Long update part 2

This is part 2 of my update. You can read part 1 here.

On Sat eve Claire came round for tea and brought her new boyfriend John with her. We'd never met John before, but he seemed very nice, much better than Claire's previous boyfriend! We chatted a lot, played on New Super Mario Bros Wii (which we made some good progress on) and all watched Dr Who together. If you missed it you can watch it here. I miss David Tennant, but thought I'd give Matt Smith a chance and he was much better than I expected. I thought the episode was a really good start to the series, although I thought it was much more funny than scary. I was expecting something very scary from Steven Moffat after some of his previous episodes such as The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances and Blink, but I'm sure we'll get some scary episodes as the series progresses. I'm looking forward to next week's episode. Matt Smith looks just like one of Alf's friends, so when he came round later that evening we had fun teasing him about it ;)

On Sunday I went to the carboot sale again with mum and dad. I took the wrong region DVDs with me to try to swap, but I couldn't remember what stalls I'd bought them from 3 weeks ago so I'm going to give up on that now. The carboot sale was much better than the previous couple of weeks and I came home with 6 DVDs (The Butterfly Effect, My Summer of Love, Just Married, The Bicentenial Man, How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days and I Capture The Castle) for £1 each and 2 PS1 games (Monopoly and Theme Park World) for £1 and 50p each. Mum bought some Get Well Soon Me2You bears for me to use as presents for people.

As well as the PS games I've bought from carboot sales I've also bought a few more from eBay - Worms 4 Mayhem which is a PS2 game and Crash Team Racing and Frogger which are PS1 games. I'm going to continue looking in charity shops and at carboot sales for games, but I don't plan to buy any more from eBay for the time being as there aren't any more I specifically want.

On Sun aft Chris and Sophie called round for a little while. I didn't go out yesterday and probably wont today either, as I'm just having a relaxing day at home. My family don't celebrate Easter, so we haven't done anything special this weekend but it was nice having dad at home yesterday (he had to work Good Friday though). Chris' grandma sent us an Easter card with two £5 notes in it - one for me and one for Alf :)

This week I have also helped mum produce some posters for library displays on the computer, done some crosswords from the Independent newspaper with my parents, attempted a few Sudoku puzzles, read my latest Official Nintendo Magazine, sorted through some old postcards that mum was throwing out and rescued some of places we've been to, rang up about an advert in the paper about some DVDs for sale (none I liked the sound of though) and emailed an friend from sixth form who I'd not been in touch with for quite a while. I've also been doing some pet research on the Internet which has led me to decide that ideally I'd like an African pygmy hedgehog or a chinchilla :) I'm now going to wait til I see my Hosp A consultant in June to ask him about the possibility of getting a pet. And this week I've cut my nails!!! They were very long as I'd not cut them for a couple of months, but one broke, so I decided to cut them all. I know they'll grow again but currently it feels very odd having short nails!

6 or 7 years ago my parents bought a 12 foot trampoline for our garden. We said goodbye to it at the weekend. I used to enjoy using it but since my transplant bouncing on it just made me feel ill. Dad never used it and mum only used it occasionally. Alf originally used it a lot but then didn't use it as much. Dad advertised the trampoline on Freecycle last week and 6 people were interested. Dad chose to give it to a family with 4 children under 11 as we thought they'd get the most use out of it. On Sat dad packed it up and it was collected. It's quite sad now it's gone as it had been in our garden for so long. On the lawn under where the trampoline was we have the start of 3 trees, a bramble and lots of other plans growing because birds used to go under there a lot. Mum and dad are glad they've got more room for growing vegetables in the garden now.

As well as playing on New Super Mario Wii with Claire and on my own, I've also enjoyed playing on my PS2 this week and testing some of my new games out now they've all arrived in the post. All of the ones I've bought from eBay and from charity shops have worked faultlessly. Most of the games I've bought from carboot sales have as well, apart from one. The one that doesn't work is Spyro Year of the Dragon but I bought it for only 30p from a carboot and didn't think it would work due to being so scratched. It was worth a gamble though at that price. I also received my PS1 memory card towards the end of last week so I can now save my progress on the PS1 games. Some of the games I've only played on briefly to check that they work, but I've played quite a bit more on Sonic Heroes and a new Sonic game that arrived in the post this week called Sonic Mega Collection, which includes quite a few old style Sonic games, which I prefer to the more modern ones :) I also started playing Canis Canem Edit (aka Bully) and really like what I've seen of it so far so am looking forward to playing on it some more. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas made no sense at all to me though as I couldn't work out what I was supposed to do! I've lent it to Sophie at the moment, but when she returns it I'm going to ask her if she can help me get to grips with it. I've really enjoyed playing on Frogger because it's the same version that we got when we got our first computer 12 years ago so playing that is very nostalgic :)

