Dan Q
It’s been a long time coming, but it had to happen sooner or later.
Here’s the announcement on the Pagan Wanderer Lu blog.
In other news, I have so much blogging to catch up on, and a couple of posts half-written, but no free time. Sooo… par for the course then.
Also: Happy Birthday, Claire!
Sloppy blogging, on my part, but I’ve been a busy boy lately and haven’t had time to say a lot. On the other hand, I’ve been twittering a little (but don’t worry, you’ll never catch me telling the world what’s on my sandwiches at lunchtime or what song I’m listening to right this second… unless, of course, it’s a dolphin steak and cream cheese sandwich or I’m listening to the 1995 Beatles Reunion Album or something else that’s actually worth remarking about).
Adam’s Big Birthday
What have I been up to, then. Well; there was Adam‘s 30th birthday, which shall probably hereafter be known as “Adam’s twenty-mmgphhnn <cough> th birthday”, which – as it seems he’s not going to say anything about, I suppose I ought to, not least because it’s an excuse to share some photos I might not otherwise have bothered to.
His birthday fell on a Troma Night, so Ruth baked a stack of muffins which were subsequently decorated by everybody who got to Troma Night before Adam did. The idea was to decorate them with “all of his favourite things”… can you begin to imagine what a stack of muffins look like when they’re iced with the BBC logo, twinkly little stars, ejaculating penises, a TARDIS, and – on one particularly well-decorated muffin (thanks Penny!) – a fabulous looking Dalek.
The Dalek is particularly impressive, yeah? I was impressed, anyway.
Andy & Sian Visit
The other thing that’s occupied plenty of my time is the string of visiting friends we’ve had in town. First up was Andy & Sian, who came up from Cardiff to open the new football stand for Aber Town, in memory of Sian’s brother, who died suddenly a few years ago.
It was great to catch up with them, eat curry with them, and play board games with them, especially as I hadn’t expected to see either of them again before the oft-promised Cardiff Is Amazing (are we still doing this, folks? how does the new proposed date sound to everybody?).
Jen & Nick Visit
Next up on the visiting queue were Jen and her new man, Nick. She’d been planning to come as part of her tour of the UK (I gather that she was at a wedding somewhere over here, too).
Nick’s a fab chap, and he and Jen make a great couple. Oh, and I got a video of Nick and Claire singing karaoke at the Inn on the Pier.
Incidentally, Jen: is this your watch? If so, you’ve left it here – where do you want me to post it?
Matt P Visits
Next up was Matt‘s visit, over Easter weekend. Claire and I hadn’t even gotten around to putting away our inflatable bed since Jen & Nick had borrowed it the previous weekend, which turned out to be convenient on account of the fact that it saved us from having to get it back out again.
Ruth organised a collaborative Easter egg hunt for us all (by which I mean; she supplied us all with Easter eggs, each with somebody else’s name on, which we had to hide) out in a nature reserve in the Rheidol Valley, which was a lot of fun. Rory‘s posted a fantastic video from the event, featuring mostly me looking like a prat as I hunt for the most obviously-hidden egg in the history of egg-hiding.
On Easter Sunday I ate too much. But I didn’t turn into a butterfly, just a big flabby ball of chocolate-muching.
And There’s More…
Andy & Faye are in Aberystwyth until tomorrow morning. Didn’t know they were here? Nor did I, until Andy was already on a train. I guess this counts as a “stealth visit.” I got to meet up with them for a smoothie after work yesterday, but couldn’t make it out to the pub with them. I invited them to Sci-Fi Night, though, but I don’t know if they’re up for that or not. In any case, you all know where to find them, now, so I feel like I’ve done my part to decloak them, in that way I do.
And I gather that Bryn will be down for the weekend as part of some variety of LUG gathering. Don’t people phone, text or blog ahead any more? What’s the world coming to?
Plenty more to say, but I’ll save it for another day.
