Booboo Magoo

Archive for the ‘London’ Category

I think I have a Canadian immune system. I barely ever get sick in Canada, but in the UK, I get Every Single Cold I am exposed to. I ended up getting a stupid cold on the Friday Mom was here, but we pressed onward with the touristyness!

Friday was Buckingham Palace Day. We don’t have many pictures because it was a no picture zone, but to be honest, it was pretty disappointing. They just take you through a few state rooms. Many of the chairs had stains, and the rugs were worn, and it just wasn’t very…palatial. I’m glad I went because now I can say I’ve been, but as far as sights go…MEH! At the end, they have a tent area where you can have tea. So, now I can say I’ve had TEA at BUCKINGHAM PALACE!

And so has Mom:

I don’t remember what she was laughing at, but I really like this picture of Mom:

A nice man took this picture of us with Buckingham behind us. So you know we weren’t just in a random tent. I don’t know what is up with my face here.

After Buckingham, we grabbed a cab to St.Paul’s Cathedral. Being a church, it’s a no-photo zone. Mom is scared of heights and wouldn’t go up to the whispering gallery.

We spent Friday night hanging out with Mike, then got up the next morning and went to Hampton Court. Mike was invited, and although he’s usually really good about indulging my pathological need to see ALL CASTLES, he draws the line at being dragged to them twice.

Touristing wiped he out, so we got food and movies and spent Saturday night hanging out and watching movies. Sunday we went out for breakfast at a hotel restaurant built on the site of the First Bethlehem Hospital. I can’t explain Mike’s face. Maybe it got the plague or something.

Then it was off to Petticoat Lane! I got a jacket and a business suit and a shirt all for less than £50. Mom bought some dresses.

Mike kindly carried our bags for us, so we rewarded him with drinks at Dirty Dick’s. Dirty Dick was apparently a guy who was so distraught at the death of his fiancee that he went around for weeks in the same clothing. I think Mike would do the same if I died, but only because he doesn’t know how to work the washer:

Mom and I were exhausted:

Monday was mostly packing and a wander around SoHo, then it was time to say goodbye.

Figuring that my mom might be a bit jet lagged on her first full day in Britain, I booked us for a bus tour that took us to a few pretty major sites around southern England. That way, she could nap here and there if she needed to, but it would also be a productive day. Mike took the day off of work and joined us, which was awesome because Mike is fun.

Anyway, the sites were awesome, but the real story here is the tour director. Picture if the Weakest Link host chick mated with a pre-school teacher, and that’s basically our tour guide. She lined us all up and counted us and gave us all sorts of calmly explained instructions like “no hot drinks such as tea or coffee”. The joke of the day, however, came about as we were pulling into our first stop (Windsor). She advised that as we had a tight timeline, we’d be allowed to (and her voice lowered here like an authority figure bestowing a great privilege on a child) bring a sandwich back with us from one of the shops in Windsor and *gasp* eat it on the bus. She then went on to explain that a sandwich was two slices of bread with something in between, and items such as hamburgers did not count as sandwiches. Also, we still were not allowed to bring any hot beverages on the bus, but we’d be permitted to bring one cold beverage if we wished. SUCH LUXURIES. Anyway, that was pretty much the joke of the entire day, and we weren’t the only ones joking about it – we overheard some of our fellow tour group members joking about it in line at Eat.

Anyway, Windsor Castle was BEAUTIFUL. Apparently the Queen spends most of her weekends there, and I can’t blame her. Here is my mommy and I in front of Windsor:

And then Mike and Mommy in front of Windsor:

And Windsor Castle by itself, being all Windsor-y

We made our way into Windsor and through the metal detector, and immediately walked over to St. George’s Chapel. We’re not terribly religious..but the final resting place of Henry VIII – HELL YEAH! It was actually surprisingly plain, and he shares it with Jane Seymour and a few other people. Surprising – I was expecting something more along the style of his daughter Elizabeth I. The only explanation we could think of is that Henry really never actually planned on dying. Anyway, we walked out of the Chapel and just happened to catch the beginning of the Changing of the Guard:

We only had about 2 hours at Windsor (including time needed to get our two slices of bread with something in between them sandwiches), so we decided not to watch the entire ceremony, instead making our way to see Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, which my four year old self would have been THRILLED to know I got to see in person (although sorely disappointed that it was behind glass and that I wasn’t allowed to turn the lights on and off. Actually, my 28 year old self was kinda disappointed about that.) I had a total obsession with Queen Mary’s Dollhouse as a kid. My mom had a book on it, and I used to pour over it for HOURS looking at all the pictures of miniature stuff.

