Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

On the plus side, I have landed myself a shiny new job.

I will be sad to leave Open Door but it’s all about moving on and up and I am looking forward to starting my new job and encountering some new challenges and opportunities at my new company starting at the end of June.

It also means I might not have to file for bankruptcy which would be nice 😀 .

I got my insurance renewal quote through from More Than the other day.

They want £1,600 from me.

Why? Because according to them I was involved in an accident and admitted fault to it. Of course, I wasn’t in an accident nor did I admit fault to it, it would seem rather silly to given I didn’t even know about it.

This is supposed to have happened in July but I didn’t find out about it until August. So I phoned them and told them the situation.

They said they would sort it out for me. I phoned them back a few weeks later to check it had been sorted but it hadn’t but they assured me it would now be sorted. But apparently not.

So I phoned them when I got the letter and sold them the situation. They said they couldn’t help me and I needed to phone a different number. Who only open during office hours so had closed by this point. Fantastic.

I took my car in for it’s MOT last Thursday.

It failed. I’ll give you a sentence to guess what it failed on. The answer is – the tyres on the rear axel were different sizes! These were tyres that Evans Halshaw put on fresh when I bought it from them last year and then put the car through an MOT before giving it to me!

As such I booked it into Evans Halshaw on Hunslet Road were I bought it from to get it fixed. No apology offered on their behalf but they did go as far as to replace the tyre – with another used one, they wouldn’t even give me a new tyre.

They also refused to fix the temperature gauge under warrenty because apparently “electrics aren’t covered.” This leaves me wondering exactly what is covered. Tyres, exhausts, etc fair enough but why aren’t electrics covered? They fixed my central locking, I can only presume this is actually gas powered?

In any case they didn’t get any money out of me, I took it up to Alba Tyres today to get it sorted as I didn’t fancy paying the £240 Evans Halshaw wanted to fix it.

Alba were happy to explain that I needed a whole new exhaust because it was actually corroded all the way down but amazingly this still came out almost £100 cheaper than Evans Halshaw.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want anyone to get cancer. But if someone has to…

I’m starting to notice a pattern in which all my blog post titles turn into just a list of pubs 😀 .

Certainly many of the posts do but that is the way it should be really. On Monday I headed out to The Deer Park with Si as well as the housemates in tail (I like to throw them a pitty invite from time to time).

Luckily I made it there in time that they were still serving food. I had already eaten and all that which resulted in me having to get an ice cream sundae – which of course there is always room for. Good times.

Having had a rather lazy weekend (for me anyway lol) I headed over to The Podger on Sunday night for a quick drink or two.

It turns out that pubs change quite a lot in a decade.

It probably hasn’t quite been a decade since I was last in there but I bet it isn’t far off. It’s quite nice in there, I managed to avoid any weird looks from wearing my A-Soc hoodie which is always nice. Throw in a few drinks and beating Craig at pool and what more can you ask for? 😀

Went for another trip to the park today to try and find some of the sights I had already observed on Google Earth. Normally I would simply be content with this but given they were in the middle of the park rather than by the side of the road I couldn’t get an image on Street View 😉 .

With the days having gotten lighter I finally made it to Roundhay Park this evening if only for a short while. Enough time to get a few pictures in anyway, hopefully I will get a lot more chance to make use of the park before I move out.

Me and Eric had been saying for a few months now that when the weather got warmer we would do a BBQ after the close one night. The weather having got better recently I decided that Saturday was the day we should finally go for it and despite initial rain when we started out shift it was (relatively) warm and dry by the time we got out. So we settled down for a BBQ and a beer in the car park – epic win 😀 .

The photos didn’t come out too clear as I’m still playing around with my various camera settings but it portrays the idea.

I’m quite proud I managed to cook everything without killing anyone and Becky brought along drinks and donuts too so it was quite a night.

I ended up with a bit of a crazy weekend (again) over the past few days.

Friday I did my usual shift at Open Door before heading over to The D to do a close. I then got up on Saturday and did some freelance work before going back to The D to do another close. On Sunday I got up early (having only got in at 4:30am) to go to Michelle’s baptism then grabbed some more sleep before heading out to the pub and then back to The D for a third time for another close.

This resulted in me getting to bed at about 3:45 and getting back up for work about four and a half hours later.

As such, tiring would be a good way to sum up my weekend.

On Tuesday I delivered a short series of talks to Atheist Society on evolution. It focused on some of the fun facts of evolution and strange twists which don’t seem to make sense at first but then, when you actually find out the answer, it makes perfect sense. The enemy of the god of gaps if you will.