Booboo Magoo

Archive for the ‘Mike’ Category

Well, last week, I was completely and totally boring. Mike and I both had colds, so we mostly came straight home every day after work and ate dinner and lounged like slugs on the couch. Thursday night, we were both feeling a little bit better, so I met him in SoHo after work, and we explored an area we hadn’t really been to, had a few drinks at pubs, then wandered until we found a really good but really expensive Thai restaurant. It was super, super yummy though. Oh, and we also caught a super talented band street performing on Regent’s Street. I only ran on Monday last week, and I have been FEELING it. Just slow and run down and no energy.

Over the weekend, I was still feeling a bit rough. Mike, annoyingly, was completely over it, and kept saying stuff like “If you just ate well like me and ran regularly, you’d get over these things faster.” to annoy me because he barely runs at all, and I’m the one who is always forcing him to take yogurt and vegetables in his lunch. Anyway, it came out a while back that Mike had never seen the Harry Potter movies, which is terrible, given his employment, so we had a total Potter marathon all weekend. We got through 1-5, and will probably watch 6 tonight. This is necessary because the first part of the 7th movie comes out soonish, and Mike will be forced to come and stand in nerd line with me to watch it when it opens. He doesn’t know this yet.

This morning I got back to running. Runkeeper crashed once – sigh. My times were pretty terrible, but I’m still glad I went. I’m not in this to be an Olympic Runner. I’m in this to be healthy.

On Friday, March 13, 2009, Mike took me down to a beach in Vancouver, told me nice things, and asked me officially to be his girlfriend. He didn’t realize at the time that it was Friday the 13th, and luckily (for him) I said yes. Since then, we don’t really celebrate on the year anniversary, we celebrate on Friday the 13ths. We had one this August, so we decided to hole up in a cute little cottage in rural Scotland.

We trained it from London to Glasgow. It was about a 6 hours train ride. Parts of it were really pretty, but it was looooong. I was certainly ready to be OFF the train by the time we reached Glasgow. Our rental car was a block away from the train station, so we walked over and picked up our car. Here we are in the car, before we actually started driving it around. You can tell it’s before because we’re smiling.

We got talked into a slightly larger model by the very friendly car rental guy, which was pretty much too big. It made it a little stressful when needing to reverse and park and whatnot. Also, stupid dumb old Garmin GPS doesn’t know diddly squat about Glasgow. It was all directing us to turn the wrong way on one ways and stuff. We FINALLY made it out and headed toward our cottage, with a brief stop along the way to grab some groceries. Also, Mike stalled the car a good 8-10 times. Anyone who has ever driven with Mike knows how bizarre this is – he almost never stalls out. Of course, I made sure to make fun of him, even though I am too much of a chicken to do more than drive around a parking lot (which I did this trip – WITHOUT stalling) in the UK. Way to stall the car, Mike!

Finally, we were in our sweet rental cottage. Here is the view from our window:

There were cows in that field, and living in a kennel not far from there were real live working sheep dogs. Super friendly, super well behaved, and SUPER EXCITED TO GO TO WORK. Lovely dogs, and very nice sheep farmer.

The cottage left us some champagne, so we took it outside and drank it while chatting and watching the sunset. Very, very sweet and romantic end to our anniversary day.

Of course, it couldn’t be all kissy face and sweet talk – that gets kinda boring after a bit – so we dug out some games to play. I don’t think Mike understands the rules of Jenga.

Slept SO deeply that night. No noise pollution, no light pollution, just deep dark quiet. It was lovely.

Saturday morning, we decided to go exploring. We always have these great plans about relaxing and doing nothing, but we’re pretty much like chihuahua puppies on speed – neither of us can sit still for very long. We decided to ask stupid dumb old Garmin what the nearest attraction was. We were so remote that the nearest attraction was over 12 miles away and required a ferry to get there. Not even kidding. But it was totally worth it. Dunadd Fort was a perfect mix of exercise, pretty views, and solitude.

