Hello every(any)one!

In less than half an hour Christmas Day 2008 will be finished and yet again it's felt different.  For me Christmas Day is still a great time, full of the joys of spending a day with my Mum, Dad and Sister with the pleasures of presents, Bacon Sandwich and Bucks Fizz for Breakfast/Early Lunch and then a Christmas Dinner with all the trimmings in the evening plus hours of movies and TV.  It has, however, changed over the last few years as I have matured from being a child to being 'an adult'.

It's no longer all about getting presents but much more about the people that I spend it with, as well as the events and people I see at this time of year.  I love this time of year.

I do have to say I'm a little disappointed about the number of text messages that I sent that were returned, specially by some of my closer friends..hint hint...but never mind I suppose today people can quite easily be busier than usual.

Anyway I don't want to 'waste' too much time writing here when I should be out being festive so I will leave this post with the most obvious final two words...

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

Well it's 6:55AM and I have stayed up all night writing a report and seemingly not got that far. I would have liked to have done more however I was stopped in my tracks pending some assistance. 

Anyway, I'm a little tired but to be honest I just want to get something to eat and get on with the day. I'm not going to make a habit of this but it seems to be an interesting experiment to try. I'm going to keep this short and sweet as I don't have much to say.

My alarm clock just made me jump as it's just gone off....that was sort of funny I suppose..... 

Last night I joined up with Ben, Dan and Rich in Sheffield for a night out. Dan is at university in Sheffield while Ben and Rich were visitors like me. We all hail from south Leeds and have been friend for many years. Richard has left the world of education and now being employed in London we shamefully don't get to see that much of him so it was great to see him.

I drove down so that I could get home that night/morning. It was a really good night although we were all abit surprised at how early Sheffield city centre seemed to shut up shop with Walkabout closing at 1:00 and Revolution closing at midnight - both of which are earlier than the midweek opening times of the same place in Leeds.

It was nice to see the guys although I did feel a bit left out as they had earlier bought pink Santa hats which they then wore for the rest of the day getting us some funny comments from bouncers and party-goers alike. I set off home at 1:00AM and following a couple of detours including using the A61 instead of the M1 route and seeing if I could find some food nearer to home. I quite like driving really late at night it's so peaceful. Oh, btw, if you want to get out of Sheffield city centre make sure you have you senses about you as my SatNav decided to try and take me down a few bus lanes! 

Six months or so ago I would have been stuck and probably forced to go to either the College or one of the pubs however I then remembered that there is a new coffee shop on main street, called Baraka.

It's a nice place with a friendly atmosphere, nice tea, free internet (which I'm making full use of) and the biggest pieces of chocolate caramel shortbread I've ever seen for sale in a coffee shop. A cup of tea and some of the delicious aforementioned chocolate caramel shortbread came to a grant total of £3.00....brilliant!