Best Week of 2014 ?

This week has been amazing both at home and away either side of an exciting Easter weekend
which saw the trend of completed goals continue.

Tuesday began with the delivery of my ticket/travel for the trip up to Leeds in early May with an emotional viewing of the 25th Hillsborough Memorial service in the afternoon as Liverpool came together to remember the 96 in a truly fitting service. The evening saw new DLC on Plants v Zombies so I had a session which saw two unlocks and watched the new episode of The Call Centre while planning my Super League preview.


Wednesday started with more planning while watching the first part of the Royle Family boxset with the early afternoon seeing me begin my weekly Super League preview which was put on hold as I had two people from the research project I was part of come up from London to film an interview with me which was interesting and inspiring as it gave me an outer look on what my life is like now and as planned I received £80 for my participation meaning from two projects I have earned £170 but am unable to name the company on here due to confidentiality agreements.

The evening saw the resuming and completion of my Super League preview and delightfully I was published on a popular website called Cherry and White which saw me gain a lot of traffic during the week and allowed me to add another name to my list of successes.

Thursday began with a short session across a few Windows 8 game before bed and the morning saw blogging and a sporting double split the evening with the Hull derby on Sky Sports and Liverpool Ladies v Man City Women on BT Sport. An exciting end to the day saw Liverpool Ladies win 1-0 with Natasha Dowie scoring and in tweeting about it, she favourited me which made a good day even better.
a new free game appear on the store -Secrets and Treasures so downloaded and had a quick go. The afternoon saw more

Source - Charlotte Fletcher

Friday began with an early wake up for the trip to Wigan before going to St Helens for the Good Friday derby which was my first away from Wigan and what a brilliant afternoon it was with a superb 33-14 win enjoyed with Gary, Gail and Charlotte whom I have met up with a few times this season and hope to do so again.

A glorious sunny afternoon continued with the trip home and a walk around Wigan before catching the bus and doing the write up of the game while watching Warrington v Widnes and followed by the usual Friday night TV - Corrie/Gogglebox and Da Vinci's Demons.

Saturday saw the writing of the SL round nine write-up while watching Soccer AM and then Soccer Saturday across the afternoon while following Skem away to Ashton via text and sadly a 4-1 loss all but ends hopes of a play-off place while in the Premier League, Chelsea's loss against Sunderland was a massive favour to the title hopes of Liverpool -'MAKE US DREAM' with the evening ending with the preparation for the SL round ten preview.

Sunday began with the completion of a goal as Saints Row IV became my 30th completion after finally purchasing and playing the Christmas DLC  with the writing of the aforementioned preview and a session of job searching online followed by the early kick-off for Liverpool away to Norwich. Despite a narrow 3-2 win it meant Liverpool were five points clear at the top with three games to go. The afternoon saw me take in the other two TV games of Hull v Arsenal and Everton v Man United with the evening spent catching up on Xbox blogging and magnets.


Monday saw another job search in different places than the previous day and then at 1.20, I set off for Wigan however the bus failed to arrive and with only an hour till kick-off I had to go by taxi which came to £8.80 (bus would have been £2.50) and made it to the stadium in time to make my notes and do my usual filming of the pitch entertainment.

A massive 84-6 win replicating Easter Monday of 2013 saw a record 12 different scorers for Wigan against a poor Bradford side. A bus journey home after getting some tea at my usual takeaway - Sicily Pizza saw me find out that Skem had lost 5-0 at home to Flyde, the first home game I had missed since November with Wigan taking priority due to my season ticket.

After returning home, I watched the Catalan v Hull KR game which ended my hopes of correctly predicting all seven games having got all six of the 3pm games correct with the evening watching the Corrie double and some of Man City v West Brom.

As Monday was spent out and about, the weekly blog update extended to Tuesday which began with writing up the LFC and Wigan reports and the SL round ten review with the conclusion of the Royle Family boxset and the start of the Mr Bean one, best to get all my boxsets done first in the pursuit of my yearly goal.

The evening saw a session on Hexic via Windows 8 with the night concluding with my decision to end my 'stay' on a number of online dating sites after being consistently ignored after expressing interest via messages and being bombarded by fake profiles. So if anything relationship-wise was ever to happen to me in the future it would come in the 'real world' though I doubt it ever will.

The next week is a quieter one with the only stand out events being Wigan v Hunslet on Sunday afternoon which annoyingly clashes with Liverpool v Chelsea so multitasking will be needed in that instance and the search for a new job continues with the lack of success so far really frustrating.

Milestones And Goals

It seems milestones are like London buses for me as there have been few recently and then three pop up in the space of a few days but more on that later on.