This week I've listened to The Family Jewels by Marina and the Diamonds 4 times (can you tell I like it a lot?!) and Lights by Ellie Goulding once. I've tested my new pillow speaker with both of those albums too - The Family Jewels when I was resting in bed one day and didn't want to fall asleep and Lights before I went to sleep one night. Ellie Goulding's next single has been announced as being Guns and Horses and will be released on 7th May. Diana Vickers' debut single Once will be out in a week or two. I found a good interview with her here. I was disappointed that Lady Gaga and Beyonce got to number 1 with Telephone last weekend. I think it's a horrible song although I have to admit it is very catchy. I was glad that Scouting for Girls knocked them off the number one spot this Sun with This Aint A Love Song. I love that song and downloaded it to help them get to number one :)

My mum discovered a great group this week called The Baseballs. They're a German group who have released an album called Strike which is made up of really original 50s style rock and roll covers of well known pop songs such as Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, Umbrella by Rhianna, Angels by Robbie Williams and Hot and Cold by Katy Perry. The album is on Spotify so if you've got that have a listen and see what you think. Or if not have a listen on Youtube using the links above.

After our hard disc recorder not working for weeks I formatted it (which completely wipes it including all the recorded programmes) and it then worked again! The remote was really frustrating because lots of key buttons didn't work, so dad bought a new one online, which works faultlessly. It's great being able to use the hard disc recorder again.

I couldn't believe it when Claudia Winkleman was named as the new host of Film 2010. Why why why?! I can't stand her and can't imagine anyone worse presenting it!

On TV this week as well as watching Ashes to Ashes and Doctor Who, I've also watched Doctor Who Confidential, the last episode of Tracy Beaker Returns, a rubbish programme about helicopter rescues with dad one evening while we were having tea, a couple of episodes of Embarrassing Bodies (I find medical programmes fascinating), Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (disappointingly Sandra Bullock wasn't on it despite the Radio Times saying she would be, but Matt Smith was on it), an episode of Bondi Vet, two episodes of Supernanny (it has been on E4 in the early hours of the morning when I'm nocturnal), the final episode of Married Single Other (what an odd series - the first 3 episodes were light-hearted and funny, the final 3 episodes were very sad), Ultimate Movie Toons (because Mika sang on it), 2 episodes of Children's Hospital, the final episode of One Born Every Minute, an episode of Countdown (because someone from AYME was on it), the first episode of a new BBC series called Great Ormond Street (which was really well made and very powerful, definitely worth watching as it's the best medical programme I've seen in a long time) and odd bits and pieces on the music channels.

I've finished watching some DVD boxsets since my last update. To finish Ashes to Ashes series 2 I watched episodes 4 to 8, the cast 80s quiz and the behind the scenes documentary. I also watched series 2 of Outnumbered on DVD (which I rented) plus the extra features. I've also bought the second series of Jam and Jerusalem on DVD.

This week I've watched quite a few films on DVD. Most were ones I'd not seen before, apart from Pixar's Cars which I rewatched. I enjoyed watching Nicholas' Gift (a moving film about organ donation based on a true story), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (an artistically made and unusual film based on a true story about a French journalist who wrote a book while all his muscles apart from one eyelid had been paralysed due to a stroke), Sliding Doors (an original thought provoking film), Runaway Bride (a very funny Julia Roberts romcom) and Bride and Prejudice (a Bollywood take on Pride and Prejudice). Another film I watched was called The Darjeeling Express, but it was unusual and I don't think I really enjoyed it. And I watched an awful film called Closer. I rarely give up on films but I just couldn't finish this one as it was so bad - don't watch it!

In the post this week I received a letter from Tesco DVD rental with some vouchers for a 2 month free trial for me to give to friends. If anyone is interested in one leave a comment and I'll let you have the code.

I have no firm plans for the next couple of days but might pop into Barnardo's tomorrow if I feel up to it. On Thur eve I'm really looking forward to the return of a great TV series called Outnumbered. On Fri Claire is coming round and we're going to watch a DVD, play on the Wii (New Super Mario Bros Wii) and the PS2 (Harry Potter Quidditch World Cup) and have tea before mum and Claire go to mum's fortnightly knitting group. Mum's group is called Knit Lit and a couple of months ago a journalist attended one of their meetings. This month there is an article all about them in a local magazine!

On Sat I hope to attend an AYME meet-up, which is being organised by the same girl who's meet-up I went to before Christmas. That'll depend on how I feel though because to get there involves a 30min car journey, a 40min train ride and then a taxi journey. And hopefully on Sun we'll browse round the carboot sale again. Next week and the following week are full of medical appts and other commitments, so that'll be hectic! I'll blog about that nearer the time though.