Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

For me, 2015 has been a year dominated by reading and wedding planning. I have been on a mission to get to the bottom of my reading list – a goal that has almost been achieved. Of course, before all of that, every new year starts the same way: clearing up from our New Year’s Eve party.

I have been a vegetarian for almost ten years. However, in January, I took the step of going from in principle to actually eliminating meat for a month or two. It was interesting. Elina spent the month wedding dress shopping, in Finland, or both. I said goodbye to my Harrogate commute. Elsewhere the Charlie Hebdo attack took place.

In February we visited The Big Smoke and took in a show. We celebrated Darwin Day, Valentine’s Day and Galileo Day. The Patriots bested the Seahawks in Superbowl XLIX and we said goodbye to Mr. Spock. I spent a lot of time on the road as I conducted by winter club visits as part of my role as Toastmasters area governor.

I took a break from reading Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in March to give me some time to watch his shows instead. I took Elina to Sheffield for her birthday (lucky girl!). I settled on a backup career choice and read one of the most important books of my life. The F1 season started and we said a sat goodbye to the greatest author of our generation. The Sunday Assembly band, The Assembly Line, played its first gig. There was a solar eclipse, which was rubbish.

Things became rather political in April. There was a leaders debate, but more importantly, I announced my candidacy for local council. Our Easter Potluck went down well. Far better than my three first roast for example. Frinks returned and we published the 4th edition of the Leeds Restaurant Guide. The Assembly Line continued to rock and I played my first league games with Leeds Samurai.

Responsive web design was on the cards for May with both Worfolk Online and CWF websites getting a make-over, including a lovely update to Worfolk Lectures. At home, it was all about baking bread. We were shocked and stunned when the Conservatives took a majority in Parliament, but at least I received 104 votes. We warmed
GabrielÄ— & Tim’s flat. We visited Nottingham for the Toastmasters district conference, and Sheffield to see Mark Knopfler.

Nothing much happened in June, so I made a list of my favourite books. He had a weekend away in the Peak District with friends. The Assembly Line played a gig and the Women’s World Cup kicked off.

I actually found a use for reading Jane Austen in July and the United States triumphed in the Women’s World Cup. The Assembly Line performed and we launched FinnStore. We attended the Finnish picnic and held our first annual family BBQ. Leeds Samurai earned their second ever league victory while in Manchester. I started piano lessons and I enjoyed my first month free from Toastmasters area governorship.

I read the most incomprehensible book ever in August. There was a trip to Finland for our Finland wedding. Jack dropped by from Australia and the flag football season came to a close. We held the Humanist summer social at Kirkstall Abbey.

I was finally eligible to compete again at Toastmasters in September and did so with a vengeance. We celebated Samantha’s first birthday, saw Dr Hassall interview Richard Dawkins, and published the Finland Restaurant Guide. Atheist Society showed a revival at the kick-off quiz. We visited Hugh & Anna, Blackpool for the Loony Party conference and Skiption for Yarndale.

I spent October doing wedding prep and baking pies. We had our Leeds wedding. I entered my final year of my 20’s and triumphed in the Area 15 speech contest final, the video of which is now online. We visited London to see the Jets v Dolpins at Wemberly. It was Back to the Future Day. We finished the month off with our Halloween party.

I completed my second Abbey Dash in November and I received my Parkrun 50 t-shirt. My dad earned his too. I wrote my first novel as part of NaNoWriMo. We finished the month with Finnish Christmas carols and another gig by The Assembly Line.

In December we completed the 6th annual Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters and published the 5th edition of the Leeds Restaurant Guide. We celebrated my grandma’s 90th birthday and held the Humanist winter social at the Lawnswood Arms.

I am working with Sky Sports at the moment, who recently relocated their office to Leeds Dock. They are encouraging everyone to talk about how good it is, so here is my contribution.

It was a smooth transition and everything is up and running. It was only a few months between signing the lease and moving in, so there is still plenty to do. It will be great when we get the other buildings up-and-running to give us additional meeting space.

It is a nice location and you get a good view of the dock.

That floor is as slippy as it looks. You can pick up a huge amount of speed on the new chairs: great for chair racing. You can also see that there is no roof. This is the same across the entire building. Everything has been left exposed, which is a design feature. There are screens everywhere, so you feel like you are in the future.

Noise levels were quite high initially but it seems to be calming down now. There is also a cafe that Sky subsidise. So for example, I can of pop that would be £2.50 on the high street is £1.00 in the cafe.

Whether it quite puts us up there with Google and Facebook as one of the best campuses in the world, I suspect probably not. But it is a cool place to work. And ultimately it is the people that make Sky a great place to be.

