Whole Foods

I know it's not really very normal to have a love affair with a supermarket, but I cannot get enough of this place. I met a friend for lunch so we dove into the copious choices of the salad bar, ate our lunch, then got amazing brownies and coffee and ate that, all while wondering through the sites and smells and bread and cheese tasting - it's so cool. For US people, I know, I know it sounds like I'm overreacting, but the Whole Foods in Kensington is like 3 notches up from the average store in the states. My friend, who is from France, said that the bakery part reminded her of France. So there. :)

I finally have my room almost finished - I've bought a duvet and duvet cover, going with black and white and red for my colors. The couch in my room is black leather, so I'll put up black curtains (this will help with the cold and the light), and then use red as the accent for pillows and maybe a rug. Shopping here is so different...I would really love to have a Bed, Bath and Beyond to simplify the process, but it's also kinda fun to wander through all 5 floors of Debenhams, House of Fraser, and John Lewis (dept. stores) and some of the smaller stores.

I'm having such a nice, lazy weekend. After a wild night out on Friday, it's good to chill out - especially since it's nasty weather!

All at once

Sometimes I think my life is just a sequence of intense bursts of random connections, memories, and events happening frantically together in a spiral of activity that sweeps me up and doesn't drop me back until it's had its way with me. Not that I mind, I thrive on the chaos usually, it's just funny that I don't do anything to start these times, they just come. So September was one of those - most of it I will not write about in detail, since it involves BOYS and other stuff I don't really like to put out there on the interwebs. :) But lets just say that there was old, new, surprising, predictable, good, bad and ugly all condensed in a matter of weeks!

I had my first god-awful date, a nice lesson in why people hate dating. I let myself be 'set-up' with someone for the first time, and although the verdict is still out on that one, it was not as bad as I thought it would be. I re-connected with two ex-boyfriends, I handled myself pretty well in some tricky situations, let myself be slightly emotionally vulnerable, took some risks and had a fabulous time, and overall came to the end of this episode of tornado Jennie in darn good shape!

I say it's the end, I could be wrong, but the wind is changing, so to speak, I can feel it. I'm settling back into life as I like it, which is good.

I'm choosing to only stay peripherally engaged in what's happening in the world, because work was unstable, my life was unstable, and if I added in the instability of the financial mess and prospect of a Sarah Palin Vice Presidency, I'm not sure I would have held onto my sanity so well. So I read other people's opinions, quietly form my own, and go on with life. Oh and I sure as heck sent off for my absentee ballot!

In vino veritas

One of the first latin phrases I learned was "in wine, there is truth." I'm certainly hoping that holds true for me, because I have had a LOT of wine in the last few days. :)

I don't have time to do my full 2 week trip to the US justice, so I'll leave it with one word: PERFECT. Saw everyone I wanted (only a couple misses due to timing - will have to see them next time), did everything I wanted, enjoyed every minute, and returned to London when I wanted. Well, there was the slight issue of missing my flight from ATL to RDU which made me too late for my RDU-London flight, but that meant I got another night with my mom, and turned out I didn't have a 'home' to go back to anyway because my flat wasn't ready until yesterday.

Wednesday night (completely exhausted) I stayed at a friends, with dinner at her house with wine and friends. Thursday night was a quiet movie night at the same friends. Friday night was a wild night out with a friend in town from Holland for the wedding Saturday. We had dinner, drinks and dancing at the Dutch pub, and a night cap at the swanky hotel bar at the Crowne Plaza at Buckingham Palace, where I shared a massive room with her, since she has a friend that works there = £295 room for £66!!

Saturday it was up, fabulous b'fast at the hotel and off to Oxford. It was my first time there, and I loved it! We were staying AT St. John's college, so it was a little glimpse into life as an Oxford University student, right there with the hundreds of years old buildings :) The wedding was at a chapel on campus, champagne in the courtyard, dinner at the dining hall - just like in a Harry Potter movie, reception with dancing after that, and then a small group continued onto a pub and then club, because what wedding is complete unless you make it to the 12th hour of celebration?? :)

I was KNACKERED, as they say, but managed to get up and out by 10am checkout, on the delayed and then canceled and then delayed train back, and to my flat to start moving heavy boxes and bags from the garage up to the flat, and to my friends to get the rest and taxi back...not sure how i did it all.

Today I was late to work - no chance I was out of bed in time - but made it through until heading off to a work dinner with our sales contact at a vendor with a few other people, which was such fun!! Opera night at this restaurant that makes decadent seem an inadequate word. It was amazing, and I will have to go back, whenever I need some crazy velvet table cloths and opera music to compliment my wine and food :)

Anyhow, life needs to slow down a bit, so I can unpack, and sleep. Ah sleep...

How much is that dress in the window?

