Make the ringing stop!

For the second day in a row, my neighbor's alarm (a clock? a phone?) has rung uninterrupted for over an hour.

The ringing just stopped...it's a miracle! So thankful for silence.

I spent my morning (8-10) at the preschool, where I stood outside in the cold receiving pretend mail and packages from two very eager three-year-olds. I then watched a group of children playing in pirate ships the teachers set up (with planks, crates, and cloth on sticks). They rowed in their boat, saw a shark, ran out of the boat, saw another shark (?), ran back to the boat, saw a shark, ran out...until going in time.

I've just finished preparing for a psych debate tomorrow, and now I have to work on a final English paper outline due Friday, for which I only have a vague topic and two books. And then I've got to write my psych final paper, for which I only have printed out research articles. If I didn't have to sleep, I wouldn't be so concerned, but I am not one for all nighters, and lately I've barely made it to midnight. So time to get working!

I hope you're excited for tomorrow! December! Legos! Calendars! Christmas! I am pumped!

Oh hi, didn't see you there!

WHOA! Almost forgot what it was like to write a blog post. Plus the soft crying of my neglected blog distracted me for a bit.

But I'm back!

I'm back because December 1 is almost here and that means I will be opening the best birthday present ever (followed closely by the VIP experience of the Starkid SPACE tour in NYC)...A LEGO ADVENT CALENDAR!


Look at how happy I am with that piece of Lego goodness in my arms.

One of my favorite bloggers (after, of course, Katie, Amanda, and Julie), Dan Bergstein, blogged his way through last year's Lego Advent Calendar and it kept me amused all the way to Christmas. He'll be blogging again this year ( www.laserfarm.com ), and since I am now in possession of a calendar as well, I figured I'd join in the fun! For you to share. I hope you enjoy it. Though Dan will be infinitely more amusing so I'd read his blog too. Can't wait for the fun to begin! Kind of makes the prospect of writing endless research papers slightly less icky.

(That's a lie...writing research papers is still 100% icky.)

See you in December!

Lazy days of summer

It's Friday! Friday! Gotta get down on Friday!

That is what happens when I open up a blank blog post and can't think of how to begin.

Since July 4th I have gone zip lining, worked, ran, and really done nothing at all. In fact, I just tried to remember what I did yesterday and nothing came to mind. But after some thought, I did go running with Amanda and Julie, as well as had lunch at Mill No. 3 with Mum and Amanda. Yum yum.

Tuesday's zip lining was super fun, especially in the beautiful weather and with some very fun friends! We got to check out the views and take lots of pictures, like this one:

Today I took a trip to Barnes and Noble to buy a GRE practice book. Let's hope it works. I have one month! But now it's time to go to work. Friday night. Hopefully all goes well. I've had a nice break since Wednesday matinee, so I'm ready to face people again. Let's do this!

USA! USA! USA!

Yes, yes, I am a horrible blogger. I suppose I should just give up recapping our trip and skip ahead to the present. The farther away I get from when I last blogged, the more I don't want to catch up. So let's just not catch up, shall we?

Today is the fourth of July! Happy birthday America! You're getting old! But not really. This lady over here is way older than you. And still we haven't figured out why she's kind of smiling. Did you know some crazy guy threw acid at the Mona Lisa? ACID! Poor thing. It was also stolen in 1911 by a Louvre worker and not found for two years. Who knew? Well maybe you did. 8 points for you then. And a cupcake.

I am currently sitting in my living room watching the Boston Pops. They just started playing the 1812 Overture. But of course no one recognizes it for a good ten minutes until the cannons start. Here we go. USA! USA!

Hope everyone's eaten some form of meat on a bun today. FREEDOM!

Tomorrow I am going ZIPLINING with Amanda, Julie and Randi. Yay! So excited to do it on a nice day instead of in the pouring rain! It's too bad more people couldn't join us, but I am sure we will have a blast! I will make sure to document the fun.

I'm also excited to finally have a day off work. I've been scooping popcorn for six days straight. And I'm sorry general public, but I just can't take you for another day. Why are you so angry about being at the movies? Stay home if you hate people so much! Send your children to camp if you can't stand to be around them. Don't take your frustrations out on the poor young girls behind the counter scooping your popcorn and cleaning up your messes. I do, however, love making mixed Icees. So feel free to order as many of those as you'd like.

