A lovely bunch of people to ring in the new year with. Not to mention recovery steak at Blackhouse and that new dessert place in The Light. Love you all.
We saw out 2018 and welcomed in 2019 with our traditional house party. This year, Elina, Venla and I were joined by Chris & Cara, Chris, Kristo, Michelle and Mike.
And oh how we partied. I didn’t get to bed until 4am. So much so, that I had to miss the first Parkrun of New Year’s Day. Luckily, having gotten out of bed at 10am, I did manage to swing my Armley Parkrun to complete the second.
We rang in the new year with our customary house party. Our 10th annual one, as it happens.
I don’t have a group picture this year. I didn’t have one for the Manchester trip, either. All of this living in the moment nonsense is really damaging the quality of my blog. I knew that trying to enjoy life was going to end badly, one way or another.
This year, the three of us were joined by Norman, Chris, Cara, Lauren, Gabriele, Tim and Kearny.
Last year, we made a series of predictions for the year ahead. Most of them we were incorrect about. But a good ones: there was a general election (Cara) and the Patriots did win the Super Bowl (Norman). We’ve now made a fresh set for 2018.
It is hard to believe that this is the 9th year we have run a New Year’s Eve party. Luckily, the new additions to the circle have not detracted from the atmosphere. As ever, it was a pleasure to catch up with friends: new and old, near and far. It even featured a Skype call from Dr Murray who is beavering away with research projects in South Korea.
The food was popular. It appeared that we would have too much of it when we first started. However, by the end of the evening, a valiant attempt had been made to get through it all. There were plenty of desserts left over. This has worked out well: we’re still eating most of the cake people brought.
Despite the party going on until just after 3am, I still managed to make it up in time for the New Year’s Day Parkrun. The benefits of having a human alarm clock. NYD is a special day in the Parkrun calendar: it is the only day when you are allowed to compete in multiple events. Because of this, Leeds stagger their runs: 9am for Woodhouse Moor and 10:30 for Temple Newsam.
That represents my 98th and 99th Parkrun: next week, the big 100.
After that it was onwards to Miller & Carter for recovery steak. There I immediately piled into my body all of the calories I had just burned off. Venla was less happy here: a new year’s hangover will do that to a baby.
Next year is our tenth anniversary, and I have something rather special planned…
For New Year’s Eve 2015 we ditched our traditional party format in favour of a murder mystery dinner party. This came with its pros and cons.
On the downside, the logistics of getting everyone round the table complicated matters. We have more friends that would fit round, so I had to omit some people from the invite list. A few people were ill at the last minute, so this further complicated the situation. On the plus side though between the murder mystery and the food, people seemed to be entertained throughout the evening.
The murder mystery itself has lots of room for improvement. The dialogue could probably be condensed into bigger sections, as it was a bit start and stop. That would avoid it breaking into conversation unless there was a length chunky of stuff to do. Once I have cleaned up the typos I will post it on here for other people to look through.
The food went well. We only got through nine of the 11 courses I had planned. Everything went smoothly and it did not feel like much of a rush. Whether that was because I was able to do a lot of the work before, or whether it was because everything was broken down into separate courses rather than one big-bang service, I am not sure. I suspect it is a combination of the two.
We had plenty of left-overs:
Our dinner the day after consisted of smoked-salmon on maneesh, meatballs, breaded fish, gammon and Yorkshires. A mixed grill of left-overs.
Lunch was taken care of by our usual trip for recovery steak. We opted for Miller & Carter because you can always get a table and the food is pretty good. The price of your steak includes chips, salad and sauce, which makes it good value.
For our Halloween party this year I carved up some pumpkins. They all looked very happy.
Those of you who did computing with me at Leeds will no doubt remember Jack Kelly, also known as Aussie Jack. He spent August doing a world tour to catch up with friends and dropped my Leeds for some food or conversation.
Having had my wallet battered by a week of Finland we ended up having lunch at the Cuthbert Brodrick. A place where you can buy a meal cheaper than you can buy a pint in Helsinki. We ended up having lunch at Wetherspoon’s again the next day – this time at the train station – to meet up with Sarann and Chris. Some might worry this would give off the impression that we’re just alcohols that spend all our time at ‘Spoons. However, Jack was here for a year, so probably had us down that way anyway.
In the evening we held a small gathering. I managed to cook a reasonable amount of food (as opposed to way, way too much) and a good time was had by all. I even went out of my way to not be a grumpy bastard and joined in the card game, Love Letters, which turned out to be a lot of fun.
We had a party. It was good. So good that I have only just recovered enough to blog about it.
We had a Halloween party (as usual) this year due to popular demand (two people asked for it). Good effort with the fancy dress team.
We made too much food. But not quite as much as we normally over-make…
