I didn’t know what else to do or what was going on, was I somehow being scammed? Was I supposed to just leave my card in the machine? Should I try and call somebody at the bank even though I didn’t have enough credit on my phone and was the precise reason I was at the ATM in the first place? Everywhere nearby was closed so all I could rely on was a stranger offering some kind of assistance or advice but who would choose to help me? I didn’t get a good reception from those I asked and many just left me to it but I had a theory that if somebody else would try to put their card in then it just might dislodge my card, it was worth a shot but again nobody wanted to help me try my theory. Maybe they thought that I was the bad guy dressed in dark clothing and covered further by a hat and scarf but I was just trying to keep warm in the cold weather. I also wondered whether maybe my attire and appearance made me seem un-trustworthy. Why wouldn’t anybody even try and help me, one couple didn’t think my theory had any potential but wouldn’t even just try to see if I could be right. Nobody wanted to help me out and so I was left at the machine waiting.

A couple of minutes later saw a mysterious blonde come to my aid and in a friendly gesture she offered her bank card to me to see if I could try and jimmy mine free, you could hear that the machine was trying to do something with my card and as I gently pushed hers in then something else happened inside. Okay, so what we were doing was a bit dodgy but I felt like it was worth a shot and amazingly it worked as I expected. Many thanks to you mysterious blonde, I didn’t catch a name but she wished me good luck and disappeared into the night, her small gesture had set me free.

I wondered why there couldn’t be more nice and helpful people out there who could be willing to help a stranger even for something so terribly small as this, I mean it really didn’t take much to help me out, it was the smallest of favours and yet most just couldn’t even do that.

I was asked for my pin but ultimately the machine decided not to work for me today and happily ejected my card, I didn’t wish to try my luck again. Others came to use the machine and in an effort to try and prevent someone else being stuck in that dreadful position I warned them against using it and they appreciated my advice, however you can’t help everyone and one man decided to ignore my warning and he was the unfortunate next victim of the card jammer. I did try to warn him but I guess some people are just ignorant to friendly advice.

Baking a carrot cake in the oven, just really fast like!

Didn’t rise as much as expected + various technical faults = FAIL!
…Still tasted good though!

Baking a pizza in the oven, just really fast like!

(4hf65jk9cx)

Not that I’m purposely looking negatively about things but I have to wonder what happens when Mr Happy has a bad day?

Well it started off alright as I spent Monday cleaning up with our Claire and practicing skills with devil’s sticks, later in the week I found that angst seems to help when trying to tackle some of those difficult moves. I also fixed problems created by others and struggled to deal with unreasonable demands but all in all it felt like it was a good productive start to the week. I also started doing the things that I should have done ages ago. It’s a long list of things to do and somehow managed to make some kind of anti-progress on that?!

I did find a moment to write to a few people who had left me comments on my website last month, they had cared enough to write to me so it was about time that I give them a reply. That was something good!

Ash and Mike wanted to meet up but Anna was itching to go and see the new Harry Potter film and we were going to make dinner beforehand. Well actually Anna was the one who made dinner of prawns and vegetables in a spicy tomato sauce served with some unusual looking pasta. We both agreed that the pasta didn’t go down too well but the rest was delicious. We then went directly to the cinema as we didn’t want a repeat situation like last week. We got in no problem this time round. It wasn’t really a movie that I wanted to see but I had seen the rest in the series so I guess I should see this one too.

Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince.
I didn’t think it was any good and Anna wasn’t too impressed either but she has read the books so her opinion was that the movie just wasn’t as good as the books. Reading the books shouldn’t be a prerequisite for seeing a film as the movie should be able to stand alone but I hadn’t read the books and found myself to be quite lost. But if everyone has seen all the other films then I guess nothing will stop them from seeing this one. I just expected a better movie! It was really drawn out, any form of excitement is short lived, fantastical elements were disturbed by the initial scenes in London which didn’t make sense to me and not much progress seems to happen in the long time that I struggled to stay awake. There were very few memorable bits or favourite scenes and actually I just don’t think the story made much sense! Not that my view should put people off I just think that people should see it because they’ve followed the series and seen the other movies, although you shouldn’t go with high expectations because I reckon you’ll be disappointed.

Den mörkaste tiden är här… indeed.

If I remember rightly I reckon the forth was my favourite in the series, so far.

When we got home we picked out another colour for the Happy Room to try and complement all the yellowy feelgoodness.

Tuesday was the beginning of the real downfall that pretty much ruined the rest of the week for me. I did write a piece on this but it goes far too deep for comfort so decided against including it here as I don’t want to dwell on these negative things because I’m not that kind of person but I just sometimes think that I am gonna explode!

