Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Last Saturday we hit up Wendy House for a good old fashioned night out. The theme was in disguise to which some people really put the effort in – notably Viv who managed to survive a night in that outfit without slowly cooking herself, which is no mean feat.

I hadn’t blogged about it until now as I was waiting on someone to post some photos. The ones below were posted by Kat, and I have to say how impressed I am that someone managed to get into so many photos taken with her own camera lol.

Sunday finally marked the arrival of George’s long awaited fry up. Given there were five of us in the apartment, we ended up having a bit of a family style breakfast round the table. These are the days kids, these are the days.

On Thursday, I attended two workshops organised by the Community Development Foundation, on fund raising strategies and using the media to promote your charity. They were being held at the Leeds Church Institute so while other people had traveled quite a distance to attend the sessions, I rolled out of my building, crossed the street and entered the venue lol.

The workshops were delivered by a man named Martin who seemed to have loads of experience in the fund raising industry – there didn’t seem to be a topic we could cover that he didn’t have an interesting anecdote about.

I was actually very impressed as to how useful a lot of the information was. I find a lot of workshops you go to, just to be fill with buzz words or tell you things that are just common sense (of course there is always a bit of that – everyone knows you should be well planned), but I found these contained a lot of useful information as well. Well worth attending.

I spent last Saturday at Spice Quarter, catching up with Si and Sarann.

A few things became apparent throughout the evening. Firstly, all you can eat buffets attract an interesting crowd. It is just packed with chavettes wearing what they consider to be high class outfits. I’m still not quite sure why.

Secondly, Si needs to move to the city centre. He is clearly wasting away out is Guiseley, and who cam blame him? There is nothing to do, nothing to see. He clearly needs to move to the city centre and live it up before he is too old. Oh when will we see the return of Crazy Party Si?

Despite his 11pm curfew, he certainly managed to exert his bad influence as both myself and Sarann went home rather drunk having worked our way though a number of jugs of cocktails at Ha Ha until we eventually got kicked out at closing time.

Blackhouse, along with River Plate, fights for the title of best steak restaurant in Leeds. So when we heard that they were doing 50% off food throughout January, there was only one thing to do – book a table and cash in on the offer by ordering two steaks each!

So on Monday myself, Norm, George and James returned to Blackhouse for some more amazing steak. The food didn’t disappoint, nor did the wine, and given the relatively cheap cost, it was a great night.

Last Sunday I went over to Jason and Sarah’s house for Sunday dinner.

It was nice to take a break from working as despite being out for a heavy night the previous evening, I was up and ready to work at 10am and didn’t finish until gone 2am. Dinner was excellent too, the food was delicious, especially their secret recipe for roast potatoes.

Having seen the house a few months ago when they had just bought it and were beginning renovations, it has really come along. It now looks like a real family house, in the suburbs, just round the corner from a school – it seems to me to be only a matter of time before we hear the pitter patter of tiny footsteps from Little Jason.

Last Sunday I spent five and a half hours in meetings. I think that has to be somewhere near a new record for a Sunday.

The day started with a Reason Week planning brunch, which was productive, though didn’t actually include any food which was disappointing. Things are starting to fall into place for the week, which is promising given how close we are to it lol.

The second meeting was a Foundation trustee meeting which produced some interesting results – more on that will be announced soon, I’m sure.

Earlier this evening Jonni dragged us out to Eccup so we could have dinner at a pub named the New Inn which he had been raving about for a while.

It was a bit of a mission to find. Having headed up Scott Hall Road I ended up on some windy country lane which was only one car wide and had trees overgrowing, entirely blocking out the sky making it feel like the Forest of Fangorn. Having got through that we eventually found what I can only describe as being similar to Westfall at night with no lights and just the occasional rustic farm signpost.

Never the less we eventually found the place and ordered ourselves up a couple of 16oz t-bone steaks. The photo really doesn’t do them justice, we spend a good 30 minutes going at them and what was left at that point still looked like an entire meal. Ignore the massive onion rings, compare the size of the plate to Kat’s meal behind. Needless to say, I was eventually defeated (which to be honest, I’m quite proud as, as I actually managed to tell myself to stop eating because I was full lol).

On Monday, we headed down to Sheffield Skeptics to see a talk by Richard Wiseman. Despite struggling to see the screen, which is a little annoying in a talk mostly about optical illusions lol, it was a really enjoyable evening and managing to get a quick chat with Richard I can see it was well worth going down for.

On Tuesday, Atheist Society began it’s regular Tuesday night meetings (See You Next Tuesday 😉 ) with a screening of the Chris Morris film, Four Lions. It’s an awesome film and well worth a watch. Though it did take us ages to get the film working despite bringing it on four different formats! So you can’t say we didn’t have a backup plan lol.

On Wednesday, I headed up to York for a York Brights meeting. It has been a while since I last saw them and could be a while again with Perspective Citywide starting so it was good to see everyone, and interesting conversation was provided aplenty as always.

Finally, on Thursday I was at a Humanist Society of West Yorkshire committee meeting which was great because the meeting was both efficient and productive – which tends to make a change from most committee meetings I’m in lol.

Last night was the first Wendy House of 2011. The turn out was reasonable, we had about ten of us and it being reasonably quiet, we soon settled into a corner of the dance floor and danced the night away through to the end. For a chance, neither myself nor James had dressed up – Jonni was devastated 😉 .