I'm leaving...

on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again.
Actually I do know when I'll be back, next Saturday. I'm going to the States for a week - another flying visit. I post this before I've told my mother I'm definitely coming .. Mom, if I've not told you yet, I'm coming to Texas tomorrow. Nothing like my spontaneous nature - you've got to love all my last minute plans :-)

I'll be going to the CDR reunion Saturday night. Sunday morning I'm planning on driving up to Arkansas to see Cheryl, Scott and Madi (sister and her family) where my parents should be as well. I'll be passing through Paris on Sunday morning on the way to Arkansas, maybe I'll get to say hello as I drive through. Sunday night and Monday are being spent in Arkansas and then I'll be headed to Tyler to spend the rest of the week with Mom. Monday night / Tuesday afternoon (whenever I leave Arkansas hopefully I'll get to stop by Paris and have lunch or dinner so if you're around and available, give me a post and we can try to plan something.

Looking forward to seeing everyone. Not looking forward to flying. The more I fly, the more I hate flying.

...oh yeah.... It's currently 11:15pm, I leave my flat at 5am and I've not started packing :- Oh dear.

Where have you been Karen?

You might have noticed that my blogs have been few and far between lately. My days are too short and too busy at the moment. The brief synopsis is that this time of year is extremely busy for me at work. It's the time of year I'm doing the school's timetable / schedule for the next academic year. Take a look at my blog from this time last year - my whole life centres around the timetable for a good month or two. Last year I had a timescale of 2 and 1/2 months to get this done. This year I have barely a month. If I were to only work M-F 9-5 it would take a good 3 months to get the timetable done. I have a month to do it all. It's a nightmare!!!! That's problem number one.

On top of problem number one is problem number two: a colleague of mine (who had a very busy day to day job here) has left. Part of her job was given to me. This "part" of her job takes up 95% of my time. Another 10% of my time is sorting out questions / problems arising from her leaving - just cause no one knows what to do now. This woman did a lot of stuff!!!

To add to my woes, a good 20% of my time is used up sorting out problems and questions about the system I look after. This is part of my normal job and I expect it. Some problems and questions are easier than others, but the combination of them is very time consuming.

If you're not good at maths - that's over 100% of my time. Did you also notice I didn't mention any amount of time being spent on the timetable for next year that I have less than a month to complete? No? That's because I don't have time to work on it. Not only is it SO far behind schedule, but I have no time to work on it!!! I'm working 12 hour days at work and then taking work home. It's seriously ridiculous. I'm close to the end of my tether and feel myself reaching breaking point. I don't have enough stamina to keep this up much longer!


Needless to say, everything in my social life suffers. My blog is one of the many things that has been effected by my ridiculous work life. Anyone know what a good work / life balance is? I sure don't have one!

Surviving Mondays

Lindsay was telling me last week how Adam (her boyfriend) decided he should go out to celebrate surviving Mondays. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and let me tell you, after my 12 hours slogging my guts out at work yesterday - I needed to celebrate surviving Monday. Fortunately my good friend, Clare, was at hand to celebrate with me! Clare introduced me to a quaint Mexican restaurant near-ish her house.

You would have been disappointed if we hadn't tried on the sombreros for you!

Roof BBQs

A bit of a random to begin the post - outragouesness!!! It now costs me £1-10 per liter of fuel!!! £66 was my last tank of fuel - a whopping $120 approximately for the American readers. An don't be confused by the size of my petrol tank - were only talking around 13.5 gallons here!

Now then, lets see, this was a while back now..... I believe this is from 10th May. That week was our first proper sunny weather. It was great! I went to Xena's flat to say hello. She was on her way to her eldest daughter's house and invited me along. So I spent Saturday afternoon at Anna's (Xena's daughter) house with her 3 youngsters.

Xena on the decking enjoying the illusive English sun The kids got all three of us on their new trampoline. Here's Xena
And Anna

....shame there's no photo of me making a fool of myself on the trampoline. You'll have to use your imagination :-)

Saturday night Lindsay's sister and boyfriend were over and we had a BBQ out on the roof. Much in the style of Friends we can climb out our lounge window onto the roof outside. It's not so easy getting back inside though. Carla (Lindsay's sister) somehow got stuck while trying to get inside (I think she was paralysed by laughter).


I think there's a few more pictures from the night, but I don't know where, so this will have to do for now. Sorry I've been rubbish at updating my blog ... life's just busy and stressful at the moment. The blog has to take a backseat to my chaotic life.

