2 6 weeks left! Yeah ... errr

What have I done??!!?? My wife's gonna kill me! Actually, she's OK with it, but she should kill me, suicide being the coward's option and all.

The firm did what I thought they would and asked me to stay an extra month. Not wanting to turn them down flat I made several demands (politely, of course) and left for the weekend with Bubble thinking I'd made them an offer that the couldn't accept. Seems I was wrong; Monday morning first thing and the boss simply told me "we accept your proposal". Bugger. Essentially they'll pay me double to work the extra month so 4 more weeks of pain followed by wallowing in cash. Oh, and I still get the 2 weeks break in Brussels at the beginning of August to sort out the flat etc.

In a sad turn of events it seems that Jules can't get the second week in August off, which is a shame because I was looking forward to languishing at their pad in the S. of France for a week. Now we'll have to think of something to do with that week. Let's see ... I think we can probably come up with something. S&J; any chance of a 5th to the 9th type of thing? 4 days would be better than none.

Bubble left for Mongolia yesterday on her trans-mongo oddesy. She and 3 mates will be taking the train from Ullan Battar to Moscow then on to St Petersberg over the next 3 weeks. I am very jealous of the trip and get on with all the people she's travelling with but, frankly, 3 weeks on a train with 4 lady teachers and me would probably not turn out well so it's probably just as well I'm not going.

Last week, I realised after Bubble had left for the UK that I had put my controller receiver thingy and memory card in a side pocket of one of our bags "so I wouldn't lose them". Bubble had taken said bag to London. Having toyed with the idea of buying a new controller and memory card then playing the games I have kept constantly so I could catch up with where I was before Bubble got back, I then noticed the PSP sitting jewel-like on the table and thought "ahh, PSP". The week was over quickly.

The PSP took a bashing; Untold legends is probably about 1/2 done. Coded arms is about 20% through. Both of these are good demonstrations of the fact that their genre of game can be succesfully mounted on the PSP (RPG and 1st person shooter, respectively) but neither prove worthy really, both lacking in depth and originality. This is very similar to the birth of the PS2. Some of the titles back then were very good demonstrations of the equipment without actually being very good games. PS2 titles got better, I expect the same from the PSP. I also got Lumines and Twisted Metal. Luminies is like Tetris with a dimension added. It's still 2D (fully 3D tetris being purely for Tefal heads and masochists) but instead of shapes of blocks, they are all square, each with a 4 block combination of 2 different colours. The game is to make larger blocks of single colours by stacking them so. If there's a gap under one side of the 4 block set, one side will collapse to fill it. Sound stupid? Well; probably it is, but it's bloody adictive with it. TM is a fairly simple drive around an arena destroying other cars kind of set up. Again; beautifully rendered and fun enough but a little shallow on game depth. I'm sure the multi-player freaks will have fun having battles on the tube but the single player is essentially stunted. Waiting with baited scrotum for Grand Theft Auto, Liberty City Stories. Actually, I seem to recall that GTA3 was the watershed for the PS2, quality games wise, so perhaps the same will happen to the PSP.

Bomber out