Last weekend, my parents came to visit. On Friday night, we sat in, drank wine, chatted and ate some gorgeous chinese food which greyeyedeve prepared for us. I got to show off my new laptop, which was good, and my parents offered to pay for driving lessons now I've sorted out my provisional license.

On Saturday, they came round fairly early, and we visited W. H. Lung. My Dad is big on oriental cooking but finds it hard to source some ingredients, and ended up spending a small fortune on spices, sauces and oils. Eve took advantage of having a car handy, and bought a lovely new rice bowl.

We headed out to Salford, in search of the Lowry Centre. We parked at and walked through the soulless corporate nightmare of the Lowry Outlet Mall, sat down looking out over the Quays (and Old Trafford, which upset my Arsenal-supporting Dad) and ate our pork buns, still warm from Uncle Ho's bakery. We had to skirt around a wedding party to get into the Lowry, but it was great. Mum and Dad have always been huge Lowry fans and I remember the two Lowry prints hung up on the stairs of our old house. They really enjoyed the gallery, especially the pencil drawings which aren't very well known.

After dropping Eve off at home for a nap, we looked around the new bits of the Arndale Centre, but found the "fashion show" in one corner to be distracting so we headed down to Cathederal Gardens and Urbis, which has an exhibit about the 10th anniversary of the Manchester IRA bomb. We didn't have time to take it all in, but it was great to see my parents enjoying wandering around and playing with the exhibits. Then we wandered up to Shudehill and got the tram out to St. Peter's Square since they'd never been on it. We tried going for a meal at Café Istanbul on Bridge Street, but they had a two-hour wait for tables so we ended up at chain New York Italian restaurant Frankie & Bennies, always a good fallback (and the St. Anne's Square branch is in a wonderful building which adds to the atmosphere).

A few days later, I received a gushing e-mail from Mum and Dad about what a great time they had, and they've been telling my sisters about it too, which is pleasing - the Saturday was their 39th wedding anniversary so it's especially good that they enjoyed themselves. Hopefully they'll be back before long.

A Friday lunchtime seems like an ideal time to let you all know what I got up to last weekend. It was a very long weekend, stretching from Saturday through to Tuesday, and a lot happened. I will attempt to break things down into reasonably coherent paragraphs.

( Oldham )

( London )

( Hythe )

( West Malling )

( Canterbury )

( Folkestone )

( London )

[	Tags	|	cassie and steve's wedding, family, photography	]
[	mood	|	relaxed	]

So I went down south for the weekend and aquired a brother-in-law. The wedding and reception were surprisingly pleasant, I didn't have any arguments with my sister, and even elected to stay an extra night. Thursday was the wedding at a manor house in the New Forest, for family and a few guests, followed by dinner. The biggest surprise of the day was a fly-past of the Red Arrows, on their way to Farnborough Air Show. They flew right over the manor house in V formation, and my godmother immediately claimed that she'd organised it as a treat for the happy couple.

( TLDR )

That was a lovely weekend. greyeyedeve came up with Flo, who was in need of cheering up. We spent Friday night eating fajitas and chilling out in front of the TV. On Saturday we wandered into town for lunch at The Basement where steve_c introduced himself; it was good to meet someone in person whom I've known via LJ for such a long time. After food, shopping happened at New Aeon Books (which has gone a bit Harry Potter with large displays of wands and staffs; however, Flo announced it to be "the best shop in the world" and vowed to return when she had some money) before we popped to the Manchester Buddhist Centre for a nice cup of tea. We moseyed round Affleck's for a while, acquiring hairdye for a planned mass dyeing session and more earrings and hole-stretching stuff for Eve. Flo bounced around Vintage to Fetish getting all excited about PVC boots and rubber tops, while I found a pair of rubber jeans which were half-price (hence lamost sanely priced) but just a little too snug round the waist for me. Meanwhile, Eve had found a pair of 7" heeled, 3" platformed shoes which look absolutely gorgeous and snapped them up in a drastic impulse purchase. Photos later. This gratuitous consumerism meant that we were running late for our gig, so we popped into Primark to get clean undies for Flo who'd forgotten to bring any with her, then grabbed a bus down Oxford Road from Piccadilly Gardens.

