Day 29 - End In Sight

A short post today: London was good, especially not going around all of the sites as I've tried to do in the past. We didn't go to Hyde Park or the Houses of Parliament, or Downing Street or Leicester Square, or the West End or Soho. The Tate Modern on Saturday was tiring enough by itself! Lots of interesting things in there, some cool pieces... And I can now say that I have seen a video of a naked man rubbing cream on himself, jumping up and down a bit while wearing a monkey mask.

It was just so nice to have a weekend away from the norm. Maybe I said that at some point in one of my phone posts, I can't quite remember. I finished reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons, which was an interesting book but which left me a bit bemused at the end. Watched a lot of Stargate SG-1 at my friends' flat, went to church yesterday morning for the first time in a long time, and that was alright too.

This morning coming back I had just under an hour to spare and breakfast to get at Euston (by the way, in case you don't know, and despite what you might have heard about its services, the London Underground is amazing). Ended up getting some breakfast thing from Burger King - tasty, but bad idea, a bad, bad idea.

The salty, starchy, crisp hash browns which are no doubt incredibly bad for me kickstarted a need for junk food that I don't often get - and this lunch time when I went out to get some samosas I ended up coming back to the office with a caramel slice and a can of Coke!!!!!!!

For a long time my Coke habit has been once a year, if that... It's been twice in the last two months now... I think I might be getting addicted again. I don't even like the taste really, I just saw the red can and needed it...

Right, another half an hour in "work" and then home. Going to the library this evening, time to take my books back and find some other fun stuff to read: fingers crossed for a good popular science book and maybe a book on magic tricks!

Day 28 - Weekend in London

Ah, this is the stuff. Don't get me wrong, I think London is way too big, way too noisy and way too crowded for me to ever want to live here - although, you know, never say never - but if you're visiting there is always something to do.

It's the middle of Sunday afternoon, and we've just got back to the flat after church and lunch and a wander across and around London Bridge. Yesterday we had a lazy morning followed by a walk to the Tate Modern (there's a post coming, possibly tomorrow, on modern art) then came home, had a roast and watched TV while chatting away. Brilliant.

It's been really great just to get away and out of the regular routine for a couple of days - even though the routine lately has been highly irregular - and to have a break. It shocked me a few weeks ago when I realised that this was going to be my only holiday for the year; I've had days off, but none in a row, and I've not been away except for work-related stuff.

That said, my life is pretty exciting (and a little scary) lately with all of the changes that are going on. I'm glad to have this break but I don't want to be away for too long - there's so much great stuff going on in my irregular life!

Day 26 - Off To London

The last time I was in London was about six months ago, and I was there for only about six hours all in all (I was invited to give a talk in Essex, and didn't have time to stay over, literally there for the afternoon). I've never actually stayed in London more than one night, and although I've been there for a day's sightseeing before I've never been for a weekend or a short break.

Quite looking forward to it; have no big plans, other than trying to see if I can persuade my friends who I'm staying with to go and see Avenue Q - I don't really know if it is there sort of thing or not, but I've wanted to see it for quite some time now, and I've never seen a West End show.

If the weather's nice then we might go for a bit of a wander. I like the area around the Embankment, and Hyde Park is quite nice on a sunny day. Taking my camera and going to force myself to take lots of photos, it's quite difficult for me. I like taking pictures so that I can have something to look back on, but at the same time it always seems like something I forget to do because I'm so busy trying to enjoy myself in the here and now.

(my two weeks in Japan was an exception - I had to fight to stop myself from taking pictures there, and also struggled with the number of pictures I could take. Am thinking that for my road trip next summer I'll be figuring out some kind of external hard drive arrangement so I won't be limited on the number of pics I can take)

Sunday will be interesting, as am going to church with Chris and Charlotte; it's the first time I will have been to church in over a year (save for my nan's funeral in April). I've not been mainly because I don't know where I would worship. My previous church just didn't feel like home any more, and the other churches in the area similarly don't feel like they have much to offer in terms of worship or people of my own age. My mum's started going to a new church, so I might try that with her one Sunday. Anyway, this Sunday will be interesting I think, possibly challenging.

Alright then, back to work. I will keep the blogging up over the weekend, but probably from my phone, so posts might be a touch short, or possibly expressed strangely (I find that the small screen effects sentence and paragraph length when I've written on it in the past).

Have fun, see you next week - four more posts to go before I finish my goal!!!