Whine and Cheese

Its snowing here. Kind of fun, I suppose, that my first snowfall of the season is here.

Last night, after leaving the warmth and wifi of the local Starbucks cafe, I wandered the streets of Teddington looking for a restaurant for dinner with little success. It's not like there is a shortage of places to eat, but a third of them are Indian food and my system couldn't handle a second night of that. So I walked around a lot looking for something appealing and found nothing. I've always been told that if you don't know what you want, then you're not really hungry. Eventually, I begged off and just had a bag of crisps and a diet coke in my room while reviewing some things for work. Boring, I know.

I did find a couple of interesting night sights to photograph. I'll post those when I get home.

One of the things I have enjoyed are BBC game shows. One is called "Pointless" where the goal is to find the lowest number of guesses to a question. Sort do the opposite of Family Feud. The host is adorable.

Well. Off to brave the snow. Happy hump day!

In case this doesn't load:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81961449@N00/8240969030/

I slept about twelve hours last night, a testament to how utterly exhausted I was after flying home. Thank heavens I didn't go to work today.

I spent the morning working on pictures from my trip. I didn't realize that I'd had so many of them, even in New Ross, Ireland, but I guess I snapped pretty much anything that caught my eye. Clicking on the photo on the right will take you to the New Ross, Ireland photo gallery. Ireland is a beautiful country, I sincerely hope to go back someday on vacation, when I wont have to work. I feel like there were so many sights I didn't see. On Ireland, I noted a few things. One, watch where you step, the dogs crap everywhere and there are no apparent scooper rules. Two, the Irish seem to be all business when working. It seems idle chat is more for the pub, most of the customer service at restaurants or shops, the folks seemed very short because they had to get back to the other things. I'm not saying they were rude, just always seemed busy. Three, cell phones! Everyone had one, it seems. It made me wish mine worked over there :)

After the bombing incidents, I admit that I wasn't all that keen going to England, even though I was working outside the city. In looking at the pictures, I realized I caught some decent shots of the city and the Tower of London. The pictures of the missing folks sent some remorseful feelings. Some of the missing are being identified every day, but it's a painstaking process and their recovery from the tube is not easy due to the unsafe conditions.

On the lighter side, I did catch a few cute guys here and there. One of the finest was the London Tower Beefeater to the right. Clicking on his handsome mug will lead to the picture gallery for London and Welwyn Garden City, the latter being where I was staying.

Again, big hugs to everyone who wished me a welcome home, it is greatly appreciated.

First, big birthday hugs and wishes to bigsabu and njbearcub1! I wonder if your moms knew that their baby boys would grow up to be such handsome, furry men :)

I'm at the Heathrow airport waiting on my flight. I fly into Chicago and then to Cincinnati. If all goes timely, I should be at my front door by 4:30 PM or so. I can't wait.

Unfortunately, I am going to miss seeingbleuvalentines and davemassive due to amazing scheduling incidents. First, Dave's trip to the UK was canceled and I was disappointed, then my work ended early so I changed my flight to today, then Dave's trip was reinstated and I couldn't change my flight back. Sigh.. it just wasn't meant to be. I'm sure they'll be other opportunities though :)

I didn't go to bed last night, I stayed up so I'd sleep on the plane and try to get my sleep schedule back to something normal for my time zone. My ride here was pretty exciting though. My taxi driver was this burly English bloke, very hot in a blue-collar way -- wide shoulders, rugged good looks, and that accent... sigh.. I should have taken his picture. While waiting here at the airport, I dished out the bucks to get the wireless internet here, about 5 GBP for an hour, which is steep, but it'll help pass the time. And it's not blocked, so I can finally read up on what you guys have been posted in my journal and your own, thank goodness. I don't have time to comment on them, but I'll have more time when I get home.

Well, t-minus 55 minutes and counting before home.... I'll post a final trip summary, with pictures, when I get home and can relax.

I was watching a show called Mock the Truth last night on BBC 2, a sort of What's My Line type of show, and saw this comic named Andy Parsons on there. I can't help it, I think he's adorable. I haven't had a chance to check out his website, but will do so when I get home, which may be sooner than Friday :).

After yesterday's purge of emotional blackness and some nice sulking and watching of DVD's in my room, I'm feeling much better today. Mostly, in part, because the sun came out (for a change). I suspect that bookish_cub has used his amazing weather-controlling powers to send me a sunny and warm day. Thanks Erich :)

I still can't view my friends' recent entries page due to the stupid computer child-security crap, so I attempted to review some journals individually. Apparently, you are a naughty bunch, because the system will not let me read about half of the ones I tried. Some of those on the blocked list include:

• bigsabu
  
• caviecub
  
• chrisglass
  
• cincy_dave
  
• _decibel_
  
• mat_t
  
• mikiedoggie
  
• raphbearish
  
• scifibear99
  
• stripedtiger

Sigh... I did managed to read one of two journals, so I should count my blessings. Not sure what I'm going to do today. There is apparenlty an Italian Market festival going on here in the shopping square, but I'm still tempted to do something else.

Well, I'm here, safe and sound in Welwyn Garden City, about 25 miles north of London, here in England. Traveling over here wasn't bad. The cab I took to Waterford had to go the long route because of the Tall Ships festival which had most roads closed, so we took the ferry across the River Barrow, which was neat because I'd never ridden one. It took about ten minutes to cross and I managed to get a photo of a nice burly daddy bear. The only negative from the cab ride was the cabbie, who reeked of tobacco and actually farted when he got out of the car to ask for directions. No photos of that.

The small airline I flew to England milked me out of 30 Euro because they said my bags were overweight. To which, I responded, "They're not overweight, they're stocky.." I loved the blank response I got from the ticket guy. I did get a picture of a cute bearded worker guy in the airport. I'll be posting pictures for a month when I get home. The plane itself had propellers, I swear... again, another photo.

My new hotel is strange. There's no phone in the room, which puzzled me greatly. Apparently you have to stay in their "Metro" locations for a room phone. Now, since when is that a perk? I've stayed in some crappy hotels before, but they've always had phones. They may charge you and arm/leg/nut for it, but it's there. And the WIFI network there has great connectivity... for a price... about $12/hour. Uh, no... Now I know why the signal is so strong on my 3rd floor room, because no one is apparently using it. No posted pics until I can get home, I'm afraid.

The hotel's only saving grace is its location. I'm about 1/4 mile from the mall and the train station. I'm using the internet cafe in the mall right now for a much more reasonable price. I'm actually debating going into London as the trains and metro are working for the most part and there isn't much to do here. We're not supposed to let the events of Thursday ruin plans, so I think I may be venturing out. More pics forthcoming.