Tesco Haircuts

The metrosexual male is far from extinct in Glasgow, a fact confirmed last weekend when I passed the Toni & Guy salon in Glasgow's West End and all the customers were blokes. I'm sure these blokes get their money's worth and end up with the latest glorious footballer coiffure but its just not for me. I like my haircut to be a simple affair. This means if I'm ever stranded on a desert island I'll be able to maintain the same levels of personal grooming with minimum effort and without the need to try and synthesize bleach or hairgel using coconuts and fishheads.
I'm lucky to live near one of the best barbers in Glasgow but, at £10 a pop for a simple #2 all over, I feel thats a waste of money for something I could probably do myself.

So as tesco continue its retail domination by selling EVERYTHING, I've even found a way in which it can save me money on haircuts. They're currently selling a full men's clippers set (blade #1 - #6 and a free comb!!) for £8 so I got myself a set. My fiancée joined the cause and was my personal barber for the night on Wednesday. I've got my work's annual dinner dance on Saturday night so our homemade hairdressing was fraught with potential disaster.

BUT in credit to my fiancéé she did an excellent job and there'll be no need for me to wear a hat to the ball!! I reckon I was getting a haircut on average every 2.5 weeks. So thats approx. £208 a year I'm spending on haircuts. Take away the £8 for the cost of the clippers thats still £200 I'm saving so I bought myself a new suit to celebrate.

Today? Depressing? NEVER!!

Apparently today is the most depressing day of the year. Especially if you play for Hearts (boom boom!!). Ahem. Joking aside I had a good weekend. Celtic won. Hooray! Liverpool lost. Boo! I built a poker table. Hooray! I won the money on said poker table. Hooray Hooray!!

Yes, you read that right. I built a poker table. Not a great table I grant you, but a functioning poker table at a total cost of £15.79. I was having a couple of mates over on Saturday evening to try drum up a bit of interest in a regular card game. In my enthusiasm to organise the game I'd forgotten we didn't have a suitable table in the flat for the game.

A quicker legger to argos and for £9.99 I got a nice folding camping table that would do the job. Someone in one of the other flats had chucked out a bit of laminated plywood that sat nicely on top of my table and gave a bit more surface area. When unpacking the table from its packaging I'd been careful not to tear it and after bit of blue-peter-tracy-island-toilet-roll-insert-magic I cut and folded my way to something that was almost but not quite, entirely unlike a poker table.
I had bought a kidnapper style roll of duct-tape for £5.80 and taped all by folds and cuts to make it a bit more solid and then covered the table with 2 bits of baize I'd got in a poker set. The result, although far from perfect, really helped add a bit of authenticity to our rookie poker night. Sorry for the quality of the pictures. My camera phone is rubbish.

oh yeah. I won £34 quid in the game too ;)

Win some, lose some.

Fairly convincing win by the hoops on Saturday. With the risk of jinxing them Virgo and Varga (just realised how similar their names are) both put in a solid shift. Motherwell's goal was a wonder strike but if we're gonna cast a couple of stones then I'd say Boruc's positioning could have been a bit better.

Good to see McGeady taking his chances this season. The Scotland supporters mightn't be too happy about it but he'll definitely by hard for Staunton to ignore when he's picking his Republic of Ireland squad in March. 3 goals in 3 games for Zurawski is good to see too. Think I'll make Poland my team in the World Cup. Sorry Henrik.

Sushi for Beginners

Didn't get to go to the match today which was disappointing. Celtic won 4-2. Thats six goals!!!! Must've been a belter of a game. I'm think I'm gonna subscribe to Channl67 so I can watch the full match online at midnight. So because I didn't go to the match I decided to use one of my christmas presents and in honour of Nakamura I'd learn how to make sushi. There's a cool asian market cash and carry type thing up behind Caledonian University in Glasgow so I was able to stock up on the basic ingredients (wasabi, gari, sushi rice, rice vinegar) for low low prices. Note to self: The beer was very cheap there, go back and buy some.

So this afternoon I whiled away the hours perfecting my vinegared rice (shari). Didn't realise how sticky the rice gets once it cools so I ended up getting it everywhere!!! I've made a bit of a mess of the kitchen too but I'm very happy with my creations (see picture). I focused on making the nigiri-sushi this time and used some prawns, crabsticks and cucumber for the toppings. I'll venture into maki and california rolls next week and if I can find a good fishshop nearby I can get adventurous with the toppings.

I ate, it tasted great and I didn't die so I'm declaring my first sushi making experience a success!