So needless to say, I’ve been busy! The giveaway might have been that I haven’t blogged much – here’s a short summary of some of the things I’ve gotten up to:
Fake Christmas
Yeah, it really has been a while. So we had a “Fake Christmas”: this year – well, last year, I suppose – many of us Aberites planned to spend Christmas with our families, so we had an extra celebration a little earlier while we could all see one another. There was food and (lots of) drink and an exchanging of gifts, followed by copious quantities of Guitar Hero: World Tour, which Ruth, JTA and I had bought for Claire.
Thanks to Rory for the photo.
Real Christmas
Claire and I went up to Preston to see my folks for Christmas. Many board games were played, including the truly terrible Wost-Case Scenario Survival Game (it turns out, the survival challenge is sitting through this dull, uninspiring game). Was good to see my family for the first time in ages, though, give my sister Becky her long-belated birthday present (I’d always expected to be visiting “any time now”… for the four months or so previous since I’d gotten it), etc.
Because I’d been so busy (see Lots of Work, below), I actually took Nena, my main home desktop PC, up to Preston with me in order to get on with some more work over the Christmas break. My dad commented that there’s no shortage of computers at his house – I didn’t need to bring one! – but I pointed out that it was simply faster to unplug mine and bundle it into Claire’s car than it would be to set up my development toolchain, environment, etc. onto any other computer… by a long way.
Between Fake and Real Christmas, I found myself gifted a variety of fabulous board games, cookware (still haven’t found an opportunity to use my blowtorch yet – except to play with it, that is! – but my blender consistently proves useful), computer bits, clothes, books, and booze – which was all quite rapidly consumed.
New Year
Back to Aber for New Year, and counted it down at The Cottage with friends, including a proper countdown using a little Ruby application I knocked up for that purpose. I was dis-satisfied with the exclusion of the positive leap second (which I planned to take advantage of) in any of the official televised countdowns, as well as with the fact that the transmission and digital-decoding delay would throw off our accurate appreciation of midnight by about five seconds, so I developed a tool that should have been accurate to closer to a quarter of a second and ran it in a nice, huge font on my monitor (and counted midnight twice, of course).
For the second time (the first time was in 2000), I’m taking a break from alcohol, and this time Ruth is joining me, and so I stopped drinking at midnight. I’d originally planned this to be a year-long break, like last time, but I’m no longer sure: needs more thought. In any case, it’s certainly working well thus far, and I’m saving money and theoretically reducing my (previously, frankly ludicrous) alcohol tolerance without impacting my social life, so it’s a win regardless by this point.
Birthday
I turned 28 with a minimum of hoo-hah. Birthdays are fine and all, but I’ll wait until my thirtieth before I find an excuse for a party.
Flatland
In a form on Yet Another Fake Christmas, Claire and I visited her dad and his wife. They’ve just gotten themselves a Nintendo Wii with Wii Fit, which we played with a little and loved so much that we’ve since gotten a copy ourselves.
It’s a lot of fun, although it’s hard to believe that the “exercises” it has you perform are particularly effective unless you do no other physical activity whatsoever. However, it does a good job of teasing you if you’re overweight, which I suppose is worth something.
Lots of Work
I hadn’t realised quite how busy I’d been for the last four months – and particularly for the last month and a half – with a web application I’ve been working on. It’s been a pet project benefitting a variety of organisations for the last six years or so, and my team and I have been slogging away at it for the last few months to make it suitable for a far wider audience. Suddenly, following the deployment of the latest version, almost a fortnight ago, I’ve found myself with a surprising amount of free time. The other day, Claire and I hung out with JTA and just sat and read the paper and discussed what was going on in the world for about half an hour before I started thinking, “Hey, isn’t there something I’m supposed to be working on right now?” before realising “No, no there isn’t!” Sheer bliss.
And Catching Up
Which has finally given me time to catch up on my neglected RSS reader. I finally feel like I’m up-to-date! All that remained was to post a blog entry – this one, in fact – to let everybody who hasn’t seen or heard much of me of late know that I’m still alive!
So, that’s the last month and a bit for me! How’re you doing?
I couldn’t (easily) post these pictures while out-and-about, so I thought I’d share them now:
The tailbackon the M6. That’s a serious amount of traffic at a complete standstill, and people million about on the carriageway. In the distance, in the first one, you can just about make out the tops of the emergency services vehicles, despite the low resolution of the picture.
