luckykaa

Will be in Bristol tomorrow evening.  Anyone want to join me for dinner or drinks?

I do find my colleagues pretty tedious after a while.

Project manager talks about work all the time.  And he does like to talk.  Other programmer I find a little dull and sort of sexist. Lead programmer is fine, but a little quiet.  I can cope with that. 

Trouble with all staying in the same hotel is that there's a sort of obligation to eat together and travel in together.  I rather like my private cocoon of solitude on the way home.  Also like having control over when I travel. Still, there's no real obligation to share.  I just need to find an excuse that's better than "You all irritate me".

All I want to do is grab some food quickly (possibly listening to an audiobook) and then retire to my room to read. 

Or possibly to visit friends. 

grumble...

I prefer a much more friendly class of hotel.  If I could arrange my own accommodation, I'd be able to manage somewhere a lot better.  Somewhere that cooks breakfast to order, and has free wi-fi (although internet on a stick is so cheap these days I wonder how they can make any money at all).  To be fair though, I can have a few things to order, and this morning's pancakes were very tasty.

Need to find a better way to get from the City Centre to Bristol Business park. 

Also need to get out more.  I'm apparently here for 3 weeks after all. 

Anyone do gaming (of any sort) in Bristol these days?

Anyone? 

So I seem to be being sent to Bristol for an indeterminate time. 

Bristol, I don't have a huge problem with.  I like Bristol! 

What is a problem is the indeterminate time aspect.  I didn't get a lot of notice in the first place.  So, it seems that hotels are being booked for 3 weeks in advance.  Apparently then I'm going to be there for 3 weeks.  At least.  Or maybe less.

This means I'm paying for accommodation that I'm not using.  Now, it's 80 quid a week, which is less than half the price of a hotel, and I need to give 8 days notice, so I'm paying for next week whether I'm there or not.  If I'm only going to be spending odd weeks in Bristol it makes sense to pay rent whether I'm there or not.  If I'm going to be spending more time here than there I'm less sure.  If I'm going to be spending 3 weeks away then I'm not sure if I should leave or not. 

WGC is appalling for guest houses and cheap hotels.  Could, if I need to stay with crazy person since she runs the place as a B&B (minus the B) if she doesn't have a full timer. 

Still, I at least have the chance to see what's going on there, catching up with friends, and charging food to the company.

I think that was the longest birthday celebration ever.  Startyed last Monday.  Went to Hersmonceux castle for the Mediaval festival.  penguin_worship was kind enough to give me a lift.

So we arrived in time for the siege.  It was fun, although the arrows did stop some way short of the castle.  Seems they had no intention of actually killing each other.  Ambled around.  Many friends came, and wished my happy birthday.  Picked up a nice book.  Leather bound funnish spells.  Received various presents.  Cider and Dragon's breath (mead fruit wine blend) and t-shirt and fudge.  Watched some people fighting and other people making stuff.  Ate some pig!  Had lots of fun.

Friday was my actual birthday.  Visited my parents.  Received some DMS (purple FTW!) and a voucher of a sushi making course.  Was competing for attention from my nephew.  Went to Britsol and caught up with some old friends (tyrshundr, vanir and xenaclone managed to make it.  Not as big a crowd as I was hoping but nice to catch up).  Decided to go back the the Washington Hotel.  I quite like it.  Rooms are a bit tatty but they seem to do good service and they're small enough that you get a breakfast cooked to order rather than a buffet. 

Stopped by other friends on the way to Reading.  Some of them were making armour. 

Went to parents for a birthday meal.  Received a present from my brother (replacement Swiss Army card.  I seem to keep losing these at airports).

Meal was onion soup, smoked salmon and avacado, pork in cider, sorbet, cheese and biscuits, pavlova.  All cooked to perfection because my dad does that sort of thing ever so well.

And so onto Sunday where I was still horribly busy.  Met up with Estelliane for lunch, and went to Caroline for pub quiz later.  We won!  Go us!  Actually I think they miscounted...  Was quite please with our epic performance on the AI voices round.  Mr Smith was a slightly tricky one.  Queeg (from Red Dwarf) required a bit of dredging my braincells.  The real sneaky one was Pod from Snog Marry Avoid - team effort from me and teammate.  Not sure if I should be proud of that one.

