Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Zits
Its this country! I am obviously allergic to something in the UK. I've been back 36 hours and I have a spot....
Ma heid
Our last weekend in Alexandria was one of hangovers and shoes........
We moved out of Rudy and Carol's and into our new digs on Friday as they were heading off for the weekend. After 7 hours in the office we packed it up, locked it up and headed off with our bags and cases in search of yet another bed!
We then took a wander down to King Street with a camera to capture a few quintessential Old Town views. Of course, whilst we were at King St we simply HAD to have a Pops Ice Cream and take it down to the Marina. It was just like the old days....us stuffing our faces with some of the best ice cream ever, and the water glasses man playing away in the background. Ahh...I'm gonna make a sentimental journey....
The sentimental journey continued with a trip to my favourite Old Town shop. Namely the Nine West Outlet store. A weeny shop packed floor to ceiling with SHOES!!!! And not only that - they were buy one pair, get one pair half off. So I did!
Our evening was spent recreating our old Friday night out. O'Connells for drinks, sitting outside on the patio at a Thai restaurant for dinner knocking back cocktails, O'Connells for another drink, then Two Nineteen (the weekend office) for more drinks and listen to the band. We made a startling discovery after being ripped off for $13 a glass of PG. Their sparking wine is the cheapest glass on the menu! It was pleasant drinking and a much more reasonable $7. So I had two....
All this boozing meant that the next morning was a little slow..! We headed to Chadwicks for Eggs Benedict and OJ before heading off to Seven Corners. Stephen went for a wander round the guitar shop and I headed to the shoe warehouse. What heaven this place is. As far as the eye can see are boxes of shoes....enough to make me drool! It really was like letting a kid loose in a candy store! All these shoes, all designer, and all reduced..... I really, really had to restrain myself and only bought four pairs. I had to remind myself that there wasn't a 40ft container to bring them home and I'd have to fit the six pairs I'd bought into a case somehow!!
Talk about doing retail therapy! We also went to Tysons Mall as well as Best Buy and Target. We went to Target because we'd figured by this time we'd need another case! We weren't wrong!!
After a late dinner in the Warehouse (yummy steak and crab cakes), we bumped into Morag and Simon along with a couple of their friends and ended up in O'Connells until about 1am. We were both feeling very sorry for ourselves on Sunday morning that's for sure!!! We headed off to the nearby Starbucks for a life-saving coffee and muffin only to find that it was queued about 20 deep with fun-runners. ARGH! Didn't they understand that I NEEDED COFFEE NOW!!!!
Packing with a hangover isn't too much fun. All that bending over when your head is pounding is not clever! At first I thought the new jumbo bag was overkill, then I realised that actually we were actually going to need every available crumb of space. Ooops....
We met with Morag, Simon and the girls for lunch in Southsides. It was burgers and cokes all round!! We all really needed the fat and the sugar! Feeling a bit more alive, but sad to be departing we headed to Dulles for the flight.
I love Virgin! We got an upgrade to Upper on the flight back. What a difference it makes when you have a fully flat bed and a little duvet and some lovely lady wakes you with an orange juice and breakfast in bed. It really is the only way to travel...shame we can't afford to book it!!
Monday was a hard day for me. Stephen headed into work and I got to work on the laundry. I was fine when I was doing something, but as soon as I sat down I was asleep a couple of seconds later!! I opened one case to find that that it had a note saying it was opened and searched. Now - fair enough - they're keeping us safe and I have no issues with that...but why they hell can't they repack it as opposed to scrumpling everything up into a ball and stuffing it back into the case? Worse than that, they had opened up my two carefully wrapped (suspect) packages and not wrapped them again. One was a carved in the round wooded Colonial Pineapple and the other was two plastic bottles of grape jelly. I'd carefully wrapped these in individual plastic bags, then put both bags inside another plastic bag in case they got crushed and went splat all over the case contents. Only one bottle was still in the double bag configuration. The other was loose in the case. I'd have been livid if that had burst all over my clothes!! Thankfully for my blood pressure an dry cleaning bill, all items made it intact.
We moved out of Rudy and Carol's and into our new digs on Friday as they were heading off for the weekend. After 7 hours in the office we packed it up, locked it up and headed off with our bags and cases in search of yet another bed!
We then took a wander down to King Street with a camera to capture a few quintessential Old Town views. Of course, whilst we were at King St we simply HAD to have a Pops Ice Cream and take it down to the Marina. It was just like the old days....us stuffing our faces with some of the best ice cream ever, and the water glasses man playing away in the background. Ahh...I'm gonna make a sentimental journey....