The Weekend draws Nigh...

Roy Keane's first home game for the hoops so fingers-crossed it'll go a bit better than his first away game. Parkhead is sold out but I'm hoping its my turn for half of the season ticket and I'll get to go. I have to admit I love going to the home games. It's a combination of the walk to the stadium, the anticipation of getting there before all the steak pies are sold out and then settling in for a good game of football and football banter that makes my day (I'm a simple soul!!!)

Speaking of Roy.....Today FM is a Dublin radio station that do a series of sketches impersonating celebs of the moment. Roy keane has been a favourite for a couple of years (rumour has it when he rings his parents in Cork he does an impression of the imressionist doing an impression of him!!!) and the skit version of 'Roy' singing Wil Young's Leave Right Now was number one in Ireland this Christmas. Click here to download some samples of the sketches.

Things I have learnt

As I may have mentioned before, I got engaged over the Christmas holidays (on Christmas Day to be precise - I'm romantic like that). Myself and fiancée are very excited about it and it looks like 2006 is going to be a fun and busy year. However, as the naive groom I have learnt that under no circumstances do you make jokes about the wedding arrangements.........ever.

Example:

The women folk (Fiancée, my mother, fiancée's mother) have taken on all wedding planning arrangements but I was told I would be allowed to pick the wedding cars.

"Awesome, how about hummers?"

I'm no longer in charge of picking the cars.

Anyway as if getting married wasn't enough I've decided upon a few things to do in 2006 as part of my New Year's resolutions (I've noticed in Scotland that New Year is WAY more important than it is in Ireland. Everyone has made a point of shaking my hand and saying Happy New Year to me. Back home, waving a pint in someones general direction with a shout of "Alright Big Man!" will suffice). Back to the resolutions:

Get better at poker
(I'm winning a couple of $1 NL Single-Table Tournaments on Paddy Power Poker at the moment but not enough to start saying I'm in anyway good at the game)

Play more 11-a-side football
(or fitba to use the vernacular)

Learn Japanese
(just in case Naka calls round)

Meet the Neighbours
(5 months in new flat and haven't progressed past saying hello in the close).

Go to an away match with the hoops.
(I've been too lazy to bother so far this season)

The Fight Against Salivia

The Tidy Britain Group have launched a campaign against footballers spitting during matches as it is a bad example to young children!! What the Fu....?

Anyone who's played football in any kind of a competitive way knows the amount of mucus and flem and god knows what else that ends up in your head during a game. Nothing like a good spit to clear it all out. Maybe the group in question would like the players to politely stop and trot over to a conveniently positioned spittoon and hock a loogie in a more gentlemanly fashion. When will people realise that football is a fucking sport and stop trying to tame the thing into something more 'civilised'. Maybe we should stop slide tackling too as it makes your shorts dirty and probably causes harm to the ozone layer.

Apparently one of the reasons for stopping players spitting is to prevent the likes of El Hadj Diouf spitting at anyone who gets within distance (and with the amount of practice he's put in that distance is getting bigger). Diouf doesn't spit at people because you're allowed to spit, he spits at people coz he's a scummy bastard. Elbowing people in the head or trying to remove the leg from below the knee is also against the rules but it doesn't stop Shearer and Eissien from giving it a go in nearly every game they play.

Reasons the Holidays Rocked!

1. Nadia and Becky from Big Brother were in the same bar as us on Christmas Eve, absolutely hammered,sitting talking sh1te to us and falling around the place.
2. Got engaged on Christmas Day!!!
3. Went Karaoke crazy in Dublin on the 30th and had a great night with my brother, my fiancée and some of the gang back home.
3. Had a belter of a New Year's eve.
4. Got 12/1 odds of Celtic winning against hearts when they were 2 Nil down so I won 65 quid when they pulled it out of the bag to win 3-2.
5. First day back to work was a friday!!

Celtic losing to Clyde in the Cup today on Keane's debut slightly took the gloss off BUT Liverpools 5-3 win against Luton was an amazing game on Saturday.

One of my New Year resolutions is to get mega fit so tomorrow is going to be the official start of that too. After my first full week of work I wonder if I'll still feel inclined to 'keep fit' next weekend.

What You get for Christmas

So what did you get for Christmas? I'm happy to say I had a rather profitable one. As well as the now mandatory deodorant and showergel set, I was also lucky to receive:

• A book of Doyle Brunson's Super System
• A Philips 2GB mp3 player
• A Collins Dictionary & Thesaurus

and oh yeah.........a fiancée :)

Happy New Year.