Wednesday 27 July 2011

Footnotes (otherwise known as random running happenings) part III

Snake!

Actual, real-life, honest-to-goodness snake on the path as I went running.

I'll be honest, it totally freaked me out. There's nature, and then there's scary nature with fangs, and venom (possibly. I have no idea what kind of snake it was) and slitheryness.

Also, I'm less than impressed that it took me more than an hour to drive two miles home from my run, thanks to protestors on Hollywood Blvd. And now police helicopters are merrily circling my apartment, attempting to deafen me.

Is the moral of this story that I should stay at home eating Ben and Jerry's with the windows shut and the air-con switched on??

Wednesday 13 July 2011

My Working Week


Snazzy pie chart courtesy of chartgen.blogspot.com

While lurking at LAX last week waiting for a pair of newlyweds to touch down, I started thinking about how much of my time at work is spent just waiting... for... stuff... to... happen. If someone had told me my career would involve this much hanging around, maybe I would have reconsidered (probably not, to be honest. It's not like I would have made a great tax lawyer. Or dentist. Or bus driver.)

I'm not exactly renowned for my patient attitude to life. In fact, kinda the opposite. I hate queues. My attention span is now so bad that I'm operating on two different laptops, and when a page loads on one, I sometimes start using the other... (hideous confession. Imagine me mentally chastising myself.) I can't sit through an ad break without fidgeting.

So how did I end up in a job where it's not unusual to sit around waiting for something or someone for up to three hours at a time?

The oddest thing is the way things go from hanging around, trying to befriend the random people standing next to you*, to crazy, intense, adrenaline-rush levels of stress, in the space of a few seconds.

Anyhoo, thank fuck for Angry Birds. Tiny, enthusiastic, avian bombs, you saved my sanity this weekend. I thank you.

*This can seriously backfire. Some people are awesome. An unfortunate minority turn out to be scary far-right-leaning creeps who have to you see again - and again - and again, at future waiting around sessions. It's a risk you take...

Friday 8 July 2011

Reasons I'm an idiot

In the last 7 days I  have, in no particular order:

 - Put the butter in the freezer instead of the fridge after buttering my bagel
 - Put the icecream back in the fridge instead of the freezer
 - Left the tape deck running in my car and run the battery down, necessitating an emergency joining of the AAA
 - Completely confused myself and invited a friend to stay during a week when I'm actually likely to be in Toronto
- Left a not-quite-shut bottle of suncream in my handbag. Goodbye bag, au revoir purse. It was nice knowing you, notebook

Not a classic week.

Monday 4 July 2011

Independence Day


The cup of English breakfast tea in the Wills and Kate mug is a slight, accidental, subversion. Sorry about that...

Saturday 2 July 2011

Wanderlust


The Gili Islands (purdy)

OK, so this is going to make me sound like a very spoilt girl indeed... but bear with me.

I LOVE travelling. One of the reasons I picked my career is the opportunities for seeing new places that come with it. Over the last few years I've been lucky enough to visit a few different Caribbean Islands, Canada and various European cities with work.

But the best holidays, by a long, long margin, have been the ones I've saved my pennies for, sat and planned through from start to finish and researched in minute detail. From Morocco to Vietnam, Slovenia to Lombok, they've all been worth the budgeting and the worrying about whether I can justify the cost.

While other people have been busy buying houses and planning weddings, I've been spending all my spare cash readily agreeing to any and every holiday suggestion thrown at me. And I don't regret it one little bit.

Even though my job has brought me to California, and I've got some road trips lined up for the next couple of months (Vegas baby!) I'm getting a bit restless. I miss the anticipation of the Big Trip. Poring over maps and making up fantastical itineraries makes me happy.

So I've decided that whatever happens, 2012 is going to involve not just a Big Trip, but THE Big Trip. Not just a two or three-week holiday, but a couple of months away from everything familiar. I just need to decide where I'm going...

It's a two-way battle between the Trans-Siberian Railway (starting in London and working my way overland to Beijing) and a jaunt through South America, from Peru, through Bolivia and down to Buenos Aires.

Tough call. Or a chance to plan two lots of absurd itineraries...