After getting up and reminding myself how fabulous teenagers were (after only four hours asleep!) I dropped Andy at work and then headed back to Newbury, where I drank coffee and smoked too much.

Caught up with Callum - chatted for hours. Extended my overdraft limit to cover the AMEX bill I'm expecting this month (oops - forgot about that).

In the afternoon Jon and I went to Oxford and I bought myself a spanky new Dolby Digital amp (not DTS, but then the last one wasn't DD so I'm not fussed) and a PC. Richer Sounds (who now officially rock my world) have taken the MZE60 back as we took the apparently depleted battery out of it and put it in another one and it still had half a charge left. Hm. They've loaned me a Sony MZE32 - which I think is much nicer than the 60 anyway - until they can get me in an Aiwa AM-HX50 to replace it. The 32 is on loan indefinitely until they can get me mine. How cool is that?

I hadn't initially planned to buy a PC but it just happened by mistake and now I have one. Still. It's nice and fast (1GHz AMD Athlon) and will let me do freelance stuff at home. I will, ironically, sell some of my AMD stock to pay for it.

Was very naughty and had a Burger King with Jon. We haven't been to the gym for ages and we're being incredibly fatty but hey. All the fat was burned off carrying the boxes out of the shop (although Jon did a lot of the carrying and I organised things) and into Mildred.

Boy in Tempo (oh the shame) was very keen to sell me lots of widgets I didn't need to the point that it got quite annoying in the end. Took great satisfaction when he was trying to sell me the on-site maintenance contract (for about £300!) by telling him that I was going to trash Windows anyway.

"I'm going to install Linux," I said, clearly lying as I'll get Steve to do it for me.
"Whyever would you want to do that?"
"Because I'm a shareholder in Redhat."

Wouldn't usually have been so tossy but he really narked me.

Anyway. It was all Jon's fault. He encouraged me. I wouldn't have parted with the readies so readily had I been by myself. I would've toyed with my conscience and not bought anything. I thought about a laptop but decided I couldn't be bothered in the end. A lot less power for a lot more - not that I'll need much power to run the gay.com chat client, but hey. Still. Last time I took him out impulse buying, he bought a house. I think I've come out slightly better!

The new amplifier, however, is doing funny things. It will need playing with or I will have to take it back next week - which would be dull.