Snow

A few days late but close enough :)

Robosexual

Well Christmas is over for another year! I had a good day yesterday we had 11 people over for dinner which is a first! We usually don't do that kind of thing at Christmas so it made a nice change and it was good to see people. I am looking forward to having things get back to normal though. I get bored really easily over Christmas and I'm just looking forward to going out and seeing people again. There's still a good few of my good mates that I haven't seen yet and I've been back since Wednesday!

Anyway moving on... I have had the chance these past 2 days to spend a lot of time working on my website. I discovered a blog called frostbolt which I found while playing around on google and I liked it! It's a World of Warcraft blog but I really liked the look of the site, seemed to have had a fair bit of customisation done to it, loads quick and is even valid xhtml! (don't know what I mean don't worry). So I did some investigating and found out what blogging system the author was using and gave it a try myself. It's called wordpress and it's pretty sweet, I've been fiddling around with the templates and got it all working well enough but, I can only do so much on this PC because it's rubbish. I even managed to import all my old blogs from blogspot which was a major selling point for wordpress as I did not want to louse the last few months posts and comments.

You can see the site at www.mattous.co.uk I'm going to continue to post my blogs on blogspot and myspace I've disabled comment posting on blogspot though, sorry Downs you'll just have to come to my site to comment :D. Theres been a small amount of activity on the forums with 4 members and 11 posts. Pretty pathetic if you ask me so get on the site people! Get involved.

No picture today. I just don't have any on this computer I'll try to get some for next time.

"Too the happy couple"

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of going to Matthew Maude and Miriam (Mim) Hiltons wedding. It was a brilliant day a big congratulations to you guys. Matt and Mim have only known each other a little more than a year and started seeing each other on January 1st of this year! Which is really cool, kinda puts things in perspective. To imagine that I could start seeing someone on January 1st and be married to them in less than a year... Crazy. Not that it's gonna happen, I'm defiantly not ready for marriage.

I'm back home in Kent now which has been pretty cool so far. I've had a bit of a boring day today though there's nothing really to do. Yesterday I finished off my shopping when I went into town with Maggie and saw a bunch of the guys at the pub in the evening. We are still in need of a venue for New Years Eve, we really need somewhere to have a party.

I've been doing a lot of looking around on the web because I've been bored and talking to my mates who still play world of warcraft. Man I miss that game. I'm really tempted to start playing again in the new year. I've been saying that I'll wait for the expansion pack to come out before I install it again but the way things are going now I dunno. Anyways Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that you get what you want and enjoy the day tomorrow!

Matthew and Miriam cutting their wedding cake.

King Kong

I spent the first part of this week getting my new website up and running. The long promised webspace form xengaming has finally arrived and I have to say that I'm very impressed. Unlimited space and Bandwidth for £30 a year is without a doubt the best webhosting package on the planet. It took 6 months to get it all working but I'm a patient man. So go check out www.mattous.co.uk I've setup the forums and gallery again so register and start posting! You can also upload your photos to the gallery now if you want somewhere to store photos or whatever.

I had my interview in London on Wednesday which went ok. I don't think I'll get it though. I got to spend the evening in Kent though which was really good. I really miss the south and can't wait to get home for Christmas. I saw Graham, Lou, Bec and Franko which was really cool we went to the hop farm and just had a few drinks. Next day I came back up to Middlesbrough with my new phone which rocks. I've been taking a load of photos with it and I'm pretty impressed.

The Journey back to Middlesbrough from my interview

Thursday night was our CU Christmas social which was lots of fun, we had a Christmas themed quiz which our team did pretty well in (4th I think). Then on Friday it was the end of term party at the union 15 hours of Christmas. Went round my mate Jay's at 9:30am went to the union to get our free breakfast hung around for a little while then went back to his and watched some Eddie Izzard. At 1pm went to meet some others at the Cinema and saw King Kong. It's the best film I've seen for a long time with the most impressive special effects I've ever seen, it's long but Peter Jackson can't make short films e.g. Lord of the Rings. Defiantly worth seeing it's a brilliant mix of action/special effects with the strange love story, but it works you really do feel for Kong. After watching it you also my have the urge to grab a blonde lass and carry her to the top of some tall building, let out a roar and beat your chest! After seeing King Kong we went back to the union and partied the night away!

Club One at the Students Union 15 Hours of Christmas.

Today I have nothing much to do so I'm having a well deserved rest. I didn't get in until 3am last night and considering I started at 9:30am I think that's pretty good going. 17 hours partying at my age takes it out of you!

As promised here's a photo from house party a few weekends back we tried to get another row of people but couldn't do it and ended up with a big heap of people on the floor.

"Get a haircut you hippy!"

