The year so far.
I've gone close to three weeks without an update, so that "update more frequently" New Year's Resolution? Pretty much failed miserably. Did anyone miss me? *g*
Ok, I'm about a month late with this, but...
Welcome to LiveJournal bawston48!!!!
This year has been terrific for me so far. I'm surprised at how happy I've been. I've watched lots of movies, read books, spent time with friends, been to a Bronzer meet, and spent a lot of time chatting (which is the biggest cause of my happiness, I'd say.) Of course, I have neglected a few things: such as LiveJournal. Not only have I not been updating myself, but I've only been skim-scrolling my friends list, rather than reading everything properly. (Probably obvious from my not commenting on people's entries.) I apologise to everyone about that, and I plan on changing that straight away. Dropping a movie a day to keep up better with what's going on in my friends' lives seems well worth it. *g*
This weekend was really, really good. I've babbled almost endlessly below, not really worth reading unless you consider paragraph upon paragraph about train journeys a big hoot. I just wanted to get a little diary of the weekend written down for my own benefit.
The train journeys were long, and had changes (as you'd expect from Liverpool to Cardiff and vice-versa) but I like them. They give me a good chance to read. Although littlexander had mentioned that the Holiday Inn is only 30 seconds away from the train station, I was still paranoid that I'd get lost and not be able to find it. Happily though, as you walk out of the train station, look to your left, you see the hotel. I had thought that the hotel room was already paid for by card (I was sure that's what it had said on the 'net) but I had to pay cash to check in. Either I hadn't read properly, or the site was mis-leading. Either way, I was in a bit of a strop with Holiday Inn when I checked in. So my first thoughts in the hotel were about all the ways in which this Holiday Inn was inferior to the Holiday Inn Express we stayed in in Oxford. About the last straw was when I looked all around the wall for the hair dryer, and saw that there was not a hair dryer stuck to the wall. Hair dryers on the wall are like, the best thing about hotels! I was about ready to freak out and complain about my shabby room, when I opened to top drawer and saw that the hair dryers in these hotels are stuck inside the top drawer of a desk. I'd never seen anything like that before, and it stuck me as amusingly weird, so the hotel room was redeemed. The showers were good and especially good because I can't get a proper temperature or pressure on my shower at home and in all, the room was exactly what you'd expect from a Holiday Inn. Not anything mind-blowingly great, but not the abomination I was ready to label it as when I first checked in. I did dislike that this type of Holiday Inn didn't offer a complimentary breakfast though, and the prices on the breakfast that you could buy there scared me off (I really don't like spending money...)
Met up with littlexander and redwitch_g in the hotel lobby, and walked around Liverpool a little. I really like Liverpool a lot. I've never been there before (which adds to Oxford and Alton and later, Manchester as new places that Bronzer meets have taken me) and it seemed to have everything. A lot more than Cardiff, certainly, and it was prettier. It even had an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurant right by the hotel. I went to one of those in Florida and ate until I could no longer move (I loooove Chinese food) and have wanted one of those to open in Cardiff ever since. Liverpool has one, and I'm jealous. But yeah, really nice city. Though I think littlexander felt really weird having a Bronzer meet in his own town. :)
After going out for a meal (and I kept up a life-long tradition of not having a clue what to order, seeing so many things that sound really interesting and worth trying, and then when the waiter asks for my order the reaction is *panic* "umm... burger", "plain", "yes please" and I end up with a plain burger which is really not at all interesting and not one of the things I even half-considered when I was making my shortlonglist of things on the menu. Still, it was a nice meal; all of the food I had over the weekend was really nice actually. The last 3 times I've eaten out in Cardiff my food has either been overcooked, or the size of the meal has been staggeringly small, and I was worrying that the pub I worked in was the only place in the UK that actually does food well, but nope, Liverpool set that straight) we ended up going back to the hotel bar and drinking until about 1am (I say drinking, but Redwitch was the only one drinking anything stronger than coke. *g*)
On Saturday morning I met thehelygen for the first time, and she is every bit as fantastic in person as she is online. The four of us then did a bit of shopping (Liverpool's sci-fi shops are tonnes better than Cardiff's), had a meal and a few drinks, and then met up with stevefarrell. The bar we spent most of the day in, Yates', totally rocks. The food was really good (although the staff did keep up the pub tradition of not listening properly to orders, and as he predicted, LX ended up with coleslaw and crackers on his plate despite specifically asking not to have any) and they have Vodka Chocolate Mudshakes there, which I had never seen before. Whoever decided that putting chocolate milkshake flavoured drink together with vodka is an absolute genius. You can't taste any alcohol in them whatsoever and if they were a lot cheaper I don't think I'd have been able to stop from drinking them. Of course, a lot of the music they played in there was wretched, as Steve so brilliantly ranted about, and there were a few other down sides to the place (it was staggeringly hot in there, and after a big meal, no one had any energy at all) but I liked it a lot.
