Painballing:

Dave and I caught the bus out to Dalmahoy after work on Tuesday. This was because Zoë told us, and I quote:

Stuart has kindly offered to give me a lift to Dalmahoy and he can take me and one other of us back into town.

The bus sailed (well, drove) straight past the 'Skirmish Scotland' banners and stopped two miles past it. At Dalmahoy. We got out. We ran back down the road, sweating and swearing.

Dave, Josh, Zoë and I were on the red team, and our guns had red paintball hoppers. Once we'd been issued with our camouflage romper suits and goggles, the fun began and we dived into bushes, firing at random into the greenery and shouting "Charlie! In the trees!"

About five minutes into each game, the goggles would be completely misted up with sweat and exhaled breath. Kind of like a deeply unpleasant miniature sauna for your face. Eventually it became an almost existential experience: is that disembodied green blob a green team paintball hopper? Shall I shoot it? (Invariably yes: <pock pock pock> "Ouch ouch ouch! Stop!") Where am I? Who am I? Does it really matter?

And then splat! A paintball or five would explode against your thigh or head and drag you back to the horror of paint-war.

There was a barbeque after it. Sweet.

Two things that made me laugh in the last half hour:

• Devon's account of insectile food hilarity. I'm not laughing at you, Brenna. I'm laughing with you. Honest.
  
• From the Observer, erudite writer meets GTA: San Andreas:

  'Go play your piano, bitch!' I shouted (I wasn't angry: I had to yell to make myself heard), glancing up just long enough for her to catch the look of tranced concentration on my face as Carl waded into a bunch of Latinos. This wasn't a game, this was true interactive entertainment.

In lieu of, you know, a decent post this morning.

I'm chopping away,

marvelling that roasting, as I've recently discovered, is the best way to cook just about everything. I pick up some random vegetable and stick the (8", ninja-sharp) knife into it. Except it's not a vegetable, it's my finger.

Stupid knife.

So now this weekend's TM practice is out because I can't play without shrieking like a girl as the cut opens up again. I am deeply unhappy about this. Our practice session on Wednesday had been great: we'd managed to inject a bit more feeling into the songs (most of which we've written ourselves, and all of which still sounds great to our ears at least); the distinction between quiet and loud bits was getting much better defined, and most importantly, I'd learned to pogo up and down while still playing passably well.

All in all, an excellent session, making it doubly annoying when inadvertent self-harm buggers up the next one.

The weekend was then nice, in a quiet kind of way. Josh, Dave, Gill and I purged the flat of alcohol on Friday night, as is becoming worryingly traditional, and then went to the entertaining (well, tequila always is, isn't it?) Berlin Bierhaus* to round the night off with a gawk at the fashionistas/neds grinding away to terrible dance music.

I met up with the family on Saturday for a meal at Howie's, and very nice it was too. On Sunday I did absolutely bugger all, apart from haul myself round the Meadows a couple of times to start preparing for this year's 10k. Still no dodgeball in sight, although I am going paintballing on Tuesday. Yay for pain(t)!

P.S: Tobias is on Gizmodo. Nice!

* Ha! "Unexpected level of sophistication" my ass.

Dave's gran

was shown a picture of Josh and I in the US. "This is San Antonio," was the explanation.

"That's nice," she replied, "Which one's San and which one's Tonio?"

Josh was Tonio. Clearly has some Mexican in him.

My weekend appears to be migrating. Possibly it's still jetlagged. The first weekend after we got back was terribly staid and traditional: an enthusiastic Saturday and then a flat-bound, liquor-soaked 'game' of Trivial Pursuit on Sunday. The weekend before last was dangerously bohemian, involving both Friday and Saturday nights on the lash. This weekend completely took leave of its senses and upped sticks to Wednesday and Thursday, leaving me gasping for breath, booze and motivation come the real weekend.

Fortunately a TM practice in the positively luxurious Berkeley 2 rehearsal studios was booked to arrest the slide. We rocked in a three-piece way, with only an absence of dynamic range haunting us because of our depleted guitar section. Mart's voice is getting stronger as well, and with a bit of luck we'll be back on stage sometime soon. Ish.

We discussed new band names (music to some ears, I'll bet, even if our actual music occasionally isn't) and how to acquire an elfin, indie female lead guitarist (solution: we can't. Also, I say 'we' when I mean in fact 'me') over tapas and beer, and then I caught the train home.

[Apologies for a pointless post: the week was utterly run-of-the-mill. The only potentially interesting event - a game of dodgeball, no less - fell through and led to a yawning Sunday of apathy. Ah well.]

Today has been lightened

by the presence of someone, just out of sight at the community centre across the road, repeatedly shouting what sounds like "timmy! timmy!"

I bought a new toy the other day:

a truly evil 8" cook's knife to replace the bendy, butter knife-style abominations masquerading as cookware in the new flat. I was a little over-excited with the whole knife buying thing.

