Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Finally got the keys to my new apartment on Friday!

What followed was a long, long weekend. Being that it is a bit of a nightmare parking in town I had to move house overnight so having already done a full days work by the time I left work at 4pm, I then headed off to start moving stuff. Which went on for 13 hours.

This included a short break to run to Ikea at which point I managed to somehow – I really can’t imagine how though – pick out the shelves I wanted to buy and then walk though the self service warehouse without buying them. Accidentially. Honestly, how does that happen? I think I was rather tired by this point.

I finished up at 5am and went to grab some sleep however I ended up getting woken up by Brian bringing another potential tenant to look round so I didn’t get much sleep. This was followed by a full shift at work followed by more stuff being moved which I agained finished up at shortly after 5am.

I once again headed home to get some sleep before getting up on Sunday, finishing up a bit of freelance work I had to do then heading over again with more stuff and in an attempt to get the place sorted a little. Finishing up at around 9pm last night when I simply ran out of energy.

Never. Ever. Again.

I managed to get some desks off Freecycle for the new apartment. However, having already agreed to collect them I found I needed to pick them up this morning at 10:30 which I obviously couldn’t do as I was at work.

Therefore in order to solve said problem I rang round and arranged with a man in a van to go round and pick them up. I had already arranged with the people I was collecting off though so I didn’t get a chance to tell them I was sending someone else and the guy I was sending to collect them didn’t seem to understand I wasn’t going to be there but would only be there to receive the goods when he arrived at my office.

This guy phones me at 10:15 saying he can’t find the place and wanted some directions. I only have an address, I don’t know which place it is he is actually supposed to be collecting from but give him the general area.

He phones me back after finding it and says that nobody is there. So I tell him I will find out what is going on, explaining once again that I am at the destination, not the origin. I then phone Alex to find out what is going on who says he will phone Richard and find out what is going on.

I give him a few minutes then phone Nick back who says he can’t get through to Richard but gives me Richard’s phone number. I phone that but Richard doesn’t answer so I phone the van man back to tell him who tells them that Richard has turned up and he is collecting the desks as we speak.

Soon enough and he is on the road and delivers them to the office. At which point he insists on calling me Richard. I mean, it’s like a sitcom that is happening to you.

Diane and Nick having arrived in Leeds (after a brief stop in London en route from Canada) we headed out for a meal last night. Being all the way over in Chapel Allerton already we headed to my old haunt, the Deer Park where we enjoyed rather nice meal. This was followed by a few more drinks back at my grandma’s before heading back to my parents where they were staying.

Early night was on the cards but we ended up getting talking and looking at a few photos and videos and next thing we knew it was gone 1am. So by the time I had got home and got all the work done I needed to do before this morning it was heading towards 3am! Never the less a very enjoyable night.

I have to say I’m really getting into this cooking thing. I’ve just made myself another Pot Noodle and the other day I purchased a frozen pizza and put it in the oven for a period of time before removing and and then consuming it. I’m still not completely sold that it is a better alternative to microwave meals but it’s certainly a novelty.

We decided to make use of Craig’s free house and order takeaway last night so headed down to Noori on Garforth main street.

On discovering they actually had a full eat in restaurant we decided to just stop there though and enjoyed a very nice meal at a good price. I went for the dupiaza and in true British style – got a side of chips with it 😀 . All in all, highly recommended, very good food for the price.

We’re becoming increasingly annoyed with The Library. The food is sub-standard and quite frankly that is hard to achieve when you run a student pub. It’s not like it’s any cheaper than anywhere else either so they can’t really play that card.

On the plus side though we have some very productive discussions – including the decision to rename Lil to Ubuntu.

A much overdue return to Wendy House arrived last night. While the music was it’s usual mix of good stuff and bad stuff it was at last a reasonably quite night with enough people on the dance floor to give it some atmosphere but plenty of space to dance.

On Saturday night I attended the annual BBQ of the North Yorkshire Humanist Society (so don’t get confused – it wasn’t a BBQ where we cooked North Yorkshire Humanists 😉 ).

