The Tree Dome

Must beat 18,000 to get my dream job

2009-02-19T07:31:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I caught an article regarding the job on Hamilton Island, stating that so far 18,000 people from over 200 countries have applied - talk about competition! Click here to read the whole article.

Granted the number of applicants is slightly lower than we all initially anticiapted that is still a lot of people for me to beat to make the first short list of 50 (will be announced March 2nd!). If you are reading this and you have not voted for me yet please do so now! (yes right now, as in, stop reading this entry, scroll down a few and click on my posted link to my video, vote and then come back and keep reading....why are you still reading this?)

It's funny, just the other day I started hypnotherapy (willingly volunteered to help this girl I know rack up the hours she needs to complete her certificate) and first session we just talked, she asked me some questions and then explained how the brain works. Basically we have our "primitive" part of the brain that processess things very simply, black and white, and this is where depression, anxiety and anger are. When we get overly stressed and feel like there is no way out, we revert to this part of our brain, as opposed to the logical, rational, optimistic part. She then started talking about how in order to reduce stress and anxiety, you need to train yourself to think positively and that with good thoughts good things will follow.

I'm paraphrasing a lot of what was said, but the point is that if you think positively about something, then usually something good tends to follow. Am not saying our brain is a genie or anything, obviosuly with the good thoughts must come some actions on our part, but speaking from personal experience if you want something really badly, and you put it in your mind that you will get it, then you will. And since the day I read about this island job it has been the forethought in my mind that I will get it, regardless of the competition I still think I have a great chance and will keep doing all I can to make sure my dream becomes reality.

25 years young

2009-02-10T09:30:00.003-08:00

This past weekend I experienced the miracle of turning a quarter of a century. Enjoyed a lovely day/evening on Saturday with all my friends, consuming a "few" beverages, partaking in many laughs, and bowling fun. It's times like these when people get together you can realise and appreciate what great friends you have, and I certainly do! Especially seeing how I have now lived in Bristol for only 2 years, could not have met and befriended a better bunch. Thanks everyone! Sunday was spent lazing about, as you do, and Monday took James clothes shopping then we chilled in his parents jacuzzi. Was funny because we were in like 37 degree water, with snow all over the garden and cold rain falling on our heads. Still really nice.

Below are a few pictures of the good times had by all over the weekend:

Send me to Australia!!

2009-02-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

Wooo- the link for my Australia video has arrived!!! Am that much closer to my dream job of living on a tropical island, feeding fishies and surfing. And you can help me get there by clicking on the link below, watching my video and giving me a 5-star rating(you actually have to click on the 5 stars to the right of the video) :)

Watch my Video!

And to help even more, please forward this to any and everyone- need to get as many hits as possible. And of course you are all welcome to visit me when I'm there :-D

Snowy Days

2009-02-06T08:38:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday Everyone!

What a crazy week it has been (weather-wise) for England! We got snow in Bristol Monday, then snow on Wednesday night had us waking up to a winter wonderland on Thurdsday, and again on Friday morning woke up to snowy conditions. Friday's storm was by far the worst for Bristol, with many roads closed in the morning hours. Had to help my flatmate Abi get her car out of our driveway, then later had to help my boyfriend with his car (twice). I know Britain doesn't get much snow, and it shows with how people are not sure what to do when they get stuck, etc. Guess all my Tahoe-driving experience has paid off!

But the snow hasn't brought misery to all, I've enjoyed frolicks in the snow consisting of snowball fights, building snowmen and taking pictures of this rare weather phenomenon.

Australia or bust

2009-02-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

Today I submitted my video to be considered for "the best job in the world" - a caretaker of a tropical island (Hamilton Island) off the coast of Australia. I'd get paid £70,000 as a caretaker for 6 months, would get to live in a 3-bedroom villa for free, have to pick up mail and feed some fish but otherwise my job is to surf, scuba dive and do other activities, taking photos and writing blogs about what I do in order to promote tourism of the Great Barrier Reef Islands. Pretty sweet huh? Think I'm joking? See for yourself - Island Job.

Obviosuly there is going to be lots of competition, but I'd like to think I have a pretty good chance of getting short listed. Am active, outgoing and am a nut for photo taking. Anyone who knows me and I've told about this know it's perfect for me. Will post a link to the video once they put it up on their site, at which point I'll require all my loyal friends and family to watch it and vote for me :)

It's hard to not get ahead of myself and imagine being on the island, but we've all gotta have dreams. Sun, sea and surf - my heaven.

Patience is a Virtue - written on 2.5.08

2008-05-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

My sincerest apologies for not updating this thing for so long (I dare not even look at the date of my last post as it may shame me to tears). At the moment I am on a train to St. Ives, a gorgeous sea-side town located in the southern county called Cornwall. It’s a holiday weekend in the UK- can you believe they simply have a “May Day” holiday weekend, and not just once but twice in the month of May! First and second to last weekend, gotta love it. So I am taking the opportunity to visit my dear friend Lauren and the other “Cornish” folk I know. How I wish the forecast was clear blue sunny skies but alas when I checked yesterday each day said rain, rain, rain. Granted, the weather here is so fickle, it can rain for a moment, and then be sunny- let’s hope for only a little rain, more sun.

My last weekend excursion was over the Easter weekend in March, decided to go explore the roots of my Irish heritage and booked a flight to Dublin. Initially I was going to be a lone traveller as I have previously, but upon mentioning my Easter plans to my friend Kieran, he immediately volunteered himself to accompany me. I was very pleased to have a travel buddy for once! And he knows a few people there so even better. Despite being absolutely freezing over the weekend it was an amazing trip. We saw the touristy sights like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Christ Church, Dublin Castle, Trinity College and lots and lots of walking. Mind you- this is barely a week after having ran the Bath Half Marathon which shattered my left leg to the point where I was hobbling around like I was 90! I digress...we did not get to tour some places like the Guinness Brewery or Jamieson’s Distillery but I have no doubt I will return so can tick those off on my next trip.

A special treat was Kieran’s friend Pete playing tour guide and taking us out to the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough, which was beautiful. Then we hiked one of the mountains, completely unprepared. At one point we reached the beginning of the path to the summit and there was a sign posted saying you should not continue unless you have a compass, hiking boots and rain coat...we had none, but of course carried on. Was lovely at the top, until it suddenly went from blue sunny skies to pissing down rain! Luckily it did not last very long. That was as far out of Dublin as we got, but will return to do a proper “family trip” probably starting up in Belfast and working my way down to Ennis, visiting family as I go.

To backtrack on something said previously- the Bath Half Marathon. I decided to do this after seeing my friends run the Bristol Half Marathon in August 2007. I began training on my own, then Jaume and I would run together and on occasion Alex too. My injury from running the half marathon actually began back in November when Jaume and I did a 13 mile run, unplanned. After this my leg hurt quite a bit, so I took a break from running for a while. When I started training again after the Christmas and New Year holidays, there was still a small bit of pain every now and again, but I thought it was muscle related, like a permanent cramp or something. After the half marathon and my leg was really really in pain, my friend said I might have shin splints.

Long story short, saw a doctor who referred me to a sports specialist who after xrays and MRI’s (overkill maybe?) diagnosed me with a healing stress fracture, but he was concerned it was not healing at a normal rate so I have been given a lovely shin brace to wear for 6 weeks. My leg does not hurt anymore but the wound is still there and I want it to heal properly so I can get back to training for the Bristol Half Marathon, which is mid-September. To keep fit I have been borrowing a friend’s bike, which has been very enjoyable to ride. Forgot how fun it is. Oh, I finished the Bath Half Marathon in 2 hours, not bad for my first one but know I could have done a bit better, less the leg causing me grief.

Since that and Dublin I have been more chilled out- 1) I needed the break from running around all over the place (no pun intended), and 2) financially I needed to recoup. During this time I started doing things that had been put on the back-burner, like applying for graduate school. Started filling out the application, getting my mom to help me get transcripts from schools back home, asking for letters of recommendation and just recently attending the Open Day session for the MBA Program (which is offered part-time by the University of West England aka UWE). I got to speak one-on-one with the Managing Director of the program and was quite impressed with their offer and program structure. It’ll take 3 years to complete, 2 years of courses and one year of research and writing a dissertation. It’s quite a commitment, but I know I want to do this. Main concern is funding. Will definitely have to research on loans, scholarships, etc. If all goes according to plan, I will start in January 2009.

Work is going well, was a little quiet before and now has picked up again. We have a Reseller Meeting in Prague next week (Thurs-Fri) which I’ll be attending and presenting at. I love these trips because I’ll stay through the weekend to make the most of being there and getting to visit a new destination. And, an added plus, my travel buddy Kieran is flying out Friday to be a tourist with me over the weekend. Has he not chosen to join me then my grandmother Luise would have come up from Salzburg to keep me company. Would have been lovely to see her, since the last time was end of September, but I’ll be seeing here again about the same time of year as I have a flight booked to go to Munich for Oktoberfest again! Busy busy. But I better travel as much as I can this year before my free time gets soaked up by grad school :oP

Back to Normal?

2008-01-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

It's only been 2 weeks since I left California and came back to Bristol but feels like much longer. Since I have come back it's been go-go-go. Started looking for a new flat right away, which was causing me a bit of stress, but luckily the situation has turned out for the best. Instead of all 3 of us moving out of the flat, my flat mates are moving out and my friend Ashley is moving in. Sure the flat has its quirks but it really quite nice, big and has a prime location, so i am very happy to not be leaving it.

With that sorted I had time to focus on work, which has been very busy- even had to work on a Saturday last weekend! Wasn't too bad though, worked with my boss on adding the final voice-over touches to this 8 minute demo we created for a tradeshow we were attending. Hilarious stuff anytime my boss Chris messed up- we have all sorts of "bloopers" with him saying "shit,f*ck, bollocks".

Have also started training again for the half marathon. My new trainers are awesome (thanks mom), the only problem I am having at the moment is breathing. Can't seem to find a good rhythym. But my friend Matt, who has started running with Jaume and I, told me of a shop in Bristol that specializes in running so i'll pop in there soon to see if they have advice.

Happy 2008!!!

2008-01-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

New Year started on a positive note- no crapy hangover!! Spent NY Day meeting up with friends, walked along Ocean Beach taking pictures (beautiful!), then met more friends in the evening and went out for dinner at an Indian place. Am normally not a huge fan of Indian (too spicey for me), but I ordered what sounded like the least spicey thing and really enjoyed it.

Was then back in the SF office for work, nothing to eventful there other than it is getting really busy. Friday a huge storm came through northern Cali, takin down trees, fences, etc. Luckily I chose to work from home that day, as I was going to hang out with Karina later, but what seemed like a good idea at first turned south when we lost power at the house. No internet and no power to the laptop would make working difficult. Ended up driving early to my sisters and working for a few hours from there.

That night Karina and I went to Red Robin for dinner (yum!!) then to an improv comedy show, which turned out to be quite good. Back at her place we stayed up til 3am watching DVDs, then I was up at 6:30am to get showered and dressed to drive for about 3ish hours to Woodland to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins. Seeing them was great, those little boys are growing up so fast and they talk and talk and talk. After a few hours with them I headed back to the bay area to have a visit with my godmother. After she left I went and took a nap so I would have energy for bowling later in the evening with friends.

Bowling was fun, though not very long. After we went to a cool little bar, drank more, and played a bit of pool. Sunday was my lazy day. Didn't have any plans to see anyone until later that evening, and as it was only a few days before I had to leave, so I needed to finish buying souvies and presies, and an extra suitcase to carry all this crap in. Went out on a dinenr date with my friend's friend Jeff. It was really nice, such a gentleman (seriously there are hardly any left these days). And it was so sweet, my friend Charrise surprised me at work on Tuesday with a dozen roses and said they were from Jeff as a way of saying he had a really great time Sunday. :)

Wednesday was crunch time for packing as my flight left SFO at 4pm, and I was still working from home that morning. Made it in plenty of time though, flight was easy breezy, slept through most of it, and the journey home to Bristol also went well. Is nice to be back, can get back into the routine of life here. Not that I don't miss Cali and all my lovely friends and family there- think of you guys all the time!!

Like Totally Radical Dude

2007-12-31T20:09:00.000-08:00

Ah I have been back in California for Xmas Holiday for 2 weeks and already I've re-adapted to the Cali way. Have said soccer a few times (cringe), cell/cell phone- but most people here say I have picked up an accent, not heavy, but nearly everyone has said they hear a difference in my speech. Works for me- accents are hot!! It's amazing that I have been here 2 weeks, a part of me feels like I have been here longer- it was so easy to just get back into the routine of things: getting up at an ungodly hour to commute via bus to the SF office for work, driving (was soooo happy to get behind the wheel again!). Another part of me is already realizing I have about 1 week left in Cali and there are still SO many people I have not seen- ahhh!! But hopefully everyone will come out Saturday night for bowling and drinks.

My two weeks has been jam-packed, visiting people nearly everyday- and if i am at work, have had lunch-dates then after-work dates, first weekend did a shopping marathon with my wonderful friend Charrise, then we went to a Sharks game that night, which we lost horribly, have been having "cousin" meetings- gotta get all those crazy Murtagh's together, next thing you know it is Christmas- and please tell me why I was so compelled to purchase this leather bomber jacket (for myself) on xmas eve that I spent nearly 1 hour driving all over San Jose trying to find the only mall in the area that had it stocked in my size?! Guess it's one of those things when I set my mind to doing or having something I won't stop until it's done.

Christmas was cool- got lots of DVD's to keep me amused in the New Year, new running shoes and socks (which of course I had to try out on Xmas day- and man am I out of practice! Bloody fattening holiday foods...), and some kizash which is always welcome. Did a ski-day with my cousin Claire and her BF and family which was a lot of fun. I was the Master, and she my Grasshopper. She did so well and had a blast, much better than her attempt at snowboarding last season (not knocking snowboarding, she just picked up skiing better).

Then took a mini-road trip to Reno, Nevada to visit friends up there. Took Miss Lilliam with me, hung out at this tiki-bar in a casino, enjoyed fruity drinks, then on Sunday instead of leaving at a decent hour in the AM like we planned, lazed our way out into the world and went with my friend Brian and his mates to "play in the mud" with their trucks. It was awesome- picture this- riding around in a 4x4 truck out in the middle of nowhere boucning over dunes and sliding across mud-flats, twisting and swerving like the fricken teacup ride at Disneyland. Though all that fun zapped the life out of me and now I find myself chillin at home on New Years Eve, quite content to hang with my lovely family and watch DVDs.

Alright, that's as updated as it gets. Have a Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!!

British Assimilation

2007-12-05T02:52:00.000-08:00

Just had yet another sign that I am sheding more of my Americanisms and adopting Britishisms (say that 5 times fast!) - was just running a report in our CRM database and wanted the date range to be from August 1st- December 1st. My first instinct was to enter this as 1.8.07-1.12.07. I was puzzled when the report only showed about 84 records, far too little as we get half of that in 1 day alone! Thinking something is wrong with the CRM I go back to edit the report, and when I look again at the date range I entered, I realized that the way I entered it (the British/Euro way) meant I wanted it to pull data from January 8-12, 2007.

Usually I have to sit and really think about which way I enter the date when dealing with Euro's, like giving out my date of birth usually takes and extra few seconds of thought, but this time I just did it instantly. Tea anyone? ;o)

Parisian Thoughts

2007-12-02T12:19:00.000-08:00

Went to Paris back in November for 5 days- was amazing! Didn't keep up with the travel journal, I figure all the photos I took are just as good- a visual journal of my travels. Instead I wrote down random thoughts and observations:

There was this girl at the breakfast table being a total control freak over the bread basket for her and her friends. "Look we each get one roll and one croissant, which you want to start with?" She said it to each of them, as if they might not figure it out and take 2 rolls instead of one! Heaven forbid.

On the metro there was a little boy totally liking the wall/window of the car! Ew. Can we say germs? Why don't parent's notice or say anything?

Don't think the French have a concept of "personal space". While waiting in line to climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower these two guys behind me kept coming into contact with my backpack- making me feel very claustraphobic and annoyed. Back off!

French people aren't rude in the sense that they are obnoxious or vocally rude, if anything the rude thing about them is their lack of "excuse me". They just stand, walk, and bump when ever they want as if there is no one else but them.

I just walked a huge maze of stairs trying to find the platform for the train to Versailles! First went down two huge escalators, then did a left and a right turn, only to be told by the signs to go back UP another set of escalators! More lefts and rights, I was really starting to question these signs but eventually I found the platform! Sunday in Paris is very quiet, much like the rest of Europe as I have observed. Much less traffic and people.

I am rubbish at mailing postcards. Even though I purchase them on the first day of where ever I am at, and usually write them all out that day or the next, I somehow manage to not mail them until the day I am leaving or, worse, when I am back home! Need to work on that.

When I go home for Christmas I look forward to...

2007-11-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

-Seeing family and friends (the obvious)
-Mom's fabulous cooking
-Driving my (or any) car
-Nordstroms, Macy's, Express, Sephora, Old Navy, Forever 21...
-Seeing the California coastline again
-Being in San Francisco again
-Proper milkshakes
-Ranch Dressing
-Fred Steak
-Rumaging through stuff I left behind and seeing what I want to take back with me
-Lake Tahoe Snow (provided there is some there this year *fingers crossed*)
-Getting in a game or two of football (soccer) with my old team

Ghouls, Birthdays and Fireworks

2007-11-06T03:19:00.000-08:00

Most of you should have seen my lovely Halloween pictures by now. Twas a very fun evening. Came to Sublime with Witchy Abi and Kitty Zoey, where we met the Devilish Sarah. Sublime was still in the process of being decorated- Nick and Leonna sure did go all out for one night. There were even a few carved pumpkins lighting the placce up- think those were from Sarah and Alex (thanks guys!). Midnight Sausage were playing, also dressed up, and managed to play loads of Halloween-appropriate songs while still keeping the atmosphere lively.

There was a really good turn out of people coming in fancy dress (FYI for fellow Americans- Fancy Dress is the term used here for dressing up in costume, not dressing up in a gown and tux. Strange, I know, but what else do you expect from the Brits?), and I took it upon myself to go around and promote the fancy dress contest we had going that night, best one won a £40 bar tab for the night. There were some really good efforts made, loved the homemade Dice-girl costume. In the end it was the Werewolf that won.

Luckily for me I planned ahead for this night and requested to start work at noon the day after Halloween. I actually ended waking up rather early, but it didn't take long for me to roll over and fall back to sleep and enjoy the extra Z's. Stayed in Thursday night as the weekend was crammed full with Birthday celebrations and I wanted to preserve some energy for it. Friday night we celebrated Sarah's bday, starting with a lovely dinner at Zero Degrees, this micro-brewery in Bristol, then made our way down to Sublime for a few drinks and dancing.

Satruday went for a run with Jaume, felt really good, got hair cut, then met up with friends at the Avon Gorge Hotel in Clifton to celebrate Emma's bday. Now the reason we started way up in Clifton is because Bon Fire/Guy Fawkes night was being celebrated that night as well- a little background on this English holiday- Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of English Roman Catholics which planned to carry out the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I of England, to destroy Protestant rule by killing the Protestant aristocracy, on 5 November 1605 (Wikipedia). Now the 5th of November in England is known as Guy Fawkes Day where typically a large firework display is put on, symbolizing his attempt to blow up Parliament.

Some of you may ever know this well known verse:
“Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.”

Back to the story at hand, becuase Nov 5th fell on a Monday this year, the city of Bristol decided to have the Firework show on Saturday at the Downs in Clifton. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of the fireworks from the Avon Gorge Hotel but only saw a few small fireworks go off from people's private homes. Realizing we were not going to see much else, we walked to the Racks for a few more drinks, then some of us continued on to Sublime. Midnight Sausage were rockin it as always. Later on the Fish boys were inviting some of us back to their pub to watch this big boxing match that was Live at 1:30am. Watched that, not a huge boxing fan, but this was a good match, more real than most crap you see on TV passed off as "real boxing/wrestling".
Had my first Sunday Roast with Lauren and her friends, quite tasty, then we chilled by the docks, did grocery shopping (which no one in England calls it- they say "going to the food store" or "food shopping"), did another run this time with Alex. Kicked my ass and my body paid for it big time that night. Was hobling around hte flat like an old lady I was in such pain. Yup, that was my weekend. :)

World Record of Partying

2007-10-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

Think I have just done a personal best at the number of consecutive party nights. Let's recap on the past 4 days...

Wednesday night was out at Sublime to meet Dawn and her dad for a few drinks and watch the Sausage play, and one of the guys working at Sublime was having a leaving do. Was also invited to the line-cleaning at the Fish (aka free beer), hard to pass up. Got there at 11pm and did not get to bed until about 4am-ish. Thursday felt a little rough, mostly tired. Made it through the day though and could not wait to finish work as The Fish was having a Wacky Races event, where they'd be showing episodes of Wacky Races and you could bet on who would win, winners got 2 free drinks. Dressing up was also encouraged and knowing me, I love going all out for parties and participating in the fun, so my friend Lauren and I had our costumes all sorted. I was going as the evil Dick Dastardly and Lauren as my sidekick, Muttley. The staff at The Fish rented costumes to wear, and while they were quite good, it was nothing compared to our creative, hand-crafted ones. Sadly Lauren and I were pretty much the only non-staff to have dressed up, few guys had on hats and blazers for the Ant Hill Mob characters, but there were a lot of "normal" dressed people there to watch and bet on the races.

It was such a blast, everyone was cheering on their cars, and for those of us in character we were also supporting our characters, sometimes even reacting along with the characters. We won one race, and three others our cars kept coming in 2nd place- drat!! We also won prizes for being the best dressed, my Muttley came in 2nd place receiving a box of chocolates and I came in 1st receiving a bottle of champagn. Sweet. End of the night we went over to Bossa Nostra, still in costume, had some drinks there, then went over to Sublime until they closed at 2am. But the night was not over yet- Dimitrius, who owns Bossa Nostra, was with us at Sublime and invited those of us remaining back to his bar for a few extra drinks. By then the group had dwindled down to the few strong surviving the night. I lasted again until about 4am, got to bed at 4:30am.

Was really tired on Friday (gee I wonder why...)but I preserved my energy as the Midnight Sausage were having a special, first-ever gig at The Fish that night and being the loyal fan that I am had to attend. Got there at about 9pm and met up with everyone, Alex and Jaume had been on the piss all day so by now they were uber drunk and providing us with much amusement with their drunken antics. When the guys started playing it took a while to get the dance floor filled, since the Fish has never had live music and isn't a dance-atmosphere pub normally. But we all got our groove on and did our best to encourage others to join in. Alex and Jaume even went as far to grab this poor guy out of his chair, holding him on either side, hoisted him onto the dance floor and plopped him down in the center of it. Luckily he had a sense of humor about it and did dance a bit.

A little after midnight the Sausages ended their set and by 1am we were heading to Sublime. I was getting pretty tired at this point, don't even think I managed to finish my pint. Wanted to go home, but my lovely friends dragged me across the street to their pub the Royal Navy Volunteer for more drinks. I stuck with Coke at this point and like clockwork, a little before 4am I said goodnight and went home. Had to be in some sort of good shape for Saturday, as Lauren and I were going to the Swan Lake ballet at 2:30pm. Woke up about 11am to the sweet text-message ring of my mobile with a message from Lauren saying we were going to meet Christian and Daryl for lunch at 12:45pm. Oi, could have done with another hours of sleep but the prospect of food got me out of bed.

We all felt a bit zombi-ish at the table, and of course eating just made me even more sleepy. Even duringg the ballet I had a few moments of drooping eyelids but snapped myself out of it. Ballet was beautiful, love the music and the dancing was incredible. Was Lauren's first ballet and she loved it. Got out at 5:30pm and all I could think of was me sleeping in my bed, which is exactly what I did upon getting home. Woke up about 8pm, pondering going out again. The crazy side of me prevailed and I got up and ready to head out. Met Roz and Jason at Vodka Revolution where it was packed with all these Uni kids dressed up pre-celebrating Halloween. Took forever to get a drink and was gettin annoyed at the place. We moved across the street to Slug and Lettuce for a drink, bit less crowded but still took forever to get drinks- do we have signs on us that say "Serve us last" or something?