The sentimental journey continued with a trip to my favourite Old Town shop. Namely the Nine West Outlet store. A weeny shop packed floor to ceiling with SHOES!!!! And not only that - they were buy one pair, get one pair half off. So I did!
Our evening was spent recreating our old Friday night out. O'Connells for drinks, sitting outside on the patio at a Thai restaurant for dinner knocking back cocktails, O'Connells for another drink, then Two Nineteen (the weekend office) for more drinks and listen to the band. We made a startling discovery after being ripped off for $13 a glass of PG. Their sparking wine is the cheapest glass on the menu! It was pleasant drinking and a much more reasonable $7. So I had two....
All this boozing meant that the next morning was a little slow..! We headed to Chadwicks for Eggs Benedict and OJ before heading off to Seven Corners. Stephen went for a wander round the guitar shop and I headed to the shoe warehouse. What heaven this place is. As far as the eye can see are boxes of shoes....enough to make me drool! It really was like letting a kid loose in a candy store! All these shoes, all designer, and all reduced..... I really, really had to restrain myself and only bought four pairs. I had to remind myself that there wasn't a 40ft container to bring them home and I'd have to fit the six pairs I'd bought into a case somehow!!
Talk about doing retail therapy! We also went to Tysons Mall as well as Best Buy and Target. We went to Target because we'd figured by this time we'd need another case! We weren't wrong!!
After a late dinner in the Warehouse (yummy steak and crab cakes), we bumped into Morag and Simon along with a couple of their friends and ended up in O'Connells until about 1am. We were both feeling very sorry for ourselves on Sunday morning that's for sure!!! We headed off to the nearby Starbucks for a life-saving coffee and muffin only to find that it was queued about 20 deep with fun-runners. ARGH! Didn't they understand that I NEEDED COFFEE NOW!!!!
Packing with a hangover isn't too much fun. All that bending over when your head is pounding is not clever! At first I thought the new jumbo bag was overkill, then I realised that actually we were actually going to need every available crumb of space. Ooops....
We met with Morag, Simon and the girls for lunch in Southsides. It was burgers and cokes all round!! We all really needed the fat and the sugar! Feeling a bit more alive, but sad to be departing we headed to Dulles for the flight.
I love Virgin! We got an upgrade to Upper on the flight back. What a difference it makes when you have a fully flat bed and a little duvet and some lovely lady wakes you with an orange juice and breakfast in bed. It really is the only way to travel...shame we can't afford to book it!!
Monday was a hard day for me. Stephen headed into work and I got to work on the laundry. I was fine when I was doing something, but as soon as I sat down I was asleep a couple of seconds later!! I opened one case to find that that it had a note saying it was opened and searched. Now - fair enough - they're keeping us safe and I have no issues with that...but why they hell can't they repack it as opposed to scrumpling everything up into a ball and stuffing it back into the case? Worse than that, they had opened up my two carefully wrapped (suspect) packages and not wrapped them again. One was a carved in the round wooded Colonial Pineapple and the other was two plastic bottles of grape jelly. I'd carefully wrapped these in individual plastic bags, then put both bags inside another plastic bag in case they got crushed and went splat all over the case contents. Only one bottle was still in the double bag configuration. The other was loose in the case. I'd have been livid if that had burst all over my clothes!! Thankfully for my blood pressure an dry cleaning bill, all items made it intact.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Photos
Photos will be forthcoming. But probably not until we get back to the UK as we've literally not had a minute to look at them, never mind sort them, resize them and post them.
As usual we've taken several thousand, so don't go asking to see the holiday snaps until we've sorted through them - you might regret it!!!
But, as you're probably missing our smiling faces - here we are in our temporary office.
Wednesday & Thursday - Keep Calm and Carry On
Back into the office. I swear we've barely seen daylight this week! Its an inside office with no windows so we could be anywhere. Stephen has been busy writing bids and I've been getting on with my job as usual. There have been a few frustrations - like having to share the laptop with Stephen, not having the information I have on my HD at home, and working off the BB in between times which is giving me BB thumb, but on the whole its been business as usual. We both spoke with our bosses on Wednesday (we have been in constant email contact). Tom was very cool about the situation. As long as we were okay and able to work he said that a flight in a weeks time would be fine. Stephen's boss was cool, but really wants him back in the UK. We had to explain about the flight situation....basically us stranded folks are being slotted onto any available seats. There are no rescue flights coming to get us home!!
We phoned Virgin again to see if there was any improvement to be had since the air space had opened up and after quite a bit of holding whilst they checked, they were able to give us flights on Sunday. Moving us up 3 days was great news!
