This week in words (heh)
It’s been quite a bit of time since my last entry. A lot has happened.
Obviously the “big thing” is that I’ve now got a little car. It’s a nice blue car. A 1.2L Fiat Punto with a 53 plate (it’s actually an early 2004 car though).
I headed home early on Friday afternoon and made the lengthy train journey to Manchester Piccadilly, where I had a great evening out at the cinema (The Departed) and then on to Pizza Express with Vlad. Saturday morning I’d hoped to make a quick trip into the CompSoc office to set up a new UPS we bought on eBay, but unfortunately I couldn’t get into the building out of hours (what with not being a student any longer and all).
In the end Vlad and I spent the next couple of hours chatting over a couple of drinks, before we headed to New Medlock House (where I lived in my final year) to meet my Dad and Uncle, who had driven the car from Liverpool. I dropped Vlad off and then drove back to my parents’ house near Leeds—the M62 isn’t exactly an ideal first drive.
Didn’t do too much at home—out for a meal and then visited my grandparents on Sunday morning. I set off pretty early on Sunday afternoon for the drive back to Blackwater—again a pretty interesting first “solo” drive. Fortunately I had no problems or diversions, thanks to the wonders of TomTom!
I’ve been travelling in to work on the bus for the past week and a bit. I got pretty annoyed with James when he started rushing me one morning, so I decided I’d just catch the bus instead. For the most part this is great: I have to get up pretty damn early (my alarm goes off at 7AM now, instead of 8AM; but I always spend an extra ten minutes in bed waking up), walk the ten minutes to the bus and then enjoy the 30 minute drive to Sun by reading a book. On the way back it goes more or less direct to Blackwater station, which is about 15 minutes, at the most.
So, today I drove myself to work for the first time: I was up at the same time as normal (for the bus), so in the end I got to work a little before 8AM to give myself some time to sort out an engineer’s V880 before a big shake up in the GMP02 lab. The drive (both ways) went pretty well, really. I had a drive around on Monday evening for the hell of it, but got pretty annoyed with myself for driving too fast: not speeding, but going around roundabouts and corners too quickly. It wasn’t so fast that I was about to lose control and crash; it just wasn’t a comfortable maneuver in general. Fortunately everything felt much smoother on my commute today: it’s obviously because I’m getting more used to the car’s quirks :)
Tags: General