F*I*N*A*L*LY

I am officially back online! SKY had to send a technician to my house this morning to fix my internet/phone problems, they weren't sure what the problem was....little did they know I was planning on holding their technician hostage until my phone and internet were working. Luckily it didn't come to that!  Now I am just wasting some time on the Worldwide Web waiting for little Hayden to wake up from her nap so we can iChat!  It has been 2 months since I have seen that precious face which I have decided is WAY too long! I have another iChat date set up with my parents later this evening when my dad gets home from work. If anyone else wants to get in on the iChat action let me know and I can schedule you in! 

Drum Roll Please

the post you've all been waiting for...or at least the post my sister has been waiting for! Pictures of my flat! I'll just go ahead and do a photo tour of the casa!

My kitchen (most of it) It is at the top of the entry stairs right when you walk in.

this is the view facing away from the kitchen, the stairs on the left go down to the front door, the hallway goes towards the spare room and the living room

view of the bathroom from the hall, right next to the kitchen (it's small!!!)

shower!

This is the second bedroom, haven't gotten everything hung on the walls at this point.

the other side of the spare room!

the living room, the two windows face out towards the street.

living room

back of the living room, the white door is where the entrance is from the hallway

the stairs leading up to my bedroom

At the top of the stairs, a little nook!

my bed, from the entrance to the room

my beloved shoes! i keep them out where i can see 'em!

dresser

the other side of my room, i had to get an extra clothes rack...there wasn't quite enough closet space!! That's all folks!

NOW the weather gets nice...figures!

Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining about having nice weather, it just figures that the sun would decide to come out now! Courtney and Melissa were in London all of last week visiting me and it rained the whole time they were here, so sad! Most people associate rain with London so they weren't too disappointed, but I was, London is such a different place when the sun is shining! As I thought, as soon as they left for the airport the sun was back out in full effect and I haven't seen a cloud since Saturday morning. Despite the rain, we had a fantastic week and had so much fun hanging out and catching up. We even spent all last Saturday on the couch in our pajamas watching TV...just like the old days back at 2404 Jaguar Court! I'll do another post on their visit once I get some pics from them, I didn't take any on my camera! I originally planned on going to the airport with them at 5:30 AM on Saturday so I could keep Melissa company since her flight left and hour and a half after Courtney's. However, when 5 AM rolled around, I was feeling slightly less selfless so I made a trade! I can't believe it, but I actually convinced Melissa to read Twilight while she was here. She had only made it half way through the book by the end of the trip and was trying to get me to give up my copy, well Kelly's copy that she lent to me. I was not at liberty to give away someone else's book...however, my feelings were easily swayed come 5 AM! So I sent them off to the airport, Twilight in hand, and went back to sleep until almost 1PM! I needed my rest, I love having visitors, but it really takes it out of you.

Sunday I awoke to another beautiful day! I had plans to meet Christine and Francis at Chili's for a much needed American food fix, so I made the trek out to Canary Wharf for lunch. It really probably is a good thing that the only Chili's in London is an hour away from my flat, that could be dangerous if it was any closer. After lunch I headed over to Annie's, we had a date to go shopping for hiking boots. Not my typical shoe shopping adventure, but I'm sure it was quite entertaining for the sales guys, or probably more annoying than anything else. It took us a while to get over the aesthetics of the shoes and stop asking to try on the "cute" ones and actually try the ones he was recommending. Annie and I are climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in January so we needed to find some "serious hiking boots." Annie requested ones with trampolines on the bottom that could bounce her up to the top. They don't make those. We finally found some boots that didn't turn out to be too hideously ugly and they are super comfy...now we just have to break them in. There are some mountains up in Northern England and Scotland that we can practice on, that makes me a little nervous, but I suppose I probably shouldn't just show up at the bottom of the highest peak in Africa in January and expect to be able to march myself to the top without a little practice. I've been doing the stair stepper at the gym, but something tells me that isn't going to cut it alone! So we decided to strap our new boots on and walk across London, although we got a little distracted and stopped in for some dinner and then dinner turned into a movie. I've got a lot of practice ahead of me to get this whole "outdoorsy" thing down!

