Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

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.

Having got to bed for the first time in a few days in the early hours of Sunday morning I found myself waking up and checking my phone to see it was 7:30pm! So I got up, headed out to the pub for a few drinks, grabbed some food and then came home and went back to bed. If only every day could be like that 😀 .

For those of you that have been following my Twitter feed you will probably have seen me counting up the hours over the Friday Saturday period. Why? Because I had a 44 hour marathon to work through.

As usual I did my regular day job on Friday at Open Door Design which is about managable but this Friday I was also doing a close that evening so I headed straight off from Open Door at 5pm to start my close at 6pm. That finished at just gone 3 at which point I dropped my Tesco to pick up some essential supplies and home to pick Norm up before heading down to the station.

By 4:45 we were sitting on a train about to head down to London for an AHS exec and trustees meeting at Conway Hall. This lasted most of the day though I had to leave at 2pm so I could be on a train by 2:30 to get back up to Leeds in time to start another close on Saturday evening. I ended up getting home from that at 4am Sunday morning. Crazy.

I couldn’t really sleep on the way down there as the train was too noisy, on the way back I was far more tired but was on my own by this point so I didn’t want to have any real sleep given I had my laptop and DSLR camera on me.

Most impressive of all, I managed it on like two cans of Red Bull compared to the several litres I would normally be on. That’s only slightly very unhealthy 😀 .