Anyway, by then it was time to go get our tour-approved sandwiches and head back to the bus. Our tour director was very happy that everyone was back on time, and praised us, saying “You all did an excellent job coming back on time. No one made everyone else wait for them, and we’re all much happier for it.” NO KIDDING. I felt like we were about to all get a sticker on our good behavior charts. We ate our sandwiches (as well as contraband kit kat’s that mom snuck on for us), and the bus was on its way to Bath.

Bath the town was kind of neat – it was cool seeing the homes of Jane Austen and Nicolas Cage, but the Roman bathhouses were kind of disappointing – very museumy and kind of boring. We did get some nice pictures near the baths though. Mike is posing for GQ or Confused Dickensonian Weekly or something:

I’m just posing:

Mike said he wanted something “dynamic”. This is me being “dynamic”

The tour guide as well as about a million signs direct you not to touch the water at Bath as it’s not treated. To horrify mom, I dipped my finger in the water, then licked my finger. MISSION COMPLETE! She is now convinced I’m going to die of some diseased water illness.

We left the Bathhouse pretty quickly and strolled around the town of Bath. It was very cute and quaint, but obviously very tourist oriented – everything was incredibly expensive! Finally, we were all back on the bus (everyone made it on time again, thank god no one got their name written on the windshield with a frowny face next to it or anything) and it was off to Stonehenge.

Stonehenge was pretty rad. They have the main site roped off so you can’t get close or touch the rocks or anything, but they have a smaller rock outside that you’re allowed to touch:

Also, I continued my anarchistical refusal to obey signs:

Requisite Stonehenge Tourist Shot:

We again all made it back on the bus on time, and it was back to London. We hopped off at Earl’s Court, then had fish and chips and a few beers, then came home. We’re all pretty exhausted and are heading to bed. Tomorrow is Buckingham Palace – TOTALLY STOKED!

I woke up yesterday morning at 5:45 and was TOO EXCITED to get back to sleep, so I tidied stuff up, had breakfast, went for a run, got dressed, and waaaaaaaaaited. Finally it was time to go to the airport. Mom’s flight actually landed early, but it took them a long time to bring out the baggage, so she didn’t get out until around the expected time. Big hugs, found her a place to get nicotined up, then grabbed a train back into London. I knew she’d be kind of shell-shocked and just need to be herded around, so we cabbed it home, then I threw her in the shower and fed her lasagne. That woke her up, and she was ready to hit the town.

We decided to train it back over to Victoria Station, then hit up Westminster Abbey.

Funny Abbey story -we had been walking around for about an hour when mom leaned over to me and whispered “Don’t people know this is a house of worship? Why is everyone on their cell phones?” I pointed out that the “cell phones” were actually the electronic tours. Cue lots of jokes about how everyone in London has the same model of cell phone and that they just walk around listening to them intently and don’t actually talk.

Here we are in the Cloisters. You’ll have to excuse both of our terrible hair – we actually looked okay leaving the house, but in typical London style, it rained and rained all day yesterday. We got sick of fighting with the umbrella and just decided to get wet after a while, hence the terrible hair.

We walked up to Piccadilly Circus, then around SoHo for a bit. Mom gives a couple of cigarettes and a pound coin to a homeless guy. I am okay with donating to organisations and with giving homeless people food/clothes, but I refuse to give them money. I explain my stance to mom, who responds “He might buy a cookie with it. Or vitamins. Yes definitely he is going to buy vitamins.” Mom is super soft hearted, but hasn’t really lived in a city for a very long time, obviously. Anyway, we head to a pub and wait for Mike. Mom is still topping up the nicotine every hour or so (a 10 hour flight with no cigarettes almost killed her, I think) and keeps meeting friends outside the bar, probably because she keeps offering fellow smokers Canadian cigarettes to try. She ends up chatting to a paparazzi who is following Keifer Sutherland around.

