Bus stop

You've got to wonder about your neighbourhood when signs like this start popping up at your local bus stop...

A wonderful birthday present

For my birthday my parents- and brother-in-law bought me a painting. It's beautiful and lovely and bound for a blank space on our walls to make this room a home. I'm getting nesty!

It's taken me a few days to post about this because I wanted to get a good photo of it first. Well, I tried and tried and didn't succeed, so this photo comes courtesy of our fabulous photographer flatmates. I'm sure it was the camera that made the difference!

Trees

Most days I ride in to work, braving the traffic and trying to ignore the fumes I'm sure are leaving a hefty coating of nastiness on my lungs. But today I caught the bus, and found myself, as I always do, wondering at the beauty of London (it's much more beautiful on the second level of a bus than it is on a bike). I work on Fleet St, in the heart of the traditional legal and printing district, and am spoilt for beautiful surroundings, with the Royal Courts of Justice and Kings College London being very close. But the thing I noticed today is the trees. London has beautiful trees. Old and magnificent trees; young, determined trees. And none of them has that feature that so distiguishes Australian metropolitan trees - the V carved out of the middle of them to allow the possum highway to pass through. I don't know what they do here with power lines, I assume they're all underground, but it makes for much prettier streetscapes.

Counting down

My current contract is due to end in two and a half weeks and I'm having difficulty getting myself into action. On the one hand I'm studiously checking all the recruitment and firm websites on the lookout for interesting jobs; and, on the other, I can't quite bring myself to believe there mightn't be a job here for me. Because, of course, there might. "They're" trying. But still, no one can tell me definitely either way, so I'm job hunting.

A glorious weekend of staying home

After a month of being away at weekends, we jealously guarded this last weekend of mooching and staying home. Of course, these things never really work out to be just mooching, and the weekend was a lovely mix of meeting friends for lunch (which took much of the afternoon as well - wonderfully relaxed and with great company), doing the usual household things, and finally knuckling down to do our tax. Still, amongst all this we managed a decent amount of much needed mooching. It was great.

3 1/2 dog years

It's 6 months today since Vaughn and I got married. On the one hand it seems just yesterday, and on the other it seems a lifetime ago - not in a bad way, rather because so much has happened since March.

The idea of me being married still seems strange to me. Every now and then I look over to the snoring creature beside me and wonder who it is and what marriage means. But those moments are getting fewer and farther between, and if these last 6 months are anything to go by I can heartily recommend the whole thing.

It's also about 6 months since we've seen most of our friends and family, which is the saddest thing about moving overseas. There are people we speak to or hear from regularly and there are many others we don't.

Another year and some photos

I woke up this morning to Vaughn with a bunch of flowers and a promise of a mystery weekend away. What a lovely birthday!

On a separate topic, we've put some holiday pics on Flickr.

Home, sweet home

Just a quick note to let you all know we're home safe and sound. With the blessing of the internet gods, we hope to get some photos and stories up this week.

Turkey, here we come!

Tonight after work we're off to Turkey for a week of sailing in the Mediterranean. My cousin Pat has organised just about everything to do with this trip, and I'm arriving blissfully ignorant of what we're actually doing, or even where. Still, I have images of perfect weather, beautiful blue water, the perfect bikini that removes all attention from the me inside it, and lots of Turkish delight. I'm choosing to ignore this last week's newspapers, filled with stories of bombings in Turkey, and also assuming that an ability to sail is hereditary and I've picked it up genetically since I've done so little practice. Perhaps that should be blissfully optimistic?