Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

I have a lot of stuff.

Despite making several trips in my car during the slight overlap period we have I did my main move along with a lot of the house stuff on Saturday morning and managed to pack out my car, Norm’s car, my parent’s Mondeo estate, the trailer on the back of the Mondeo estate and my parent’s X-Trail. Quite an impressive convoy we had going.

Still things are moving slowly. The lounge is still a mass of boxes as is my bedroom and it’s not getting shifted particularly quickly. While I spend most of my time at home sorting through things, when you work 7 days a week, you’re free time is not actually not much time.

Still, I have some days off coming in December, I can use those to unpack.

With the long awaited conference for atheist, Humanist, secular and generally free thinking student societies finally having arrived, myself and Norm headed up to Edinburgh for the conference that would form the foundation of our national federation for such societies.

I feel I was lied to. I was told Scotland had a road network. It really doesn’t. It’s barely motorway up to Newcastle due to roadworks currently going on and after that it just runs out entirely – some of the A1, the legendary A1, is basically just a country lane.

Still we made it up there in one piece and kicked off the Friday night with introductions, a meal and some late night drinking. It was nice to have some fun as basically what followed was two days of talks, debates and lots of Humanism.

Never the less we have all come away from the event with a new national oranisation – the national federation of atheist, Humanist and secular student studies or A.H.S. for short. So all in all a rather successful weekend.

Last Wednesday we headed down to Bella Italia for a form of “goodbye” meal to Mr. O’Shea who is regretably leaving us to take a million-pound-per-day job down in London.

It was a fairly nice place and the good was good and despite me getting called away for one or two very short phone calls the company was excellent too. Not a bad place to spend an evening.

In preperation for our upcoming house move and Oli needing to get alcohol and snacks in for his birthday party tonight we headed off to Tesco (via a few other shops last night) and managed to spend a rather impressive £260 between us!

Between the endless series of deliveries for things we need for the new house as well, I’m rather scared of looking at my credit card bills. Especially as my wages for the next 6 weeks are basically going to pay for my rent and maybe my petrol :o.

It’s week two of my job at Open Door Design and it’s coming along nicely. I’ve been working around with one of their previous big sites which I’ve really been able to get my teeth into and rip apart. It’s everything you expect when you get into the real world, I’ll leave you to fill in what that means :D.

Can it really be? Has it really been three years since I arrived at university as a young fresh-faced student who had a good idea of what awaited him due to the amount of TV he had watched?

Apparently so. Last Friday was the last day of term of my third and final year at university and despite the cheeseyness where else could it really end except for Fruity? Especially given it was the last Fruity of the year and cheap entry.

We started the night at Danny’s house party which involved lots of burning things which was fun. Then just before 1am we headed off to hit Fruity. It was an excellent night as it was fairly empty with many students having gone home; you could comfortably dance and get straight to the bar yet there was enough people in there to give it some atmosphere – the perfect level.

We ended up getting home about 4am and retired for a well earned night’s sleep. Except Liz who was up being “just friends” with George till 8am :P.

So, I started work this week.

It’s not the best thing ever to be honest. I have to get up and dressed at like 8am. Not pm – am!

Still, the job itself is pretty good. While I’m currently in the getting myself up to speed stage I think once I get my teeth into some good projects it is going to be an excellent job. Plus the people are really nice and friendly and we’re just round the corner from Elland Road McDonald’s. What more could you ask for?

This year the union are running a “Skint” fortnight which means that instead of offering free entry to the last two Fruitys like they normally do, they are charging £2 entry. It still proved a tempting enough offer last Friday however.

I seem to be even more of a light weight within the past few weeks. We got to the pub about 5 past 10 and by 11 I was struggling to finish my 6th drink. It’s clearly been far too long since we were doing regular Bondi Beach Bar trips, that was like the first 15 minutes “back in the day.”

I recon we did it the right way though – hit The Old Bar first, then head up to Terrace when The Old Bar kicks out and finally head into Fruity when Terrace kicks out, that way Fruity is already warmed up and playing ultra-cheese by the time you arrive.

On saying that maybe it was a bad idea to get there in time for B*Witched. We seemed to scare Rosie’s housemates off by bursting into song. I mean, it’s not that strage a couple of mid-twenties males screaming their hearts out C’est La Vie. Right?

Having done a lot of this over the years it seems somewhat tearful to think that this could well be my last blog from DEC-10. It’s been like a home to many of us, particularly those of us who have spent more time in here than our actual homes (I wish I was joking lol).

While my room is very noisy with the hum of computers and climate control devices I’ll miss the quiet hum of DEC-10, the endless late nights we spend in here coding. I hadn’t really been dwelling on the idea of one chapter coming to a close and another beginning but sitting here is really making me think. And we all know that is a bad road to go down :P.

Then again, who really wanted a good degree from the University of Leeds anyway?

I mean, it’s not like such a hideous failure in my degree means my entire life is a failure. I have many other strengths outside of academia. I have many other areas of interest and expertise – such as my intimidating knowledge of Simpsons quotes.

And after all, who really wanted the opportunity to go on and do further study or be hired in an exciting graduate role? I’m sure their are companies just crying out to pay people huge wages for researching just how many flips make the perfect burger.