Anyway, Mike finally arrives, and we have another drink, then head to Angel of Green for my favorite spicy noodles. Mom (disappointingly) doesn’t like them as much as I do. Ice cream, then home, where mom promptly passes out and sleeps solidly until 7am when I wake her up!

We are now all just getting up and dressed to go on a bus tour to Stonehenge, Bath, and Windsor Palace!

Okay, I get to preface this by warning everyone that it is probably going to be all over the place. We are interviewing roommates off and on tonight, so my train of thought is going to get even more derailed than it usually does. Also, I have the trusty camera and camera card reader back, so there is a mish mosh of photos to share.

LET’S BEGIN!

Okay, so I didn’t empty off the camera before Mike took off, and I found some pictures from 3 Sundays ago where we hung out in the common and listened to the live band. Apparently, Mike was a ninja that day, and I completely forgot.

Also, I am apparently a complete slob on weekends. I really need to step up my game! Ugh! I’d wonder how Mike could stand it…but seriously, I am fetching him beer in this picture, which ANSWERS THAT QUESTION BEFORE I EVEN ASK IT!

The next couple are from Mike’s trip to Vancouver. Considering he was out there for over a week, he really didn’t take that many pictures! He mostly used it as a poor man’s mobile Google Maps, so there’s a lot of pictures like this on the camera:

Also, Mike acts super relaxed and non-ego about the stuff he works on, but he seriously gets super excited when he sees something he’s worked on being advertised. I could understand if it was something cool, but Sorcerer’s Apprentice? Really? What a nerd.

He did also take a few pictures of him and Bryan kayaking though, so it was totally worth him taking the camera for an entire week.

Anyway, Mike is back and over his jetlag, so we are back to having ADVENTURES. Friday night we were having drinks with Mike’s work friends, and one of them mentioned that he was going paintballing with friends, and there were a few extra tickets, and would we like to come? YES, THIAS, YES WE WOULD!

We had to get up super early to meet Thias and friends at Wimbledon station for 8:15am so we could be on time for the paintballing, which turned out to be a bit in vain as it was around 2 hours after arriving that we actually got started. Here we are when we first arrived at paintball. You can tell we’ve just arrived because we don’t look irritable at having waited for 2 hours in black protective gear for stuff to start already. Left to right is Thias, Jeremy, Jake, Hayden, and me. Mike was taking the picture. Oh, and a girl named Cat joined our group a little later

We got grouped with some other people in the purple team, and were paired against the yellow team. The yellow team was comprised of mostly cheaters. We busted them blatantly wiping paint off of their overalls instead of going to the dead zone multiple times, and they would continue shooting at people after they’d yelled that they were hit. One of them also shot a girl on our team point blank in the back. Anyway, we lost all rounds pretty miserably, partly due to poor skill on our team, and partly due to their poor sportsmanship. I did take an opportunity to shoot Mike once though, which made it totally worth it.

Once we were done with paintball, it was time for refreshments. Hayden, Cat, Jeremy, & Jake approve.

As does Thias

Mike and I also approve. Mike displays approval by biting my ear mid-picture.

We had to head home pretty early to meet roommates, which was kind of a bummer, but it’s important we get the right sort of person in, so it’s a sacrifice that’s worth it. Speaking of which, time to interview another. We have a busy August coming up, which I will do my best to faithfully document. Also, need to take up running again. Also, also, need to stop eating everything in sight.

So it turns out that Mike read the itinerary wrong – he leaves today, not yesterday and arrives Monday, not Sunday. Which kind of sucks because I was super looking forward to seeing him. I even made a sign to greet him at the airport with. I won’t be able to use it now because I’ll be at work when he lands.

Luckily (?) it’s random enough that it can be hung in the kitchen as a silly/stupid decoration. Andrew and Laura got a kick out of it, so I don’t think anyone will mind.

Buddy and Leia are safely back in Canada, and Leia’s been uploading photos like a madwoman. I stole some to post here (she said it was okay).

Me, Buddy, & Mike during our walk around Bayswater:

It was a hot day. We soon required refreshments.

Then we walked to Paddington Station.

