The Secret Life of Andrew

I've been having a jolly week off. So much so that today is especially hard, being back at work. I hate my job, so I'm kicking into action Plan B. I'm going to start applying for part-time library work and see where I end up. It's quite nice earning an ok wage (especially on 4 days a week) but with library jobs being few and far between I can't just wait for a perfect job to come up. It's nearly a year since I got my MSc and I'm still here. So There's a good, 20-hour a week job at University of Leeds which I'll go for. I guess I'm too comfortable here but if I want to get out then I really need to take a risk.

On Bank Holiday Monday we did the new, extended Leeds Owl Trail. I recently emailed the people who do it with some extra owls we found and I got a reply today to say that they're not actually Heritage owls, they're 'scare' owls. Fake owls! Who knew?! We finished up near Millennium Square so we went to Spice Quarter for lunch and had their all you can eat buffet. It was so good! I'd never used a chocolate fountain before, fun stuff!

On Wednesday we went to see Scott Pilgrim Vs The World which I really enjoyed. It's fun stuff. I have a love/hate relationship with 'geeky' (I can't think of another way to describe them!) films. For me they either try too hard (Lost In Translation) or have really unlikeable characters (Ghost World, Juno), but then I'm aware that the ones I hate, other people really love, and the ones that I love (Eternal Sunshine for example) also divide people and can have the same arguments that I've just mentioned fired back at it. I've never know any other type of movie to divide people in such a way. Anyway, I'm glad to say that it was on the right side. It was really funny and there were a surprising amount of characters in it. My only problem was that I didn't care if George Michael (no, not that one) got the girl or not, Knives was much cooler and he totally should have run away with her at the end instead of being blinded by Ramona's colourful hair.

On Saturday we went to Lotherton Hall. Typically the summer bus that goes straight there had stop running last week so we had to get the bus to Aberford and walk a mile to reach the place. It really is in the middle on nowhere. Still, it was worth it. It has a free bird garden which was really nice, especially as the weather was great. And the house itself is stunning. There are no ropes holding you back from wandering around, the windows are large and let loads of light in and so the house doesn't have that cold, hollow feeling that a lot of similar big houses can have. There were a lot of worldwide knickknacks around along with bird artifacts, and an exhibit upstairs which had fashion items influenced by birds. All really interesting. We had dinner in the café where James declared that 'there are a lot of lumpy people around aren't there?' and we walked around the grounds and had a really nice chat about family and other things. A great day.

We got back and walked through the market where I saw a teenage mum pushing a pram wearing an 'I *heart* Justin Beiber T-shirt. I cried inside. In the evening we went to see Witness For The Prosecution at Leeds Grand. I love Agatha Christie and it's surprising how much work she did on the stage. The play is wonderful, although it's very wordy so you do have to concentrate. All the twists at the end totally pay off.

Must mention the book I'm reading. I've just read Superfreakonomics which was great, and now I'm on to the Bad Book Affair. I should read more novels with a librarian as the main character. I'm loving it. I'm really into reading at the moment.

Music-wise I haven't really bought anything new apart from the new Kim Wilde album. The Hurts album is on the way though. I've mostly just been listening to Dragonette - 'Get your titties off my things'!

Might be booking a Xmas trip to Denmark/Sweden soon. More details to follow.

Because my last posts have been about rambling on certain topics I've neglected to actually update with news. Firstly, books! It was my book group last week and we read Marcus Zusak's 'The Book Thief'. It was very good and I have to say and it was interesting to see WWII from a German point of view. I loved that it was narrated by Death and it was very skillfully written in that it was quite easy to read, and not particularly depressing. However, when it hit, it hit hard. The ending was especially horrible, but I never found it a chore to read. Great stuff. I'm whizzing through books at the minute which is good. I read Armistead Maupin's 'Michael Tolliver Lives' which was a joy to read. Technically he's not the best writer but he has such a skill for making wonderful characters and observations on people. He always has some wonderful quotes. The one that's stuck with me is about getting older - 'You don't have to keep up, you just have to keep open' which I think is very true. It was odd seeing the characters from the series set in the modern day, but it did make me realise how much I'd missed them. It was also surprisingly sex filled. No bad thing! Haha. I'm reading Harlen Coben now which I'm enjoying despite having it forced upon me!