After achieving my 50th Parkrun and earning my t-shirt in September, November saw my dad reach the target too. He is now hot on my heels for the 100 club. Of course, it is not a competition. Something I want to be very clear about given a man who is twice my age is a good 4 minutes faster than I am.

I went over to Temple Newsam to run it. Overall, I think it is a better Parkun course. It is up and down hills, and there is some actual countryside. In comparison, Woodhouse Moor is just running around the houses. Temple Newsam does get too muddy at some points, but Woodhouse Moor has the horrible muddy corner as well, so I hardly avoid it on my regular run. Mud is fine of course, but the possibility of slipping over and hurting myself slows me down.

This tree is not supposed to be underwater.

The River Aire had been really high recently though, and moving at an incredible pace. At least for a river that usually meanders along slowly. I took a video. It is difficult to capture the speed at which it is moving, especially once you put it into YouTube’s landscape player. Here it is anyway:

For our Halloween party this year I carved up some pumpkins. They all looked very happy.

I started doing Parkun early last year. I’m not really sure how much I like it, but I have been pulled back each week by the promise of a free t-shirt. Now, almost two years later, I have said t-shirt!

It was totally worth it. Now on to the 100 club. That’s a black t-shirt…

For what I loosely described as a stag do, I headed down to Wembley Stadium for the Jets v Dolphin NFL game.

The seats were okay. We were in the premium club. I have previously wondered whether being in the lower tier would be better, but you do actually get a good view and can see the entire field. The only issue was that being on the north side we had the sun in our eyes, so being on the other side would have been a lot better. That disappeared after the 4th quarter though, and the view improved.

The merch was not run very well. We got there several hours early and they had already closed the NFL shop saying the queue was too big. Why they could not just run it throughout the entire game was unclear. They had other merch shops inside, but they had all run out of caps, missing an opportunity to make a significant buck out of Norman and I who were not prepared for the sun making an appearance.

The game itself was pretty good. It was nice to follow a game I did not care that much about as I could relax and enjoy it. Last time I saw the NFL at Wemeberly it was the 49ers v Jaguars. Obviously, it was the Jaguars, so no chance of the 49ers losing, but it was still a little tense. It got very exciting when the Dolpins looked like they would make a forth quarter comeback but sadly it was not to be.

The food was good too. I had the world’s longest hot dog, which itself was covered in pulled pork. I couldn’t finished it.

A good day all around. Thanks to everyone who came to keep me company, especially my dad who drove there and back!

It has been a while since I have wasted some of my time moaning about a trivial issue. So I’ve sent a letter to Wasabi Co to complain about their milkshakes not working.

Hi,

I think you should remove the milkshakes from your menu because they never ever work.

We’ve stopped even asking your Albion Street store because every single time we have gone in there ever since it opened, they have said the machine is not working and we need to go to the Trinity store to get a milkshake.

However the Trinity one manages little better. In the twenty times we have been in there to ask if the milkshakes are working we have maybe had four times, and that was quite a while ago – the last ten times in a row we have been in there they have not been working.

I used to work at McDonald’s and I was embarrassed about our failure rate because our milkshakes would be out of action maybe 10% of the time, probably less. Your failure rate is over 90%; they basically never ever work.

We have stopped going in now; we just go to the smoothie place next door because we know they won’t be working. It feels like they are only on the menu to annoy both your own staff and your customers.

Best wishes,
Chris

Still, probably good news for my health, and Juice next door.

Wasabi have since responded saying they are doing all they can to get the milkshake machine fixed. So we got out hopes up and went back a week later. This only lead to another email…

Hi,

Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. We went in yesterday and the machine was still not fixed. I was told that the branch no longer sold milkshakes as the machine was broken and would be out-of-action permanently.

Best wishes,
Chris

They again got back to me to say that they definitely are fixing it, and will be getting a new machine into their Albion Street branch too, presumably to start selling milkshakes there for the first time ever.

When you order online from Sainsbury’s you can order root ginger in a distinct number of pieces. However, the size is a little variable. The piece on the left is one week’s piece and the piece on the right is the one from the week before.

National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, takes place every November. The idea is that you commit to writing just under 2,000 words a day and by the end of the month you will have a 50,000 word novel.

I have been meaning to give it a go for years now, so this year I am trying to commit to it. I have an idea and I have outlined the story, which I am hoping will provide me with the framework and remove a major blocker in the motivation. I could be wrong though, we shall see.

I am not committing to writing a full length novel. I have the outline of the story, so I am going to write that and if I finish early then so be it, that will be fine. A short novel is better than no novel at all!