Entry #17: Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy

After following the Dancing on Ice competition I actually missed the final! With good reason though, I was preparing for the goodbye night out before my cousin left for his round the world adventure.

By “preparing” I of course mean drinking. I was warming up with my sister, her boyfriend and Natalie. Natalie is a long-term friend of my sister and through spending quite a bit of time together last year is my friend too. We all were drunk by the time we got to Trof on Peter Street in the Northern Quarter. I'd been there one time before on its official opening night, which was the same evening I went to that re-scheduled blogging workshop. By the time my cousin and his entourage turned up later than planned we were even more drunk than when got there ourselves.

I had a good natter with Amy, a quick chat with Ian from Clique when I noticed him in there too, then the four of us first in were the first out as we left to go to Mint Lounge for others to follow us on. On the Monday after I felt like I'd been lifting weights, and it was when Natalie spoke of having many bruises I remembered transporting her to Mint Lounge piggyback — evidently it wasn't a smooth ride. Our memory of our time in there is blurry, we were very drunk.

As well as the alcohol, my vision was blurry because I was getting used to the new glasses I collected that day. I could see, then I couldn't, then I could, then I couldn't… I went back to the opticians a few days later raising concerns that I was finding it difficult to focus. They had told me to give it a few days to get comfortable with them but it was a nightmare trying to focus on the computer monitor at work, inevitably going cross-eyed and dizzy. They checked and confirmed my prescription is the best for me and reiterated for me to give it time.

They also advised me to avoid computer monitors for a few days, because close-up objects are what's most problematic, hard to do when I need to stare at a monitor for about seven hours a day at work alone. Over this weekend I wasn't at the keyboard much anyway. I babysat on Saturday night and I made up for my lack of Dancing on Ice participation last week by voting for Kyran in the Champion of Champions show, twice. I really want to go see the tour coming to the Manchester Evening News Arena around my birthday. I may try and get some tickets this weekend, Natalie said she'd go.

Alex and Amy left for their trip on Saturday, starting off in India; Their Web site is Round the World, Very Slowly. When nattering with Amy she promised to update their site and not let it go stale, so I'm looking forward to reading their stories and looking at their photographs. It's on my to-do list for photographs to form part of my blog in the future, but for starters I need to get a good digital camera. Tonight I've worked on code to give my correct local time now we're in British Summer Time after entering Spring and putting our clocks an hour forward at the weekend.

British Summer Time (BST), more generally known as Western European Summer Time (WEST), starts on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October. The code I've written automatically figures out if a given date is in or outside BST, in this case the timestamps of blog entries. I would entertain you with the code but I've not yet written the code for me to quote code within blog entries (haha), and I'm not going to hardcode it for want of keeping the source of blog entries as pure as possible. I should work on further developments Tuesday evening and may put the new stuff live then. O, it's fun geeking out.

After losing an hour, I ensured I made use of what time I did have on Sunday. I visited my friends Paul's and Emma's graves in Southern Cemetery after leaving my mum's in Chorlton, then came home to Stretford. I went to the pound shop to get some new cheap earphones because my good ones broke, spent more than one pound in there as usually happens, then did some supermarket shopping. I went round to Gina's and we went for a drink at manto. When we got a corner to ourselves I posed the question of who we'd find coming to sit with us.

Within a few minutes that was answered as four females joined us, and our spontaneous inexpensive cheer-me-up drink was good fun as we talked to them. I had a laugh with one in particular. She's called Donna, an older woman, and my new text buddy hehe…. When I got home I finally signed the petition to Keep Afflecks Palace open. I first learned about Afflecks Palace's uncertain future through Mancubist: What does the future hold for Afflecks Palace?

Afflecks is an icon of our diverse culture, it's a relaxed, welcoming place — a space to be just as you are. I'm all for building up our city and redeveloping sites into better things, but building something else here would demolish more than just bricks and mortar.

entry info

Entry #17, published on Tuesday, 27^th of March 2007 at 01:01 local time (Swatch Internet Time @042 .beats)

Returning in 2008 ;-)