. . . . Ricks Extra Long hair . . . .: I cant drink like I used to.. I need a coeeff....

So...I used to be able to drink....

I sit here at 7.30pm awaiting the arrival of some of our friends to spend the night drinking, playing games and having fun. I am not dreading it, but I am wondering how long I can actually keep it together and keep awake as I already have what I call a thick head after a massive 3 (Canadian) pints down the pub this afternoon whilst watching United win against Brighton and Hove Albion (Yes, Their whole name is Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club a bit of a mouthful I agree, but if you look at a map - Brighton and Hove are two very close places that only have one football club...

Hove and Brighton

Anyway, I digress. I cannot, do not and an unable to drink as much as I used to. That is a sad fact.

In the 90's as a young teenager I used to frequent the Nags head and even than as an amateur drinker, I remember drinking a whole 4 English pints, before meandering home via the chip shop and a hangover the next morning.

For those of you that don't know there is a difference between English and Canadian pints. I my perfect world the size of a drink named 'Pint', would be equal no matter where you drank it. But Canada being Canada, they took the old English pint and messed with it.
An English pint is one eighth of a gallon, 568.26125ml, 34.677 cubic inches or 1.2009 US pints. In USA, Canada or other weird places it is 1/8 of a US gallon, 2 US Cups (are all cups the same size in USA?), or 28.875 Cubic Inches. Basically its smaller - although some places boast of serving real British pints, which is great!

Anyway, back in the god days, I could easily drink 4 big pints and get up easily the nest day.
Then I went to Germany and really learned to drink.

In the early 90's supposedly I drank a lot. I say supposedly, because I do not remember a lot of it. What I do know is that the NAAFI sold a lot of beers and we drank all of them. On the army camp I lived and worked there was also a Belgian bar that was open 24 hours a day and sold strong Belgian beers for about 25c each (cheap).
On a weekend we would drink in the NAAAFI bar from after work till 11pm, then drive (Drunk, many times - and yes we were fools. Cars were crashed, but luckily no one died) or we would jump on a train on which we never paid, and were often thrown off, to the city in Monchengladbach where we continued to drink all night in a place called 'The street of a thousand pubs', until the late early hours of Saturday or Sunday morning. Many times we arrived back at home having stolen a bike, or ran from an unpaid taxi just in time for breakfast at 9 or 10am, before heading back to the bar to continue the drinking for the rest of the day, afternoon, into the night and repeating the same kind of scenario for the rest of the weekend.

I found a video of one of the shittest pubs in Monchengladbach - The Gravel pit. This IS where we did most of our drinking...

Even during the week we would have sport on a Monday or Wednesday afternoon - finish by 3pm and head to the bar - sometimes ending up in some German hovel, or drinking establishment till the early hours of the next morning - before heading out for the early morning run the next day, still drunk and puking in the bushes as a normal start of the day.hose were the days.

Army life always revolved around drinking - At Christmas the 2 weeks prior to going home for the holidays was made up of troop, squadron, mess and private parties - often on consecutive days during the week and the days would be a waste of time, spent recovering from the night before.

But that is the olden days - Now I sit here at 1pm after playing the game 'Secret Hitler', with Joel Byron, Adam, Alena, Buffy and Heather till the early hours. I didn't drink that much, but needed to stay in bed till after noon to recover. I simply don't have the bodily functions to be able to recover fro it instantly any more.

Back to the game though - Secret Hitler is exactly as you imagine it. One of you is a Secret Hitler and you must find out who it is by voting on elections and working out who is a Fascist or a liberal - hopefully before someone assassinates you like Joel did with me. It was a fun night and with Buffy and Alena as Secret Hitlers, it was remarkably true to real life!

So, toady is going to be a mellow day - Relaxing with a podcast and maybe a bath later. We have things to do on the house, but we might not bother. Its already been a good week for the house - We gave it a present earlier this week - a brand new rug for the front room. We wanted something to bring the front room together, so now it looks like this....

..and the small rug that was here is upstairs in what will be the nursery later this year. Ill post some photos of that room when we have finished it.

Other news.....

The snow is well on its way to disappearing. Its getting warmer and will be above freezing for most of this coming week. With a little rain on the forecast, it means that hopefully by Buffters birthday on April 4th we will be well into spring. If you wonder how much snow fell, take a look at the little snowman we found the other day...

Big Enough

The warmer weather will hopefully help with my mornings - for the last few weeks I have had to take a lighter with me to the garage door as the lock has been frozen solid. I spend a couple of minutes every morning defrosting the lock and key with the flame before I can get into the garage and off to work. The lock on the garage door now looks a little burnt..