Zombie-fied

When I get stressed I tend not to sleep. Not because I'm awake thinking / worrying about something. Just because I don't go to bed. A lot of times I don't realise that I'm not going to bed and getting enough sleep til days later when my body stops functioning. Well, it's now days later. My "not getting enough sleep" started Thursday; you remember Thursday's posts - not a good day. Last night as I watched the clock tick over past 1:30 am I thought to myself "Self, you have to get up in less than 5 hours - GO TO SLEEP!" I think I finally fell asleep just before 2. Ho hum. My problem is not finding a remedy to sleep. My problem is finding a remedy to get rid of stress* - any ideas? :-D

A forgotten post: As I went to post this, I realised there was a small post I did last week, but didn't put it online - ops! Click here to read the post.


*Another way stress is manifesting itself is a lack of hunger. I'm not of the opinion that dropping a couple pounds is a bad thing though - so this, I can deal with. What's not so great is that I also suffer with diabetes - my diabetes is usually fine and rarely ever causes me trouble. Not eating for extended periods of time does not do my blood sugars any good. And when my blood sugar is down and I need to eat to get my sugar levels up - well, it's like trying to eat something just after you've vomited - you just don't want to eat and it makes you feel sick to eat. Ho hum. I guess I better make sure I eat something.

Bank Holiday weekend

As you can tell the end of my week wasn't a great one. To put it mildly, I was a bit stressed. Friday after work all I really wanted to do was to have a huge TGIFridays cocktail and go to the cinema. A good friend, Clare, stepped in and accompanied me. I had a great evening! Just what I needed after my week!!

Clare and I at TGIFridays

Then onto the movie - got to love Patrick Dempsey!!! (Maid of Honor was the movie of choice. Man, I love chick flicks!)
Clare and I outside the cinema. Can you believe it costs £15 to see a movie in Leicester Square?!!

Saturday was a pj day. Pretty much the whole day. Saturday night I went to Ed's flat for dinner and good company. His ex-flat mate, Clem, was there too. I'd met Clem once before, but as it was her birthday party I didn't get to speak to her much. She's a pretty fab gal. I much enjoyed Saturday night!

Sunday was forgettable. I think I was in my pjs all day. I did upgrade my iphone to try and solve my camera issue*, but it didn't fix it. So back to the Apple company for that. Joy.

Monday was a bank holiday here so I had the day off work - yipee! The weather couldn't have been better. I went into town for a few groceries and ant powder (I had ants creeping into the kitchen) and then hung out on my roof the rest of the afternoon in the sun. Lindsay (my flatmate) got back from her weekend trip to the midlands and her boyfriend joined us as well. The three of us stayed on the roof for several hours passing the time playing card games. A very fun and relaxing night.

Today I'm back at work. Sigh. The weather's still lovely and warm. It's hard to be stuck inside working when the weather's so lovely!

*more on that later

A Girlie Night In

Xena had a few girlies over to hers last night after work. She made us way too much good food. Food, Laughter and Fun. A great night.

Steph and Xena

Mary H. and Mary B.

Defeated

Defeated. That's what I've moved on to. Helpless.

Angry Karen Returns!

Grrr. Grrr. Grrr.
Very annoyed, frustrated, "put upon", taken advantage of, angry. That's how I feel at the moment.
Grrrrrr!

Death to speed humps!

30 speed humps. That's the minimum amount of speed humps / bumps I go over every day. It's a 3 mile round trip to work and home, and along the way I pass 30 speed bumps! If I take a detour because of traffic, add another 8 onto that. Going to the grocery store, add 7 more. It's ridiculous!!!

My rant is very justified I think, not only are those things flipping annoying, but they've also caused / contributed to the recent problems with my car. I had a big bill to pay last month (I talked a lot on the phone when I was in America ... sheesh, I've learned my lesson there!) so I didn't have the money after paying the bill and going to Oslo to face the astronomic cost of the car garage. I was too scared to even see how much it would cost to fix. Pay day has come, and Roxy went into the shop. I was told a week or so ago that my back brake lights were also gone. My goodness, can anything else go wrong with my car - flat tire, break lights out, the suspension is on it's way out, no "get up and go "ie no power".

The good news is that Roxy is all better. The better news is that the brake lights had caused the loss of power and it only cost me £54 to fix. Don't get me wrong, £54 is a lot of money. And it's a HUGE amount of money to replace brake lights! But I prefer to think of it positively - I thought it was going to cost me hundreds of pounds to get fixed, I can cope with £54! Yea - I have a working car again!!! (Apparently when the brake lights went, the car computer told itself that there was a problem with the brakes and put it in "get home mode" - ie not much power.)