( Therapy? )

Just so I've got a better record of it, last weekend saw greyeyedeve and her daughter Flo coming up to Manchester. Flo is a cute sixteen year old spooky kid, very friendly and full of hugs, and generally a joy to be around. Unfortunately she's not been sleeping well and wasn't up to accompanying us to see Rico. After they arrived, we went to grab takeaway from the apallingly-apostrophed Taste Masters' on the corner, and Flo headed back home while Eve and I went for the bus.

Saturday saw a fairly late start. We headed into town roughly at lunchtime, taking the rail replacement bus since the trains were down. This took us to the station and we headed to the wonderful Primark in search of jumpers and socks. Flo aquired a very fetching and gothy jumper and skirt combo. After a little more shopping we dropped Flo in Affleck's Palace while Eve and I headed to the Retro Bar for the Lifestyle Munch, to catch up with blackpantheras and others. We met back up with Flo afterwards and were accosted by a balloon artist who gave us each a curious balloon construction - a hat with a dog on top, a flower, and a bunny called Elvis climbing to the top of a vodka luge. He suggested that Eve and I swap our balloons, a "romantic exchange in latex", which endeared us to him no end. We gave him some cash for his trouble, and suitably equipped, headed to Wagamama at the Printworks for some gorgeous food. There had been talk of heading down to Stockport to join lemurkind and trypr at Mark and Laura's party, but we were kind of knackered so settled for getting the bus home and watching the Ichi the Killer anime which Eve had purchased.

Sunday was again a late start. Headed into town, this time on the train. We had a good conversation in Piccadilly Gardens about Why Furries Are Bad, why BDSMers Are Good, and how to handle under-18s in BDSM. After some shopping, we wandered around the Northern Quarter (unfortunately Affleck's and New Aeon Books were both shut), and ended up in cord for a drink before heading over to the Triangle Centre to go on the giant Ferris Wheel there. We got on it and rose high above the city centre. The Arndale Tower got in the way of Piccadilly but other than that the view was excellent, and we could follow the lights in the darkness for miles. I found that I'm not scared of heights - I can stand on top of tall buildings and look over the edge just fine - but I'm mildly unnerved by having a large amount of thin air between whatever I'm standing on and the ground. But clutching the opposite seatcushion helped me enjoy myself immensely and it's well worth doing. You get to go round three times for a fiver, which makes it pretty good value. After that we failed to have a restorative pint in Sinclair's due to it shutting early, so we mooched down to St. Ann's Square in search of liquid refreshment, before deciding that we were too tired and going home to watch The Matrix.

In a way the weekend didn't live up to my hopes - a combination of bad weather and lethargy meant that I didn't get to show off Manchester to Flo in all its glory, particularly missing out New Aeon and The Basement, but she still had a good time and loves the city and wants to come back, so my mission was still accomplished, showing her that there are places beyond Stoke where you can be alternative and not get hassle for it.

[	Tags	|	birthdays, devon 2005, eve, family	]
[	mood	|	happy	]

Arr! I be returned from me holiday in Devon, and since it be Talk Like A Pirate Day, I shall not be regalin' ye all with me tales of grog-soaked hedonism and landlubberly cycle ridin', until I can bring meself to type in me usual manner.

On holiday, we celebrated the 39th anniversary of me parents' nuptials, and on the same day me big sister's 32nd birthday. And yesterday was the one year anniversary of me and greyeyes lockin' eyes across the scurvy Trendyhouse, when I was up with kaz_pixie to be celebratin' sarcaustik's birthday, which be another of the anniversaries in the last week. Since Eve and I can't remember when we actually got together, we have agreed to be commemoratin' this date as our anniversary. She spent the day in bed, laid up wi' a migrane, and I spent it playin' San Andreas. Yarr.

