Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

I ways always told that gambling doesn’t pay, that you would always lose money and it was a bad habit to get into.

On Thursday we had a work’s nigh out to Alea Casino down at Clarence Dock to take advantage of their special offer dinner which also includes a free chip to use on the casino floor.

After dinner hit the roulette table and to my surprise I managed to hit the right colour several times in a row. I then moved onto strips of numbers and hit lucky again. Indeed by the end of the night I cashed out and left the casino with £1 more than I went in with even after factoring in my coke, a two course meal plus an extra side and two glasses of wine.

What this means is that I have done the scientific research and it turns out that gambling actually does pay! I know, I’m as shocked as you are but there you go. Of course part of the scientific method is being able to repeat the experiment, however most of the office managed to walk out of there having won some cash. So take that science!

Kate organised a gay night out last week (we’re not entirely sure whether this is her way of slyly trying to tell Steven something or not) and we ended up in The Viaduct on Lower Briggate.

As soon as we walked in there a guy with a good ten years on Steven asked him to get his penis out so he could have a play with it. Scary times. What is more interesting is the fact that it is almost acceptable – as Rich pointed out, you would never get away with that in a heterosexual environment if that is the right description to give, but it’s for some reason just acceptable in a gay bar?

This was soon followed by drag cabaret. This really annoyed me because of the obvious technical inaccuracies. For example her singing was coming out of the PA system but she clearly had no microphone, if you can’t even bother to pretend to be miming then it’s just a poor effort in my book.

And why where their sex catalogues, everywhere?

And somehow people still wonder why I preach the virtues of a relaxed night chatting in Wetherspoon’s.

I just wanted to make that clear for the record because I don’t really feel enough has been said about it.

Last week myself, Oli, George and Lil headed out for a night out which ended when Lil got really drunk, decided to attack a group of guys and earned Oli a rather beat up eye for his trouble when he tried to calm things down.

Still, spoils of war and all that, at least I got myself a nice new hat.

Last weekend Robin Ince was kind enough to stop by to give us a talk before doing a gig at The Library later that night. While I sometimes find his material a little hit and miss, live he is an excellent performer and I really enjoyed both the talk and the show.

Despite still being in the recovery stage of flu I headed down to Oxford this weekend for the AHS national convention. We set off on the Friday afternoon as to be in time for Camp Quest UK director Sam Stein’s talk and stayed as late as the Sunday night to hear Dr Evan Harris’s talk on trying to introduce some common sense into Parliament – something which is not popular in there.

All this resulted in us not getting back into Leeds until 2am this morning, something which my body did not appreciate when I had to get up for work this morning. Never the less it was a great weekend. On top of the talks and conventions we also managed to fit in the Ashmolean Museum, the History of Science Museum and of course plenty of watering holes on the way.

Oxford is a beautiful city, if occasionally puncuated by some hideous buildings that really stick out and the colleges are all like mini-cities in themselves. Would be a really nice place to be invited to do postgraduate study (hint hint) 😉 .

For those who don’t know I was stuck down ill on Tuesday night. I managed to claw my way back into work today but that was probably a mistake given how I am feeling now.

In any case last night didn’t help. Having not really slept properly since Monday night I finally managed to drift off in the early-ish hours of this morning having gone to bed about 11pm. And by gone to bed I mean tried to sleep, I didn’t actually get out of bed at any point yesterday save to make myself some food.

Anyway, I had finally dozed off when I was awoken at the sound of my UPS beeping like crazy at 3:30am. The power had gone out.

Needing to sort out my computers I reached for my torch, carefully positioned on my bed side table for such occasions. Of course being ill and knowing I needed plenty of fluids I had carefully positioned a glass of orange juice next to my bed.

Of course, it went flying spilling it’s contents over the top of my bedside table as well as the wires and printer sitting below it. And of course I couldn’t see to mop it up because we didn’t have any power so none of the lights were working.

So here I am, cleaning up the mistakes of last night despite the fact I’m physically exhausted and despite the fact I still have loads more to do tonight before I can sleep.

But at least through it all, I know I have you. All of you. Everyone of you, each of you different and each of you amazing in your own special way. I honestly don’t know what I would do without you. Never leave me, Dairy Milk.

No, I’m not talking about the classic song by Poe which was featured on the Book of Shadows soundtrack.

Last night I headed over to York for a good old fashioned ghost tour. York Brights coordinator Ewan is one of the tour guides to invited us over and it sounded like a good laugh so I thought I would attend.

I had been forewarned to keep an eye out for sly skeptical comments in the talk and that there certainly was :D. Lines like “one of York’s genuine mediums – if that isn’t a contradiction in terms” and “she swore them all to secrecy about the elaborate array of hidden wires and sound effects she used that night” provided a good night of amusement and entertainment.

Afterwards we headed to Caesar’s Restaurant for a very nice meal indeed – although we didn’t get any free garlic bread as Ewan had assured us we were almost certain to receive. The food was never the less excellent though.

On Friday, the new season of Perspective kicked off in Leeds with representatives from the Mormon faith coming down to talk to us. I was actually surprised how interesting and informative it is, there is actually quite a lot of deviation from traditional Christianity that is not immediately apparent.

We weren’t best prepared for the course not having things like plates but the food was never the less good and with Essentials now open until 10pm we even managed to source some coffee (Extras stocked it but they only had decaff so I just walked out).

The inevitable march of aging means we rarely venture out of our houses to hit the down these days. I’m often at the pub as little as three or four times a week these days and clubbing is a whole different sorry state all together.

However given I’m playing plenty to live in a very nice city centre apartment which allows me to go out, get drunk and walk home all with relative ease the very least it seemed appropriate to do was to re-start a regular schedule of Wendylicious, particuarly as I always try to be around that Saturday for Skeptics in the Pub.

I have to say I’m glad I did because it was a pretty epic night. I think I’ve discovered the best formula for Wendy, drink at home, go to The Old Bar, drink some more there, then wander into Wendy around 11:30-midnight as it’s brilliant for the first few hours but then gets a little repetitive.

As such awesome times ensued including several short appearances from Amerijohn (even if he wasn’t actually hanging out with us for the most part, traitor) and some kind of end of night drunken cooking which is always a victory when it doesn’t burn the place down. Good times.

On Monday evening I headed over to York to speak at a meeting of the North Yorkshire Humanists a rather nice invite sat in between Ariane Sherine in December and Andrew Copson in February.

The talk went fairly well, I could really tell that it had been a while since I had done much public speaking and was somewhat out of practice but everyone I spoke to said they found it quite interesting and there were plenty of questions so the feedback was positive. Having run through it the night before I was a little taken aback at how much stuff I had so it’s probably for the best I kept things moving at a good speed.

Interestingly the street we were on, Priority Street, apparently has seven churches on it – five separate church buildings and two other church groups which meet in the same community centre as the Humanist group hold their meetings – most exciting of all was the Rock Church next door :D.