He picked me up on Saturday, and we went to Mansfield for about an hour, in an attempt to sort my phone out, which eventually got resolved and I should have my old number back in the next few hours (fingers crossed, anyway). After that, we headed to my Grandma and Grandad's bungalow. I hadn't spoken to my Grandma since I'd gotten back from Wolverhampton, and she was super pissed about it. Like, more than pissed.

I think when she was shouting at me was the point where I just realised all this stuff that was on my shoulders, with my vocal nodes, and crap health at the minute, and missing my friends so much, and not having a job, and not having money, and wanting to move out of my mums, and being harassed every time I tweet something or whatever. I couldn't help but burst out crying (which is bad for my voice, so I started getting panic-y about crying), and then she started crying, and it was horrible. My dad and grandad were stood in the kitchen just trying to keep their heads down. Though it was resolved quickly, and they said I need to keep in better contact. So we had food, and with that, we were off to my brothers flat.

My brother (along with my entire paternal family, thinking about it) is one of those people who I am terrible at keeping in touch with. I hadn't spoken to him since Christmas, and since then, he's found out that he's going to be having a baby. But he hasn't really changed much, he just has baby things hidden in the back room now.

He and his wife (also called Elizabeth Brown now, if you can believe it) were giving me hilarious amounts of advice for trying to get a job, and getting experience in blogging if I want to be a writer, and taking courses in things I'm interested in (we'll get to that blogging thing later). They both said they'd look over my CV for me and help me word it a little better if it needed it. I'm not passing up any advice they give me because they're both pretty successful now. My brothers working on getting his PhD now. Thanks, bro. I'll be able to live up to you, no problem.

After we'd talked about what things we wanted to get for the baby (as one of two Aunties, I shall be looking into purchasing a Jellycat cuddly toy) and then we made our way back to Tibshelf for Chinese food from the take away we used to go to all the time when I was little. I was disappointed by the Vegetarian dishes.

Then it was back to Creswell with my Dad, where I worked on my writing a little bit (setting up for NaNoWriMo in November) and went to bed.

The next day, I rolled out of bed around 11am, and was forced to get ready to go to Creswell Crags. It was actually a really lovely day outside, and was really beautiful. My favourite place was near the new visitors centre, they had a tonne of hand carved signs, but "coming home with the gold of our adventures" was my favourite one.

We had a cup of tea and I had a delicious cupcake, and then we ambled around for an hour before going back to the car. I took a lot of photos and made a lot of notes about certain things as well, as more of my preparation for NaNoWriMo. We got home, had dinner, and then me and Anna had a little bit of a girly time, where she painted my toe nails and forced me to put this face mask on. It was a good time. We watched a Harry Potter film, and then had an early night because it seemed like an unnecessarily long day.

The next day, my phone got sorted out, my dad and Anna went to work, and 15 minutes later, my grandparents came to pick me up to take me shopping. They do it every so often when there's a huge sale on at Next Clearance and I get all my favourite clothes for like, £2 a piece. It's glorious. We had tea at the Thorntons Café and it was lovely, but then I came home because I was exhausted and normal activities of gaming and being scared of the mouse that's currently living in my wardrobe returned and that's about where I am now.

I'm going to make a promise to myself now. I am not updating this blog just for the sake of updating it. I'll force myself to hold of posting , unless I really need a good rant. I think my blog was a lot better last year, when my summer was full of interesting things (like that one week where I was at Download festival for five days, then was in Manchester two days after it finished to see Green Day, and two days after that I was in Birmingham with some of my Uni friends to go and see Derren Brown). So it probably means I'll be posting a hell of a lot less, but I guess whatever I do post will have some level of quality.

That being said, I'll hopefully be seeing Claky in a few days to go to Gay Pride in Nottingham. Who knows, though?

Here's a list of things that I've been doing since my last update:

1 - Looking for jobs in newspapers

2 - I watched all of the Harry Potter films*

3 - My first Xbox 360 that I've had for about a month died

4 - I got a new Xbox 360 Slim as a gift for my half Birthday** and Christmas

5 - I set it up with a HDTV that my mum is lending me, and it's glorious

6 - Watching Only Fools and Horses nearly everyday with my mum and Derek

7 - Sorting out. I'm so close to being done.

So this thing happened where I got this awesome new games console (that turned out to be a lot cheaper than my Wii was when I bought that nearly two years ago) and I've been downloading a couple of demos to try out. I downloaded the Eternal Sonata demo because Wardy said that I could just have his copy for free and I actually loved the demo. Me and Chris were talking about the characters, and stuff like that, and I can't actually wait to get my hands on it.

This has kind of put my cleaning up on hold, but next week, after I see my dad tomorrow, I'm going to start listing stuff on ebay, and it is making me a little nervous I guess. I have some things to post off too for JSA, and more jobs to look for.

Right, a couple of pictures I think because there's a lot of text on this page and I think I should break it up. So my very bland but similarly awesome set up at the minute, and a little picture of my Fallout 3 character should do it I think. I really haven't been out and done things lately.

Fallout Nuka-Cola T-shirt, Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw, No More Heroes tattoo, S.H.Figuarts Tsunashi Takuto figure, Fallout 3 Special Edition, Shadows of the Damned, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, Songs in the Key of E-mail by ALL CAPS and material to make my very own Vault 101 Jumpsuit.