"Hello. I'd like to play with some knives, please," I babbled psychotically to the shop assistant, having spent the previous twenty minutes staring at the arsenal of culinary weaponry on show. He unlocked some cabinets and I eagerly picked up a variety of knives and waved them around. I think I blacked out a little with giddy enthusiasm.

"This one! This one!" I cried when I'd found one with the right combination of balance and scariness. "I want this one."

I cooked with psychopathic abandon that night, I can tell you.

Apart from the weaponry, it was a fairly pleasant and unchallenging weekend. Spent a bit of time lounging in Princes Street gardens with a book and the iPod; went for a cycle (hard work after spending two weeks in a car) around Arthur's Seat, and generally enjoyed the sun. I may even have managed to top up my 'tan' from the States. Woo yeah.

Luc and Marie were across from Luxembourg, so I caught up with them and the rest of the Mafia on Friday and Saturday nights and attempted to poach my liver in alcohol.

I'm back.

P.S: Josh has just posted a load of photos from the trip. Dave also has some on his Flickr account and some more on mine, since he ran out of bandwidth on like the third day.

I predict a riot.

The RF are back at home, but home has moved to a new flat. The view from our kitchen window has the castle and Princes Street gardens to the left, and the Forth glittering off to the right. The view from my bedroom window has a brothel.

On Saturday Dave and I met up with Jeff, Devon et al for the Make Poverty History march. As per usual, the Socialist Workers bandwagon-jumped with alacrity (seriously, what's their problem with single-issue causes? Don't they realise they dilute the message when they demand the dismantling of the world's dominant trading system when the march is about a simple set of sensible, achievable aims?) and talking to a few of them, it struck me that most had cut-glass Kensington accents while the good old-fashioned capitalists selling whistles and flags were broad Glaswegians.

Anyway, we made poverty, and then sobriety, history.

On Sunday I met up with Martin (and Alice, for the first time) for a mid-afternoon hair of the dog and then it was back to the flat for a roast dinner, Trivial Pursuit and an irresponsible amount of wine and whisky. Good, if hazy, times.

Last night, as I finally made a break to escape from take-aways and sponging food off my flatmates, I found Sainsbury's blockaded by riot police. Sponging it is then.

The end is nigh.

On Saturday, we drove into the centre of Santa Barbara to watch the summer solstice procession, a Beltane-type affair with the town's loons and samba dancers watched by the sane inhabitants. We watched, ate a last burrito (tinged with both sadness and blessed relief), and left for Los Angeles.

California is perhaps the only state that I had some preconceptions as to what I expected it to be like, and as we crawled along the last stretch of the 101, it felt authentic. The freeway was four lanes wide in each direction, crowded with cars, and cut through sandy, rocky passes. Winding boulevards lined with bungalows snaked up the hillsides away from the interstate. The sky was dotted with light aircraft and microlights.

We caught up with Brenna in Westwood - UCLA country - and were introduced to our Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority contingent for the evening. They were a smidgen...baked. We left them to get their shit together and Brenna herded us to an In-N-Out Burger, our first fast food of the trip.

I loved it. It was almost a religious experience.

The design of the place, both inside and out, was bold and unfussy. The menu had four things on it: burger, cheeseburger, double burger and fries. Apparently there's a whole vocabulary of 'secret' key words that let the savvy customer customise their burger. In-N-Out Burger is exactly how Apple would do fast food, except without the price gouging.

Fed and watered, we collected our slightly more coherent hosts and got a taxi to a bar called Saddle Ranch, just off Sunset Boulevard.

The evening's entertainment was primarily based around laughing at people falling off a mechanical bull. Dave and I helpfully obliged, but Josh rather unsportingly managed to tame the beast. Disappointingly, no bones were broken and the only casualty was pint of beer kicked over by the bull's operator. I forgot to shout "Rawhide!" and whoop wildly, but there you go. Maybe take more than one evening of riding the mechanical bull (if that's not prison talk, I don't know what is) to turn me into a cowboy.

The next day, our last, was spent looking around LA. We had precious little drive to do anything more strenuous than some light sightseeing, so we climbed into the Impala and headed vaguely in the direction of Hollywood, tooling round Beverly Hills on the way at a kerb-crawling, and probably illegal, pace.

We stopped at a diner on Sunset for some breakfast and were sorting out the bill when the parking valet (who we'd ignored, having become sick of tipping absolutely everyone) dropped off a Merc for another customer. The customer was Breckin Meyer, who played the lead character in Road Trip. I can now die happy.

In the afternoon we walked along Hollywood Boulevard, visited the Bradbury Building and looked around the bustling but manky downtown area. With a couple of hours to kill before catching the plane home, we sat on Santa Monica beach, soaked up some sun and watched a seal play in the choppy ocean.

FIN