Work, eat, sleep, drink

As the title suggests, I haven't been doing much exciting lately, I've been working and catching up on some R&R in my spare time.

Romana has been sharing my room until she moves into her own place this weekend, so she is looking forward to that.

I had a few drinks with Charlotte on Friday night and then spent the rest of the weekend being very lazy! Mana and I headed down to the park on Sunday afternoon and played scrabble in the sun with Deb.

I've started going to the solarium (sunbeds) again! It is so nice getting the rays over here as the sun just isn't the same as in Bris (obviously) but I do miss it. So I think I will be keeping up the sunbed over winter, not just for the tan but for its therapeutic qualities as well :-)

I'm meeting Keryn tonight for a cheap pub dinner and on Saturday we're heading over to Camden markets and then Primrose Hill for possibly the last BBQ of the year if the weather is fine!

We will hopefully get to Brighton next weekend! Apart from that there's not much to report! Hope you're all well! And Happy Birthday to James for Saturday!

Marisa - please let me know how it all goes with the bub and put some photos on your site!! I can't wait!

Dave - good luck with the move to Sydney, see you in London soon!

xox

Birthdays, birthdays everywhere

Just a really quick blog entry while I'm at work, my birthday weekend was rather large but really good, thanks to the awesome gals over here who made it special.

The SW4 festival on the Saturday in Clapham Common was huge, 20,000 people were there (although this is nothing compared to the 105,000 people at the free Fruitstock festival a while ago) although to me it actually felt just like a Brisbane festival, there was almost as many Aussies there! It was a fun day of mucking, dancing, drinking and ponchos :-) Pics here!

Sunday was spent with a great big sleepin and then heading out for a birthday dinner in Covent Garden with the little London crew including my housemates. We went to a Moroccan restaurant that had great ambience but incredibly bad service, but in all the night was fun! I tried my first Shisha pipe - Mango no less, which was really nice! I also got to catch up with Lorrae who I haven't seen since her going away do in Brisbane back in April or something. Pics here.

On Monday we had a nice big fry-up for brekky (thanks to the boys) and a lovely birthday cake (thanks to the girls) and we headed off to the Notting Hill carnival which was cool, a big street party with food and music carribbean style although we were all too tired from the last 2 days to enjoy it totally but we certainly enjoyed the Brazilian donuts!

Last weekend Romana and I went to the Tower of London which is very old and interesting, and much bigger than we thought it would be inside! We started a walking tour but got a bit bored of that so wandered around by ourselves and saw the crown jewels amongst other old stuff ;-) It was amazing really, to walk around in a castle that existed in the 11th century or even earlier.

The day before we had a bit of a wander around Oxford Street, we discovered Carnaby Street which is very cool, it was another of those little explorations down cute little lanes that involves lots of squeals and gasping and "how cute!"s. We also went to Hamleys, a great big traditional toy store (think HOme Alone) looking for a board game but we were overwhelmed by the variety and ended up walking out empty handed.

Last week also saw my first Soho experience which was great, I met up with Christian for drinks and dinner and a wander through the vibrant little community of Soho, which is full of restaurants, bars, shops, brothels and strip clubs. It's the red light district in London and its very obvious but doesn't feel dirty or dangerous. I took Romana back there a few days later and we had the most dodgey Thai buffet I've seen in my life, it was vegetarian disguised as real meat, but it was actually tofu, it was revolting I could barely eat it. There's one place we are never going back to.

This weekend we went on a little shopping trip with the boys to Clapham Junction which is quite suburban but really cute (its walking distance from my place) where we managed to pick up not one, but three board games. We had our last BBQ of the summer in the back yard and then on Sunday we went for a trip to Ikea with charlotte and her sister. I felt a bit carsick because I haven't been in a car since Thailand (except for when Julie drove me up to clapham high street) so I remedied it with a hotdog, chips and coke once we got to ikea haha.. This Ikea is huge, about 3 times the size of the one in Brisbane, it has 2 levels and an enormous self service area. Anyway I got a chest of drawers for my bedroom amongst lots of other useful little things to organise my life in London. I <3 Ikea.

Oh I forgot to mention the sample sale on Friday - Accessorize and Monsoon, it was great! I picked up a couple of handbags, a few scarves, a couple of belts (all real leather), hats, purses, socks all for £20!! Woohoo! Love cheap stuff.

We topped off the weekend with an impromptu game of lawn bowls and a family dinner (awww). James made his signature dish - Chicken drumsticks, with his secret recipe of .... wait for it..... soy and brown sugar! :-S It was nice anyway :-)

Okay you're all up to date! Sorry for being slack again!

Oh and thanks to Dad and Grandma and Grandad for my birthday cards, they arrived well in time - thank you!

And thanks to mum, James, Grandma & Grandad and Amelia & Chloe and Tyler for my beautiful pressies that arrived in the post today!! Woohoo!! Now i won't be cold in the winter with my lovely pjs and scarf and warm wintery things..

And thank you girls for my awesome GHD - I LOVE IT LIKE A FAT KID LOVES CAKE hahah... (no offence to anyone out there)

And for the big one thank you so so so much to my darling Gav for the super-cool nano ipod which is now full of tunes ready for my trip to work in the morning!!! (and the awesome little badges which are now pinned to my handbag). I LOVE YOU and I miss you.

Love to everyone!! xox