After work I got to spend a short amount of time at the Worthley's shindig, where I eventually just played with five-year-old Jessie, who was pawned off on me by a sister who shall remain nameless. Jessie has a pretty good imagination though. Kid carried around a brick, pretended it shot lasers, and had conversations with it.

FIREWORKS! BBQ! FREEEEDOMMMM!!!!

London recap part 2

I realized I had this part two just sitting here, slightly unfinished but waiting to be posted. So I suppose I'll do that now...

Our fourth day in London was rainy, so we took a taxi to the British Museum. One of those museums I read can't be missed. It's the one with the Rosetta Stone. It was pretty cool seeing that, and it had a lot of neat, old things, but in general, I start to lose interest when the museum has no art. I can't take too much natural history. But here were my personal highlights:

There's the main hall. Pretty cool.

In the room of enlightenment. Very enlightening.

THE ROSETTA STONE!

This is from the Parthenon...I'm pretty sure I studied it once upon a time in Art History, but that was two years ago. So who knows.

The mummy of Cleopatra! Unfortunately not the famous Cleopatra, but whatever. It's a real mummy!

After the British Museum, we headed over to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and saw some beautiful art. Now that's what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, for stupid reasons I do not know or understand, we couldn't take pictures inside. But before I learned this, I snapped this beaut:

How I wish I could have documented the Monet pieces I saw. I looooove Monet! And there were so many.

Yum! Here's one of our delicious Italian meals. I got some gnocchi with mozzarella. So. Good.

After the Italian meal we walked over to Piccadilly Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue for the sole reason of being where Harry Potter filmed in part one of the seventh movie. Yay! We are so cool!

Walking in the footsteps of Harry, Ron, and Hermy. Loving life.

London recap part 1

Okay, time for an update.

I seemed to have stopped rather early on in the trip. Whoops. So let's go back to London, shall we?

Last Thursday, the third day in London (although that first day doesn't really count, since it was just traveling and crankiness), we visited the Tower of London, among other sights.

Heading into the Tower of London, a large fortress with lots of buildings inside, including a building housing the crown jewels (in a rather large vault that we walked around in).

There was also a show going on, which we missed most of and couldn't really hear, but somehow everyone ended up dead. So we weren't sure we really wanted to understand anyway.

There was also a nice sight of the Tower Bridge over the Thames.

After the Tower of London we walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral. Unfortunately visiting was done for the day, but we got there just when people could go in for the evening service. So we went in for free and looked around. We left before the evening service. But there's a picture of the fam outside the church.

Then we crossed the river and headed towards the Tate Modern museum and the Globe Theater, but unfortunately the Globe was closed and the museum was closing in less than an hour. So we saw the outside of both, and discovered the Millennium Bridge right outside the Tate. Recognize it from Harry Potter? We did!

Well we saw the outside of the Globe Theater. Too bad it's not the original one though.

Then we walked the Thames path in the direction of our hotel, and passed the London Eye.

And we passed Parliament. What a beautiful photo op! Me gusta!

:)

So long, UK.

Last night in England, what?

When and how did this happen? You've been good to me, England. I've enjoyed you. London has been absolutely lovely, and I can't believe we're about to leave it. I'm just glad we're heading off to Paris before we have to go home. It's a little strange to realize I've been away from home for almost 6.5 weeks now, but still don't feel all too homesick. I could keep going and traveling. If I had to go back to school that would be a different story. The University of Manchester dragged their semester out way too long. But staying on this side of the pond with endless amounts of money and time would be wonderful. Where's a magic genie lamp when I need one? Seriously, I just spent my last two pound coin on London postcards. Sadface.

So what have we been doing? Well Saturday we took a lovely trip to Oxford, today we took another lovely trip to Cambridge, and yesterday we walked around London in miserable rain. I promise I will post better, more detailed descriptions of these days - with pictures - ASAP. In the meantime I will continue to be lazy and tired and about to go to bed. We also rode on the London Eye earlier tonight, and ate another Italian meal. The concierge told us Italian food here was not good, but he must have eaten Italian food out of the garbage because I'm pretty sure we've had it more times than necessary and there have been no complaints.

We have also discovered a love of Afternoon Tea:

WHY ARE WE LEAVING ENGLAND?!?!?!