Gareth and Penny’s birthday cakes. Gareth’s is decorated with a small place flying across a blue sky, while Penny’s is shaped like a fairytale castle.
This was the moment during their recollection of their boating holiday that Matt suddenly realised that what Liz was telling him about a “steaking incident” was actually true and not something he’d dreamt.
Claire, Jimmy, and Beth. I don’t think Beth approves of this photo being taken.
A fabulous example of BiCon’s non-assuming, gender-doesn’t-really-matter thinking, in the form of the signs on the toilet doors. Behind these, the secondary signs are the same, except the the “Toilets with urinals” sign has had appended to it “Standing up okay,” and the “Toilets without urinals” sign has had appended to it “Standing up okay, put you might end up pissing on the seat.”
Not only a transgender-friendly statement, these signs also function as a reminder that in an environment where your gender is one preferred by not 50% but closer to 95% of the people present, imposing privacy by something as arbitary as gender is even more pointless than it is in the rest of the world.
The organisers of BiCon run a census each year. I think this photograph of a small part of the survey really does reflect “BiCon thinking” when it comes to the definition of gender and sexuality. One question reads “What term(s) do you use to describe your gender?”, with the following options – female only, female mostly, female somewhat more, female/male equally, male somewhat more, male mostly, male only, none/no gender, androgynous, genderqueer, other (please specify). Where almost any other survey would provide in the region of two mutually-exclusive choices, BiCon’s survey provides 10, which can be used in combination, and the space to define an answer yourself if you’re not satisfied with those available.
BiCon attendees are encouraged to decorate their name badge with stickers showing their affiliation to various groups, causes, ideologies, relationship structures, fetishes, etc. These make really good conversation-starters, but the list on the first day – with about six different “codes” – tends to have no bearing on the final-day list, fully-expanded by people adding their own codes and encouraging one another to make use of them. Click on the list to zoom in.
Went out last night for curry and beer to celebrate Paul‘s birthday (yes, we’re all well aware that Paul’s birthday was almost a month ago, but this was the first chance we’d had to really get together and make an ocassion of it). It was great to get together with a handful of folks rarely seen in the same place outside of Troma Night – and in some cases, recently, not even then – and have a good night out.
At the end of the evening I was quite tipsy; a direct result of the fact that or a few hours before the curry I’d been “warming up” with ales in the Ship & Castle with Matt P. And, as you may have noticed by now, there’s a strong correlation between me going to bed drunk and me blogging about particularly unusual dreams. I skipped a dream that I couldn’t be arsed to blog about, near the end of last month, under similar intoxication. I’d made some notes on it, as I try to with everything I dream about, but never found time to write it up to standards of internet legibility (whatever that can be taken as meaning).
In any case, last night was a classic example of me dreaming within-a-dream, which I gather is something a lot of people haven’t experienced (for me, while not commonplace, it’s not terribly rare, either, for me to “wake up” within a dream, or to remember previous dreams as dreams within the one I’m currently ‘in’). Note the double-indentation to ease understanding of which dream I’m referring to:
I had been hosting a house party of some variety, in a somewhat larger (and significantly tidier) version of The Cottage, and it was beginning to wind up – most of the guests had gone home, except for a few small, scattered groups in different parts of the building (I mentioned that it was bigger than The Cottage usually is, right? – there are times that the word “mansion” could have come to hand). JTA, Claire and Ruth were somewhere upstairs; Bryn was talking to Andrew Rawlins (!) in a kitchen reminiscent of my dad’s house; and I was in the living room, talking to Penny.
If I remember rightly we were talking about oral sex technique. So, just a regular conversation for me, you’re probably thinking. And that’s about the time that we kissed.
We hid that we’d been kissing from Bryn and Andrew as they came through the living room, said goodbye, got their coats and left. And again, when Gareth, Penny’s partner, arrived by car to pick her up. And then I went to bed.