Okay - here's the plan.  I'm heading to Bristol on the 2nd of September (unless nobody wants to come) for some birthday drinks at about 6pm. 

I'll try and find somewhere in Clifton.  Somewhere that does good cider.  If anyone has suggestions then awesome.  Let me know.

A friend of mine is doing a street piano crawl this Sunday.

From Portland Square, St. Pauls to Waterfront Quayside. 

Also,another friend is running a little Firefly Shindig on the 26th. 

New Year.  Went to Bristol (again).  Fun enough.  Next year I think I'll have to party closer to home.  Anyone want to come visit?  Is it too early to invite people?  Seem to have spent a lot of this month in my car. 

So, I decided to take today off.  Otherwise I don't really have much of a bank holiday.  Driving back from Bristol takes up a hefty chunk of the day and I'm too tired afterwards. 

I seem to have a minor cold again.  Very annoying.  

Decided to Install Windows 2K on Edgar, my old PC.  Not quite sure what to do with a AMD K6-300 with no hardware video acceleration.  Was hoping to be able to use it as a DVD player but it's a little too slow.  Could always install FreeDOS on it.  And Linux but still not sure what I want to do with it. 

There seem to be a lot of things that I might do if other things are organised. 

Next weekend I might go to a Christmas party in Bristol.  For new Year I might go to Bristol again or might do something else.  Might do something between those dates as well.  Next year I might go to a model exhibition at Alexandra Palace.  I might go to the Serenity LARP and might be crewing or might be a player.  Might hold a Back to the future video marathon early next year. 

Might be a good idea to actually
find out what other people are doing so that I can make some decisions. 

I feel tempted to visit Brissle next weekend largely because of this and spacefall's birthday. 

Trouble is, it's too far to go:(

anyone else planning on doing something that weekend?

So, went to Bristol.  Saw friends.  Went to B7 meetup.  Saw more friends.  Made some friends.  Went to a party.   Saw friends many of whom I hadn't seen for a while.  Saw most of them again the next day

Some good things and some slightly annoying things, which I'll get out of the way first..

Annoying thing #1 - some idiot whcaked my wing mirror!  A-****ing-gain.  Now, I'm going to replace it soon anyway, but that's not the point.  Whoever did it damaged my car and just drove off because they thought they could get away with it.  Actually the whole journey home was annoying what with not really wanting to change lane (only had one effective wing mirror), not being able to pull into the last convenient serivces between Reading and Pease Pottage because some idiot had rolled his lorry on the entrance, spending a

Annoying thing #2 - I couldn't be in two places at the same time.  Pub was fun.  Party was fun. 

But anyway, arrived in Bristol drove around playing a game of Space Hunter.  Eventually found a space only a few hundred miles from where I wanted to go.  Chatted to tyrshundr and the_smut_fairy and the other flatmate who may or may not be on LJ.  Went to the pub. 

I should have taken the bus.  The correct stop was clearly marked.  I found the palce fairly easily although since the directions wer  from the station, I took a slightly roundabout route.  spacefall and steverogerson were already there.  And so I chatted mostly to steve and spacefall, but milled around a little.  Met girfan briefly.  Confused everyone there because I was the only person who got the name.  Note to self - don't sing the doom song in mixed company unless you don't mind scaring people.  Met snowgrouse, who I thought was decidedly cool, and also had some very funky pics in her notebook. 

But I had to leave.  I had said I was going to rattieally's birthday party, so I did.  And met some people I hadn't met for a long time.  I knew I was in the right place when someone suggested playing Global Thermonuclear War (I'd prefer a good game of chess).  We decided not to play because as someone else pointed out, the only way to win is not to play.  So we played pass the parcel (done the good way with a prize between each layer) and pin the nose on the penguin and whacked a pinata and then played apples toapples - a fun little game where you need to select the most suitable noun for an adjective.  I lost convincingly. 

Went to bed.  Made some rhymic pumping noises to inflate a matress Woke up.  Went to Reckless Engineer and met most of the people from the party.  Had Sunday Lunch.   And all was good.