The BBQ itself was good although I feel I was mis-sold when told it was in York as it was in a village just outside named Haxby – not a problem when you’re coming from York but on the far side when driving up from Leeds.

It was interesting to see the demographics in North Yorkshire, the age range is much better than West Yorkshire although this could have been disorted by the fact it was a bit more of a social event than a regular meeting.

They seem an active enough society though, they hold 11 meetings a year (just missing out August) which is more frequent than a lot of societies which take extensive summer breaks and they seem to have quite a bit of committee rotation going on.

Headed down to London for the AHS meeting on Thursday.

The station car park was full which resulted in me parking literally a mile away. Still cost me £3 as well because the parking ticket machine ate half of my money. I scribbed on the ticket though “I have this machine £3!” and didn’t get a ticket despite it expiring so one way or another I got an almost fair amount of parking (I should have only paid £2 really). Interestingly, if you phone the help number on the parking machine, you get a modem on the other end.

Got the train down fine and found my way to 1 Gower Street which was very irritating as I came from King’s Cross so I started at something like 137 Gower Street. That is one of the very annoying things about London – just because you’ve found the right road doesn’t mean you’re anywhere near where you want to be!

The BHA offices were nice enough, they were very much old converted houses with many small floors over about four different levels. We finished up there and headed round to the College Arms for a pint which again was small but nice enough.

Myself and Andrew were both getting the train back from King’s Cross so we headed off not long after though unfortunately by this point it had started raining. Having already got a coat I offered my umbrella to Andrew who hadn’t brought anything. This turned out to be somewhat of a mistake as the heavens properly opened and it began pelting it down, I was not impressed by the time we finally reached the station. Especially because earlier I had thought to myself “should I switch to my walking boots in case it rains?” and decided against it in the end.

It was also rather irritating how many people were on the train back to Leeds at 9:30 at night though it gradually thinned out as we headed northwards from an almost full carriage to an almost empty one.

It wasn’t the most pleasant journey back, I hadn’t brought a jumper because I was trying to travel light and I thought I could just put my coat on if I was cold but it having been soaked right through that wasn’t really an option so it was rather cold, especially with me not being overly dry. I did manage to get a discounted hot chocolate from the snack cart though which was most welcome.

By the time we reached Leeds I was ready to give up for the night (though I still had to drive to Halifax and back, but that is a whole different story – coming soon) so I gave in and jumped in a taxi back to my car. Well worth not freezing to death on the talk back to my car and more importantly, my beautifully warm Wikipedia hoodie.

Got home last night to find my exhaust was hanging off the bottom of my car.

This is the new exhaust I had fitted a month or two ago so I wasn’t overly amused. After having duct taped it back in place this morning I phoned my local branch of Alba and explained one of their other branches had put me it on and it was now hanging off and could they fix it.

They said no.

Apparently they also use different suppliers and have to go through those supplies so if I took it down there, they would then phone the branch that did the work and get them to order the part then once they had it it would be sent to the branch I was now at before they could do the work.

So I phoned up the branch that originally did the work who said bring it down and they would get it looked at.

This is where it all goes a bit wrong for the blog post really because shock of all shocks – I had a good experience with a garage! I took it down there on my lunch break and though I spent ten minutes just waiting for them to get round to me once they said they sorted it out for me and didn’t try to charge me either.

It kind of ruins the whole tone of the blog post really as I wrote the first half this morning before taking it down to them expecting to have loads more to rant about, but I don’t. Well done Alba, I guess.

If I did want to continue the rant however I could easily point out that these victories shouldn’t be so rare in modern life. I seem to spend most of my lunch breaks running around trying to fix one thing or the other – the extended blog post about housing that should hopefully arrive in the next few weeks (I’m waiting until it’s sorted so don’t hold your breath) is testament to that. Life shouldn’t be full of all these problems. It shouldn’t be a fantastic day when something is actually sorted as it should be. Still, that is the modern world I guess. Today was a good day.