And then I woke up. I don’t specifically remember waking up, but I remember having a moment of realisation that everything that had just happened was a dream. It was an unusual dream, sure (although not entirely unpleasant: Penny’s pretty hot), but just a dream, and so I got on with my day. Leaving Claire in bed, I went to work, and I remember thinking about the fact that I would undoubtedly blog about the dream I’d had, and that I hoped I wouldn’t alarm or embarrass Penny by doing so!
And then I woke up. Actually, this time, and there was a moment of confusion as I remembered that it was Ruth I’d spent the night with last night, not Claire at all, and I spent the first few minutes of the morning trying to work out where the dreams began and ended. Perhaps more confusingly, I discovered when I woke up that I’d somehow, in the night, managed to cut my hand and I was bleeding all over the place. I snapped the following photo after I’d cleaned it up a bit.
Ruth theorised that she attacked me in my sleep because she was jealous that I was kissing Penny in my dreams, going on to add that she wanted to be dreaming of kissing Penny. But I’m not sure if she’d approve of me blogging that, so you should pretend that I didn’t.
Do you or anybody you know routinely dream that you are dreaming? Or wake up from a dream with an unusual injury? Or have dreams that involve your friends cheating on their partners with you?
So, what have I been up to this weekend, you ask. Well…
On Friday I took the train up to Preston. The train I was on broke down at Machynlleth when they linked it up to the carriages that had come down the Pwllheli line, and the repairs set me back by almost an hour, but it turns out that the rest of the rail network was running behind schedule that day, too, and so I didn’t miss any important connections. I arrived in time for a quick “birthday tea” with my family (for my dad’s birthday) before rushing off to the Waterstones for the launch party for my friend Faye‘s first published novel, Cover The Mirrors.
I drank as much wine as the store were willing to give me and bought myself a signed copy of the book. I even managed to get the photo, above, under the proviso that it’s only allowed to appear on the internet thanks to the fact that I’m holding a carrier bag in front of Faye’s face (she’s more than a little camera-shy). I haven’t started reading Cover The Mirrors yet, because I’m virtually at the end of The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, and I’d like to finish that first, but little doubt you’ll hear about it here in due course.
After the book launch, my sisters and I took my dad out for a few drinks to celebrate his 51st birthday. It turns out that, in my absence, Preston’s nightclub scene has really taken off. We started out in an 80s-themed bar which is part of a chain called Reflex. It’s so 80s it’s unreal: all 80s hits playing, David Hasselhoff and Mr. T decorating every wall, glitter balls and spots and mirrors everywhere… deely-boppers available at the bar… and so on. Really quite a fantastic theme venue. Then, under my sister Sarah’s recommendation, we tootled up the street and into a cafe/club called Manyana, where my dad got hit on by somebody young enough to be his daughter.
I snatched this picture. I’ve no idea who she is – we didn’t get her name – but she seemed genuinely surprised to hear my dad’s age. So I had the DJ announce it, just to make sure there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that there was an old person on the dancefloor.
This influx of Preston nightclubs is making them all remarkably competitive with their drinks prices, too. I bought a few rounds for the four of us and none of them ever came to over a tenner, and one – thanks to the “buy one get one free” policy at Manyana – came to under £6, which is quite remarkable for a city nightclub on a Friday night for four people!
On Saturday I had brunch with my sister Becky, my mum, and her boyfriend and then got back onto the trains to head back to Aberystwyth. Owing to line maintenance, the stretch of track between Crewe and Preston is unusable every weekend within sight, and so I was re-directed via Manchester Piccadilly. Yet again, my train ran late, and I found myself sprinting across Piccadilly station, trying to find a train that was heading Shrewsbury-way…
…meanwhile, my friend Katie, having slept through her stop, woke up in Manchester Piccadilly and, not quite awake, clambered off her train in an attempt to find a connection. I’d apparently featured in her dream, and so she was quite surprised (and not quite sure if she was seeing things) when I sprinted past her. She sent a text (which I chose to ignore: my pocket beeped but I was too busy looking for a train to take the time to get my phone out) and then phoned me before she was able to confirm that yes, it really was me.