The irritating news: all these problems - brake lights and subsequent loss of power, suspension, the lot ... all contributed to and sped up by the vast amount of bloody speed bumps!!!

Happy St Georges Day (a day late)

Ireland has Saint Patrick's Day, America has Independence Day, England has Saint George's Day. Yesterday was St George's day here in England. Because today wasn't a "normal" day at work (see below) a couple of people from work headed to the local after work. After a few rounds, we migrated to a pub that was showing the football so the guys could enjoy. I took a colleague home around 9 and then headed home.

Lindsay and her boyfriend, Adam, were out watching the football (near home) so I went and had one with them. Adam came back with a round of drinks and some hats. Oh the fun.

You knew I was a jester at heart!

Lindsay and I. Just a couple of goof balls!We crack each other up!
Notice I'm wearing England's flag colours of red and white in the above pictures!

Today at the NUT (National Union of Teachers) was on strike because of pay. Around 20 of our school's 70 teachers are part of this union, so school was closed to pupils. The rest of us were at work as normal. Well normal without students - which is always a plus!

Around lunch time, I thought of my childhood in Texas as a good thunderstorm came through - complete with hail! Once again I got pelted with hail for a picture to post on my blog. Hail is hard to capture on film!

If you really want to know what St George's Day is all about (other than an excuse for the English to go down to the pub) click this link.

A disclaimer (for my parents): I was driving last night and completely sober, just for the record.

April showers?

Two weekends ago my back garden was covered in snow, last weekend it was pelted with hail!

(Hail is pretty hard to capture on camera - have you ever tried?) I got pelted trying to get a picture for my blog - see how dedicated I am to you?!

Sunday was the London Marathon. This is my second year to go down and cheer on the runners. My throat was pretty sore by the end of it. Must remember to buy noise makers next year! This year I thought to myself, I should run the marathon just to prove I could. 26 miles? I'd have to start training now. I'm sure the feeling that I should / could do this will pass. On the off chance that I do run ... are my blog readers going to come to London and cheer me on?

I was at mile 9 this year. It was quite manic when I arrived. Most of the people who finished around the 3 1/2 mile mark were running by as I arrived.

The sun was shining when I left. I was even hot in my long selves. Then it turned cold. Very cold. And very wet! :-( It's always fun to see what people wear to run 26 miles!
A 3 stone (42lbs) nurse's custom anyone?

There were several rhino's this year (I saw these last year as well. I wonder if there is a charity with a rhino as a logo that they run for.

This guy was pretty funny looking as well. Not as much fun as the guy who ran past in a thong, but I didn't have my camera out for that guy. Notice his name, Andy, painted on his chest? Most of the runners will write their name on their clothes so you can encourage them by screaming out their names. "Come on Andy, you can do it!"
A few Mr Men ran as well.

I meant Ann and Kelli at the marathon this year. Ann lives right by mile 9 of the marathon and fixed us a yummy lunch and provided a warm cup of tea afterwards. Thanks Ann, it hit the spot!

Kelli and I headed from east London (mile 9 of marathon) to Wembley (north north London) because a friend / colleague was playing football at Wembley Stadium - home of English football. (For those that don't know, getting to play football at Wembley is pinnacle of any footballer's career - a little boy's dream come true. A once in a life time opportunity for the amateurs.) We were told that we could buy tickets on the door by our friend, but apparently there was some miscommunication within the football teams and stadium. When we arrived, we were told that we couldn't buy tickets on the door because they were sold out, only to find out that there were loads of allocated seats for my mate's team that were empty. Someone's family had even traveled over 6 hours to watch the game and were turned away.

Oh well, we came, we saw the Wembley arch. We left.

Kelli and I met up with Adam (from work) and his mrs, Anna

As my Wembley plans didn't work out, I crashed my flatmate's lunch plans. Lindsay was having lunch with her boyfriend, Adam, sister, Carla, and Adam's friend, Christian.

Lindsay and Carla

Christian and Adam Adam, myself and Linds on the way home. I'm getting better at self portraits, eh?! Oh wait, I didn't this one, Lindsy did. Poo!

Norway trip posts

I finally finished uploading my millions of pictures from Oslo. Because it's taken me so long to do this, the posts got out of order, so I've re-ordered them as best as I could with the limitations of google blogger and my internet understanding. It just means that Day 4 and Day 5 (my newest posts) are at the bottom, under Day 3. I want you to read them (I spent lots of time on these blogs you know!) so I've set up some links on this post to make it easier.

