Chris Worfolk's Blog

I earned over £100 yesterday.

How awesome is that?

After New Years Eve close I was in work the next day for 10am which was almost an open (we opened at 9, the first staff came in at 8) and I was supposed to be on until 5:30. Fate however seemed to have different plans. The closing team was Rich, Hannah and Haris. Rich is a kitchen closer (though can do front but doesn’t really know what he’s doing that well), Hannah isn’t either and Haris might be able to manage kitchen but doesn’t really know what he’s doing that well. So it wasn’t the best situation ever.

Then Hannah phoned in sick. They were now down to two closers and you need at least three (preferably four). So somehow I got talked into staying on and doing the close. We got out at 2:30 meaning that I worked a 16 and a half hour shift. That took some Red Bull. I wouldn’t have agreed to do it but it was time and a half yesterday so when you take off my breaks I got 12 and a half hours at time and a half and 2 and a half hours at premium (after midnight) hours. Not bad.

Afterwards we headed over to Amanda’s party. Well, I say party, I think we missed most of it as when I got there I found both Dannys and Chris there as well as Amanda passed out on the sofa. We spent most of the night watching movies then went for breakfast at 6:30 as soon as the restaurant opened just to annoy Rob :p. Well, and also because we wanted food. I ended up getting back home about 1:30pm ish. It’s been a long few days.

By two middle aged men.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking. Not because you should be thinking it, it just means you have a dirty mind but because when I mentioned it to other people, that’s what they thought. Well, joked upon at least, they didn’t actually think it. I didn’t, it was all sweet and innocent when I said it.

So what am I talking about? Getting pulled over by the cops of course.

New Years Eve was crawling with cops. I rarely see them around when driving around (though I don’t drive as nearly as much as most other people) but I saw at least half a dozen just on my travels on New Years Eve one of which was following me for about half a mile then disappeared on the roundabout. I couldn’t work out where it had gone but 100m further up the Mad Mile it suddenly appeared again lights flashing.

They just asked me questions like had I been drinking, who the car was registered to, where I lived, etc but they seemed to have an odd attitude. I was a little daunted at first and they pressed the drinking question. After they asked it yet again I eventually ended up saying “I’m not going to risk it tonight am I? There’s cops everywhere.” I hastely added “not that I ever would” but this small sign of confidence (or possibly cheek) seemed to get them to back off and leave me alone. I guess they are looking for the people who have been drinking and are mega-nervous they have just been busted.

It was a little daunting at first but I was fairly certain they didn’t have anything on me. I was doing 45 in a 50 zone and it wasn’t like that was suspicously slow as it had just turned from a 40 to a 50 zone so I was still accelerating up. Everyone else gets pulled over all the time so it was just a random spot check. It was 3am after all.

Anyway, speaking of New Years Eve plans, I did the close at work with Martin (our store manager) who got us out at 5 past 10. Though we closed 20 minutes early so it was a 1:25 close, compared with James Martin’s 1:20 on Christmas Eve. It was an irritating night though because a lot of the things I had been taught to do on a close we weren’t allowed to do because we weren’t supposed to be doing them (things I genuinely didn’t know we weren’t supposed to do).

After the close we headed off to Danny’s and flicked out way through music channels and the countdown on BBC1 until about 2ish – 2:30ish when I headed back to see if the party in my street was still going on. I found everyone had gone to bed when I got back though so I decided to get some sleep given I’m now up for work.

Something struck me as quite interesting the other day. A few weeks ago the union held a housing talk which said if you went outside of the student areas you could get even cheaper housing of like £40 a week which I presumed would be just as low standard as typical student housing. But there is a much bigger difference.

Take this for an example. The houses my friends live in go for between like £48 and £60 a week and are student houses. That means they suck. Don’t get me wrong, you get some quite nice student houses in comparission to others. But I have yet to see a “nice” student house. IE, a house that as a non-student you would think, yeah this is quite a nice house. In terms of student houses there are different standards but compared to other houses they are very low standard housing. All of them.

Secondly they are in really bad areas. Hyde Park, Woodhouse and Headingley are some of the most burgled areas in the entire country not to mention the string of friends I could reel off that have been mugged. And the area itself is just a horrible area I mean you have Woodhouse Moor but generally they are dingly streets filled with terrace housing and very little greenary.

Ok so let’s say that is like £55 a week plus add on another £20 for all your utility bills (water, gas, electricity, phone, internet, TV, etc) that comes to a total of £75 a week.

Ok now imagine this. 3 bedroom semi-detached house to share. It’s nicely furnished in terms of the standards of a a real house – ie, nice enough that it would meet up to the standards that your parents would live in. Kitchen, dining room, lounge, bit of a garden, nice big drive enough to fit about 6 small cars onto. Nice area too both in terms of aesthetics with plenty of green and indeed a lake literally over the road from you and in terms of crime, or the lack of it.

So you basically have a nice house, in a nice area, without the crime you get in student areas. How much would you pay for that? Presumably a lot more than the crappy student house in the crappy student area right?

How does £25 sound? All bills inclusive. I kid you not. (Disclaimer: this figure comes from a real offer made to me. But a damn good one. I’m not saying they are all quite this good but my point still stands). It’s like, well in this example it is exactly, one third of the price of a student house. And about a million times nicer. The only thing you don’t have is location (in terms of student housing being near town and uni). Other than that it’s a no-brainer. Seriously think about that. Your paying three times as much for a house of no where near as good quality in no where near as nice an area, so you can get around a little easier. We’re getting raped.

