Endorphins Rock

I meant to update yesterday whilst at work but got too tired so I'm doing it now before i get too tired. Not that much happened today but, barring the inability to find body wash (I don't know where Target hides it) and abandonment by good internet, today was a pretty awesome day. It all began when I slept for 2-3 hours at work (shh don't tell), not all in one shot though, I'm not that bad. Finished all my work with about fifteen minutes to spare so I dawdled a bit and washed the back sliding door until nine. Sat and talked to my mom for a half hour while she got snack and then peaced out to go sleep at home (I have ear plugs now so instead I can just disappear downstairs and not waste gas). I set my alarm for 12:15 so I could go pick up my mom on time for once and was quite surprised when it was my internal alarm clock that woke me up at 12:52 and not DC101. Turns out the sound on my clock was turned all the way down, when did that happen? Anyways, after stealing some lumber from work and getting more sleep, I declared that we (Mom, Darwin and I) would be going to the park. Not only would Darwin get a walk, but Mom and I would take turns riding the bike like it was intended, instead of the cobweb magnet it has been for the past year. Thus began our modern epic: "Getting the Tires Blown Up". Seriously should not have been as difficult as it was but it turns out that car tires and bike tires have different sized nozzles, who knew. Such was the reason for the trip to target where they only seemed to have Schwinn brand air pumps which I chalked up to fate (my mom has a Schwinn bike). Returning bike pump in hand and earplugs in purse, we quickly blew up the tires and then set to the task of loading that big ass bike into the back of the car; we have a bike rack (unattached at the moment) but by now it was already 6 pm and we wanted to get moving. Upon getting to the park my mom decided that she was too tired to ride the bike so exercising the Schwinn was left all up to me, someone who hasn't really ridden a bike in about.....nine years? Somewhere in there. I felt like a kid for about the first lap around the park just with better balance, I could stay up but for the life of me, could not ride in a straight line. I must have looked pretty funny but I got better the more I went around, nothing fancy but I never fell down, quite proud of that. But definitely the best part of the day was after we got home, when I got a nice rush of endorphins for my trouble. I just felt so happy. For the first time this week it didn't matter that I don't have an internship, that I'm probably going to be graduating with little to no work experience in a career field with little to no job openings ever, that I should have gone with a Management major instead of Film minor, that the house was a mess, I just wondered if I thought I could make it to the sidewalk up the street near 7-11 without getting run over tomorrow. I'm also going to try and go visit the Curves gym in Kentlands after I get off work tomorrow and figure how much it's going to cost for my Mom and I to join. Time for more water.

Ok, no more wallowing

This past week has felt so long. Mainly cause I did absolutely nothing. There was of course plenty that I could be doing but the sheer amount of stuff in the living room was making me feel claustraphobic and sapped all motivation right out of me. Awesome. Well, while sitting downstairs eating out of my black bean soup bread bowl (yum), I decided/told myself that I would stop wallowing in my inability to get stuff done and actually do something. I'm having visions of mounds upon mounds of boxes and trash bags full of stuff for the veterans to come pick up. Yay.

Ok, I know this was my London blog, but why let a perfectly good blog rot in oblivion? I guess I should change the display look. I'll do that eventually.