And it's not an anniversary, but we should all break out the grog and drink a toast to the hearty health of evath and his lovely wench kimholding who got engaged! Congratulations!

I've been doing some groundwork with the family in light of my concerns. I've suggested that various topics of conversation be avoided, which didn't go down terribly well but I think made the point that I'm unhappy about the way my family conducts slanging matchesconversation. I've also mooted that in the name of greater harmony, people should be able to walk away from conversations without any comeback, which has gone down slightly better.

I'll be taking my bike and walking boots, and have a couple of other things to work on. Here's what I need to sort out now:

• Bikes
  • I need to get two bikes to Birmingham on Friday so my sister can drive them to Devon. This shouldn't present much of a problem, apart from the fact that the Northern Rail cycle regulations state that there's a limit of one bike per passenger.
  • Virgin Trains appear to require you to book in advance to take a bike on the train, and also seem to charge for it, but they don't say how much.
  • Our options are to get greyeyedeve up to Manchester to accompany me, which will be expensive hassle, or to get my sister to drive up with the bike rack, which will be hassle for her and I don't know whether she can do it. One other option might be for me to go back to Manchester and take a bike down on Thursday, and take the other down on Friday. Again, hassle.
  • Pack pump, repair kit, screwdriver, alun keys, spare lights etc. for my bike and everyone else's. Probably worth bringing my cheap-ass Lidl panniers too.
• Entertainment
  • Transfer lots of music from my desktop to the laptop for ease of listening.
  • Bring a few books from my unread pile.
  • Bring some Jeff Noon and Steve Aylett for my big sister.
  • Acquire some variety of board game to be played as a family.
• Laptop
  • Install Apache and the OpenGuides stuff to work on the code there.
  • Install Perl ncurses modules to write a good UI for my So Duku solving program.
  • Pack digital camera, batteries, charger, tripods and CF card reader.
  • Get a draft of Dad's website done while on holiday.
  • Take USB mouse to make laptop more usable. Investigate USB hub / splitter?
  • Install Alpha Centauri on laptop as distraction.
• Other Stuff
  • The usual - clothes, wash kit, boot polishing stuff.
  • Eve's combat trousers and boots.

[	Tags	|	devon 2005, family	]
[	mood	|	pissed off	]

I have in recent years developed something of a phobia about situations that I can't back out of; being trapped somewhere in a social situation in which I feel uncomfortable. It's the main reason I'd like a car - I could then go places and be able to drive off at stupid in the morning when the trains aren't running if I have some kind of altercation. However, part of the reason I've refused to cave in and get one is that I don't want to be a victim of this fear. I've overcome it on many occasions, throwing myself into situations I can't easily back out of, but one such situation is coming up in a few weeks, and I'm losing sleep over it, hence why I'm up writing entries on greyeyedeve's laptop at 3am while she sleeps peacefully.

In a couple of weeks, I'm off to Devon with my family for a week - both my sisters, my middle sister's boyfriend and dogs, my parents, me and Eve. We're staying in the luxurious-sounding Scyttel Cottage, and have plans for a week of barbequeues, walks, bike rides and lounging around. It all sounds very nice, but I have a horrible feeling that it's going to be a week of arguments, ill feeling and awkward silences. The trouble is that basically I can't talk to my family about anything. It's not that they're stupid - I'm proud to come from a very bright family. But they're set in their ways, and just don't bother to think about things. I can't talk about computers, because despite being the only member of the family with professional IT qualifications or experience, I'm constantly told that Linux isn't a real operating system, that nobody uses it and I should go and get myself a nice MCSE. My Dad is a Microsoft shill and my middle sister's boyfriend is an iFanboi.

I can't talk about politics, because my family are mostly Tories who spout party rhetoric without thinking. I can't talk about current affairs because they all trust the police and government implicitly, and think that it's fine to go around shooting random Brazilians for no fucking reason. I also have to be completely vanilla around them, and not show any affection towards Eve. This is mostly due to my middle sister, who has huge issues relating to her boyfriend's daughter, and throws a screaming hissy-fit at the mere hint that other people might have stable emotional relationships and get on fine with their other half's children. Last time I was home, she saw Eve and I lying on a mattress with our arms around each other, and launched into an attack, in front of my grandmother and great-uncle, about us having "simulated sex" when nobody was looking.

