Got up at 9am without an alarm. My body clock just wakes me up in the morning now. I really have to work on this because I actually can't sleep in now. I've trained myself to exist on so little sleep that I can't stay in bed once I open my eyes.

The kids were ready to be picked up by ex-mother-in-law Rose at 10am, and they went off to visit cousins for the weekend. Mia and I just sat about doing various projects and soaked up the endless blissful silence of not having the kids around. Deep joy. Yeah of course we love the kids, they are beautiful, wonderful, well rounded, funny, intelligent and glorious people. I'd be proud to know them if I wasn't their dad. But they are also noisy, irritating, large, all-elbows and knees, sprinkle sweet wrappers into every corner of the house and always in your face.

Fell asleep to more "Stargate Atlantis". Zzzzz

Hattie had a day off for study time today so she came into work with me. She's actually studying her Wiccan stuff, but hey, she can do what she likes within reason. She's 14 and therefore responsible for her own timetable. I don't beat her up about going to bed on time, she doesn't bitch about being tired. It's an arrangement we have. :)

I had Ben and Vicky a couple of the actors from my film come over the office to say hi to Hattie, and they came by, which was really sweet of them. I know they are busy people and I really appreciated they took the time as a favour to me. Hattie loved meeting them. She's read the script and she knows the characters, plus Vicky is a fun gal and Ben is really hot so she was feeling frisky all afternoon. She's a fan.

Got halfway home and had gassed up the car and was standing at the checkout when I realised I'd left my debit card in Choices Video earlier in the day. ARGH. Really embarrassing. Luckily I had my wallet in my bag, so I could use one of my broken old credit cards. But then had to drive all the way back into Bristol to get the damn card, then all the way back home. I was really pissed off.

Oh yeah, then I remembered I had to pick Mia up again. By the time I got home I was spitting feathers. Ate a grumpy meal and schlumphed off to bed.

Final day of editing on the video project. Okay so there's a little contingency time and we've going to finish up and polish next Tuesday, but basically we're done.

This is the group I was most worried about. They had an ambitious story and they were running ahead all the time so they missed a lot of stuff they really should have grabbed at the time. I was so busy reigning them in all the time I missed loads of stuff we should have done. But it's getting made and as usual you can fix most things with perfect editing.

We finished around 5pm and I raced home to pick Hattie up to take her to a meeting at her school about her GCSE choices. She's picking Textiles, Sociology, Photography, Religious Studies, History and as a backup subject Geography.

Just got home at 8.30pm and then had to nip out and pick upMia from Trowbridge where she was out drinking with her work buds. Dog tired when I got home. Really must work on getting more than 5 hours a night. It's doing my head in, gradually.

Bought a DVD player today. Yeah I know at last count I have 9 DVD players or devices capable of playing DVDs. But this one fills a niche, and it was cheap. Okay, yeah and it was a cool toy and I just wanted it.

The Durabrand DVD-1005 is a small DVD player which is the size and shape of a game console, like an old Playstation 1. It's silver and plugs into TVs via a SCART or composite lead. Plus if you know the right key combo on the remote you can hack it to be multiregion.

Okay all the cute rationalisations aside, why do I need this? Well I need to play multiregion DVDs and I need to do it in my office while I'm working. I could play them on my computer, but I'm working on my computer and I don't want to tie it up. Duh. Plus I might want to go and work at our other location and take the DVD player with me. So the solution to this "problem I didn't even know I had yet" is that it needs to be multiregion and portable.

So when I saw this puppy in ASDA I was interested immediately. Only because it looked cool and at first I thought it was a portable DVD player with a screen. (Which by the way I look at all the time even though I DEFINITELY don't need one of those.) Then I saw it was £17.99. Okay, I just slipped it right into my basket right then and there, because I didn't have a single reason not to have it. It's less expensive than the last DVD disc I bought.

(Note: since I wrote this, I've had some problems with the thing, but those problems went away - it's working at the moment and, bottom line: for £17.99 I can just toss it and buy a new one if it breaks.)

So OH happy day. Nothing better than getting a new toy which fills a need, is cheap and works okay. It's a win win. I'm sure something else happened today but you know what, I have no idea because I was too busy playing with my toy. We men, we are SO easily distracted. :)

Penultimate edit day with the first years, oh apart from the Monday morning session next week to finish off the first group's stuff. This one was nice, got some really nice performances from the guys from Swindon, and the editing went real smooth. Got some really nice cuts in there.

Also the group listened intelligently to all my explanations. Got loads of stuff across to them. They are a good group anyway.

Went to Tescos on the way home and got an ASSload of food. Only cost £50 too so "result". Filled the fridge and cupboards to brimming.

It was my mum's birthday and I forgot to phone her. As I'm always telling people, I'm a very poor friend, brother and son. I care, and I've got lots of heart, but I'm a total disorganised doofusmost of the time, easily distracted, and yet able to concentrate fully on one thing for hours. Aspberger's anyone? Runs in the family so I wouldn't be surprised.

Today's superconcentration marathon: Comic Life, a new bit of software for making comicbooks which ships with the new Apple MacBook Pros, but you can get from the manufacturer's web site for $25. It really rocks a lot. I've used all the comic book maker programs from Comicworks and everything else. I'm telling you right here and now, this is the best one ever. I made this comic page in about 15 minutes after downloading the software. It's really easy to use, and sorry PC folks it's only on the Mac at the moment. You can choose a bunch of layouts, frames you can drag your pictures into. Then you can add sound effects, captions and speech balloons. It's all too easy. Now the hardest bit of making comics is thinking up a story. It's like a word processor for comics.

You can get a 30 day trial of the program from www.plasq.com. Oh plus for Mac users there's all kinds of cool toys.

After work I rocked the laptop for a couple of hours then we watched some new episodes of "Stargate Atlantis".

Feeling a bit overcooked today. Three days of socialising both gives the lie to my complaint that I don't have a social life and leaves me feeling like I've ingested too much rich food and drink. I need to fast and rest.

After partying and migraine I'm feeling distinctly pasty, so any ideas I had of doing projects, like building Ted's new bed, sorting out all the bills in my IN tray, or anything like that have all gone out the window. I'm going to take it easy.

Didn't get a chance to nap today like I was going to. I dunno, something was always getting in the way. I must start getting some early nights.