Tuesday began with the continuation of the Only Fools boxset while watching Stallion83's stream of Kinect Sports Rivals which inspired me to confirm my order for the title as it looked amazing and the afternoon saw more Only Fools with the evening featuring a trip to watch Skem v Worksop. Due to a future clash on Easter Monday with a Warriors game, this would be my last home league game this season and what a way to end as Skem came back from 0-1 down to win 2-1 against the division's top scorers.

Wednesday began with a milestone as I completed the Windows 8 version of FIFA14 which has become my first ever FIFA completion after seven years of different versions. Afterwards, I watched the final episode of Junior Paramedics and the first in a new series of The Call Centre and then off to bed. I did my weekly weight and Xbox update and had a long discussion over the phone about my upcoming project in the afternoon, I continued the Only Fools boxset and did my weekly Super League preview with an interesting series opener of 'Invasion of the Job Snatchers' ending the night.

Thursday began with an update for Windows 8 so had some music on and caught another of Stallion83's streams before bed. The morning started with the ending of the Only Fools boxset and the start of the Porridge one with the materials for my project arriving in the afternoon (secret until next Wednesday) and setting them up into the evening with a session on PvZ GW ending the night alongside the Hull v Hudds game and some American Dad.

Friday saw the beginning of my two-day project and some blogging and magnet sorting in the early afternoon before the debut of Kinect Sports Rivals on the Xbox One which saw my second milestone of the week as I unlocked my 5000th achievement which came after winning a bowling match and led to a celebration after nearly seven years of Xbox gaming. The evening saw me got to Wigan v London and a mixed game ended in a Wigan win with the usual takeaway and bus journey home ending the night.

Saturday began with the consuming of my takeaway with Gogglebox and some note checking from the Wigan game before bed with Game Changers and Soccer AM starting the morning and a letter from HMRC arriving saying I had unpaid tax even though I had sorted it months ago so after a 15 minute wait on hold, I was told it had been an accidental posting which I wasn't too pleased about but let it go.

The afternoon featured Football Focus and Soccer Saturday with the Catalan v Widnes game at 2.30 during which i wrote up my Wigan match report and then a session on PvZ GW with a friend online. The evening saw me watch Wigan v Arsenal with the Latics sadly losing on penalties and then caught up on the latest episode of Da Vinci's Demons and ended the night while Xbox blogging with Epic Movie in the background.

Sunday began with the resuming of my two-day project and Goals on Sunday ahead of an exciting afternoon of football where an emotional Hillsborough memorial was the prelude to a stunning 3-2 win for Liverpool over Manchester City which a spine-chilling ending as Gerrard rallied the troops for the title run-in. I listened to Fylde vs Skem in the Doodson Cup final which sadly saw Fylde win 1-0 and Swansea V Chelsea saw the title challengers come out on top with some blogging and a great MOTD 2 and The Goonies bringing the weekend to a close.

Monday started with the travel and ticket booking for the trip to Leeds in early May with the afternoon beginning with the collection of my project materials as they were returned for analysing with the results coming on Wednesday. I wrote up my Liverpool, Premier League and FA Cup blogs and within minutes reached my third milestone of the week as my goal of 20,000 blog views was finally completed. The evening saw my usual Monday night TV viewing with the week finishing with the amazing Walk On documentary.

Sportswise, it was a nice change to have all three of my teams win in the same week and though Skem losing in the Cup final was a negative the comeback earlier in the week meant it wasn't so bad of a week for them.

As I mentioned above it was a momentous week in terms of My Xbox Achievement Adventure as I reached the milestone of 5000 unlocks with the next target being to get more in 2014 than I did in 2013 with a new long range target of 7500 set.

This coming week is a packed one with two Warriors games in four days with the trip to St Helens on Good Friday followed by a home game against Bradford on Easter Monday, The Hillsborough memorial later today will be emotional even though I will be viewing only on TV with Liverpool's next game at Norwich on Easter Sunday so another TV game. Also the second part of my project takes place on  Wednesday but as yet information is sketchy so will be detailed in next week's post.

 As I write on the April 15th,I feel this message is a fitting end to this post  - 25 years ago today, 96 Liverpool fans went to an FA Cup semi final at Hillsborough and never came home. Remember them always.

Damaged Post :(

FAO FUTURE POSTS DO NOT START TYPING - ALWAYS COPY THE PREVIOUS POST AS THIS IS A RESULT OF A PREVIOUS BLOG BEING OVERWRITTEN!

Three Months Gone Already!

March has come to an end and spring is certainly here, proof of the fact is that in writing this at 8pm it is still light outside and even more is that its a full month into my 28th year, which has flown by very rapidly but first onto the weekly summary.

Tuesday began well with an email off West Lancs Media proposing a future meeting to discuss my articles so that's something to look forward to I guess with the afternoon featuring a collation of the last four weeks sleep data and the printing and re-designing of the sheets for the coming month. The Evening saw me watch the Manchester derby while doing an extensive job search and checking on the progress of current applications.