As we were driving to Dunadd Fort, I noticed a sign for a castle. I freaking love castles – not sure if y’all noticed by now. Mike is an awesome boyfriend and generally indulges me in these things, so up we went. Carnasserie Castle was another bit of a hike – not too far but pretty much straight uphill. It was actually pretty awesome – it’s not one of the “Big Deal” castles, so they let you walk around what’s left of it unrestricted. A couple areas are fenced off for safety (it was bombed a long time ago), but other than that, it’s open. They even let DOGS in this one. Also, it’s free. Free is good. As are fantastic views.

We then decided that we’d take the long way back (ie: no ferry) and pass through some different countryside. We popped into Inveraray to grab groceries for dinner, and stumbled upon the Inverary Jail, which was a bit of an interesting history lesson, but mostly just filled with hilarious mannequins.

This fellow has been caught on the pot..

This guy is apparently insane. I think he looks a bit like Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies:

After that, we headed home and ate our faces off. Junk food galore. Seriously way too much. I felt ill after. Mike and I cuddled on the couch – him watching movies while I read a biography on Queen Victoria. Apparently I am now about 85 years old. I read for fun, and not normal stuff – no, biographies on Queens. Sigh.

Sunday morning, I woke up and went for a run – the Week 2, Day 3 run. I think RunKeeper got confused or something. I know my times were the greatest, but I could pretty much stand still and do a pace greater than 49:12. I don’t even know. The point is I did it, right?

We then cleaned up and drove back into Glasgow. Dropped off the car, then hung out in a series of pubs until it was time to catch the bus to take us to the airport. On the bus, some girl was freaking out and crying and trying to think up excuses for why she was about to miss her flight because she screwed around until the last second and wasn’t getting on the bus until after she was supposed to already be checked in by. It was a 30 minute bus ride. One of her stress case lines was “Why do I always do this to myself?” I have to admit, I lost all sympathy for her at that point. It wasn’t any good reason, she was just having fun hanging out with her boyfriend and didn’t leave on time. I was a little bit meanly happy to see she had missed her flight when we were going through security.

Our flight was delayed (possibly karma for my mean feelings towards Little Miss Irresponsible?), so we hung out in an airport lounge, drinking and defacing colouring pages we got in a Disney Princess activity set. Being an adult is pretty rad. You can have candy for dinner, and no one scolds you if you draw a penis on Flounder from The Little Mermaid.

Made it home safe, sadly coming down with colds. I forced myself to run this evening even though I’m all snuffly. My thought is then I don’t have to feel TOO bad if I’m all sick and skip Wednesday, right? Times were again, shitty, but I’m getting sick and was running into the wind for a fair bit of it. Frankly, I’m just proud I went.

In other news, NINE short days until my mom lands here. I’m pretty stoked. I love and miss my mommy like crazy! I wish my dad was coming out as well. Maybe we can talk him into it later…

I own an iPhone 3G. It is sadly locked to a carrier in Canada, so needs to be jailbroken and unlocked in order to work with a UK sim. It’s kind of a pain, but since iPhones are so freaking mainstream, it hasn’t been too hard, and everything has been working pretty well.

That is, until ios4 came out. OH. MY. GOD. Slowed my phone down to a crawl, apps crashed regularly, phone actually needed to be reset TWICE in one day (and prior to ios4, I could probably count on one hand how many times I had to do it in the entire time I’ve had it – > 1 year). Mike spent a good portion of yesterday evening trying to roll it back to ios3, but the evil overlords at apple have made that pretty much impossible. I ended up reinstalling and then jailbreaking ios4 again, only this time with no multitasking enabled. I used the instructions and tools found here, if anyone else is having the same problem. Fingers crossed – it’s been pretty well behaved so far today. It’s definitely slower than it was on ios3, but at least my apps aren’t crashing, and it only takes 10-15 seconds to open SMS, instead of the 30+ seconds it was taking with multi-tasking enabled. I am hoping it can hold out and not be a useless piece of crap until November. We’re going to Vegas then, and iPhone 4s are SO much cheaper in the States than they are in the UK. Like the equivilant of $200 Canadian dollars. The plan is to pick one up in the States, so I am crossing my fingers that my trusty little 3G can play nice til then.

