Wow! What a great night this was! gwyn_r and I went out to see Hothouse at the Trafalgar Studios, stopping at Fratelli la Bufala beforehand for pizza (best in London in my opinion) and then went and had drinks at Gordon's wine bar after the show (major advantage of 2 hour running time in my book). She spoiled me silly and paid for everything, and I did my best to show her how beautiful my home town was by parading her amongst the tulip beds of the Victoria Embankment Gardens and then of course taking her to the ever so amazing Gordon's.

And here it is nearly midnight, and, look at me, nary a spot. It's a miracle! And .... I have made a new friend. :-) Yay!

1. Overturn the monarch. Hello 21st century!
2. Renationalize rail.
3. Enforce separation of church and state.
4. Real freedom of speech.
5. Baseball and/or Thanksgiving

My life has been wrapped up in three things lately: dragons ,running, and work. the dragons ,well, it's a silly game I started playing in January and I'm pretty addicted right now. 5here's going to be a "seven dragons in seven days" event starting Tuesday and I'm trying to get ready for it by collecting 200 dragons before hand (so I can have 6 eggs at a time instead of 5) and by capturing extra red dragons, which you can use to make your eggs hatch faster. The popup ads I have been getting on the website crack me up: no, I do not need an incubator, because my eggs are purely imaginary. I don't need the "dragon" language learning program (I assume like Rosetta stone) either, though I have to say if it actually taught dragon I might consider it. Problem: dragons are still imaginary.

 

My fun for this week has been going to classical (Baroque) music concerts, five in seven days; I was a little tempted to catch the Saturday afternoon concert but I think I overdid myself a bit during the week anyway, as I went out 5 nights in a row. I don't think I'm really up to those kind of energy levels yet and I kind of collapsed Friday and didn't make it to Brighton as intended to see A's show and wound up sleeping for 12 hours into Saturday.

 

Work: three more weeks left. Can't wait for it to be done. The stress levels have already dropped tremendously and I'm feeling hopeful that in June I might be able to finally shake the urticaria.

 

Running: it's the Couch to 5 K program, and, while I'm not actually interested in running 5K, I'm really interested in trying to build myself back up physically (and didn't feel like joining a gym especially when I'm not going to be in Central London for work anymore and am going to need the money for, oh, rent when I'm unemployed). I was planning on taking it slower than the recommended one level per week; I started running April 29 and am just now ready to start level 3 (say maybe on Tuesday). I've been really proud of myself because I haven't given up on any of my runs, but actually completed each of them (even though last Monday, day 2 of level 2, I was ready to throw in the towel). I've also been very consistently running every other day, which is kind of surprising, but I've brought my stuff in to work with me so I can do it on my lunch breaks ,which is turning out to be a great way to burn off work stress (and was especially cheering the day they turned off my log in because our outsourced support company decided to process my leaver paperwork the day it arrived instead of reading the due date). So I have some places where I like running - Lincoln's Inn Fields and Tooting Common - and this morning Jason is going to introduce me to Crystal Palace as a running venue (prior to brunch at the Cafe Latino). Interestingly, this was supposed to be, in part, something we do together ,but we've only actually run together once a week or so; he's doing it before work, and I'm doing my lunchbreaks, but the good thing is that we're both sticking with the program. I suspect he could be progressing much more quickly than I am, but he's keeping it to my level and enjoying not having to work too hard.

 

Anyway, enough fooling around; it's time for a run.

 

Today I met gwyn_r, friend of emmarytz, at Notes, where we had some wine (cold: rose for me and prosecco for her) and confirmed the fact that we're going to see Hothouse together next week. And she told me she also knows varina8. Boy, LJ may be dead across America, but it is still the glue that holds together my Seattle social circles.

Work, today, was mostly not worth talking about: I'll summarize by saying five hours of meetings and you can draw your own conclusions.

My evening went from Notes to St John's Smith Square where, in the company of my roommate, I heard a wonderful concert of French music from my absolutely favorite era, including a Marais and some ass-kicking harpsichord stuff, and life was good.

Rah! It's been 20 years since me and J got married! And this is definitely a milestone year for us. Wish us luck as we hope for twenty more years and even another 20. I'm looking forward to a lifetime of kayaking, cards, and lazy meals in the back yard. :-)

Looks like I've been too busy doing my critical writing to bother letting people know I've written them - thank goodness for Twitter, though!

Right. So, while in America, I went and saw American Utopias, Mike Daisey's look at Disney World and Burning Man, with varina8 and exedore. Mike's show was entertaining, though not nearly as good as I suspect his other, newer show (Fucking Fucking Ayn Rand) would have been (if I'd been in Seattle long enough to see it). I'll remember this night as the evening my old college friend Adam Epstein totally snobbed me off, unfortunately; I try to control the stress but sometimes it comes and finds me (especially a drag when I was trying to be friendly and polite).

Back in the UK, I was off (with the promise of an under two hour running time) to see Ibsen's Public Enemy at the Young Vic. Whistleblowers with big egos: it's a theme that's as fresh today as it was when it was written.

Less enjoyable was Marc Almond in Ten Plagues - a promising evening ruined by really irritating music and a worse libretto. Ah well.

Then on Friday I was treated to The Ghost Hunter, a spooky tale of a ghost tour guide slipping into the supernatural. It was a perfect evening: one hour long so no need to restrain myself with the post-work boozing, and after fighting over when my actual last day at work was going to be (see the stress levels go up again), I was well in need. This play knocked me out of my can't think about anything but the job brain and got my weekend off to a good start.

Although I also saw a concert on Sunday (and may write it up), I was feeling quite blue on Monday and tried to fix it with a comedy: The Play That Goes Wrong. It wasn't pure genius but it was a good time and I did feel better after seeing it.

The rest of the week will mostly be baroque music performances so there won't be too much in the way of reviews coming, but I think I've hit the ground running and ought to be able to keep the traffic on my blog pretty stable while I'm not adding any more content. Meanwhile, I have a paper dragon egg:


Woo!

This looks like the year where my age is catching up to me. Bags and wrinkles under my eyes, the grey coming in so fast that even Jason notices it ... hurray.

On the other hand, it looks like my weight has finally stabilized. I'm happy about that. Now, with luck, I can start turning it back into muscle again. I nearly quit while doing my run yesterday but I'm going to try to stick it out, at least through this month. And for next month, I will also see about getting a Pilates pass so on my days off I can go and do a session at the TCR YMCA. And I'm kind of thinking I might take a few evenings/days/mornings to do some kayaking on the Thames again ... maybe get my BCU 2* and even 3* cert. I've got the time, and you can do it for cheap, so I should get back into it.

Ran into someone at the Covent Garden May Festival (the Punch and Judy blow out for you Ben Aaronovich fans) who asked how I'd been. "Sick for the last six months, which is why I'm quitting my job," I said. But then I realized there was certainly positive news: 20th anniversary this week, getting citizenship next week, lovely boy moving in with me ... and the hope that quitting the job will let me break the stress cycle and kill off this damned illness.

On the other hand, I was up at least an hour after I went to bed last night, and I'm a tired tired girl this morning. Ah well. It's a Monday. Later: trying to do stage two of the Couch to 5K for the second time. Obviously since I made it the first time I ought to be able to make this time but it was really, really hard work. I'll hope that the second time is less painful.