We then decided to stick with what we know best, The Fish Market and Sublime, our comfort spots. Had one at The Fish then went to Sublime for more Midnight Sausage (told you we are obsessed, or maybe it's just me). By now all our moods and energy levels had improved and we were dancing all night long. Stayed there until 2am, which technically at that point it was daylight savings here in England and the clocks had gone back so really it was 1am, but couldn't convince Nick to stay open ;) Headed to Bossa Nostra with the Fish boys, but we were not lasting long. Jaume and Ben headed off frist, Alex and I were finishing our drinks with these girls we know from the Fish, then headed off at about 3am. Came upon Jaume standing at the Fish door, looked inside and saw poor Ben on the floor. Alex and I helped him ustairs and into bed, actually he had trouble staying in his bed, kept rolling onto the floor and just decided he was better off there. Got to bed at (take a guess) 4am-ish.

They don't call Sunday a "Day of Rest" for nothing. This is my super lazy day. Had to be up a little early (11am) to meet our landlord for fixing the freezer. Will make my way into town and do grocery shopping, then this evening will meet Josie to carve pumpkins. I would like to say that I am going to be sensible and not go out to Mbargo's this evening, at the moment I can't fathom the idea, but wait a while and who knows. ;)

Monday Morning Update- Did end up at Mbargo's last night with Lauren. Am SO looking forward to a chilled out Monday night.

I am protesting your sexism.

2007-10-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

Upon moving to England one of the first things I noticed was how much more sexist of a country it is compared to the California. Granted, I know I come from one of the most liberal, equal opportunity, anti-"ism" region of the whole United States, but some of the stuff I was coming across I just could not comprehend. Mostly it's how the men around here act towards women and speak about them very much the "you are my bitch, cook me dinner!" attitude. I know that for most of the guys it's just them being macho, other's I am pretty sure that is what they truly believe. And I know the US has its fair share of "macho" guys too, guess growing up in the Bay Area you don't see it that much.

For the most part I have handled it well, trying to not take it too personal, realizing it's a cultural difference. BUT, last night at poker there was a sign up sheet for this amature poker tournament going on. The guys were passing it around, and Neil, who was the poker-overseer for the night, said "Oh and there is a women's sign up sheet too." Excuse me? Why of all things in the world that have to be seperated by sex is a poker tournament one of them? Our league is not seperated by sex, even the world league tournaments you see on TV aren't, so what's the deal? After Nick signed up for it he handed me the clipboard and I said no, I am protesting this, it's bullsh*t. Maybe I am taking it too seriously but honestly, what is the difference in POKER to have guys and girls play seperate? So yeah, that sorta wound me up last night. Had to get it off my chest and share.

A Very English Weekend

2007-10-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

England has been doing very well in the Rugby world cup. Last weekend was the quarter-finals, which we won against Australia (woo!), so this past Saturday we played France in the semi-finals. For those who are not familiar, English people seriosuly disklike the Fench. So not only was it important Rugby-wise top win, but also for the fact England doesn't like France. AND- there was also a World Cup qualifier football match on earlier in the afternoon, England vs Estonia, which was fairly important. So basically we are talking about a whole day of English sports (aka- lots of drinking). Got to The Old Fish Market at 3pm when the football match started. Watched with friends Jason and Roz, was a great game, England scored 2 goals then a guy from Estonia scored the 3rd goal for them (classic).

Then at 8pm-ish the rugby started. But even before this the pub was getting fuller and fuller to the point where you couldn't move an inch. Oh, and we have this thing about sticking notes on our friends backs, with silly stuff like "I wet the bed" or "I like to touch boys" so that was going on all day providing us with much amusement. It got to the point where we were all so paranoid anytime one of us walked by the other everyone was constantly turning to check their backs. Even people around us, who were watching our little game, were getting paranoid!

Back to rugby- Enland won (double woo!) meaning we move on to the finals next weekend. Sunday South Africa and Argentina played, personally I wanted S. Africa to win so I could hassle Dan about England beating them in the finals, and luckily they did win so it's England vs S. Africa this upcoming weekend. After the rugby match headed to Sublime for a friend's 30th bday party, where drinking continued until about 4am. Sunday was completely knackered, not hungover in the sick-headache way, just really tired. Met up with some girlfriends and watch the most depressing movie (Becoming Jane) about Jane Austin. And upon finishing the downer of a film we decided to go out to Mbargo's to cheer ourselves up. None of us could believe we were actually going to go out again after we all had very drunk-Saturday nights, but we're young so we can handle it. Was a pretty chill night, didn't want to have another crazy one. This week am being good and not going out, want to save my energy (and liver) for the weekend - GO ENGLAND!!!!

Finally an Update!

2007-10-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

I’m not even going to bore you with my excuses for not updating my blog in...3 months (cringe). In short the past three months have been good, been working hard, but of course leaving enough time for fun. Recently went on vacation to Austria and Germany. In Austria stayed with my fabulous grandmother, she taught me to play golf. Then took the train into Munich, Germany where I met my long-time friend Michaela. Toured around the city, then did a day at Oktoberfest- was totally amazing! Drank from 11am to 11pm. Hopefully most of you saw the pictures. On a healthier note- I have begun training for a half-marathon I am running in Bath in March. So far so good, longest I have gone is 8 miles in about 74 minutes. Still not playing football (soccer) which is sad. I really miss it.

Been looking at continuing my MBA. Took a trip to London one day back in August to check out a University. It was nearly perfect- except for being in London. I know that may sound crazy to some of you, but I am not ready to move from Bristol. I really like it here. Plus London is very expensive, would probably be cheaper for me to just commute from Bristol to London if I did go there. But not sure I like that as an option. Starting to look at MBA’s closer to Bristol, have two options, University of Bath or University of West England. Won’t know anything for sure until later next year, and if I did start, it would be Fall 2008. We shall see.

In November I’m going to Paris for the first time. Going for 4 days, should be fun. Hoping to take a day trip to Normandy to check out Mont Saint Michel; a tidal island. Quite cool. Figure I should get in one last trip before going home for Christmas mid-December. Be home for about 3 weeks, will fly by. Lots of people to see, snow to ski on, shopping and spending quality time with my car. I miss my precious. Though I am looking to get a car here, I just can’t take public transit all the time, sometimes you just want to be able to take off without having to consult train schedules. My only setback is not knowing how to drive stick-shift, but my friends who are selling me their car are willing to give me lessons.
Okay think I am getting ahead of myself telling you what I’ll be doing in December- if I do that then what knew news will I have to share with you! I’ll try to update this more frequently- should have SOMETHING to write about after this weekend- big rugby match between England and France Saturday night and a friend birthday party- good times! X

4th of July in England

2007-07-09T02:38:00.000-07:00

This year I celebrated the 4th of July in England. I texted all my friends inviting them to celebrate with me at Sublime where we would have hot dogs, smores, and even fireworks. I got a few cheeky replies like “I don’t usually support rebellions,” or “Is there going to be tea?” Few days before the 4th I went and bought all the makings for hot dogs, though the best I could find was a Frankfurt, bit skinnier than our Jumbo, Oscar-Meyer Wienners. Smore’s were imported from the states thanks to Chris and Charrise, all I had to get here was marshmellows. You would not believe how hard that was. Hardly any shop had marshmellows and if they did, they were super small. Luckily I found the perfect ones at Wilko’s (the last place I would have expected to have them). I also bought a Spiderman Cupcake mix- it was perfect, came with red sprinkles and blue frosting.

I also bought poster paper and paint to create my own American flag and perhaps some other American decor. For the fireworks I went to this local shop and told them I needed some fireworks for tonight. They asked how big my garden was so they could show me the proper sized ones and I said that I don’t have a garden; was thinking of lighting them in the street or in Queen’s Square. They said if I did that I could get in trouble (figured that much myself). We chatted for a bit trying to figure out a solution, then the guy asked if I had access to the roof of the pub and I thought about it and there is a flat bit that you can get to from the bathroom window. He said so long as my friend owns the pub, that is his property and he can do whatever he wants on it, including lighting fireworks. Sweet! I bought some sparklers and a box of 16 fireworks that when lit, would shot up really quick *bam bam bam* and make a loud shriek as they went up, then a nice *BOOM*.

Back at Sublime I worked on my All-American posters with the help of Josie. We did an American flag, then I drew a pin-up girl holding an American flag, with the slogan “I want you” underneath. Little pun on the famous Uncle Sam poster. And we also did one of the Statue of Liberty, though when I painted the sky I wanted it to look like a nice sunset, instead It looked like the city was on fire  Once the posters were dry, Gag’s helped me hang them and decorate the corner with some streamers I bought, then I went upstairs and quickly baked the cupcakes. Downstairs ready to celebrate with me was Ben, Josie and her boyfriend John, Gags, and then Dan, Dave and Sue joined in as well. Before I fed them I made Alex and Dutchy hot dogs and smores since they had to work and couldn’t join in. Everyone loved the hotdogs, and I bought sauerkraut which no one had ever seen or eaten, but they all liked it, especially John, he was eating it straight from the jar!

Time flew by and before I knew it, it was about 10:30pm- firework time (you have to set them off before 11pm). I got Nick to be the one to go on the roof and light the fuse, while the rest of us went out onto the street and lit our sparklers. We waited and just as our sparklers faded away, SHHHHRRRRRIIIIIIIII- BOOM!! Everyone thought the fireworks were quite good, I mean it wasn’t a big production or anything, just a symbolic gesture. Ben was awesome as the end he started chanting U-S-A, U-S-A! Silly Ausie. Back inside we had a few more drinks and chatted away, then slowly people started heading home. I was so happy those who came did, and that they had a good time celebrating with me, especially since none of them were American. Quite interesting was how many of them did not really know what the 4th of July was all about. Next year we’ll have an even bigger celebration and more fireworks!

Poker Goddess

2007-07-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday night at Sublime there is a poker match. I have been playing since I got here, and have done fairly well for a beginner. Last night I played and was getting some really good hands in the beginning, so I was playing lots of hands and built up my stack early on, allowing me to sit back and let other players knock each other out when I had crap cards. Slowly but surely people were getting eliminated and I made it to the final table. Alex was there with me actually, and I knocked him out (sorry babe!), and then after a few more people were gone it was just me and this guy who plays regularly.

Alex was sitting by me, giving me little tips here and there because when you get to this stage in the game and there are very few people left, the way you play has to change. And since I don't get this far often, I don't know this so Alex was helping me a little. Eventually Tom, the guy who oversees the poker games, asked Alex to kind of sit back from the table. Guess they thought he was playing my game for me- which he wasn't. No biggie, I felt that I knew what I was doing. got a hand of 8-10 (i think) and was the big blind, he called, and we saw the flop. I think 5,7,9 came out, so i was 1 away from a straight. I put in a huge raise, he called, then out came a 6, so I had the straight. another big raise, he went all in. I called him on it. we still needed to see the Turn card and when that came out it was a Jack, so I had a straight of 7-8-9-10-J and won.

The guy was not very pleased. As we were leaving the table I put my hand out and said good game and he totally gave me the flimsy-girly hand shake and didn't say anything. What a poo. There weren't very many people in the pub left, Dan and Danny were working and they congratualted me, a few of the guys from the poker remained and Alex. He was annoyed that the guys were being such wankers and not congratulating me. Alex was really pleased, and that was enough for me so I didn't care about the others. We had a victory beer and at one point Alex spoke up and said to everyone "Can we all give Triana a round of applause for winning tonight?" Him, Dan and Danny applauded and I think the other guys were kind of like "clap.....clap...." Jerks. Would have been nice to be celebrated but really I was happy that Alex was proud of me winning.

So now what is going to happen is I will get a text message with information about an online poker game that only those who have won during the month of July get, the game will be sometime in August and then the top 5 players or the winner from that game will get an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas to play in a $10,000 buy-in game which they pay for! Jesus....what have I gotten myself into, haha. Highly doubt I will make it to Vegas, but who knows. Will have to start practicing my online poker skills, game runs a bit different since you are online and don't get to see people's faces or body language, so you have to read them in different ways. Will let you know how it turns out.

Weekend in London

2007-06-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

Went to London this past weekend to visit Alex. <3 He has been there for about 3 weeks working at the Churchill Fuller’s in Kensington while their manager is on holiday. Apparently it is one of the most photographed pubs in London because of the abundance of flowers that cover the outside of the pub, and when they are in bloom, it looks stunning. Even more amazing is inside the pub, it has a Thai Restaurant and that section is like a jungle with loads of plants and flowers. Alex was more worried about making sure all the plants were okay rather than the pub, lol.

Took the train on Saturday afternoon to Paddington, got to my hotel, then cruised down Portobello Road and checked out the market going on. Lots of stands and shops with things new and old. Found this one guy selling all sorts of spices and wanted to get something super spicy for Alex. I asked the guy, “ I need something that would kill a man,” and without even thinking twice he pulls out this little plastic bag and says “Then you want this.” It even says on the label: World’s Spiciest Powder. He said to be careful and use it in small doses, and I explained it was for my boyfriend who is always looking to make his food as hot as possible. The vendor said he has sold this stuff to other people exactly like that and they come back to him saying the stuff made them cry. Granted they probably used too much, so we’ll see how my little spice monster handles the heat. Muahahaha.

Later in the afternoon Alex got a break and we met up for drinks and dinner. It’s funny he happened to be working in this area because when I was in London in January with Kris and Will, we came to Notting Hill on a Sunday night in search of dinner but came too late and had a hard time finding anything open. So I recognized a few places as Alex and I walked around. Sunday I woke up super early, the guys staying across the hall from me were chatting up a storm at 6:30am! Got up, found a place to access Internet, then slowly made my way over to Camden Town to meet my friend Ana who lives in London.

Camden Town is another one of those places I missed out on when I was here in January, but Kris and Will had gone and said it was the highlight of the trip for them. As soon as I got there I could see why, it was like a massive Haight/Ashbury/Telegraph Avenue neighbourhood. Ana and I walked through so many stalls and shops, and everytime I thought it would end, we turned a corner and there was more! Eventually you saw the same stuff, but also new things. We did a little shopping, got Chinese from one of the food stands, and continued walking around. We were there for about 4 hours and probably didn’t even see everything, but we had our fill.

Met up with Alex in the evening and we were going to try and see what was around Paddington, but as we were on the tube, he got a call from the pub that a fuse had gone out, so we hopped off the train and raced back to the pub. Luckily the electrician who normally works for the pub was eating dinner there and sorted things out. Back out we went, had a few drinks at different pubs, got to see where Jaume and Ben used to work, then we had dinner and headed back to my hotel just in time to catch the last bit of Rome (this TV series that Alex is hooked on, and is rather good).

Monday morning I had a later start, checked out of the hotel (luckily they let me leave my bag there since I wasn’t leaving London for a while), and headed over to South Kensington to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Got there at about 10:30am and didn’t finish until 3pm. There was so much to see, and all very interesting stuff. Sculptures, figures, replicas of famous pieces of work, a fashion exhibition, Asian rooms, British History halls, etc. 80% of the pictures I took from the whole weekend were in this place. After I exhausted my eyes and mind with the museum, I went back to the hotel, grabbed my bag and walked to Churchill. Left my bag there then Alex and I headed out. We had a few hours before I had to catch my train, but we can’t really go far since he has to stay near the pub in case of an emergency, and there isn’t much to do in Notting Hill on a late Sunday afternoon. So we had a few drinks, and ended up at this place called the Hilltop (I think) and ran into one of his regulars and had a few drinks with him.

Now you would think that after having about 2 “bad” experiences with drinking Stella that I would have learned my lesson. But no. I had about 4-5 pints of it and that is usually the amount that screws me over, which it did again. :oP Not the best thing to be travelling home pissed but such is life. Luckily I made it home safe, and with a solemn vow to never drink Stella again. Evil stuff. Aside from the rocky ride home I had an awesome weekend. Got to check out more of London and see Alex. <3

Moving Out

2007-06-22T02:53:00.000-07:00

June 21st is the first official day of summer. The weather in Bristol though does not reflect this time of the season. It has been cloudy and raining for the past few days and looks like it will continue doing so through the weekend. Wednesday night we had a proper thunderstorm that came through the area really quick and dumped a shyte load of rain. Lightning had even stuck the sign of this one shop in the city centre- scary.

So the Internet at the pub is still not working. Tuesday I had to relocate my “office” to the Marriott Hotel. Paid 15 quid for 24hour WiFi access. Was pretty cool, hung out in the cocktail lounge and was basically the only person there all day. Around 4pm more people turned up. Wednesday I had my office at The Watershed, this café/cinema/digital media centre close to the Pub. They have free WiFi but I felt obligated to buy a few coffees throughout the day so I didn’t feel like a total mooch. The one downfall of the free public WiFi is that once more people got onto it the connection speed got slower and I couldn’t even get on to the VPN at all, and Skype calls were out of the question.

Started look for flats as well, found about 6 places online, sent them emails. Then when I got home Leonna had gone by an agency and got a listing of places in Bristol that we would be shown Thursday afternoon. Then a guy I had emailed called and we would see his flat Thursday evening. Ended up back at the Watershed Thursday for work, took an extended lunch break in the afternoon to go check out the flats Leonna arranged for us to see. That was fun, we had 4 places lined up, but at we were driving to the agency, we realized the first one was unfurnished and decided to skip anything unfurnished, so down to 3 places. The first one we go to looks really small and we realize it is a one bedroom! Not sure how the agents got that into the pile, so scratch that and down to 2. Plus the halls in the building smelled like a dentist office.

At the next one, as we are walking down the street, we approach this old church and I tell Leonna, “Wouldn’t it be cool if they took old churches and converted them into flats?” Well they did, this was the next property we were viewing! A bit strange at first but when we entered the place was really lovely. Huge rooms, one with high vaulted ceilings and windows (remember this is in a church), and each room had its own bathroom, the smaller room had the larger one. Then up a flight of stairs and to the right was the living room. Huge pane-glass windows, then up the stairs again to the 3rd floor which had the kitchen, which was kind of like on a balcony that when you looked over the side, you saw down to the living room.

We really liked the look of the place, and Leonna was practically ready to sign the contract there and then, but when we started asking about price, I felt my purse strings tighten. Rent was a bit more than I really wanted to pay and we owed the agency a fee. As we were leaving Leonna was like “Why aren’t we taking this place now?” and I pointed out my concerns about the high rent, not only for myself but for them as well, and then Nick brought up his concern about the area. This part of Bristol was very close to a bunch of brothel-type places and massage parlors. I had also noticed before when we got out of the car that the area didn’t look that great. He said he wouldn’t want us walking on Old Market late at night, which is the only road to get to the city centre and Sublime, which we would be going to late at night, be it them for work or me to go out or see Alex.

We would keep the place in mind but I was not about to sign a contract, especially since it was the first proper place we saw. That evening I went to see the other flat on Victoria Street. Nick and Leonna would follow as Nick had some food orders to take care of. When I got there and saw the place a few red flags popped up, dishwasher wasn’t working, the living room and small room (which would be mine) faced the street and it is a main road, so the noise level concerned me, then in the bathroom the tub needed a good scrub and possibly re-grouting, and in the larger room the windows faced down into the living room and couldn’t be opened, and the girl said it could get rather stuffy sometimes.

She left me to have a further look around on my own, and I was about to text Leonna and say forget it, but then she called and they were at the door. I told them I wasn’t too sure, but they had a look still. We all seemed to have the same hesitations and I actually thought we were going to scratch the place but after we left and got into the car and I told them how much the rent and bills were estimated to be, Nick said it was very cheap. So now we were reconsidering. We had a long chat in the car and when we got back to the pub and decided the few faults could be taken care of by the owner. So I called the guy, told him we were interested but had some questions, and the issues we had he was fine to take care of. He’d clean and re-grout the bathtub, and replace the dishwasher. So with that we told him we’d take it and he’ll be emailing me the contract soon for us to sign and post back to him. Move in date is July 7th- about 2 weeks away!!

So I have talked about all the negative things about this place- allow me to share the good things. In short (haha, like anything I write is short): kitchen and dining area are separate from the living room, living room has high vault ceilings making it a very open space, rooms are upstairs, and the whole place is fully furnished- every pot, pan, teaspoon, table, TV, linens are all there for us to use, which means we don’t have to budget for all that stuff. It also has a storage area that all the tenants share, and there are only 5 flats, so it isn’t a huge building. From what the girl described most of the tenants seem like nice, orderly types, only once in a blue moon have they noticed people being noisier than preferred. The other great thing was the guy didn’t ask for any references or credit checks- sweet. Not that any of us aren’t able of paying rent, but I have very little credit over here still, possibly the same for Leonna and Nick’s is tied to the pub, which sometimes shows up poorly.

All in all we are very happy with the choice. It is super close to Sublime and everywhere else we all go. The area is safe, none of us would be concerned about walking home late at night, and I think once the place is cleared of all the stuff in it and we make it our own it will be very nice. Housewarming party!!!

Reseller Meeting in Vienna

2007-06-22T02:49:00.000-07:00

Went on a business/leisure trip to Vienna for 4 days. Left on Wednesday and spent most of the day flying if you can believe that. Chris had the same flight as me so we were travel buddies. Man is he a terrible traveler. Doesn’t want to wait for anything, hates sitting around the airport, whine whine whine. The man needs to chill out. It was cool though, we had some small travel issues along the way, which he blamed me for all of them.

Once in Vienna and at the hotel we met up with Mr. Campbell and walked to an Italian restaurant called Maria Rosa and had a late dinner. Good food, ended up eating there a few times during the trip. The business part of the trip was us hosting an EMEA Reseller meeting from Thursday- Friday. That part of the trip went well. Everyone I met was very nice. Went out for dinner Thursday night with everyone, which was cool, got to hang out in a more relaxed environment and get to know everyone. Granted, not like this was a very formal meeting to begin with, but still. Made me less nervous when it was my turn to present in front of everyone.

The weather was muggy and humid. Luckily the conference room was cool in the morning but around noon it too became warm. The food was also good, nothing too strange. Had some Wienerschnitzle, and other dishes consisting of meat and either rice or potatoes. Gelato was all over the place and very delicious! The best kind of ice cream I have only found in Europe. First was Lagnesse ice cream in Germany, very creamy and smooth, then Magnum ice cream in England (I am sure it exists in other countries too), and the Gelato in Vienna was awesome.

On Friday afternoon my Grandma Luise took the train from Salzburg over to Vienna to spend the weekend with me. After finishing with the meetings and a bit of work, met her upstairs and then we joined the boys (Chris, Dave, and David) for dinner. We all had a really fun time. Omi was chattering away with everyone, talking golf, politics, religion, travel, etc. with everyone. Saturday morning Omi and I went on a bus tour of Vienna, which included a tour of the Schonbrunn Palace. It was very impressive, the wooden floor patterns beautiful, rooms extravagantly decorated. Some woman got all pissy because I took a picture of one of the wooden floor patterns with my camera and you aren’t supposed to take pictures inside. Okay I have respect for history and keeping it preserved and all that, and usually the reason they don’t want you taking pictures is because the flash can ruin things. I had the flash off and it was a wooden floor. Whatever, even Omi thought she was being silly.

The gardens at Schonbrunn had to be the most amazing part of this place. It spanned across a huge area 10x the area of the palace itself, and had numerous fountains, a labyrinth, zoo, greenhouse- would take a whole day to probably explore it in its entirety. On the tour we did not have time to explore the gardens, so Omi and I made a note to return on Sunday. After the bus tour, we wandered around the city centre to do a little shopping, since we found out all shops would be closed on Sunday (darn Europeans…). Didn’t get much, pretty much felt that I could get everything I saw back in Bristol.
We did hit up this open-air market, which had lots of yummie smelling food. As we walked past all the food stands I was looking for some exotic, spicy peppers or chilies to get for Alex since he loves spicy stuff. But everything I saw was stuff I could get back in Bristol, again. When we got back to the hotel we started writing our post cards and then I crashed for about 2 hours. Woke up about 8pm-ish and headed out for dinner. I attempted to guide us towards the river where I had seen lots of nice looking cafes and restaurants when Chris and I were coming in to town via the taxi earlier in the week, but my navigation skills were poor that night, and I couldn’t figure out where it was, then on turning around and going back to the area of our hotel, we didn’t take a turn and ended up even further away from our hotel and more downtown. It was nearly 10pm at this point, and most places were closed.