With this in mind I think there is little else worth mentioning.

Well, we made Fajitas one night which was brilliant!! As we were doing so we had The Princess Diaries on in the background which by the way was dreadful but not really a movie aimed at me anyway.

Another hideous movie we saw this week is one called Push (2009). I wouldn’t recommend that to anybody unless you’re looking specifically for a way to be bored and totally confused.

The only decent movie I saw this week and yes, I have seen a lot more than usual this week, was Babel (2006) starring Brad Pitt. It was quite long and that is bad for me as I can’t really bare movies that drag on past the two hour mark but this one actually managed to hold my attention throughout and despite feeling worn out when I watched it I managed to stay awake. I guess that ultimately the story is about a gun that falls into the wrong hands and the repercussions of this form of evil. As you watch the movie you see several different stories play out but these stories don’t happen in order and despite these people being spread out across the world everyone is connected and affected by a single bullet and you slowly discover how these different stories are connected but I felt like you can almost see the whole picture quite early on with possibly the exception of one element but in the end this doesn’t seem to form a big revelation and so there is no major twist in the tale, you just get to see exactly how everyone is affected in a dramatic way. It was a good movie to sit through and easily the best I saw this week but I wouldn’t choose to see it again because you don’t take much away from it apart from a feeling of sadness, just what I needed when I was already on a downer(!) This isn’t a happy story so I don’t know what you would gain from a repeated view but despite this it was still the one movie actually worth seeing this week.

On Thursday we received a postcard from Josefine and Michel. Their message was short and sweet and it was just so nice and unexpected to hear from them like that, you don’t get many postcards in these digital days.

I would also like to let it be known that I am not impressed with Virgin 1 at all. They have been showing repeat episodes of The X-Files in order from the beginning until close to the end of the 6th series but all of a sudden they have reverted back to the first season. I seriously thought they would go right to the end!

Saturday turned out to be the most interesting of days for me, unlike any other Saturday before as I headed up the first ever all guy Saturday team. We were on a helluva mission and it seemed like we were destined to fail for a long time with so many elements being against us but then somehow managed to pull it together a bit better towards the end. It was raining for most of the day but I found walking in the light rain listening to my feelgood music to be quite refreshing, I could have walked for many miles like that.

And so finally, upon writing this reflective account for this dingy week a bowl of muesli slipped out of my hand and went everywhere! I mean everywhere, not just all over myself but all over the floor, it was perhaps the disastrous cereal equivalent for how I felt this week had gone. I mean how can I possibly find a happy conclusion when I am quite annoyingly sat covered in an explosion of milk and bits of spilled Muesli?

Ok, well I do believe that for everything bad that happens in our lives that something equally good will happen too as the necessary opposing element in order to keep the world in balance. So it’s been a bad week with the bad bits left unmentioned here but fair enough, it happens but then we just have to let it go and hope that something better to be just around the corner. It is also a philosophy that almost excuses these bad times in that they are necessary in order for the good things to happen too. It certainly plays true for my life. So I guess I’ll  just write this week off and look forward to happier days.

New Website Content:

I found a moment on Monday to sit down look into the coding of my website as there were quite a few problems emerging; ratings weren’t working, comments had been disabled but I managed to fix these quite quickly. I then implemented a new code to show the title of the similar entries in the sidebar when you hover over them, I think the result works well, just what was sorely needed to try and explain the odd coloured blocks. These are posts without a corresponding picture but until now their title and meaning wasn’t easily accessible.

I also found out that I haven’t made it as a finalist in the Dazed Raw Blog Awards. I submitted my website for this competition in the photography category last month but I guess it just isn’t Raw enough?! Actually I know for a fact that it isn’t but I thought that it was worth a shot. I didn’t have anything to lose.

I did manage to get a few new bits and pieces posted to my site this week. This included finally managing to finish writing Part 3 of Sweden ‘09 which I actually started writing it in Sweden!

Also this week the automatic updates in the Fingerpainting series, that I set up 6 weeks ago, came to an end but I am planning to try out a new fully automatic system at some point next week to continue the series.

Having checked statistics using the new update service that was introduced this week I can now see my website is proving to be most popular in the USA at the moment! So I just wanted to take a moment to say a big Hello to those viewers over the pond!

Additions This Week:

Compare These Meerkats

Billy Hund Is So Smart Like

Silverfallen – See How She Flows

Sweden ‘09 – Part Three – Hooked On A Feeling!

Starry Night Over Vänern

Fingerpainting 5

Coming Soon – Part Four of Sweden ‘09.