As we were headed the same way, she joined me on my train for one stop, which was a nice surprise for what was a long and overcomplicated train journey. A few folks have suggested that this might not be a coincidence, and that she might be stalking me, but I’m yet to be convinced.
In any case, I don’t have a picture to go with this part of the story. Sorry.
YATN. If you were there, you know how it went. Big thanks to Jimmy and Beth for coming along.
In case you’ve not been anywhere that I can pounce on you and go “squee!” recently, here’s what you missed out on. You’ll remember that last week I mentioned that Poultrygeist – Troma‘s new movie – was coming to Aberystwyth. Well, it did. And it rocked…
…and better yet, Ruth, Claire, JTA, Paul and I got to hang out with Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Studios and producer of The Toxic Avenger, for a couple of pints and to share a bowl of nachos. The guy’s fabulously chatty and friendly, and if it weren’t for the awestruck feeling of “wow, we’re just sat here chatting with Lloyd Kaufman in Lord Beechings” we’d have probably been more interesting company.
When he said goodbye, kissing the cheeks of each of the girls, I genuinely thought that they were in danger of exploding with excitement. Thankfully they didn’t, because I’d already bought them tickets to see Poultrygeist later on.
Which was, as I’ve said before, fantastic. It’s even better seen with a nice, energised audience, and better still when the director and several other people who worked on the film are hanging around afterwards to answer questions, chat, autograph things and so on. There are apparently 15 prints of Poultrygeist and the capacity to make more on demand, so if you want to see it and can’t wait for the DVD release, go speak to your local cinema now and ask if they’ll show Poultrygeist, even if only for a week (as Lloyd himself said, it’s better than showing Transformers on all 24 screens of some soulless megaplex). And hell, with Troma’s current financial situation, they could probably do with a helping hand with getting into as many projection booths as possible!
The title of this post – Quickly, Before They Turn The Glass Into Lesbians! – is a reference to one of my favourite lines in the film.
Paul might have bitten off more than he can chew, though, as he hinted on his blog. After some discussion with Lloyd, Paul is likely to be responsible for:
I’ll leave it to him to go into detail, if he wishes.
Between places, we also joined a growing crowd at the foot of Matt‘s bed in Bronglais Hospital. His operation was a success, but he’s reacted unusually to the general anaesthetic and they’re likely to keep him in for observation for another few days. If you haven’t had a chance to visit him already, he’d probably appreciate the company (although Sarah seems to have barely left his side): visiting hours are 3pm-5pm, 6pm-8pm: just ask if you need to know what ward he’s in and how to get there. If you’re feeling particularly cruel, mock him by talking about how well your bodily excretions are working, or swap his drip with his catheter bag while he’s not looking.
But seriously: I’m sure we all wish him well.
Finally – as if we weren’t full enough from a large Sunday lunch – after leaving the cinema, Gareth, Penny, Amy, Ruth, JTA, Rory, Paul, Claire
and I slipped down for a late-night curry at the Spice of Bengal. Which was delicious, although there was a little much food for those of us who were already quite full.
Nonetheless, a fantastic end to a fantastic weekend! I’m sure everybody else will have a different story to tell (Paul spent longer with Lloyd and went to more films; Claire and Jimmy got horribly drunk together on Friday night after she, Ruth and JTA failed to see a Meatloaf concert; Matt’ll have his own morphine-fuelled tale to spin, and so on), because it’s been a rich, full couple of days for many of us abnibbers.
Sundeep had decided that we were to celebrate her birthday by climbing Snowdon, so that’s what we did. My legs are sore now, not least because I thought it would be wise to jog most of the way back down again.
Here’s the piccies. As before, if you read this on my blog rather than on
Abnib or in your RSS reader or whatever then clicking on the pictures will start a slideshow-like pop-up thingy that’s ever so cool.
More pictures are available in the Abnib Gallery: Sundeep’s 21st & Snowdon Trip.
Yay. Woo. I’m 25. Etc. Quarter of a century old. [Insert meaningful speech here.] Ahem. Thanks to all of you who came to Troma Night yesterday and saw my birthday arrive; and in particular to those of you who brought me alcohol. Bonus.