We just turned around and went back to the hotel and decided to check on the Italian place near the hotel and luckily they are open until midnight serving food- yay. Had another pizza from them, yummie and then we headed back to the hotel and went to bed. Sunday we had an early start because I wanted to explore more of the Schonbrunn gardens, then check out the Belvedere Palace and Exhibition, tour St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and grab lunch, then Omi would have to leave to catch her train at quarter to three. The gardens at Schonbrunn were amazing, way too big for us to explore in only 2 hours. We first went and found the labyrinth and went through that which was fun.

After exploring a little more of the gardens we went to the Belvedere palace and walked through the art galleries. Normally I am not big on art galleries, don’t know why but they usually bore me. So I was quite happy to find that these art works interested me and I got to see Omi’s favorite artist, Klimt, and he had some really nice pieces, then I discovered a new favorite of mine, Wolkmuller (I think). He had some great pieces. From the Belvedere went back towards the Opera at the city centre, and decided to eat lunch, then headed to St. Stephen’s. Was surprised that I could take pictures inside, most churches usually say no.

Then we headed back to the hotel, Omi packed up the last of her stuff and after saying goodbye, tried to sort out the rest of my afternoon. I discovered there was a Lichtenstein Museum and my friend Dan had asked me to try and find Switzerland and Lichtenstein badge/patches for him. But by the time I got there it was already closed. I walked most of the way back towards the city centre, passing by a bunch of museums, parliament, Hofburg Palace and took pictures of those places. Back at the city centre I headed towards this park where there supposedly was this “Summer in the City’ where they had food stands and drinks, outdoor activities, music, etc. Was counting on that place to be my source of dinner, and was really bummed to arrive at the park and it didn’t have any traces of the “Summer in the City” thing.

It was getting late at this point and being a Sunday I knew I had to find a place to eat dinner soon, otherwise I would end up eating at the Italian place again. Ended up back around St. Stephen’s and ate dinner at this strange place where the food was served cafeteria style. After this I went back to the hotel, started packing, got myself an ice cream (hehe), then went to bed. Was up at 5am-ish, showered, finished packing and was downstairs by 6:30am, had breakfast and then caught a cab at 7am, arrived at the airport. Check-in was really quick, and the nifty thing about Vienna airport is they don’t have a big security check area, they have mini-security stations at each gate. So as I am waiting in the airport, I pull out the laptop figuring I can do some work offline, but then my wireless picks up on a signal from the airport- sweet! So I am checking emails, getting stuff done, then it’s time to board the plane. We get a slightly late start, which worries me because my connecting flight in Amsterdam leaves less than an hour after the supposed landing time of this flight. Once we land in Amsterdam, I make a dash out to towards my gate and luckily make it to the gate with a bit of time to spare, they were also running late.

Flight home was easy, in Bristol caught the AirLink bus back home. Was nice to be home, and I was happy I took the day off so I didn’t have to worry about getting online or anything. Unpacked, did laundry, grocery shopping, went to the gym for a bit, then tried to upload pictures from the trip only to find that the Internet was down. We tried to fix it numerous times but to no avail. Stayed up as late as I could (because I have realized I only need 5 hours of sleep to function) then headed off to bed.

Party Animal

2007-06-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Saturday night JD was having his official going away party. Jaume and Abi met me at Sublime, then we headed over to Pitcher & Piano where JD and his friends were outside having drinks. Decided it was a vodka night and started on vodka cranberry. We had a few drinks there, stood outside chatting, these guys were giving poor Abi a hard time about being "abnormally short". Kind of funny, was all in good fun. Then we made our way back to Sublime. We thought we'd only have a few drinks there and then move on, but JD was quite happy to stay there, so that is where we remained for the rest of the night. Continued with the vodka cranberry. Midnight Sausage was getting ready to rock the house, I love them.

Loads of people turned up that night. Ridgey, Johno, Rob, Emma, was a good crowd. We were all having a great night drinking and me, Abi and Caroline had a blast shaking our booties. The night just seemed to fly by, and before I knew it, it was closing time for the bar. Several of us stuck around and continued celebrating on a mellower tone. Swtiched over to Coronas at that point (my poor debit card was hurting from all the double vodka drinks), and just chilled. People slowly started leaving, and I was getting tired as well. Couldn't believe it was 5am! I jetted off to bed, looked out the window and saw it was getting light out. Haven't had such a late night like this since the ghost thing at the Fish.

Amazingly I woke up at noon feeling okay. No headache, or stomach ache. I was just really really really tired. Took me a while to get myself out of bed, showered, and then dragged myself downtown to go shopping for clothes for my business trip to Vienna at the end of the week. I was like a zombie walking around. And of course I managed to find and buy clothes that aren't the most professional looking. Oh well. Took it easy the rest of the day and had a quiet, early night. Though tell me why when I get 6-7 hours of sleep I wake up really tired and am practically falling asleep at my laptop whilst working? Yet on 4-5 hours of sleep I seem to do okay? Maybe I'll test myself tonight by staying up and seeing how well I fare tomorrow.

Pub Golf & Lady Boys Weekend

2007-06-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

This past weekend it seemed like everyone was celebrating their birthday. On Saturday Jaume’s girlfriend Abi was celebrating her 21st, and Gag’s who works at Sublime, was also celebrating her 21st. Abi invited me a while ago to do Pub Gold with her so I did that, and told Gags I would stop by her party at Sublime later. For those that don’t know, Pub Golf is a very elaborate drinking game. If you play it properly, you can get pissed really quick. You normally play 18 holes (pubs) and at each one you drink a different drink. Some holes have pars, and whatever that number is, be it 2 or 5, that is how many sips you have to drink your drink in (this is where it gets tricky). Luckily we played a mellower version of the game, only planned on doing 9 holes (pubs), and didn’t have pars.

We started at this Hanah’s flat, she used to work at the Fish Market, met all the other girlies there. We were all so cute in our golf outfits and plastic golf clubs. First hole was Wine at Hanah’s, then we were off to The Old Duke for a cider (yick), then to The Old Fish Market for a beer. Jaume and Alex had just finished work and came with us to the next hole, Vodka Revolution, but this was a quick stop since it was a shot we all did, then the guys were going to head off to Lloyds while we continued on with the Pub Golf. Eventually we were meant to end the night at Lloyds, so we figured we would run into them over there later. Next was the Commercial Rooms for 2 drinks, Gin and Whiskey. You are allowed to use mixers, so we all did Gin and Tonic and Whiskey and Lemonaid, which was surprisingly good (normally I hate whiskey). Then we went to Edwards, I think, for Rum. I cheated slightly and got a Malibu and Coke, hey- it’s a rum-based liquor. Then we went to Lloyds, where we had doubles to count for the 8th and 9th holes. I can’t remember what we were meant to drink here.

Found Alex and Jaume, had our drinks with them, then they wanted to head off and go to the casinos. Us girlies tried to figure out our next move, and it seemed most of the girls wanted to go up to Whiteladies and continue drinking up that way. I wasn’t very keen on going all the way up there, because that meant taking a taxi home and I didn’t want to take on by myself. Luckily Hanah and her flatmate were going, and they live back in the city centre like me, so we agreed to leave together whenever that would be. Didn’t actually take too long sadly. When we got up to Whiteladies Road, we were trying top find this bar that two of Abi’s friends were in to get them to come out with us. We found them at this Tequila House. It was a strange place and I was not feeling it, so didn’t want to drink there. Neither did Hanah and her roomie. Abi could sense the party mood was going flat and was getting a little upset. I was starving and went a few doors down to Subway for a sandwich. Came back and ate it outside where Hanah and her roomie were sitting. Abi was there too, but not looking cheerful. The 3 of us agreed we wanted to head back to the city centre. Hanah invited Abi to come along, saying she could stay at her’s, but Abi said she just wanted to go home.

We each got into our respective cabs, and back at the city center we went back to Lloyds but I was feeling quite tired and decided to just go home. Back at Sublime, Gag’s “studio 54” themed party was still going, but had definitely died down. Saw Danny and some of her other roommates that I know dancing and found out that Gags had already gone home because she was totally pissed. Bummer. I decided to stick around downstairs and have a few drinks with them, and Dutch and Graeme were there as well. But I felt totally underdressed in my pub gold outfit next to the glamed-up studio 54 girls. Thank got for living upstairs, I excused myself, dashed up to my room and threw on my sparkly aqua dress from my 23rd birthday and silver heels. Went back downstairs and felt so much better. Everyone loved my dress and thought it was so cool of me to go change for the party. We danced around, drank and had a good time. Then Ben showed up and he and I sat outside having a drink when Alex and Jaume turn up.

Alex had a really good night at the casino apparently, so they were in good spirits. We all hung out at Sublime for the rest of the night, then once the party and people died off Alex and I went back to his for the night. Sunday we woke up around 11-ish and poor Alex had a hangover. I was feeling quite good luckily, so I went and got him some apple juice and asprin. We chilled upstairs watching TV for a while, then I went home to shower and then came back to “kidnap” Alex since he had the day off and I wanted to do something other than sit on our bums and watch TV.

We were quite hungry and went to this place on the waterfront called The Spy Glass. We sat outside and shared a steak and king prawn kebab and shark steak. The shark steak was really good, tastes like chicken. After that we walked down to the city centre to see what was playing at the theater. The two movies we might have seen, Spiderman 3 and Pirates 3, weren’t going to start for another 3 hours or so. We walked on, Alex went into Burtons and got himself some socks and pants, then on our way our we passed by the tents where the Lady Boys of Bangkok were performing. These are transsexuals doing a Las Vegas-Cabaret style show. We looked at the program and saw that the next show was about to start, and decided to give it a go.

When we bought the tickets the lady asked if we wanted to sit up front, and we both said yes, thinking we wanted to be as close to the action as possible. Ha, think we got more than we bargained for. Alex got pulled onto the stage in the second act. I was dying of laughter. They had him put on this wig and tu-tu and sort of dance around a bit. The cool thing was there was a guy in front of the stage who took a Polaroid of Alex up there and gave it to me. Thought he would charge for it, but he didn’t. Sweet. The show went on and soon Alex was back in stage doing a Titanic scene with one of the girls. He was a good sport about it, and you have to be, otherwise you look like a wanker.

The performances were quite good, some better than others. What was really amazing was how good some of these guys looked as girls. You really wouldn’t be able to tell on most that they were transsexuals. After the show we headed back to the Fish Market. We knew that the guys from Sublime wanted to go out and possibly do Pub Golf for Dan’s Birthday, but neither of us wanted to do that, just have a drink or two. We hung out downstairs and waited for Ben to come down then we would all head over to Sublime together to see what the plan was.

When we got to Sublime there was still a group of people there, and Nick was just waiting for them to finish up so he could close. It didn’t look like Pub Golf was going to happen, so we got ourselves some Coronas and chilled outside. Then Dan came down and we had a drink with him. Once Nick was able to close the pub, we decided to go to the casino so the guys could gamble. I don’t mind playing Craps, but they don’t have that here so I planned on just being a spectator. At the casino I watched Alex play Roulette for a bit, he explained what was going on and I decided to bust out a 20 and have some fun. Did pretty well, was up by 20 quid soon and did my safe playing and pocketed 20 quid worth of chips, so that I would at least leave the place even. I left the table with 30 pounds and cashed that in.

Sat at a table with Dan, Ben, and Leonna, waiting for Alex and Nick to finish playing, then we headed out for Mbargos. I haven’t been there on a Sunday night in ages, so was kinda happy to go, though I definitely wanted a mellow-non-drunk night. When we got there Dutchy was having a drink, and Alex and I hung out with him near the dance floor. We didn’t stay for long, as Alex and I were both quite tired. We took a cab home, and when we got to the Fish I realized I had given my house key to Leonna. I texted her to leave the side door unlocked for me, hopefully she gets it, otherwise I am screwed for working tomorrow morning. Other than anticipating a crazy Monday it was a really good weekend.

Lazy Day (5.28.07)

2007-06-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

Did not have any real plans today so no reason to wake up early. What eventually did wake me up was our bedroom door opening and seeing these two guys walk in. I thought they just had the wrong room and would realize this seeing a girl sleeping in one of the beds, and then go away. But no, they walked right in and went over to where these two girls had been sleeping (they left earlier this morning) and started taking the pillowcases and bed sheets off. I asked them if they were supposed to be doing that and they explained that it was after checkout and they needed to collect the sheets. Ah...so you guys work here. Seriously this place needs to invest in nametags or shirts for their staff to wear.

After they left I got up, showered and when I started getting dressed I realized I had no more clean shirts! So I put on jeans and my black zippy jacket and got tokens to do laundry. Not my ideal way of spending time, but it gave me a chance to update the old journal and eat lunch in the common room. During the dry cycle I went out in search of a Scotish zippy jacket. No luck, either expensive or the cheap ones were ugly. Went back to the hostel, collected my laundry, and when I got upstairs Shannon was in her bunk. She was going to rest after her night with Hue. I decided to go to the National Scotish Museum, but sadly only stayed for about an hour. I was just so tired and hungry, and the exhibits were not very interesting.

On the way home I debated whether or not a nap would be a good idea, since I had to be up fairly early to leave the hostel and catch my flight home. Decided not to, so again was back in the common room writing in my journal. Shannon came down and read her book and updated her journal. Once I was done, I went onto the Internet, checked my bank account- looked good, then Yahoo! Mail, and even checked my work email, but luckily there were no major emails. After that I went out to check out a few shops I heard of, particularly for Celtic Jewelry. The one place I was really interested in ended up being really expensive, and everything else was already closed. As I headed back found another scarf shop and stocked up on more of the “trendy” UK scarfs.

Went into a Christmas Store, and felt like a time machine moving forward to December. Ornaments all over, Christmas music and the best part- that Christmas scent. Mmmm. The lady was kicking everyone else out and had locked the door before I realized it was closing time, but she didn’t mind me browsing around. We chatted a little about what it is like working there, wondered if she ever went crazy. Went back to the hostel, met Shannon then she and I headed out to have our one “sit-down” meal of the trip, instead of take-aways or eating at the hostel. During my walk I passed this pub/restaurant called the World’s End and thought it looked good, so we went there but there were loads of people inside waiting and we stood around for a bit hoping it wouldn’t be a long wait, but we soon realized this place was not very organized. Apparently there was no one to write your name down and delegate who got sat next, so we went across the street instead and ate at this bar called Tass. It was so nice to sit down and have a real meal, I gobbled mine down.

After I wanted to find some dessert, like ice cream or cake, so we went along Princes street looking for a place there. I knew finding a dessert place would be difficult, 1) They don’t seem to have many “dessert-only” shops, and 2) it was getting late AND was a bank holiday. Right as we were about to head back we came across a fricken TGI Friday’s, can you believe that? I know they have dessert so we went in there. I ordered the Chocolate Indulgence (layered chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream). Yum! Satisfied we headed back for the hostel. It was getting to be about 9:00pm and the sun was setting (oh yeah, over here daylight savings time is wicked- doesn’t get really dark until about 10pm or later) so we walked through the park between Princes street and our hotel enjoying the beautiful orange light that was being cast on all the buildings.

Back at the hostel I took a shower, one less this to do in the morning, and packed up my stuff. When I went to bed I had a little trouble falling asleep, my mind was racing with what I had to do for work, personal things, but eventually sleep found me. Didn’t get the best sleep though, kept waking up. At 4:45AM I got up, dressed, slabbed on some make-up, packed the rest of my stuff and headed out. Caught the Airlink bus and arrived at the airport just as my flight’s check-in was starting, so I was the 4th person in line. Security went fairly quick, and on the other side I got a mocha, and filled out my postcards. I was bummed I couldn’t send them earlier, but I had forgotten my address book. When I finished with that I went over to my gate, sat there until we started boarding. Flight was rather painless, did a bit of sleeping. At Bristol I caught the Airlink bus home, got in at about 10am-ish, dropped my bag, grabbed my laptop and started working. Would have been nice to be able to unwind, and unpack instead of work, but that is my own fault for flying home in the morning and not Sunday night. Notes of future reference.

Inspirational Art (5.27.07)

2007-06-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

Had the alarm set for 8am-ish. Was planning to go see the Pixar exhibition at 10am so I would be back in time to check out the Royal Botanical Gardens with Shannon around noon, then we were going on our last tour later in the afternoon. Initially I woke up thinking I'd rather sleep in and that I could go see the Pixar exhibit on Monday. I lay there for a bit thinking about it, then realized I HAD to go to the exhibit today if I wanted to get in for free using my pass because today was my last day to use for places. Jumped out of bed, took a quick shower, and made it to the museum just a little after 10am. I was so excited to see this exhibit, funny that bakc home Pixar is headquartered just across the Bay, and I remember when this exhibition started, think it was going from LA, to New York and then maybe London...and I thought- damn they better bring it back to SF! But instead I moved across the pond and amazingly the exhibit is here.

As I walked through the exhibit, looking at all the drawings, storyboards, etc. a huge swell of inspiration came over me. It made me want to start drawing again and to maybe take some classes just to keep up with it. Made me think how much I wanted to work for them and that maybe I should try to get into the industry over here (did you know outside of Cali that Bristol has the largest animation studios? Wallace and Gromit were created here). Took about 2 hours to see everything in the exhibit, and trust me I saw EVERY picture, statue, etc., then I headed back to the hostel where I had a sandwich, met Shannon, then we headed out for the Botanical Gardens. We chose to walk as it was only about a mile away and it was a nice day. Got a little lost, we passed the garden completely because it was hiding behind houses, though on the map it looks like it was right there on the street. turned around, and eventually found the entrance.

The Garden itself was quite large but I found it to be a little dull. Didn't get that "wow" factor from it. Was just like walking around a normal park, didn't have a lot of exotic or special themed areas. At least the weather was nice, the sunshine made it pleasant. We caught the bus back home so we would catch the Vault tour on time. The Vaults are 120 rooms varying in size located under the South Bridge, but the thing about the South Bridge is that it is no longer a bridge, it's a normal street. Quick synopsis- It was a bridge but in order to support it about 19 arches were build under it. but then they wanted the bridge to be more like a major shopping strip and build up on either side of the bridge buildings with shops. thus, the arches were now enclosed and became known as the Vaults where at one time merchants stored goods and laborers worked, then became a red-light district, brewery,....quite an amazing history.

After that tour Shannon went to St. Giles Cathedral to hear a choir sing, and I was so knackered that I went back to the hostel to take a nap. Woke up around 8pm, went downstairs, made dinner and was eating in the common room when Shannon came back. We decided to go out for one beer at a pub a few doors down from the hostel called The Scotsman Lounge. OMG this place was jam packed! The appeal was they had live music and these guys were playing more "traditional" Scotish songs. Finally made it to the bar, ordered Carling and sort of found a space to stand. It was hard to just chill because everyone was moving around, or at least trying to, so getting bumped into was frequent and I really didn't feel like having my pint go down the front of my shirt, so I was almost paying more attention to the people around me, making sure I didn't get knocked over by surprise.

There was a group of young Irish lads nearby having a grand old time. A bit roudy, bouncing around and singing, one of them started talking to Shannon and soon enough she and I were mingling with his friends. They were nice, but like I said, very roudy and silly. At about midnight when the place was closing down we walked over to this pub called Dropkick Murphy's and hung out there for the rest of the night. I was actually feeling quite sober, so was just chillen, talking to people and dancing around when I could. Shannon left with her guy, and when Dropkick Murphy's started closing around 1am I headed back to the hostel. Luckily it was really close to the hostel, so I wasnt worried about walking home alone, and I kind of made sure to walk close to other groups of people, just in case.

Winky Binky (5.26.07)

2007-05-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

Set my alarm to go off at 8:15am...finally got out of bed at 8:45am. I have a SeaFari boat tour today at 1pm but before that I though I would have time to join Shannon on her hik of Arthur's Seat. Though it became apparent that I wouldn't get back for the SeaFari in time, so I went and had breakfast at the cafe next to the hostel. It was a traditional Scotish breakfast- sausage, bacon, hashbrowns, over-easy eggs (or maybe there were over-hard), toast, beans and haggis. Skipped the beans and bacon, eggs were okay, not my normal style, and haggis...well that wasn't my favie. It is made of sheeps heart, liver lungs, mixed with onions, oats, and spices. Yum. ;)

After that I decided to go along Princes street again, didn't really have time to do anthing more interesting. After an hour of that, caught my bus to the New Haven Harbour and went to the lighthouse where the tour meets. the weather seemed to be holding out, was sunny most of the time with a few clouds. the tour took us out into the bay where we went by the Incheith Island, which had a lot of small, square rooms build on it. They were strategically placed to make the island look like a battleship from a distance to scare off enemies. Then we went around to the Incholm Abbey, another little island. here we saw our first seal chillen on a rock. We also saw a Puffin flying. saw more seals throughout the tour, and obviously lots of birds, but no more Puffins. :(

After the boat tour I caught the bus back to the City Center and went back to the hostel. Ate lunch there, chatted with Alex. He's off to a mates wedding today down near Leicester. Went out to the shops of High Street to find some Scotland souvies, ended up on Victoria Street which had some cooler, local shops. Then ended up at the bottom of the Castle, walked up loads of stairs to the main street leading to High Street and made my way back to the hostel. Ate dinner, took a nap, then at about 10pm Shannon and I went out to this place called Winky Binky to hear some live music. We had trouble finding the place, eventually i found it - again a little doorway with equally small signage. The bar was underground, we ordered our pints and sat at this table and enjoyed the music. Was a rock band doing covers which was cool.

The place started filling up and when I was coming back from getting us another round of drinks, a guy in his mid-late 30's, was sitting at our table talking to Shannon. His name was Thomas and we found out that he was there for his mates "wetting". This is when you go out with your best mates right after you have a baby. The guys were nice, and it was funny to see all these guys out and showing us pictures of their kids. They went off and did their own thing, then this younger guy started talking to us and we chatted with him and his two friends Amanda and her brother Mark. Nothing flirty, just friendly chatting. At 1am we decided to call it a night and headed home.

Edinburgh, Scotland (5.25.07)

2007-05-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

The last two holiday weekends i kept saying that I would go somewhere, but lack of planning left me in Bristol both times. So when i knew we had another 3 day weekend at the end of May, I was determined to go away for the weekend. thought of going to Paris or Barcelona at first, but then looked at Edinburgh. Seemed like a cool place, and when I was looking at the Edinburgh info site, I saw that Pixar's 20 Years of Animation Exhibition was going on at the National Scotish Museum. If that isn't a sign from God, then I don't know what is. Booked my flight and 4 nights at a youth hostel (should be interesting- staying in an 8 bed female dorm). Packed up my stuff Thursday night, luckily Alex leaned me his duffle bag for the trip, all my bags/suitcases are too big. The one bummer was that my flight left so early on Friday that the bus to the airport wouldn't leave early enough to get me there in time for checking in, etc., so i had to take a cab. Cost 18 pounds :oP oh well, lesson learned. Cab came and got me at Sublime at 4:30am (ugh) which meant I was up at 3:30am. and of course I didnt get to bed until about 11:30ish so I got about 3 hours of sleep.

At Bristol Airport I checked in fairly quick and had about an hour to kill. Wandered about the shops. Flight started boarding, got on, and right after take off i was fast asleep. In Edinburgh I collected my bag and then found an info desk to collect this 3-day Edinburgh pass I bought online. Gets you into places for free, free public transport, discounts at restaurants and shops. the lady behind the counter was really nice and informative. I caught the airport bus (free) and got off at the city center, checked my map and found my hostel on Cockburn street (okay, you all can stop laughing now). Along the street were a ton of cute shops that I knew I would check out later. Almost walked right past the hostel, it just has a single doorway squished between a cafe and shop, and their sign was also quite small. I checked in, but it was too early to go to my dorm (about 9am). I left my bag at the reception and went to catch a tour bus that the lady at the airport recommend I take. Figured it would be a good way to get a tour of the city and it's points of interest.

The tour was cool, helped me determine where things were and whether or not I wanted to visit that particular spot again. We went down Princes Street where one side has a huge park along it, the other side a bunch of shops. Then turned the corner and went around the Edinburgh Castle, went down High Street (the Royal Mile), passed the Nationak Scotish Museum where the Pixar Exhibit is (woo!), then down to the new Parliament building which is the funkiest, ugliest building design for a goverment type building. An hour later the tour is over and I still have about an hour until I can go to my dorm, so I stroll down Princes Street as the shops have at least openned by now.

didn't really feel like going into the shops though, so I made a turn and decided to check out Calton Hill, we passed it on the tour bus. Walked up to the top and got the most amazing view of the city. On my way back I passed a cemetary which I walked through, then crossed the North Bridge and found some cool stores which I checked out, then it was finally okay for me to enter my dorm. In the room I found 2 girls already there, and could see there was 1 more in the bunk below my top bed. Put the sheets on my bed, unloaded my stuff and had to take care of some admin things. I found out the 3 day pass has to be used in 3 consecutive days, and I had already booked a train ticket on Sunday (day 3) to go check out this little city called Linlithgow outside of Edinburgh. Went to the train station to check on the cost of changing the ticket and basically it would cost more than the ticket is worth (was only 4 quid) so at this point I am thinking i will just miss the train and if I decide to rebook later i will.

