Journey to the great Londinium

Well, it's finally happened. I had a job interview in London today at an agency, which means that I now have three interviews for proper jobs on Friday. I'm hoping, potentially in vain, that I'll get to go up to my manager on next Monday morning and say, while trying to control my glee and my impulse to flee the building immediately, and tell her that I've gotten a job and that I'm leaving in a week. All the things I'm interviewing for are amazingly above what I'm earning right now - at least £4,000 a year more, if not more than that. And they'll all be off the phone, and I'll finally be making enough to have real clothes, and it'll be in London.

I bought a copy of Time Out (a magazine that essentially is a list of what is happenning, and where, each week in London) today to look through on my train trip back to Blandford, and was amazed at the sheer number of free things that were happening. There are free concerts in parks, free films, free loads of things. It might be a dirty, grimy, city full of grey buildings, but there's just such an energy!

Anyway. I'm moving to London. It's real. I feel almost like I did when it was getting time for me to move to Britain. It's fantastic.

A small, strange, island

Yesterday during the obligatory birthday phone call from my parents, my mother mentioned that one of her friends had asked her why I stayed in England after I finished my degree. How do you answer a question like that? "Well, I thought about the money that I'd have to spend on the plane ticket and decided I'd be better off buying booze"? Yes. That would so go over well. At the time I answered with a vague and nebulous "Because it's nice?" but after having slightly longer to think about it, I think I may have come up with some reasons that are slightly more interesting.

1. How can you not like a country where people actually chase cheese down a hill?
2. No George Bush.
3. There are tiny little cottages that are older than my country, and people pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to live in them.
4. Hedgehogs.
5. Being able to walk through thousands of years worth of history in a few steps.
6. The ability to take a cheap flight to mainland Europe. And it's actually cheap. Like £50.
7. Cool accents.
8. My boyfriend lives here.

That's all I've been able to think of thus far, but I'm sure the reasons will keep building up. It's not so much that I don't like the States, because I do. It's just that this is where I am right now. And for a bit longer too.

Portrait of the artist

It's my birthday...a picture had to be taken.

A quarter of a centuary

I'm 25 today. This is difficult to believe because most of my brain is still convinced that I'm 16 and don't really need to worry about the bills, I can spend that money on CDs. Yesterday Matt and I trekked into Bournemouth to go shopping with some gift certificates his dad was giving me early so that I could buy some clothes for an interview I have in Londinium on Wednesday next week. We went out for Chinese for lunch, went shopping, and then went to see X-men 3 (which was not as good as it could have been). It was fun, especially since we haven't been able to go out much recently, mostly due to a cash flow problem but also because we now live in the middle of nowhere.

I'd had a dream on Friday night that is one of the ones that you hope so desperately will come true, even though you know it won't, that you can't help but hold onto it and hope against hope in the back of your mind that it will happen. I dreamed that I was walking down the street, and someone behind me tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. I turn around, and stare in disbelief because R. is standing there, grinning like an idiot. And we go out for coffee, and we talk for hours. So what I really want for my birthday? Coffee with my best friend.

It's a Plymouth VER-I-SON. It is not a joy TO RIDE!!!

Today I failed my British driving test. Because I:

1) Stopped at several lights that had just changed to yellow.
2) When turning, crossed my hands over on the steering wheel too many times.
3) Did not check my second side mirror after looking in the side mirror closest to oncoming traffic and my rearview as well.
4) Kept my foot on the brake whilst stopped at a stoplight several times.
5) Did not check all mirrors and blind spot before turning corners, slowing down, or putting on my indicator to turn above mentioned corners.

Sometimes I like living here, and other times I just want to pull out the submachine gun I have tucked away under my bed and start shooting.

Hell on earth

heat+humidity+hayfever+being-stuck-on-a-bus-which-says-on-the-side-there-is-airconditioning-but-really-it-is-just-the-driver's-window-rolled-down=HELL