As I seem to have been given at least two (three if you count expansion packs) board games for my birthday, and it is Geek Night (Aberystwyth’s favourite alternative board games night), tonight’s Geek Night will be extended such that it will start not at 7pm as usual but at 5pm. This’ll give us a chance to play not only the usual favourites, but also some of the new stuff – Gloom, the designer card game with funky semitransparent cards, in which the aim is to make your family as unhappy as possible and then die, while trying to cheer up the other families and give them happy lives – a great oppertunity for nanofiction; Il Principe, a renaissance Italy strategy and resource management game (why do the Germans make all the best board games, by the way?), and the 5-6 player expansion for Seafarers of Catan, which finally completes the main published tree of my collection of the Settlers of Catan games. Oh, and we’ve also got a copy I’ve assembled of my interpretation of the Programmer’s Nightmare card game, which Claire and I playtested yesterday and it seems to work… although anybody without a grounding in Assembly language might find it somewhat confusing.
So, hope to see you all at 5. Or at 7. Or whenever.
This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.
This repost was published in hindsight, on 11 March 2019.
Claire wrote:
Tickets go on sale at 11.00am TODAY for the Tsunami Relief Cymru concert at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff on 22nd January. Acts confirmed include Jools Holland, Eric Clapton and Feeder. Dan and I are going, standing cos it’s prob cheaper and more fun, tickets start at £15. Let’s go! It’s only in the middle of exams, I’ve got one in the morning of the 22nd and I’m still going!
Also, Happy birthday to Dan, who is a whopping 24 today! Come to Troma Night and tell him how old he is!
Went to Andy‘s unbirthday party (sadly the original party, this summer, had to be cancelled as nobody who matters could make it). That was fun – drinking and TwisterTM. Will try to post pictures as they become available (JTA has more).
I played Twister until I hurt my back. Then I stopped. Andy did remarkably well, and won two successive games.
Update 7 October 2019 (15th anniversary of this post). Andy’s LiveJournal is long-dead and purged, but I’ve recovered the text of his post, which I linked to, from archive.org:
The Birthday which was not a Birtday [Oct. 7th, 2004|01:13 am]
[ mood | Mood? Me? ] [ music | Virgin radio – quiet can’t wake anyone ] Wow people turned up I was impressed. Yay for Andy’s Aber friends. Wish more people could have been here but many studying in silly far away places so couldn’t but thanks all who did show especially those who engaged in twister. You have either all gone home and/or gone to bed so will leave you all for the night. Love al my party friends… Andy
Could I be a happier bunny?
A belated birthday present from Claire arrived in the post this afternoon – a stack of Studio Ghibli movies on R2 DVD:
Damn; I love that girl.
Update (20th March 2012) – crosslink: I suspect that this post by Paul was relevant?
Well, I’m 23. Meh.
An array of cards and gifts, followed by a flurry of e-mails and phone calls to explain delayed gifts. I think I’ll try again for my birthday, next week, when the Post Office become competent again (this is the theory).
Went out to Cafe All Spice with Paul, Bryn, Kit and Claire, for much curry and wine. A great evening out. Now; Bryn and Paul are asleep on my couch, and Kit has gone home. I feel stuffed and contented. And knackered. I’m falling asleep as I write this, but if I tried to sleep I’d just feel more knackered from trying to digest my stomachfull of curry.
It is Claire’s birthday.
“Our feet are going to get wet.”
Somebody had to say it. Somebody did.
The waves roll up the beach, rustling gently against the smooth pebbles. Claire sits in front of me. Kit is to my side. The remaining embers of the fire flicker, as if trying to fight to hold onto the remains of their minimal existance against the oncoming tide. We watch the waves through the dwindling smoke.
I put my arm around Claire, holding her hand against her busom. She returns my grip. I glance across at Kit, and he looks back. For a moment, I look into his eyes… try to see what he sees… but to no avail. We turn back to the sea.
For the best part of half an hour none of us had spoken. For a half hour to come none of us will speak. Sometimes there’s no need for words. Sometimes just being together is enough.
The greatest secret you never tell is how you feel.
Goodnight;
