yes, so, my week-long visit to the UK.

saturday morning i arrived at heathrow, in pretty good shape. found my hotel (a bargain at 70% off) and it was glorious!!! views of the central london skyline: westminster, big ben, the london eye, the tate modern....soft bed, in-room bar, lovely men who brought me champagne and a disposable razor, and a really freakin' cool espresso machine that even i couldn't screw up. the whole lobby was marble and glass, and that's where i asked my friend tamara to meet me for lunch. we had sandwiches and tea and gossip, and then we took a walk along the thames. then i decided to have a nap. blacked out for a couple hours, and then K showed up! no more details needed. i was so happy--everything is back to normal. we drank the champagne, got dressed up, and walked over to the royal festival hall for the keith jarrett concert. the whole experience was lots of fun. i looked really good, in my opinion, because my mom made me an awesome skirt to wear. we saw some UK sort-of celebrities, had a lovely intermission cocktail while people-watching, and oh...the music was phenomenal. keith jarrett, gary peacock, and jack dejohnette, improvisational jazz. after the show, we skipped out on my dinner reservation, and i was sad. but not for long, because the walk back to the hotel, with london all lit up, was amazing. then we went crazy in the very posh hotel bar. i must have sampled four or five different champagne cocktails. oof. you know it's a posh bar when the bartender actually lit my *boyfriend's* cigarette, not just mine. plus he brought me another drink when i toppled mine in the process of reaching for a bowl of olives. when the bar closed, K and i went upstairs and emptied the minibar of its champagne as well. i think we fell asleep around 4 am. which explains why...

sunday morning i woke up with the most dreadful headache. but a gallon of water and that foolproof espresso machine put me right. K and i checked out, left our luggage, and walked allllllllll around the town. alllllllll. we walked for hours and hours. had a run-in with two rude american ladies while getting me my hangover-curing sandwich. stopped at a pub for some curative lime-and-sodas. saw the college i'm planning to apply to. also saw the inns of court, the royal opera house, covent garden on a sunday, the london school of economics...we saw a lot. finally, heat-stricken and exhausted, we got on the bus for home. sunday night was spent surprising everyone at my pub. no one knew i would be back, and it was extra fun because it was my mate chris' birthday, and i popped out at him and yelled happy birthday. to sleep early.

monday. monday. let's see. i think i sort of did not much in the morning. then K and i probably walked into town. the weather was great. sat in the pub all day, greeting all my old friends. and then my mate fisher came to town for his birthday! i was so excited--he lives an hour away and is very busy with university and his job, and i love him to bits and wish i could see him more often. so columbo and fisher and i had a great piss-up. a nice day.

tuesday i had some financial stuff to take care of. boring. once again spent most of the day in the pub. K went home early and i experienced for the first time a little custom called a lock-in. put away your memories of church sleepovers; this is different. at closing time, the pub landlord locks the doors, closes the curtains, and whoever is left drinks until they can drink no more. well, it was just me and chris and dave and smoking joe and a few other people, and i apparently was verrrry entertaining. although i have assurances i was not embarassing, rude, inappropriate, or aggressive. so i'm okay with being entertaining. i'm sure i was just being opinionated as usual. chris (i heard later) put me in a cab. where i refused to sit on the seat, preferring to lie on the floor of the cab. i also would not take his money. which means i had not enough money to make it all the way home. so i got out of the cab and tried to walk home. i thought it was a good idea to take a shortcut. through the woods. where i fell backwards onto some seemingly soft thornbushes and decided to maybe take a five-minute nap. when i realized i was lost, only one block from my flat, i felt stupid and forced myself homewards. oof.

wednesday night up. and at 'em. i picked up the lovely jean-max and walked into town to seek a pub lunch. which of course was at our pub. where everyone else was already gathered. (i should explain--it was a bank holiday on monday so a lot of people had the whole week off work.) had burgers and coke. yum. for fisher's birthday, bought him a beer and a bowl of chips. we had a table full of friends, and it was so relaxing and nice. but then, enter the crazy man. rory. he just sort of sat down and started talking to us. but he did not talk like a normal person, oh no. "excuse me, could i interest you in a...dialectical interchange, by which i mean...a dialogue, a verbal...intercourse in which we could...exchange ideas....a...if you will....conversation between moi....et toi....." i decided he was fun and harmless. things that should have told me otherwise: him smoking two cigarettes at once. his opening of descartes and reading aloud thereof. the fact that he had sherlock holmes stories memorized and proved it by repeating it verbatim a second time around. anyway, i was having fun observing his insanity, but K would have no part of it. at which point rory became a little aggressive and called K a "wimp and a faggot." i told him that i found that kind of language offensive, firstly, and secondly, he'd better take it back. rory refused, so i stopped talking to him. at which point another crazy guy started trying to overload rory's brain. at one point he came up with, "i am a psychiatric nurse...a female nurse." and then rory fell asleep. like, instantly. on the table. so that was that, and he got booted out. the rest of the night was better. jean-max and nate and i went to the new "lesbian" pub, which is not terribly gay but rather simply owned by a lesbian. it is in the middle of nowhere and has very very cheap beer and a good pool table. a very chill time. we met the owner's dog and smoked farrrr too many cigarettes and forgot to eat. then, drunk drunk drunk, we decided to knock on the door of our pub after closing time. of course they were having a lock-in and let us in. and we drank more. and then a bartender i had found rather sexy, alex, tried to corner me in the bathroom. and then i stopped finding him sexy and told him to piss off. hmmm. time to go home.

thursday i recovered. seriously. no more drinky drinky. i instead watched K get increasingly drunk. we were having a really nice time until i suddenly got extremely hungry and tired and really really needed to pee, and he wouldn't leave me alone. but even after i yelled at him, we didn't have a fight. so things are really getting better between the two of us and i am very happy about that.

friday was booked full. lunch with adam-from-kenyon. nice. i climbed mt. potato. we talked about kenyon people. then i met up with jean-max and nate at the pub. 4 pm was steve, 6 pm was tiff, 7:15 pm was maja...i dined in college with maja, and that was a new experience. not too bad. then i took her back to the pub to meet K, because she is polish and he has spent some time in poland. after she went back to her place, nate and jean-max and i took off. sat down by the river smoking, then took another of our stoned epic romps through a field outside of town. finally made it back, went to tesco's and bought obscene amounts of food, went to jean-max's place and ate it while watching some film or the other. finally got home and went to bed. no drinky drinky is good for me.

saturday morning went for a final drink at the pub, then K put me on the bus back to london. made it all the way through security in record time, so did a little window shopping and sucked down one too many beers and started talking to some south african guy about wine. then i got on the plane and slept slept slept. i guess that's the end of my week. i could talk about the nasty-ass flight attendant on my plane from chicago to home, but that would be boring.

so. thank you very much for reading this far. hey, look, it's still 9:45 in the morning. i am doing well at this waking up early thing. see, otherwise i feel like all i do is go to work. not that i don't have fun at work, but it sort of feels like one long day that never ends. especially if i go to bed after i get home and don't wake up until it's time to go back. so now i'm going to bed at 10 pm like a good/boring girl, and waking up at 8 so i can have coffee and lift weights and watch two hours of ER. :)