Strangely though, between 8pm and 9pm on the day of the California presidential primary the staff decided that just in case people in the bar wanted to get up and dance, our table, and the table next to us, would be a safety issue, and need to be taken away. Not any of the other 20+ tables, just ours and one other. Yeah, that makes sense. Of course, by this time, all those other tables were taken, so we had no choice but to leave. And I was only halfway through my jug of Vodka Redbull as well, and had to drink it a lot quicker than I'd have liked. *frown*
We went back to the hotel bar for a bit, but I had to leave within an hour or so to catch my train. The train journey back, in several parts, was a lot better than expected. I had been worried that I'd fall asleep on the train and miss my stop, and indeed, if I *had* missed my stop on the train from Liverpool, I'd have ended up in York. Thankfully, that didn't happen, I was wide awake, and got off in Manchester. I had a bit of a wait there, so decided to walk around the town. Manchester didn't look nearly as pretty at night as Liverpool did, and although all the shops were shut and I can't make a proper comparison between the two cities, I had a really strong negative reaction to Manchester, the total opposite of the reaction I'd had to Liverpool. I read at the train station for a little, but it wasn't amazingly comfortable, it cost 20 pence just to enter the toilets (ridiculous...) and all the drunk people kept walking past me and asking me what I was reading, and whether my book was really boring. Drunk clubbers find books to be boring, apparently. Very near the station was a cafe that stayed open all night, so I went in there and listened to some Dude Where's My Country on audio book. At one point, some of the drunk clubbers went in there, and one of the girls asked what I was listening to. I told her it was an audio book, she asked what that was. "You know, it's a book being read out loud on CD so that you can listen to it". "Oh, who's it by?" "Michael Moore". At that point her and her group laughed out loud for about 5-10 minutes at what a 'stupid name' Michael Moore is. I really didn't like Manchester.
Then a couple of people came into the cafe and talked way too loudly (as in, above the volume level of my cd *g*) about who they were supposed to have sex with, "but he wasn't any fun, so I shagged him and him instead", you get the picture, so I changed the CD and put my Chevelle (awesome band) album into the player and listened to that for a bit. But although you can't hear the music itself unless you have the earphones in, you can hear that there is music playing, and I was getting tonnes of frowns and funny looks from the people in the cafe, all of whom looked as rough as anything, making it clear that they didn't approve of me listening to music on a personal CD player. Thank goodness it was almost time for my next train, so I got the heck of that cafe and went back to the train station. The next train journey was the least pleasant, and the only one where I was feeling really tired. I drifted in and out of sleep, to the point where I dropped my book on the floor and stuff, and was having those *horrible* dreams where surroundings are incorporated into the dreams, and every moment you wake up, for a few split seconds, you would swear that what was in the dream was real, and that you did tell the people in the next seat over to shut the hell up, but after a few seconds of panic and worry, you remember that you were just dreaming, in time to fall asleep again and begin the cycle all over again. The little bits of sleep did make the journey go quickly though, so I got off at Birmingham, and felt wide awake again. The train journey back to Cardiff was lovely. I sat and without any tiredness read some Bill Bryson, and laughed at a passage where he complained about that really awful semi-conscious sleep I'd had over the past couple of hours. :)
Anyway, I think I'm getting more comfortable at Bronzer meets. Sometimes I'm a little nervous and worried about whether I'm being too quiet, whether I'm being to silly, etc., etc. but this weekend felt more like spending time with friends I've known my whole life, and not once did I worry about whether I was being quiet or how I was coming across. I really wish I was one of those people that remembers quotes and stuff, because I remember laughing and giggling a lot over the weekend, but can't for the life of me remember any of the things that made me laugh. Anyway, I want more Bronzer meets. They should be at least monthly. *g*
Bronzer meets rock. redwitch_g, littlexander, thehelygen and stevefarrell rock.
