Gimme my speeeeeece

This weekend was fun. John went on a bachelor party in Manchester, leaving me and Helen and Gemma whose men were at the same party (it was actually Scott, Gem's fiance's, bachelor party). So we three girls went out on Friday night. We were supposed to meet at 7:30 for dinner, but work has been so crazy that I had to push the time back to 8:30 because I was still at work at 7:30. On a Friday night! What!

So we girls had some food and some wine and good dinner convo, then went to a couple of bars. We stayed out until about 1 and went home. We were going to keep drinking but most of the bars were closed by then. Clubs were still open but the one semi-decent club was a little bit of a walk, you have to pay to get in, and it's not that great anyway.

We went to a new bar called Silks that a girl at work had said was good. They were playing good indie music when we went in, but it was a very different scene than we are used to, as there were lots of people with dreadlocks and many peircings. Gem and I thought it was fun in there, but it was too much for Helen who downed her drink and was ready to go as soon as we got there. There was a Scottish guy there who made us laugh because Gemma was standing too close to him and he said 'Gimme my speeeeece.' (space) We had fun trying to get him to say more things in Scottish, but it turned out hearing Gemma imitate him was funnier than him actually talking.

Saturday I thought I was going to have to work, but I logged in in the morning and saw that the US had managed to get all the testing done so I didn't have to go in. Woo hoo! So I made scrambled eggs for breakfast, did some housework, read, took a 2 hour nap (same old Kara!), watched some tv, and then in the evening Helen and I went to see Crash. It was alright. Not what I would call a feel good movie, but pretty good anyway. We made it an early night so I could be at the stables at 8 am. When the alarm went off the next morning I was very tempted to stay in bed, but I dragged myself out of bed and worked at the stables until noon, which was fun but now I'm really sore. When I got home I read, watched tv, and napped (simple pleasures) then John got home about 5 and we watched the Colts game. Go horse!

John went to Lisbon this morning and he'll be gone until Wed morning. Then we leave for Kenya on Wed night, so hopefully everything works out with his flight so he doesn't miss safari!

Mrs Jones

Faith and Jeremy got married Sat, Sep 10 in Miami! She said it was perfect. They are off cruising the Caribbean now.

Friday roundup

Another Friday, finally. Since last week we had a bank holiday on Monday, the week went really quickly. It's completely messed me up this week, and I kept thinking it was the next day (Tues I thought it was Wed, etc).

Last night was fun because I got to see Gemma and Helen. I haven't seen Gemma since the Hawiian party, over a month ago! We went round to her house and had some vino and nice long chats.

Wednesday night I had my riding lesson. I have been in this Tues 7:00 lesson for a long time, and recently they've been pulling a bunch of beginners into this lesson. Turns out they have pulled so many people up into my group that I can't even get into the lesson anymore! At first I was annoyed (don't they know this is MY lesson?!!!), but I moved to this Wed 7:00 group with a different instructor, and the group is a little more advanced and I'm finding that it is so valuable to have a different instructor every once in a while because they give different tips and pick up on different things, which help me improve. When I'm with the same instructor week in and week out I already know what she's going to be looking for.

So the Wednesday lesson was good, it was my second lesson with Amy (instructor) and my new group. There is a woman in my group who is nice and is always friendly to me, but when I've talked to her before I have thought that she is really posh. I realized when I was talking to her after the lesson this week that it's a little bit of a German accent that I am hearing, not necessarily poshness! Durrrrr! You would have thought that maybe the fact that she's called Astrid would have helped me catch on quicker.

The horse I rode stepped on my foot, little bugger. They are so heavy!! I'm ok though, no breaks or even bruising.

Tuesday I was going to work at the stables but we had a team building event Tuesday afternoon which was outside of Basingstoke, so the earliest I could have gotten there would have been 6:00, and considering they close at 8:00 it wouldn't have been too worth it. So instead I went safari shopping! Got some thin trousers, lots of boring tops in tan, beige, and olive colors, a hat, and of course a nice woolly jumper and earrings. Ok, the last two weren't for safari but I just couldn't resist! I almost bought a dress for Gemma's wedding but I had to tell myself to FOCUS.

This weekend I'm off to Bournemouth with Anita and John is having his college friends around for some footie and beers. My poor cats will likely be spending the weekend under the bed to get away from the noise (and smells!).

