Like A Game Of Pick-Up Sticks

It's been quite a weekend. I'd start at the beginning if I could actually remember where the beginning was.

Well, on Friday I finally bought the t.A.T.u. CD. Having told myself that I would wait patiently until it charted and then get it from Sainsburys (all chart CDs for �9.99), I gave in and went to a high-street record shop and paid "full-price" for it. It's a good CD, and it's refreshing to see that there are new bands with a grasp of what pop is really about. Especially interesting is the cover of How Soon Is Now? (and if you don't know who recorded that originally, tough). I expected it to be dire, but it's not. DJ Sammy would do good to take note.

Friday night was spent preparing for the housewarming weekend, mostly. Tidying up and rearranging rooms to maximise space. Nice. It didn't help that we were both already pretty much exhausted.

Saturday started far too early for my liking. Needless to say, even with the preparation done on Friday night there was still a fair amount to do, such as hoovering. Hoovering late evening when your neighbours have a young kid really is not a good idea, so it was saved for Saturday morning. We managed to fit in a quick game of Carcassonne before lunch, and then as we were finishing our first guest arrived. Strangely enough, it wasn't Anne. She turned up second.

For an hour or so no one else turned up, so I was chatting to Anne about the events of her weekend so far, while Alison chatted to Colleague A (I'm not going to name people outright) from her office. American Bassoon Guy (who lives two streets down from us) turned up early afternoon, as did Weakest Link Flute Player, but apart from that it was a steady stream of Alison's colleagues. So come by the early evening we'd had plenty of guests come and go, but apart from Anne none of them were people invited by me rather than Alison.

At 6, a posse from my office turned up. An ex-boss (Boss S), my current boss (Boss J), their respective partners (Boss J also brought his pet spot. Don't ask, trust me, you don't want to know), and Colleagues G and D descended upon us en masse. This gave me my first real opportunity to be the one giving the guided tour, and in particular to show off the stuff I'd actually done myself (wiring for instance) and be mocked for displaying the Lego Rebel Blockade Runner in pride of place (and quite rightly so). It was while I was doing this tour that I realised how proud I was of what I've accomplished, and what Alison and I have accomplished together, since we moved in. Oh, and I found out that Boss N's brother was now seeing Colleague H, in an amusing twist of gossip. Why am I always the last person to find these things out?

The office posse stayed for less than an hour, I think, soon after which Pizzas were ordered. At this point it was just Alison, myself, Anne and ABG. Naturally we took longer arguing over the semantics of the offers on the Pizza menu than we did deciding what pizzas we wanted. I was disappointed at the lack of any form of seafood special to suggest to Anne than she had *cackle*, but that was pretty much all the mileage we got out of the menu itself rather than the various contradictory offers that were attached to it.

Dunk turned up as the pizzas turned up, and amusingly was stuck out in the rain by the pizza guy standing stubbornly in the doorway trying to explain that he needed the security number off the back of Alison's Visa card as well as her signature. I think I had more idea what he was on about than he did. I don't mean that to sound superior, I was just stating it as a matter of fact. Honest.

The rest of the evening was less hectic. An ex-colleague who I was supposedly having an affair with while we worked in the same office, and her boyfriend joined us at about 10, which was actually quite a relief since I was expecting her earlier. My one worry about the whole weekend was that the Ex-Alleged Bit On The Side (EABOTS) would be here at the same time as Boss S, with whom she had a distant but moderately awkward history. EABOTS and Dunk shared notes on their fears of flying, and the rest of us offered unhelpful comments.

The evening more or less ended when EABOTS + partner, and ABG left. The rest of us chatted for all of ten minutes I think before deciding it was high time we crashed.

There is far less to tell about today. It was good for once to witness Anne's reactions to new Buffy episodes first hand rather than remotely by text, particularly given the slashy elements that there were to witness. Well, not exactly slashy, more kind of pre-slashy. I don't want to say too much because I know there are people who read this who will take even something that vague as being a spoiler, but I had to say something.

The only other thing of note I have to mention is that I've started rebuilding the Lego Republic Gunship, because I want to make a Battle of Genosis display. Yes, I'm sad. At which point did you fail to realise this?