Went from the train station to the Royal Mile, mainly in search of food, and also to visit the Castle. Got a sandwich to go, and walked up towards the Castle. Did the guided tour, which was cool. Was quite chilly up there at times and even started raining a little. When we got to the top/main center of the tower, we arrived just in time to see the changing of the guards who were positioned in front of this one building. And apparently the guards are not always at the Castle, but for this week and weekend they are, so that was pretty fortunate to get to see them there. After the tour we were free to roam the castle and it's many building. Saw the Royal Jewels, banquetting hall, checked out the cannons, but eventually was getting tired and them to top it off my batteries in my camera start dying. I took it as a sign to bugger off.

When I got back to the room the girl in the bunk below me was there, along with another new girl. the one under me is Shannon from Denver, CO., and the other is Henny from Australia but has been living in London for the past 4 years. We all got on realyl well, chatted away, and made our dinners at the hostel and ate in the common room together. Then we decided to go on the Witchery Ghost and Gouls walking tour that evening. it was a very funny tour. the main guide was quite comical and his companion had the task of dressing in all sorts of costumes and scaring us at times. At one point I got called up to join them because I was accused of being a begar (long side story...) so they had to cut off my hand. I was funny, i totally screamed at the wrong time and wasn't holding the fake bloody hand very well. At the end of the tour us girls went and had a pint, did more chatting and exchanged contact info since Henny was going to be leaving the next morning. So far a pretty good start to my weekend.

We have a Kitchen!

2007-05-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the weather was cloudy and rainy, which was a good think really becuase after last weekends party-fest I had not done any cleaning or laundry, so I was able to take care of that. Also, we got a new lodger, Dan. He used to work at the Crown (Chris's pub) and is now working at Sublime fulltime. It's good because poor Nick has been running this place all on his own and needs someone else to manage the bar and staff so he can do other things for the business and also take a break every now and then. So because Dan moved in i think Nick felt inspired to tidy up the kitchen (finally) and the function room. the boys cleared everything out and Leonna and I spent 3 hours on Monday evening cleaning the counters, shelves, washing dishes, etc. It is so nice to have our own kitchen now.

Sunday I wanted to go check out a few local gyms to see about joining. Got Leonna to go with me, and Nick drove us in his "new" car. Went to the Marriott, which Alex recommended. The biggest plus of this place is that it has a pool and huge jacuzzi. The down side is it is rather small, has all the basic equipment you would want, but only like 1 or 2 machines of each. And no classes, like pilates or aerobics. Then we went to Fitness First and that place was much larger and more open, lots of machines and it has classes. But no pool. The other cool thing though is if you are a memeber of one Fitness First, you can go to any of them. So I am torn. Leonna and I got day passes for each place so we can go back the following weekend and check them out.

This past week has been pretty good. I am realizing that I function better on 5 or less hours of sleep. Sunday night I only got about 4 hours of sleep and was fine on Monday. Monday night I got about 6-7 hours of sleep and was totally knackered on Tuesday. Oh, speaking of Tuesday, I played poker as usual that night and did really really well. Made it to the final table and finished in 3rd place!! I have never made it to the final table, so yay for me. Don't worry, I am not going to become a gambler, it's easy to take risks and play the game knowing there is no real money involved to lose. :)

Wednesday was a fun night. It was Alex Taylor's Birthday, he is one of the guys from Midnight Sausage, and they were playing at this place called Bristol Ram. Went there with Nick, Leonna and JD, had a few drinks and listened to them Play. I didnt think Alex was coming because when I called him he wasn't sounding to enthusiastic about coming out, but he ended up coming, which made me happy. Had more drinks, listened to the guys, then when they were done with their set and slowly starting to pack up their gear, Alex grabbed one of the guitars and totally blew me away when he started playing all these different songs! Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nirvana....I was amazed. Had no idea he could play, and so well. There really is something about musicians that can turn a girl on, was just totally smitten sitting there watching him play.

Once the guys were packed up, we headed back to Sublime and continued the party there. It was a really fun night. A late one too, didn't head to bed until about 4am. Was a bit tired Thursday morning, but no hangover. yay. Today, Saturday, Leonna and I were supposed to use our day pass for Fitness First and work out, but she got suckered into working at Sublime in the day, and then has to work at her actualy job across the road later this evening. Bummer. Might just go there on my own later...we shall see. tomorrow though she and I are definitly going to the Marriott to use that day pass. Wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to swim and chill in the jacuzzi. Then in the afternoon Leicester Tigers are playing for the Rugby Cup, so I'll go watch that with Alex at the Fish.

Oh, one last note before I go, next weeknd I am going to Edinburgh, Scotland for 4 days. Should be fun, heard it is a beautiful, fun place. and what is really great is the National Scotish Museum has the Pixar 20 Years of Animation exhibition going on, and it will end after that weekend. I took it as a sign from God that that was where I should go next weekend. Will be staying in a youth hostel in an 8 bed female dorm. should be interesting. I figured staying at a hostel was best because a) it is cheap, and b) since I am going alone it will be a good way to possibly meet other travelers my age, especially if i am sharing a room with 7 other girls. I just hope they are jerks. Will let you know after next weekend how it goes.

Alex's Birthday weekend

2007-05-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

Alex's 30th Birthday was on Satruday May 5th, so from Friday - Sunday it was a non-stop drinking fest. Saturday we started at the Fish Market, then headed over to the Crowne and had a few drinks, then over the Walkabout for another drink. At this point Alex started sucking away at his scorpion lollipop which amused us all. Then we went to this cool place called the Beer Keller and it was all like german-beer garden style, though indoors. They had a live band and they were playing all sorts
of funny songs, "i am the music man"...and a bunch of "omp-pa-pa, ohmp-pa-pa" stuff. We stood on the benches the
whole time with our huge steins in hand, singing and dancing away. Then we went back to Sublime and had a few drinks there before heading home.

Sunday was pretty much the same. Woke up, showered, then we all met at Sublime because N ick was having an
all-day bbq. except they had a late start and we didnt get fed until after 3pm, but before that we had a
drink at Sublime, then Alex, Jaume and I went back to the fish, started playing mario kart on nintendo for
a while, then we went back to Sublime, got fed, drank a few more pints, met up with a bunch of others, then
headed over to a bar/restaurant called the Hole in the Wall- it;s actually a nice place. Had two rounds
there, and i knicked my glass because it was cool looking, hehe, then we went to this cider house called
the Apple, had a really nice drink in there, then went to this place called Mumu's, had another round in there, and
started playing this weird game where you take a packet of ketchup or mustard and you twist it, then
pass it to the next person, and you keep going around until it bursts. My twist broke the packet of BBQ sauce. Then we went back to Sublime, had another round, which i am not even sure i finished at this point. We were pretty tired and
drunk so alex and i went home and went to bed.

We decided that Monday was our day of rest. We literally sat on the couch and watched TV all day long. No Kidding. The weather over the weekend wasn't as warm as it had been. Was really windy and overcast sunday and on monday morning we woke up to rain. It was hard getting back to work after having 4 days off.

Alive and Kicking

2007-04-29T08:30:00.000-07:00

Looks like I have already failed you all on my "I'll try to update my blog more often" promise. It's the same old excuses so I won't waste words on them. It's another beautiful weekend here, and apparently all over Europe. Spoke with my Grandma Luise this afternoon, she lives in Munich, Germany, and she fears that the nice weather now will mean lots of rain during the summer. Guess it is a bit early in the season for such summery weather, and the lack of rain will obviously have reprucutions, but we're all oblivious to those worries by the warm rays from the sun. We're being brain washed.

Last weekend I took a day trip town to the sea-side town of Torquay (say it like "tor-key"). Woke up early on Saturday, but still managed to find myself rushing to the train station, and as I was standing the the queue for the machine to print my pre-bought tickets, I looked at the time and it was 8:44am. My train leaves at 8:44am, and they always leave on time, unless delayed. So I got my ticket and went to see if there was another train I could catch that would take me to Exeter (switch trains there to the one to Torquay). As I looked around at the upcoming departing trains, and not finding what I wanted, I saw one going to Exeter, and realized as I read the screen that it was my 8:44 train, but it had been delayed. What luck!

Train ride took about 2 hours, enjoyed the scenery, listened to my ipod. When I arrived at Torquay the ocean was pretty much right across the street from the train station, and I was in heaven. Didn't realize I missed the ocean so much. I would have to compare Torquay to Pacifica. The weather though was much nicer, sunny and breezey. Walked around the town, found the city center and did a bit of shopping, then went to lie out on the beach and catch some of the sun. The only bummer about Torquay was that the beaches were not the white, soft sandy California kind. the sand was dark, compact and quite small. But I guess I can't expect it to be an exact likeness of California, otherwise Cali wouldn't be so unique and special.

That night I had a few drinks and didn't think I had that much but apparently I did because not only did I get sick, but had a hangover the next day. Alex did too, so we were quite the pair waking up at like noon, dragging ourselves to KFC for food, then went shopping because we were going to make the traditional English Sunday Roast for dinner, got back to his place and sat on the couch watching TV all afternoon. I finally got up and went home to take a shower, which made me feel loads better. Headed back to the Fish, started making the roast dinner which consisted of roast beef, mashed potatoes, veggies, and yorkshire pudding. Everything in the meal was great except for the roast. Probably wasn't the best quality of meat, and we vowed never again to buy it at the supermarket, unless they have an actual butcher in there.

Work has been really busy, got a few projects going on and the deadlines were all approaching at once. Got the big one taken care of, which was to make a demo movie, and the rest should be done soon. Next week will fly by though because I will be in Birmingham Tuesday- Thursday morning for an exhibition, then I am taking Friday off to extend the bank holiday weekend (we all get Monday off over here in the UK for May Day), and it's also Alex's Birthday so we might try and go somewhere.

This weekend has been pretty chill. Went running yesterday morning, then shopping in the afternoon. I feel like all my clothes are so dark and black, don't have much bright spring/summer stuff. So as i was shopping I kept telling myself "no black no black". Did pretty good I think, only bought 1 black cotton tank top and it's just because that is like a clothing staple everyone needs, and my other one is turning gray. On the way home picked up some brownie mix to bake, which turned out really nice, passing them around to everyone and putting smiles on faces. Last weekend I was inspired from an email I got my from mom to bake cookies when she said she was baking some. But they don't have the insta-cookie dough here so I had to do it from scratch! (I have never done this before- scary). They came out okay, not the best cookies I have ever tasted, but the guys at the fish seemed to like them well enough, especially Jaume.

Last night I brought him and his girlfriend Abi some of the brownies and we watched a super hoekey (they don't use the work hoekey over here, and when I said it they were like, "what?") movie- Puppetmaster II. It was more funny than scary. Today I have attempted being more productive, putting away laundry (need to do ironing later), went to the shop and bought hooks, hammer, screws, screw drivers so I could hang up my bags and photos. The room is really started to look like h ome now, espeically with all the pictures up. Got a cork board too so I can begin another collage of photos and crap that I collect.

Speaking of being productive, I should sign off and get on with the ironing, uggg...I hate ironing, but need to do it, especially for the "nice" clothes I'll need at the exhibitions. Hope you enjoyed the update, and as always, I will try to do it more often. :o)

Direction to London

2007-04-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

For those of you planning to visit me:

1. Go to www.google.com
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type "New York" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
6. click on "get directions"

7. scroll down to step #23

Everywhere I go, I bring the California weather with me

2007-04-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday evening, sitting on a brown leather couch in Sublime, with Smacky on my lap (that is my laptop by the way, put your dirty thoughts in the garbage), sipping on water (it is incredibly hot over here), wearing shorts, tank top and flip flops (Mom- and you thought I would have no need for "California clothes"). On the TV is Manchester United vs Watford football, ManU kicked ass. Sublime is pretty empty, usually is at this hour. It's one of those bars that is really only very busy Friday and Saturday night (like after 11pm). Tonight Midnight Sasusage is playing as usual. Will probably listen to a bit before heading over to the Fish.

Last night it was really quiet around Bristol. Usually Friday nights the city is bustling, especially Sublime- but not last night. Most people figure it's becuase it's the "weekend after Easter" and people are broke from partying then. Chatted with Gags and Josey, then Nick let them have a 20 minute drink break so us girls went over to this place called MuMu's down the road. They had really terrible wine, I had Hypnotic & Sprite. Yum. When we got back to Sublime, it was still dead and Nick had the girls go pass out fliers for the DJ he had there that night. I went along, but wasn't really motivated to be shoving fliers in people's faces. We went over to the Centre and then down by the waterfront and it's funny how the type of people changed to these sleazy, scum bags. While Josey was trying to explain to this group of older men where the heck Sublime even was, I was standing waiting, and this guy grabs my arm and said "Give us your papers (the flier)". I did, and he said "So what do I get for showing up- sex?" I laughed and said "No" then walked away.

Once back at Sublime I grabbed my bag and headed off to the Fish. Had a pint there, chatted with their security/bouncer guy until closing. Then they started cleaning the lines. Line cleaning happens about once a week at most pubs around here, and it's when they drain all the remaining beer from the taps, which means free pints of beer. This isn't something that is open to the general public, it happens after closing so you have to know the people at the pub well enough to be allowed to stick around for this. We usually can get about 3-4 pints each, though for me and Dutchy maybe only 2 since we are both Grolsch fans we have to split how ever many pints are poured. I tried Guinness, yick. Carling isn't that great either. Kronenburg is pretty good, and Fosters too.

Post-Easter

2007-04-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday was another sleep in day (yay), and it was also another gorgeous day outside. Got ready, ate lunch, started a load of white laundry- side note- so I had done a white wash before and everything came out looking a bit gray and dirty looking. Strange, and I was looking in several shops for bleach but it doesn't seem to exist in this country. I asked Alex and he said just find the detergent that says it is for whites. So I go back to the store and find something with "whites" in the name, so I figure that is my best bet. Re-wash my whites and they came out nice and pretty this time.

Back to Sunday, did some washing, then took my book and iPod over to Queen's Square and laid in the sun. When it started to get chilly I headed over to a mini market to buy some chocolate Easter eggs for me and Alex. Got 3 different ones (was one of those buy 3 for 2 deals), went over to the Fish and found Alex and Jaume upstairs just chillen and surprised them with the chocolate Easter eggs. Both were very happy. We each took one and scarffed them down (btw- apparently they say "scoffed" instead of "scarffed" over here, I got an earful for that one).

Then I went home and did a little more laundry, made dinner and then got ready to meet Nick and Patty at Mbargo's. Got there at about 9:30ish and poor Nick was falling asleep at the table. I think his choie of beverages that night turned into a sleeping potion for him. It wasn't our usual group at Mbargo's because the girls were all out of town for the holiday weekend, and no one from the Fish felt like coming out. Hung out with the guys, danced a bit, and by midnight we decided to head home. Nick wasn't going to last much longer. It was a bit of a struggle to get him in the taxi and home to Sublime but we managed.

Monday, my 4th day off. By now I totally forget what work even is. I feel like I have been on the longest vacation. Which is a good thing right? I decided to head into the City Centre and check out the shops. The current fashion trend over here is totally 80's. Leggings, geometric tops, bright colors, crazy hair,...yeah not my style. The other day I saw a woman wearing a fricken tape measurer as a belt! Wish I had had my camera for that one. Came out with two zippy jackets (love those, can never have enough), and a pair of jeans. I was gutted when I noticed my favie pair of Gap jeans had a hole on the inner thigh. This new pair is a good replacement though.

Went over to the Fish and chillen with Alex for the rest of the afternoon watching TV. It's cool on days like these when he is basially on call all day, only needing to go downstairs if it is busy or to cover breaks. And since it's a holiday, the Fish was dead, so we were able to hang out for hours and not be bothered. Had mashed potatoes and a beef pie thing for dinner and wathced Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Then Alex had to go downstairs and close up, and I was getting ready to go to bed since I had work the next morning. But then Jaume and his girlfriend Abi came upstairs. They had been on the piss all day and were trying to get Alex and I to go out for a drink with them. Neither of us wanted to, but at the last minute Jaume got Alex to say yes, so I put my shoes back on and we went looking for a place that was even open to have a drink.

Found ourselves at this sports bar, which was actually going to close soon, but they let us in so long as we had jus one drink. Had our drink, then Alex and I went home to Sublime and let the drunken lovers wander their way back to the Fish. I am so happy this is a short week, I can feel my motivation to work slipping. :oP

Pre-Easter week

2007-04-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe it is already April! And Easter no less. Got an email from Chris saying that in the UK we get Friday AND Monday off over the holiday weekend. Sweet. 4 days off, I felt compelled to go somewhere. First thought of going to mainland Europe, but wasn't really feeling prepared, and decided to stay local and explore more of England. Thought of going north inititally, but was told that it would be quite a few hours of driving and with the holiday weekend, it could take twice as long to get around. Bunch of people suggested places in Southern England to check out, so that became my new plan. However, I was so busy with work and other stuff that I was slacking off in actually planning this trip. Next thing I know it is Wednesday and I am like, crap- I need to get myself together if I want to go anywhere.

I looked online at cars to rent, and found this one place close by, but in order to rent an automatic, they want 48 hours notice. So if i wanted to take the car Saturday, I had to reserve it today (Wednesday). But the Internet was being all weird and the reservation forms were not cooperating with me. Then when they finally did, it wouldn't accept my credit card info. Ahhh! By this time it was 7pm, too late to call the place, so my weekend road trip was now a whisper in the wind. I was really bummed out. Alex said he would take me on a road trip though, so that made me feel a bit better.

So for my long 4-day weekend I am resolved to chill, continue cleaning and organizing around the flat (mainly cleaning the kitchen upstairs so I can actually use it, and organize my room- clothes are overflowing, need more hangers, and I could really use a night stand or something, right now I am using all the cardboard boxes I have acquired as night stands). Here is what I have accomplished so far:

Friday - slept in (finally), showered, walked over to Brandon Hill (park) with my laptop, sat on the grass in the sun (with sunscreen) and worked on updating my blog posts. Went home, talked with mom and Karina for about an hour, wrote cards to people, ate dinner (made my infamous pasta with ketchup because I ran out of tomatoe sauce and when Patty see's my creation he is totally disgusted, as most people are), took a nap, then headed over to The Fish.

Saturday - more sleeping in, had to dash home to take a shower and then head right back to the Fish because a group of us were going to meet there to watch Chelsea v Tottenham at 12:45pm and then go play football. I showed up at about 1:30pm. Tottenham lost (bummer), then we headed over to Queen's Square and tossed around a frisbee for a while, then along came the guy with the football, so that got tossed int othe mix, and then out came a rugby ball. All three going on at once, quite funny. Played a funky game of football- one goal and one goalie, two teams of 4. Then headed home, went grocery shopping, organized my food on the shelves and in the fridge, then went upstairs to re-dye my hair. Came back down, had dinner, pasta with real pasta sauce this time (Patty was pleased), Midnight Sausage was about to go on, brought Smacky downstairs so I could enjoy the music and catch up on emails, update the blog, etc.

Okay, the blog is officially updated, down to the minute. I will try to do a better job of updating it more frequently.

Happy Easter!

S'mores (3.30)

2007-04-07T14:08:00.000-07:00

A while ago I was talking with Kaz, this girl I met via The Fish, and somehow the topic of smores came about. No one over here knows what they are, expect for one or two people who have been to the States. My boss Chris was going to San Francisco for a business trip and I asked him to bring back Graham Crackers and Hershey's Chocolate, 2 of 3 key ingredients to making smores. Friday night was declared smore night. We all met here at Sublime and I set out skewers, marshmellows, the graham crackers and Hershey's, and used a large candle on a plate as our camp fire. I gave everyone a lesson on how to make smores, and then let them all have a go at it. Everyone really enjoyed them, and I made ones for all the staff at Sublime. It was like a smore factory.

As the evening progressed and more people were coming by they saw what we were doing and joined in on the smore goodness. What's really funny is that even a week later I have people coming up to me asking about the smores because someone had told them about it. So now I'll have to organize another smore evening, just need to import more Graham Crackers and Hershey's.

The rest of my weekend was spent cleaning and organizing my room. Bought kitchen stuff so I could actually cook real meals. Sunday was a beautiful day and I decided to get outside and wander around Bristol a bit more and take more pictures of the city. Came home, took a nap, then ate dinner and got ready to go over the The Fish for the quiz, and then was going to meet up with the Sublime crew at this club called Mbargo's. But then downstairs was Nick, Lionna, and Patty and they started having drinks, so I joined in. One led to another and I decided to just hang with them and go straight to Mbargo's. We were having a fun time just chillen and drinking in Sublime (Sublime closes early on Sunday's so it was just us). Even had an ice cube fight at one point.

Then we made our way out the the city centre to catch a cab to Mbargo's. Got there, continued drinking and did some dancing. The acoustic guys Midnight Sausage are the regular Sunday night entertainment (they play at Sublime on Saturday nights) and they are really good. They do covers of popular, classic songs that make you want to dance. We were there until probably 2am I think, then I walked a very drunken Alex and Jaume home to The Fish. It was really surprising that I wasn;t drunk myself because I had been drinking since about 7:30pm and had had quite a few cocktails, shots and beers, but I was totally fine. Almost sober. Hey, better than being pissed right? :)

Poker, Zoo & Football (3.27- 3.30)

2007-04-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night is poker night at Sublime, and I was playing. It's only been my 3rd time but I had a killer start. First hand, I had like a 9 and Queen of clubs and placed my bet, then these two other guys bet. The flop came out and I can’t remember if 3 more clubs came out right away or if the third one came on the river, but basically I had a flush. Me and these two guys kept raising each other until all three of us were all in. This is quite unusual for the first hand. Everyone from the other two tables had now gathered around ours to see what would happen. We showed our cards and I knew a Flush was good, but the other guys each had an Ace and I can’t remember what other cards were on the table but I wasn’t sure if I had one. But Alex grabed my shoulders and was like “you won you won!”15,000 in chips! Man if only it was real money. Everyone was impressed, even I was. I ended up placing 9th, which is pretty good. If I had lasted a little longer I would have made it to the final table. That is my goal for next week’s game.

Wednesday I took off to hang with Alex since he had the day off. We decided to go to the zoo, which is up near the Clifton Bridge. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, Nick and Lionna had gone a few days ago and said it was fun but not the best zoo in the world. It is definitely smaller than most others. Didn’t have tigers, zebra’s or giraffes. They did have lions, loads of monkeys, reptiles, penguins, seals, insects, and birds. Alex loved the monkeys and kept saying he wanted one. You know those wooden boards with animals painted on them and holes for you to stick your head through…well Alex went nuts and had me take his picture at every one we saw. His best was the lion. There were also signs all over the zoo saying “Adopt an animal.” Alex and I were taking the piss and saying, oh let’s adopt an alligator, it will fit in the tub.

When we were walking through the monkey area Alex stopped and pointed saying “Oh my God that is the ugliest monkey I have ever seen!” I look and he is pointing at this zoo worker standing on the other side of this enclosure. I tell Alex to shut up, and apologize to the guy, but he didn’t seem to mind, think he may have even laughed. Then we noticed what he was standing in was a monkey cage that people can actually enter and walk through. We did and it was so cool. You could practically touch the monkeys they were so close. Then we went over to watch the seals get fed. There was this adorable little baby seal and he was making quite a racket. After we saw all that we could at the zoo we headed back towards our pubs. Along the way Alex took me to this restaurant that has a huge patio looking out on Clifton bridge and the gorge. It was really nice, would have been even better if it was sunny, but I still enjoyed it. We chilled, drank a pint, then continued walking down the hill. We stopped at this other restaurant near Sublime and had another pint. Went to Tesco’s to pick up dinner mixings but in the middle of shopping we got lazy and decided to just bake a pizza in the oven and have salad.

