The rain is going horizontal outside.
Today I am something of a physical wreck. Over the weekend I've knackered my voice and hearing on two separate occasions, and this morning can hardly move my neck.
On Friday we went to see Embrace in Manchester. We went earlier than usual to meet up with the "sea-cret lig" (I'm not 100% sure why it's called sea-cret) people. This is a group of people who meet up and make new friends before Embrace gigs around the country. Wolla is one of the people who organises it and we met him last Tuesday at the video shoot. He told us all about it then, so we met up in The Phoenix Club next to the university.
It was cool and we met some nice people. Our natural reticence to force ourselves on people already chatting meant that we didn't meet everyone, but we met Sue and her husband, and two mental cockney ladies. Wolla has a stunning ability to remember names so proved useful in placing names to faces from the message board. It was cool, and I enjoyed how Embrace fans can vary quite significantly.
The gig itself was amazing, but then again it always would be. We were front-left next to the speakers and this is how my hearing was destroyed for the first time. We were stood next to people who didn't seem very enthusiastic about it, but I shouted along to every word and totally lost my voice. It was bizarre, as virtually the whole crowd seemed really up for it, bar the small group of people that we were stood in the middle of.
On Saturday we met up with Julia in Manchester for her birthday. We had a mooch around but I'm kinda banned from buying anything at the moment as people are getting fed up of buying me presents for my birthday / Christmas, which I've already bought myself.
On Saturday night we got drunk at home on cocktails and then wandered the very short distance to The Mill. We haven't been there in a while as it had been shut for refurbishment (it's been split into two rooms), and then there was that whole Liam being arrested incident.
I had a really good night, we danced the best we could to the music, and all got quite merry. It was a shame that a few more of us weren't available for the evening, but we had fun anyway. The thing is that I personally had a good time as I was drunk and with my friends, I would have had a good time anywhere. The club itself didn't really help things, as the music on the night was quite poor.
We danced and jumped around anyway (as we were drunk), but, as with many alternative music clubs, the choice of music was a mixture of the conservative and the wilfully obtuse.
Before midnight the DJ in the main room played some remixes of things such as '7 Nation Army' (and amazingly picked a remix that was impossible to dance to), and some unidentifiable dance music. This was obviously an attempt by the DJ to show he was cool and bang up to date 'wiv da kidz'. All it showed to me was that he knew how to ensure an empty dance floor. Then he'd have a brief flurry of still cool classics, and then follow it with turgid Ian Brown songs, and the old oh-so-boring staples. It's not 1994 anymore.
The back room was quite full, but seemed to be playing a mix of sixties songs whenever I went in. Anyway, the dance floor in the main room is bigger for spaz-dancing so we stayed in there for most of the night.
It was really loud and as my voice hadn't really recovered from the night before, I managed to totally destroy it when trying to speak to people. My hearing was also battered for a second time by standing right next to one of the speakers. I'm going to end up like a non-blind Helen Keller.
The neck injury seems to have slowly developed over Sunday and this morning. I think it is due to enthusiastic dancing. Hopefully it will have recovered by Friday.
Sunday was mainly spent lazing around, and being fussed over by my da. Liverpool got beat again. Ho, hum, I suppose we have to wait till Christmas to see if Benitez is heading in the right direction.

What am I going to do today? I can't sit on the internet all day anymore, and I can't be arsed to do any work leading up to my birthday. I think I may write some indietron reviews as I've lately felt the urge again to build it up and complete it. Heh, I'm so not a 'finisher'. I like the idea and initial development of that idea, I can't be arsed to finish it off when it gets boring.

I'm looking forward to my birthday this weekend. Jo and Grace are coming to the bowling on Saturday, which will be cool. We haven't seen Grace in a while, Nick says she is more interactive and exciting now. Children frighten me.