"Start as you mean to go on,"

I thought last night, "get up early for a change". Looks like the vein in which I shall be continuing involves snoozing my alarm for an hour and three-quarters amid increasingly troubling dreams about Daleks.

On Thursday night I went to a pub quiz organised by my work's Social Committee. I was part of the committee's first incarnation, and o! they were halcyon days. We had money, stupid ideas and a total lack of management oversight. We organised wine tasting sessions, booze-fuelled barbeques, the Christmas party, and - our crowning achievement - a day of paintball. It all came crashing down after one of my esteemed colleagues copped three paintballs to the head and wound up with concussion. Ah well: you win some, you lose some. The Social Committee-as-Untouchables situation evaporated fairly soon after that...the old guard were blown to the four corners of the company and the new, user-friendly committee have just started out.

<fx: wipes tear from eye, reminisces about shooting workmates>

Anyway, back to Thursday. We lost the quiz by a point and proceeded to get giddily drunk. I met up with the usual suspects in the Phoenix afterwards, bringing my work lot along in tow and bumping into - for the second time in as many weeks - an ex-girlfriend that lives in the area. There's nothing like meeting a happily relationship-enabled ex to drive home how absolutely single I am. Actually, I say 'nothing like', but in fact I lie: making a minor spectacle of myself saying a rather too heartfelt goodbye to Devon's friend Emily came fairly close.

Oh, and I lost my wallet.*

Jeff and Josh had organised a meal for Friday evening, and I invited Kate along as my not-date. It was a good meal (in the Atlas Restaurant), followed by some abysmal pool playing and finally a descent to the pit of Bertie's. Again. This time there was A) thankfully no dancing, and B) no...er...other stuff.

I made the (admittedly difficult) decision to take Saturday off from alcohol after a ridiculously tanked-up week. I got my heinous mini-mullet seen to and had a pleasant wander over Calton Hill and through the lower reaches of the old town. All very civilised. I had planned Sunday to be pretty much in the same mould, but fate (and Jeff, drunkenly inviting a load of visiting foreign people to the flat on Sunday evening) had other ideas. I managed to get a bit of bass practise in before we were deluged with assorted visitors from France, Luxembourg and Germany. For a change, I was wheeled out not to play the bagpipes but to let everyone else have a go.

Josh cooked us some pasta at about 12.30 am, we watched some episodes of Spaced, and I went to bed.

* Of course, I found it in my jacket the next night after having cancelled all of the cards in it.

Hurrah for chat, ceilidhs and acid-inspired Sunday afternoon telly.

I started writing a "woe is me" entry late on Friday afternoon. I'd spent the day trying to compensate for Bingy Corp's exasperating inability to read the instructions on the stuff we send them, writing email after email to explain and re-explain how to use it.

I was in a bad mood. Fortunately, the weekend saved me from crushing frustration and you from a whingeing blog entry.

On the way out from work, I collared Jason and convinced him to come along to Pivo after he'd gone home to change. Next I called Kate and grovelled at her until she came along too. Once we were all installed in the pub and clutching our respective pints, I felt able to let out a kind of whole-body sigh. I could physically feel my muscles relaxing and my mind emptying of the irritations of the day's non-work.

Jeff, Josh, Devon and the rest of the Mafia were also out that evening, and Jason and I met up with them after Kate went home. We wound up in Bertie's of all places, now reinvented as a truly diabolical Aussie-style sports bar.

With a dancefloor. Oh yes. Check my bad self dancing like a twit.

On Saturday night we all headed down to Devon & Annabel's for a meal. (Again, with excellent food. It's time Jeff, Josh and I organised a dinner party to say thanks to them for continually feeding us so well.) Both Louise, a German friend of ours, and Emily, an American friend of Devon's, were (are still, in fact) visiting at the same time and so we'd organised a trip to the Caley Brewery ceilidh.

Which of course sported a dancefloor. Oh yes. Check my bad self dancing actually quite competently.

A nice little walk through Holyrood Park to pick up my car from outside Annabel & Devon's flat rounded things off on Sunday. So how did I come away from the weekend? Happy, tired and a little philosophical*. A pretty good antidote to a crappy preceding week.

* But I'm not going to tell you why.

Atomic power:

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Woo, yay, etc, etc.

Zen and the art of bicycle maintenance1.

