Year In Review - Part II

As always, I made sure to have some escapade in my year.

This year was New York, NY; Kansas City, MO; Austin, TX; Santa Claus, IN; Dublin, Ireland; London, UK; Glasgow, Scotland; Berkeley, CA.

Here are a few pics...








Lessons Learned...

• Sometimes you have to get away be it for entertainment, avoidance, therapy, or your birthday. You just need to do it!


• Traveling alone has its rewards. You get to go where you want, do what you want, and all on your schedule.


• Traveling alone can be scary. When something goes wrong, you have only your brain to figure out what to do


• Traveling alone means it's hard to get good pictures. Yea, you can ask the random stranger to take a picture for you; but with my trust issues, no one was touching my camera!


• Sometimes the places you least expect to enjoy are the best and vice versa. I had high hopes for London though it proved much less enjoyable than anticipated. I had low hopes for Berkley and it proved to be a top on my list of places to return.

Tomorrow I Take Off

I'm very excited, as today is my last full day of this week. Tomorrow I take off to Dublin/London/Glasgow. I just checked the weather and it should be in the 70's with rain. I should plan to pack an extra set of pants and maybe less shorts.

Tomorrow will be hectic. I am having Chris drop me off at a Metrolink station so I can take Metro downtown to work for a few hours. I think sometime around 10 or 11 I'll leave work to Metro to the airport. My flight isn't until 3, but with the President coming to St. Louis for the All-Star game, I have to be prepared for hassles at the airport. Metrolink to the airport is about 45-50 minutes from downtown, so if I leave at 10, I should get there around 11, and I'll just eat lunch inside security and have about 3 hours to kill. I'd better pack another book!

It has just occured to me that I used the words President and kill in the same blog! Egads! What do you think will happen?

So just a quick review of my weekend and then I'm off to work as much as I can possibly stand today!

Saturday, Amanda and I went for a bike ride, partly for the ride, partly for the geocaching experience. We looked but found no geocach. We also rode in the rain, which was slick, but fun.

Sunday, Eva and I went for a hike up at Pere Marquette State Park. We are getting Eva prepared for her trip to the Smokies. While there, we looked for a geocach, and surprisingly enough found it. Lucky for me it had a Travel Bug so I get to take that with me to the UK to deposit in a different geocach! I am very excited about this!



Words-
ungood: Surfer term for "bad". Also used in George Orwell's bovel 1984.
drunk catcher: An obstacle found in one's path that, while drunk, provides, an incredible challenge to avoid. This includes cracks in the sidewalk, low-hanging tree branches, abnormal curbs, and members of the opposite sex who are of questionable attractiveness. Generally these are ranked by class, or degree of difficulty: class 1 being the lowest and class 5 being the highest.

In Use: The captain totally tweaked his ankle last night on a class 5 drunk catcher.

My Itinerary

For those of you that choose to keep track of me, like Amanda, Holly, and Drew (for mom) . . . here is my itinerary for next week. (This is also my back up copy).

[For reference, STL-St. Louis, ATL-Atlanta, DUB-Dublin, LHR-London Heathrow, GLA-Glasgow, all US flights are Delta booked through Northwest]

DUBLIN
JULY 14 Flight DL1723 STL-ATL 15:15; arrive 17:57
JULY 14 Flight DL0176 ATL-DUB 20:55; arrive 10:00 (+ 1 day)
Hotel Jurys Inn Parnell Street (353 (0)1 878 4900) [In-15th, Out-16th]

LONDON
JULY 16 Flight BD124 DUB-LHR 11:40; arrive 13:00 (44 (0)13 3264 8181) [REF#32L4ZX, bmi]
Hotel Euston Square Hotel (44 (0)20 7388 0099) [In-16th, Out-18th]

GLASGOW
JULY 18 Flight BA1492 LHR-GLA 17:35; arrive 19:00 [REF#32FWHT, British Airways]
Hotel Victorian House Hotel (0141 332 0129) [In-18th, Out-20th]

DUBLIN
JULY 20 Flight AL225 GLA-DUB 10:55; arrive 11:50 [REF#25FJ2N, Aer Lingus]
Hotel Jurys Inn Parnell Street (353 (0)1 878 4900) [In-20th, Out-21st]

HOME
JULY 21 Flight DL0177 DUB-ATL 11:50; arrive 15:45
JULY 21 Flight DL0909 ATL-STL 17:35; arrive 18:20

Anyone wanting to drop me off and/or pick me up at the airport or a Metrolink station may volunteer! ha, like how I threw that in there!