On Thursday evening I planned to go train with this ladies football team over in Keynsham. I had been looking for a team to join, found them online and emailed inquiring about them. The coach wrote back saying it was too late in the season to join now, but that I was welcome to train with them on Tuesday and Thursday from 7-9pm and if I wanted to join could do so when the next season starts in August. I gathered up my football gear and headed to the City Centre to catch the bus. I was a little annoyed because I could not find the stop for the bus he told me to catch. When I finally found it and the bus came around, I told the driver I was going to Keynsham (your bus fare is based on where you get off at, so you have to tell them where you are going and if you want a single or return), but the guy said he didn’t to go Keynsham. So I am totally confused but can’t really argue with the driver so I get off and try to figure it out. I realize that I probably should have said the name of the stop and not the town so when the next bus came by, I asked the lady if she went to my stop and she said yes, so I hopped on and made it to the training field just on time. Met the coaches and was told to train with the reserves and third team. It was so nice to have a real football training with an actual coach. Playing in SF with the recreational league was fun, but seeing as how I never had proper training before this was really great. Now I can learn to play properly. I thought I did rather well. I was a bit nervous because I don’t have any formal training I thought I would stick out like a sore thumb. But I did rather well. Was totally knackered at the end of it, and when I went to catch the bus home I realized that my bus didn’t run that late, and the bus I needed to take happened to have just gone by and another one wouldn’t be around for another hour. It was freezing cold, I was sweaty and didn’t want to risk getting sicker so I called Alex to see if Jaume would be able to pick me up. He did, bless him. Times like these I really really miss my car.

Weekend in London (3.24 - 3.25)

2007-04-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Before I get to the story of my weekend, let me give you a quick mobile update. So I have been waiting and waiting for my bank statement to arrive in the post so I can get a mobile. When I arrived home Wednesday Nick gave me my mail and there it was. So my first order of business on Thursday was to get the phone. They put in all my info, but it still had to do a credit check, and I was declined. Most likely because I don’t have any credit here. The guy said I would need to bring someone else who had credit to sort of be a co-signer for me. I went home and asked Nick if he would do it. He said sure, so Friday we go back to the store. They put in his information and HE is declined as well! What we realize is that it’s our address that is messing things up. The people who lived at the pub before apparently had a lot of debt and the computers see this when it looks up our address. Pretty lame. So the guy said to bring in someone else with a different address. You have no idea how annoyed I was at this point. The only other person I could think to ask was Alex. He said he’d do it, but we would have to wait until his next day off, which would be Monday, since he works during the day and on the weekend. Skipping ahead to Monday, we go to the store, and my understanding from my last visit was that we could use Nick’s account info to pay for the phone and plan, and that we just needed someone else’s name for the address check. Well that wasn’t the case. The phone has to be under one name, and Alex would have put it under his name, but he just found out the people renting his house are leaving at the end of the month, so he didn’t think it was a good idea in case he runs into money issues. Understandable, so now I need to find someone else to get this phone for me. I talked to my lovely boss Chris and asked if he’d do it and he said yes, and in fact he wants me to look into what deals they have for business accounts because his phone contract is about to run out and he’s thinking of switching to this company since it has such a good international call deal. However he is on Holiday for the next two weeks so I’ll have to wait. In the meantime I have a temporary mobile, thanks to Alex. He told me he had an old phone and I could just buy a new SIM card for it so that I at least have something. Bless him. So now I have a mobile, yay.

Okay, on to the story of my weekend. Took a train on Saturday afternoon to Reading where my friend Liz and her husband Paul were going to pick me up. I had met Liz back in San Francisco when we both worked at Nimblefish. She and her husband Paul had moved to SF and lived there for about 5 years but just moved back to England in July 2006 because they wanted to buy a house and start a family and just couldn’t afford to do it in the Bay Area. Works for me, now I know more people in England. They picked me up from the station then we went to their friend Andy’s house. We were all going out to London that night for their friend’s going away party (he’s moving to Australia). It was me, Liz, Paul, Andy and Rachel. The place we were going to was called Zebrano’s off of Oxford and Regent Street in the heart of London. You know how people say driving in London is a total nightmare- well I didn’t realize how terrible it was until this night. We drove to the bar and it was so bad. We sat and sat in traffic forever, moving less than a full car length at a time. I would take driving through downtown San Francisco any day over London. Never again.

Zebrano’s was a cool place, very schwanky. Mixed cocktails were 7 pounds! Corona’s were only 3 so after having 1 cocktail I stuck with Corona the rest of the night. Met more of Liz’s friends but ended up chatting with Andy mostly and hanging with him and Paul near the bar. It was a fun night. On the way home we were all feeling a bit peckish and tried to find food. We saw a McDonalds and pulled over to go in. Me, Paul and Andy walked over only to find that it was closed. As we walked back toward the car, the boys had to go pee and decided to do it in this doorway. I kept on walking to the car, and when the boys came back, we could see that the front of their trousers above their knees were all wet. We thought they pissed themselves but what happened was when they stood in the doorway, water started spraying at them from the doorway! How funny. The door took a piss on them before they could piss on the door. Hahaha…good times. We stopped at a petrol station and got food there. Dropped Andy and Rachel off then continued on to Liz and Paul’s house. We were all so tired, we went straight away to bed.

Woke up Sunday morning, had some coffee and toast, took showers and tried to figure out where to have lunch. We went to this cute country sort of restaurant and met their friends Paul and Linda, who just had a baby boy. I had a beer and ale pie, which was really yummie. Paul and Linda were lovely people. When we started looking at our watches we realized we wouldn’t make it to the train station in time to catch the 3:45pm train so I’d have to take the next one which left an hour later. Thank God my ticket was an open one, meaning I can catch any train at any time. Caught the train but it was so crowded that I didn’t have a seat and ended up standing more of the way home, as did many others. Played the quiz at the pub (we did such a crap job this time) and then chilled with Alex for the night. I am still feeling under the weather at this point so plan to stay at home next weekend and take a break from traveling.

Gothenburg, Sweden (3.19 - 3.21)

2007-03-23T07:01:00.000-07:00

To pick up where my last post left off...I sleep through most of the plane ride, only waking up shortly before we have to land. I noticed that my ears were not equalizing, despite chewing gum and yawning like crazy. I kept typing to "pop" them but nothing seemed to work. I figured maybe after landing they would clear up. As we are getting ready to land the captain tells us that it is snowing in Gothenburg! And as we are approaching the runway I can tell the plane is moving way too fast, and sure enough when we land the plane bounces like a rubber ball, freaking out all the passengers. I think the cabin crew was having a good laugh at this because when one of the stewardesses came on to tell us "Please stay in your seat...blah blah" you could tell she had been, or was trying to control her laughter.

The airport at Gothenburg was very small. When we departed the plane, we were actually stepping down onto the runway and had to walk a bit to the airport building. Oh, and it had started snowing. Good thing I had my North Face ski jacket. Went through security, no biggie, got my luggage and met Rolf from Maxiom (a partner company of Actify’s I was visiting). He drove me to central Gothenburg where their office is, and along the way he explained this weather is not typical, and that it will probably melt away in a few hours. I found that hard to believe because everything was covered in white. We got to the office where I met the rest of the Maxiom crew. My purpose for this trip was to work with them on creating this demo movie.

We all went out for lunch and it was my choice of what to eat. I said I wanted a traditional Swedish dish (this is brave of me seeing as how I have no idea what sort of food Swedish people eat, for all I know they indulge in cow brains). They took me to this place and I had beef and mashed potatoes/turnips. It was actually a pretty “normal” looking meal. The meat was a different cut from the cow that I had never had, but it tasted fine, and the mashed potatoe/turnip was exactly like what my Grandma Mary makes, so really nothing to crazy, which was fine by me. At the end of the day Rolf drove me to my hotel. It was a really cute little place and very central. I unpacked and took a stroll around the area. There were a bunch of shops and a mall nearby. I went to the mall because I still hasn’t exchanged any money, and I saw an ad saying there was an exchange place in this mall. Got my Swedish money and started looking for dinner.

I walked all over the mall, back outside on the main avenue, and hadn’t really found anything that appealed to me. I was running short on time because I had to go back to Maxiom’s office that evening to work with Michael on the demo (he wasn’t able to work with me on it during the day, so we agreed to meet in the evening). I kept looking but it was getting late so once again I defaulted to what I know – McDonalds. Took it back to the hotel, ate it while watching Friends on TV, then called up Michael to see if he was ready to meet. He told me the street name of where the office is, and I had a map of the area so I figured I could find it easily. They said it was about a 15-20 minute walk.

Well it turned out to be more like a 45 minute walk for me. I was going in the right direction but ended up going too far up so that when I turned down this one street I was beyond where I needed to be. Luckily my inner GPS sensed this and I started heading down and found another main street, which I turned on. I knew this one was right because the tram rail ran through it and I remember the building being right near the tram. I walked and walked and was starting to think I had gone too far and was about to turn back when I saw this tattoo shop that I remembered passing when we went to lunch. And sure enough there was the office. When I got upstairs Michael said he was starting to worry but since I didn’t have a mobile, he didn’t know what to do. But I made it there okay and the walk home went by much quicker now that I knew where I was.

Tuesday walked to the office, and had another traditional Swedish dish for lunch, fish and mashed potatoes. The funny thing I notice about these guys is that they are always having a coffee break. When they get in, a few hours after that, coffee after lunch, another one before they leave. Coffee coffee coffee. That evening Rolf took me out for a pint at this pub nearby. The guy behind the bar started saying something to me in Swedish and I was just smiling and looking at Rolf. Rolf said I was an American, then the guy said it in English, the he wasn’t going to ask me if I was cold since I had on my big jacket and scarf. We laughed, I hadn’t even noticed that I still had on all my layers. I let Rolf recommend something but it was a bit too strong for my taste and he could tell. We asked the guy behind the bar what I might like and he actually gave me a sampling of two beers. One was a Pilsner which I thought I would like since I have had it back home, but as many people have told me, when you drink a beer closer to it’s home, it tastes totally different. And it did, the Pilsner was quite sweet, so I took this other one. Then we went to dinner at this Italian Pizza place and his son Martin met us there. He was about my age and is thinking of going to Edinburg for school. I find it so funny that all the guys I work with, because of their age, have kids that are my age. Works for me :o)

On Wednesday I checked out of the hotel and met up with Tomas, one of our resellers. He picked me up from my hotel and we went to his office just outside of Gothenburg. Purpose for meeting him was to talk marketing and what we could do to increase his business. Then he drove me to the airport for my flight home. I still had all this Swedish money so after checking in I found a gift shop and spent it all in there. Got a shot glass, of course, key chain, tshirt, post cards, and another keychain. While waiting to board the plane started having a small conversation with this young guy sitting across from me. Kept chatting as we headed for the plane (again had to walk out onto the runway) and when we boarded since we were one of the last one, I didn’t think we’d find two empty seats together, but we did. So we chatted the whole flight, about America, Sweden, our jobs, etc.

Once at Stansted I headed to catch the train to Liverpool, then took the tube over to Paddington and once there I had to wait about 30 minutes for my train and it was about 6:30pm, I was hungry and none of the restaurants were open, except for…take a guess…McDonalds. Ate that, then went down to catch my train. Walked into Sublime at about 9pm, a good hour later than I expected to be home (forgot to mention that the flight from Sweden had a 40ish minute delay). I was so happy to be home. I’d rate my first “long” business trip a 7/10. Had some bumps in the beginning and was just so exhausted from traveling and having to switch transports just to get around. Would love to go back to Sweden though not on business so I can do more sight seeing.

St. Patrick's Day & Business Travels

2007-03-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

I had a fun day. First I got to decorate Nick's pub with all this St. Patty's decor that I took from the Fish because they were being all uptight about using tape on the walls to put up posters and stuff. Whatever, their loss, our gain. Did that, then went with Nick to watch him play rugby, which is what US Football is based on but there are some major differences. Rugby moves much quicker an is more brutal, no pading at all! It was fun to watch but I was freezing my ass off.

Then we went back to the pub and shortly after began drinking the night away. We took a bunch of silly pictures, which I will send out soon. We stayed up really late, which I shouldn't have because I had to catch a train to London at 8:30am to go visit about 8 different hotels to see which one we want to use for this event we are having at the end of April. I fell asleep after hitting my alarm. Hate it when I do that. Woke up in a panic and rushed out of the pub. I missed the 8:30am which is what I wanted to catch, but luckily since I had an open ticket I just caught the next train, which showed up shortly after I got to the station.

Arrived in London and had to get on the Internet to look at where all the hotels were (was going to do that Saturday but the Internet at the pub wasn't working and there are no Inernet cafes in Bristol), did that which took about 1 hour, ate lunch, then met up with this girl Caroline from Bristol, who happened to be traveling into London as well, hung out with her and her friend for a bit, then had to "start work" and go look at the hotels. I was carrying around my laptop case and my purse and my backpack filled with my clothes for Sweden (oh yeah, I am also going to Sweden Monday morning for 3 days- will tell more about that later), and it was all very heavy and I didnt have the best walking shoes on either, so I was moving at a snails pace.

Finished hotel hoping at about 6PM, took the tube to the Liverpool Street Station, ate McDonald's for dinner (I know I know, I am in another country and I choose the most American thing to eat, but in times of desperation and exhaustion I go with what I know). Then I caught the train to Stansted Airport at 7:10pm. Arrived at Stansted, and caught the Hilton shuttle bus to my hotel (can you guess where I was staying?).

Woke up at 4am to catch the 5am bus to take me back to Stansted airport. Was moving a bit slow so i JUST made it downstairs to the lobby in time to catch the bus, then at Stansted I had a bitch of a time figuring out which line to stand in because none of them had a sign saying they were for my flight to Gothenburg. Finally found the line, which luckily wasnt too long. Got through that quick enough, then had to stand in the security line, also not so bad. On the other end I got my self some breakfast and then realized it was time to head out to my terminal. Now, I don't know what my mind was thinking, but the terminal tram I was getting onto clearly said "this will take you to gates 20-39". My flight was at gate 45, and even though I totally looked at my ticket and saw "gate 45" my mind thought the number 45 fell somewhere in between 20-39. Nice huh? Of course I don't realize my mistake until the tram pulls up to the terminal and says "This is the last stop, you must get off". So when i get off at the terminal you can't just go back from where you came. i asked people at the desk what to do and thy said they would call someone to take me to my terminal. i waited....and waited...it's 6:15am when i had gotten there and now it is 6:35am. i ask again if someone is coming. they said they will call again. keep waiting...my flight leaves at 6:55am so I am getting a bit nervous. It's 6:45 and finally the guys shows up. I seriously JUST make it to my gate. Get on a basically sleep for the whole 2 hour flight. Ahhh the joys of traveling.

AeroLink in Cardiff, Wales

2007-03-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I got to attend an exhibition with my colleagues Graham and John in Cardiff, Wales. I have never gone to any of our tradeshows or exhibitions so I was pretty excited. Plus the guys are so cool and chill, I knew it wasn't going to be a serious business thing. John came to Sublime on Wednesday at about 3pm to pick me up and we'd drive together to Cardiff and meet Graham there. Quick geography recap for anyone who is a bit rusty- Wales is a country of its own in the United Kingdom. A good portion of the population living there speak your traditional English, but they also have their own language, Welsh. And let me tell you, it is nothing like English. I'll post some pictures I took of a few signs so you can see the difference. All signs in Wales are printed in English and Welsh.

Cardiff is a pretty decent sized city in Wales and is only about 30 minutes away from Bristol. In fact, you can see Bristol from Cardiff and vis versa (there is a small channel that splits the two). We arrive in Cardiff, go to the CIA (Cardiff International Arena) and set up our booth which took like 10 minutes. Then we headed to our hotel where we met Graham, checked in and headed downstairs to the restaurant for a few pints. I had Stella (wife beater) and then we walked over to the marina I guess you would call it. It was like if the Metreon was on the bay. There was a shopping center, theater, and lots of restaurants. We ate dinner at this Italian place then headed two doors down to this dim sum & cocktail place where we all had fruity girly drinks. Then we headed back to the hotel and had another round before hitting the sack at like 1am or later- and we are supposed to be ready to leave the hotel at 7:45am tomorrow? haha. I have no alarm clock, no mobile to act as my alarm clock. Then I see on the phone instructions for setting up a wake-up call. I do that but am not very sure it is going to work. Seemed a bit dodgey. And sure enough come 6:30am I don't get a wake-up call. Luckily my body knew I had to be up, so at 6:45am I jolted myself awake and got out of bed.

Got ready, went downstairs, checked out and we headed off to the show. It was a very small exhibition, but I did not mind since it was my first show. A good ice breaker. The show started a bit slow but then around lunch things seemed to pick up. My first task earlier was to take CD's with our trial version and pass them out to people and collect business cards hopefully. I was nervous because I have never had to do the in-face sales pitch before to anyone that mattered. I started out a bit rusty, but as the day progressed and I met more people I became more confident in my sales abilities. Even pulled in a few good leads.

The event was scheduled to end at 6pm but by 2:30pm it seemed like things had died down and we had spoken to pretty much everyone we had to, so we got to leave early- yay! My feet were killing me and I was tired. Packed up the booth, and on the way out of Cardiff John took my by the bay to show me the locks. It's this interesting system of letting boats in and out of the harbor. See the waters around Cardiff and Bristol are supposedly one of the most dangerous because the tide changes so quickly and at incredible depths. In a matter of minutes the tide can go in and out by 14 meters (about 40 feet). So this harbor has these locks and what is does it keep the water in the harbor seperated from the bay water. If the tide changes, the harbor water doesn't. It is always at the same level.

When ships and boats want to enter the harbor, a door opens and the ship pulls into this closed off space. The door closes behind them and then depending on if the tide was high or low, the space will fill or drain, making the water in this sealed off space equal to that of the harbor (you with me so far...?). Then when the water level inside the space is at the proper height, a door in front opens allowing them to enter the harbor. It's really cool and we were lucky enough that when we arrive a small boat was entering the harbor so I got to see the whole process.

On the ride home a took a nap, then back at the pub I met Vicky, Chris's daughter. Very nice girl. We both agree that Nick is a very messy person. We had a fun time trying to find and plug in a workin light bulb in the bathroom (the previous one went missing). Then Chris came by the pub and brought me my special food delivery. I Requested Ghirardeli chocolates for this girl Caroline who loves it, and then Hersheys bars and Graham crackers. These people have never heard of s'mores. I shall educate them in the making of one of the sweetest, messiest treats. It's funny, when I describe it to people, the girl's reactions are "Oh that sounds good!", while the guy's are "That sounds bad for you." I thought girls were supposed to be all food and figure conscious...? LoL.

Paintball

2007-03-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

Saturday was super chill. Uploaded photos, updated blog, attempted to start laundry but only had time for 1 load before I had to head out to the Fish Market to meet Alex. Got there, Alex was working so I sat at the bar with Dom and had a pint. He has the new Nokia N73 and it is very sheik but we could not for the life of us figure out how to turn the keyguard/lock on. As we were talking his girlfriend Caroline was texting saying she was going to come over to the Fish Market but then she got a phone call and couldn't. Dom told me they were going paintballing with a bunch of their friends and funny enough Caroline sent him a text asking if I wanted to join them. A bit short notice but I have always wanted to play paintball and I really didn't have plans for Sunday.

So at 8am we all met at the Fish Market. God it was early, only had 4 hours of sleep. And before I went to the Fish Market I walked over to a Starbucks nearby hoping to God it would be open. But no...they don't open until 10am. *sigh* Darn the English and their not wanting to be open at the butt crack of dawn so I can get my coffee fix. We head outside of Bristol to the playing field and it is out in the country in the woods. When we pull into the driveway we can already see some of the playing fields with barriers and blocks to hide behind. Oh this is going to be fun. I was a little nervous about being hit by the paintballs and how much it would hurt. I have never played so have no idea what to expect. We get out suits and sit through the safety lecture. The thing that freaked me out was that the balls are traveling at like 200 MPH! Ouch. We get helmuts and the 16 of us walk down to our first playing field.

Most of us in the group have never played, only a few had before. We seperated into two teams of eight, the Green and Blue teams. I was on Blue. The first game we play is your basic old capture the flag. We get 350 balls to start with, load up our guns and head out onto the field. Oh, and the whole field is a bit on the muddy side because of recent rains. And the playing fields aren't flat. They are valleys so there is plenty of slipping and sliding to be had. The game starts and we head out. The Green team had the smart strategy of basically charging us and got the flag rather quick, but then the guy was hit so he had to drop it. Our first game did not last long and I was out before it ended. My first experience of being hit with a paintball was quite painfull. The ball hit on left hand near my knuckle between my ring and middle fingers. Owwwww.

The first match pretty much set the precendent for the rest of our matches. Green team was kicking out asses. They always seemed to get the edge on us. We played about 4 games of just the 16 of us which was cool, even if they were going really quick. Then we found out a huge group of people were supposed to have joined us this morning to play but got lost or woke up late and would be arriving right before lunch. We decided to play one game with them before lunch and found ourselves mixed in with about 30-40 Eastern Europeans (couldn't quite tell where they were from and only 3 or so spoke English). Mostly guys, about 5 girls and the guys looked like they were going to be taking this a bit more seriously than our group. Some had extra padding and gloves like they're seasoned pros.

We played one game with them and it was a bit scary. These guys were just taking it way to seriously and spoiling our amature fun. What really pissed me off was that when I got shot, and clearly held my gun up in the air, indicating this thus you should not get shot at anymore, the jerk who shot me kept shooting me! Errrr that pissed me off to no end. But I breathed and tried to not let it wind me up too much. After that game our group got to have lunch which was a welcomed break. Then we headed back out for more pain. It actually isn't too bad getting hit. Some do hurt and you will get bruised, but at the end of the day you aren't like doubled over in pain.

We played about 5-6 more games, and pretty much my strategy for most was to maintain a hidden sniper position. Did pretty well with that. Then the last game of the day is called a Run Out where you pretty much shoot away all your remaining paintballs. And even if you are hit you are not out. I was a bit scared at first becuase of the other group and I feared they would just stand behind you and shoot the shit out of your back or something mean like that. I stayed farther back on the field maintaining a higher ground and just rambo style shot and the opposing team (we still used teams but honestly if you wanted to shoot your teammates you could). Thus concluded our day of paintballing. We drove back into Bristol, I went home to take a shower and would meet everyone else at the Fish Market later. When I got there only 6 from our group were there and some of us stuck around and played The Quiz, which we lost. All in all it was a really fun day, despite the few moments of pain from being shot at. Would definitely go again.

First work week

2007-03-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long gap between posts. I had my first full work week which kept me busy all week long. I don't have a normal 9-5 work day anymore. Back home I could get off work at 5pm and still have a few hours to go run errands. Here everything closes at 5 or 6pm, so when I am "off work" I can't do anything. So what I have to do is take a big break middle of the day, do my errands, then come back to the pub and work later. It isn't too bad, just have to get used to that as my routine. Working in the pub is cool though. I wake up, shower and dress, grab my laptop and come downstairs sit at a table and set up my "desk" and start working. And because the pub doesn't open until noon, the morning hours are quiet and even when Sublime opens the afternoons are pretty chill. Only a few lunch rushes here and there. Monday I had a rough start to work. Was supposed to catch an 8:23am train to Chippenham to work with Chris in his home office. I work up at 8:30am. *doh* Luckily Chris wasn't uspset, he just said I'll see you tomorrow then. I was pissed though because I paid for a ticket I didn't even use. What a waste.

The rest of my week was busy busy. Tried to get a cell phone but they want a bank statement which will prove my address and that I have a bank account. It should come in the post in about a week. Tuesday night was JD's (my other flatmate and Nick's business partner) 30th Birthday so we all went out on the piss. But it was a short night because we went to the River, but Alex was being a pain and said he didn't want to go because he would get drunk, and he was already quite intoxicated. But he kept texting his friend telling me to go hang out with him at Sublime so I leave the River and go to Sublime to convince him to come out. It took a while but I managed to do so. But we get there are they won't let us in. So we head back to his place, which is the Old Fish Market and I stayed there. Probably a good thing because I got some decent sleep and the rest of the group stayed up drinking until 8am. Yeah I am not that hardcore. Haha.