Christ, I don't know where to start with the weekend. My anecdote gland is dry, so I'll just list what we did in a cold, clinical manner:

• we got mortal.
  

Alright, there 's a bit more to it than that, but you get the idea. It's Jeff's birthday today (<fx: waves weakly at Jeff, sings bad chorus of "Happy Birthday">), so the weekend was devoted to a debauched carnival of preemptive celebration. It kicked off relatively tamely, with Neil coming through for a 'few' quiet ones in the Traverse Bar.

I woke up with a killer hangover2 and a pressing need to get to the bathroom. Of course, the bathroom held neither painkillers, Irn Bru nor toilet roll, so I ran screaming to the corner shop to score the required items.

By 5 pm that evening the flat inmates were all present and correct, and so it was time to rock and roll. We headed to the Southsider to inaugurate the 2004 Bar Olympics. Currently, the only official events are pool and table football; and needless to say, I suck at both. After being ritually humiliated by Jeff and Josh (current scoreline is Jeff: 2, Josh: 1, me: nil) at said events, the fun really started. Josh's pictorial record of the evening's entertainment is more eloquent than that your humble correspondent could possibly muster (or indeed remember), so I'll leave it to him.

On Sunday we went to see School of Rock. It rocked, but not as hard as Tiny Monkey.

1. I tweaked the gears on my bike this morning. I needed a title, 'kay?
   
2. Honestly, you pay through the nose for a wanky beer that comes in a wanky glass served by a waif-like barmaid in a topologically-challenging (because it's in the process of disappearing up its own arse) bar, and what do you get for it? Pain like no human has ever experienced. I may have to rethink my laissez-faire attitude to financial self-flagellation in Edinburgh's blossoming array of style bars.
   

I've switched from Enetation to Haloscan for comments. Hopefully they'll work more than 20% of the time now.

Thunderbird is go!

My new bass was just delivered at work. Turns out it's in excellent nick - near perfect, really - and is actually a lot lighter than my current one, despite having a ludicrously oversized neck and headstock. I'm looking forward to deploying it at tomorrow's Tiny Monkey practise!

To the person that found the Roquefort Files by searching Google for "Joyce epiphany old woman monkey": I can only hope I've been of some assistance.

After the epic nature of Friday night and the hilarity of the near-death experience it engendered, Saturday was a welcome respite from combat-ready boozing. I met up with Kate for a couple of games of pool and then a stroll across to the Cameo to watch Touching The Void. Which, incidentally, is very good.

My word, what a pointless and inane entry.

Flat flambé.

So on Friday, we were all - 'all' being a sort of extended Mafia family, the Belgians and just about anyone else we could convince - on a veritable Big Night Out. We started off in Bonsai* (and just about stayed there for the rest of the night - it took so long to get anything to eat I was weak with hunger) and then headed off to Bannerman's in the Cowgate to rally the troops.

An aside is called for at this point: a friend from work (who will remain nameless to protect the lucky-to-be-alive) had come along with us, and was getting on very well with a German girl called Iris. Iris is (deep breath) the flatmate of the sister of a friend of Jeff, but that's not important. Anyway, this colleague of mine had obviously been deploying some fearsome chat, and Iris had given him her number, which he entered in his mobile.

Back to the rest of the action: after Bannerman's, we headed on to Medina - of course - and frittered the night away in the usual manner.

The next morning, I was dragged out of a pleasantly hungover sleep by a phonecall. It was the aforementioned workmate, asking rather plainitively if I had Iris' number. The sorry story came out: he'd gone home after Medina and decided to have a smoke before bed. He couldn't find his lighter, so sparked up with a small cookery-type blowtorch he had lying about in the kitchen. Mission accomplished, he plonked the blowtorch on a table in the living room and headed off to bed.

The next morning, he woke up and wandered through to the living room. He found a blackened stump where the table had been, smoke filling the room and the walls streaked with soot. Upon the ex-table were the incinerated remains of his mobile phone and the remote controls for his TV, VCR and DVD player. His TV also appeared to have suffered from smoke inhalation, and didn't work any more.

Oh how I laughed once the shock had worn off. I gave him Iris' flatmates number and went back to bed.

* I used to feel sorry for Bonsai - it was always empty, and it just felt like it deserved to be busier. Tcha! No longer!