I have tonnes of movie discussion to catch up with, since I've not updated this all year and yet I've watched 54 movies this month already. Don't worry, I have no intention of talking about all of them. *g*
I'll say this much now though, in case I go on another extended absence.
JFK is the best movie ever.
Oliver Stone is the best director ever.
Rocky sucks.
(Not, you know, The Rock... who rocks (not a word bawston48!!! :p) but the movie.)
I really despise the preview feature that LiveJournal has. What good is a preview that doesn't show up half of the HTML properly? The preview function at the Beta was one of my favourite things about the place. Thank goodness for faithx5's idea of posting entries as private entries before making them public. That is going to be a life saver. :)
I did the Dante's Inferno test again recently. Probably of all the online quizzes, this is the one I liked most.
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
LevelScorePurgatory (Repenting Believers)Very LowLevel 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)LowLevel 2 (Lustful)LowLevel 3 (Gluttonous)HighLevel 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)HighLevel 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Very HighLevel 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Very HighLevel 7 (Violent)ModerateLevel 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)ModerateLevel 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Moderate
Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test
My level has actually gone up, but I've dropped down from having all extremely high and high ratings to having a bunch of medium and low ratings. Have I honestly become so much less evil? I don't like it. I liked having such a high evil rating. *eg*
Wow, this entry really is all over the place.
And finally, a meme, taken from stevefarrell
Recommend to me one of each of the following
1: A movie.
2: A book.
3: A musical artist.
4: An LJ user on your friends' list who isn't on mine.
Don't worry about the last one if you don't want to, since I'm too scared to friend people on livejournal before they friend me, in case they don't like me, but I'd really appreciate recommendations in the first 3 categories from everyone. If you want to, of course. :)
I may update more later or tomorrow. I hope I will. This isn't going to be a particularly effective diary for me to look back over my year, week, etc. if I'm only updating once every blue moon. My other new year's resolution, to start playing the lottery I need to at least *play* the lottery so that my 'when I win the lottery...' claims can have some basis in possibility, I've not done either. I shouldn't have made resolutions. I never keep them. :)
Ok, I'm about a month late with this, but...
Welcome to LiveJournal bawston48!!!!
This year has been terrific for me so far. I'm surprised at how happy I've been. I've watched lots of movies, read books, spent time with friends, been to a Bronzer meet, and spent a lot of time chatting (which is the biggest cause of my happiness, I'd say.) Of course, I have neglected a few things: such as LiveJournal. Not only have I not been updating myself, but I've only been skim-scrolling my friends list, rather than reading everything properly. (Probably obvious from my not commenting on people's entries.) I apologise to everyone about that, and I plan on changing that straight away. Dropping a movie a day to keep up better with what's going on in my friends' lives seems well worth it. *g*
This weekend was really, really good. I've babbled almost endlessly below, not really worth reading unless you consider paragraph upon paragraph about train journeys a big hoot. I just wanted to get a little diary of the weekend written down for my own benefit.
The train journeys were long, and had changes (as you'd expect from Liverpool to Cardiff and vice-versa) but I like them. They give me a good chance to read. Although littlexander had mentioned that the Holiday Inn is only 30 seconds away from the train station, I was still paranoid that I'd get lost and not be able to find it. Happily though, as you walk out of the train station, look to your left, you see the hotel. I had thought that the hotel room was already paid for by card (I was sure that's what it had said on the 'net) but I had to pay cash to check in. Either I hadn't read properly, or the site was mis-leading. Either way, I was in a bit of a strop with Holiday Inn when I checked in. So my first thoughts in the hotel were about all the ways in which this Holiday Inn was inferior to the Holiday Inn Express we stayed in in Oxford. About the last straw was when I looked all around the wall for the hair dryer, and saw that there was not a hair dryer stuck to the wall. Hair dryers on the wall are like, the best thing about hotels! I was about ready to freak out and complain about my shabby room, when I opened to top drawer and saw that the hair dryers in these hotels are stuck inside the top drawer of a desk. I'd never seen anything like that before, and it stuck me as amusingly weird, so the hotel room was redeemed. The showers were good and especially good because I can't get a proper temperature or pressure on my shower at home and in all, the room was exactly what you'd expect from a Holiday Inn. Not anything mind-blowingly great, but not the abomination I was ready to label it as when I first checked in. I did dislike that this type of Holiday Inn didn't offer a complimentary breakfast though, and the prices on the breakfast that you could buy there scared me off (I really don't like spending money...)