I had my weekly conference call this morning. We had to laugh when I was explaining that we had a flight on Sunday, it was basically business as usual, and that we had adopted "Keep Calm and Carry On" as our motto. Sarah chipped in with "I'm not sure Tom's keeping calm. As I was walking into the office this morning he drove alongside me, rolled down the window and yelled over "Kerry's coming home!" ". Ahh...its good to be missed!!
We went for pizza at Faccia Luna with Morag, Simon and the girls on Wednesday night. Its THE best pizza in Old Town. We had our favourite pizza from there - honed after plenty of practice to Pepperoni and Onion. The girls were pretty quiet at first, but it didn't take long for Stephen to wind them up to the usual fever pitch of excitement!! Its a skill. I'm not sure that he didn't miss his vocation...
We phoned Virgin again to see if there was any improvement to be had since the air space had opened up and after quite a bit of holding whilst they checked, they were able to give us flights on Sunday. Moving us up 3 days was great news!
I had my weekly conference call this morning. We had to laugh when I was explaining that we had a flight on Sunday, it was basically business as usual, and that we had adopted "Keep Calm and Carry On" as our motto. Sarah chipped in with "I'm not sure Tom's keeping calm. As I was walking into the office this morning he drove alongside me, rolled down the window and yelled over "Kerry's coming home!" ". Ahh...its good to be missed!!
We went for pizza at Faccia Luna with Morag, Simon and the girls on Wednesday night. Its THE best pizza in Old Town. We had our favourite pizza from there - honed after plenty of practice to Pepperoni and Onion. The girls were pretty quiet at first, but it didn't take long for Stephen to wind them up to the usual fever pitch of excitement!! Its a skill. I'm not sure that he didn't miss his vocation...
Zits go bye bye
In other news... The day after we arrived here my spots cleared up! It was a miracle, a MIRACLE I tells ya!! And despite all the stress of the past week, they've not come back! (I really hope I'm not tempting fate here!)
Zena may no longer have to "turn it up to 11" and electrocute my zits. Boots profits may tumble as I no longer need to buy a myriad of spot treatments. I may no longer have to spend hours at night surfing the web to find more and more outlandish spot-banishment solutions.
Of course, it could be that I'm just allergic to the UK and they'll come back with a vengeance! I think it might be something to do with exposure to sunlight. Is this a good reason to put down on a Green Card application d'ya think?? Reason for application: Your climate makes my zits go away. Hmmmm. It would take an understanding Official to pass that one!!
Zena may no longer have to "turn it up to 11" and electrocute my zits. Boots profits may tumble as I no longer need to buy a myriad of spot treatments. I may no longer have to spend hours at night surfing the web to find more and more outlandish spot-banishment solutions.
Of course, it could be that I'm just allergic to the UK and they'll come back with a vengeance! I think it might be something to do with exposure to sunlight. Is this a good reason to put down on a Green Card application d'ya think?? Reason for application: Your climate makes my zits go away. Hmmmm. It would take an understanding Official to pass that one!!
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Tuesday - Into the office
After arriving at the office, I checked BBC online to find my hopes of a quick getaway dashed. No air space was opening up. At this rate our flight on the 28th would be in jeopardy and we'd be returning to the UK sometime in August. If we didn't just apply for our Green Cards of course!
It certainly made me really despondent. There was a glimmer of hope we might get home sooner, then it was snatched away. It turned out to be a changing situation though and thanks to BA brinkmanship I caught the headline that UK air space was open just as we were leaving the office. Thank you to everyone who sent emails and texts to let me know!
I wrote down the precise instructions on the Nats website for directions to the game. When we were nearing the ballpark I realised that we're doing SatNag down in some respects. The Americans must give fundamentally different instructions than the Brits as the ones on the Nats website were equally as likely to send us wrong as SatNag woman was. When we came back she instructed us to go left, then go left when what we were doing was changing lane. Confusingly she also says Go Left when telling you to turn left. Hmmmmm.
The Nats lost. But its always fun to go to the baseball! The Five Guys burger was great. The banter of the beer sellers was great. The beer was great.
Our hosts were flaked out on the sofa when we got home - waiting for the teenage kids (us) to come home maybe? At least with the opening of the air space they won't be forced to adopt us!!
Spent an hour on hold to Virgin before giving up at midnight.
It certainly made me really despondent. There was a glimmer of hope we might get home sooner, then it was snatched away. It turned out to be a changing situation though and thanks to BA brinkmanship I caught the headline that UK air space was open just as we were leaving the office. Thank you to everyone who sent emails and texts to let me know!
