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Today is going to be a mix between work and pleasure. While I plan on taking it easy and watch some movies and play some video games, I also have to do some work for an i/o Computers client. It’s nothing really that big, but some quick Photoshop work and re-arranging of their online catalog.
Jess, Kelly and I went to the drive-in last night to see ‘The Simpsons Movie’ and ‘Live Free or Die Hard’. Both were excellent movies. ‘The Simpsons’ was hilarious as we all expected, and ‘Die Hard’ was hilarious as Kelly and I ripped apart all the computer parts. I still don’t understand Hollywood’s fascination about making these computer system look totally unbelievable.

First off, no one ever uses a mouse. While that would be fine that is they were pure code writers, this isn’t the case. Everyone was using very advanced, multi-window, semi-transparent graphical user interfaces. What I have always enjoyed about these interfaces is that when they need some information, everything they need opens up nice and easy in fully cascading windows, just as they need the information. But my biggest question with these windows it this – how the hell do they close these windows? If you ever look at them, there’s no little “X” at the top to close the windows. Hell, there’s not even the word ‘close’ anywhere. So, just like they magically appear, they disappear as soon as the person who needed said information is done absorbing it.

I’m not even going to start about flying code. There are plenty of other good articles online about that.

Jess has to close tonight, so I pretty much have the house to myself tonight. While Kelly is here, I may start the i/o work I need to get done. Let those two talk and do their chick thing for a while. That way, once Kelly heads home and Jess heads to work, I have the entire night and house to myself.

Sounds like a plan to me.

Well, it has come to this again.

According to the scale, I hjave lost 12lbs since January. However, according to how I feel, I’m a fat-ass. I just hate the way my body feels. I know I have some extra weight, as about 66% of all other Americans do. I’ve been trying to lose it, but it’s tough with the scheduled Jess and I run sometimes. Add to the fact that you tend to eat more in stressful situations, and right before we left for England, this were pretty stressful.

For those of you who don’t remember, about 3 weeks before we were to leave for England, we had the financial week from hell. First, out TV died and we had to get a new one. Next, Loki ate my glasses. And finally, the my entire computer dies.

Yeah, just a little bit of stress there considering that the currancy exchange rate was dropping and all of our extra money was getting sucked into these problems.

Then, when we finally did get to England, I mean hell, we’re on vacation! We enjoyed all the food we could!

And now that I’m back home, I just feel rather large. I was looking at pictures last night of myself from around 2001 and I was heavy. Then I saw myself in 2004, when I met Jess, and I had lost all the weight and I looked pretty damn good. On top of that, I felt pretty damn good. That’s what I want to get back to. I honestly aren’t too concerned about what the scale says, I’m more concerned about how I feel in my own skin. To me, that’s what really counts.

So, starting today, I am going to try my best to once again alter my diet and see if I can’t start shedding some poundage.

I know a lot of it has to do with my job. 2 years ago I was on the sales floor and moving around all day long stocking, moving shit around, and running from one side of the store to the other. Now, I just sit in my office all day at my computer, dealing with problems, calling vendors, and organizing all my installs. And then when something does go wrong, I just get into my car and drive to the job site and take care of things. Again, not very active. My job can’t change right now, so my after-job activites must.

So, that’s pretty much where I am at right now — square one. But, hopefully in a few months, I can say that I have seen signifigant progress and that I am a little more comfortable with myself.

I did want to work on the site for a while tonight, but I am finding that I am in what I would describe as a ‘tech rutt’.

It sucks…

Well, this is a first for me. I am writing this right now at about 30,000ft as we head up the coast of the UK onto Glasgow, Scotland, and then we’re headed over the North Atlantic.

It was bitter sweet to pack up and head home. Even though we really enjoyed the later half of our trip, it is time for us to go back home and back to our hum-drum lives. The most bitter sweet part, for me at least, is the early-freakin’-bird flight we’re booked on. We had to get up at 2:30am to get showers and head to the Great Hall at Thurnham to catch our cab ride to the airport at 5am. We packed just about everything up the night before and tried to get some sleep, but by the time we were done packing, it was already after midnight. Major league suckage.

But, we’re headed home now for what will turn out to be a most decidedly long day. We’re flying now, and with the time difference, we will land in Boston around noon. Then we have a little over 4 hours until our flight to JFK. After that, we have about a 3 hour car ride back to Jess’s dad’s house to pick up our car. After we pack the car, it’s a 15 minute drive to Phillipsburg to get Loki, and then a nice 90minute drive home. For those of you keeping score at home, here’s how it all breaks down. (times are in US) we Wake up today at 9:30pm (Friday) after getting about 90 minutes sleep. Then, we’re at Manchester airport for 3 hours, plane across the pond for 6, 4 hours at Logan, 40 minutes to JFK, 3 hours to Easton, 15 minutes to Phillipsburg, and 90 minutes home. That means that our day starts at 9:30pm and will end somewhere in the neighborhood of 11pm. Yeah…what fun. Don’t forget now, we have to unpack when we get home. Plus, Sunday is our only day off, so we get to go back to work bright and early on Monday morning. The worst part about vacation really is coming home.