I think that's about all. Surprising lack of anime things there, if I do say so myself.

But last week, I did go out with Simon, and it was really cool. We had to walk into Sutton, so I went to his house which took about twenty minutes, and then we walked the rest of the way to town while he was telling me about his Australian accent and giving me examples. We had chip cobs at the café, and I filled him in on what had been happening, like the gig, and I said I'd lend him the DVD. We went around a few shops, and I bought a Fallout 3 expansion (one more to get, though I still have to do Operation: Anchorage) and then we went to Sutton lawn, which was so much fun. Then again, I pretty much always have fun when I'm with him.

The other thing I was going to talk about is fandoms. I've honestly never been that keen on Harry Potter (which makes people look at me with hate sometimes, I swear) and lately there's been a lot of people talking about it being the end of an era with the last film coming out and all. Personally though, I have a couple of completely different fandoms that I'm not too involved in, but I still love them all the same: anime and video games.

I've been gaming for 15 years now, and I started getting into anime about 7 years ago now, I think. However uninvolved I may be with these two, they have lead me to meet some fantastic people who I can happily call my friends. Don't get me wrong, I have a few friends who just aren't that into it, and I love them all the same.

Gaming has been a huge part of my life, from the early days of Mario Kart 64 and Street Fighter

Alpha 2, to now, where I'm about half way through Fallout: New Vegas. And Anime has changed my life, and helped me find new friends at University, and it gave me a new found confidence with chairing WAC for 9 months. I've had a lot of amazing times because of the things I'm into, like drinking and smoking with Wendy Powell and Brad Swaile. And I've never taken them for granted.

I think with all this talk of the Harry Potter story ending for a second time, and a lot of hardcore fans being terrified of this change makes me realise that I am extremely fortunate to love this fandom so much; it won't end, at least not for a very long time. And even if anime stopped being produced, and gaming went under, there are so many old series and games that I could fall back on. I find myself to be very lucky knowing this.

So, now that's out there, I'm thinking about perhaps starting a new blog where I can talk about all things game and anime, maybe with a couple of friends who might be interested in writing about the same things. Who knows? I have a lot of possibilities right now.

Lastly, going back to the illness thing that's been plaguing these posts for a good couple of weeks now. I have a gaming injury. I'd been sitting playing Fallout for so long that when the game crashed and I went to restart it, I had an incredibly bad stabbing pain that went down my back, and it was killing me to breathe because it hurt so much. Turns out because I'd been sitting for so long, I'd knotted my muscles in my back, so I'm officially not gaming for a few more days. I'm on day 4 of bed confinement. It's just so special.

That's all I have, but Becca and Allan are here with his parents, and seeing as I've just spent an hour on the phone trying to sort out banks and job seekers, I'm going to go and say hello before I start panicking about impending meetings.

1) Illness. I'm having a few minor health problems. It's kind of a massive deal for me, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm not dying, so I guess it would be considered minor. Maybe I'll talk about this in the future.

2) Sorting out. I'm in the process (still) of sorting out my room which seems to turn over more nostalgia than anything else in the entire universe. I'm currently in the process of making scrap books. And I'm keeping birthday cards from years and years ago because I'm a sentimental fool. I hope I don't have to mention all this again, unless I'm typing the words "my sorting out is done, I've magically sold enough dresses and costume jewellery to pay my rent until I find a job."

3) Gaming. It's been a really long time since I've been into gaming like I am now. I picked up Fable II at a car boot sale for £3, and I'd played a bit of it before, and didn't completely hate it, so I played that through, and enjoyed it. My character, however, was much too good to marry any old NPC, so she married a prostitute. And it's spit out more gamer points than I have for Left 4 Dead 2, which I've spent a considerably longer time on.

The latter is actually my main problem. I think I got about half way through Bioshock 2 before I put that on the shelf. I'm not giving up on it, I just have other things I could be playing. Like Fallout 3 now that I have The Pitt (which I've finished already) and Operation: Anchorage.

I sold an old gold necklace the other day for £50, so naturally decided that my best course of action was to buy the cheapest copy of Fallout: New Vegas I could find. Now that it's on it's way, I don't really have the intention of buying any more games for a long while, unless I find Beautiful Katamari for £3. Well, there is the point that I'm going to trade in the four Fallout 3 expansions I've got, used and now have no need for, but that's not technically buying a game.

But this got me to thinking, I now have something to track on the end of my blog posts again, and once my laptops media players are sorted out, I can keep track of my finished anime series again, which is kind of exciting. So yeah, I'll keep track of my gamerscore on the bottom of this thing now.

I think I just needed to get this out of my system. So here's my final summation. Fable II was good, Bioshock 2 wasn't so good, Fallout 3 is my 4th favourite game of all time (No More Heroes, Starfox Adventures, Mario 64, then Fallout 3) and I still have a tonne of other games I borrowed that I should probably play on. I finished Vanquish. I have no desire to play on Viva Piñata just so that my favourite piñatas get killed by sucky, more vicious piñatas. The Kameo disc I'm borrowing is temperamental and decides not to work when it's having a bad day. I can't be bothered to replay Left 4 Dead, when Left 4 Dead 2 was so much better. And Brutal Legend just speaks for itself.

I needed this ramble so badly. I talked games at Simon earlier, and I don't think he cared about it all too much.

Gamerscore: 4280