Friday night a bunch of us went to the Dogs (Greyhound racing) in Swindon. It was so much fun. Alex organized it and we all paid 10 quid for a bus that would take us there and back. Placed some bets, and was wining every other race in the beginning but then I hit a wall and lost the rest sadly. But since I had won some money back I only ended up losing 5 quid. Not bad. Spent more money on beer, which they had a great deal, 5 bottles of Stella for 10 pounds. Score! Saturday has been a chill day for me. Slept in, did grocery shopping, uploaded photos, updating my blog, and still need to go laundry and then this group called Midnight Sausage is playing at Sublime again tonight so I will stick around for that. They are really good, just two guys with acoustic guitars. But man can they play, and when they do covers it is amazing. Will try and get a recording and share it.

Familiarizing & Socializing - day 4

2007-03-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

* crash * * clink * * clank * This is what I woke up to at like 7am. Garbage day. And the trucks were parked right outside my window. Ugh…definitely need those earplugs. I didn’t have an alarm this morning because I only have my cell phone to use and the battery is dead and I looked at the plug and it would blow up probably if I plugged it in. Luckily my body told me it was time to wake up at about 8am. Made it downstairs without setting off the alarm, and even sorta figured out which lights to turn on so I wouldn’t be sitting in the dark.

For lunch I was going to make myself a sandwich from the few groceries I bought yesterday but when I went into the fridge I noticed it was jam packed with new stock and my deli meat packs were gone. Asked Nick if he saw them and he said he thought they were old packs left over from a buffet event they had a week ago. No biggie, he ended up cooking me a fantastic chicken sandwich instead. Very tasty. I still needed to get myself more groceries, and now an alarm clock and some office supplies, so I took a break from work and grabbed the bus to Asda. First it took forever for the bus to get there. Supposedly it should only take 20 minutes but it must have been 30 or 40 minutes. And my lack of sleep was catching up with me so I found myself snoozing on the bus.

Arrived at Asda, found a cheap alarm clock, office supplies, and got just a few basics that would tide me over for a few days – pasta, tomato sauce, lettuce, dressing, peanut butter, jelly…I think that was it. Remember I have to carry all this on the bus/walk home, so I couldn’t go crazy. Ride back to City Center was much quicker and I found a closer stop to Sublime so I didn’t have to walk as far. Logged back on to make up for my break and then at about 6 or 7pm I ended my work day. The pub was pretty busy by now and I didn’t want to get in the way by cooking my dinner in the kitchen, so I decided to go out for something cheap- pizza. Walked around, this time going in the opposite direction of where I usually go and after a while found M&M, which I remember Alex and Dutch recommending. Popped in there and paid $5 for dinner, score.

On my way back home I decided to stop in at The Old Fish Market to see if any of the guys were working. Saw Alex behind the bar, and then Dutch. Had a pint of Glosch (Dutch beer- very good), and then Alex had a break so I sat with him while he ate his burger and I ate his chips. He said they would be coming by Sublime around 1am and that we’d all get pissed. Headed home and definitely needed a nap if I was going to stay up that late. Woke up around 9:30pm and did some things up in my room, setting up the new laptop, writing more blog entries…then at about 11ish I headed downstairs for a pint.

It’s awkward to be hanging out and drinking in the pub by myself, but I didn’t want to bring Smacky down and look all anti-social. Luckily there were 4 people on staff and it wasn’t very busy so I was able to chat it up with the girls, met Dani and Josie (sp?) and Gags was there too. That worked out rather well, at least I didn’t feel like a loser standing at the bar alone. Then this guy who was standing at the bar and then moved to a table with his friends came over to us and was asking Patty if he knew one of the girls at his table because she thinks he looks familiar…it was strange and funny. Then he and I started talking- usually all my conversations with people start with, “Hey you aren’t from here are you?” and then the conversation evolves from there. His name was Marc and he was a nice guy, talked about football and why girls and boys don’t play together, about Bristol because he was born and raised here- he wants to take me around and play tour guide one Saturday. We keep talking then it’s 1am and the guys from Old Fish Market come in. Marc excuses himself to go talk to his friend at their table and then the Fish guys and I go grab the table next to them, not intentionally- it was the only one available.

Then the drinking continues and these guys are doing the best they can to get pissed before the pub closes in an hour. Met Ben and Hanah, the other two Fish people, and we have a great time drinking and talking and comparing scars. The one on my head won the contest. Then Alex and I start talking about food and decide to get some kebabs. He takes me to this place they frequent, we get our kebabs and take them back to the Old Fish Market to eat them. We’re eating and then realize it’s about 2:30am and Sublime is probably closed and I don’t have a key yet. So I crash upstairs at Alex’s flat. Thank God tomorrow is Saturday, can actually sleep in and recoup from my first week in the UK.

Bar Life Rocks - Day 3

2007-03-03T10:12:00.000-08:00

Thursday, my first official day working for Actify Europe. Woke up at about 7:30am, took a bath (I am really starting to enjoy taking baths, they are so relaxing), got dressed- and I actually dressed up so to speak. Boots, jeans, nice top- figured it would help motivate me and make me feel like I was in an office if I dressed the part. Before I went downstairs I looked at the security unit to turn the alarm off but Nick had put a note saying to come wake him up. Strange, but I couldn’t remember the code so I woke him up and he thought I was actually going to work at his dad’s place and that he’s have to show me how to unlock the door, which is why he had the note to wake him up. I reminded him Chris is in Switzerland so he told me the code and went back to sleep.

I headed downstairs with my laptop and got to work. It’s actually pretty nice working in the pub. It isn’t very busy during the day and even when there is a lunch rush hardly anyone comes over to my side of the bar that I work from. I get drinks for free, and man coffee never tasted so good. I think I need to teach these guys how to make a mocha though…expand their menu a bit. Work was work, nothing special to report on that end. Went out for lunch to this place called O’Brians, a sandwich place round the corner. They were very nice, oh but it was so funny. I ordered a sandwich, and when I got my plate it had the sandwich and 4- yes exactly 4 potato chips (crisps). It looked so funny, wish I had my camera with me to photograph it.

Went back to the pub, continued working then signed off at about 5:30pm. It was quite dead in the pub all afternoon. Nick had gone out to look at entertainment equipment so it was just me and Jake. He was bored out of his mind so I suggested we play cards. I taught him Speed, he was doing really well. Most people take a while to catch on. Then he left after his shift ended around 6pm and I decided to try and find this supermarket called Asda, apparently it is like Walmart. However I didn’t know exactly where it was, just a general direction. I walked in what I thought was the right direction but it was getting late and dark so I just made a big circle and came back to the pub.

There was going to be live music at the pub that night so I decided to stick around. Brought Smacky downstairs and started to upload the photos from my Bon Voyage party. While I was waiting for it to finish this guy from the group sitting on the couches behind me came round to my table and sat down diagonal from me and was like, “Hey how’s it going?” I was nice and said “Doing well”, then he introduced himself as one of Nick’s friends. His name is Alex and he invited me to sit with him and his mates. So I left Smacky continue to do its thing and took my Corona round to the couches. Met Alex, Dutch (Richard) and Simon. Alex and Dutch work at this pub called The Fish Market which I have walked by a dozen times, it is right around the corner from Sublime.

We all just sat and chatted away, and of course drank. Alex was getting pissed (drunk) and we were all having a good time. It was getting late and they started talking about playing poker. So at about 1am me, Nick and Dutch started playing. Alex was to busy chatting it up with these two girls to play. I have never really played poker, so this was a first for me. And we were each putting in 5 quid. I was doing fairly well for a beginner. Nick has a certain way about him when he plays, he likes to bid high and challenge. A few times he and I went head to head, I won once, which was cool. But in the end all my chips were gone, so it was just Dutch and Nick playing. We finished up at about 2am-ish and by then I was quite tired and had to be up for work tomorrow (or today…) so I said goodnight and hit the sack.

Bristolian Life - Day 2

2007-03-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

Quick recap on last night. Went with Jake and Guy across the street to King William to play pool. English pool tables are a bit smaller than in the US, and the balls are too and they are just two colors, no numbers at all. So we couldn’t play cutthroat. I played like shyte, but I reckon the several pints of beer in me was throwing off my A-game. After a few games we then headed down the street to a cider house called Apple. Never had cider before and it was fairly good, a bit fruity. The pint was huge and this thing is like a 9% alcoholic beverage. After that we headed out to a place called SoHo. Kind of a club, bar and here I just had water. Was getting really tired and told the guys that I needed to go home. Plus it was late and I didn’t really feel like getting locked out of the pub my first night.

They walked me back to Sublime where I headed straight upstairs and into bed. Wednesday morning woke up pretty early so I could get a start on opening a bank account and look for a mobile. I took a bath, got dressed, and headed downstairs. As soon as I walked out from the back and into the bar area I hear “BeepBeepBeepBeep!!!!!” Damn this place has an alarm and I set it off. I just stood there not knowing what to do, then I could hear Nick upstairs turning the alarm off. He said he forgot to tell me about the alarm and would show me how to turn it off. Then he let me out and I went to Barclays and opened my current account (that’s what they call a checking account here), then walked around the City Center looking for a mobile. I found a T-Mobile store and the guy in there was really nice and helpful. I had a lot of questions especially about International calls and service coverage Internationally. Then I looked at Vodafon and after sitting and reviewing the two I decided T-Mobile was the best for the money. BUT, when I went back to sign up they asked if I had a UK debit card. I won’t get it until early next week so I have to wait until then. Rats. Actually it’s good, forces me to take my time and look at other places. Picked up a brochure from O2 (looks crapy), and then I was told 3 is a really good place and so far they have the best International plan. We shall see.

So after all that I came back to the pub and JD was there and I made a comment about going around the corner to the post office to pick up my parcel that they tried to deliver a few days prior. He laughed and said it wasn’t at the post office, but somewhere else far away and that he would drive me there. We headed out and I got to see the outskirts of Bristol, it is a very pretty area. JD and I were chatting away and he was cracking me up I haven’t laughed like that since we had our “Cousin’s Dinner” before I left home. Must be an Irish thing that we crack each other up. So we are driving for a while and kind of get lost which makes us laugh even more. I mean really this BusinessPost place left a card at the pub with a little map on it basically showing 2 main roads intersecting and below that a rectangle labeled as “This is us”. We were driving up and down the roads forever, and JD even stopped at a few other businesses to ask where Business Post was, but no one seemed to know. Long story short, we eventually found it, got my parcel, and headed back to the pub.

Back at the pub I attempted to get online with the work laptop but it still wasn’t working, which worried me since I was starting work the next day. Nick went upstairs to check on the wireless port and found that it was knocked over, so he fixed it and in an instant I was online. Yay! Access to email and Internet. Stayed up pretty late checking emails and such, finally got to bed around midnight- good thing I don’t actually have to go far to get to work tomorrow, heehee.

Move to England - Day 1

2007-03-01T03:25:00.000-08:00

Made it to SFO on time, Karina and Daniel drove me, mom was going to meet us at the airport. When we arrived mom called saying she missed the bus and wouldn’t get there until 2:30pm probably. I was a bit nervous that she wouldn’t make it in time, but as luck would have it she didn’t miss the bus and as we were walking towards the British Airways check in desk, mom was coming right up the escalator.

There was no line at the desk so I checked in my bags really quick, then we sat down and ate burgers for lunch. Then it was time for me to head through security. We took some pictures and said “See you later” with no tears luckily. Though silly Karina handed me a note as we were parting which said on the front “Do not open until I am out of sight.” Just reading that alone made me teary eyed. Went through security fine, then as soon as I got to my gate I opened her note, read it and cried a bit. Not that is was super mushy, just very sweet and reminded me what an amazing sister I have.

Boarded the plane, and my game plan for the flight was similar to my last trip to London- sleep the whole time to beat jet lag. However this did not work because I started chatting with the guy sitting next to me and he was very gregarious so we were talking on and on for most of the flight. We joked that the poor lady next to us must hate us because we were talking for so long. Whatever, I was enjoying our conversation. We finally shut up when they turned off the lights in the cabin indicating “it’s time to sleep.” I had a pretty good sleep, then woke up with about 2 hours left in our flight. Ben (my fight buddy) and I went right back into talking on and on until we landed.

At Heathrow I went to the “Non EU” passport line because I thought it would be better to travel into the country under my US passport. When I got to the desk the woman asked me why I was here, I said I am moving here. She asked if I had a visa, I said I don’t need one because I have an Irish passport. She said for me to use that one instead, so I was through immigration in a flash. Got my heavy ass bags, which Ben was kind enough to help me with, then headed to the underground to catch the tube to Paddington station.

I was nervous how I would manage my two large bags going through the tube, because there are not always lifts or escalators which means lugging them up a flight of stairs. Luckily there was always a kind gentleman to assist me with my bags. Got to love being a girl. Made it to Paddington station with about 1 hour to spare before my train departed, so I ate some Burger King, chilled in the station reading up on Vodafon and their mobile plans, then caught my train to Bristol. Slept most of the way on the train.

When I arrived at the Bristol station I caught a taxi to Nick’s pub, Sublime. It didn’t look open so I was at the front door knocking and then one of the staff came to the door and helped me in with my bags. Silly me, the place was open. Next time I should probably try the door before assuming it is closed. Jake, the guy who opened the door for me, and I had a laugh about that, wanted to make sure he didn’t think I was some stuck-up American expecting the bellboy to take my bags for me. Met John (JD), the other owner of the pub, and he told me they were just finishing cleaning upstairs. So I went to the bar and had a pint while they finished up. Then JD and Nick came down, met Nick and they showed me to my room. It’s very cozy, obviously not some huge room but it had a twin bed, closet, and several shelves. I like it. And the bathroom is right across the hall, which I could tell the guys had really cleaned up for my arrival. Candles and popuri and fresh towels, very sweet of them.

Took a bath which was like heaven after 12+ hours of traveling. Then hung out downstairs at the bar with Jake and his friend Guy while I waited for Nick to take me to a shop to buy sheets. We didn’t quite make it in time though, all of the shops were closed or closing, so we’ll create some make-shit sheets for the night. No biggie. I am just so happy and grateful to have a place to stay. Oh and the bar is fantastic. Really cool, trendy place. And everyone I have met so far is very nice. Didn’t get to the bank today like I thought but I’ll do that first thing tomorrow, and then get my mobile and I will be happy as a clam. (Why are clams known for being happy? Was there some sort of study done?) I digress…tonight is poker night at the pub, so that will be interesting. Think I’ll be a spectator. Bummed that Smacky isn’t picking up on the wireless in this place…will have to call Apple possibly in the AM to see what the deal is.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

2007-02-26T11:30:00.000-08:00

*If you know what movie my title is from you rock*

Well here we are, the big day. My flight leaves in about 4 hours and I am happy to report that I am pretty much ready to go. Sunday night I may not have been so confident of my preparedness. I was running around like crazy trying to pack up all my shyte and basically realized I had way to much stuff and needed to unpack everything and re-evaluate everything, only taking what I really really need now, and the rest can come in boxes later.

It still seems unreal to me that I am moving. Sometimes it hits me, like when I walk around the house and do something I think, I won't be here any more doing this. Or when i have been saying goodbye to friends. Luckily the waterworks haven't been turned on too much. Only got a bit teary with some people, for whatever reason, but nothing too dramatic. I don't even think it will be that sad at the airport this afternoon with my family. It really just feels like a vacation, a long one. :)

I'll be sure to continue posting once I am settled in my flat so keep checking for updates from Sunny England.

Birthday Maddness

2007-02-13T18:18:00.000-08:00

Last week was my Birthday and I celebrated as much as possible. Wednesday night went out to dinner with mom and Karina, on Thursday went to Yancey's Saloon for pizza and beer with a few friends, took Friday off and hung out with Karina (we went to the Aquarium by the Bay, walked around Pier 39, then watched Ab Fab at home), then in the evening I treated myself to a massage (soooo gooooodd), and Saturday was the big party day.

During the day we had the family & friends party at the house which was really fun. A lot of people came and most of them I won't see again before I leave so it was also a good bye party. Then at night was the "kid" party at Element Lounge. That was fun, we drank and danced, I drank too much and didn't remember a lot of the end of the evening but I was with good friends who took care of me and made sure I was safe.

Stayed over at Regina and John's place, and on Sunday morning I was up to go play soccer. Some of my teammates who were at the club were "amazed" I made it to the game, haha. I ws feeling pretty well actually, only after the game did I feel exhausted. All in all it was a really good birthday and I can't ask for more than that.

Vista Upgrade

2007-01-31T16:08:00.000-08:00

This is by far one of my favorite Mac vs PC commercials - Surgery. Especially since in my office we all use PCs and everyone else around here is all hyped up on Vista.

Viva la Mac!

Score 1 for Me!

2007-01-30T19:55:00.000-08:00

On Sunday I played soccer and decided to play forward. Usually I play defense, but was feeling good so I played up. Was doing pretty well, and the high light for me was when I scored not only the first goal of the game, but my first goal ever! Though it was not as graceful as one would like. My team mate Maneesh had passed the ball to me and I was in front of the net. I meant to stop the ball then kick it in, but my timing was off and instead the ball hit my shinguard, but still went into the goal. Hey, I'll take it anyway I can get it.

The rest of the game I had many more goal opportunities. One I kicked the ball a little too high and it went over the net, and the rest were awesome setups, again with me in front of the net, but my brain and feet just were not talking to each other and I totally f*&%ed up each time. Oh well, at least I tried, and I can only get better from this point on. I had fun regardless. I love my soccer team, I will be very sad to leave them. And apparently in England co-ed teams are not very common. wtf?

Supercross 2007

2007-01-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

Went to watch the Supercross at AT&T Park on Saturday night with my friends Lilliam and David. It is a really cool event. Those guys are crazy on the bikes, zipping around the track lightning-fast, running into each other and crashing, but luckily there didn't seem to be any serious injuries. It was funny to see the baseball field transformed into a dirt track. I was rooting for #7 James Stewart because my friends Elana and Dayved, who are avid motorcross fans and riders themselves, told me to. LoL. I am really glad I got to check this event out before going to England - good idea Miss Lil!

Vroom vroom.

Me, David & Lilliam

View of the whole track.

It's Official

2007-01-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

Bought my plane ticket for London. Leaving on February 26th but I'll be back for Christmas. Now that there is a moving date, it's making things move along quicker, knowing that I have basically 6 weeks to sort everything out. The work situation is going well, haven't gotten a 100% job offer, but it is 95% there. As usual Chris is being so generous and caring with the whole move, I am so lucky. I know I keep saying that, but it is true and there always seems to be something new that he offers or an idea he has to help me.

It is starting to hit people that I am moving, now that I have a departure date. People at work know. Friends and family are starting to know. Soon the waterworks will be turned on. Time to buy waterproof mascara.

Flight Home

2007-01-18T17:36:00.000-08:00

When I woke up on Monday I could not believe I was already flying home. The week went by way to fast. I woke up early so that I could take Big Red (my huge ass suitcase) down to the post office so I could arrange to have it sent to Chris' pub in Biddestone. Man that thing was heavy - about 70lbs. When I got to the post office I thought the process would be quick, but my suitcase was too heavy so I had to take out some stuff, and ship that seperately. I felt weird opening up my suitcase and doing all of this in the post office, plus it was a small office, but hey- gotta do what you gotta do.

When it was all said and done and I left the post office it was a little after 10:30am, and I needed to get on the tube to head for Heathrow at 11am. So much for my morning walk in the park. Headed back to the hotel, Kris and Will had already left (we said our goodbye's earlier) and luckily I had already packed the night before. I left the hotel and made my way to the Victoria station. However, I still needed to buy my mom and sister their gifts. There were two shops in the Victoria station, but of course I didn't see anything I liked. What a time to be picky eh? After wasting time there, I walked down a block to this one souvenir shop that I had been to before, and they had a much larger selection. Got their gifts, and headed back to the station. It was a little past 11am, but I thought I could still make it to the airport on time.

I was doing good, up until I reached the airport, got off the train, went into the terminal to check in only to realize I was in the wrong terminal. The tube stops first at Terminal 4, then at Terminals 1, 2, 3. I was in Terminal 4 and needed to be in Terminal 1. So I go back to the underground, and just miss the fricken train. The next one wouldn't be by for another 10 minutes. So now I am starting to worry. I get on the train, get to Terminal 1, drop off by bag and head for the security line. This was the icing on the cake. The line was pretty long. Wouldn't have mattered if I got to the terminal on time like I planned, but such is life.

Finally got through security, and when I was leaving that area, I got out my watch and saw that it was 1:20pm. My flight leaves at 1:45pm and on the board it said my gate was closing AND that it takes 15 minutes to walk to my gate. (ahhh!!) So I am running through the fricken terminal now, with my huge ass backpack, getting all sweaty hoping I don't miss my flight. Luckily when I rounded the corner and saw my gate there was still a good sized line in front, so I relaxed, bought myself a water bottle and got in line.

The flight home was nice. Slept in the beginning to help align myself with Cali time, watched some movies, wrote in my journal, and then next thing you know we are landing in SFO. Karina and mom were at the airport to pick me up, so sweet. I had an amazing time in London and this trip definitly solidified for me my choice to move there and has made me even more excited and confident about the move.

Last Night in London

2007-01-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

Sunday - Managed to wake up relatively early considering I was out until 2am drinking the night before (good times). The plan for today was to go to the markets over in East London and then check out Parliament, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. However, Kris and Will didn't get much sleep at all apparently, and were having a hard time getting out of bed. I knew they would rather go to the markets, so I told them I'd head out and see the Royal parts of London, and come back at 1pm and then we could go to the markets. They agreed, so I headed out.

Can you believe it was actually sunny!? Blue skies and sunshine, it's a miracle. Though still incredibly cold. My first stop was Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. I took a zillion pictures, because everything looked so pretty with the sun shining on it. I wanted to tour the Westminster Abbey, but on Sunday's it is closed to tourists, and is only open for regular masses. Then I walked across the street to Parliament, thinking I could take a tour of that, but it must have been closed on Sunday as well because I didn't see an entrance, or queue to get in. So I just walked around the outside, taking more pictures.

Once I was done there, I headed over to Buckingham Palace, but for some reason I had trouble figuring out where the entrance was for this place. Maybe Sunday is just a bad day for tours. I continued to walk around the property, feeling a bit disappointed when I noticed a huge crowd of people had gathered outside of the gate to Buckingham Palace, and there was music. I made my way to the fence, stood on my tiptoes and saw what all the comotion was about- it was the chagning of the guards. It was towards the end, but at least I saw something today. Took pictures, then walked over to one of the parks lining the palace. I decided to take a stroll through St. James' Park, and as I was walking, the royal guards were leaving the palace gates, and making their way down the street I was on, so I got a front seat of watching these guys march on by. Very cool.

The walk through the park was so nice and peaceful, and the fact that it was sunny really helped. There were a ton of birds all over the place, as there is a pond that runs down the middle length of the park, and everyone was feeding the birds. The animals here are so domesticated. I saw one guy wearing a glove and a pidgeon was on his hand and the guy was totally petting it like a pet! Oh and then I saw more British Squirrels, and those guys are super friendly. When I got to the end of the park and rounded the corner I had made a full circle and was back at Parliament and Big Ben. I found a payphone and called our hotel room to see if Kris and Will were up yet. They were, so I made my way back to the hotel, then we headed out for the markets.

Spitalfields Market is the first one we went to, and it was pretty cool. Tons of booths with cool stuff, but after a while we all felt that some of the stuff that was being sold wasn't very unique as we saw the same things in several booths. Still cool to look at. Then we went down the street to Brick Lane, which definitly seemed like a more authentic market. Kristine even bought a cute coat. I wanted to visit Harrod's, so we took the tube over there and checked it out very briefly. Wasn't exactly Kris and Will's type of store. Suppose I'll get to check it out in more detail when I move there. It is pretty amazing though. There are a bunch of rooms, some with various themes. There were rooms for buying meat, candies, etc. along with all the other department store items like clothes, cosmetics, etc.

After Harrod's I needed to go back to the hotel for a little cat nap before we headed out for the night. And since it was my last night in London, we wanted to find a really good, authentic fish & chips place. Will did some research and found 2 restaurants in Notting Hill that were supposed to be good. We took the tube there, but when we got to Notting Hill, and finally found the resturants, they were both closed. Other than bars closing early in England, apparently restaurants do to on Sundays. We obviously were still thinking things around here ran 24-7 like in America, and because of that got slapped in the face. So no fish and chips, bummer. But I was really getting hungry and so were Kris and Will and because it was so late we feared traveling anywhere else to find food, because by the time we would get there, they'd be closed. So we desperately searched the one main street of the area and found a few places but we were having a hard time agreeing on a place. Just when I thought I was going to go crazy and just eat on my own, Kris found a Portugese/Brazilian place that she liked, and i didn't care so we ate there. Turned out to be a really cool place, however when they say things are 'spicy" they mean it. I ordered my meal as "medium" and should have stuck with "mild". I couldn't even finish my chicken. But at least the crisps were yummy and they had bottomless soda.