This month is going to be CRAZY BUSY. This weekend we are trying to get a crew together to go check out The Great British Beer Festival during the day on Saturday, then come back to ours for a BBQ and more… beer sampling.. for the rest of the evening. This Sunday there is nothing official planned, but I think I am going to do my best to convince Mike that we should go see Inception. Next weekend, we both took the Friday off, and we’re headed to a cottage in Scotland for our anniversary (Mike asked me out on a Friday the 13th, so we celebrate Friday the 13ths rather than the actual year anniversary). Tonight or tomorrow night we need to call Mike’s grandparents and see if they are interested in having some weekend visitors for the 21-22, and if they are, we are trying to arrange Mountain Biking in Wales for that weekend. And then on Wednesday the 25th, my mom lands here for a week of sight-seeing. I took off the days when she is here and we are going to SEE STUFF and HAVE FUN and DRINK WINE! It’s gonna be rad.

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.

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!

We’ve been in the UK a solid 5 months now, and had yet to visit Mike’s grandparents up in Wales, which makes Mike pretty much the worse grandson ever. We decided to rectify that this weekend. Mike had been wanting to try driving in the UK, but we decided that central London wasn’t exactly the best location to attempt this for the first time, so we trained it to Chester and rented a car there. He actually did pretty well – he needed reminding only a few times in the beginning to be a little more James Bond and a little less Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. By which I mean he was driving on the righthand side of the road, and whatever else you’d like to take from that regarding his appearance, intelligence, and behavior..

Anyway, we got to his grandparents’ place around noon, just in time to take them out for lunch. Well, I guess they took us for lunch? We drove, but they paid. We bought dinner though.

After that, we drove around and checked out a few touristy places. Basically, it was a beautiful sunny day, so all of Wales was a postcard.

Mike and I ruining the beautiful scene. It was gorgeous and sunny, but also really windy, which is why I’m wearing Mike’s coat.

Mike is manly and not bothered by the wind’s chill. Or so he says. Which I think is his way of being a gentleman.

We went back to the grandparents’ for a bit, then out for dinner. Then back home where Mike and his Granddad watched a documentary on Hitler (fun fact, Mike is super interested in anything WWII), while Molly (his Nan) and I read. I was reading Somewhere Inside, which I finished on the train ride home. It was pretty good, but I have to wonder if the Ling sisters worry that some of the things they wrote could get people who were kind to Laura in trouble back in North Korea. I hope that’s not the case.

The minute our heads hit the pillow, we conked right out. Mike woke me up twice because I was snoring. I am not usually a snorer, but I am thinking the walking around in the wind, mild allergies, and nice full belly combined to take me RIGHT out.

In the morning, we had breakfast with the Grandparents, then went for a drive ourselves around. We ended up finding an animal sanctuary place that had a restaurant overlooking the farm, where we enjoyed hot bevvies and watched the animals. Geese are kind of mean. One of them was chasing a pony away quite aggressively! Here I am by the fence. None of the animals wanted to pose with me.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and Mike actually had the day off, so we decided to go check out Hampton Court Palace. Hampton Court Palace was the main home of King Henry VIII, who is pretty much the baddest ass English monarch ever. It’s about a 30 minute train ride from London to Hampton Court train station. Once you’re at the station, it’s a 2 minute walk over a bridge and you’re there. Here we are on the bridge, with Hampton Court Palace behind us:

Anyway, the inside of the castle wasn’t terribly fascinating – we basically learned that Henry’s court ate a lot of meat. Thousands of animals worth. It was 70% of their diet. OH GOD THE MEAT THEY ATE. They boiled it. They roasted it. They fried it. Meat meat meat. I sweat, the first third of the audio tour was all about meat and how much of it he ate. He also had a huge wine cellar and liked fruits and sweets, which is no surprise to anyone who has read or watched anything about Henry VIII. Dude was totally about his pleasures – women, wine, and food.