Music news now and I have booked tickets to see Saint Etienne play all of Foxbase Alpha! Yay! Although I have to say that I prefer their stuff really, they're very good live so I know they'll be good fun. It's at the Sheffield Leadmill too so it'll be nice to take advantage of the living in Leeds! And of course go back to Sheffield. I my devouring 80's music quest I've just got Erasure's new Best Of which I'm loving. I was surprised by how many I knew actually and this is solely down to my Mum (again). She used to listen to them a lot when I was little. It's funny how much music I absorbed without realising it. Are there any other 80s bands that I should delve into? Note - they do need a Best Of for me to sample!

Moving house is turning out to be quite stressful. We got a removal quote through this morning. Not pretty. And I'm slowly realising that I can only cope with two large things going in my life. Those spaces are now full what with work and Uni. I can't cope with anything else! However, things have got better but I'll just be glad to get there now. It is a hassle.

On Tuesday night we went to see Othello. I'd been for a work three-course lunch for dinner at Live Bait so I didn't want anything to eat really, so we went to the Playhouse and hung around there. Lenny Henry was Othello and he was fairly good. He did have a tendancy to shout his way through it and I do find the play itself to be a little wordy and hard to follow. The worst thing about it though was the stupid audience who seemed to think that because Lenny Henry was in it it must be comedy. It's a harrowing play and so how people could laugh at lines where Othello talks about killing his wife and how Iago is an honest character is beyond me. And it was very irritating. The play itself was good though, it's a tough one to do, but it was Northern Broadside so it ws reliably good.

We were out last night. It was James' workmate Helina's leaving do and as an honourary LSC members I was invited (nobody else's partner gets to come along to these things!). There were loads of people there, both old and new staff. We first went to Revolution for a few drinks and then on to Akbar's for a lovely curry. I got to chat to most people really and I had a good time. However, by the time we got to OK Karaoke I was a bit tired really. I've yet to sing there but when we can walk home that stage will be mine!

Well that didn't work did it? After saying how eager I was to write more often I seem to have gone the other way and started to write less. This is simply no good. 

Anyway, last Wednesday was my first book group meeting! So I trundled off to Skipton library, eager to talk about Sarah Waters'  'The Night Watch' which I think is one of my favourite books, simply because no other book has sucked me in quite so much. I don't really remember being compelled by a book so much since 'Cloud Atlas'. It turns out that having a book you love at your first book group meeting is both a blessing and a curse. It gives you something to talk about but if someone doesn't like it then you just want to punch them in the face. Funnily enough, when I first got there one of the ladies who interviewed for the job I went for there a year ago was on tea duty! I told her then and she just went, 'Oh God!' because, obviously I didn't get it (even though it was the best interview I had ever had and I know that they were gutted they couldn't give me the job because someone internally had got the job. Haha.) but she did remember me. She asked me what I was up to now. I made sure I told her about my MSc to get my foot in the door too! Hehe. After getting my tea I took my seat at the table. there must have been about 20 people there in total and it doesn't get much bigger apparently. With this being Skipton I wasn't surprised that I was the youngest there. I was surprised that I was one of only two males though! I sat down and I thought, 'God, this is like a WI meeting!'.

All was not lost however, and I really enjoyed myself. The housewife sector didn't really like the book and there were a few comments by other people that made me think 'what the fuck are you talking about?!' but otherwise the book was well received. I got chatting to a lady next to me who loved the book and it felt really good talking about how much we loved it. The refreshments were good too! Rum truffles, mini mince pies and posh juices :D The next one isn't until January now but I'll be going to the next one. It was really interesting hearing people's differing opinions about the book.