They were really jetlagged for the first few days, so we didn’t really do much other than that. Once we were back at work, they did a day trip up to Manchester where Leia, super Coronation Street fan, met one of the stars of the show. She was super excited about it – I think it was one of the highlights of the trip for her!

They also did a day in Brighton, then took off for Dublin and Paris before making their way back to London to catch their flight home. I took off last Thursday to give them a tour of London. London Bridge, which I think was a bit disappointing to Buddy as he was expecting the much more iconic and prettier Tower Bridge.

We saw the Tower of London. Here’s me and Buddy at the Tower, a picture I am mostly uploading for Mom. Buddy is her best friend’s son – Buddy and I (and his brother, Cody) grew up as cousins, pretty much. She loves both of the boys like nephews, and I don’t think there are any pictures of us together since the school Christmas Concert days.

The plan was to go to Covent Garden and do some shopping, then walk down and see the sights – Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Parliament Buildings, etc. Unfortunately, I forgot that not every body is used to walking everywhere all the time! Buddy and Leia were pretty bagged after shopping, so we hopped on the London Eye, and I pointed out the big landmarks we could see. Then we headed home and ordered a pizza and vegged out.

I’ve been pretty low-key this weekend. I probably would have gone somewhere if we’d realized earlier that Mike’s flight didn’t land until Monday, but we didn’t. I’ve been very domestically productive – laundry, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, sweeping, mopping, dishes, etc is all done, but I’ve mostly been staying home and reading. I can’t wait til Mike gets home so we can go on MORE ADVENTURES!

It’s been over a week since I updated – shameful, but we haven’t really done much since Denmark.

My hip is recovered, and I plan to get back to the running tomorrow. We also had friends from Canada up – Buddy and Leia. I took pictures, but then neglected to get them off of the camera, and now Mike is gone to Vancouver for a week’s vacation (and also to get some necessary tasks done – renewing his passport and other such tasks that are just easier for him to do from Vancouver). He took the camera, so I have no recent pictures. Here is a picture that recently cropped up on Facebook of me, Mike, and two of his old nerd school friends. It’s only two months old. Same thing, right?

Anyway, Buddy and Leia got super screwed over by jet lag, so we didn’t get to do much with them over the weekend. This week has been a whirlwind – busy work, plus getting Mike ready to go. He left on Friday. Katy came up to London last night and slept over, then we spent today exploring London. We went to Borough Markets, then I took her through central London to see the Parliament Buildings and Big Ben and the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey and Soho. Lots of walking, but also lots of chatting and relaxing. She’s a relaxing person to hang out with. It’s nice. Due to tube issues, we barely made it to the tube station in time for her train. Like.. movie-level running to meet the train sort of shit. Luckily, she made it.

I hung out with Andrew and Laura (roommates) tonight, and now I’m chilling out in the too-empty bedroom. I’ve been making lots of comments about sleeping in the middle of the bed and eating lots of fish (which Mike doesn’t like), but I actually really miss him. I basically need to get a life and stop checking my phone for new emails every 5 minutes. Right now, I KNOW he’s on an epic bike ride with all of our friends, and then they’re having a massive BBQ/drink-a-thon. Insult to injury. Not only is my very best buddy gone for a week, he’s having a blast with all of our Vancouver friends. Totally jealous.

I realized today when I was looking at my kindle that I read too much. I got the kindle in March, I think. Since then, I’ve read over 20 books. I much prefer a work commute spent reading on a train than one spent stressing over traffic, and the kindle has made it that much easier. Highly recommend the kindle. I never thought I’d be an e-reader person, but now I can’t imagine going back to regular books.

Anyway, this was kind of a rambly, pointless post. Buddy and Leia are passing back through in for a few days on their way back to Canada, and I took Thursday off to take them around. Should be a good time. I’ll try to get some pictures going

We’ve been on a bit of a movie binge since we got the new TV, and ended up catching the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which lead to me downloading the complete Sherlock Holmes series for my kindle, which then lead to me googling 221B Baker Street to see if it was real, and discovering it not only existed, it had been transformed into the Sherlock Holmes Museum, a replica of the boarding house that Holmes and Watson (fictionally) lived in. Sherlock Holmes was, of course, not real, but 221B Baker Street was, and that location was an actual boarding house from 1860-1934, so in 1990, they turned the location into a replica of the suite Holmes and Watson shared. What did that lead to? Well…elementary, my dear Watson.

