Posts Tagged ‘holidays’

Happy birthday, Easter Bunny!

As a belated Valentine’s Day present, I recently took Elina to Paris for four days. We took a plane there.

Needless to say, it was incredibly stressful, but once you put aise the horror of travelling it was a fantastic place to be – these two extremes balance the entire trip out to an average response of “it was ok.”

Also, my “translator” girlfriend, refused to speak to anyone on the trip, so I had to do all the talking, despite not speaking a word of French for over a decade. Another lie in her backstory is revealed. But anyway…

Paris is a gorgeous city. We were fairly central – just five minutes walk from Notre Dame Cathedral, so we spent our nights walking the banks of the Senn and listening to groups of jazz musicians freestyle by the river. Not that you have to be central – the beautiful buildings seem to go on for miles and miles, all in the same Parisian style.

We got the open top bus tour tickets that they sell everywhere – even Leeds – so we could just hop on and off, allowing us to work our way round the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde and do some shopping on the Champs Elysées as well as seeing the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Panthelon, which were all only a short walk away.

I wasn’t expecting a great deal from our hotel room given my experiences in other capitols, but it turns out we had got one of their “executive suites” (LateRooms FTW) so it turned out to be massive, with an en suite that was bigger than entire hotel rooms I have stayed in in London, and a balcony overlooking the streets below.

I was also shocked at how cheap it was to eat out – the restaurants in the Latin quarter offer three course meals for €10 and there was more food than I could eat! On the last night I treated myself to the €15 menu (which is still half what I would expect to pay in Leeds!) and had an amazing duck in orange sauce (or a Canard a l’orange if you will) as well as snails, muselles and some beautiful desserts.

Why do all these days come at once?

Happy Galileo Day!

That’s right, I said it. I’m an atheist, and I used the word Christmas. I know, I know, I’m crazy, I’m on the edge, etc, etc. A lot of non-believers don’t like using the word because they think it has too many Christian connotations. But I really don’t have a problem with it.

Why? I guess for the same reason that Reclaim the Night started. I don’t think we should give up the word so easy. Because it’s nonsense that the origins of the holiday season lie in Christianity, we all know it’s nonsense and it really doesn’t bother me that people are occasionally misguided about this, but even if they were, it would only inspire me to explain to them the truth.

Of course, Christians genuinely are celebrating the birth of Jesus, but the rest of us aren’t. Any suggestion we were could equally be rebuked by the argument that actually, Christians are celebrating Paganism just as much. So I don’t even get drawn into the debate these days. For me, as a Humanist, the holiday season is another arbitrary point to celebrate life. family and friendships. But as all holidays are essentially arbitrary these days, it doesn’t make it any less special.

Last year we launched and ran the Humanist Action Group‘s Holiday Food Drive.

Thanks to all your generous donations we were able to provide food parcels for three local homeless shelters. We managed a total of 24 boxes packed full of a variety of different kind of food either directly donated or bought with donations. It was a good start, but we think that this year we can do a lot better!

As with last year, we need your help in three ways. First of all, we need food. That is the main part of a food drive, so any food you can donate is great. Anything which will last for a few months or more is ideal. Secondly, we need time. We need people to help us collect everything together and package it up. Finally, any money donated will be used to buy more food in bulk from wholesalers to help us fill even more boxes.

If you think you can spare some time to help those less fortune this holiday season, then please do get in contact with us. You can also sign up on Facebook, or if you want to donate, you can do so via our page on Virgin Money Giving.

Together, we can make this a truly special holiday season. Which, to me, is what the holiday season is really all about.

Chris

Having safely returned from our trip across Europe I’ve finally got round to adding all my photos into the photo gallery website I designed while in La Rochelle.

You should be warned now that essentially “this site is best viewed on Chris’s computer.” Ideally you need a Javascript enabled Firefox which you can run full screen on a 22″+ full HD resolution monitor hucked with a reasonably fast broadband connection. You may think to yourself this reasonably poor usability – and you’d be right. But as I have that, my friends at work have that and my parent have that, I don’t really care about anyone else. Well, not that I don’t care about you, I just don’t think it worth my time to make a usable gallery for photos you probably don’t give a crap about.

In any case, you can check out the photo gallery in all it’s beautifully transitioned jquery glory which doesn’t even look good over the internet because it takes so long to load everything and is therefore only good when viewed on a local machine anyway, but again, see above, here.

It’s Easter, holiday time! Those beautiful extra long weekends where we can all relax and take some time off work.

Well, almost.

I got called into work on Friday for a meeting which took up most of my daytime though I was home a few hours earlier than I would have been if I had been at work as normal which was nice.

Saturday I was working as Normal. Given we now open until 1am however it was a rather late one so I didn’t end up getting home until well after 5am and didn’t end up getting to bed until 6.

Sunday I went back to work to cover someone’s shift which turned out to be just as long as Saturday nights though I did get home a bit earlier. Working Sunday also pushed everything else back so I’m now working today as well. Fun times.

I didn’t do any work on Sunday. Well near enough anyway.

And I didn’t do that much work on Monday either.

It was really weird. I spent most of Money sitting around feeling guilty that I was only doing a bit of work. But I recon if I could get rid of that feeling I could really enjoy days off once again.

Myself, Norm and Michelle went for lunch at the Deer Park which was good. Not just because you can never, ever go wrong with a mixed grill but also because it was a re-discovery of the ability to just go for a pub lunch in the middle of the day, something we used to do like every day but never really do anymore. Or, if you will, back in the day.