Scottie James Grainger

I have been playing online poker for some time now, mainly playing for fun but have recently started playing for real money. It’s amazing how much more nervous you get when you are playing for real money because every move counts and you really have to know when to bet and when to fold.

I’m still learning so limit myself to putting just £20 a month in my 888.com account and once this has gone I go back to playing for fun. I have won a couple of hands so far, but hopefully when I get a bit more experience I will win a few more.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the World Series of Poker which starts on Friday in Las Vegas, with the likes of the super talented 21 year old Annette Obrestad and most would say the man to beat Phil Ivey taking part to win this coveted crown.

Well I had my fancy dress party at the weekend and it went down a storm. My coloured contact lenses really paid off and they made my costume look ace. I had a plain white t shirt which I’d managed to get slightly dirty and I’d also put some fake blood on, my jeans where stone washed and they looked ace with a few tears in them. I’d managed to get some Converse trainers as well. The Zombie style contact lenses looked awesome, and they didn’t bother my eyes at all.

All night people where asking about my contact lenses and where I bought them and so on. I bought some solution so that I can store them for a few months, and hopefully use them again.

I’ve been planning to fit some underfloor heating to my bathroom for a while now, but plans have been put on hold because on Tuesday I came home to find a pool of water underneath my boiler!

I called the plumber out and he started to dismantle the boiler, ominously shaking his head the further he got into it. I told him to fix it whatever the cost, because I have two kids and and need hot water for baths and showers. Apparently the boiler has been leaking inside for some time and has rusted a lot of the internal parts together so needed replacing. The plumber was there for a good couple of hours and replaced a few parts, shouting me that he had finished went to the other room just hoping it wasn’t going to cost a fortune.

He showed me what he had replaced and the old parts which were a mess, before telling me that it would cost about £275 for parts and labour and that he would send me an invoice. Although not as much as I had feared it puts a dent into my water underfloor heating budget, so that will have to wait another couple of months.

On the plus side the boiler now works like a dream and is a lot quieter too!

My sister-in-law came round last night asking me to help her with her online dating profile picture as I have a decent camera and a bit of knowledge about photography. I took a few pictures of her, loaded them onto the computer and cropped them to size.

Uploading the pictures was easy and fast, but it did get me thinking about the do’s and don’ts of choosing the right profile picture. This is what I’ve come up with to help all you potential online daters:

Do:
1.    Use a photo that you like. Even if your friends think it’s amazing, if you don’t like it you’ll be tempted to downplay it and/or make negative and apologetic responses.

2.    Use something recent. Keep it to within the last nine months – 18 months at most. Using an old photograph is like lying.

3.    Use a good head shot. Save action photos for the “more photos of me” section. Make sure your photograph is clear, well-lit, and presents your head and shoulders (neck up shots may look as if you’re trying to hide something).

4.    Smile! A smiling photograph always wins over a non-smiling one – there simply is nothing more appealing than a smiling face.

Don’t:
1.    Use a glamour shot. It’s not real and while it may get you noticed, it’s going to be a real let down if/when you finally meet face-to-face.

2.    Use poor quality photos – blurred, yellowed, too dark photos make it seem as if you don’t really care.

3.    Wear hats or sunglasses and avoid photographs with too much hair in your face. These things give the impression you’re trying to hide something.

4.    Show too much flesh. It may get you attention, but is that really the kind of attention you want?

5.    Wear too much makeup.

My son’s birthday is coming up and he wants the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz mobile phone, luckily I got his first contract just before his birthday a couple of years ago so he is due for an upgrade. The only trouble was that the mobile company he is with, Virgin Mobile doesn’t stock the phone so he will have to change mobile service providers.

I checked various mobile phone comparison sites and found a T-Mobile contract with free handset, 300 minutes, unlimited text messages and free accessories for £25 per month, it also includes unlimited internet which is good because I know he will use it.