I was planning on posting our photos on flickr when we got home, but that’s just not going to happen. I will be happy if we make the drive home tonight and don’t end up crashing at Jess’s mom’s house. But, my goal right now is to get home as quick and safe as possible.

I want to sleep in my own bed.

Plus, we have a date to go see ‘Harry Potter’ tomorrow. Can’t disappoint!

Yesterday, we went to Thirsk for the day and we had a wonderful day there. James Herriot’s house is basically Jess’s Graceland. She was ear to ear smiles the entire time and she was like a giddy kid the entire time.

The funny thing is that yesterday, we ended up taking the rail and the bus to everywhere we need to go, and it was yesterday that we finally figured out how the bus and rail system work over here. And of course, we are leaving tomorrow morning. Figures.

Last night after we got back, we had a few hours to kill before to we took the last bus back to Thurnham, so, we headed to what has become our favorite pub, Weatherspoon, and had a few drinks. Ok, let’s clarify that, I had the drinks and Jess had ice cream. I was decently drunk when we left there, but you can’t go to England and not get drunk in a pub, right? And I really like the bar keeps over here. When I ask for my drink of choice, they tell me to tell them when to stop putting the Pepsi into the vodka. That’s awesome so I can have the drink as strong or as weak as I want it. Let’s just say that I ordered my last drink 5 minutes before we had to leave for the bus, and the Pepsi in there was strictly for coloring. Ahh, that was a good night.

Today, we went into Lancaster for the last time to pick up souviners for everyone back home. Unfortunately, it’s been raining all day non-stop, and I got soaked to the bone. But, we did get something for everyone which is a good thing. I’m at the apartment right now drying off while Jess’s is going around taking some last pictures of the hall and surrounding area.

We’re leaving here on Saturday at 5am to head for the airport. That means that we’ll have to be packed and ready to go in about 10 hours. We’re still on the fence if we will try and sleep before we leave or just sleep on the plane. Who knows.

I will have to say that this trip has changed a lot about myself. After seeing how people live over here and what their daily routines are like, I know that my daily routine is going to change a bit. Nothing majorly radical, but I like the way certain things are done over here.

Truth be told, I am very sad that we’re leaving, but very glad we’re going home. It’s a weird situation to be in.

Well, I think that’s about it from over here in England. My next post will probably be sometime on Sunday from the comfort of home.

Cheers!

We are having a much better time today.

To be honest, we almost went home yesterday. Here’s why.

We are literally out in the middle of nowhere. We really wanted to go to London, but with the bus and rail schedules, we would only have about 6 hours in London. To us, 6 hours in London is nothing more than a tease. Considering that your average tour takes an hour, and getting from one place to another, we might be able to see 2 or 3 places if we really hurried. We did not want to do that. Add to the fact that since the US dollar is not almost worthless in International Exchange, we have gone through more money then we planned to. But, during our little talk last night about maybe just calling it quits and coming home, we decided to take ownership of this trip.

I asked Jess that since we’re not going to London, where else would she like to go if it were at all possible. She mentioned that she would love to go to Thirsk, a town literally across the country. I asked her why, and this is where James Herriot practiced being a country vet. She loves his books and the TV show based on him, so we checked out some rail information while we were at the internet café yesterday in Lancaster. As it turns out, it is only about a 3 hour trip via rail to Thirsk. So, we walked down to the Lancaster rail station and bought 2 tickets for tomorrow to go to Thirsk. She is like a giddy school girl right now.

As for me, I talked her into taking a guided tour of the Lake District today. It was an awesome trip! Our first stop was Castlerigg Stone Circle, which is an arrangement of stones, kinda like Stone Hedge, but only these are about 5,000 years old. Not only where the stones cool, but the scenery was out of this world. The views we had there was what I dreamt about seeing when I eventually made it to England. I took tons of pictures and they should be up on flickr either now or shortly after this gets posted. After there, we went to tour William Wordsworth’s house and his museum. And after that, we went on a very nice ferry ride across one of the lakes there. It was about 7 hours in total, and worth every pound!

After we got back, we got changed, and went for a swim in their indoor pool. Then we did the whole ‘resort thing’ and went into the whirlpool and then into the sauna. Well, at least I went into the sauna, it wasn’t quite Jess’s thing. After that, we went to dinner, and we just got back to the room now. We rented ‘Shaun of The Dead’ from the leisure center, and plan on watching that tonight. It’s one of our all time favorite movies, and it only seems fitting to watch it while we’re here in England.

As for me, I’m off to grab a cupcake fir desert, a glass of Diet Pepsi, and watch some TV before we have to go to bed. Our taxi picks us up tomorrow at 7:45am (2:45am US) for the train station.

Cheers!

Here and alive in the UK without internets. Using an Internet Cafe right now getting raped bythe minute. See everyone when we land state-side!!