Well I did! As many of you know I don't like having my haircut which is why its so long usually! For once I like it though so that's a good thing! I've got an interview for placement next week so I've got to look slightly presentable. I would tell you who I'm going for the interview with but I would have to kill you. Seriously... Anyway the annoying thing about it is that I'm going down to London on Wednesday for this interview, staying at my house that evening. Coming back up to uni for 1 more day of lectures (which I will not be going to because its the 15 hours of Christmas) and more importantly Matt and Mim's wedding on the following Tuesday. Then the very next day I'm going back down to Kent again! I will have Pete for company though this time which will make the journey much more interesting!

I'm still amazed by the amount of information on wikipedia (as you can find out if you follow any of my links today) they have everything! Nothing much to say really had a manic few days so I'm off to bed. Tomorrow night I'm off out to the School Disco that the Students Union is having. Usually everyone dresses up as school girls/boys but this one is special because it's the Nativity Play theme, so I expect to see lots of shepherds with tea towels over the heads, a few too many inflatable sheep, a few angels and who knows what else! The CU is also doing carol singing outside the Union before the whole thing which will be a good outreach and pretty funny I'm sure because we'll all be dressed up too! Pictures at some point!

A picture of lake back home, can't wait to get back!

Information Overload!

Good and reasonably productive day today, I haven't done any work but it's been one of those days where I got lots of little important things done. So now hopefully I can concentrate harder on doing some work. I sorted out the tax exemption form (because student don't have to pay it woohoo!), set things in motion for getting an interview for placement next year sorted and ordered my new phone (very excited about that one!).

These past couple of days I've had the opportunity to help out my good friend Matt Maude who is getting married in just under 2 weeks now. He's just moved into his house so has loads of things to do so I've been helping him get things sorted wherever I can. I've been lifting heavy stuff, making flatpack wardrobes and things. It's really good fun actually I haven't had any real experience doing that stuff and it's good practice for me when I eventually go down that road myself!

Also if your bored (and if your reading this you probably are or at least will be by now) then check out this site I stumbled upon the other day http://en.wikipedia.org. It's an online encyclopedia that anyone can add too or change. There is so much information in there it's crazy I spent all afternoon reading about Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons and all kinds of other things. I think as a Christian I think it's important to know what other religions/cults believe in relation to what I believe it's pretty fascinating. This site is really cool because anything your unsure of is bound to have a link explaining it, also almost any name or place mentioned will have a whole section of its own too. I could easily get lost in this site for hours!

I'm trying to get into the Christmas spirit, need to do my shopping bigtime! Here's my new wallpaper! As always from http://www.vladstudio.com check it out!

House party

Once a year the CU goes away together for a weekend and that my friends is where I have been this weekend. We all met outside the union at 4:45 and at 6:00 we left; traffic was to blame but we all knew we wouldn't be leaving on time and anyways we got to spend an hour in the bar instead. The next 3 hours were spend in one of the 3 mini-buses that too us, it would of been a great journey except Westwood was on the radio for the last half an hour or so... If you don't know who Tim Westwood is count yourself lucky.

For the next 2 days we were in Newcastleton just the other side of the Scottish borders a little place called Whithaugh Park. I Love the country side and this place was awesome miles from nowhere, no TV or internet just 2 days full of Teaching, Worship and a game or two of Risk.

The speaker we had with us was amazing, his name is Steve Braye and he had his son with him too. He's an ex-military guy who used to be in the SAS which would of been enough to keep me interested for a weekend but he has the most amazing testimony and his relationship with God really just shines out of him. The teaching was a mix of a lot of things which was actually really good because it just gave God a chance to do more in me. If only the weekend was longer! Now I have to process what went on there and it was a lot. Choices, The way of the cross, sexuality, freedom in Christ and a whole bunch of other things. Lets just say God's doing a lot way too much to talk about here but I'm sure this isn't the last you'll hear of it.

This is Newcastleton the somewhere in the background is the place we were staying at, Saturday afternoon a bunch of us walked into town though. I'll post some more pictures when I get them.

Romans (8:38-39)

Had a pretty good day today this week it was big group instead of small group, I'll explain. Basically instead of having small group every week at church we have small group one week and big group the next. It's a pretty cool idea because it gives all the small groups a chance to get to know each other more. Tonight we were talking about spiritual giftings, something I've never really been sure of is it what my giftings are. So when they asked if people wanted prayer I was up and had a really cool picture from Matt Maude (such an awesome guy) saying that I would be leading the spiritually poor and seeing them turn to God. I've had words about leadership in my life before I suppose one of my issues is thinking that I don't have what it takes. That's not cool though because it goes against what God is saying, I have no problem with having faith and trusting in God to see other peoples lives changed but when it comes to my life I don't have so much confidence. Change that GOD!

Found this while looking though my photos of our outreach in Texas! Very cool it's on one of Deliverance Bible Church's walls!

"These are the things that make me free
I feel like I'm stuck in "stand by me"
This night was too good to be true."

The Ataris - San Dimas High School Football Rules