When did this house become so small, so cramped, and so cluttered? Please hold your snickering and mumblings of "it always has been silly," because it really hasn't been. Well, to me it hasn't been. I used to be able to get along quite fine in this house, it was messy but we got along. But really since returning, this place has become unbearable! There is stuff everywhere and nowhere for it to go! Now, being the person with large amounts of summer related time on her hands, I decided to spearhead the effort and try to get the backroom in the basement clear of anything un-craft related so that it could become my mom's private craft area. Once everything was out of there and the room organized, all the random craft things from all over the house could be brought in and out of the dinning room, kitchen, bathroom, her room, the office (you get the picture). Doing this is where I hit my first snag, expensive childhood toys aside, there is the bed. My old bed. Originally, it was brought down when I changed beds from a full to a twin, I guess so that that room could be turned into a guest room. It was only used in that capacity once and has since stayed upright, waiting for its Murphy bed-like day to shine. Now, call me crazy but what part of craft room which my mother insists be her own with a lock on the door so she can have an organized space, sings guest bed. Especially when we have a sofa bed that, suprise suprise, can never be opened up because of all the junk. Anyways, I suggested we get rid of the bed, thinking naively that my parents would also see it as a waste of space. Nope, they kepts saying how it could be unfolded for guests, because you know we have relatives banging down the door left and right to stay with us. Relatives who could never sleep on a sofa bed or the couch. I eventually broakered a deal on this front though, if i can mend the air mattress, we can get rid of the bed. So, about a week ago, I went looking for the air mattress and found it thrown onto the floor of the laundry room under a bunch of boxes. Awesome. I'm also forseeing a fight on the other air mattress. An air mattress that EVERYONE who has slept on the thing has said was wildly uncomfortable. But with all those guests knocking down our door to stay with us might need a place to sleep! God forbid our adult family members spring for a hotel if they show up with all their buddies. The most we ever have up here are my one uncle and two cousins. 1. Sofa bed, 2. Upstairs sofa, 3. Air Matresss once I've fixed it. Done, in the event an aunt should show up as well, kick a kid onto the floor or sleep on my chair all laid out. We are not hosting our entire family in this house, we don't need all this unnessisary bedding!

I am nowhere near being done with this rant but it's 1:42 and i'm tired. So, in summary, I thinking I'm coming accross two basic problems here:

1. Deep-seated childhood issues about keeping things

2. The Fact that my parents have not gone through all their stuff in a very long time. I'm learning that my parents give away in cycles, one round gets rid of some stuff, go back 6 months - 1 year later, get rid of more stuff.


To be continued....

The room’s almost completely packed now, two very heavy suitcases almost full although I’m pretty sure the blue one is on top of my phone. We’re going to the Hard Rock Café tonight, possibly with some other people from our seminar. James has been going on an on about it since we got here. Then tomorrow morning bright and early, we’re off on our week of travel: Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen in one week. In theory, the hostels we’re staying at have computers but we’ll see how that goes. See you in a week!

We’re pretty much done now, Michelle went today, presented on Michael Faraday (I keep thinking his name’s John or Thomas). I started to do a little packing today, I packed the backpack I’m bringing with me on our week off. We’re going to Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen in eight days. I love London but I’m really looking forward to the week. It’s not completely packed but it’s definitely shaping up to be one very compact bag. As our last seminar activity, we went to go see the Mousetrap tonight which is a play based of an Agatha Christie short story and has been running for more than fifty years. The theater was tiny too, smaller than Fords Theater. It was okay, not really a mystery fan but the actors were good. Tomorrow’s going to be interesting; we might try and go to Hampton Court Palace, are probably going to the Hard Rock Café and definitely have to pack up our whole room. Yikes!

We’re almost done! I am absolutely dreading packing though, at least there’s no maximum weight. Andrew and Doug went today, Thomas Huxley and James Cook. Still did nothing, thought about the packing job ahead of me. We had a pub walk which was interesting but kind of expensive. Had chocolate-y stout, I think that’s what it was, at the first pub but not really anything else at the rest. About the second pub in, I really started to want some chips and it wasn’t just me. So after the pub walk, instead of staying at the third pub, we tubed back to IES and then walked over to Tesco and bough bake-able chips. Popped them in and watched How I Met Your Mother on someone’s computer for the rest of the night.

We had presentations today from lovelies Alice on Francis Galton and Cheryl on Charles Dickens. I personally loved Cheryl’s presentation; she is going to make a fantastic professor. Then in the afternoon we went to Westminster Abbey to play “find the grave” and there were a lot of them. There are also a lot of memorials to people who aren’t actually in the floor so it was a little confusing as to who exactly is buried there. I said hi to grandpappy Chaucer who I’m supposedly related to through both of my parents and then had to explain why I did so since I kind of said it out loud. For dinner we had a giant seminar potluck where everyone grouped up by room and cooked something. Amanda and I made a pudding cake thing that had a real name but I forget. Whatever it was, it was good. Everything was good, well done us.

