Ok, I'm on a sudden blogging roll. It's pretty easy and natural once I actually sit down to do it. Anyway, here's my outlook for 2010:

January:
* Recover from London trip - done.
* Buy new computer - done.
* Edwardian Ball - done.

February:
* Ski trip - done.
* Volunteering for PantheaCon - done.
* Valentines day for girlfriends - done. I took Diana to Pillow Fight and took Liz to Cirque du Soleil's Ovo.

March:
* Do taxes - started.
* Go to Albion Nova Steampunk Exhibition - tickets are bought, hotel room is reserved.
* After doing taxes, start researching moving back to Mountain View.

April:
* Maybe try to take my roommate to Bats Day at Disneyland - depends on money/time, we'll see.

May:
* Go to Eve Online fan meeting in Vegas if they have it again this year.
* Volunteer for BayCon but I'll try to take it easy and not sign up for many shifts because it interferes with my birthday and it's stressful.

June:
* Attend SF Pride in stilts this time so I can actually see the parade.

July:
* Attend Tiki Crawl - waiting for site to update so I can buy tickets.

August:
* Do something special for Diana's birthday. We're still talking about what to do. Maybe want to go to diving in Mexico or maybe a birthday/DefCon combo trip to Las Vegas.
* Attend Burning Man - I haven't been in years. Probably be part of the "fuck it" non-theme camp.

September:
* Visit my family, going in September seemed to work out well last year.
* Go to Northern California Renaissance Faire.

October:
* Go to Eve Fanfest in Iceland - waiting for site to update.
* Epic Halloween Party!

November:
* Recover from Epic Halloween Party, start getting Seasonal Affective Disorder, give Liz good birthday hugs.

December:
* Go to Dicken's Faire.
* Hide from Christmas.
* Epic New Year's Eve party!

Also, sometime, during 2010, I want to move back to Mountain View. Hopefully, maybe, April or May but I dont' mind waiting for a good opportunity. My shit is already/still packed.

I feel like I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff.

This really isn't any more than any other year. This is sort of my typical thing. If you ever wonder why I don't blog more often, wonder no more!

For Valentine's Day, I surprised Diana by taking her to the San Francisco Valentine's Day Pillow Fight. She likes being surprised. She had no idea where we were going or what we were going to do before getting there

After we got out of the car in San Francisco, I handed her a shopping bag with a pillow in it. I think she started to suspect something was up when we started seeing lots of other people walking in the same direction who were also carrying pillows.

I had gone to Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond and tested all of their pillows to find the perfect, small, soft, durable pillows. I was trying to be soft and I didn't want to accidentally hurt anyone or have an exploding feather pillow.

I was stressy, as usual, about making it on time. We did manage to make it just minutes before starting and then the fight ensued. I was trying to be innovative by doing body blows with my pillow or balling it up into a soft boxing glove and giving them a jab; everyone else seemed to be going for the head.

I was kind of nervous that Diana might have a bad time. I was afraid the tight crowd might give her social anxiety, a panic attack if some stranger was especially vicious, or that she might fall or get hurt by accident. None of that ended up happening, so yay. She had a good time.

I quit after 30 minutes because I was tired of getting pillows to the head and my arms were getting tired.

I met back up with Diana after a while and we managed to make it to our restaurant reservations, with a quite a bit more stressing about it from me. If you haven't figured it out, I stress a lot about making it to things on time.

Here is my dos and don'ts:
* Maybe consider bring a helmet. They are vicious and go straight for the head.
* Do bring a bandana or mask of some sort because you will get feathers up your nose and inhale them.
* Bring water, it's a work out.
* Arrange a meeting point and time beforehand; there were too many people tweeting, blogging, and uploading pictures so we weren't able to get working cell phones.
* Even though it is the San Francisco waterfront in February at night, don't bother bringing a jacket, you will work up a sweat.
* It might be a good idea of not going in with phones, wallets, and valuables. It's a fray; you might lose or break them.

Since moving to California (almost 10 years ago) I've wanted to go downhill skiing in Tahoe almost every year. Well, I finally got to go two weeks ago.

( Read More )

So, the summary of what did and didn't work well was:
* Snowboarding is difficult; downhill skiing is much easier for me.
* I need to buy gloves with wrist guards in them; my wrists have already been injured and I'm afraid of further injury.
* Getting the boots and skis from a rental shop that wasn't at the resort is cheaper.
* Sierra-at-Tahoe is a really nice resort; it has a lot of stuff for beginners (also tubing!).
* The lessons at Sierra-at-Tahoe are good.
* Braiding my hair was good, it kept it out of my face.
* Cell phones are fail. We need better up-front coordination of where to meet when. I might bring my radios next time.
* Bring lots of ibuprofen; we will be sore.
* Maybe get snow goggles next time. I had some issues with snow in my eyes.
* Next time, I want to get to the resort earlier. We only went for a half-day but I had a lot of extra energy.

Ok, so I promised myself and others that I would journal often during the trip and show them lots of pictures. As you can see, that failed miserably. What made it worse was that once I fell behind, it was intimidating to try to catch up so that discouraged me even more.

It also didn't help that I've been somewhat depressed. It's a combination of the weather change and feeling sad and lonely because I don't have my usual amount of social interaction and people making me feel good.