I’ve been kept busy with work over the past few days. As I mentioned previously I was working Christmas Eve then I got woken up by a call at 12 on Boxing Day asking if I could come in and do a night shift. Then yesterday I was on the close and today I’ve had another call asking me to come in. They must really like me :p.

But despite keeping busy I still haven’t started my revision, still haven’t done all the development work I was planning, I’m barely on top of my inbox, the other little things you never get chance to do during term time and need the holiday for haven’t been done. There is just no real progress with the whole life thing.

So it’s Chrismukka. Happy birthday Santa!

Anyway, still very tired. Got a few hours extra sleep in this afternoon. Well rest at least, I got watching Star Trek: First Contact. We has Chrismukka dinner at 3 then afterwards I headed over to Amanda’s for a general social event with the people at work. Plus I managed to navigate my way to Allerton Bywater and back, go me!

So last night didn’t go too well. My alarm went off at 6:40 and I didn’t even feel like I was asleep when it went of. I think I was actually lightly dozing so I got a small amount of light sleep. Still, I was tossing and turning until about 3ish when I gave up and watched a bit of South Park for an hour before trying to get to sleep again. Not being massively successful but I think I managed it eventually. Not massively useful when I had to be up in about two afters after that though.

I have an 8-4:30 shift today which means by the time I get out all the supermarkets and most of the shops will be closed. Awesome. And not open again for another two and a half days as most open late on the day after Boxing Day. I might drive back to uni tonight and collect some more stuff. I found myself wanting specific elements of my DVD collection last night. My music collection too.

Anyway hopefully last night will have reset my sleep pattern. Though it’s only going to get messed up again on Wednesday.

I was going to get to bed early because I have to be up at 7am tommorow for work. But that plan went wrong somewhere. Can’t say I am really looking forward to work. Sunday mornings are always busy and if we don’t have plenty of staff on we’re screwed as I suck at breakfast kitchen.

I managed to get some work done on a few projects this evening but I still have a load of random tasks to do as well as get my revision started. I mean, the quote unquote holiday started two weeks ago and yet it feels like we have only just broken up. I don’t know where the time has gone.

So yeah, it’s not been the most relaxing Chrismukka so far. I can’t say I am particularly looking forward to the upcoming events as I can’t see them being any less stressful. I want to get back to uni and de-stress and get some revision done but how much chance I’ll get with holiday stuff, transport and working. I’m working tomorrow as previously mentioned which I should make clear is Christmas Eve. I’m closing on New Years Eve. And I’m working New Years Day. Awesome. Actually New Years Day pays time and a half which is pretty cool and I presume everyone else will be turning up to work drunk too.

Awwwwww yeah.

I “went to bed” over 3 hours ago. How come I’m still up playing WoW? I turned off my laptop and everything. Yet now suddenly it’s on again and I’ve been playing WoW for the past few hours.

I keep meaning to make a shopping list of the big purchases I want to make over the next year. Well, not year, but next 6 months at least. Loads of other stuff too but the major purchases. Might as well blog about it, I blog about everything else and will be blogging about them when I buy them.

• UPS so that if we have a power cut my computers will be ok. My parents had a power cut the other day so it’s a real issue. I have a UPS picked out though it only has 3 plugs which will probably cover my desktop, my server and my monitor so I can see what is going on. But my other server, laptops and other electronics may have to do without.
• Server for next year so I can set up a proper file server that I can use and access from elsewhere too. I’ve blogged about these cheap machines loads of times before. It shouldn’t be too expensive but I need small form factor stuff which isn’t mega cheap so the case could be the most expensive component :D.
• DVD player as my old one is broken and my computer can’t play region 1 DVDs. Should be getting this for Chrismukka.
• MP3 player as again, my old one is broken. I like my current one though so I might try to fix that one as it’s just the little joystick thing that is playing up, other than that it works fine.
• Dishwasher as I’m not a washing up fan so if I’m going to move into a house next year I want to try and get a dishwasher installed.
• GPS system as I can’t navigate so I need one for my car. Or I would if I had a car.
• Car so that I can make use of my GPS system. Also so I can get to work.
• Speakers both for my computer system and car. I thought this list was looking a bit light then I realised I had forgotten these. I really want to power up my desktop speakers and probably fit better ones for my car too.

Need to cut down on my social spending I think. My bank statements are just a massive list of cach machine withdrawals. I’m doing plenty of work still and my hours have picked up a bit over Chrismukka so hopefully I’ll start being able to cross things off my list. I’m thinking about moving specific amounts of money into savings account as a kind of “reserved for stuff on my list” type money. I also have large accommodation bills to pay so I need to make sure I have money available for that.

EDIT: This UPS looks good actually, 4 powered sockets and everything.

I’d like to congratulate Phil on getting blogrolled! My blogroll is most selective at the moment and all blogs on it must be regularly updated an interesting (though I also have Michelle blogrolled). So being quite impressed with Phil’s blogging particularly over the Chrismukka period when everyone else has stopped and indeed managing to blog during term time when he doesn’t have an internet connection, his blog is now on the list which so far still only numbers five blogs.

I’ve been meditating on the subject of my blogroll recently. There are a lot of blogs I read on a regular basis which is what I use my blogroll for but most of them don’t have new posts on each time I read them and I like that my blogroll is quite selective. So I was a little torn as to what to do. I considered blogrolling everyone or even creating a minor blogroll for the rest of you. I’m still torn as to what to do. Feel free to throw in your thoughts.