After dinner we wanted to find a pub for drinks but once again it was already really late and if bars close early on weekdays then they were sure to close just as early, if not earlier, on a Sunday. I suggested we find a pub near our hotel, that way we didn't have to worry about getting home. Once we were back in our neighborhood, nearly all the places were already closed or stopped serving alcohol. We had almost given up but then we came across St. Geroge's Tavern, and decided to try there. When I walked in I saw one of the guys I had met the night before, Oula. I quickly said hi to him, then went to the bar to get my drink before they shut down. The guy at the bar served us, though apparently they had stopped serving drinks 30 minutes ago. So we sat, had to quickly down our pints as they were closing, and then attempted to find another pub butt they were all closed. They must think us Americans are a bunch of lushes always trying to get alcohol at odd hours. lol.

Football & Pints

2007-01-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

Saturdays plan was to visit the Portobello Market, then go to the West Ham United vs Fulham football game. However that morning Kristine was feeling really crapy. We missed the market, and she decided to stay at the hotel and rest for the day. Will stayed with her, and I went to the West Ham game on my own. I got onto the tube heading towards Upton Park, and as we got closer and closer to that stop, more and more people were boarding wearing West Ham colors (burgundy and light blue). Luckily I had a purple-ish sweater on so I sort of matched the fans.

When we got to Upton Park there was a sea of people out on the street, either heading towards the stadium or buying food. I went and got the tickets, then bought a cool scarf sporting the West Ham colors, ate some food, then began the task of trying to sell the two extra tickts I had. I really hate doing the whole "tickets, tickets for the game" bit, but I had to at least try and get some money for them. My first taker was another scalper, asking how much I wanted. I paid 40 GBP (80 USD) for each ticket and wanted to get as close to full price as possible. His response was "Good luck." I kept at it for almost 30 minutes, with no other takers. Then it was almost time for the game to start, and the scalper came back to me and asked what was the lowest price I'd take, and I said 20 Pounds each, and he agreed. So at least I got 1/2 price.

When I got into the stadium, they were just starting to sing the West Ham song.

"'I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams they fade and die,
Fortune's always hiding, I've looked everywhere,
I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air,
United! United!"

I was impressed by how loud the crowd was. I've never head a crowd at a US stadium get that loud. And it was funny how in the stand where all the "crazy" West Ham fans were, they stuck the Fulham supporters. They even had a few policemen stationed in the aisle that seperated the West Ham and Fulham supporters. The game was really good, even though both teams had been playing poorly as of late. There were some major errors on the field, but they kept us on our toes by always having the score be so close. At the end of the second half, the score was 3-2 West Ham, but then the refs added 5 minutes of extra time, which is a lot. West Ham managed to keep their lead, but in the last second of the 5 minutes, Fulham scored, tying the match. Everyone (except the Fulham supporters) was pissed. "The referee's a wanker" was booming throughout the stadium.

I left the stadium and headed back to the hotel. When I got there, Kris and Will had left me a note saying they left for dinner. I tried to catch them, as they left me the name and address of where they were going, but when I got there and looked around I did not see them. So I decided to look for a cool pub for food, and didn't really see anything in that part of town, so I went back to Westminster (the area we were staying in) and went into this pub called St. George's Tavern. I felt a little akward going in, because the entrance in a big open space and I felt that everyone in there was starting at me. Did I have "tourist" printed on my forehead or something?

I saw some people at tables eating food, and headed in that direction to look for an empty table, but on my way over, a gentleman stopped me and asked me my name and if I wanted a drink. I was a little apprehensive as he was definitly much older than me, but what the heck, I said yes. Then when he came back he asked "So are you for West Ham" and pointed to my new West Ham scarf. I expalined I was on vacation and went to the game that afternoon. He was so jealous because he is a West Ham fan. We talked about the game, then he introduced himself and his friends. They were all a really nice group of people, nothing dodgey about them at all.

We all sat and talked and drank, it was a lot of fun. And when that pub was closing, they asked me to go with them to another one down the street which stayed open a little later. I did, we had 1 more round, and they taught me some football chants which was cool. Then we went across the street and they bought me a shishkabob which I was so thankful for because I hadn't had any dinner up until that point. Then they walked me a few blocks down to my hotel and told me that when I move to London to give them a call or find them at St. Georges'.

They were so cool and nice (English people are so nice!). I'd only been in London for 2 days and already I made some new friends, which tells me I'll be just fine at making more when I move there.

ARG!

2007-01-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

Damn timed internet....I was writing a new post, and it was quite lengthy. Thought I had enough time to finish but apparently not and not I've lost all that I just wrote. Errr...to tired now to re-type. Will do it later.

The City of London

2007-01-12T10:38:00.000-08:00

Today was our main sight-seeing day. We started by taking the tube to the London Eye, a 420 ft tall monster ferris-wheel type thing that you can ride around in to get an amazing view of London. Sadly it is going through maintenance all fricken week so we won't get a chance to ride it. We hopped on a ferry and took a nice boat ride from the Westminster Pier (near Parliament) up the Thames to the Tower of London. The ride was nice and we got to see quite a few points of interest along the way, like the Globe Theater, Millenium Bridge, London Bridge, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

After departing the ferry, I went to take a tour of the Tower of London, while Kristine and Will got some nibbles and pints. The Tower of London, though pricey, was a great tour. It's been around for about 900 years and so much history has taken place there. After my 2 1/2 hours there, we walked along Cannon Street, passing by some really cool buildings, the Monument (built to commemorate the great fire of london in 1666), St. Mary-le-bow church, the infamous St. Paul's Cathedral which we sadly didn't go into (next time).

Then we walked across the Millenium Bridge, went into the Tate Modernm Museum of Art, which really we went into the use the restroom, but inside they have these kick ass slides! Kristine and I went down one which was fun. Then we continued walking back in the direction of the London Tower so we could catch our ferry back to Westminster. The ferry ride back at night was a nice contrast to our earlier boat ride. The whole city was lit up and very pretty. Sadly my little camera doesn't take night shots well, however Krstine (being a photographer) had a better camera so I'll just snag some of her nite shots.

Now we are back at the hotel, giving our feet a rest before we head out for the night. We plan to go to Picadilly Circus, Traflager Square and Chinatown (all close to each other and in the southern part of Soho). Should be fun.

Greetings from England!!

2007-01-11T08:44:00.000-08:00

I arrive at Heathrow on Tuesday morning, left my bags at the airport and went off to see Hampton Court. Really cool place, lots of history. Took a few different audio tours and rushed out into the gardens to go through the Maze, and then hurried back to my bus stop as I had to head back to Heathrow to meet Chris. The journey back took much longer, and I totally goofed at one point and got on the wrong train so they delayed me even more.

Finally got to the airport, met Chris, we drove to his pub in Biddestone (near Bath) and called it a night. Wednesday morning went to Stonehenge. Very cool thing to see, though it was freezing and windy! Then we drove into bath which is a great town. Took a tour of the Roman Bath House, had tea at 3pm, then headed back to the pub.

Today I took the train from Bath to London, got to my hotel, waited for my friends Kristine and Will to arrive, decided to take a stroll around the area. Saw the Westminster Cathedral, and some war memorials near Hyde Park. Krstine and Will didn't show up until nearly 4:30pm! Apparently their flight out of SFO was delayed for 3 hours, then during landing, the turbulence was so terrible that they both threw up, and so did a few other people. But they finally made it here and despite a rough start are happy to be here at the hotel.

Going to London (but only for 1 week)

2007-01-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

Today I leave for my vacation/recon trip to London. But do not worry, this isn't "the move". I mean really people, do you think i would move and not have some amazingly huge party to say my goodbyes??? C'mon, give me a little more credit. I am all packed and ready to go. It does feel like I am moving though since I had to pack the 2 extra suitecases with moving items. When I return I will start boxing up all the stuff in my room for storage and probably won't have much else to move over when I leave end of February, which is cool.

Weather right now in London is rain. :oP I know I know, what did I expect- beautiful California sunshine? It will still be fun, got myself some new waterproof booties to walk around in. I will do my best to update my blog whilst over in London if possible. Otherwise I'll do a big post when I return.

Cherrio!

it's 2007 - are you ready?

2007-01-03T20:58:00.000-08:00

I welcome with open arms and open mind the New Year of 2007. It's going to be a big year for me as i am moving to London at the end of February. Exciting, scary, thrilling, uncertain - I'm feeling all of it but this is my dream and I know it will be an amazing experience. Right now I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Work is crazy busy, and I am trying to get ready for my London vacation/recon trip next week. Sounds easy but the thing is I am packing 3 (yes three) suitcases. 1 is for the vacation part, the other two are going to have "pre-moving" items like towel, linens, extra clothes, etc. that I am leaving at my boss' house until I get there in Feb. Cool huh? He is such an awesome person and am so thankful to have him as my boss.

Roaming Charges

2006-12-28T10:41:00.000-08:00

I almost had a heart attack on Tuesday when i got my phone bill. Back at Turkey Day when we were in the Reno area, I got a few voicemails and a call that I used the "roaming" feature to be able to connect for. I had no idea what the charges would be like, but I kept it all very short and hoped it would not be too drastic.

I have been waiting in anticipation for this bill and when I open it my mind was already expecting some large figure, and the first "total" my eyes land on is 553.00. I almost cried. I could not believe that some roaming charges which could not have been for more than 10 minutes all together cost that much more than my usual $50-ish bill. I was trying to be calm about it and just couldn't stop thinking about how much money this would be taking away from my savings for moving. Then I go back to the front page where I saw this astronomical number and look at it again and realized it is the total number of minutes(!!!) that i used last month. My actual total to be paid was only about $60. Then I cried a little out of happiness. lol.

Lesson to be learned, know how much roaming and other charges might be before you accept them!

Merry Christmas!!!

2006-12-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone! Yes it has been a while since I posted something, just been super busy. Santa was very nice to me this year, got a new backpack for my European travels, money (for Europe), giftcards, Son of a Witch (book, sequel to Wicked- awesome book!), USB thingie for Sprite (my ipod mini), and other cool things.

Working on the xmas dinner right now and my sister is making donuts. Can't wait to see/taste how they turn out. Time is just flying by. This weekend I am going to Reno to hang out with friends who live there for New Years, and then a week after that I am off to London for a week vacation/recon trip, which I am really excited about. Need to start getting my shit together and pack and start boxing up stuff.

That is my update for now, New Year resolution - to be better at updating my blog. :o)

2006-12-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

Hey Ya - Peanuts Style

Sky Diving

2006-09-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

"I....went...to...the DANGER ZONE....." dun dun dundun....oh yeah that's right I went sky diving. It was really amazing, not scary at all. You don't have time to be scared. We jumped from 9,000 ft on Sunday, had about 30-45 seconds of free fall which goes by really quick, then the parachute is deployed (which really hurt actually) and then spent about 5 minutes gliding back down to earth. THe instructors let us steer the chute, turning left....then right....it was awesome.

The place we went to is Sky Dance Sky Diving located in Davis, California. I went with two coworkers, Vijay and Krishna, Krishna's brother and my good friend Allan. We all had a great time and are ready to do it again!

Here are some cool pictures we took:

Here's Krishna and I getting ready for our jump. Don't I look adorable!

That's me!

Here I am calling mom, Karina and Greg to let them know I am alive.

From left to right we have Vijay, Sudir and Allen getting ready for their jump.

Here they are after their jump - alive and well!

Busy Bee

2006-09-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I've posted something. I was house-sitting in Oakland for two weeks in August and there was no way for me to properly access the Internet at the house (they have dial-up!), and when I came home, things just got really busy.

I joined a recreational soccer league, we play once a week on Sundays, and then to help prepare for that I started running. It's been really great, I go along the Embarcadero all the way to Pier 39 and then back to the Ferry Building. What else is new...oh- I am going sky diving on Sunday. Two of my coworkers, one of their brothers, and my friend Allan are also jumping with me. I'll be sure to post about that.

Guess that is it for now. Until Sunday.....

Weekend Update

2006-07-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

You probably though that since the World Cup is over, that I've forgotten about soccer? Well think again - I am acutally going to start playing soccer on Sunday August 6th. A college friend has been on this recreational league for a while, and even before the World Cup, I wanted to joing, but they had just started their season, so I have had to wait. The season starts this upcoming Sunday and i can't wait. I bought myself some fun soccer gear, and Greg has been helping me practice my moves. I'll be sure to post pictures of me in action.

Saturday Greg and I went to the Berkeley Kite Festival, which was really cool. So many different kites or all shapes and sizes. I took pictures, but Smacky is being re-callibrated so you'll have to wait til that is done to see them. The coolest part was the ballet event, where these guys fly their kites to music. It was really amazing the control that they had on their kites and how animated they become when flying to music.

Later that evening we were on our way to play billiards, took a wrong turn, and came across Laser Quest. We player one round with like 30 other young kids (probably junior high - high school) and it was blast. I highly recommend this place.

All in all it's been a fun weekend - hope yours was too.

Germany for the World Cup!

2006-07-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

Germany made it to the semi-finals after an excrutiatingly long game against Argentina. Tied 1-1 at the end of the game, they went through 30 minute sof OT, still no goals on either side, so it was down to the goal kicks where Germany prevailed! Italy had a pretty clean sweep against the Ukraine, 3-0 putting them in the challengers seat for Tuesday's game against Germany.

Germany will take this, I can feel it. And now that I have my authentic jersey from Germany (thanks mom) I am ready to support my team. If you get a chance, I highly recommend you watch the game. Tuesday July 4th at 12pm PDT.

GO GERMANY!

Sizzle

2006-06-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

Jesus it is hot!! It's crazy. I know I am a fan of sunshine and all but this is pushing it. I'm starting to look forward to the cooler weather in England. Speaking of, no updates as of yet but it is still the plan. I've been watching the World Cup lately, figured if I am going to live in Europe I better get into their footbal. I am enjoying it, and it helps that at work we have an Xbox and I play it constantly with a coworker, who is Italian. So right now we are dueling it out between Italy and Germany, and some days we play whatever teams are playing that day. Germany is kicking ass- woohoo. I am even going to get myself a jersey to show my support.

And don't think I'm an unsupportive American that I wasn't also rooting for the USA, but hey you need to have back up teams. Plus considering how diverse we all are and that my heritage comes from Germany and Ireland, I have to support them as well. Why doesn't Ireland have a World Cup team? What's gives?

Website Project

2006-06-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

For my summer class we had to create a website and make it all pretty and fancy. I confess I did not know much about the HTML aspects of this assignment, but I have been curious to learn. I found this one website that was quite helpful called HTML Goodies. It had information on changing background colors, text colors, and other fun stuff.

I also bought a book from Borders called Creating Web Pages with HTML. Mainly this book is to help me learn HTML for work purposes, but it also proved useful for this assignment. I look forward to learning more about HTML, and hopefully if you return to my site you'll be able to see changes that reflect my new HTML skills.

Moving to London

2006-06-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

Yep, tis true, by the end of 2006 Greg and I should be all set to move to London. This all came about because I had thoughts of doing a semester abroad. But Greg and I were supposed to be moving out and into our own place by the end of the summer, and if that happened, there is no way I could have left him for a semester, financially. Then I started thinking, well maybe we should wait to move out after I do a semester, or maybe I can take him with me,....and basically that all lead to the idea that we should just up and move to London.

We have no obligations here, bills, rent, kids, etc. And since I have an Irish passport, I can easily live and work in the UK free as a bird. So work, not an issue, school on the other hand was a bigger concern. I really wanted to be able to contine my studies abroad, but even with my Irish passport, I still need to live in Europe for a few years to not have to pay international fees- which are crazy expensive. So, I am pulling out of school. I had another summer class lined up and 2 Fall classes which I'll be dropping, and once we are settled in London, I can look into getting into a school over there.

So yeah, this is the plan, and we are doing it. And 6 months to prepare for this isn't very long, but we'll do it. Two biggest things are me getting a solid job over there, and then finding an affordable flat (hehe). Thanks to everyone who knows thus far for your support, it really means a lot to me.

Cheers :)

Life in the Fast Lane

2006-05-21T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all, how ya doin? I am doing well, just busy with school. It's like a never-ending cycle. I finish a class at one institution, still have 3 weeks left at the other one, and back at the first school I start summer classes right away. I think I will actually get a real break mid-August. Thank God. Luckily the hard class, financial accounting, is ending this Wednesday, and my first summer class is relatively easy.

Work is improving. We had a major change in the executive team, which we all thought was needed. Everyone was very happy, and the future of this comany is looking that much brighter. Life outside of work and school is also great. Greg and I will hopefully start looking for a place of our own this summer, and he is working on getting some photograhpy-related work.

Well that is all I have for now. Take it easy.

Blonde Moment

2006-04-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

The other day I was at work, doing my thing, and an Instant Message pops up. I didn't really look at the name, and for whatever reason I thought it was my coworker Charrise. She's talking about how she's broke, and is stressing about money, and I am trying to be supportive. Then she goes into how her car is in the shop and she is afraid to call and find out what is wrong with it, and then she asks if I want to call them. I figured she was joking, and I said I would. Then I inquired about what was wrong with her car, and she says "You should know, I called you in the middle of the night when I broke on me." At that moment I was lost- Charrise never called me....but Greg did.

This whole time I was talking to Greg, and I seriously did not know it. He was a little scared, so I called and explained myself. We were both laughing. And Charrise sits in the cube next to me, so she could hear our conversation and was laughing herself. The lesson today children, is to pay attention to who you are speaking to. Because next time, you could end up saying something to the wrong person that could screw you over. So pay attention!

Bang Bang

2006-03-21T20:27:00.000-08:00

Last last Friday some coworkers and I went to the Jackson Arms shooting range in South San Francisco to go bust some caps. It was pretty intimidating since I have never shot a handgun before. I was so nervouse just loading the clip- and man is that hard! By the way, Joe and I were using an HK .45. It was so loud inside the range, which made me even more nervous, and it didn't help that the shells from the clip sort of bounced out at you after every shot. But I got used to it all, and was having a blast.

I did pretty darn good too for my first time shooting. I'll have to take pictures of my two targets and post them. But to give you an idea, they were posters with the outline of a persons torso, and different areas were sectioned off and given different points. I managed to hit right in the center of the chest several times, one right in the forehead, and the rest were scattered around the rest of the body. Only a few ended up outside of the "person" on my poster. I want to take lessons, make sure I develop the proper technique.

Moral of this post- don't F*$% with me or you'll end up looking like the guys on my posters. ;)

To Quote Beth "OMG a New Post"

2006-02-21T19:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, I've been neglecting my blog-update-duties. Sorry. Life just went from 0-60 right after the New Year, and I honestly haven't had time to update. So what has been going on that's kept me so busy, you ask? Well, let me tell you, in a nutshell. Work was picking up after the slow month of December. We were prepping for a World Wide Sales meeting, and I had a training to prep for, and I was also getting a lot of new assignments, projects, and responsibilities that had me running around like crazy.

Then I also started my second semester of Graduate school. My acutal "grad class" is Organziational Behavior- I took something very similar in Undergrad, and this class is very chill. The teacher is cool, we sit in a circle and sign Kum-bay-ya...haha, gotcha. We do sit in a circle though and basically just talk. About the text, different thoeries, share our own experiences, etc. Very cool. My other class, with is actually one of my undergrad prerequisits that I need to fullfill, that one is the kick in my a$$. Financial Accounting. Mind you I am pretty darn good at math, if I may be so bold to say, but I haven't been in a math-type class in 4 years, and I have never done accounting. But I am managing, and learning a lot. It just has actual homework which is pretty labor intensive.

So, aside from my full-time job, and graduate school I have also been trying to have a life. Hang out with Greg as much as I can, and also with my friends (yes Greg, I do have friends) :P Plus, we all know that February is THE busiest month of the year. Everyone has a birthday (including me- yay- 22!), or party, or some kind of event going on. So yeah, that's what's going on. I know there was a lot of other cool stuff that happened in between these lines covering the past two months, but that requires another long post, and right now I need to go cook my din-din (chicken strips and pommes), and then study like crazy for my Financial accounting midterm tomorrow. joy.

2oo6

2006-01-01T13:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! A time for celebration, reflection, and resolution. For me 2005 was a pretty significant year. I graduated from college (yay), left Borders to start a "real" job as a marketing assistant, and decided to start Graduate school as well. Other significant points were that I began surfing, did a bit of traveling (yosemitee, hawaii, reno), and had lots of good times with friends and family. Looking forward I hope that school isn't so hectic in 2006, that my job grows, and that I am able to pencil in time for fun suff. I want to make sure I continue with surfing, and hope to acqire a surfing buddy. Traveling probably won't be to far off places, but more local like Yosemitee (first trip didn't work out so well). Definitly have to get in some skiing this season. Last year I only went once, hopefully I can make it out twice or more.

I'd like to say that one resolution is to get into shape, but that is so common that I figure by now "Getting into shape/lose weight/etc" is like a pre-determined resolution that 99% of the population are likely to have, that it isn't necessary to state it anymore. Whatever your resolution(s) is, I hope you can stick to it, and may 2006 bring happiness, prosperity, and good health to you all! (ew..that sounds like the inside of some Hallmark card).

:)

Christmas :)

2005-12-25T19:34:00.000-08:00

This year Christmas just came upon me too quickly, I hardly had time for it all to sink in. Christmas eve I went to the McQ's house, watched "It's a Wonderful Life" for the first time. Good movie. Christmas morning we opened gifts. I received some very nice stuff from Greg's family, Spongebob goodies, lotions and other bathroom stuff, and from Greg I got the most beautiful pair of diamond earings. Totally unexpected, and I was almost too afraid to open the white, velvet "Zales" box. I wasn't the only surprised person, Brian (greg's dad) was totally shocked when we handed him a beautiful, blue, hollow-body electric guitar. And Greg I kept in slight suspense by first giving him photo paper for his printer, and then had Beth (his sister) drop this HUGE box on his lap later. It was an Epson 4990 photo scanner, very nice and something he will get a lot of use from.

Back at my house it was also a very nice Christmas, giftcards to my favie places- Victorias Secret, Macys, and Nordys, then Sephora items from Karina, a gap shirt, and a Spongebob version of that "Barrel of Monkeys" game. I just finished stuffing myself with good food, and am eager to try dessert. We've been watching Xmas themed movies all day...and sadly our TV is being weird and is kind of frozen just showing us DVD's. We can't switch to TV, hell we can't even turn the darn thing off!

Well I hope you also had a very lovely Christmas- Hohoho!

Freedom!!

2005-12-14T22:45:00.000-08:00

Today was my last final. My group and I did our marketing strategy presentation and I just have a few minor edits to do to 2 essays for that class, and I'm done. Horray! It has been a bit of a struggle this semester going back full swing to school and starting full time work. the thought of not continuing this part of my education crossed my mind many a time. But, I just have to keep my head up, and know that at my age I am doing myself a favor getting this over with now, and I will have plenty of time soon enough for work and play.

Concerts, Hockey Games, Movies

2005-11-21T19:56:00.000-08:00

so over the past 3 weeks or so I have been a busy girl. Greg and I went to see Foo Fighters and Weezer in concert- awesome show! I have some great pics too of Weezer, and if you look closely, you'll notice there are some very muscualr men stripping on stage during a song. It was their last song, and I think Dave (FF) set that one up to surprise the Weezer guys. Hilarious.

Then less than a week later Greg and I went with a friend of his and his wife to a Sharks game. We'd been wanting to see them play for a long time, so that was a real treat. I had on my over-sized Sharks jersey and was screaming and jumping. Greg found it quite amusing.

