Another crazy weekend

Leaving work

I left work for the last time on Friday, felt a bit weird to be going as I’ve got used to getting up early every morning and trudging in to work on the bus like everyone else. I thought I’d just be heading off home but apparently I was having a leaving do so we headed off to the Old Abbey Inn (conveniently about a hundred yards away from our offices) for drinks. I was a bit surprised by this as I hadn’t really worked there very long (about eight weeks I think) and I’ve never had anything like that before, so it was really nice to have people organise something. I also had all my drinks bought for me so I was happy from that respect, although Landlord was the only bitter on tap. Amusingly Colin (the managing director) said he thought I didn’t look like a lager man anyway when I had to choose between a pint of Landlord and Carlsberg when the latter had only a couple of pints left in the barrel. 🙂

Most people left after a couple of drinks, but Gareth, Jim and Jimmy stayed on for another hour or so (possibly longer, I sort of lost track of time beyond a certain point) and we had some amusing arguments, including one about the location of the Monkey Bridge in Bury which resulted in Jim ringing Trav to settle the issue (though I still haven’t checked with people from St. Gabriels as to whether I was right or not). I also realised just how utterly revolting lager really is when I felt my stomach clench violenty when I drank a pint of Carlsberg (the Old Abbey is owned by Kro and their bars seem to have a habit of running out of proper beer).

At some point I managed to get down to Fab where it was David’s leaving do, although I was pretty tired by the time I got there and according to Justine I was nearly falling asleep at one point. The music was okay but it was very smokey and somehow the girl behind the bar nearly managed to interpret a “pint of Tetleys” as “a Jack Daniels”?! We left fairly early as people had either Aikido or work the next day, and to be honest I think I would have fallen asleep on the comfy seats if we’d stayed much longer.

ManLUG

ManLUG was a bit different this month, as no one had volunteered (or been press ganged 🙂 into doing a talk, so we just ended up sitting in the room and talking shop for a couple of hours, which was quite interesting as you meet quite a wide variety of people, strange though that may sound. Simon offloaded the Javastation Krups onto me as he’s been trying to get rid of it. I’m going to try and get Debian on it at some point, not sure exactly what I’ll do with it but it should make an interesting side project and an opportunity to play with Linux on non-x86 hardware.

After ManLUG I was on the way back to Piccadilly with Vlad to get a bus home to Bury when suddenly several text messages came flooding in – there’s no reception for o2 in parts of the Kilburn Building so everything must have got held up until I got outside. One of them was from Lizzy asking if I’d go round for a bit as she wasn’t feeling very well and wanted the company, so I headed all the way back to Fallowfield for that. Unfortunately that coincided with all the students moving into Owens Park so it took me ages to get to my stop. We didn’t really do much when I got there, although we did go round to Lucy’s very swanky apartment (which looks like Slade Prison from Porridge until you get into the actual apartments) which I think we’re both quite jealous of now. Apart from that it was basically help unpack and carry stuff and look at photo albums (I found a great one of the Megs outside Nicos, just the lads standing there looking very smart but with sunglasses on).

By the time I left it was a bit late to get a bus back to Bury so I got my dad to come and pick me up and I’ve not really done much since then except talk to Kate on UA and started to watch some of the DVDs that arrived for me this week. All in all it hasn’t been too bad a weekend, just a bit rushed and tired. Next week is going to be incredibly busy though as I’ve got lots of things to do in our department, not to mention trying to keep an eye on freshers fair and manning at least one stall, plus knowing my luck I’ll probably catch whatever bug was making Lizzy ill or freshers flu again. First week back is always a laugh though, and we’re back in the Burlington tomorrow for Warped so no doubt the usual antics will be resumed.