Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Last week, we headed down to Alea Casino for a poker night that had been organised by the analysis team.

Row One, aka myself and Jason where there to represent the office and I brought Norm along too. After the night we had, I think future tournaments might be restricted to analysts only though.

As part of an elaborate tactic, I went out first to make sure I wasn’t stealing chips off Jason and Norm. They then went on to place first and second, taking almost all of the prize money. Good times.

Last week, I took Elina for a romantic night’s food shopping. Came back from Marko with 16 steaks, 30 bottles of Kopparberg and a box of chocolate bars. Job done :D.

Another great thing about meeting Elina’s mum was she had even brought me some presents over from Finland! Apparently, each year the reindeer shed their antlers, and then people collect them up and turn them into useful things like bottle openers, stopper and cork screws. It’s the cycle of nature beautiful.

It was a rather all-star turn out for our poker night last week with myself, Elina, Jonni, Kat, Norm, Casual Dave, Happy Matt and Jason all eventually turning up.

Nobody dressed up this week, which was a little disappointing, but never the less it was a good night with Jason and Happy Matt eventually walking away with the prize, after just managing to knock out Kat the Card Shark.

Last week, I took Elina to meet my friends at York Brights. It was a rather strange evening as when I walked in I found them sitting in a whole different corner to the usual one, due to the amount of people at the pub. For creatures of habit, like myself, this simply isn’t cool and I spent a good twenty minutes repeating over and over again “this isn’t where we sit…” ;).

There were also lower numbers than usually turn out, perhaps due to so many people taking holidays at this time of year – which also contributed to a slightly lower than expected turn out to Skeptics this month.

Never the less it was a great night all the same, and we tried the food for the first time which turned out to be average.

On the way back, the heavens opened to what I think was the heaviest rainfall I have ever driven through, possibly even heavier than the torrential downpour I went through on my way to appear on Ummah Channel. We’re talking so heavy that I was driving significantly below the speed limit! Nothing wrong with rain, when you’re inside though ;).

As usual, Viki was pretending to be ill at Wendy, which meant she was feeling fully refreshed on Sunday morning having gone home early. You would think that would mean she could go and get breakfast, but apparently not. Luckily Fonze stepped up to the plate and delivered the goods, with Norm adding his cheffing expertise to prepare it all.

Having travelled round Europe last week I saw some amazing architecture, especially in Milan, Salzburg and Verona (where which both myself and Heather Nova now dream about).

However, thanks to the hard efforts of myself and Elina, Leeds now equally has its place among the great architectural works of the world, with our newly constructed Kopparberg tower.

This month’s Wendy House turned out to be a bit of a handful. The night started off with Viki’s 21st birthday party, to which none of Viki’s mates turned up, but luckily the three of us are so popular that we made up the numbers with our own friends ;).

To celebrate we did trays of shots, and managed to mix around eight different spirits leading to be receiving the following text next day from Jonni…

Fuck your shots. I woke up in the doorway of my old flat.

As I explained, it’s not really a good night unless you wake up on someone else’s porch. Having carefully planned ahead to make sure I would have chicken wings ready for when I got home too, what more could you really want from a night out.

Thanks to Nicola for the photos.

On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.

She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.

It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.

We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.

Recently, we headed out to Revolution for a work social. We started with a buffet dinner, which was very nice, but then I really hate buffets because, as a Yorkshireman, I have to eat until I can eat no more to get my value for money, and that is quite frankly, uncomfortable. Never the less it was quite a good night though starting tailing off at around midnight so we headed home.