Then, about 5 days later Greg's dad (Brian) took me and the McQ family and Greg's godfather out for a special evening, consisting of dinner and a show. The dinner wasn't really the big surprise, though Brian sure did keep it under wraps until a few days before. We had dinner at this fancy Italian place in San jose called Il Forino. Now, Greg and I were a bit suspicious about what the "show" would be. We checked out where the restaurant was in SJ, and noticed it was very close to the HP Pavillion. So we checked what shows were going on that night- you know who was playing- Paul McCartney. Greg and i were trying to not get all worked up because we figured there was no way his dad got us all tickets for him, even though we know how much Brian LOVES the Bealtes and Paul and the rest of the guys, it just seemed impossible. So after dinner, we got these goodie bags, and some stuff in it was hinting at the show. We got mini-magic 8-balls, glow sticks (getting closer) and voila- ear plugs. Greg and I were like " we know we know!!" and sure enough he busted out tickets for PM.!!!!!!! We were all freaking out- and not only that- but he got us all iPod Shuffles!!! Crazy man. So that was an amazing night, though i admit, after less than 2 weeks of work, school, and all these late night shows, my energy levels were at zero. But I did enjoy the show, PM rocks!

Then, this past weekend, Greg and I decided to be crazy and go see the midnight showing of Harry Potter. Major mistake. I was practically asleep by 10:30pm, and our movie didn't start until 12:30am, we got home at 4am and i was supposed to be waking up at 5:45am to go work. Not smart, but the movie was really great. may even have to see it again when I'm not 1/2 asleep.

Okay, just thought i would update you all on the events area of my life. :)

Ickie Group Work

2005-11-15T21:10:00.000-08:00

I have the pleasure of working with the same group of people in my marketing class all semester long on this one project. At first, it started out okay, I started noticing everyone's personalitites, but for the most part they all seemed cool. It's always around the early mid-semester stages that you REALLY start to see how people opperate. I tell ya, my group has some "special" people in it. One is "the follower" just goes with the flow, doesn't ever really seem to have an opinion, one is "the aggressor" not afraid to say how they feel and takes charge, the last one is "the most-unreliable-irresponsilbe-airhead" and if you can't figure out how this person acts based on my lovely description....well read it again. And me, well I tend to try an be the organizer, makong sure we are all on task, turning things in on time, etc., and a peacemaker, don't usually rock the boat, and if there is any, I try to mediate as best i can, and i consider myself a very responsible member.

Lately for this project I was seriously stressing out- so much that it all came to a breaking point of me crying and my whole body was freaking out- eye burning, nose bleeds, throat tensing up, etc. It took me a few days...maybe even a while week, to get myself together. To understand that I can't control every aspect of this project, as much as I try, and that I can only do so much, and as long as I am doing my best, then that is okay. And i also realized that I need to not have this group crap on my mind 24/7, need to learn to relax, and not take it all on myself to do this and that. So far it's been working, not feeling as stressed, despite the fact that my group is slightly falling apart, i think the rest will be okay. thanks for listening. :)

Emeril and Elmo!

2005-11-05T21:58:00.000-08:00

On Friday night as I was flipping channels to see what was on TV, I came across the food channel to find Emeril with Elmo cooking! It was the cutest thing. Sadly I caught only the last like 10 minutes, but it was great! Emeril and Elmo made biscuits with strawberries and whip cream, and Elmo was the sweetest thing! If they ever re-run it I hope I can record it. Here is the site with the info: http://www.sesameworkshop.org/healthyhabits/emeril.php

Craziness

2005-10-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

This past month has flown by so fast, I can't believe my last post was about starting my job. Seems so long ago, and so much has happened since. the job is great. I work with cool, nice people, and I finally get what the company is all about. It took me a while, but we had some demos of our products, and it all made sense. The dimmer switch in my brain went up a bit.

School has been keeping me even more busy and stressed. Had to turn in a group-essay-exam, and of course we had some straglers that couldn't seem to get their shyte together, so of course the night we are supposed to turn this in, what am I doing- writing someone eles's essays. Granted, they were only about 1 page each, but still, it was like- I did my part, you need to do yours. Luckily someone else in my group helped and also re-did some questions so they would actually make SENSE. err....that was last week. Now, we've realized that we are a bit behind on our group project, but luckily so are other people, and a few items were cut from the "list of things to do" by the teacher so that makes it a little easier, but we still have a lot to do, and we have to do it TOGETHER. none of this, you do 1-5 and i'll do 6-10. seriously need to keep tabs on certain people. I'm not a student, I feel like a babysitter. (whoa...went on a rant there...sorry- you can see the whole situation frustrates me).

In other news...going to see FOO FIGHTERS Friday night with Greg- yay. I've been looking foward to this. I'm a little bummed though about Halloween. This is the first year in a while where I still don't know what i am doing, what i'll dress up as, and I still haven't carved my pumpkin! Luckily, Miss Lil and I are doing that one tomorrow after work, but unless someone clues me in on some party (hint hint) ...I'll be laying low this weekend.

Marketing Assistant

2005-10-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

Today was my first day at my new job as a marketing assistant. They wasted no time putting me to work, my pal Charrise (who works there and hooked me up with the job) had been telling me that they desperately needed someone because tons of work was piling up. I am happy to oblige. The people are pretty nice too. I met most everyone in the office, had to write some names down on post-its so I'll remember.

For lunch my boss, Lynne, took me and 2 other coworkers out for burgers and beer. Cool. I am really excited about this job. It will lead to all sorts of great opportunities, with good money to be made, and hopefully some traveling involved.

OMG- so this evening I had to get my passport and SS card so I can do the HR paperwork tomorrow, and I could not find my damn SS card!! I had kept it in 2 places before, and I thought it was still there, but i checked those two places (once I fricken figured out where THOSE were) and it wasn't there. I was starting to get really nervous and mad that i would have hidden it so well, that even I couldn't find it. But then there- it called to me- and I found it. yay! i exist! lol.

Todays Lesson- Hide your SS card well, but not well enough that you can't find it in 10 minutes or less.

Say Hello to Sprite

2005-09-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

This week I purchased a Green iPod Mini 4GB to replace my original, 1st generation ipod, which I will be giving to Greg. Can you believe the iPod Nano is replacing the Mini?! When I realized this I decided I better get my Mini now before they are all gone. I like it, it's lime green, cute, tiny- perfect for me. i don't know about the rest of you, but it's really sad that the Nano is replacing the Mini. The Mini sold so well, and was just relseased like 1 year ago! Plus the nano....well it's too nano-ish. It is so fricken tiny and light, that someone could drop one in your hand and you wouldn't even know it's there because you wouldn't feel it. I like the look of it, and the color screen, but they could have done it at the same size of the Mini and just expanded that line. Oh well, at least I got mine before they are all gone. Yay for Sprite!

Get up of your butt

2005-09-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I am going surfing today. I just need to keep saying it in my head so I actually do it. I don't know why it is such a chore for me to get up, put on my suit, strap the board to my car and go. Is it because it looks cold outside and the thought of freezing Pacific Ocean water makes me snuggle in my robe even more? It is because I'm afraid the surf conditions will be shity and I'll have a bad surf day? Or is it because I want someone to go with me? Probably all of the above, and a lot of the last one. It just really helps when you know someone else is going with you, it motivates you. And it is a lot more fun.

But, I will not let that get in my way, I haven't surfed in weeks and it is bothering me, so I am going! Grrrr!! Woman Power! lol.

Farewell Borders

2005-09-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

This Sunday I gave Borders my 2 weeks notice. My friend from SFSU called me a few weeks ago asking if I was interested in an open marketing assistant position where she works. I interviewed, a few times, and this weekend I received an offer, and have accepted. Sorta, we are still working out some details. Most people have been very supportive, of course they are sad to see me leave, but we'll just have to hang out more. I wanted to talk to our GM today about it, I left her a memo yesdaterday on her desk stating my 2 weeks resignation, but our talk didn't happen. She wasn't in her best mood, and for this she needs to be in a good mood.

I am excited, new job, new people, new everything. It will be great. I'll have normal 9-5 M-F hours, vacations, benefits (super important) and I'll be working in an environment where I can use my skills from college, and grow with the new skills I am learning in graduate school. I will keep posting new information as I get closer to starting my new job. :)

Good Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

2005-09-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

I got my fellow peeps at Borders to agree to donating 50% of our tips to the Red Cross to help the people in New Orleans. I started it today, made a cool little sign and put it on our tip jar. It was filling up nice, one lady and I talked about it for a little while, and she put in a $5. But my cafe manager saw the sign, and since we are a Seatles Best they don't allow non-SBC signs anywhere in the cafe. Plus, our tips get taxed, so we have to figure out how we'll "officially" do this. So, I took down the sign, and we still took 50% of the money in there, which amounted to $15- not bad for only like 5 hours of tipping, and I'll be giving it to the Red Cross. Hopefully we can figure it out so we can continue our good deed. Spread the Love.

When It Rains, It Pours

2005-09-04T00:48:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I finally had it with Borders, and I started looking for other jobs. Right away my friend told me that her company was in need of an assistant, so we got that going. I had that interview, and then the next week, another friend called to see if I needed a job because her company needed an assistant. I set up an interview for Thursday, and then the next day, my HR manager tells me that our current CSR has put in her two weeks notice and if I am still interested in the position, to apply. (!!!!!) I couldn't believe it, everything was happening so quickly. And later that same day, this woman who runs her own event company, whom I had sent my resume to, emailed me and we set up an interview for Friday afterwork, my CSR interview was Friday during work. Crazy.

Most of it went well, the CSR interview didn't seem to go well. The guy was a bit of a jerk and I felt that from the moment I met him that he didn't like me at all. I was really hoping that the first company I interviewed with would call me for the job, but they haven't, and I doubt they will since it has been 1 week since the interview. And my friend from that company left for vacation the day before my interview so I can't ask her what's going on. Oh well, the others are still good opportunities. It wil just be nice to get out from Borders, do something a little more meaningful with my degree, and get more money. So keep your fingers crossed for me!

Winter Formal at Borders!

2005-08-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

This winter my co-workers and I at Borders will be celebrating our 1st Winter Formal. Me and my fellow committee members- Jenn, Liz, and Christine- are planning it all out. We will pick a date, probably a Sunday since we close earliest on Sundays and can have an early after-party. And on that day we choose, all Borders employees (who choose to participate) will show up to work in their prom gear. Dresses, suits, etc- we will be dressed to the 9's and work our shifts like that. Then, we'll have an after party- TBD, where we will crown the Borders prom King, Queen and other court memebers.

This is going to be so much fun! The only bummer is our dress code doesn't allow open toed shoes and tank tops, so us girls will have to get creative, but it's no biggie. It'll just be fun to dress up and see other people dressed up. Our customers are going to think- "wow, not only am i receiving excellent customer service, but they looks great too!" lol. More to come as the details unfold. :)

Thank you!

2005-08-08T22:52:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to let ya'll know that I truly appreciated Greg making me go out and surf on my own. I might have been a baby about it at first, but I knew it had to be done and it really helped me. So- Thanks Greg!! *big smoochies*

Conquering Fears

2005-08-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I wanted to go surfing, but I have issues about going there by myself. I realize that when I am actually surfing that I am alone, at least with no one I know, and that anyone coming along is just hanging out on the beach. I guess I just like knowing that someone is there so I don't feel so alone. But on Sunday mom wanted to get stuff done, so she couldn't be my surfing buddy- though a little later she did offer to go for a few hours only, but I didn't want to go all the way out there just for a few hours and feel the pressure to leave. So i got a litttle mopey, and was sulking around the house. Greg was asleep and Sunday is his day to sleep me and for me to not wake him up early :) When I saw him flip in the bed I took that as my opportunity to go bother him, figuring he was partially awake. We went back and forth about the whole "me-not-going-alone" thing- he though it was silly and that I should just go, and I just kept saying that I didn't want to go alone.

Eventually I started putting my suit on and slowly getting ready to go by myself...i think I was taking my time, hoping Greg would join me. But he insited that I do this on my own and get over this need for company. We agreed that if I did this on my own, he'd come out with my next weekend. So i did. It was a good thing, and I knew I was being a baby about the whole thing, I just really had issues going by myself. But I went, rented my board on my own, managed to get it in my car, and get myself down to the beach. It was a really rough day in the water. I was getting tossed around, my board was beating the Shyte out of me- I have an awesome purple bruise on my thigh where the fin hit me. I was able to catch some good waves, But I didn't stay out for long, the water was really rough, I spent more time just trying to paddle out then anything, and my toes started going numb. It was a good expereince though, and I was also getting over this fear i have of the really strong waves, which i think relates to me having trouble poping up. I get nervous cuz these waves are really pushing you and the thought of leaving the safety of my board gets to my head. But i managed to stand up even while riding some of the stronger waves and just going with the flow. i still REALLY need to work on poping up though.....that will be a major accomplishment for me at this point.

Cum Laude my A$$

2005-08-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

When I graduated from SFSU I found out that I was graduating with honors (naturally) and there are 3 levels- Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, and Summa Cum Laude- going from lowest to highest. I was part of the Cum Laude list, which was great, but I always had a feeling that I was better then just Cum Laude- like c'mon, I've gotten all A's for the past 2 years, for my entire major....I have to be at least part of the magna team. Whatever, I'm not sure how they figure your rank anyway, so i just accepted it. Then the other day i went to check my unofficial transcript online to check my GPA for my grad school application, which by the way it was a lovely 3.78, and I noticed at the top of the transcript it said- "Graduated with Honors- Magna Cum Laude" And I was like- what?! i went back to the program from graduation and checked to see where my name was, and it was under cum laude....so I don't know if it was a type-o or what but who cares, it says on my transcript Magna Cum Laude and that's what counts! So take that- yeah!!! They should have that honors ceremony all over again just for tihs discovery. :)

Sufer Girl

2005-07-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was my first surf all on my own. The first day, Saturday, it was a bit hard to get up on the board because I had rented a 9'6 longboard. All my lessons have been on 10' longboards and it is amazing how much difference 4 inches can make. I kept nose-diving into the bottom of the ocean, flipping and flying all over. As the day progressed I was getting the hang of the board, but I like my 10'. Sunday I was able to rent a 10' longboard and had a blast. Caught lots of waves, and still wiped out a few times. I need to work on popping up in one motion, i still use my knee as a crutch which is BAD. I just have to keep going out and practice, practice, practice! :)

Here are some pics of me from Saturday, courtesy of Greg. :) To view more, go to: http://www.fujicolor.com.au/Triana

From graduate to graduate school

2005-07-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

Life has been oober crazy. So much has been going on that I have barely had time to comprehend it all. Here's the skinny- I have decided to start graduate school this fall, 2005. I was going to start taking pre-requisit classes at CSM, and then start the grad. school Fall 2006, but the program director for the MBA program at Notre Dame de Namur said I might as well start the actual program if I am going to start the pre-requisit stuff. They allow you some leway in finishing your pre-reqs while you start the program. So I went home, talked to mom and BOOM- I am applying for Fall 2005. I had to drop the German course at CSM becuase there is no way I can manage graduate school and learning a language at the same time. My new plan for that is to finish my MBA in about 2 years, then I will still have 2-ish years before the supposed "move to germany" happens and I can learn german then. So there is that.

I have also taken up surfing- yay for me. Last weekend I went down to Santa Cruz to buy my wetsuit, and today I went out to Pacifica for my first surf on my own. It went okay, the board I rented though was only 9'6 and usually i have been learning on a 10' - and believe it or not but those 4 inches make a difference becuase everytime I tried to catch a wave, my board took a nose dive to the sandy bottom and i went flying. towards the end I was starting to figure out how to manage the board so it wouldnt do that,...but I like the 10'. I am going back out tomorrow morning and hopefully i'll find a 10ft board to rent. Hopefully I'll get some pics of me out on the board soon, Greg was with me today but his battery was low and so was his energy ;) I'll give mom my camera tomorrow and we'll see what happens.

Deutschland!!!

2005-07-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

Earlier this 2005 a wonderful idea popped into my head- move to germany. Greg and I were just driving in the car and I realized that I can't stop thinking about Germany and that I really miss it and want to go back on a slightly more permanent basis. Greg thought the idea was cool, but I didn't get a lot of support on the home front. And after lots of talks, I decided to put the plan on hold. I realized that I wanted to go to graduate school still and if we were to move in like 1 year (which was my plan at the time) and live there for who knows....2-4 years...then graduate school would have to wait. There were also a lot of other things Greg and I wanted to do first before making such a big move.

But ho- in the back of my mind the thought has continued to linger, and this past week my moving spirit was rekindled and I announced plans to move to Germany. This time though, I have a better plan of how it will all pan out. We won't be going for about another 4 years, which leaves me plently of time to finish graduate school, for Greg to finish his school and start working more in photography, time for us both to save money, get more work experience out here, and-of course- to learn German. That was another set-back when I thought of this before, Neither Greg or I speak German and i doubt we would have been able to learn enough in a year. So this new plan of mine makes more sense, factoring in all those lovely details.

I'm already getting started on the language part- I have signed up for German I starting thus August at CSM, and by next Fall I should be starting Grad. school.....that could take about 2-3 years to finish depending on if I am part-time or full-time....while continuing my German, and getting Greg going on his German, working, saving, and violla (?) 4 years have past, and we are off to Germany. Now, don't get me wrong- I understand that this kind of move isn't going to be easy. A lot of planning will be involved in the next 4 years to help the transition. I have family in Munchen whom I shall solicit help with job-finding, apartment-finding, and once we get there- setting everything up. I'm hoping that between now and then greg and I can afford to visit germany for a few weeks, kind of a reconnaisance trip, but we'll see.

The whole purpose of this trip, for me anway, is just to see more of Europe, live there and just be there. I don't have any delusions that life will be a total vacation and that greg and i will always be traveling, and doing stuff- well maybe i would wish for that, but I'm a practical girl, and know that we will only do what we can afford. So yeah, that's the plan.

Job-hunting...season closed?

2005-07-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

This job hunting business is looking bleak. I had a whole bunch of places I applied to, and a few calls/invited for interviews,...but a little birdy told me to be careful of these places that are "sales/marketing" because what you end up doing is like door-to-door work. ew....not my thing. and sadly some of these places I have applied/interviewed for are those type of places. Rats. Back to Square1.

Why isn't Pixar calling me? Maybe they misplaced my number and are at this moment sacrificing small rodents to the telephone gods, hoping that they (the telephone gods) will be pleased enough by their offering to give them my phone number again. I just have to remember that everything happens for a reason. maybe I am not meant to find a job right now....just gotta go with the flow. Well, back to searching the wanted-ads. Wish me luck. :)

Opera

2005-07-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I took mom to the SF Opera to see Bizets "The Pearl Fishers." We went early in the morning (10am) to the box office, and at 11am any tickets that were not sold already for the show, go on sale for students at $15/ticket. So, we got orchestra seats (normally like $100+) for $15/each. Cool huh? After we got the tickets we walked to the shopping center on market and had lunch at the Nordstroms cafe. Good food, and plus my friend Marie works at the bar, so we said "hi." The opera itself was pretty cool- the story was based in Sri Lanka, so the sets were really colorful, as well as the costumes. The story is about two friends who fall in love with the same girl, but swear that neither will go for her, and remain friends. but then she comes to their village, and one recognizes her, they are in love....and then the other friend finds out, and gets jealous and their punishment is death. but then at the end, the friend creates a diversion, sets them free, and dies for them. The ending though was kinda quick. They didn't really spend much time saying good bye to each other, or explaining why he changed his mind to set them free- actually, maybe they did. see, the guy realized later that this girl, had once saved his life many years ago, and so he was returning the favor i guess. the one bummer of the whole show was that this old man sitting behind us sneezed, and failed to cover his mouth so his snotty- goobers sprayed ALL OVER our necks and shoulders- and we were wearing tanktops. it was soooooo gross- about as bad a Greg getting yacked on in Hawaii. I felt like I needed a shower immediately. at intermission mom asked him to cover his mouth next time, apparently he didnt realize he goobbered us- eww, you should always cover your mouth when you sneeze!!! many because he was old he forgot that life-lesson. Ew.

Long time no post....

2005-06-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry for my blog absence. I have been super busy ever since we left for Hawaii...and once we came back I have been working, taking some summer classes and it's just been nuts! I have barely had time to actually look at my Hawaii photos. Anywho, here is the short, sweet version of what I've been up to. Work- still at Borders and sadly the position I was in line for...well I am still waiting. And I guess I am too impatient and don't want other opportunities to pass me by so I have continued to look for jobs elsewhere. If the one at Borders opens up first, cool. If not, oh well. I just applied for this position at Pixar- wish me luck!

School- I am taking a Cross training boot camp class 4 days a week at the butt-crack of dawn. it's a really great workout. Then I'm also taking a computer class to learn Excel with my mum on Thursday nights. The teacher is such a pompus ass. Damn community colllege jerks. He talks to all of us like we are babies and that we dont know what a computer is. Errr...mom and I do our best to pretty much ignore his yammering and just do our work.

Life in General- Is going great. Hawaii was wonderful. I swam with turtles, surfed (and got a really bad sunburn- ouch), went swimming with Greg, did a little bit of hiking, and mostly we drove all over the island exploring. (O'ahu). Swimming with the turtle had to be the highlight for me. A few down points- 1) the west side of the island is kinda crudy. they get no precipitation so it is all dry and yikkie. plus, it is the lower economy area and it shows. sad. 2) we went on a dinner cruise one night. the travel agent guy lied to me. he said sodas were free, and you got 1 free alcoholic beverage. when we got on the boat- only 1 free alcoholic drink- anything else was $3 a pop. we just drank water. and the boat itself was a little dissapointing. small, and not as fancy as in the picture the travel guy showed me. oh well. we did get some great pictures though and it was a really nice view of Waikiki. the major downer was that some poo girl got a little sea-sick, went running down the aisle (and greg and i had aisle seats) and she started blowing chunks, and some landed on greg's back. ewwww....we were all shocked, and i took his napkin, brushed him off, and made sure i did not catch any shrapnal. it wasn't so bad, not like drippy, super-chucky- just a few specks, but still pretty gross.

as for the rest of my life in general, i am just really tired these days. working out in the morning, then work for 8 hours, come home, barely have time to eat dinner and then it is bedtime. and i haven't been getting to bed on time either, so that probably is contributing to my lack of sleep. its funny, i'm done with school but i feel like i am busier then when i was in school. crazy.....oh- i am also taking up surfing. i really love it, and we have an ocean right here, granted it is really cold, but that is why they invented wet suits. so i have another lesson in july, and then i hope to purchse my own board and suit. yay. okay, i have yapped too much. hope this satisfies those of you who have been wondering "what's triana been up to?" i'll try to get some pics posted.... we'll see. aloha!

Super StAAAAAr!!

2005-06-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

That's me- I'm a super star because I got ALL A's again for my final semester at SFSU! Woohoo! I was a little nervous about getting all A's, because I had this one teacher who gave only B's, despite the fact that our group nailed our presentations and sutff. So, when we got our dissapointing 88 on our first group project, we bugged this guy on what we had to do to get an A on the next group project. I thought we did really well on the next one, but then on the final exam- the teacher wanted us to know practically EVERYTHING from the whole semester. Not just the text books, but any anecdotal stories he told, and how they related to our class, and all our guest speakers, the movies we watched...it was intense. Plus, he has not given us a test yet in this class, so we didn't know what to expect as far as his style of writing the test. So on the test day, there were things on the exam I knew, and others things that I had no idea what they were. So I am really happy that i got my A. Yay. *pats on the back for Triana*

Wind-up Toy

2005-05-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I get myself so wound-up over work BS sometimes. Well, maybe I do know why, I just wish I wouldn't get all worked-up and pissed off at stuff that I shouldn't really care about. See, I don't work directly in the music department anymore, but I still am attached to it- especially my DVD section, which looks like crap. It just makes me upset to see how the music section is being taken care of sometimes and I just want to scream, and tell people how to do it right. Sounds a bit controling doesn't it? I admit, I'm a slight control freak, and I tend to think that my way of doing things is better than other people's ways....hey at least I recognize this in me. But seriously, it's not always "my way", it's just how it should be done. Like store policy, and people don't do it. Luckily I was able to vent my frustrations a bit before I killed someone or quit. Greg keeps telling me that I need to "let go" of it all- the music department and Dvd's....it's hard though. I have a serious attachment to the section, I really CARE about it- how the place is run, managed, and looks, and I can't seem to snip that umbilical cord. *sigh* And I worry that even if I were to take a new position at the store where I am totally away from the music section and not involved in it at all, that I will still stress out over it. It's like, as long as I work there, and see it, I'm going to give a shit. But who knows, maybe once I really "snip" that cord and take a position away from music I won't be so attached. I guess we'll see. Thanks for listening. :)