Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Having filled up on steak we decided to wander over to Oracle on the south bank for some drinks. Unfortunately, Oracle was already closed by 11pm, which is a pretty poor effort.

So instead we headed up to Call Lane and ended up in Call Lane Social.

I saw ended up, of the ten people that came out for the meal, only four of us ended up in there – myself, Norm, Jonni and Tom. After the first round, Jonni and Tom disappeared too, meaning that of the ten people left at the end of the night were the only two people in the entire group that actually have 9 to 5 jobs! But the important thing is, we showed those kids how it’s done :D.

Call Lane Social was pretty disappointing, their drinks range was OK, but nothing to shout about and service took absolutely ages and it wasn’t even that busy.

On Norm’s (almost) actual birthday we headed down to River Plate for a good piece of steak.

Having already pre-decided, Norm went for the 1kg steak! It covered an entire dinner plate and to be honest, I think we all had our doubts as to whether it could physically be eaten by one man – never the less, Norm stepped up to the challenge and defeated it.

I decided a smaller steak would be a good call – especially as I was having half a rack of ribs to start with! Plus having only eaten what could be considered two meals in itself, I still had some room for dessert.

Overall, however, I was somewhat disappointed with River Plate. It was excellent, but it didn’t live up to my expectations given previous experiences. The judge’s verdicts are in, and Blackhouse is officially the best steak restaurant in Leeds.

I’m very dubious about this idea that every Wendy has to be adopted as part of people doubling up on their birthday celebrations with something on the actual day and then a Wendy as well – especially as I’m bitter about not being able to do this with Viv’s birthday being on what would have been my birthday Wendy and Halloween the weekend after.

Never the less, September Wendy was a fantastic night with the usual drinks starting at our apartment, followed by a bit of time in the Old Bar before heading in.

I actually felt somewhat guilty in the morning because I woke up feeling fine. Though any chance of that being a problem was quickly solved when we held the post-Wendy fry up the next day, once again cooked primarily by yours truly – and also included Yorkshire Puddings!

Unfortunately, my camera died soon after we got to The Old Bar, so I have a distinct lack of photos, so the ones from inside of Wendy were snapped by Norm.

Earlier this month, myself and George headed down to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire social at The Adelphi for a few drinks.

James had a voucher for two meals and a bottle of wine – so we ended up having a rather romantic evening. Surprisingly as well, I found myself around the median age range – shocking for HSoWY! 😛

Having had to eat and drink at quite some speed in order to make it to Alea on time to register for the poker tournament, I was somewhat intoxicated by the time I left and ended up doing quite well – adding further evidence to the idea that I play better poker when I’m drunk.

Since joining Facebook in 2006 (that’s over five years ago now – I genuinely don’t think I remember a time before Facebook), I’ve always had a policy of not accepting family members as friends.

There is good reason for this. Thanks to the innovative tagging features Facebook keeps introducing, your Facebook profile is full of photos, notes and status updates about just how drunk you where when you threw up in what you thought was a bathroom but later turned out to be something completely different. Nobody wants their family to see that side of their lives.

However, in the spirit of being more open, I’ve decided to rescind this policy. For better or for worse – I guess we’ll find out soon!

On Wednesday, we headed down to Sheffield Humanists for their talk by Dr Natalie Hammond, “Paying for Sex.” She had recently completed her PhD on the subject, specifically men who pay women for sex and the law surrounding it.

After the talk, there was a group discussion which took a while to get going, initially with people discussing the laws surrounding the topic, but finally someone got up and moved the discourse to where we really wanted it to be – the ethics.

Naturally, being a progressive group, most people were in favour of women having the right to do as they wish and rational enough to see that it is just the same as selling your body to any labour (I sold my body to McDonald’s, doing hard labour for far less money for example), and supporting decriminalisation so that victims are not afraid to come forward and the industry can be properly regulated.

A good parallel between this with the law surrounding abortion. Even if you disagree with abortion, it still makes sense to legalise it because of the harm caused by back street abortions and driving the practice underground.

Similarly, the harm caused in prostitution is nothing to do with any inherent problems in the industry, it’s the fact that we drive it underground and as a consequence the pimps, the human traffickers, the drugs, etc, etc get involved and that is what causes the problems.

Luckily, there were a few people in the audience with more regressive views, so some great debate got going :D.

With the university term drawing near, Elina had to return to Finland for the final year of her degree. So, at the end of August we headed over to Manchester Airport to drop her off.

It was pretty rubbish. I hate airports at the best of time, but when you’re only going there so that it can take away your girlfriend, that’s just a kick in the nuts.

Luckily, in today’s modern age, distance is only a partial barrier and Skype has been serving us well ever since. Big thanks to George for coming to keep me company too.

Recently, myself and Elina went for a walk down the canal. It was pretty scary, there was a lot of nature, including the rabbit you can just about see in the middle of the photo of the bushes.

Elina and I recently headed over to Ilkley Moor to take in a bit more nature. Afterwards, we went to lunch at the Cow & Calf pub, which turned out to be the exact same chain as when we ate at the Roundhay Fox the day before.

Having a bit of time before before Elina headed back to Finland, we headed over to Tropical World and Roundhay Park where you can observe nature from the safe distance of behind 20mm of glass.