Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Another great thing about meeting Elina’s mum was she had even brought me some presents over from Finland! Apparently, each year the reindeer shed their antlers, and then people collect them up and turn them into useful things like bottle openers, stopper and cork screws. It’s the cycle of nature beautiful.

It was a rather all-star turn out for our poker night last week with myself, Elina, Jonni, Kat, Norm, Casual Dave, Happy Matt and Jason all eventually turning up.

Nobody dressed up this week, which was a little disappointing, but never the less it was a good night with Jason and Happy Matt eventually walking away with the prize, after just managing to knock out Kat the Card Shark.

Last week, I took Elina to meet my friends at York Brights. It was a rather strange evening as when I walked in I found them sitting in a whole different corner to the usual one, due to the amount of people at the pub. For creatures of habit, like myself, this simply isn’t cool and I spent a good twenty minutes repeating over and over again “this isn’t where we sit…” ;).

There were also lower numbers than usually turn out, perhaps due to so many people taking holidays at this time of year – which also contributed to a slightly lower than expected turn out to Skeptics this month.

Never the less it was a great night all the same, and we tried the food for the first time which turned out to be average.

On the way back, the heavens opened to what I think was the heaviest rainfall I have ever driven through, possibly even heavier than the torrential downpour I went through on my way to appear on Ummah Channel. We’re talking so heavy that I was driving significantly below the speed limit! Nothing wrong with rain, when you’re inside though ;).

As usual, Viki was pretending to be ill at Wendy, which meant she was feeling fully refreshed on Sunday morning having gone home early. You would think that would mean she could go and get breakfast, but apparently not. Luckily Fonze stepped up to the plate and delivered the goods, with Norm adding his cheffing expertise to prepare it all.

Having travelled round Europe last week I saw some amazing architecture, especially in Milan, Salzburg and Verona (where which both myself and Heather Nova now dream about).

However, thanks to the hard efforts of myself and Elina, Leeds now equally has its place among the great architectural works of the world, with our newly constructed Kopparberg tower.

This month’s Wendy House turned out to be a bit of a handful. The night started off with Viki’s 21st birthday party, to which none of Viki’s mates turned up, but luckily the three of us are so popular that we made up the numbers with our own friends ;).

To celebrate we did trays of shots, and managed to mix around eight different spirits leading to be receiving the following text next day from Jonni…

Fuck your shots. I woke up in the doorway of my old flat.

As I explained, it’s not really a good night unless you wake up on someone else’s porch. Having carefully planned ahead to make sure I would have chicken wings ready for when I got home too, what more could you really want from a night out.

Thanks to Nicola for the photos.

On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.

She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.

It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.

We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.

Recently, we headed out to Revolution for a work social. We started with a buffet dinner, which was very nice, but then I really hate buffets because, as a Yorkshireman, I have to eat until I can eat no more to get my value for money, and that is quite frankly, uncomfortable. Never the less it was quite a good night though starting tailing off at around midnight so we headed home.

On Thursday I finally got up with some old friends who worked with me at The D.

It was somewhat disappointing that Elina didn’t instantly fall in love with Nando’s, but we had a great night away heading up to the much loved Cuthbert Brodrick afterward and finished the night at Revolution.

On Wednesday, I received a letter from the company that runs my car park.

It stated that some permit holders where parking there on a Sunday even though their permit did not entitle them to and if this continued, they would get their parking enforcement company to start issuing tickets.

Now, I have no idea if they sent this to everyone or not, but I do know that I am pretty much the only person who parks there on a Sunday. So I can’t help but feeling a little bit victimised by this.

Apparently, even though I have been parking there for two years now without any problems even after explaining to them when I first signed up I would be there all the time, the standard permit I have only covers Monday to Saturday and if you want to park there on a Sunday, you have to pay extra.

This is despite the fact that all council car parks are free on a Sunday and nobody parks there anyway so it isn’t like they need the space.

You could of course argue that this is just a company trying to pull as much cash as it can from every available orifice but pragmatically, it’s just them being wankers. They make virtually no money out of having this separate pay extra policy because no permit holders park their on a Sunday anyway, so the only person they are getting extra money out of is me. Their price gouging brings them little reward, but plenty of angry blogging.