Good as the book group was, it came at a bad time as I had an essay in the next day! Although it was a bit of a chore it didn't turn out too bad. I was 1 word over the word count which pleased me as I never go over it! I had to do my references and amendments at Uni though so that took a while and I just got it in before my last lecture. I've got another one in in a week and a half which I'm a little more worried about though :s After that I am free to think about Xmas! Thursday was also interesting because I brought home the whole Dewey Decimal system home with me, which is four volumes, but I could only carry three :s I just wanted to look eager really. I ended up meeting James on the way back through Leeds as he was going for a night out with his old workmates, courtesy of The Daily Mail of all things. He didn't get in until late, the drunkard.

Speaking of James, he's been at his new job a week now. It's with the Legal Services Commission. more importantly he's on flexitime and this has made me very jealous. My job would be so much better with flexitime and there is no good reason why we can't have it. Grrr. Anyway, it seems like he's enjoying his job and that is the main thing. At least I have a commuter buddy now :D

The weekend's been quite quiet really. We didn't even leave the house for that much, other than to go food shopping. Morissons had a nice Xmas tree up in the foyer which made me eager to get one of our own. Hopefully after the 6th December Uni will have calmed down and we can pick up decorations for cheap! I'm not sure where we'll put a tree but I want one to put presents under! 

We watched a few things including finishing off 'Life of Mammals'. The last one was a bit sinister with horrible killer chimps but hey, I've loved the series. I want to watch 'The Life of Birds' next I think. Hmm, I can't decide. It makes me sad to think that because of the BBC balls up with the Queen that documentaries and news are suffering cuts. Ironcially, it's documentaries that the BBC do the best, probably the best in the world and yet they're cutting funding and letting things like reality TV and 'light entertainment' go free, there's no justice. note how I didn't add that the BBC do the news the best, because they really don't . I fucking *hate* the news and its scaremongering. So speaking of things the Beeb do well, Cranford is really good. I've always missed out on period dramas. But I'm enjoying this, especially as it puts Dame Judi Dench back on our screens. Always a pleasure.   

We watched 'Lilo and Stitch' too wich was great! It's very different to a normal Disney movie but it's really, properly, funny and Stitch is so darn cute. The fact that it's set in Hawaii and yet has aliens in is also very odd. The look of the whole thing is great and the chartacters are really inventive. I always thought that Disney had gone off the boil in the 90s but I was clearly wrong. Also, it's after watching stuff like that i have to say, how can anyone think that 2D animation is dead. It can still be utterly beautiful.

Super Scrabble was also played, which killed an afternoon. I lost so I won't dwell on it, but we watched Spice Girl videos while we played. They were so 90s! And wasn't Posh a rubbish Spice Girl? She hardly sung and didn't really *do* anything. The Viva Forever video is pretty freaky too. We also watched the Best bits of Children in Need (is it so wrong that we taped it and skip through it to get to the good stuff?). We didn't end up watching much of it really as I don't care for soap stars singing or variety show stuff so it wasn' t too long in the end. James observation that it is full of awkward talking is also true!   

I have to mention that I'm really into Bloc Party at the moment. Yes I've caved. I did kind of stick them in pile of indie-bands-that-had-one-decent-song in 2005 pile, because in 2005 there were *loads* of bands like that but after liking 'Flux' I've caved in and gone for it. Their new album is pretty decent too I have to say.

