Time for another countdown

My sister is coming to visit for the first time since I've been here - yay!!

She gets in on September 29th and while she is only staying for a week....we're gonna have so much fun. One month to go!!!

Day out at Greenwich Park

My Vancouver friends (who live around the corner in Bromley), Kassan, Aaron, Haley and Geoff, had an invite from Kassan's mate Dom for a day out in Greenwich so they invited me along.

We turned up at about 2 after going wedding dress shopping for Haley and there were about 10 people there. We had gone to M&S for our lunch and then a cold beer and wine for our drinks - Strongbow - big mistake! So we pulled out the blankets, set ourselves up, introduced ourselves to all of the other people who we didn't know and got to drinking.

By about 4:30 there were about 20-25 people and there was cricket, football, badminton and frisbee going on. After about 3 or 4 strongbows I decided that it would be a great idea to try out football (soccer) and wasn't all that bad except for the fact that I tackled a bit too much (oops!) because it seemed to be the easiest way to get the ball away from the opposition. So after an hour or so of that we decided to take a drinking break.....back to the blankets for food and booze!

Then it was onto frisbee which I'm actually quite good at when "merry" but suck at when sober haha! After 45 minutes or so of that it was another drinking break.

The sun went down at 8:30ish and it went from being ridiculously hot and sunny to absolutely feezing so we decided to move down to the pub at the entrance to the park. Great idea!

I'd already had 5 or 6 strongbows and proceeded to have another 3 or 4 at the bar. Wicked time as the majority of the people there were Aussies and they can drink!! At some point during the night I ended up getting engaged to some random Aussie named Blair....don't ask!! So after that we decided it was probably a good idea to head home. Off we went to try and find a cab which was surprisingly easy for that time of the night.

Instead of all going our separate ways, Blair and myself ended up crashing at Haley and Geoff's as it's a halfway point from both of our places and Haley made us Kraft dinner - woohoo!

Fab day, hopefully if summer sticks around we can do the same thing next weekend!

Claire's birthday

It was my friend Claire's 20th birthday party on Thursday and she had reserved an area at the new bar/club Revolution. There are only a few bars and clubs in the City so when a new one opens, everybody goes because they are sooooo bored of the old ones. And of course in London, Thursday's are the new Friday's so last night being a Thursday, every bar was busy - but Revolution was packed! I had no idea where they were or how big Revolution was so after half an hour trying to get from one end of the bar to the other, I made my way downstairs to the club and there they were. I found the new love of my life - raspberry mojito's!! Yummy! After a few of those and some "birthday cake" shooters, the bartender suggested some shooter (I can't remember the name) which was essentially vodka and chili. Of course, I love chili's so I said bring it on! There were only 6 of us brave enough to try them...me and 5 guys. It was alright, not very spicy but left an awful taste in your mouth. The best part was my mate Dave (in the pic) - I think it took him about 20 minutes to recover from the mouth burn hahaha!! I only stayed until 10 as I was out the night before until 11 (and consumed over a bottle of white wine). So much for not drinking as much... It was a good night but I gotta say, I think I'm going to wait for the Revolution craze to die down before I go back!!

Winter is here!

It's official, London missed summer this year!

I think it's been the wettest summer on record, there have been floods all over London and everybody is sick and tired of this weather.

I actually had to get my winter coat out on Tuesday and have been wearing it for the last three days. Apparently we're supposed to have a warm and sunny long weekend but I'll believe it when I see it!!

Ami's engagement party

My friend Ami had an engagement party last Saturday. I'd been planning to go to this party for a couple of months but hadn't planned on having a bottle of wine at lunch on Friday followed by a pitcher of seabreeze after work and then a bottle of wine with Dad on Friday night!! So needless to say I was slightly hungover on Saturday morning/afternoon. I ended up spending the majority of my day on the couch but finally got my ass in gear at 4ish so I could get ready for Ami's. Ami lives in Basildon, Essex, which is where the party was. This all seemed ok until I set off. I left my house at 5:30 to get the train from my station to London, then got a bus to another station and another train to Basildon. I finally arrived at 7:30 - 2 hours after leaving my house - ugh! When I got there I could barely speak to anybody let alone drink! The turnout was good, not many people I know as there was a lot of family but it was still a good time. I only stayed for an hour and a half as I had to leave by 9:30 in order to get home by midnight. That's right, I left the party at 9:30 and walked through my door just before 12! So, 4.5 hours of traveling for an hour and a half at the party. It was fun but next time I won't be drinking the night before!!

