mike[space] dot net

Merry Christmas, everybody's having fun! Out of nowhere, Christmas has snuck up on me and I am already at home admiring Mum and Mick's new television, and enjoying the fruits of home cooking. Sadly I appear to have finally succumbed to the prolonged exposure to Claire's flu/cold/cough, and am extremely bunged up. And really not that inclined to try and write up anything interesting to summarise the end of the year. I'll be at Mum's for another couple of days, before heading back down to London - potentially via a lunch date with Hollie in Leighton Buzzard, if things work out well. Hopeful

That's how long I've been back in the country - whoo! It hardly feels like I've been away, which considering how long I was gone for seems at best ridiculous! Fortunately I somehow still have some holiday left, and I will get the chance to catch my breath between Christmas and New Year. Saw a bunch of the ex-wavers last night, sadly not for long as I didn't finish work till late, but it was good to see everyone!

Cycled in again today ... feeling very healthy as a result ;-)

I guess the relative silence on this blog is indicative of how I am adjusting to life back in the fast lane. It's not that I don't have downtime, it's more that I just can't be arsed to spend more time at a computer than is really necessary, and when I am at a computer, the chances of me having time to write anything here are slim to none! Overall though, life is progressing well, although work could do with being a bit less stressful - too much to do, and definitely not enough time to do it in!

I have kept up the cycling, roughly doing two round trips a week - it's still very enjoyable, and it's a great way of clearing my head of work issues, and my body of the various toxins I still like to partake in. This weekend was a classic example of the latter, with two Christmas parties back to back, sandwiching one of the worst hangovers I've had in recent memory. The work party on Friday was a riotous affair at All Star Lanes, involving many white russians, a lot of bowling and (apparently) some bad dancing. There's also a blank spot of a good five hours or so, with 3 hours still pretty much unaccounted for (left the place around 2, got home at 5 ... I only know this because Ro assures me I was very insistent on letting him know I had returned home!) The hangover was completed by the presence of Sam (Ro's 8 year old); he's a great kid, and really fun to spend time with, but if he hadn't been there, I would have been quite content to lie in bed feeling sorry for myself instead of bouncing around playing the fool and mario kart in roughly equal measure.

On Thursday a crowd of 26 of us all headed to the theatre event of the year, Monty Python's Spam-A-Lot at the Palace Theatre. And it really was one of the funniest things I have ever seen - it's a wonderful slice of some of the best bits of Search for the Holy Grail, extended and tweaked, wrapped up in a load of catchy, silly songs. It's fast paced, very well performed and I don't think I stopped laughing for more than 20 seconds for the whole bloody show. Highly recommended ...

In a somewhat remarkable turn of events, I actually cooked 3 times last week, which is some kind of record in the world of also working for a living at the same time!! I produced the old slow cooked steak recipe for myself and Ro on Monday, followed up with a pork chop, mash and garlic cabbage on wednesday, and then cooked baked salmon for Mum on Saturday. All turned out very well, and actually the cooking after work thing wasn't a complete nightmare - it was quite nice to have something to focus on and move my mind away from work. The only new thing in the cooking that I did was to take on a pointed cabbage - on advice from Claire, I lightly fried it in butter and fresh garlic, and it turned out very well.

I want to ride it where I like ...

Finally after a couple of weeks of procrastination, I headed down to Adam's last night to pick up my bike. After the obligatory kicking arse at table football, and a hefty chinese meal, I rode down to Claire's, which was just under 3 miles, and involved the joy that is Brixton Hill. This morning was the bigger challenge for me, 7.15 miles into work at St Paul's. Surprisingly, I do seem to have retained some of the fitness gains I made whilst snowboarding, as this wasn't anything like the near-death experience I feared. That said, there was of course the inimitable joy of playing with London traffic, which for some perverse reason I get quite a kick out of, even when being honked at by a bus because the driver didn't know how to use his mirrors ;-)

Technically it's actually more like 10 days, but that doesn't sound as good. It's already starting to feel like I've never been away, but the welcome home has been very warm, which has been lovely. The first couple of days was simply a case of getting reacquainted with my sofa, and enjoying some much needed projector time - Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Scrubs and West Wing were all the big winners!!

Monday I got the chance for an all too brief catch up with Adam and Sam. Having been made to walk all the way to London Bridge, Adam then cried off early due to some crappy excuse about being a bit tired. But it was good to catch up, and am pleased that wedding plans are progressing well ;-) Tuesday I had to remember how to get to Claire's place, stuck way out in the backside of beyond that is West Norward, i was out there to demonstrate my much advertised cooking development. Apparently I impressed, as I was allowed to stay, and then Wednesday I was out with Rachel to catch up with all the london office gossip. Grant was supposed to be there as well, but he cancelled on us at the last minute and so he is currently in our bad books ;-)

Woohoo - 108 days after departure I have finally returned back to London, and it feels great to be home. I've had a lovely, warm welcome from my flatmates, and I am already settled back in, currently enjoying an episode of The West Wing. I failed miserably to get any sleep on the flight home, and was pretty worried about my mis-step with the time zone adjustment, but things seem to be working out ok ;-)

Tonight is my last night in Oklahoma, after which I only have one more stop on my first circumnavigation of the globe: New York, New York, so good they named it twice ;-) This is more of a step toward home than it would normally be, as Claire is also flying out to spend the weekend with me, which (unsurprisingly) I am really looking forward to. It's definitely proven to have been a good idea to be in OK from a work perspective, but personally, I would much rather be home right now! Still I will be back in the UK on November 4th, and looking to catch up with a lot of people over the coming weeks.

Today was definitely a movie watching day, and it was a big opening weekend for a couple of films - The Prestige and Flags of Our Fathers. Being a big fan of Christopher Nolan (Memento in particular), I figured that The Prestige was going to be the best choice, and duly headed to the local multiplex. And I am really torn on my conclusion about the film. There's no way I can explain my indecision without massive spoilers, so if you don't want to know about the plot, stop reading now until you go and see it. As a non-spoiler description, it's a good film, but with a flaw that really ruined it for me, but I think a lot of people could accept the flaw and just enjoy it, go check it out and see if you agree with me ... read on for the spoiler-ific posting