Wednesday began with more job searching but on a wider scale than the previous night and I began the quest of watching all the DVD's I own that are unseen since purchase and did so with the Brookside 30 year Memorable Moments which was brilliant to watch and did bring back a lot of memories of the 90's and 00's.

The evening saw me take in Liverpool v Sunderland which was a win for the Reds despite a nervy finish at 2-1 with some PvZ Garden Warfare to end the night.

Thursday began with another DVD series this time it was Phoenix Nights which was a brilliant comedy and hard to believe it was so long since it finished on TV and the trend of good news this week continued as I got an email off Will who had orchestrated 'The Hub' project I had taken part in and offered me the chance to take part in another project in the coming weeks which adds to my list of things to look forward to.

This was joined by a trip to Dewsbury on April 4th as I managed to book my ticket and travel for the bargain price of £22 for Wigan's Challenge Cup game while later on I put on the Fonejacker boxset, another good series that ended on Channel 4 a long time ago with the evening seeing a blogging catch-up and the weekly edition of Junior Paramedics on BBC3.

Friday began with an early order as tickets for the Good Friday trip to St Helens went on sale and at a decent price too so that joins the list and will be the first time I will have gone to a Good Friday away from Wigan which will be nice. On the subject of Wigan, the evening saw a trip to Wigan for the home game against Catalan and an exciting game saw a last gasp win courtesy of a try from Matt Bowen who ran full length to complete a 22-16 win.

Saturday began with the writing and sending off of my Wigan match report and during the day with Skem playing away, I watched the United v Villa game, Soccer Saturday and Arsenal v Man City with Skem drawing 3-3 away to King's Lynn after coming back from 3-1 down. The evening saw me reach the final stages of my Lego Simpsons build while going further on PvZ Garden Warfare.


Sunday began with the completion of the Lego Simpsons build which can be seen in the adjacent images and it was a brilliant project to do and I look forward to the additional figures that are released in May. An early wake up for the F1 in Malaysia which was a strange one with only 15 finishers but an exciting race all the same with Hamilton winning and in the afternoon a spectacular 4-0 win for Liverpool at home to Tottenham made for a great way to end the weekend with the RL round up ending the day.

Monday saw two letters arrive which contained my tickets for Dewsbury and my travel for St Helens with the match ticket still on the way and an afternoon of writing and preparation for the weeks blogs with the evening featuring the usual Monday night TV but with a twist as The Walking Dead came to the season's end. A cliffhanger with a lot of open ends makes for a long wait until the next season in October.

A fairly mixed week to end the month but the month as a whole has been pretty good compared to this time last year with the exception of the work issue of course but I will go into that in the following monthly summary.

Fitness wise, Runkeeper saw and Nike saw an improvement on February with the former seeing 27.3 miles for the month with the latter collecting 35.564 fuel which included reaching my goal of 2.5 million overall which came on the 8th as another fitness goal of 2000 miles overall on Runkeeper.

The Xbox achievement chase saw a new record month for 2014 with a haul of 164 unlocks which is amazing but not enough to become the best ever as the record of 183 from 2011 still stands but the run of centuries this year extends to three with the hope of a full year now a quarter fulfilled.

The achievement haul was accompanied by 4182 TA points and a total of 2790G with an official total of only 134 unlocks needed for my long time goal of 5000 with the goal of 100,000G now within 10,000 at 9535. The average month improved to 2550 meaning a likely goal completion of August/September which would be easily ahead of schedule.

A massive goal was reached on the 17th as I breached the target of 125,000 TA points as seen in the adjacent image while also getting closer to the goal of 40% completion by reaching 38% on the 20th.

Sports wise, it has been a mixed month for my trio of teams, the main positive is that Liverpool end the month on top of the Premier League with a 100% record with wins over Southampton, Manchester United, Cardiff, Sunderland and Tottenham. Wigan have done well with wins over Hull KR,Warrington and Catalan ending the month after a mixed opening with a victory over Wakefield followed by a late loss at Castleford.

The biggest negative has been Skem who have been unrecognisable from their form in the majority of the season with only two wins (Trafford in the league and Carlton in the Doodson cup) but have lost five and drawn one which included the unbeaten home record ending spectacularly with three defeats in a row.

On the subject of my goals for 2014, to reach five this month was amazing with the only one not mentioned above being that I attended my seventh Skem game of the year which came in the visit of Trafford and reached ten in the defeat to FC United which saw a huge crowd for the first time in a while.

So overall a good month with more positives than negatives and there is hope for even more joy in April etc....

• Trips to Dewsbury and St Helens with Wigan with another depending on the next round of the CC.
• A new project to do via 'The Hub' 
• Liverpool hopefully edging to a first Premier League title with Skem improving in the NPL.
•  Some concrete progress on the career front - please?
• An improvement in my weight loss and general fitness.