10June2007
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; Travel & Leisure.
Re-compressing after a week away with family and friends - tomorrow is back to grinding stone. For how long? Is it that there are not many stones to be ground at the moment or a case of too many grinders?
All the brothers went trying to find something that wasn’t a road to ride on and after some serious map and GPS reading we found it. I placed too much faith in my TomTom navigator at one point and set off down a busy A-road, cars flying past whilst the obvious path lay dead ahead. Perhaps after years of using Fedora I’m placing too much faith in other technological gadgetry…
28May2007
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
Touchdown. Now the whole extended clan is back in the U.K. and thanks to the vagaries of GNER/Virgin/British Rail/Railtrack/whatever-the-hell-its-called I’m booked First Class on a train to see them. Which was cheaper than a standard class ticket.
Other than that its a typical bank holiday Monday in Huddersfield. Raining. The wifi on my ‘phone really is rough and drops out at any excuse. It might just be the hardware spec as web browsing fails with ‘memory full’ errors. Such is the price us ‘Early Adopters’ take in the great technological revolution of life.
8April2007
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; House; Linux & Open Source.
The wisps of steam rise gently from my cup of Earl Grey whilst down the road by local curry shop is preparing my lamb balti just the way I like it. Hopefully.
A few months back I found a necklace from Tiffany & Co under the carpet. So spent a few minutes researching the origins. Turns out its an Elsa Peretti teardrop heart necklace and what those in the retail trade would call “A Regular Runner”. The Tiffany’s website quotes cost at USD $135. An ebay auction from google of an identical piece finished at 25 quid. Ah well.
Lastly, as there hasn’t been a picture up on my blog in a while, here is where I do my RHCE course at Leeds Met. The one disadvantage of the course is that you cant take it outside on the good days. Which this Bank Holiday has been.
4January2007
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
Its been quite a Christmas break. The day itself was spent playing Resident Evil 4 which was great fun. The cocktails were bloody marys in the morning and snowballs in the afternoon. The latter went down a treat.
So to the wedding. Clifton and Sarah were nervous as hell leading up to it but for all the right reasons and none of the wrong. The registrars were late causing a last minute panic however once the £3.50 had been handed over for the license we were good to go and everything went off without a hitch afterwards. Thankfully my best man’s speech was well received and I will publish it here when I get a moment. It was a great night and one of the best days I’ve had in a long time. Again, probably a bit too much alcohol but its rare that I let myself go.
New Year’s was more of the same and the first few minutes of the 2007 saw me and the Chief Usher from C&S’s wedding shouting insults at fireworks being launched down the road. The extended family of both sides are an eclectic mix and I enjoyed their company very much. Torquay is a lovely spot and if you are ever in the area I cannot recommend the Acorn Lodge Hotel strongly enough! Happy New Year!
5December2006
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
Wow, two weeks without a post. Let’s see, a weekend spent with the soon-to-be Firth’s at Torquay, much of which was spent in bed with an awful stomach bug not helped by countless jars of cider celebrating the upcoming nuptials. Still, great to see them both looking on top form and looking forward to the wedding. The week prior had been taken up with setting up Cornwall’s first ski slope in the centre of Truro where I learnt that said town has much to offer the single man in terms of visual distractions of the female variety.
The fireplace is now in and the plaster is taking its fair time to dry. So de-humidifier has been re-located to the sitting room to aid the process.
Last weekend involved no travelling however as I was now driving on two punctured tyres I decided to replace the whole set. Rock ‘n’ roll. Saturday night was spent with Shaun who is at any one time friend, teacher, boss, flatmate and drinking partner. In this case it was the latter and we worked our way steadily across the pumps of the Rat and Ratchet whereupon I promptly left him at 10pm to find Ed my old flatmate from University. Ed’s best mate Peter died a few months back on a stag night in Leeds. Ed was the last person to see him alive - his body turned up a few weeks later in one of the canals. He was running from an altercation and fell in. Having swum around in Lake Windermere as a foolhardy youth with a few draughts of dutch courage swimming inside me I understand how difficult it is. I hadn’t seen Ed since however I had hosted the remembrance website he wrote and we had stayed in contact since University. He was looking the happiest I have seen him and I told him so. At least I think I did. I walked home not long after 12 and arrived home a little damp after having been gently pissed on the whole way home as Yorkshire weather is wont to do.
19November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; House.
In trying to fix a shelf it managed to convince me it never should have been in the wall anyway and it now sits leaning against the wall with books stacked up around me. I did manage to get wall plugs to replace the run-of-the-mill ones that had come out however a combination of Serenity(7/10) and laziness got the better of me. Harumph!
I leave tomorrow for Cornwall as work takes me out of the office for a week for fresh air and excercise - its a good thing. On the way down I hope to be stopping at Clifton and Sara’s to catch up before the weekend when we celebrate their upcoming wedding. I’ll try and take some of the office with me but we shall see what comes of it.
11November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
I have seen the Zombie flick a number of times. My favourite part is of course where the undead are getting totalled in the shopping mall and it is the film particularly that plays through my mind when visiting any shopping centre that bears more than a passing resemblance to that in the film. I have been following the progress of Linux on the ipod for some time and decided that it might be a good idea to check out prices of iPod videos at John Lewis. After discovering that they had a new store at the Trafford Centre and having passed it several times on my trips south, I felt confident of navigating my way single-handed, despite having the fall-back option of kid brother in case we ended up in a Rotherham contra-flow by mistake. I successfully did so and it was here that things started to come unstuck. We spent the next twenty minutes playing dodgems with other drivers in an attempt to secure an elusive space in the already over-full and bursting car park. Clearly this was some place to be on a Saturday! Our minds salivated at the wonders that surely lay inside - why else would anyone put themselves through this?
Sadly, if there was a fountain of youth or bottomless pit of Quesadillas, we did not find it. All we found was consumerism at its western worst. The food hall we entered first was dominated by a huge LED screen blaring adverts over nigh on 1000+ people, all chewing mindlessly on food as a cow chews cud in a field. We ascended quickly to the retail area, all very fresh and new. Making a beeline for JL’s we perused the technological section only to leave empty handed for a number of reasons too boring to put in here.
Convinced already this would be my last visit to the place, we strolled (or fought) the length of the mall, only to find a prayer room the size of a changing room at one end. It declared itself to be multi-faith and on inspection it contained two persons of the Islamic faith prostrating as is their wont. I was surprised - what would happen if a Jew were to attend at the same time for a quick browse of the Torah. Would this even happen? The room appeared to be unattended and at best guess was included in the plans purely for the purpose of permitting those people who could not visit a shopping centre at certain times to do so, safe in the knowledge they could do the necessaries at the appropriate time, ducking out of HMV to remind $god that despite their slavish devotion to items of a material nature, they hadn’t forgotten about him. Who really benefits here?
8November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
After some prodding from my father and cousin I have decided to write this blog as they both seem convinced I am the next Life Commentator. We shall see.
