I went to Westfield and all I bought was a lousy milkshake

Actually, it was a really nice milkshake made using chocolate Hob Nobs, but we'll come to that in due course.

Exciting stuff, people: I'm on holiday!

Hurrah!

And by 'holiday' regular readers will know that I actually mean I'm sitting around at home dividing my time between a DVD boxset and Scrabble on Facebook.

Actually, it's not quite been so laid back this time around…

Holiday time started on Friday evening with a jaunt to Westfield with Marcosy and a promise that I'd make his trip to Shepherds Bush worthwhile by actually buying something (usually when we go shopping I make all these grand declarations of things I want to get, but never end up buying anything because more often than not they don't have my size). This time, though, I had a number of things I *really* wanted - like a shirt and a hoody in Hollister (the shop that looks like a Mexican brothel) and Snow Leopard for my iMac.

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An aside:

Is it weird that I'm genuinely excited about a new operating system? What's that all about?!

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Unfortunately - for both my Snow Leopard lust and Marcosy's pleasure at seeing me hand over cold hard cash - Scanner, the company IT guru, had told me it would probably be best to hold off upgrading straight away just in case there was a conflict with any of the software I use. So, while I did go into the Apple Store, pick up a copy of Snow Leopard, and stare at it like it was Autumn Reeser on the box rather than a disgruntled looking Leopard (we'll come back to this), I ultimately put it back - despite Marcosy pointing at some random dude and shouting "HE'S BUYING IT, WHY THE HELL CAN'T YOU?!"

To make matters worse, Hollister (the Mexican brothel) turned into an epic FAIL as well; the shirt was waaaaaay too big, despite the fact I tried on a small, and the hoody, while lovely, was … well, it was 60 quid, and I wasn't convinced I wanted to spend 60 quid on it.

Ultimately, then, I made do with the aforementioned milkshake, which was all sorts of lovely and felt a bit like an entire meal in a cup; I had to stop halfway back to my car to rest my hands on my knees and take a deep breath.

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Saturday, sweaty yoga aside, was a reasonably chilled out day. Sunday, however, was another matter.

I started the day with another session of sweaty yoga; as I said to the teacher on my way into the studio, I'm very good at maintaining a regular schedule for this - not, I think, because I know it's good for me, but rather because I know it's cost me a fair amount of money so I should really get my money's worth out of it. I didn't tell him this, of course, because I want to give the impression I'm a dedicated student. I do wonder, however, what they'd do if I happened to fall asleep in the 20 minutes or so before class where I just lie back on the mat and shut my eyes (it's almost happened on at least two occasions). I'd like to think they'd just leave me be, but the reality is that they'd probably point and laugh before nudging me awake with their feet.

Anyway, after yoga I headed home to trim the neighbour's bush. Ahem. I mean the bush that overhangs my parking space. It's been leaning perilously close to Clubbie recently, and seeing as summer's pretty much done and dusted I thought I'd butcher it trim it back so it doesn't shed its scummy leaves all over my bonnet. Job done, I took the cuttings down the tip, then headed home to shower and grab some lunch (not at the same time, mind), before zooming off to meet Best Mate Jo.

Best Mate Jo and I haven't caught up in ages, so we decided to go see The Final Destination in THREE-DIMENSIONS (sorry, I always feel the need to suggest that 3D films are some sort of schlocky 1950s B-movie or something) at the cinema. To enjoy it in all its THREE-DIMENSIONAL glory we had to wear some stupid glasses.

The fact that they're illuminated by the flash here doesn't quite highlight how ridiculous these glasses are. I look like Roy Orbison.

The film was OK, but not as good as the previous Final Destination films. The THREE-DIMENSIONAL effect was without a doubt the best I've see, though, even if it did give me a headache; unfortunately, the glasses couldn't do anything to enhance the acting abilities of the film's stars - they were all universally terrible.

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An aside:

Do you know how many pairs of 3D glasses I own now? Three. That's three; one for the 3D episode of Chuck that was on telly last week, and the other two from cinema trips. They're all on my kitchen counter, because I don't quite know what to do with them. And get this: you're not allowed to take your own when you go to Vue Cinemas - they make you buy new ones every time, the cheeky bastards.

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Clubbie's been looking a bit dirty recently, so I excepted an offer from Big Bro to help me wash 'er on Monday afternoon. What I failed to remember is that Big Bro has, this year, transformed into something of a car washing nazi wizard. He researched it on the internet and everything. Gone are the days of squirting some random detergent in a bucket and chucking it over the bonnet, oh no. There are stages; many, many stages. My ridiculously short attention span was kept in check during the early stages because I was put on hose duty (dirty) and there's nothing I like more than wielding my hose with a purpose (dirtier), but by the polishing stage my mind was wandering and I almost went running off up the road after a cat. Plus, the polishing stage is really hard work; first you've got to go round the entire car dabbing blobs of polish on, then when it's dried you've got to go round again and buff it off in a wax on, wax off stylee.

On the plus side, after two and a half hours Clubbie looked awesome, and I've got biceps to die for.

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I decided to take advantage of my holiday time today by going to an early yoga class. I've never done a morning class in the week, and as I'd hoped the class was considerably emptier than it is in the evening. Good times. Even better, the class was being taken by one of my favourite instructors, a hilarious lady who keeps you smiling through the anguish of standing head to knee pose (that's Dandayamana Janushirasana to you and me); in fact, I laughed so much I fell out of the posture. Anyway, she also did this remarkable thing to realign me in one of the postures where, I think, she basically jabbed me in the ribs and I straightened up. She didn't literally jab me in the ribs, but she sorted me out so I wasn't slouching before tottering off down the studio to make a rude comment about one of the women at the front of the class.

All in all, it was a cracking class.

In the afternoon I headed over to Kingston for a haircut (awesome, and much needed), and a failed attempt to buy an iPhone 3GS. Can you believe they're sold out *everywhere*!? Well, the 32gb black versions, at least; and I can't be doing with a 16gb one (my current one is 16gb and it's almost full - I need storage, dammit!) or one in pimpy white. Several shop assistants laughed when I said "have you got any 32gb iPh-". I almost bought an Apple TV in desperation because I want one and I was really geared up for giving Apple some money today. I resisted only because there are rumours of an Apple TV update coming soon…

Anyway, I did give Apple some money, just not as much as I'd planned. I bought Snow Leopard (Scanner emailed me over the weekend to let me know he'd installed it without any problems so it should be OK for a simpleton like me to do it).

And back home I did indeed install it without any problems whatsoever. Good times. I do, however, keep looking at the box and thinking that that looks like one seriously pissed off Leopard on the front. Who at Apple drew the short straw of lobbing a snowball at it and snapping a picture before getting mauled?

All in all, then, it's been a rather busy, but very enjoyable few days off work so far. And I have high hopes for those still to come, despite the fact that I expect much of them will be devoted to hunting down a black, 32gb iPhone 3GS…

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Oh, and my DVD boxset of choice this week? Gilmore Girls Season One. It's *awesome*.