Girls' weekend

How is it that it is ALWAYS Monday? Every time I turn around, there's Monday again! It's like the annoying girl at my riding school who once you make eye contact with her she sticks to you like glue the entire time you're there, even when you go to the loo.

I have training today and tomorrow, so it's not all bad. A little break in the day-to-day routine. It's some soft skills course called The Winning Edge. I've heard it's really good, so I'm optimistic that it will keep me awake on this cold morning.

Had a really great weekend. John was in Brussels for Rich's stag do. Friday night I went to the store as I hadn't gotten groceries for a few days. Then I had to vacuum and clean up for company as I was having the girls over on Saturday night. Once I was done with all the boring chores I poured some wine, watched some tv, and loaded all my Beatles' albums on my Ipod. I'm slowly but surely getting that puppy filled up, although I still only have about 4 gig loaded (out of 30).

Saturday I had meant to get up about 8:30 because Michelle was due to arrive at 10:15 and I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to do any last-minute tidying. However, between pressing the snooze button about 5 times and snuggling the cats I ended up running late. I had just finished changing the bed sheets and other odds and ends when the doorbell rang, and in the end I didn't even leave enough time for breakfast!

Helen picked us up at 10:30, we swung by to pick up Gemma, then we headed to Reading for some shopping. The goal was to get dresses for Anita's wedding (unfortunately Anita was in Bournemouth this weekend so couldn't join us), but we all had a wandering clothes eye and ended up getting several different bits and pieces, from scarves and belts to necklaces, jumpers, and shoes. The best excuse of the day for purchasing something was from Michelle: 'I only tried on the shoes (which she bought) so I could have a sit down!' Gemma and I did find dresses for the wedding. The other girls weren't as lucky on this trip but there's still time.

We shopped for ages. By the end we were all so tired that we couldn't bear one more shop. We went home after about 5 or 6 hours of shopping. We went to my house and chilled out for a while, then I made some pasta (with pesto, which Gem and I were excited about because our husbands don't like pesto so we don't get to have it often), salad, and bread.

After some drinks and time to do ourselves up, we headed into town. Started at Rhu Bar and met up with Gemma's netball friend. We played the drinking game 'I Never', which kept us entertained. My friends from work, Jason and Dave, were out and they hung out with us for a while as well. From there we went to Silks, which is the place were Gem, Helen and I went a couple of months ago that had some pretty alternative people that scared Helen. They were playing good music so we went on the little stage to dance, and it didn't take long for everyone who had been on the stage to leave. I'm not sure exactly why we scared them off, but it didn't really bother us that they seemed put out that we had arrived. I imagine we weren't alternative enough, but we didn't really care. Eventually people came back on the stage, once they got over whatever the problem was.

We stayed there for a few songs and then went to Liquid, the big nightclub in B'stoke. They were playing really good R&B music. We danced for quite a while there, but you could tell we were all getting really tired after a long day of shopping and a few drinks, because where there was a song we didn't like as much we were hardly dancing very much, but when a good song came on you could tell we all mustered more energy for dancing. We bumped into Jason there also, and it was good to have him there because five girls dancing together seems to attract a lot of attention from guys who think you want them to join you. One guy kept hanging around us for quite a long time, and I finally told him we were all married and it was amazing how quickly he left. I think next time I'll make us all signs so we'll get left alone from the start!

By the time we got home we were all sore! The soles of my feet were hurting so badly that I was limping once I took my shoes off! We had some munchies and finally at about 3:30 we went to bed. We all stayed at my house for a little slumber party.

Sunday we got up late and after a while everyone was gone. I eventually got around to showering, etc, and then John and the rest of the boys needed to be picked up from the train station in the afternoon. John had been up until 7:30 the night before! So he and I had a little sleep, and pottered around for the rest of the day.