So today we had presentations from Chris who used the word ingenious a lot to describe Joseph Paxton and Dale who, according to him, had the best person ever, James Watt. But the big story today was the arrival of Servo cookies. Now, for those who do not know, a week ago or so, we jokingly started plotting to have servo cookies sent to us from Gettysburg not expecting it to actually work. Well, it did and today they arrived, they also billed the seminar, we were hoping for free but oh well. As for the rest of the day, nothing, we’ve kind of hit tourist overload at this point and do not really feel like doing all that much. So, watched TV wrote this, nothing really. We’re going out for Indian tonight though so that should be fun.

So, pretty much all week we had been saying that yesterday, Saturday, we would travel to Wales and go visit Cardiff. We have discovered our week spot in small to medium-sized planning ahead while in London. We can plan a week-long excursion through Europe but when it came to Wales we were all talk and no ticket-buying. However, after a brain storming session on the way to Bath between Amanda and I, we decided to buy tickets to Cardiff upon our return from Bath. So, bright and early Saturday morning we were on a two hour train to Cardiff. Every time we’ve been on these trains, there have been reserved seats, seats with tickets sticking out basically saying reserved for people who bought tickets for this particular train. For one, we had reserved seats and didn’t have to wander around looking for an empty seat. When we got there, we played the “don’t know how public transport works here, lets just walk” game which worked until later. We walked down to Cardiff Bay, the main purpose being the locating of the Doctor Who exhibition and melting into sublime geek-hood. We wandered around the bay; found the travel centre which looked liked a submarine blimp. They had a bunch of maps, which pointed the way to the exhibition. We walked over, paid £5 to walk through and see all the costumes and props they had. Upon exiting, there was a shop, as always, and I got something for my dad for Christmas, I can’t tell you though, he reads this. We walked all the way back, through the town, past the rail station, to Cardiff Castle, which was utterly fantastic. There’s an outer wall, with a Victorian tack-tastic Medieval-inspired castle. Then in the middle, was the keep, the Norman castle which we climbed to the top of on some very steep stairs. At this point, we decided that we wanted to visit St. Fagans History Museum. On Amanda’s map, it had an arrow that said “this way to St. Fagans”. We walked for a mile, stopped, accidentally, outside of a sex shop, and stopped in at a subway for some water before giving up. Eventually, we discovered the reason that we never found St. Fagans was that it was five miles away. Go figure. At this point, it was about 4:45 and we began to think about dinner. We stopped into a Wetherspoon’s pub where they had a burger and drink special. After our tasty, tasty dinner, I bought expensive batteries and some starburst twists before boarding out train and heading home.

Our first adventure on Sunday turned out to be attempts at pancakes. Tired of toast and cereal everyday, some mix was bought as well as some extremely expensive syrup from Tesco. However, as they were being cooked, it became readily apparent that these did not look like your average pancake; they were too light in color. Upon eating them, it turned out that the English idea of pancake mix makes little, thick, crepes. After that misadventure we scooted on over to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. We knew we’d be late and there would be a crowd but it was pretty much the only day we could do it. Needless to say there was a decent sized crowd that we navigated pretty well, a lot of the pictures I got were from holding my camera over my head but I got some decent ones. After sitting in what was probably St. James’ park for a while trying to come up with something to do we decided to pop back over to Covent Garden which we had kind of seen when we went to the British Museum and investigate the Jubilee Market which is an enclosed outdoor market? They had lots of interesting stuff and I bought a scarf for myself and Christmas presents for some other people. However, because I had such tremendous foresight to not bring any money with me I had to take out money from an ATM for the first time since I got here. I think it was the whole weekend there had been the Thames Festival, I’m not quite sure what it entailed except that tonight they were doing fireworks. We got out at the tube stop between the two the flyer had suggested getting off at and parked ourselves beside the Thames. We were there pretty much an hour before the fireworks were set to begin so most played cards while the rest of us tried to take up as much space as possible. Eventually, what we guess correctly as being the fireworks barges began to move and everyone got up. The barge moved, and then kept moving, and then stopped right in front of where we were standing. So, we essentially front row for the fireworks show. It was fantastic, almost made up for missing the 4th of July because of work.