Now I know it doesn’t seem like a lot for his birthday as it is a free phone, but I do pay his contract every month so he is getting a good deal if you ask me, that is of course till he gets a part time job (hopefully sooner rather than later, he’ll be 16 next week), then he can pay for it himself.

I’m intrigued to see what the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is like, especially with its HD video recorder and how the touchscreen compares to my HTC Magic.

I’ve got a face dress party coming so I’ve decided to go as a zombie. I’ve got some ripped jeans and a white slim fit t shirt, and some FX stuff for my face. I’ve been looking around for coloured contact lenses, I’m drawn between two pairs.

1. The Zombie branded pair has a very small pupil with a larger black circle around the outer eye.

2. The solid black lens is just one solid colour.

I think that the Solid black colour gives a better zombie look. The party is about a fortnight away so I don’t have to worry too much at the moment.

At a push I could get some white UV contact lenses which would give that extra sparkle.

I’ve seen that I can keep the contact lenses for around 3 months in some contact lens solution. So I might even where them on general pub outings.

Prices seem to vary a bit from site to site, but I think that I’ll get a slightly more expensive pair as you pair for quality, buy cheap buy twice is my moto

Well my £2 free bet from The Sun came up trumps in the Grand National on Saturday. I Choose Don’t Push it early on in the Morning and got it at 20/1 which wasn’t great as a mate got it for 40/1. Anyway i knew that McCoy was desperate for a win, so i knew he wasn’t on a donkey. You didn’t really hear much about Don’t push it until the end. Connor Castle did worry me slightly as he stayed out in the lead for quite a while, if he hadn’t gone wide on the canal turn would it of been different.

Don’t push it seemed to be around 5th but just not mentioned by any commentator. It wasn’t until the 2nd time round on canal turn where Tony McCoy started to up the ante a little even though there was a slight mistake. I think Black Apalachi was push slightly too soon. When the big 4 separated you could see that Don’t Push It would clearly get the win.

Me and my wife have been thinking of having a weekend away for a couple of months now and we’ve decided to go to Belfast. Neither one of us have been to Ireland before so though this would be a great getaway where we could relax for a couple of days.

There are lots of cheap flights to Belfast and their tourism website has lots of things to see and do including visiting St. Anne’s Cathedral and the Titanic Boat Tour, as well as various shopping centres to keep my wife happy.

Being an up and coming city, Belfast has a plethora of restaurants and pubs to choose from, I just hope we can make up our minds when we get there

All we have to do now is set the dates book the flights and hotel and make sure the grandparents can look after the kids for the weekend and we’ll be sorted!

I have been wanting to update the flooring in my kitchen and conservatory for a while now as it currently has some awful chequered lino, so have decided to make the change and tile the whole area. Because the kitchen leads into the conservatory I have decided to tile them both with the same tiles which will be made from travertine.

Travertine is a natural stone and has pitting on the surface giving it a rustic feel which I am going for and will perfectly complement the  granite worktops in the kitchen. I have decided to go for French Patterned tiles that has a mosaic look to them, this will be a little bit more expensive and harder to fit but I think it will be worth the effort.

Travertine is extremely hard wearing so even though it costs more than standard tiles it will last a lot longer (I hope!). I have a week and a half off at the end of April when I hope to get the tilling done, so we will have to wait and see what it turns out like.

Good news, I’m full sold out of my t shirts on eBay so time to get another order in with my t shirt printing company.

I’ve made around £50 ish from my t shirt sales on eBay, I think I’ll get a few more printed this time to try and double my profits.

I’ve been looking round and got a few new designs one or two for the world cup and a few comedy ones.

The t shirt printing company that i use are really good and they use good quality t shirts not cheapo stuff. Hopefully I’ll have my t shirts in around 5 days, which isn’t bad considered that I only emailed them over lunch.

This week’s been slightly busy at work and at home as we’ve been having new carpets fitted so everything’s being moved around different rooms.