Anyway, we saw about 2/3 of the inside before the call of the sunshine overtook us and we went out into the garden. I love the trees! They look like Super Mario Bros mushrooms

Also, a cute bridge with a royally gate behind us. We’re at a palace, yo!

We walked around the formal gardens for a while, then made our way to the park that has the MAZE in it. We made it to the centre of the maze, then out again. Apparently, the maze turns me into a turbo nerd with terrible posture. Weird.

By then, we were ready to head home. We made a quick stop in the gift shop (I have been putting together a mishmosh tea set from English gift shops. So far, I have a tea cup and saucer from Westminster Abbey, and I bought a teapot from Hampton Court Palace in honor of Henry VIII being my favorite monarch.), then headed home to drop stuff off and head back to SoHo for dinner. We went to Gourmet Burger Kitchen. I know it’s weird considering I LOVE steak, but I actually prefer veggie burgers to “real” burgers. I like the seasoning better. Anyway, I had a lentil burger. We were supposed to go on a pub crawl, but I left my ID at home because I’m 28 and older than time, and nobody IDs in the UK anyway – except, apparently, the pub crawl people. We found a cool pub instead and people watched and drank wine/beer. Not really a super huge night – we were home by 11. It worked out though, because around midnight, it started to POUR. Like stronger than our shower. This is weird for the UK. Usually a “rainy” day means it mists annoyingly all day and accomplishes nothing other than making your hair look stupid. Proper rain was actually a nice treat.

Today is all about the lazy but getting stuff done. Mike is working on a rig of some sort, and I’m going to study my DBA stuff for a while. Then we’re going to go somewhere local for lunch and get groceries. Also, laundry. Lots and lots of laundry.

85.5 kg. 188.5 lbs.
Absolutely no change over 28 days. Not even a fraction of a pound.
I should be disappointed by this, but I’m not. I’m actually pretty stoked. There are two main reasons for this:

1. I gave up on boot camp. It just wasn’t working for me. The main reason was the timing. 7:15-8:00 was cutting right into our dinner time, and Mike and I had basically no social life in the evenings. We’re in a nice routine of me getting home first and cooking dinner, eating together, cleaning up, then heading in any old direction for 20 minutes or so, until we find a nice pub, then having a small drink and heading home. I pretty much always have either a small glass of wine, or something with a diet coke. Between that and the walking, the calories are a wash, and we get to chat and see people. The other reason I gave up on boot camp is admittedly kind of stupid. There was a know-it-all Aussie chick in the class that I couldn’t stand. I am sure she was trying to help, but I honestly wanted to smack her. She had opinions on how I should be doing everything – running, punching, bridges, just everything. And she insisted on helping, even when I’d refused the offer – ie: tightening my boxing gloves when I’d just said I didn’t want them tightened. Very, very irritating. I know I shouldn’t have let her ruin my experience, but gah! Irritating.
2. I haven’t been tracking my food intake. I’ve been basically “intuitively eating”. I try to choose healthier options, eat when I’m hungry, and stop when I’m full. The fact that I’ve maintained a weight for a month without significant exercise or food restriction shows that I’m getting good at knowing how much food my body needs. I think this bodes well for my long-term success.