Anyway, since Mike is the bossest boyfriend ever, he indulges my silly whims to see weird and interesting sites around London, we went.

The good thing about it being so new is that it was a lot more interactive than many of the other tourist attractions. When you visit 300 year old castles and whatnot, you tend to be forced to follow a specific path through the attraction, and areas are roped off so you can see but not touch. It makes sense because the stuff is OLD and it would not last through thousands of people sitting on it and touching it and all that other stuff. The Sherlock Holmes Museum is a bit different. Nothing is really roped off, and you’re totally welcome (in fact, encouraged) to pose on chairs, and pose next to wax figures of people from the books, and all that other jazz.

This, of course, is right up Mike and my alleys! Neither of is very sure about this fellow in the mask:

But I’m more than willing to give this dead dude a lap dance. Dude looks pretty horrified by it.

Mike does his best to imitate his look of horror.

Anyway, it was a fun way to kill half an hour. After that, we went walking in and around Regent’s Park, which is actually bigger and awesomer than Hyde Park. Hyde Park has a lot more attractions, and just general Stuff To Do In Londonness appeal, but Regents Park is way prettier and fun to lounge in.

On the way, we found a bust of JFK, which doesn’t even really make sense because dude..London? I’m cool with just accepting the fact that it’s there.

Mike is more WTF about it

The first thing I noticed in Regents Park were the paddleboats. Since I am a huge dork, and Mike is an awesome boyfriend (see first paragraph), we went paddleboating!

We did a lap around the island thing in the middle, then paused in the shade to cool down, chat, and watch the cute little ducks (and geese and whatever other birds were there)

Mike found a leaf that looked shocked, so we had a bit of fun with the macro setting on the camera.

Then we were ready for lunch. We decided to pick up some snackies from a grocery store and sit in the park, since it was such a pretty day. It took a while for us to find a grocery store, but on the way, we did find Prince Albert Road *snicker*.

We finally managed to pick up some beer, diet pepsi, cheese, ham, bread, and grapes, and made our way back to the park to feast and enjoy the weather. Mike still finds it especially cool that he can enjoy a beer in a park without getting fined.

The evening has been mostly spent watching The Big Lebowski and relaxing. I think it’s going to be pretty soft for the next few days because on Wednesday, we fly to Denmark!! I’m not bringing my laptop or phone or anything because it’s a music festival, and we’re sleeping in a tent, and frankly I don’t feel like babysitting it all, but I will attempt an epic post soon after we return!

Sunday ended up being kind of a do-nothing day, but not really, if that makes sense.

After Mike’s spurt of insane working hours, I pretty much let him dictate the pace of the weekend, since it was his first real break in a long time. We’ve been on a bit of a mission to make our house more social (see:BBQ). I cleaned out the living room and put up some posters that were just laying around and got rid of garbage. The living room LOOKED much nicer, but since we’d cut off sky, we didn’t really have much to watch. Our place in Vancouver had an xbox, which is fantastic way to stream media from computers to the TV. We decided this was necessary in order to get more people in the living room, so took off to Computer Exchange to pick up a used one.

Of course, the Northern Line was down from Kennington to Morden for “planned engineering” – they do this about one weekend a month – so we had to train it to Victoria. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we decided to walk rather than tube it to SoHo.

We managed to pop up just as the Changing of the Guard was starting.

We didn’t stay for the whole thing was it was pretty crowded, but we saw a bit – enough to cross it off of our list of London Things.

A bit north of that, we stumbled on the Winston Churchill War Rooms. Mike has a huge interest in anything WWII related, so we popped in. I originally went in because it was something we could do that related to Mike’s interests instead of going to another castle. Mike likes castles, but he’s not in love with them like I am. Anyway, I am totally glad we checked it out. Very neat little piece of history, and Mike finally found some pictures/momentos he’s interested in.

After that, we walked up to Piccadilly Circus where there was a Hare Krysna parade taking place.

