Saxy Black Sexophone. No, wait...

After the somewhat maudlin entry I wrote yesterday I thought I ought to do something that was a bit more of a write-up of the weekend.

Anne and Jess's visit went well. There was Chinese Food (and chips). There was much ice cream. In fact, much doesn't begin to cover it. There was shitloads of ice cream. Magnum Moments. Mini Cornettos. Two tubs of Ben and Jerry's. Jess likes ice cream, that's all there is to it.

There was also Will & Grace, and Scrubs. And, of course, I bullied them into sitting through all the wedding photos.

Obviously, Anne and I insulted each other a fair bit, because that's always good fun. Well, it's good fun when we both know the insults are meant in good fun. I would imagine it wouldn't be if either of us really meant it. Although, knowing both of us... LOL.

The funniest/silliest/stupidest thing that happened was surprisingly/obviously done by me. Alison had asked for money for her birthday to go towards getting a Tenor Saxophone, and the card from Anne and Jess contained two crisp banknotes of (thankfully) different denominations. When I was clearing up at one point during the evening I picked up the empty envelope the card had come in and tore it in half. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the empty envelope wasn't actually empty, and that in addition to tearing the envelope in half, I also tore two banknotes in half. Sellotape. It's amazing stuff.

Saturday morning I got up "early" and made myself breakfast and read comics while the rest of the house slept on. My body had been stubbornly drifting somewhere between 'not going back to sleep' and 'too tired to get up' so I figured I should force the issue. Anne and Jess joined me first, as usual following the exchange of text messages which ensured that a coffee was sat waiting for Anne when she arrived downstairs. Once everyone else got up breakfast turned out to be ice cream. Good job I'd had something a bit more solid already, otherwise that would just be begging for a hypoglycaemic episode. It was risky enough as it was.

As I said, Jess likes ice cream.

Then Anne and Jess departed, and Alison and I set off on a mission of our own. Well, strictly speaking the mission was Alison's, but putting it that way didn't flow so well grammatically. We were heading for a music shop in Halesowen so that she could try out Tenor Saxes.

Unfortunately, the gorgeous black sax with silver keys that Alison tried out wasn't quite so good soundwise as the more standard brass lacquered one that it looks like she'll be getting. Still a few other places to visit to try out second-hand ones, so she may yet end up with a gorgeous black one, but it's looking a bit unlikely.

Last night when I told Anne all of this over IM she said 'Don't they all sound the same?'. For the benefit of anyone else who was wondering the same thing, think of it in terms of cars. Any car will get you from A to B, but not all cars drive the same. The main difference you get with instruments is in the richness of tone, which varies from model to model and also to a certain extent varies on an individual basis too. There is other stuff like how easy it is to hit the notes at either extreme of the range, how standard the key layout is, etc.

When I told Alison what Anne had asked, she wasn't that impressed. She gave me an evil look, as if I was the one who'd asked the question, then said 'Ask her if all women fuck the same'. I pointed out that the car metaphor I'd used had been a perfectly adequate explanation and that there was no need to get vicious and/or confrontational. The response to that was a pouty 's'pose'. I think I won that one, LOL.

Saturday night I made progress with the first chapter of the first book of the trilogy that's gonna take me 10 years to write. A little bit of topping up last night has now brought the chapter's word count to approaching 2,500, which isn't much when you compare it to my NaNoWriMo efforts, but is still good given how out of practice I seem to be at the moment.

The other thing that happened yesterday was ordering a patio for the back garden. For some time we've been eyeing up this circular patio which has a sun motif, and seeing that a local DIY store had put it on special offer was enough to make us take the plunge and commit to getting it. Now we just need to get rid of the trees in the way.

And as for this week, well, it's both the last week at work before we go on holiday, and is also (supposedly) the last week of my assignment here. We're still struggling to obtain sign-off from the user, and if we don't then essentially it will be that this week and the two before it will have been a total waste of my time. Good huh?