I headed out to the Deer Park with Si this lunch time for Sunday lunch, perhaps somewhat in celebration of beating Charlotte by a good two hours on our closing race last night and because there is never a bad day to go for a pub lunch.
The real shock of the day is that having sat down and pretended to look at the menu before going for the same thing I always have, I actually choose something different this time! Sure I went for a burger rather than a steak but still, I think it’s big leap to actually alter my usual selection.
I really enjoyed today to be honest, it was nice that it was just the two of us, it’s an excellent chance to be cynical without someone dragging the mood up. Sunday lunch is about relaxed chat, a nice meal and then heading home for a nap, none of this hyper talkative nonsense. Just a relaxing lunch so I can drift off and pretend for an hour or two that I don’t have a pile of work to get through.
Friday saw the Christian Union come to Perspective to talk to us about their faith. It was an interesting event shall we say.
While so far Perspective has been fairly restrained so far there were some rather heated discussions on Friday and behaviour on the A-Soc side was quiet frankly not up to scratch. We persevered though and at least the feedback I got from Joe from the CU when chatting to him afterwards was that people were at least asking geniune questions which is what Perspective is all about.
The food was a bit of a disaster too, the catering plans feel through and so I had to be dispatached to bring in pizza which resulted in there not being much food to go around. All in all, not the most successful session but at least the discussions kept going long into the night.
Last Friday saw the first planning meeting for Rationalist Week 2009. While the event is still over two months away things are finally starting to fall into place and we’re about half way through our fundraising drive for it so we need to keep the momentum going on.
The first meeting was really just to throw around ideas but the week is starting to take shape now, at least as outlining the events we want to do. Exciting stuff!
Last Thursday saw A-Soc’s Darwin Day 2009 celebration in the union. Thanks to the hard work of Nicola and Sophie as well as the baking of Norm and Michelle, it was an all day party which ended up raising us some cash for Rationalist Week too.
If you aren’t aware, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Darwin was a brilliant scientist that who moved our knowledge of the origins of life on uncountably despite the controversial nature of his work. Happy birthday Charles!
Well that’s it, I’m now a card carrying Humanist.
On the plus side, it would seem people are fairly receptive to moving the HSoWY meetings to a different night so we can finally end the clashing between HSoWY and A-Soc.
Last night’s talk was by Rich on Neodarwinism which was interesting. Meanwhile Norm lead a group discussion on Darwin at A-Soc, both events seemed to go down fairly well. Afterwards we converged in The Terrace so it was all good.
While I’m on the topic, congratulations to John and Zoltan who have been elected onto the committee at the EGM.
With a last minute lack of turnout on Monday night, I headed down to Club 360 at HiFi with Chris T to check out Subculture who had invited me down to watch them play.
There are quite a number of bands playing, each with their own unique style shall we say 😉 . I was impressed by Subculture, they got the crowd going and the music was good which is all you can really ask for from a gig.
Did someone say recovery steak? My my yes.
Sunday saw the day start with a trip to the Deer Park for lunch with Si. Norm and Kate also joined us as well as Liz who I would describe as being hyper and never stopping talking, but she wasn’t hyper, that’s just Liz at baserate.
This was followed by an evening trip to Louisiana Bar & Grill at which my earlier mixed grill prevented me from making the obvious choice. They also had a 20oz steak which was very tempted but being resigned to trying something new and exciting I went for the swordfish steak. It was fairly disappointing to be honest but never the less an experience.
The best part of the restaurant was the table cloths you could draw on though. Clearly there was only one thing on our minds 😉 .
I reiterate my horror of town on a weekend. 30 year olds still wearing the same outfits they were wearing 10 years ago, people so illiterate they can’t understand the difference between male and female toilets, drunk hookers lying in the middle of the ice covered road trying to light up their last cigarette. It’s just not a place you want to be.
That having been said, once you blank it all out and look at it on a microenvironmental level, things can be fun.
Having enjoyed a nice meal at Colton Mill Harvester (I didn’t go to the salad cart so sadly I’ll never know whether Morgan Freeman was working it) we headed in town and did the rounds at Wetherspoon’s, Sports Cafe and Walkabout. Of course, the night finished with the obligatory trip to Subway.
The real suprise of the evening though was that Crabs was still standing upright by the end of the evening. First time for everything I guess 😀 .
Last night saw the second session of Perspective at which we welcomed John Halsall to talk about Buddhism.
As with last week out speaker delivered an excellent talk and I came away thinking I had really learnt something. He also led a short mediation session in which we were encouraged to focus on different parts of the body in term and try to consider what was going on in each of them. Though to be honest it just got me thinking how many parts of my body hurt lol.
Yet again we packed out the room and so next week we might have to reconsider how we lay the room out or maybe even try and move to a bigger room. It’s not easy being so popular.