For Day 1 - Oslo Bound click here

For Day 2 - Palaces, Playing with art & Pascals click here

For Day 3 - white, wet and painful click here

For Day 4 - Museums, museums, museums click here

For Day 5 - Homeward Bound click here

Now I'm in debate to go on a blog strike until I get a comment on either Day 4 or Day 5 just to make sure at least one person found those posts and read them. I'll debate this.

I hope that you've enjoyed my Oslo trip as much as I did. It was fun going over the pictures and posting them - I hope I didn't overloaded you with too many pictures from Oslo. I do realise these were some seriously moster posts.

Snow in London!

Saturday morning I woke up to this wonderful sight. It was so very pretty. It lasted most of the day, but slowly melted away. But just gorgeous. These were taken from my back garden.

I couldn't help but hit you with a snow ball!

Day 1 - Oslo Bound

It's taking me SO long to get these Oslo pictures up for you. In an attempt at getting some of the pictures to you, here goes:

Cate, who is a friend from work came over Monday night a little after 10, we packed our one bag to take with us and headed to bed as the alarm went off at 2:30. Then it was off to the airport. We left relatively on time (considering I'm habitually late) and even with the car trouble we managed to get to the airport in plenty of time.

Here's a picture of the sleepy-eyed adventurers

I thought I had taken all the drinks out of my bag but I hadn't, so we gulped down a couple drinks (notice Cate has 2 Capri suns in her hand here)
What else do you do on the plane to cure boredom other than take a self portrait

We were meant to fly into an airport around 2 hours outside of Oslo (this is what you get for tickets that cost 2p) but the fog was too heavy to land and we were redirected to Oslo airport, a mere 25 minute train ride away. Wa'hoo!

After arriving we had to go through the mandatory checks with immigration and customs. If you look closely you can see Cate going through border control in Olso here.
After making our way through the airport we managed to find the train station, and it was a 10 minute wait for the train to Oslo city centre. If you look closely, you might be able to make out the sign that says train to Oslo (well something to that effect but in Norwegian).
From the train station we walked through town to find the hostel we were staying at. Poor Cate was a marter and carried our one bag on her back and her carry-on on her front.

The hostel didn't accept check in until after 3pm, but luckily we were able to lock our bags up in lockers instead of carrying them around the city.

After the hostel it was off sightseeing. The only problem was that all of the signs were in Norwegian, so we had no real idea what we were looking at. Oh well. This is the Fort in Oslo (or part of it anyway Cate needed the loo and I thought the building was kinda cool.
I also thought it would be fun to take a picture of the loos as she walked out. What can I say - simple things / simple minds
More fort
Playing on the wall / roof thing of the fort - it was Cate's idea!

Now this was my idea - and how bad do I feel for suggesting it! About 5 seconds after this picture was taken Cate smashed her face against the wall and you could hear the tooth against wall horrible sound. Luckily no lasting damage was done - but seriously painful I'm sure!

I wanted to get someone to take a picture of us at the Fort, Cate suggested a self portrait instead.

Take 1

Take 2 - this was extremely funny business trying to pose for a picture - at least my face made it into this one
Take 3 - "That'll do"
More fun at the fort. Notice how natural this picture is - not posed at all!
"Is this thing loaded?"
More fort ... the place was pretty big

After we left the Fort we stumbled across this statue / art sculpture thing. We found it quite amusing. Can you see Cate's expression?
Have a closer look. It's all so scandalous for Cate.
After such an early start and so much crammed into a day, I was exhausted! Not the best picture of me, but it sure does show how I was feeling at this point.

We stopped for lunch around 3pm at a pizza place. £30 ($55) for a pizza pie and 2 sodas. Seriously expensive this place!

What's a pizza pie you ask? Well it's like a pizza with an extra thick layer of cheese and leek over your topping of choice (for us it was pepperoni and mushroom). Cate's most famous quote from the holiday came from this meal, "You wouldn't think the ingredientswould work together, but in a strange way they do - and taste slightly Norwegian"

On the way to the hostel after lunch we stopped by a few shops and had fun with some hats.


Then to the hostel, to make beds and crash. I was so exhausted I feel asleep for a few hours. I think Cate read guide books (such a good tour planner!) and got on the internet. Cate = productive, Karen = lazy. In my defense I did have to drive to the airport and was up 20 minutes before Cate.
Once I dragged myself out of bed we went in search of a drink. We ended up at a TGIFridays. I'm not overly keen on going to places that I can get in England, but I fancied one of their cocktails ... £10 ($20) for the priviledge
The it was back to the hostel for a good night's sleep. Ok in a dorm of 6 with not so comfy matresses it wasn't a great night's sleep, but the accomidation was cheap so I'm not going to complain (very much anyway).