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The I Feel Happy Topic!

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Had a needle inserted into my ear earlier. Piercing number 5 is done. And yes, this was taken at Manchester Piccadilly while waiting for my train to Congleton. And yes, that’s some dried blood around the jewellery. No big deal.

Also bumped into a good friend of mine when getting off the train at Congleton, and it was a really lovely chance to have a bit of a catch-up with her.
 
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Saw Dear Evan Hansen last night, and it was absolutely brilliant once again. Think it marked the first time I've ever cried while watching a theatre production, and I don't even care. 💙

Also ended up doing something else solo for the first time this morning - a hotel breakfast. Loaded up because it had already been paid for. Did my normal three-course breakfast - cooked plate first, then bread & pastries (also cheese, because cheese at breakfast is amazing), then yogurt. Only downsides of the hotel breakfast were no hash browns or potato-based item for breakfast, and the yogurt options were slightly lacking. On a positive note, they had a very nice cheese & onion sourdough loaf that went really well with some Cheddar cheese.
 
While Mock exams should feel terrible, I don’t feel completely negative about them. My brain and arms ache, but my soul is very satisfied.

Very weird.

Also, one of my favourite games has a graphical update, so I gave it a replay and I’ve gotten hooked again… blowing up demons and robots it’s great fun. Indeed, such visual chaos; I don’t think I’m entirely sure what’s going on half the time either.
 
I got the first semester exam results from my MSc back today… and there were some very pleasant surprises! I got 88% in my Operational Research exam, which was definitely higher than expected even though I was cautiously optimistic about it afterwards, but the biggest surprise of all was a mark of 86% in my Statistics exam… I was genuinely convinced I might have failed after I exited the exam hall for that one, so a mark of 86% shouldn’t have been possible under my post-exam mental arithmetic!

I’ve booked to see my exam scripts, as I’m genuinely curious to see how on Earth I managed 86% in Statistics in particular… there’s a small part of me that thinks it must be a clerical error, or my lecturer taking pity on me.

Nonetheless, the results were certainly a pleasant surprise, and a lot better than I was expecting, particularly given that I hadn’t done formal exams before these since my GCSEs nearly 6 years ago!
 
So, tonight was a rather important Church Council meeting at my church. How did everything go? Well...
1) I came out to the church, and it went really well. I'll freely admit I was very nervous, but I managed to say what I was planning on saying, and even got a round of applause afterwards. Wasn't expecting that, but hey - I'm not gonna complain!
2) The same-sex marriage discussions were extensive, but for the most part, civil and respectful. How did the voting go? Well...The long and short is that the voting went in favour of same-sex marriage being allowed at my church by a much bigger margin than I was expecting.
Safe to say I'm incredibly happy right now. :D ❤️ 🏳️‍🌈
 
I did something I never thought I’d do today… I had a chance encounter with another theme park enthusiast “out in the wild” so to speak!

Basically, I was chatting with a coursemate I’ve been working on a group project at university with for the last 6 weeks or so and met for the first time last autumn, and for reasons I can’t quite remember, the conversation got onto theme parks and roller coasters.

She said that she loved theme parks and roller coasters, and “knew who built different roller coasters, knew the element names of certain roller coasters and why x ride was an improvement on y ride”, which naturally piqued my interest… so I told her I loved theme parks and roller coasters too, and we struck up a conversation about them! As I gradually ascertained that she pretty much seemed every bit as into parks and coasters as I am, the conversation then progressed to me showing her my spreadsheets and my Captain Coaster account… and instead of thinking it was weird, she thought my spreadsheets and such were cool and said that she’d always wanted to track her coasters! We then had a long conversation about what parks we’d been to and what coasters we’d ridden, about theme park YouTubers we watch, sites we go on, and a number of other things… and in general, I just thought it was awesome to discover such niche common ground with someone I’d known and been friendly with for so many weeks!

I was really friendly with my coursemate before, and she’s been an excellent work partner on the Implementation section of our machine learning group project, but knowing that she’s also a theme park enthusiast is a definite added bonus!

I know it’s small, but I just thought it was awesome to coincidentally find out that someone I’d grown friendly with through university, and the group project in particular, is also a theme park enthusiast! She implied that she occasionally reads forums, so she may well read this very post at some point…
 
Matt N said:
I did something I never thought I’d do today… I had a chance encounter with another theme park enthusiast “out in the wild” so to speak!

Basically, I was chatting with a coursemate I’ve been working on a group project at university with for the last 6 weeks or so and met for the first time last autumn, and for reasons I can’t quite remember, the conversation got onto theme parks and roller coasters.

