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.

Well today is not the best of days. I went for an interview yesterday at Leeds College of Art and I'm guessing that the silence following means that I haven't got it. I'm really annoyed with myself about it really. There were only four candidates so I had a good chance. The job had change which site it was based at so I had a tour of both sites and both are lovely small libraries. The one where the job was based was more FE orientated which would have been nice and different. It didn't help that I mucked up the test good and proper. I had to put 20 books in Dewey order (easy) and then write down the bibliographic reference of one of them. I still don't know what that means. Harvard reference? I think I was thrown by the fact that they told us that the job would entail a lot of cataloguing and since I'd never catalogued a book in my life I wrote it as a catalogue reference, or what I thought one would look like anyway. Still, I was prepared to sell myself at the interview and talk about how my current workplace even has its courses validated by the Open University as well and how it was clearly meant to be. However, I didn't get a chance to sell myself at all as the interview took about 15 minutes. I talked about why I wanted the job and was given a few scenarios which were easy enough but I didn't get to say much as all. I had all kinds of things to say about equal opportunities and all sorts. I'm so fed up about it all. I've got another job to apply for which would usually keep me going a bit but it's a medical library and I know less about that than I do about art! Why do libraries hate me so much?!

I dunno if I've been up to much else this week. We've been catching up on TV stuff I guess. We've finished watching the (not so) new series of Skins which was fairly good. So many of the characters are massive dicks though, I found it hard to care and wanted a fair few of them to get what they deserved. The excessive and over-exaggerated use of drink, drugs and sex was also a little off-putting. I know that's the point of Skins but I found it really divorced from reality this time around. Also - extremely mopey. More so than the last lot. It's had its moments though. We're also coming to the end of Medium series 3 which is brilliant. It's one of the most underrated shows. It's quite X-file-y but the excellent family scenes ground it so well. It's a joy to watch, and so original with it. The way its filmed is also quite interesting. A lot of 'cop' shows such as Monk and Psyche are quite bright and comedy based but Medium has more in common with Without A Trace which is more dramatic, but with great comedy touches.

We're continuing very slowly through our trip through every Bond film. We're on Roger Moore now. I've not seen many of his. After Diamonds Are Forever though I'm glad to get to him. It was fairly rubbish all told. Flat on all points. Live and Let Die though was fiarly solid I thought. James prefers Moore to Connery and I can see where he's coming from. Moore is a lot more suave and seems to suit the role better somehow. I do quite like Sean Connery still. The only major bad thing about Live and Let Die is the awful boat chase near the end. Well, the chase itself is very good (and there are a lot of good chanses in the film) but it's slowed down by being broken up by crap policemen bits. And that goddamn awful Sheriff character, just awful.   

The other thing of note that we've been doing is watching all of Madonna's music videos right from the start. The Celebration doesn't cover them all so we're watching the ones it misses out in-between the ones that are on there. I'm a bit ignorant of Madonna pre-Ray of Light so it's been a bit of an education to me. It's funny how time has a habit of just remembering the 'classics' and one of the joys of watching everything she's done is that I've become familiar with songs I've never heard of. It's so odd that there are either songs I had no idea existed ('Fever', 'Bad Girl') or videos I've never seen. Also interesting is that not all of her early stuff is as amazing as people seem to think. The Immaculate Collection is pretty solid but then there's stuff like 'True Blue' which is fairly terrible. On the whole though I'm much more of a 1998-onwards fan. Still the highlights in terms of music and video are (for me): 'Material Girl', 'Papa Don't Preach', 'Express Yourself', 'Vogue', 'Bedtime Story', 'Ray of Light', 'Don't Tell Me' and 'Hung Up'. We did the Evita and Music era last night and 'Music' still sounds incredibly weird to me. It's just such an odd song. There's loads going on, lots of weird noises and yet it just works. 'Don't Tell Me' is one of my favourite Madonna songs though. There's just something about the video, the production and the song which is utterly spot on. I think the same about 'Ray Of Light' too. Gutted that 'Nothing Really Matters' isn't on the DVD though, it's an excellent video. Also, her look from 1998-2002 is proof that she doesn't need her get her vadge out to look great. She's in her 40s at that time and she looks excellent, really classy and stylish. Put the Hard Candy away love!

Can anyone give me some advice on MP3 players? Although my old but reliable thing has been good to me I can no longer seem to update it. I'd quite like a bigger one anyway but they seem to be so expensive, so while I'm happy to go over to the Apple darkside, especially with 120GB IPods available, the prices just seem a little high for my liking. Sadly you can't buy smaller ones new anywhere, I just want something that's biggr than my 20GB one! I'm looking to spend about £150 if possible.