I wrote down the precise instructions on the Nats website for directions to the game. When we were nearing the ballpark I realised that we're doing SatNag down in some respects. The Americans must give fundamentally different instructions than the Brits as the ones on the Nats website were equally as likely to send us wrong as SatNag woman was. When we came back she instructed us to go left, then go left when what we were doing was changing lane. Confusingly she also says Go Left when telling you to turn left. Hmmmmm.
The Nats lost. But its always fun to go to the baseball! The Five Guys burger was great. The banter of the beer sellers was great. The beer was great.
Our hosts were flaked out on the sofa when we got home - waiting for the teenage kids (us) to come home maybe? At least with the opening of the air space they won't be forced to adopt us!!
Spent an hour on hold to Virgin before giving up at midnight.
Monday - QQ UK Inc is in business
We got into the office and Stephen got to work doing techy things to the laptop in order to get it working on the UK system. We made a couple of calls to our IT dept, and were surprised to learn that we were the only people who had phoned in to request things like making our mailbox size larger etc. Oh well, I guess we were in a lucky position of being able to do what we did.
We were very hopeful at reports that UK airspace might open up that night, or the following morning. I had a quick look at how we could book a ship back to the UK....or a row boat...probably each coz we have a lot of luggage...! We began to get news of others stranded abroad. Paul B, stuck in Sweden with some colleagues, my sister in Spain getting on HMS Albion the following day, Stephen's brother and family in Turkey, Richard and family in Majorca. But my heart really went out to the one guy Stephen knows who was stuck airside in Kuala Lumpur with a young family and no luggage (it was checked in and he couldn't get it back) who was told he was being re-booked for mid-May. Nightmare stories like that made us realise that we were in the best position we could be. We had lodgings, all our stuff, somewhere to work, lots of friends nearby and we knew our way around what is, after all, a lovely area.
We decided to go to the baseball on Tuesday as the Nats were playing. What a freakin' nightmare to book tickets on the website. Every page was timed, and it you were too slow you lost the tickets. The page that needed all the address and credit card info gave you a whole 3 minutes to complete it!!! On my second attempt (he'd already tried twice) I was yelling at Stephen for a local phone number "NOW. NOW. I need it faster than that...Oh. There we are. We've timed out again!" Honestly, that laptop nearly became a frisbee!! Between us it took 5 attempts to book the goddamn tickets.
After dinner Carol took us on a personal tour of the monuments at night time. Again, it was something we had never done - usually because we'd be bolstering the profits of O'Connells!! What a fantastic thing to do! We were running about with Stephens camera and a tripod getting photos. The only slightly nervous moment for me was when we were briskly walking to the White House and I realised that I was carrying a long narrow object that could easily be mistaken for a gun, towards the residence of the US President with several police cars and sharp shooters nearby!!
We were very hopeful at reports that UK airspace might open up that night, or the following morning. I had a quick look at how we could book a ship back to the UK....or a row boat...probably each coz we have a lot of luggage...! We began to get news of others stranded abroad. Paul B, stuck in Sweden with some colleagues, my sister in Spain getting on HMS Albion the following day, Stephen's brother and family in Turkey, Richard and family in Majorca. But my heart really went out to the one guy Stephen knows who was stuck airside in Kuala Lumpur with a young family and no luggage (it was checked in and he couldn't get it back) who was told he was being re-booked for mid-May. Nightmare stories like that made us realise that we were in the best position we could be. We had lodgings, all our stuff, somewhere to work, lots of friends nearby and we knew our way around what is, after all, a lovely area.
We decided to go to the baseball on Tuesday as the Nats were playing. What a freakin' nightmare to book tickets on the website. Every page was timed, and it you were too slow you lost the tickets. The page that needed all the address and credit card info gave you a whole 3 minutes to complete it!!! On my second attempt (he'd already tried twice) I was yelling at Stephen for a local phone number "NOW. NOW. I need it faster than that...Oh. There we are. We've timed out again!" Honestly, that laptop nearly became a frisbee!! Between us it took 5 attempts to book the goddamn tickets.
After dinner Carol took us on a personal tour of the monuments at night time. Again, it was something we had never done - usually because we'd be bolstering the profits of O'Connells!! What a fantastic thing to do! We were running about with Stephens camera and a tripod getting photos. The only slightly nervous moment for me was when we were briskly walking to the White House and I realised that I was carrying a long narrow object that could easily be mistaken for a gun, towards the residence of the US President with several police cars and sharp shooters nearby!!
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