So, I'm declaring that I'm not going to attempt to catch up, for now. I might journal some missing parts of the trip later if I feel like it. I'm going to try to start again, today, to try to journal more often so I can maybe cover the remainder of the trip.

One of the things that is sort of disappointing me is that I haven't used any of my train passes, yet. They were quite expensive and I only have a couple of weeks left to use them before they expire. I might get one or two train trips in and then I'll just have to let the rest get wasted.

I just might come home early and take some vacation from work to spend time with my loved ones. I miss them so much and, at this point, I'd rather spend time with them then to go do touristy stuff alone.

If I don't keep my promise to journal, feel free to nag me horribly.

I know I promised to post this earlier but I've been busy and tired.

Last weekend, I went to the Tower of London. It's very near my flat and I spent all day there and still didn't see everything. I'm going to go back, probably on Halloween because they have a special tour then.

Check out my full Flickr Set. It's short and has full comments.

( The Full Story )

I didn't end up doing much last weekend. I have a cough that started before I left the states. I feared that, if I did a lot of walking around in chilly moist London air, it would just get worse and I'd end up having to go to the doctor. I'd rather not figure out just how health care and insurance will work for me here.

So, I spent as much time as I could being dry and warm. I worked on my laptop and watched a bit of television.

I live in City of London proper. This part of town is just dead at night and weekends. Being mostly single and having an active social life, it's been my habit to eat out. However, I can't seem to find anywhere in my neighborhood that is open. There are plenty of sandwich shops around but they seem to be only open for lunch on the weekdays. I did finally figure out that food can be found at pubs and it's tolerable. I'm not used to going to bars and pubs for food. That's usually a last choice. I did eat a chicken pie at the Black Friar's pub down the corner. It was good comfort food.

I was really craving french toast but that is difficult to come by, as far as I can tell. A cooked English breakfast is more like what I would have for supper with sausages and potatoes and such. I did a bunch of research on Yelp and found that there are a couple of American food diners nearby. I walked to one on Sunday and did score orange juice, french toast, sausage, and an americano. It just wasn't the same as what I usually like for brunch but it was close enough.

Also, I found that Yelp hasn't really taken off here in London. They have their database populated with the neighborhoods and businesses but there are hardly any reviews. As far as I can tell, all of the reviews are written by Americans either visiting or living in London.

I lost the fight with my washing and drying machine, so far. All of my clothes are still wet and smell of detergent.

Belladonna gave me a hint on where I can find an actual supermarket but it was closed when I got there. That part of town seemed to have more open shops and stuff going on so maybe I'll have to go down there and check it out.

I'm already missing the active social life that I'm used to. I'm hoping to remedy that by meeting doseybat and maybe other people at a pub tomorrow night.

Today was good and chill. Nothing special. I just woke at my usual time, got ready, went to work, grabbed Starbucks, worked, bought groceries, fooded, and went home.

It's good to have a normal day.

At work, I'm feeling really good about mentoring a new employee. I've been brain dumping and giving lectures. I hope I'm not coming off as know-it-all.

The only abnormal or stressing part of my day was dealing with banks and credit card institutions. Nothing big, just letting them know, belatedly, that I'm traveling internationally so they don't put holds on my cards. Also, someone at BestBuy or somewhere screwed up and leaked a bunch of credit card numbers including mine. They put a hold on that card and are FedExing me a new one to my flat. I just want to make sure I have access to as much cash and credit as I can "just in case". This first week was expensive.

I think I might go to the Tower of London, Old Bailey, and St. Paul's cathedral tomorrow. They are just a few blocks from my flat. There are tons of awesome things just walking distance from me. I'll pick up some post cards and take pictures. Don't forget to email me your post address so I can send you a card.

( Yesterday was a productive day, I think I'm starting to be back on track. )

( Let's see, what have I been up to? )

Ok, I'm in London. Thank god for Starbucks and my black card. I have free internet and a familiar brand. I've already been productive as an ambassador. I was teaching the baristas the miracle of iced tea lemonade.

The flight was totally enjoyable, actually. Way better than any domestic flight I've taken. I had lots of food, space, entertainment, coffee. I caught up on the bad movies I missed in theaters.

The passport check at the UK border was a bit dicey. Note to self: make sure I have an "letter of invitation", practice my story a bit, have the company address here in the UK with me. They let me in, anyway. Ha! Suckers.

I was in the elevator and tube with the guy from The Office (English version) and The Invention of Lying. I just let him be, he seemed as stressed about traveling as me.

The trip in the tube was just like the BART. Nothing new to me. However, I couldn't find any lifts so I had to schlep my heavy cases up stairs. Sad face.

I've been wandering around for a good 30 minutes looking for the alley in which my flat is hiding.

Stupid maps.google.com is giving me "slow loading" fits so I'm using Yahoo Maps. Sad face. Yay, it found it, though. It's up that huge flight of steps I kept passing by. Doh!

Ok, I'm going to go call my girlfriend before she freaks out and check into my flat.

UPDATE: I found my flat and now I'm comfortably blogging from my couch. I really nice gentleman saw me schlepping cases up the giant set of stairs and helped me. From the top of the stairs, I could see right into my flat window. (Note to self: don't be nude in the living room) I even figured out how to make an international call and let my girlfriend know I'm not dead.