Munich and V-festival pictures

Munich:
http://www.ofoto.co.uk/I.jsp?c=e6cd4ld.vuansgp&x=1&y=hdsy6q

V-festival:
http://www.ofoto.co.uk/I.jsp?c=e6cd4ld.16mxcwwp&x=1&y=-hp3kto

Crazy neighbors and Emily and Alex

We had a lovely weekend. Friday night I went round to my neighbors who lives directly across the street. She had invited a few other friends of hers who live in our little neighborhood. It was very, very funny because these women are all mothers who are about 10 years old than me and have lived in Basingstoke their whole lives. It was like being around a bunch of hens clucking about the neighborhood for seven hours! I have been living in my house thinking no one was paying any attention to John and I, and when I left my eyes were opened to the fact that people are very interested in what everyone is doing.

One of the ladies asked me if I am still horse riding. I have only met her once before, many months ago, and she lives quite a few houses away from mine, around a couple of corners. I asked her if we'd talked about my riding before (wondering how she knew about this hobby), and I went bright red when she said, 'Oh well, Kara, the men just LOVE seeing you in those johdpurs!' And I found out that Basingstoke is the swinging capitol of Hampshire, and Kempshott Park/Brighton Hill is the swinging capitol of north Hampshire! And I also learned what dogging is, and of course they gave me all the low down on what each neighbor is up to, practically house by house! It was something else.

We had all gotten there at 8 pm and finally at 3 am I decided I had to get home. I thought people might take advantage of someone making a move to go home, as it was so late I thought maybe people were waiting for someone to make the move to leave first (as I had been), but no one left with me, and I heard from my neighbor's husband that she didn't get home until gone 4!

Then on Saturday we went to Kent, which is a truly lovely part of southeast England, to visit John's college and uni friend Emily and her husband Alex. We haven't seen them in a very long time, in fact I hadn't seen Alex since their wedding which was 2 years ago December. It was great to see them; they are a really lovely couple. Although, John was definitely having a bad day. We got rear-ended on the M3 on the way there. Luckily it was in stopped traffic so there wasn't much damage to our car (the other guy's car was crumpled in the front) and no injuries. Then John picked up one of their cats, which apparently opened up a cyst on the base of the cat's tail, and cat puss went all over John's white shirt! Emily tried to squeeze the puss out but we all agreed it was best to just call the emergency vet (as it was late at night, after regular vet hours), and the vet said to bring him in. They ended up being gone for 2 hours because the poor thing had to be shaved, have a local anesthetic, have the wound opened and flushed out, have some jabs, etc.

Before all of the cat stuff we went into Canterbury (THE Canterbury, from The Canterbury Tales, which my senior year English teacher would be most impressed to find out I'd set foot in) for a nice meal. What a beautiful place, and what we could see of the cathedral (as it was closed off for the evening) was breathtaking.

We left early on Sunday. The weather was gorgeous so we spent the day in the garden reading and giving the cats attention. It was the perfect way to wind down. If we hadn't have done that I think the weekend would have felt like it got away from us.

Munich

I haven't been as good as updating my blog as I had hoped I would be. Work is pretty busy right now as I am leading a project that is going live in three weeks. In fact, it goes live the day we leave for safari! So hope everything goes well because I won't be there to do with the aftermath. Of course, I suppose I shouldn't really care how it goes since I won't be here to deal with the aftermath! :-)

We went to Munich last weekend. Got there very late Thursday night so started the sightseeing on Friday morning. It was funny because the weekend before we had been interviewed by a radio station at the V festival and then we hadn't been walking around but a few minutes on Friday morning and these people with a mic and TV camera came up to us on the street and asked us something in German, trying to interview us. People just want to hear what Kara has to say, I tell ya!

We went on a four hour tour on the first day, which was really good. It was actually a free tour and you just give a tip at the end of whatever you think it was worth. It was called the Free Munich tour and if you ever go there be sure to seek it out because it was the best orientation to the city we could have asked for. I didn't realize until they told us, but Munich is where Hitler started his whole takeover. The city was basically completely destroyed in WWII, but they have rebuilt the buildings to look either exactly as they were or in the architectural stylings of prewar times, so the city does not look at all like it was built up in the 20th century, even though most of the buildings were constructed/reconstructed then.

There was lots of beer. I'm not going to have to drink beer again for a while. I'm much more of a wine girl anymore and do enjoy beer still, but the beer there was so rich and potent and I drank so many 1/2 liters of it that I'm good for a while! :-) Also I didn't realize that pretzels came from there. We had loads of those big soft pretzels as a snack, they go good with the beer. There weren't any small crunchy pretzels though.

We saw lots of cool sites. Obviously we went in lots of churces as per usual, did a couple of palaces, patroned a couple of beer gardens, visited some botanical gardens, and of course ate some fairly stodgy food.

I will of course post pics soon!