was given three spiffy presents.  diotina and 0olong gave me a teeny beaver figurine and the second Science of Discworld book (yay!) and  tisme gave me the Psychobox, which looks fascinating.  Then we retired to The Forest Cafe for half an hour, before I collapsed from tiredness.

This birthday looks likely to be an odd one.  It feels like the first one I haven't really cared about being any older (although Ed assures me I said similar things last year), and it's the first time I've been unable to think of anything major I wanted.  Heck, I don't even expect my friends to get me anything - it'll just be nice to see them.  Looks like I'll be seeing about 15 people on Sunday, which will be nice.  I feel exhausted just thinking about  it.