My its been an odd day today.

A mix of strange internal feelings. On one hand I’ve been driven to do as much work as possible. Opposing this was a horrible “everything so tedious feeling” Add to this a Mental Slave Driver character to keep the show on the road and you’ve got a Newt whose increasingly feeling uptight. I’ve think I’ve won through, but reflection at home with a cup of tea will show this.

Going to have more days like this. Got lots of stuff I want to do.

Fortunately because I’m running the show I can say “Sod this I’m off home”.

Which I’m doing now. Bye

Well the leafy one got up to Leeds on Friday night and him and deputy_dug had a right rollicking bachelor night out on the tiles, which deputy_dug can fill in the gory details.

Meanwhile me and littlerachcat chilled out and watched “Runaway Jury” which was jolly good for a courtroom drama, 4 stars out of 5.

Went over to Oldham during the day to visit Rach’s Grandma and go shopping at Morrisons. While Rach went round with her grandma doing her shopping, I went round on my own doing ours. This was one of the most deeply wrong experiences I’ve ever had. All the aisles were the same, but in a different order to Leeds. Add to this the fact it was a busy Saturday and I was never so glad to get to the pub for lunch. After a lunch we had a quick drive round some of the latest properties Rach has seen on the interweb for sale. Some very nice houses in a very nice area, just a couple of streets away from the in-laws. Hmmmmmn.

After a brief kip to burn of the food and alcohol from lunch got ready to go out to the Victoria Hotel in town.

As usual me and Rach were early, but much to my surprise so were Doug and Cab. How grown up we all are. Doug and Cab were especially fetching in matching white shirts (don’t ask). We talked we drank Rich, grannyannie, gillywoo,nikkyboy, glennkenobi, susannah_banana, Ruth and Alan turned up, we drank some more, the gurning began (see photo), we ended up in the Lounge, Rach fell asleep just after I bought a round and I abandoned my pint of Guiness to take the wife home. Handy the taxi rank being directly opposite the Lounge. Sunday was very quiet and hungover. MORE PHOTOS HERE

So in a couple of weeks time Dr Cab is off to Washington for 2-5 years to do some medical imaging nonsense involving lasers in a government funded brain drain institute being paid very nicely to put up with Americans.

Meanwhile in good ole blighty……..

El Cabbage is up in Leeds this weekend before disappearing to America to do his Post Doc.

Me Rach, Doug and Cab are going to the Victoria in Town 8pm onwards to drink beer and reminisce. Feel free to join us.

**EDIT** Opps should have said were out SATURDAY night.

Rach has got a job at Halifax hospital starting September!!!

I don’t think its really sunk in as you can see on her blog, since she’s finishing off her dissertation (hand in tomorrow). Personally I’m over the moon.

And as a personal bonus another job at the School of Medicine almost virtually the same as the last one I applied for and nearly got has turned up!

The recent roller coaster ride that has been my life has definatly slowing to a halt recently, which is good.

Today I’ve been working from home. Mainly brushing up on the web-programming skills and doing some tidying up. Oh and some Counter-strike was involved and a leettle bit of tidying up around the house.

Life is returning to chill mode, and that is good.

I’ve been on a bit of a crime spree recently film wise.

First up was The Long Good Friday. Killer plot, Bob Hoskins at his meanest, Charlie from Casualty getting glassed to death. Classic. The whole macho tough guy 70s British crime thing done with intelligence and class.

If you’ve got nearly four hours to spare watch Serigo Leone’s Once upon a time in America. Its his last film and its an absolute cinema classic. Robert De Niro and James Woods putting in the performances of their careers. The plot is tight, and because Leone takes a show not tell approach there are hints of what is going on that are only betrayed by the characters actions and their expressions. It takes in 50 years of organised crime and without wanting to give to much away starts in the 1920s and the street gangs in the jewish ghettos of New York and ends in the 1960s in the halls of power, where the corrupt trades unionists and gangsters who backed them are now in politics. A visual treat of a film that you should watch if you appreciate cinema as a medium in its own right never mind if you are a fan of Gangster movies.

Well I didn’t get the job I went for , Database/Web developer within the School of Medicine at Manchester. I’m a tad grumpy about it, since it would have been a nice leg up on the money front. However I got some cracking feed back. Apparently I did a good application and my interview was good too. At the end of the day it was a close run thing with them only deciding to go with another candidate who had more experience than myself last night (interview was on Monday). So no dishonour or disgrace there.

After the post-feedback grump I’ve been quickly refocusing on my current job. The win-win nature of going for this other job was the knowledge that I’m not fleeing my current job because I hate it or have to due to financial reasons. In fact I quite like my job. There’s lots of good work to be done. In fact in many ways quite a positive outcome, since I know will have the time to finish off the projects I am working on and comfatably round out my skills.

In other news Rach has got an interview at Huddersfield next week 🙂

Leeds hot. Nice and sunny. But hot.

Armed police with big moustaches (is Salvador Dali responsible for the security in this land now?) at the train station. Worrying thoughts, train on time (phew)

Train crawls to Manchester, slows to a stop in outskirts. What’s going on here gov? No idea. 20 mins later find out Truck stopped on line. 10 mins later, conductor getting shirty with passengers. Bus coming to pick us up. No time scale given, so sod it bail out have a short run and catch train.

Arrive at work hot sweaty, pissed off after taking two hours to get to work.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Spent most of yesterday recovering from Geek Trek (more later).

About 2pm started getting my act together and after donning the designer white linen shirt and trousers, which kept me both stylish and cool, headed off to catch the train.

At the train station bumped into nikkyboy, dreadtemujin, Heather,gillywoo glennkenobi and deputy_dug. Spent an anxious fifth teen minutes or so waiting for a train, since several were cancelled/delayed. This was a knock on of Wednesday’s nonsense and both Leeds and York had a larger Police presence than usual.

Got to an obsencely sunny York 20 mins before kick off so jumped across town to the venue. The Merchant’s Adventurer’s Hall was a spenledid venue for the happy day. All oak beams, pictures of men (and women) with beards and starched clothes from ye olden days.

The ceremony was short and sweet, and after a quick photo session it was back inside for the wedding Breakfast. This was a marvellous Lebanese affair, which as a veggy I really liked. Monster radishes and olives. mmmmn olives……

After speeches and a cake made of a mound of profitroles it was downstairs to the reception disco, DJed by Wendyhouse djs nikkyboy,gillywoo & glennkenobi. An excletic mix of beats and music which can only be described as pure cheese was played and some one in the ensemble asked them to turn it down!!. Sat outside in the gardens with our littlerachcat for a while since she had been at work or day (as she has been today, tommorrow all the way up to Wendesday eeck!). As the sun went down watched the bats come out of the hall roof, flying & diving madly for their free lunch of summer insects.

Caught up with a ton up people. Met bitvacuous properly . We’ve met before at my own wedding a year ago, but that was a bit fuzzy. Talked about the joys of cats!

I only danced once in the whole evening, a rather energtic Slam dance to Battlestar Galalttica with the groom. Picture two fat blokes flying through the air. As keefybabe said after wards, “I think I’m slightly sweaty now!”

Then all too soon it was time to go home, so after goodbyes it was back in the car, with Foz and a delightfully drunk Mandy in back, to Leeds.

A great wedding, and one that was highly entertaining.

Here’s to Mr & Mrs Baker!

What did Keef and Matty wear under their kilts?