Woolstock, Wacky Warehouse, Bouncy Castles, BBQ, ISS, Marbles, Ducks

I do like gigs in Leeds on a weekday. I can just hang around after work, amble up to them, then ride home afterwards. So it was that I was at the Subculture in Leeds on Friday night for the "bleep night" of Woolstock III. £10 to see five bands, all of which I wanted to see, can't be argued with. Briefly:

Novus UK - missed the start of the set, but I love bleep with fem vocals, so I liked what I saw.
Action Directe - I did have to explain to ayrton_nix that "Better Dead Then Red" was not, on this occassion, a political song :-)
Uberbyte - I think I've got used to kmrikky's stage persona :-) I'll be on the lookout for legitimate digital downloads.
Modulate - AWESOME! All four of them dressed in white, punching the air, fantastic visuals, Sammi from Faderhead joining them for Dirtygirrrls / Dirtybois [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY3voY3da4o], Skullfuck, etc. Wore me out. I even bought their traditional shiny 12cm audio CD afterwards.
XP8 - I was kinda worn out after Modulate, so I ended up leaning against the bar and chatting to bikerfaerie when they were on.

Saturday daytime started with me taking evie_petrol to a birthday party at a Wacky Warehouse, where she ran and climbed and wore herself out. I let her have a sleep in the car for a while afterwards as at 17:00 we went off to a BBQ in the close where we live. This was for one of Evie's little friends, who has turned 8. It featured a BOUNCY CASTLE in the garden. I didn't see much of Evie after that, apart from little squeals of "watch me Daddy" as she hurled herself in the air and flipped over, or having to give her a quick snuggle when she fall awkwardly and hurt herself. She would recover from the latter in about 10 seconds when she remembered there was more bouncing to be done.

I have missed Doctor Who, so I'm avoiding DW related posts. It's on the Sky box, and I'll watch it tomorrow.

I astonished everyone with my astronomy knowledge when a very bright object appeared overhead around 22:14. "What's that?" asked someone. I glanced up: "oh, that's the International Space Station - it's making several high visibility passes over Northern Europe around now." It was definitely the highest, brightest passes I've ever seen. The ISS generally gets something like 10-15 degrees above the horizon when visible from the UK. This pass was up at about 40 degrees! It's also not a point source. You can kinda make out a "shape" caused by the different positions of the solar panels. I forgot to wander home and quickly watch the shuttle launch, but Discovery safely made it to orbit. As usual, I've got a tiny window in the corner of my monitor tuned to NASA TV as the shuttle approaches the ISS.

I was flagging around 22:30, so we went home and Evie was poured into her bed. She didn't wake up till 09:30 the next morning and I got something vaguely approaching a lie-in. Hurrah for bouncy castles!

Sunday was a bit less exciting. It rained, so Daddy ended up playing various games indoors with Evie till a couple of her friends came calling and she went off to play with them. Later on we went out to feed the ducks down by the river, but were thwarted in our plans by an almost total lack of ducks! Usually, approaching an area of ducks with a small child and a bag of bread leads to a cacophony of quacks and a scene reminiscent of The Birds. We managed to find a few but nothing like their usual numbers.

Evie acquired one of those marble-run toys recently, which Daddy quite likes building complex marble runs with. Trash used to love playing with marbles when she was a sprog, rolling them down the stairs or the wooden cover off her mother's twin-tub. Obviously, this modern, cheap plastic marble run toy represents something she would have exploded with delight to have had available thirty-odd years ago.

Sunday evening was the season finale of Lost, which was odd in that it (arguably) answered more questions than it posed, which is unusual in Lost.