So basically I've got a week ahead involving not talking to anybody about anything, and keeping my head down and ignoring any other conversation. This will increase my family's opinion that I'm a brat who doesn't care for the "close bond" of family relationships, an accusation mostly based around the fact that I constantly forget people's birthdays and don't give a toss if they remember mine. Mostly I'm worried about said middle sister. Usually family gatherings occur at the parental home, and she lives close enough to commute without staying over, so I get a bit of peace. However, I'm going to be spending a week in the same house as her, every night, not having sex or making any other noise for fear of anybody overhearing and starting a fight about it. And there's no escape.

It's a situation I'm obliged to take part in, that I can't get away from, that is taking me hundreds of miles from home. If things go tits up, I'll be in the middle of the countryside. Even if I can get to a train station, I'll have large amounts of luggage and a bike or two with me. It'll cost me probably over a hundred quid to get home just for the train ticket, and that will be a tricky journey with multiple changes that will take a full day to complete. And if there's an argument and I can't leave, then I'll have to spend the best part of a week being stuck in a situation I'm really uncomfortable with, surrounded by awkward silence and recrimination.

It's at times like this, when I'm up at 3:30am worrying about this sort of thing, that I really do think that spending significant amounts of time with my family may be more hassle than it's worth. I'm planning on spending no more than three days down at my parents' for Christmas having managed to outstay my welcome last year. It's not that I want to cut off all ties with all of them, but if I could just treat my family in the same way as I treat my friends, without the horrible sense of obligation, then my life would be a better place and I'd probably be fast asleep by now.

[	Tags	|	employment, family, geek, manchester, stoke	]
[	mood	|	happy	]
[	music	|	Green Day wafting down the stairs	]

Recently, I have been applying for jobs. There's not a lot that's hugely appealing, though the 38k sysadmin job for which I'm overqualified would be bloody good if I hear back about it. I've not heard back about the half-dozen-odd jobs for which I've applied on Reed, Jobsite and CWJobs. I'm very impressed by Reed's website - it managed to parse my job titles and descriptions, and various other information, out of my CV (which implies also that my CV is sensibly laid out, woo). Shame that there's not a huge number of interesting jobs there.

In other news, I've been helping out with Debian's package for OpenSSH. It seems that the maintainer is neglecting the package, and I'm tempted to e-mail him and politely suggest that he take on a co-maintainer. I'm not eligible myself, because I'm not a Debian Developer, but there are a lot of very old bugs seemingly affecting the version in Debian's stable release, which seem pretty trivial to close. I've already helped out with #103677 ("ssh-add breaks when keys aren't mode 600"), #154645 ("ssh doesn't read /etc/hosts") and #197037 ("please remove rlogin/rsh/rcp alternatives") and I'll be taking advantage of the new bug subscription facility to see if anything happens as a result of my input.

Socially, life has been good. greyeyedeve has been a bit under the weather recently, culminating in taking today off work to recuperate. This has meant that we weren't able to go out with dreadtemujin and theheatherfreak when they were out and about. Still, podman came round to pick up some of his stuff and I got to meet Jules, whom I suspect will be on LJ before long. Eve's nephew Andy has been staying over for a couple of days which was fun, and I've seen quite a bit of Flo, including going round to her new house in Meir and meeting her housemates and neighbours, who are all completely bonkers. Tomorrow, Eve and I are going down to my parents' for the weekend, since my great-uncle Charlie is over from Australia. Most of my close relatives will be there, which will be good. Then on Sunday we're back up to Manchester, so Eve can go get a bike on her day off on Monday. Should be meeting up with Cabbit up there, and hopefully I'll be meeting up for a coffee with Aliss soon.