What a week! It is strange how one phone call and subsequent e-mail can turn a working week on it’s head. I expected to be in the office most of the week but ended up having almost three days out on the road. It made a nice change but just means I have a bucket load of work to get done on my return. Got back into the office on Friday lunchtime, and my last appearance had been on Tuesday, so you can imagine, quite a lot to catch up on. In a usual week, I would travel on average just under 100 miles, this week, I have clocked up, 401 precisely as I pulled on up outside Pav’s house!

Let me not bore you with work, let us focus on more important things. Pav messaged me yesterday afternoon, he was already at home and it was minutes before 4pm. He said if I came over early he would give my car a quick wash. I could not resist, particularly that 240 miles of motorway driving for the past two days had taken their toll on my car. I left home at 6.30pm and got to Emner Green at 7.10pm and parked up. Pav was getting his kit ready and within minutes was hitting it with his new hardcore foam gun. A few minutes later the cap broke. After a foaming, rinse, wash and wax, the car was done. It took less than 40 minutes and it was a great improvement. I took the opportunity to take some photos with Nokia 73, which I have now uploaded to FlickR. The final result can be summed up by the following photograph.

No that is not a shot of the sky on a early Summer evening but in fact the reflection in my bonnet. Amazing finish and not bad considering the little amount of time and effort spent. Proves how good the car can look with just a top up wash done properly. Much better than my quick jet wash rinse at home on Tuesday evening when I got home from work. I also just washed the alloys as they were grey and in places going black from the brake dust. I was really glad that Pav offered to wash the car for me. As always he did a great job and it meant I would not have to wash the car myself over the weekend. Good thinking, because as I write this, it is pouring outside. I went to see Fantastic Four with Pav back in July, just a month shy of two years ago (has it really been that long?). I should go on record as saying I enjoyed the movie, even if the ending did leave plenty to be desired. So I came back to see the sequel with low expectations, although from the trailers, it did look good. The main draw, as last time is Jessica Alba playing Susan Storm, AKA The Invisible Woman. The story begins very quickly, there is no slow build up as in other Marvel movie adoptions. This is a good thing, but expected as this is a sequel, we know all the main characters already. The action comes thick and fast and there are various comic moments thrown in for good measure, mainly by Johnny. However, in comparison to the first movie it falls down on several counts once again. The Silver Surfer character is not explored in enough detail, the plot in places is just completely unbelievable. I do not think Mr. Fantastic would ever work with Victor Von Doom again, regardless of the circumstances. The trip to London for a major set action pieces is not explained well enough and there is little support by UK personnel. It would be impossible for the US Army to arrive (with or without superhero team) on the South Bank and try and stop the London Eye collapsing. I was disappointed because it was an opportunity for the filmmakers to show the international presence, but instead they opted for the Fantastic Four team can save the day on their own, even in someone else’s backyard. The ending was a disappointment, but less so than the first movie. It was left open ended once again but we wanted something more substantial. Sure the world is about to end but we need to feel the danger, the suspense, the fear. I think that is the problem with this franchise, it is family friendly (or at least tries it’s best to be) and lacks the dark side, so predominately in other movies of the genre. The Fantastic Four are a perfect team of super heroes always able to react, always able to deal with the problems in the world. However we want to discover what happens when the perfect team is broken or torn apart? It is such a shame because I am sure with all the comic books, there is a wealth of material to work from which would adapt very well to the silver screen. I joined Face Book back at the beginning of April. The social network website is just far too addictive. Once you join and create your profile, you then join a network (in my case London) you can start searching for friends (old and new). After only a few months, I have many work colleagues, uni friends and even old school friends on my friends list. The best aspect is that it is open source so people can write their own widgets for you to use, for example embedding video, creating a top 25 friend list from your contacts. Chris has been on the site a while and was glad I finally took the plunge by writing on my wall. The interface is clean and simple, and I like the option to write a few words to describe my current status. Give me the opportunity to give a quick short burst update rather than wait until I get around to updating this blog. Talking of blogs, my friend Charlie has just started a blog over on MySpace. As much as I hate the interface over there, I am going to read all about his adventures, particularly his trip up to Scotland next week. Not much planned for this week, off to Sheffield tomorrow to see my sister and spend Father’s Day with her and the rest of the family. There is little else on the agenda to be honest. Want to create a new mp3 album to listen to in the car, my most recent CD which is several weeks old, is getting a bit tired and I am tending to scrape around for music to listen to in the car. I am going to set myself a challenge for my next long distance trip. I must burn a CD and listen to it all the way through without skipping a single track. It will be hard for me, being a ‘skipper’ of music albums generally. We shall see.