She said that she loved theme parks and roller coasters, and “knew who built different roller coasters, knew the element names of certain roller coasters and why x ride was an improvement on y ride”, which naturally piqued my interest… so I told her I loved theme parks and roller coasters too, and we struck up a conversation about them! As I gradually ascertained that she pretty much seemed every bit as into parks and coasters as I am, the conversation then progressed to me showing her my spreadsheets and my Captain Coaster account… and instead of thinking it was weird, she thought my spreadsheets and such were cool and said that she’d always wanted to track her coasters! We then had a long conversation about what parks we’d been to and what coasters we’d ridden, about theme park YouTubers we watch, sites we go on, and a number of other things… and in general, I just thought it was awesome to discover such niche common ground with someone I’d known and been friendly with for so many weeks!

I was really friendly with my coursemate before, and she’s been an excellent work partner on the Implementation section of our machine learning group project, but knowing that she’s also a theme park enthusiast is a definite added bonus!

I know it’s small, but I just thought it was awesome to coincidentally find out that someone I’d grown friendly with through university, and the group project in particular, is also a theme park enthusiast! She implied that she occasionally reads forums, so she may well read this very post at some point…
Click to expand...
As good as this sounds...I've rarely, if ever get to have similar theme park chats in the flesh as no one from my circle have the interest in theme parks as I do. Honestly sucks for me with no one to bounce off with.
 
Matt N said:
I did something I never thought I’d do today… I had a chance encounter with another theme park enthusiast “out in the wild” so to speak!

Basically, I was chatting with a coursemate I’ve been working on a group project at university with for the last 6 weeks or so and met for the first time last autumn, and for reasons I can’t quite remember, the conversation got onto theme parks and roller coasters.

She said that she loved theme parks and roller coasters, and “knew who built different roller coasters, knew the element names of certain roller coasters and why x ride was an improvement on y ride”, which naturally piqued my interest… so I told her I loved theme parks and roller coasters too, and we struck up a conversation about them! As I gradually ascertained that she pretty much seemed every bit as into parks and coasters as I am, the conversation then progressed to me showing her my spreadsheets and my Captain Coaster account… and instead of thinking it was weird, she thought my spreadsheets and such were cool and said that she’d always wanted to track her coasters! We then had a long conversation about what parks we’d been to and what coasters we’d ridden, about theme park YouTubers we watch, sites we go on, and a number of other things… and in general, I just thought it was awesome to discover such niche common ground with someone I’d known and been friendly with for so many weeks!

I was really friendly with my coursemate before, and she’s been an excellent work partner on the Implementation section of our machine learning group project, but knowing that she’s also a theme park enthusiast is a definite added bonus!

I know it’s small, but I just thought it was awesome to coincidentally find out that someone I’d grown friendly with through university, and the group project in particular, is also a theme park enthusiast! She implied that she occasionally reads forums, so she may well read this very post at some point…
Click to expand...
That's pretty cool Matt, the only coaster enthusiasts I've met have been at places you would expect to find them, such as Towers Street Meets (well OK, apart from the one that turned me into an enthusiast in the first place).

Friendly people you really connect with don't come along every day. She sounds like a keeper! 😊
 
Hehe, nice.
If we don't count meeting them in a park, the closest I've come to encountering an actual wild geek would be walking past someone on the street. He was wearing a Duelling Dragons T shirt, I was in a Leviathan one. We exchanged silent nods as we passed, like Real Men(TM).
 
Okay, okay how about we take a step back and consider the fact that this relationship might be purely pletoni- batonic- tech-

Tectonic?

Damnit…
 
Sometimes, people can surprise you. I had one such occurrence this morning at church, when someone came up to me and said how pleased they were about how the same-sex marriage vote went last month. I was genuinely caught by surprise, as they'd previously said to me back in 2023 that they thought the prospect was just wrong. Genuinely pleased that they've done a complete 180 since that conversation!
 
Had a fun game of exploding kittens at work tonight during the kickball.
Mostly fun because the LD thinks she's good at it... but I had a very good hand.
She smugly took my diffuse card on the first turn. My turn was next, and I had 3 of a kind, so I took it straight back. On my second turn, I was able to take *her* diffuse card. She was out not long after. 🤣

Meanwhile, the spark had never played it before, but picked it up straight away, and put up a good fight.
By rights, he should have won. We got down to only the last card left in the draw pile (which has to be a bomb) and he had 4 diffuses, while I had 2. But good as he was, he was still a noob.... And I had a very good hand.
I still had 1 diffuse left when he exploded. 💣
 
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Ah, the simple joy in secondhand plastic consumerism.

Im finding myself more and more a fan of the classic Lego look, so through BrickLink I ordered these three ghosts and dragon that they don’t make anymore. Despite not being alive for its run, I still find the classic dragon nostalgic as it is the front car of The Dragon, a ride I definitely rode when I was young.

I also scavenged the Lego Pick-A-Brick for the rest of the pieces to complete the ghost figures as I only ordered the shrouds. I still needed to shell out a bit more as I didn’t want to just order that, so I designed and bought the pieces to make a little Ark of the Covenant (no I’m not collecting Lego religious artefacts I just really like Raiders) and also enough classic smiles to replace the heads for all of the minifigures in my castle set.

Was nice after a very successful but gruelling History GCSE.

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