Met up with littlexander and redwitch_g in the hotel lobby, and walked around Liverpool a little. I really like Liverpool a lot. I've never been there before (which adds to Oxford and Alton and later, Manchester as new places that Bronzer meets have taken me) and it seemed to have everything. A lot more than Cardiff, certainly, and it was prettier. It even had an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurant right by the hotel. I went to one of those in Florida and ate until I could no longer move (I loooove Chinese food) and have wanted one of those to open in Cardiff ever since. Liverpool has one, and I'm jealous. But yeah, really nice city. Though I think littlexander felt really weird having a Bronzer meet in his own town. :)
After going out for a meal (and I kept up a life-long tradition of not having a clue what to order, seeing so many things that sound really interesting and worth trying, and then when the waiter asks for my order the reaction is *panic* "umm... burger", "plain", "yes please" and I end up with a plain burger which is really not at all interesting and not one of the things I even half-considered when I was making my shortlonglist of things on the menu. Still, it was a nice meal; all of the food I had over the weekend was really nice actually. The last 3 times I've eaten out in Cardiff my food has either been overcooked, or the size of the meal has been staggeringly small, and I was worrying that the pub I worked in was the only place in the UK that actually does food well, but nope, Liverpool set that straight) we ended up going back to the hotel bar and drinking until about 1am (I say drinking, but Redwitch was the only one drinking anything stronger than coke. *g*)
On Saturday morning I met thehelygen for the first time, and she is every bit as fantastic in person as she is online. The four of us then did a bit of shopping (Liverpool's sci-fi shops are tonnes better than Cardiff's), had a meal and a few drinks, and then met up with stevefarrell. The bar we spent most of the day in, Yates', totally rocks. The food was really good (although the staff did keep up the pub tradition of not listening properly to orders, and as he predicted, LX ended up with coleslaw and crackers on his plate despite specifically asking not to have any) and they have Vodka Chocolate Mudshakes there, which I had never seen before. Whoever decided that putting chocolate milkshake flavoured drink together with vodka is an absolute genius. You can't taste any alcohol in them whatsoever and if they were a lot cheaper I don't think I'd have been able to stop from drinking them. Of course, a lot of the music they played in there was wretched, as Steve so brilliantly ranted about, and there were a few other down sides to the place (it was staggeringly hot in there, and after a big meal, no one had any energy at all) but I liked it a lot.
Strangely though, between 8pm and 9pm on the day of the California presidential primary the staff decided that just in case people in the bar wanted to get up and dance, our table, and the table next to us, would be a safety issue, and need to be taken away. Not any of the other 20+ tables, just ours and one other. Yeah, that makes sense. Of course, by this time, all those other tables were taken, so we had no choice but to leave. And I was only halfway through my jug of Vodka Redbull as well, and had to drink it a lot quicker than I'd have liked. *frown*
We went back to the hotel bar for a bit, but I had to leave within an hour or so to catch my train. The train journey back, in several parts, was a lot better than expected. I had been worried that I'd fall asleep on the train and miss my stop, and indeed, if I *had* missed my stop on the train from Liverpool, I'd have ended up in York. Thankfully, that didn't happen, I was wide awake, and got off in Manchester. I had a bit of a wait there, so decided to walk around the town. Manchester didn't look nearly as pretty at night as Liverpool did, and although all the shops were shut and I can't make a proper comparison between the two cities, I had a really strong negative reaction to Manchester, the total opposite of the reaction I'd had to Liverpool. I read at the train station for a little, but it wasn't amazingly comfortable, it cost 20 pence just to enter the toilets (ridiculous...) and all the drunk people kept walking past me and asking me what I was reading, and whether my book was really boring. Drunk clubbers find books to be boring, apparently. Very near the station was a cafe that stayed open all night, so I went in there and listened to some Dude Where's My Country on audio book. At one point, some of the drunk clubbers went in there, and one of the girls asked what I was listening to. I told her it was an audio book, she asked what that was. "You know, it's a book being read out loud on CD so that you can listen to it". "Oh, who's it by?" "Michael Moore". At that point her and her group laughed out loud for about 5-10 minutes at what a 'stupid name' Michael Moore is. I really didn't like Manchester.