I have to say though is that the highlight of my weekend was someone trading a pokemom with me globally via DS wIfi. Wonderful stuff. I didn't even need to be online while it was traded, I just logged on and someone had given me a Piplup. The wonders of the modern age. It's funny, I read a comment somewhere saying that we are lucky to live now rather than 200 years ago, which is true, but I bet that people in 2207 will think the same thing (also, how crazily futuristic does 2207 sound?! And yet it's the same distance away as 1807 is. Even 2107 sound futuristic and yet 1907 doesn't sound so old, there are people alive today who were born then!). It just makes me wonder what people in the future will think of us. Probably how horrible it is that we can die of cancer or heart disease just like how we think how horrible that people died of cholera. It is quite exciting to think that in my lifetime so many exciting things will be discovered :D 

I can't believe I haven't updated for so long for no other reason other than work's been so busy. Now that's not usually a reason for not updating but I've been flat out for the past two days. Monday put me behind as I got to the train station in the morning only to see that trains to Leeds were cancelled. Alternative routes were going to take ages so I 'worked from home'. You figure out what that means. Although, actually I did do some work as I could access the spanking new Virtual Learning Environment. Our team of four had our photo taken for the page so we are online for all staff to see (thankfully this is an internal thing). So yeah, busy but in a good way as our new team are on a four man mission to revolutionise admin in the College. 

Anyway, that's boring. At the weekend Lucy came to see us. We met her from the train station at arond half 6 and she had a mega huge suitcase with her. She assures us that it was full fo sleeping bags but I reckon that it was empty and her comment about us having the 'biggest DVD collection ever' makes me think that she's smuggled some of those home with her. Hmmm. Anyway, we picked up cocktail ingredients on the way home and after our Indian I made, what turned out to be 'Mighty Rand's'. 'Mighty' because they were tasty. To make a Mighty Rand you will need vodka, peach schapps and pineapple juice. You can also make Juicy Lucys which are the same but topped up with Morissons peach and mandarin juice. Classy. So we drank those and played Scattergories. It was great fun actually and it was nice to entertain in our house for a change. 

On Saturday after awakening the cosy Lucy we headed out into town. I don't think Lucy's ever seen so many charity shops. We managed to get some good stuff too. I got some 'Rand' party pickers so now I can hold cocktail parties AND supply people with party snacks. I also went into the library and found a book group to join. Their next meeting is today which wasn't very good but the next one is October so I'll go to that. I hope it's not just full of old people though. I shall see anyway. It only meets once a month either way. We had lovely dinner in Cafe Jaca and then we had a wander to the castle. Lovely stuff. We mostly just talked about Disneyland! Lucy's LJ comments about James being hotter than in photos have made me laugh. 'Lucky Rand!' indeed! It was lovely to see Lucy and I'm glad that someone actually thought to come and see *us* for a change. In fact, it's nice to know that I have a friend out there who gives as much as takes. We're well aware tht we live ages apart but neither of us puts pressure to visit the other and we see each other when we can. I couldn't ask for anything more really.

We didn't really do anything for the rest of the weekend. I've been playing the Broken Sword games because I realised that they'd released some new ones and I'd only ever played the first two. So I'm on number 2 at the moment. They're very funny and still look great. It helps that they're set in Paris (well, the first one at least) which made me feel like I wanted to go back there!

We've watched quite a few films over the past few days. The first one was 'Crank' which was absolutely ludicrous and totally made for 'macho guys'. However, despite this it was quite fun and wouldn't have been anything without the nice direction and editing. It was also really fast paced too and this worked well, much like 'Run Lola Run' or something like that. On the other side of things we've also watched 'Bright Young Things' which I really enjoyed despite the total lack of plot. It's very funny and very Stephen Fry. It's directed well though and doesn't show signs of it being his first directed film. I'm sure we watched another film but I can't think for the life of me what it was!

I have just finished my book on 'The Alphabet' which was very interesting. I learnt a lot considering it was just one chapter a letter. It's fascinating where letters have come from and why we write the way we do. I managed to pick up loads of stupid fact such as that most words in Elnglish start with the letter 'S' and that the least used letter is 'Z' (and also why 'Z' is zee in America and 'zed' in England). The newest letter in the alphabet is 'J' which wasn't fully accepted until the 1850's oddly. Just silly things like that. I'm not sure what to read next really.