Friday frolics
thalassius came to Birmingham late on Friday which triggered the usual coming together of the Birmingham Grouping.
I'd travelled up early on Friday to see my supervisor. On the way, I realised I shouldn't have bothered as I started to feel more and more tired from my cold. By the time I got there for my meeting, I was a bit falling over. My supervisor did not show up. Stabbitty death kill... Anyway, I gave up, went home, rested and was pleasantly alert when it came for time to go and meet people.
loreid, kathrid, wychwood and of course the Great Attractor himself were the grouping.
Bookshops are good places to meet. Conversation can be had while waiting, but invariably, one gets lots of book recommendations while one is waiting and one gets to squee about ones own recommendations.
We moved on to a cafe that is probably an independent cafe. It's at least a bit different and has nice, quiet places to sit and chat. It was one wychwood had discovered recently and recommended. I remember discovering it a year ago and never mentioning it due to lack of confidence that anyone else would like it. I guess there's a lesson for me there.
Unfortunately, the cafe closed and kicked us out before we were ready to eat and none of us felt hungry enough to go and eat things, so we went to find somewhere different to sit until we were hungry. This involved us traipsing around lots of Birmingham, unable to get into any first choice place, walking into somewhere no one felt overly comfortable, working out that this was how people felt due to politeness failure and then leaving. We are not silly, oh no :)
Anyway, this at least meant we were hungry and we decided that what we all really wanted was Italian, because none of us could complain about that. However, Italian was on the other side of Birmingham, so we decided on French instead. However, when we walked up to the French place in the Bullring, we found the very restaurant we wanted to go to, but conveniently located in the Bullring itself. This made everyone happy.
There we talked lots and had one of those fantastic chain conversations that went through multiple topics in no particular order. I've not had one of those in a while, and this made me very, very happy, although perhaps I suffered from too much serial association (where something makes me think of something else and then I say it, only to realise people are still talking about the first thing and I have rudely interrupted someone else, oops). We started on economics and the current financial crisis, which was fun, and I can't remember where we got to after that.
I'd travelled up early on Friday to see my supervisor. On the way, I realised I shouldn't have bothered as I started to feel more and more tired from my cold. By the time I got there for my meeting, I was a bit falling over. My supervisor did not show up. Stabbitty death kill... Anyway, I gave up, went home, rested and was pleasantly alert when it came for time to go and meet people.
loreid, kathrid, wychwood and of course the Great Attractor himself were the grouping.
Bookshops are good places to meet. Conversation can be had while waiting, but invariably, one gets lots of book recommendations while one is waiting and one gets to squee about ones own recommendations.
We moved on to a cafe that is probably an independent cafe. It's at least a bit different and has nice, quiet places to sit and chat. It was one wychwood had discovered recently and recommended. I remember discovering it a year ago and never mentioning it due to lack of confidence that anyone else would like it. I guess there's a lesson for me there.
Unfortunately, the cafe closed and kicked us out before we were ready to eat and none of us felt hungry enough to go and eat things, so we went to find somewhere different to sit until we were hungry. This involved us traipsing around lots of Birmingham, unable to get into any first choice place, walking into somewhere no one felt overly comfortable, working out that this was how people felt due to politeness failure and then leaving. We are not silly, oh no :)
Anyway, this at least meant we were hungry and we decided that what we all really wanted was Italian, because none of us could complain about that. However, Italian was on the other side of Birmingham, so we decided on French instead. However, when we walked up to the French place in the Bullring, we found the very restaurant we wanted to go to, but conveniently located in the Bullring itself. This made everyone happy.
There we talked lots and had one of those fantastic chain conversations that went through multiple topics in no particular order. I've not had one of those in a while, and this made me very, very happy, although perhaps I suffered from too much serial association (where something makes me think of something else and then I say it, only to realise people are still talking about the first thing and I have rudely interrupted someone else, oops). We started on economics and the current financial crisis, which was fun, and I can't remember where we got to after that.