We weaved our way through the crown to our favorite massage parlor, then went to Computer Exchange to get the xbox. Sorry they are just shitty iPhone pictures, but we didn’t bring a camera because we were planning a do nothing, lazy Sunday watching TV in our pajamas. (Isn’t it awesome how we moved to London to sit around in our pajamas and watch TV. We SO could not do that in Canada, apparently). I should really know better by now. This is LONDON. Even when nothing is happening…something is happening.

Once we got the xbox home, we found out that the older TV in the house didn’t play nice with it. It kind of worked, but there was an annoying flashing thing that kept happening. Mike ended up ordering a cheapish TV on Amazon, which almost killed him. I don’t know if it’s his career, or his being a boyness or what, but I have never met anyone SO fussy about TVs. The last one he bought in Canada, he researched for pretty much two full months before he committed. It was an awesome TV, but damn! That’s a lot of time spent just picking at TV.

Since then, we’ve mostly spent evenings hanging out and watching old episodes of It’s Always Sunny and Extras and South Park and Family Guy, except for last night when we went to Camden to hang out at World’s End pub. We needed to go back there to pick up Junior the tshirts he was wanting the night we went when he was visiting, but they sadly are not selling them anymore. I got a tank top instead.

Tonight, Mike is going to the wrap party for the last show he was working on. I will have to ask him when I’m allowed to use titles of stuff he’s worked on. I think it’s when it hits his imdb? I dunno, but anyway, they’re bowling and doing karaoke, which are super dorky activities I LOVE, but spouses aren’t invited. I think I am going to do laundry and read. This weekend will likely be a little bit soft as we’re off to Denmark for Roskilde.

Of course, the last time I said that, we ended up having a pretty eventful day, so I guess we’ll see!

Oh, in completely unrelated news – Joseph the homeless guy who sits with his German Shepherd Milo at the Old Street Tube Station shaved his head and his beard. I miss him with hair, although I suppose he’s cooler for summer now. He wasn’t at Old Street this morning – I saw him out and about at lunch when I went to post a letter. Apparently, he just decided he was sick of his beard. Oh, and Milo caught his lip on a fence and has a booboo, but is expected to make a full recovery.

I guess I never mentioned Joseph and Milo before. They’re just kind of there. I say hi to them every morning – they’re part of my day. I also buy a diet pepsi from the newsagents downstairs a few days a week. And most days, nice kitty (a grey short-haired persian who lives in my neighborhood) is around for a head scratch on my way home. It sounds silly, but it’s really nice to be seeing similar faces every day.

London is becoming home.

Lots of news around the Posh Palace that I’ve been terrible about keeping everyone up to date about.

Firstly, Jack and Karen (the Irish roommates) have moved out. They decided it was time for them to be grown ups and get their own place without roommates, so that’s what they’ve done. In their place, we have Andrew and Laura – New Zealanders fresh to London.

Secondly…the saga with the r-word. Oh god the r-word. I will be forever traumatized by the r-word. It all started a few weeks ago when Karen decided to get a late night snack, and a rodent of some kind jumped out at her when she opened the pantry. A few days later, the same thing happened to Jane. So we decided to call an exterminator. The exterminator came, pealed back the skirting boards on the pantry and other cupboards, then laid big ugly dangerous looking rat traps. I grew up in Alberta, where there are no rats, and am pretty much repulsed by even the word, so I named him Ricky (Mickey Mouse, Ricky Rat – get it?).

At the same time, we went through the pantry and cleaned up any loose food (mostly some cereal that had spilled on a lower shelf – we think that’s what Ricky had stopped by to snack on) and wiped everything down. A week later, the traps still hadn’t caught anything, so we decided that Ricky was no longer visiting us now that we weren’t being very good hosts, and called the exterminator to come back and collect the traps.

Around this time, we were showing the house to new potential roommates. The kitchen looked terrible with all of the skirting off, so we put it back on to show the house.

About a week after that, the kitchen stunk a bit. I did the usual things you do when the kitchen stinks – take out the garbage, wipe out the microwave, and do a look for anything rotting. Didn’t find anything, but I pinpointed it as coming from the pantry.

Ever read Nancy Drew? She was always taking off and doing stupid things to investigate mysteries like walking around abandoned houses at night and confronting crooks. Apparently I am the Nancy Drew of kitchen smells. Instead of getting a boy to look, I decided to pull off the skirting by the pantry.