I still want to lose more though, so I’m starting Couch to 5K again. I actually did the first day of week 2 this morning (at 6am – ugh, I so wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep, but Mike pointed out that I had already gotten out of bed, and I’d feel fine once I was on the road, so I went out. He was right!). I looked into gyms in my area and around work, but nothing was terribly impressive, so I think I am going to try to go at it at home. Mike ordered me some resistance bands off of e-bay. Between that at the jogging, plus all the walking I do because I don’t have a car, I think I should be set. I’m going to keep up eating how I am now – not tracking every calorie, but mindful of what (and how much) goes into my mouth. It’s how I’m happiest. I said when I started on this journey that I wasn’t going to do anything that I couldn’t do for the rest of my life, and that still stands. I don’t plan on neurotically recording every calorie I eat for the rest of time. Even if that means I never have a perfect body – I’d rather live a happy, full life in a slightly larger body than unhappily restrict calories forever in a super-thin body. Some people can do that for life. I’m not one of them.
I have to say, Mike is probably the best boyfriend I’ve ever had, especially when it comes to all this health/fitness stuff. I’ve had prior boyfriends that were all for me eating well and exercising, as long as it didn’t involve them having to eat salad or be inconvenienced by my exercising. Mike is pretty much happy to eat whatever I’m cooking (even if it does involve big scary leafy greens), and never complains when my alarm goes off at 6am, even though he doesn’t get up til 7. He’s also good at giving me a gentle push when I need it (like this morning), without coming across as the food and exercise police. In short, Mike rocks.
In other news, I am also studying to write my Microsoft exams for all of the DBA business. No specific reason other than I like to be a school nerd, and the more I learn, the more employable I am. My laptop, however, could learn a few things from Mike. It does NOT want to install SQL. It wants to spit out errors, and have a hissy fit. I am going to try to work through it again tonight, but if I can’t get it to install, I’m going to back up my stuff and reformat my laptop. I’ve been meaning to do it anyway – that and open it up to blow the dust out. It’s been running slowly and very hot lately, so I think it might appreciate a little TLC.

It has been FOREVER since I blogged. This whole working and boot camp business has really cut into my internet time.

So anyway – THORPE PARK WAS AWESOME. We got there right when it opened and immediately got in line for one of the roller coasters. Long line, but it was totally fun. A few more coasters, and a totally regrettable KFC lunch and we headed to the other side of the park to try to get on the SAW ride. Sadly, the line up was 2 hours because someone puked on the ride and they had to shut it down and clean it up, so we did the SAW maze instead. As we’re walking into the Saw maze, a girl comes running out of the entrance, crying and screaming, “fuck that, fuck that”. It was a pretty awesome way to pump us up for the maze, which was scary, but not bad enough to make me run out screaming. After that, we waiting in another line for 40 minutes to ride a log flume. RIGHT when we got to the front, the ride closed down due to “a guest action”. We speculated that it must have been really awful – urinating into the water or something like that, but we found out later that it was actually that two guys lost their hats and decided to get OFF of the ride to retrieve them. Idiots. Anyway, when they hit the emergency stop, engineers have to come reset all the pumps and stuff, so we didn’t get to ride it. The gentlemen involved were escorted from the park WITHOUT their hats. They weren’t the only ones escorted out – we saw a few people (mostly groups of older teenagers) being escorted out. We also saw security assisting a puker on a bench, and heard about a fight on another security guy’s walkie talkie. Kinda thinking that Security Detail: Thorpe Park might be a funny reality show.

Anyway, mom asked for photos, and I realized we really don’t have many because you can’t exactly hold a camera on a ride. Also, Mike spoils photos by making faces:

We did realize at the park that we were lacking pictures of us on rides, so we pretended we were on a super awesome roller coaster:

After Thorpe Park, we went with some of Mike’s coworkers for burgers and drinks and conversation. All around fun day and fun evening.

Beyond that, nothing much has happened this week. Boot Camp is kicking my ass – I could barely walk yesterday for muscle soreness.

This weekend is a bank holiday weekend, which means I get Monday off (yay!) It’s also Katy’s birthday. Mike is sick and working, so I am taking the train to see Katy and help her celebrate her birthday. I am super excited to see her and her hilariously wonderful daughter Meghan. Also in the realm of people I am excited to see – my mom has booked her flight to come see me at the end of August. I took the days off that she’s here, so we will have lots of fun and get up to all sorts of craziness.