Then a couple of people came into the cafe and talked way too loudly (as in, above the volume level of my cd *g*) about who they were supposed to have sex with, "but he wasn't any fun, so I shagged him and him instead", you get the picture, so I changed the CD and put my Chevelle (awesome band) album into the player and listened to that for a bit. But although you can't hear the music itself unless you have the earphones in, you can hear that there is music playing, and I was getting tonnes of frowns and funny looks from the people in the cafe, all of whom looked as rough as anything, making it clear that they didn't approve of me listening to music on a personal CD player. Thank goodness it was almost time for my next train, so I got the heck of that cafe and went back to the train station. The next train journey was the least pleasant, and the only one where I was feeling really tired. I drifted in and out of sleep, to the point where I dropped my book on the floor and stuff, and was having those *horrible* dreams where surroundings are incorporated into the dreams, and every moment you wake up, for a few split seconds, you would swear that what was in the dream was real, and that you did tell the people in the next seat over to shut the hell up, but after a few seconds of panic and worry, you remember that you were just dreaming, in time to fall asleep again and begin the cycle all over again. The little bits of sleep did make the journey go quickly though, so I got off at Birmingham, and felt wide awake again. The train journey back to Cardiff was lovely. I sat and without any tiredness read some Bill Bryson, and laughed at a passage where he complained about that really awful semi-conscious sleep I'd had over the past couple of hours. :)
Anyway, I think I'm getting more comfortable at Bronzer meets. Sometimes I'm a little nervous and worried about whether I'm being too quiet, whether I'm being to silly, etc., etc. but this weekend felt more like spending time with friends I've known my whole life, and not once did I worry about whether I was being quiet or how I was coming across. I really wish I was one of those people that remembers quotes and stuff, because I remember laughing and giggling a lot over the weekend, but can't for the life of me remember any of the things that made me laugh. Anyway, I want more Bronzer meets. They should be at least monthly. *g*
Bronzer meets rock. redwitch_g, littlexander, thehelygen and stevefarrell rock.
I have tonnes of movie discussion to catch up with, since I've not updated this all year and yet I've watched 54 movies this month already. Don't worry, I have no intention of talking about all of them. *g*
I'll say this much now though, in case I go on another extended absence.
JFK is the best movie ever.
Oliver Stone is the best director ever.
Rocky sucks.
(Not, you know, The Rock... who rocks (not a word bawston48!!! :p) but the movie.)
I really despise the preview feature that LiveJournal has. What good is a preview that doesn't show up half of the HTML properly? The preview function at the Beta was one of my favourite things about the place. Thank goodness for faithx5's idea of posting entries as private entries before making them public. That is going to be a life saver. :)
I did the Dante's Inferno test again recently. Probably of all the online quizzes, this is the one I liked most.
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
LevelScorePurgatory (Repenting Believers)Very LowLevel 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)LowLevel 2 (Lustful)LowLevel 3 (Gluttonous)HighLevel 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)HighLevel 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Very HighLevel 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Very HighLevel 7 (Violent)ModerateLevel 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)ModerateLevel 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Moderate
Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test
My level has actually gone up, but I've dropped down from having all extremely high and high ratings to having a bunch of medium and low ratings. Have I honestly become so much less evil? I don't like it. I liked having such a high evil rating. *eg*
Wow, this entry really is all over the place.
And finally, a meme, taken from stevefarrell
Recommend to me one of each of the following
1: A movie.
2: A book.
3: A musical artist.
4: An LJ user on your friends' list who isn't on mine.
Don't worry about the last one if you don't want to, since I'm too scared to friend people on livejournal before they friend me, in case they don't like me, but I'd really appreciate recommendations in the first 3 categories from everyone. If you want to, of course. :)
I may update more later or tomorrow. I hope I will. This isn't going to be a particularly effective diary for me to look back over my year, week, etc. if I'm only updating once every blue moon. My other new year's resolution, to start playing the lottery I need to at least *play* the lottery so that my 'when I win the lottery...' claims can have some basis in possibility, I've not done either. I shouldn't have made resolutions. I never keep them. :)