Shopping & Star Trek

Took a trip over to Meadowhall on Saturday morning. We've got a free 'test shoot' with the wedding photographer next week, so thought we'd get new 'outfits' for it.Was a nice day for a drive in my lovely fiancée's new car, so we set off in good time and were there before 10 and it wasn't too busy. Managed to quickly find me a shirt and I'm happy to find that I'm a size smaller for shirts, which is a pleasant boost to my weight loss attempts of late. I also get a selection of fresh coffees from this awesome little place which seems to have a gazililion different flavours and grinds the beans up. I also bumped into a work colleague, which is just weird when you've left the city to go shopping.

By the end of the day I found out I had also gone down a jeans size, (and without the aid of Special K) and got myself Richard Herrings book and the newest Danny Wallace one, so some amusing reading times ahead.

What's particularly nice is just getting out of familier surroundings for the day. When me and my lovely fiancée don't keep being reminded of he various jobs we've got on, or work or anything like that we always have a good day, even if it's doing something simple like shopping. Actually, shopping isn't that simple, she's spent 4 years teaching me how to do it, I think I'm getting there though.

Afterwards, I headed over to Nottingham to see my friend Will. We've started meeting up every few weeks for a Star Trek night, which has been fun times. This is the third one recently. It's me, Will, another Rick (known as Rick-One, whereas I am Rick-Prime) and Will's fiancée Gemma. We all pick an episode to watch, based on a pre-selected theme, and often do a little introduction. Mine was a powerpoint presentation about the Next Gen Episode, The Last Outpost, which is the first Ferengi contact. (First Contacts being our theme.) What I hadn't remembered from the episode was Geordi's inappropriate lines all through! He makes the oddest comments, from 'Hello stranger' to a ship no-one has ever seen before, to 'My hero' at Data and the just odd 'Do I look conscious?'. And the frustrated mime playing one of the Ferengi was hilarious, especially when he just gave in and danced around the set.

Of course this episode looked perfect when we watched Spock's Brain after. Marvellous. By which I mean ridiculous. And terrifyingly sexist.

It wasn't all fondly ridiculing Trek though, we had quite a discussion about the feasibility of a myth/legend/metaphor based language as we watched Darmok. We also watch Voyager's Distant Origin and had a serious discussion about Chakotay as wasted potential. It's fun times to do. Will did a introduction with various action figures having a roundtable discussion about Darmok and Rick-One did a video with himself as Captain Picard displace in time and leaving clues in his episode of Voyager. The intro's are fun times for 30 year old men to spend their time!

Twas a late night as we also added on The Gamesters of Triskelion and Who Watches the Watchers. And I took to my bed (well, Will's sofa) excited for the following day's return to my fiancée and the Doctor Who finale.