Happy Birthday

Today is my mum's birthday! Happy birthday mum!

It is also the 'other' Ellie at work's birthday, so we went to the Cluny after work to celebrate. I didn't have a lot to drink, but I am very out of practice at alcohol, so am currently feeling rather sick. Just sort of tired and headachy, but like if I lie down to try and sleep, I'll start to feel queazy. Such a lightweight! It was nice to socialise with some of the Seven Stories lot though. They are a nice bunch. We mostly dicussed the merits of David Tennant, Gordon Brown and archival vs museum catalogue systems. Yes, we are an exciting lot!

On the way home I was craving whole nut chocolate (a usual state of affairs) so I headed for Sommerfield on Chilli Road to pick some up, and across the road I spied a guy with a tripod and camera, taking pictures... goodness knows what of as Chilli Road in the rain is not the most exciting place. I thought maybe he was a Blipper or a Flickr-er, and that an ideal blip for today would be a candid shot of him setting up his shot. Sadly, I'm a bit shy, and a bit disinclined to look too much like a stalker, so after a couple of failed attempts to snap him, I gave up. There were just too many people around, and it was too obvious that I was taking a picture of a person I evidently didn't know! I ducked behind Sommerfield as I was feeling a bit embarassed, and took some cool pictures of barbed wire instead thinking one of them would do for a blip. But a few minutes later I found this giant leaf and decided it was more fun! If you're reading, man with tripod on Chilliingham Road - hello! I wasn't being creepy, I just thought it was cool that someone else was out taking pictures on a miserable night in Heaton!

In other photographing news, I am quite excited because I ordered myself a new camera last night. It's a Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim, and it only cost me a fiver on Ebay. I've been wanting to try my hand at lomo photography for a while, but I don't really want to fork out for a proper LC-A, but apparently the wide and slim is the poor man's lomo as it's essentially a toy camera, but achieves similar effects. Want to get my paws on some slide flim as well and have a go at getting my 'lomo' pics cross processed as I've found somewhere in Newcastle that will do it. Ooooh.... geeky excitment!!!

I realise I ramble quite a bit on here... sorry.