In my last update I forgot to write about my exciting news. I have a job interview! Funnily, it's for the job at Halifax Central Library which I'd given up hope of hearing about, being as the closing date was well over a month ago. It's good news but it's peanuts pay. The only way I could take it would be if they offered me the higher end of the scale, and even that's £14K and I have travel costs on top. The other thing is that the York Uni job which I really want has the interview date a week after this one which could leave me in a tricky position. I have no choice but to wait and see and just take it as it comes really. It's promising either way though I guess.

We went for a nice meal last night at Tompopo. I had some kind of beef thing which was very nice. I went Vietnamese this time, very good. I was also tempted by the Vietnamese coffee which has condensed milk in it! Next time it will be mine. I think I forgot to mention that I went out for lunch with work last week too, to Little Tokyo. I do love it so. Nom nom noms all round I think.

Continuing James' streak of luck, his work were celebrating 60 years of legal aid yesterday. Not only was there cake (!) but James won the raffle too. So our house has a load of nice smellies in it. He also won the poetry competition and got a bottle of wine! I've noticed that he had bought a lottery ticket for Saturday funnily enough.... 

I finished my book last night. It was 'Then We Came To The End' by Joshua Ferris. It was a good read and as it's set in an office, identifying with is quite easy. Not a lot happens though, and for that reason I doubt I'll remember much about it in a year. It was interestingly written though, in that, although there's some third person perspective, it's mostly written by an anonymous office worker. They talk about 'us' as lot but never identify themselves, and yet it's not first person narrative. Very odd but it did work.

I must update about my birthday fun. So last Saturday we headed to Tropical World which was brilliant. We got in free as we're Leeds card holders and we got the bus for free as we'd won £6 on the Eurolillions the night before! So it was a good day out in all. We had a nice lunch there which was great and the weather on the whole was really good too. It's good to see that the meerkats have got a bigger enclosure now and the reptile bit is back so we got to see some great animals. It was fairly busy though so I did get very irritated with people banging on the glass at nocturnal animals. Yeah, very big and clever. 

After we'd done Tropical World we went arouns Roundhay Park which is really nice, it's just a shame it's so far out of Leeds really. And then after we'd wandered around there we headed back home for a bit. In the evening we went to Little Tokyo which is possibly my favourite restaurant ever. We got served by a great waitress who was trying to teach james how to use chopsticks, not with much success I have to say but she was very niec to him, where as I just laughed at him! I had a duck bento box which is always always amazing, and we had cocktails and I had coconut ice cream for dessert followed by a very strong coffee. James has hot chocolate with rum after and let's just say that it's a good job that he wasn't driving! I had a great day though, really nice.

On Sunday 3rd we headed to Driffield to see some of James' family. It was a good day overall. We stayed with James' grandma for most of the day and saw his cousins, auntie and uncle during the day too. James gets very annoyed with visiting his auntie and uncle and sometimes his cousins too as they never ask us about what we're doing. I can understand his frustration really and I don't even think that it's because there are loads of young kids around now either. You'd just think they'd ask us stuff as they don't see us very often. I don't even think they know that much about me really, well, not stuff they'd have heard straight from me anyway. Anyway, it was a good day. The night not so much as James wasn't very during the night. We still don't know why but it didn't make his birthday (which was the next day) worth celebrating. Poor mister man. I'd even made him nice birthday stuff too.

So yeah, bank holiday Monday wasn't all that fun as we didn't do a lot. We decided to postponed James' birthday for a week! Just as well really as I'm still waiting for one of his presents to cmoe through! I'm still waiting for some cards too (still not got yours yet Lucy) so God knows where it all it is.

In the week I got some of my presents through the very slow post. I got some Xbox360 points from my family and also a bonsai tree set which I'm really pleased with. I've planted two to see how they do and I've saved another two in case things go horribly wrong. It's a slow process but I'm really worried it'll go wrong because they're meant to be difficult to grow. Does anyone have any experience with them as I really want it to go right! We also watched my Librarian: Quest for the Sacred Spear DVD which was brilliantly fun, especially as it had Kyle Maclachlan playing an evil librarian.