Prague and other things

I have been harrassed by my sister and a couple of other friends for not updating my blog in a while, mainly by my sister though! So my story is that I STILL do not have internet access at my new flat. It's been a month, but SKY likes to take their pretty little time and make the process as difficult as possible. The date is 4/16 though, I will be up and running! My advice to anyone moving oversees is to keep your expectations VERY low when it comes to anything dealing with the service industry! So I apologize my my recent bout of blog neglect. I'm sure many things have happened in the past few weeks, but my mind can't be bothered to think of them since my brain has been in a permanent allergy-induced haze for three straight weeks. Today I shifted from Allergy medicine to Cold & Sinus medicine since the prior clearly wasn't doing its job and maybe I have misdiagnosed myself. But I will try and do my best for you people, starting with Prague.

I went to Prague the last weekend of March with Kelly, Desi and Desi's little sister Chloe. It was such a great, laid back trip. Prague is a beautiful city that is really small so it is easy to get around on foot. I'm sure Prague has TONS more to offer than what we did, but we weren't in the mood. We didn't do any tours (other than a pub crawl!) no museums, no historical facts (other than those recited to us out of Desi's Prague book) Which by the way, must have been outdated...every bar or restaurant we tried to go to that we found in the book was no longer there! So I can't really offer anyone a history lesson here, no fun facts about any of the sites, no way do I even know what I was taking pictures of! I was just snapping everything that looked pretty. We did a lot of people watching while drinking Czech beer on patios by the river...that was fun. Here are some of my favorite pics...don't expect details!

Big Old building with pointy spires in Old Town Square

Astrological Clock in Old Town Square

Apparently marionettes are populare in Prague, I think they are creepy

I took this pic b/c it reminded me of my PaPa, he used to build Violins!

Proof that I was actually in Prague, not just my camera

The Charles Bridge

St. Nicholas Cathedral

Absolutely disgusting! These people were all over the streets and they expected people to tip them...notice the cap in front of him for tips is empty...maybe he should take a hint and go home with his rat and find a new day job. Playing with rats while subjecting poor innocent dogs to their diseases is not an acceptable career.

After that debauchery, we were in need of some beer

We got lucky, it was the Spring festival while we were there. All of these tents were set up in the Old Town Square.

These were some delicious cinammon sugar doughy treats they were selling, good thing I'm back on carbs. Kelly won't hang out with me when I'm not eating carbs, she says I'm mean.

The facade of St. Nicholas (I only know this b.c I did some googling just now!)

Whoa! It's been a while since the last beer, must take a break for another one.

St. Vitus

View of Prague from the Prague Castle

Prague Castle at night.

I have all of my pics posted on my shutterfly site, if you want to go check them out. Now I need to address the fact that I have not posted pics of my new flat, since I know that is the real reason my sister has been harrassing me about updating my blog...let's be honest, it wasn't because she wanted to see the pics from Prague! I have taken the pictures of my new flat, but they are on my small digital camera and I seemed to have misplaced the USB cord for that camera, so for now they are stuck on my camera! They are cute though! Oh, also stuck on my small camera are all of the pics from Prague with people in them (the 2 that I remembered to take!) Either way, until I find my USB cord or April 16th when I have internet access at my house there will be no flat pictures, very disappointing I know! I will be off of work all next week because my two bestest friends, Melissa and Courtney Sue are coming to visit me tomorrow!! YIPPEE! I love my season of visitors! We are off to the beaches of Portugal on Easter evening for some much needed R&R! I'm sure I'll have lots to post about after they leave and I can calm myself down from the excitement of re-entering the 21st century with my internet access! Until then, as Melissa would say...Peace, Love and Crabs!