Men are from Mars

Well as far as I'm concerned, they might as well be! After dating for 12 years, I am no better off and have no more clues/ideas about men than I originally did. If anything, I'm worse off! Just when you think you've figured them out - you get one who you think is totally different....so you start trying to figure that one out - then they change and you have to start all over again. I can't keep up!!

They all think that we're the hard ones to figure out but we're not (well at least I'm not hehe!) Men...they can't make up their minds....

Anyways, that was my little rant - had to get it off of my chest.

Weekend in Alresford

It was the first weekend of summer - finally!! So we headed down to Caroline's Mom's house in Alresford. We left work on Friday afternoon and met up at Waterloo Station to catch the 6:35 train down. Caroline was already down there as she had been off school for a couple of weeks. So after getting our tickets from "Prince", we hopped on the train for the 50 minute journey to Winchester.

The train was packed and I was shocked that there were so many commuters to that part of England. We were lucky to get a fast train but I could not imagine my journey to/from work being a minimum of 50 minutes. Once you get off of the train at Winchester, there are a lot of people who live between a 5-20 minute drive away and of course there's the walk when you get off at Waterloo. That means that some of these people travel 1-2 hours each way! Craziness!!

There were 6 of us on the train and we got a cab when we got off at Winchester. After a 10-15 minute drive, we got to Alresford which is sweet little village just north of Winchester. It's tiny but very quaint and super peaceful.

By the time we got to the house it was about 8 at night. Caroline, bless her, had made this lovely vegan chili as Hannah is a vegan and I'm a veggie. So we sat outside and ate our dinner, had several bottles of wine and lit a fire in the garden - it was fabulous!

I woke up at 6:15 on Saturday, guess I'm used to my Monday -Friday early mornings, and of course everybody else was sound asleep so I went for a walk. Went for about 1/2 hour walk around this cute little stream and ended up in the village. I was hoping that there would be a little coffee shop open as Caroline only had decaf.....but it wasn't even 7am so I was out of luck. I even waited 10 minutes for the Co-op to open so that I could get some fresh orange juice and a newspaper.

Then it was back to the house to sit on the outdoor swing thingy with my juice and paper. Finally somebody woke up at about 8:30 and it started to get gorgeous and sunny. Everybody slowly filtered downstairs and it was time to hang out in the sunshine!

Our friend My was catching the 9:30 train into Winchester as she couldn't come on Friday night. So Caroline and I went to pick her up and get groceries for dinner that night. We stopped in at the Tescos and got tons of groceries before heading back. When we eventually got back to Caroline's, the girls went for a long walk but I stayed in as my knee was acting up bigtime. So instead of a walk, I prepped lunch (for those of you who know me...that's a scary thought but there were no fires and no accidents).

The girls got back from their walk and it was time for drinks - pimms and then wine - bbq and suntanning!! Of course most of us didn't think there was going to be much in the way of suntanning so we didn't take bikinis....so....it was bra time! Fab afternoon with temperatures getting in the high 20's which is great as it's been like February weather for months! After hours of sunning ourselves in the backyard (and some ridiculous photos) we made dinner which was more of a continuation of lunch...Then there were more drinks and girlie talk. I went to bed early as I'd gotten up at stupid o'clock that morning.

Next morning I woke up early again but was lazy and lay in bed until just before 8am. When I got up Hannah was cleaning the kitchen, so I helped out and then we walked up to town. Luckily there was a little cafe open with REAL COFFEE!!!! Yay! After a couple of good cups of java, we went back to the house for breakfast of fresh fruit and more sun. Lunch was more wine and leftovers from the day before.

Nobody really wanted to leave but we knew that there was stuff to do when we got home. So four of us got the 2:45 train home, the other 3 got a later train and Caroline stayed back as that's where she's hanging out until she moves into her new place next month.

It was an amazing weekend - almost on par with going to Kelowna for a weekend. I'd love to go back another time but of course...it would have to be sunny for more bra tanning hahaha!