It turns out that the exterminator had NOT come to get the traps, and under our pantry was a dead, maggoty rat. I am not usually a girly girl – I capture and release my own spiders, and can take out the garbage, even though I hate doing it. Dead maggoty rat, however, was past my level of grossness tolerance. I screamed like a little bitch and jumped on a chair. I am not sure why I had to jump on the chair – it’s not like it was some sort of undead Zombie Rat, but it was necessary at the time.

Mike was at work still. Luckily, Jane’s boyfriend Michael was there, spraying weeds in our backyard. He had actually come to fix Jane’s window, and just decided to spray our weeds while he was at it. He is pretty much the best roommate’s boyfriend ever. He doesn’t even LIVE here and he does all that awesome shit. He came in from outside and cleaned up the dead rat, maggoty rat for me. Needless to say, I pretty much love Michael right now. He can do no wrong in my eyes. I actually sent Jane the following texts soon after:

You are never ever allowed to dump Michael. He just cleaned up dead maggoty rat from under the pantry.

Never. Ever. Leave. Him. Ever.

Then, a week later, he bought a BBQ for the house. Well, not really for the house – for himself. He doesn’t have a garden, but likes to BBQ, so it storing it here, and letting everyone else use it.

We had new roommates, a new BBQ, and a need to thank Michael the Dead Rat Remover, so we had a BBQ on Thursday.

Sarah is a vegetarian, and everyone likes different things, so we had Make Your Own Skewers. Chicken, beef, halloumi cheese, and assorted veggies. It was super yummy and social and fun. Mike unfortunately was at work til 9 or so, so he missed the food part, but was back in time for socialness. Ace was back in London on his way back from Canada, so we had 9 people in total.

We’re actually on a mission to make the house more social. 6 people live here, but you barely ever see anyone. When Karen and Jack left, we got them to get rid of some reclining chairs that prior roommates had left behind. They were big and ugly and took up too much space in the living room. It’s way more inviting and open now. We’ve also been hanging up cheap art we’ve found at charity shops and in storage to make it homier. Little by little, it’s getting prettier, and people are spending more time in common areas.

Anyway, I need to get on to making dinner, then waking Mike (he was at work til 7am – no seriously…7am. wtf?) He’s napping, then after dinner we’re meeting friends at a bar.

Will try to do something touristy and new on Sunday!!

Yay! It’s a holiday Monday. Mike, unfortunately has to work. Luckily, we have a Canadian friend staying with us for a few days, so I have someone to hang out with. That is, when he gets up..

Saturday was kind of cold and rainy, so Mike and I decided to check out St.Paul’s Cathedral. It’s a no-picture sort of place, being that it’s a church and all. Other people were taking pictures, despite the signs, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so there are few pictures in this post.

It’s £12.50 per person to get in, plus another £4 for the audio guides. I didn’t used to get the audio guides in places, but I’ve come to realize that they are SUPER handy, so I’ve started getting them. Anyway, St.Paul’s is gorgeous – all huge and open with detail work everywhere. Because we are CRAZY, we climbed all the way to the top (with a stop in the Whispering Gallery). It’s 538 steps to the very top. It’s outside, so you can take pictures there.

Mike and me with our dorky audio guides:

The view from the top. I imagine it would be pretty amazing if it wasn’t so foggy and gross.

I fell on the stairs on the way down and got huge bruises on my left leg and right arm. I am graceful like a ballerina swan.

After we were done there, we got a text from our Canadian buddy Mike and his friend Derek. I am going to refer to our friend Mike as Ace as having two Mikes is confusing. Anyway, we met them at the tube station near our house, then took them home to drop off their bags, then we went out for dinner and drinks. Here is a picture of Me, Derek, and Ace. I don’t remember much about the night, but I trust it was fun.

Sunday was spent resting at home and getting caught up on stuff. We also had a couple over to look at the room upstairs (Irish roommates are moving out) and meet everyone. They seem nice. We’ll see, I guess. Derek and Ace went to check out the Tower of London, then came home and we hung out. Derek caught a plane back to Canada this morning. I think Ace and I are going to check out Buckingham Palace today (provided it’s open). It’s been a fun weekend!