....£1080. Yeah so that was a new high for me in terms of having expensive taste... !!! I had been watching this dress for weeks - every morning I go running past this shop and it's right on Portobello Road, where most things are pretty reasonable, but lots of fun clothes. So I thought, when I get paid on the 15th, I'll go check it out. They had taken the dress down, but I went in to ask anyway, and when he answered it was one of those moments where I would have spewed coffee on the guy's face if I'd been drinking anything. I laughed and said well I won't be doing that today!! He said do you want to try it on anyway? (I'm thinking NO! I don't WANT to know if this dress looks good on me!) So I tried to shrug off, but he insisted, saying he hadn't seen it on anyone, so I caved, and he went to get it, and I very, very carefully tried on the dress - and of course it was beautiful and fit perfectly. So not fair. It was fun though, to prance around in and try to think of some reason I would ever need a gorgeous pale pink shift with real pearls sewn into it in the shape of necklaces and delicate sequin detail...but there really isn't one. Especially not for a cool grand. Thus, I wandered down to the market and found a not quite so glamorous but still cool pink dress for £10, making today the first time I have spent 100 times less on an item I wanted.

In other news, I FLY TO THE US TOMORROW! I can't believe I'm so excited - last trip was, honestly, awful. The one weekend I spent up in Richmond was great, but work was just a nightmare, and I could not wait to get back to London. And I must confess I'm starting to understand why people don't like traveling all the time for work - just when I start to get into a rhythm of seeing friends and meeting people, I disrupt it for two weeks and it takes a while to get back in the swing of things.

This trip may turn out the same, but I've got two fun-packed weekends planned, so hopefully that will make up for any other stress. It's crazy how lucky I am though, I get to do this and not lose more than one holiday (vacation day). So even if the US office is painful, I should just take it in stride - it's a small price to pay for all the benefits on the other side of the pond! :)

Missing Music

I went to the BBC proms last night and had SUCH a good time! The proms are 8 weeks of world-class concerts put on by the BBC, most at Royal Albert Hall (which is an amazing venue), and if you get there 2 hours before to queue, you can get a £5 standing ticket in either the gallery or the arena. The arena is down on the ground, and the gallery is all the way up above the top row. I'm going to go again before the 8 weeks is up, so I'll take some photos. We opted for the gallery - the acoustics are better and there's room to sit down if you get tired.

The music was awesome - Gershwin, Stravinsky, a modern piece with audience participation (had to clap a rhythm while the orchestra played - so cool to have 1,000's of people collaborating with the music in a constructive way) and a world premier of a jazz/classical piano concerto where the young composer played the piano himself.

We sat/stood next to this gentlemen who was from Pittsburgh and has come over for the proms every year for the last 40 years!! So cool. The atmosphere is something to experience, and there are usually guest orchestras and big names and it's just such a cool thing - I think they've been going on since the 1800's.

Then only downside was that I seriously wanted to go home and play the piano for hours though...and couldn't :( I will be purchasing a keyboard the day I get back from the US and move back in my flat - it's been WAY too long now.

Break point

Something amazing happened when I reached my the point that I was willing to move back to NC if that was what it would take to be happy again. After I faced up to the worst that could happen (sorry, my home state, I love you, I will be a Carolina girl forever, but I just would shrivel up and die living in Cary at the moment), and realised I would survive, I was able to face my life with a huge weight off my shoulders. I wasn't staying at my job because I HAD to, I was fully prepared to leave if that's what needed to be, and I could calmly wait out a few things and see if things got better (so far so good). And since that moment, life has just been awesome. Nothing really changed, except my outlook. I could deal. And I'm not just coping, I'm loving being alive and in London. Such a cool city (I know I already gushed earlier this week, but I feel I'm overdue for some happy posting). I went to Portobello market this weekend and just wandered around, ran into an acquaintance, remembered what it was like to be part of such a cool neighborhood.

This month is the BBC 'proms' which are classical music concerts almost every night at Royal Albert Hall that are open for standing room tickets for £5. I'm going on Saturday night with a friend for some Gershwin and other jazz/modern music. Should be fun!

There's also some cool festival type things going on for the Olympics in Trafalgar Square, may try and go by for that tomorrow night.

If I had a baby...

Apparently I would sit it down to try and play a game with me, banging its head against the wall as I tried to prop it up, creating a massive knot on the back of its noggin. I would then run with the baby to get some ice from the store, and instead find some sort of cold magnetic eggs, which only made the baby cry worse, and ask advice from every one there as to what to do. Then later on I would leave to go out and forget to make sure someone else watched the baby while I was gone, and send frantic text messages to my friend who was in the house to get them to switch the baby from sleeping on its stomach to back or whichever is the one they're supposed to do.

At least, that was my dream last night. Very weird. I can understand some of it, because I know I have always been petrified of having a baby, but not why I was thinking about it last night, when I spent the evening in a Soho club with my friend and six Italian guys dancing to crazily mixed music and trying to plan a 2am outing to play foosball!

Speaking of 2am, I'm getting old. I went out Tuesday night, Thursday night, and last night, and wow am I tired. Somehow I managed to make plans with 3 different people tonight, so I will probably end up very dazed and confused on Sunday, when oh yeah I might try to go play golf! Why can't I learn to find the happy medium in life? Either I'm doing nothing but watching iTunes movies and sitting on my roof terrace, or I'm acting like I'm in college or something.

Not a complaint - it's much better to be really enjoying life again, I must say!