Thank Your London Friend

If you go to my real blog site at stephysite.blogspot.com, you can now choose to "like" or "dislike" each post. Took me forever to get that on there. It should be as simple as adding it via the easy editor; but I always have to go and mess with the actual code which sort of voided that easy part. But alas, I got it there, so you should go "Like" or "Dislike" your favorite posts!

Other than that, I'm drawing a blank today. It could be that all of my enthusiasm has gone to the wayside today. I feel like a giant slug that just wants to go back to sleep.

I wanted to say thanks to Holly for asking her friend about London and for letting me borrow him should I need any help while there. I really appreciate the assistance! It's nice to know that there is someone on that side of the planet that'll help an insane stranger! So thanks Holly and Friend! (Holly, please do warn Friend that I am tilted a little to the left when it comes to sanity; I'd hate to scare him!)

A'ight, talk later maybe...

word-
hobeau: An unclean boyfriend.

Bananus

Okay, I'm cranky this morning. Why? I don't know. I feel disgusting, I feel cranky. I at least smell good. Enough about me. If you want to read about me, you can ask to be part of my more private journal.

If you follow along with all of my blogs (an endless number); you will know that I have lied to you today. I told you that my Wordpress blog would have different content than my other blogs. Eh, at least here you get the word of the day!

I want you to either read the Wordpress blog or to check out the four links I have listed below:
Punk Rock Skulls
Barbaric Gulp
Justin Z.
HOK London

I have more to say, but will have to talk later. I have a morning meeting and actually need to prepare!

Word of the day (makes me think of Nanerpus):

Bananus: The little brown part at the bottom of the banana that no one in their right mind eats.

In Use: Only monkeys eat the bananus!

Damn Difficult, Damn Rewarding

Yesterday was interesting. Two friends (M&S) got crappy news, one of which is required to have surgery on Friday; another friend (C) is getting no news when she needs to hear anything; and Amanda came over to do laundry (and of course walk the dogs). I got added to a project here at HOK, which implies I will be here for the long haul of the project. This sounds very reassuring to me, I have a job still, at the place I love to work.

I feel exhausted. On one hand, it's a good feeling, because I hate feeling antsy and it makes sleep peaceful. On the other hand, exhaustion is hard to work through, especially when the sun isn't even up yet and I'm at work. I'm drinking some hot tea though, so I'll be alert in no time I should guess!

I think I am mentally in a better place these days. Part of it is medication, I am sure the other part is planning a trip. I feel like I just need to get away, do something I want to do, spend my money on me, and see things I want to see (an adventure). I guess unless you are in my head, it makes little sense; but I am really looking forward to the future, which is pretty necessary in my opinion. I haven't really looked forward to anything lately.

So in my planning, I look up something new everyday. Today, I might look up more information on the public transportation available in London. You probably already know I am a big advocate for public transportation, and would prefer to never drive again in an automobile (unless I'm the passenger). It makes "getting around" pretty damn difficult sometimes; but is usually a damn rewarding journey.

Alas it is time for me to move onto something else today, a little thing called work! I am designing a retaining wall today, a continuation of yesterday! I might stop back in later to post more, but until then, please have an enjoyable day!

Word of the Day:
fembot: A girl or woman who, unfortunately, finds herself oversubscribed to dominant views of beauty and femininity.

In use: Dude, your new stepmom is such a fembot with her plastic surgery, dye job, and falsies. I don't know what your dad sees in her!