Speaking of which, I've found a great job to apply for. It's Harewood Project Archive Assistant which sounds amazing. It's only for six months though and only 15k but it'd be good just to get my foot back in the door. I've been a bit frustratd with work of late, I'm just a bit frustrated that even though I've been out of uni for four years I've never been able to get of the starting block as far as wages are concerned. And I know I'm quite capable of working in a higher paid job, there are plenty of people I work with who are earning more than me and they're no better than me. I guess have risen to 17k but as I'm only working for four days a week it doesn't really count. I just want a better paid job! Is that too much to ask?

While I'm on a work note, OfSTED came this week. Only for a day but as I'm on my own I had to organise the whole thing. It went well but I was in a meeting with them, answering questions and all the time thinking 'why am I still here, I don't want to be in education anymore' so I'd better get another, better job soon.

In other crap news, we're still fighting to get our deposit back from the last house. Turns out it's been sent to our old landlords (nice of them to tell us) and they want to keep £200 of it for carpet cleaning. We need to see the emails and sort it next week so we can tell them to fuck off. It's so unfair and we've been moved out for 8 weeks anyway and we've had to do all of the chasing for it so it could get ugly.    

Better stuff now. This weekend's been really nice. Yesterday we went to Leeds City art gallery which we'd never been to before. We ended up spending most of the time on the lower ground floor in the natural life bit which is really great. I ticked off another two prehistorical fossils that I'd always wanted to see off my list as they have a Hypselosaurus dinosaur egg there and a Megaloseros skeleton. The former is the biggest dinosaur egg ever discovered and the latter has the widest skull of any mammel that's ever lived. Strangely, both of these facts were absent from the displays. The reason I originally wanted to go to the museum in the first place was that they were meant to have a computer game retrospective exhibit on which sounded brilliant. However, it wasn't on. We asked about it and apparently they hadn't got enough funding for it which I was saddened by as I was really looking forward to it.

In the evening we went to the cinema to see 'In The Loop' which was very funny. I'm not a big fan of all the swearing though, not because it offends me, just because swearing in itself isn't funny at all but I did enjoy. A three out of five affair really. There's loads of stuff at the cinema we want to see. Hopefully the next week will bring Coroline and Wolverine and then Star Trek a little later when it's got quiter.

Music-wise it's electroclash week this week with new albums from Peaches and Fischerspooner (and I think Miss Kitten although I don't have it). Peaches 'I Feel Cream' is brilliant and it always amazes me that even though she work sin quite rigid template she always does something a little different, she really is a very underated gem. The new Fischerspooner album is really good too, possibly a bit more accessible than there others although that's never been a problem for me.   

I had an excellent weekend as Lucy came to visit us on Friday night. now I did plan on making Shepherd's pie except that I forgot the meat so that was that idea out of the window. However, I did make up for it by buying a Chinese and making a strawberry, blueberry and raspberry crumble (which I had all of the ingredients for so there!) so it turned out ok in the end. We basically just talked all evening really with the prescence of mulled wine and it was a really nice night. Subdued but then there's not that much to do in Skipton in the evening that isn't subdued really!

The next day we went for a short walk and then did some charity shopping. The shops were kind to me as I got some gingerbread glasses (not made out of gingerbread obviously). We had lunch at Bean Loved, before heading back for a cup of tea and getting Lucy to the station. So yeah, a lovely day.

In other news, I've got an interview at Keighley library. Obviously this is good although I'm not getting my hopes up. It would be amazing if I did get it (4 month contract or not) and I still love the idea of working in a public library, family history especially but we'll see. The interview is next Wednesday and I've got to do a 5 minute presentation about how I'd promote a 'Family History' day at the library and the positivies it would bring. Obviously it would get people into the library and using other resources but I'm unsure as to how one should advertise stuff like that. If anyone has any ideas I've be happy to hear them. Online research will be done at some point I think.

I've been doing some currency research today to see how far our Icelandic Krona will be getting us next weekend. It's looking good and overall, I think it'll work out about the same as the UK anyway, if not slightly cheaper. I think visiting places whose economy's collapsed is the way forward frankly. Amusingly (although not for them) some restaurants are doing 'depression' specials! Mind you, I've seen places here doing 'credit crunch' specials so it's not that different. I've been reading the guide book we have too and I'm really excited about it all. Holiday! Yay!

It's my book group tonight so I'd better hurry and finish my book. It's David Mitchell's 'Black Swan Green' which I've read before. I'm enjoying it more the second time round I have to say. It's only been a slog because the DS has sucked me in. I'm playing Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings at the moment and it kills my train journey, it's great!

Is it still January?! It's killing me, and this commute will be the death of me :( Mind you, it's just about getting light when I leave the house in the morning now.