Underpass under the Clydeside expressway between Kelvingrove and the Riverside Museum.

My life needs to slow down a bit at the moment. Everything seemed to be happening at once, thankfully it seems to be calmed down a bit now. Uni stuff went skewee for a while which put my holiday in April in doubt for a bit, it’s all sorted now back on the modules I’m meant to be on and can now go on holiday.

Second thing that happened was spending most of last week catching up with friends which involved spending too much money and drinking too much alcohol but it was totally worth it even if my body was objecting by the end of the week, need to do it more often but maybe not all in the one week.

Finally and most exciting thing is I am now the expedition team for Project X!!! Project X is the Clyde region scout explorer belt expedition to the east coast of America in summer 2013. The expedition is taking 57 explorer and network scouts to Washington for a couple of days, they will then set off on a 10 day hike down the Appalachian trail then onto a jamboree in Florida for a week.

If anyone is wondering how I ended up involved in this, blame a train journey with the organiser and my big mouth! Semi jokingly asked if they still needed leaders and was told if I was interested he’d see what he could do, 3 days later it’s all done and I’m signed up for it. 18 months of hard training and fundraising ahead but it’s a once in a lifetime experience (or hopefully a first of many in a lifetime for me). So, expect this blog to be inundated with waffle about project x and all associated stuff.

For anyone who’s read my blog before you will have noticed that the book reviews have dropped off a bit, this is mostly because the only things I’ve been reading are lecture notes and I doubt anyone would ever want to read a review of them.

Last night consisted of friends, food, drink and an amazing selection of music.

So what made last night so different to other night involving all the same thing? Well I’ll tell you, it’s the fact that we were (almost) all back together for the first time since we left Uni. It’s not often we can get our amazing bunch of friends all in one place at the same time. Since leaving Uni we’ve been spread out from Aberdeen to Derby and haven’t seen nearly enough of each other but it was like we’d never been apart and that’s the value of a true friendship.

Some of us barely speak to each other over the year but it’s as if we talk everyday when we’re back together, I love it, of course I would love to see them more but that’s not going to happen.

The people in this post know who they are and so do the ones who were missing, you’d better make it next time :p. You are all amazing and I don’t know what life would be like without you and I don’t want to.

P.s. that’s the mushy stuff over, normal service will resume in the next blog.

This book sees our hero Charlie living it up in Venice while working on his latest novel when a mysterious beautiful cat burglar breaks into his apartment, steals his copy of the Maltese Falcon and tells him he can have it back when he breaks into the house of Count Borelli and RETURN a briefcase to his safe without peeking.  Charlie’s curiosity gets the better of him once he is in the safe though…

The book takes some very interesting twists and turns with Charlie and Victoria yet again ending up in a casino where they bump into Victoria’s father, Alfred, who helps put the pieces of the puzzle together.  Charlie’s criminal tendencies move on from just mere burglary to the lofty heights of kidnapping, though he did think it in the best interests of the kidnapped at the time.

There are also hints the Charlie and Vic’s feelings are developing beyond friendship, but only hints.

The more sharp of you will have notice that I seem to have missed out Good Thief’s Guide to Paris, I have read it but will have to read it again before I can post any comments on it.  I will get there eventually.  Promise.

The good thief’s guide to Vegas is the third book in Chris Ewan’s Good thief’s series featuring Charlie the mystery writer thief. Funnily enough this book is set in Vegas and revolves around Charlie and Victoria’s misfortune of getting mixed up in an illusionist deception of the casino which employs him. Victoria is Charlie’s agent for his lawful career and we learn a lot more about her and her past in this book. Yet again Chris keeps us guessing through the novel and having read the two previous book I’m starting to get a feeling for his writing style but I still couldn’t work out the ending.

This book was a first for me as it’s the first e-book I’ve read and it was a far nicer experience than I expected, the iPad I read it on isn’t the easiest thing to put in your pocket but it is easier to sit in bed and read, you don’t have to hold the book open at the right page just prop it up against the headboard. I’m impressed and will buy more, might even consider buying a kindle just for the ease of carrying one. But that’s in the future.

No idea what to read now though…

This is the best book I have read in a while and the only book I’ve read cover to cover in one night, not once but twice.  There are so many little twists and turn in this book that you just can’t put it down.

The story revolves around a crime author, Charlie, who also happens to be a thief and the mystery of the 3 monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.  While struggling with the final draft of his latest novel Charlie is approached to steal two of the monkeys by a mysterious American.  Once Charlie has the monkeys, the American is found dead and everything unravels from there taking the reader on a journey round the darker side of Amsterdam.

This book is well worth a read and I dare anyone who picks it up to try and stop reading it half way through.

There has been a lot of wind though.

Poor old tree, it was rotten in the middle anyway.