Car boot, Florence, Steve and Ruth's

As per usual, life has gotten the better of me and kept me busy enough that I've fallen behind in my blog updates.

There was a UK bank holiday two weekends ago. John and I used to the time to relax a little. After returning from Florida there was lots of catching up to do which kept us busy, so when the weekend arrived we tried to make the most of the time. On the Sunday we had a 'car boot' sale. For my American friends, this is like a garage sale, but instead of selling your garage you sell the trunk of your car. Ha! Oh dear, where do I come up with them?! Ok, seriously though it is similar to a garage sale but instead of selling things out of your garage you pack them all up in your car and take them to a place where lots of other people are trying to hack off their junk.

Madeline and Michelle had kindly agreed to help us, so they came up the day before (which was a good decision considering we had to get up at 5 am to make the opening!). They are both seasoned in the car boot domain so we tried to give them free reign in set-up and pricing. It was a nice idea, but any time someone asked Madeline how much something was she would look at John, ask him how much he wanted for it, and then when he thought of a price she would give him a wide-eyed look and tell him in a whisper that it was too low and she would buy it herself for 'x' amount of pounds! :-D Quite funny really. In the end we grossed around £80, which is quite good considering it was all stuff we would have just tossed out in one of our quarterly charity runs otherwise. We still had loads of stuff we didn't sell that we had to take back with us, but luckily Mich and Mad found some stuff they were happy to adopt so they lightened our load a bit as well.

Last Wednesday and Thursday I was in Florence (Italy) for work. I kind of kept forgetting that the trip was coming up, what with everything else going on. The few times I thought about the trip I only focused on the work bits so I was completely unprepared for just how beautiful a place Florence is.

I arrived about lunchtime and went straight into the office. I grabbed a spot of lunch in the company cafeteria (even the cafeteria pasta was al dente!) and spent the afternoon in a web conference leading the design meeting. I had time in the evening to explore in the city. The hotel was in the heart of Florence, next to the river. The hotel room itself was very nice, with the suite part downstairs and the bed, wardrobe, and a second TV in an open upstairs area of the room. I'd not been in a hotel room like that before.

They had told me the next day that I didn't need to be in until about 11:30 because my presentation wasn't scheduled until noon. Even though I've resigned I still didn't have the cheek to come into the office that late. But I did get up early and take an hour in the morning to walk around the city again. I told the woman at the hotel front desk that I had one hour before I had to be in the office and asked if she could tell me the best must-see things to do that were nearby. She took out a map and drew me a little map with the sites. It's really an unbelieveable place. The statues, fountains, architecture, cathedrals, squares... Rome is my favorite European city, and Florence shared a lot of characteristics with Rome apart from the ruins. I guess that should be obvious but I didn't expect it.

So I got into the office about 9:30 or so. I gave a presentation to the HR lead team, which went really well. So a successful trip indeed!

Last weekend we went to Steve (best man) and Ruth's in Thorpe. The have a lovely new house. The weather was gorgeous so we sat outside for a while before heading into Windsor for lunch and again for dinner. It was great to see them and they both seem really well.

Ok those are pretty much the highlights. The World Cup is starting tomorrow (not to be overshadowed by a much bigger event happening tomorrow, ehm) and I think everything pretty much stops for it. All I hear everywhere I go is football, football, football. I hope the weather's nice so people who don't care about the world cup (hand raised) have something to distract them! :-)