Remember, remember, the fifth of November...

We just got back from going to see Sir David Attenborough give a talk on Wallace (co-theorist on the Theory of Evolution) and Birds of Paradise, and it was *amazing*. Not only was the subject material interesting, but David is an excellent orator and had the audience enthralled by his manner, and highly entertained. His mannerisms are exactly like those in the documentaries that I have watched numerous times, and it was wonderful watching him talk.

But that's not all! He also held a signing in the theatre after the event, and though we already own his "Life on Earth" and "Life on Air" books, we bought another Life on Air to get it signed (all the proceeds went toward bird conservation, which was fantastic). I really enjoyed the chance to meet this great man, and hope he has many years left of entertaining and informing us in the future.

Yay!

Tags: uk 2008 attenborough
Current Mood: enthralled

Well, it's been a long time since I created a post along the lines of what I've been up to. It's been a very busy time, both with fun items and with work as well. Rather than write an extremely long winded post about what I've been up to, I'll do a nifty bullet point summary for the last few months ;)

What I did on my last few months

• My parents came over to the UK and visited us! It was great having them over, and although we had to work for most of the time they were over, we still managed to take some time off and travel around with them. I took a week off, and we all caught the Eurostar (my first time, lots of fun!) over to Brussels and then legged it off to Brugge, which was a very beautiful city with lots of really good Belgian beer. From there, we picked up our car, and drove up to the Netherlands, looking at the flowers in Keukenhof and staying in Haarlem. A drive from Haarlem to Vianden (in Luxembourg) via lunch in Germany was a real treat, and Vianden was just awesome with its very own Dracula-style castle overlooking the town in the valley. I really liked the flowing hills of Luxembourg - very pretty.

• While my folks were over, we went for a weekend over in Norfolk, checking out some of the seaside towns over there. I think I still prefer white sand beaches! (There was one beach, that would have been lovely if the sun was fully out and the wind wasn't blowing a gale!)

• A little bit prior to my folks coming over was Emma's conference in Copenhagen, and I met her after the conference on a friday night (after turning the wrong way out of the railway station, and ending up in the red light district). I really enjoyed Copenhagen (more good beer!) and we caught a train up to Helsingor (made famous as the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet), which was very awesome. The sound (water sound) that it sits on was a major passage for shipping trade, and the King, who sometimes took residence in the castle, demanded that ships not only pay his taxes, but also lowered their flags as a salute. Apparently if the ship didn't lower the flags, the King's gunners would fire a warning shot across the bow of the offending ship, and the flags were lowered pretty damn quick smart. Double thumbs up for Denmark, in my mind.

• All of the travel managed to take its toll on my health, and I picked up a bout of Glandular Fever while over in Europe. Suffice to say, not at all pleasant, with the aching bones and the shivering, and generally feeling like crap. For some reason, the virus didn't attack my glands but instead went straight for my liver, with the wonderful effect that I can only now have one cup of coffee a day, and no alcohol at all for the next two months (at least, could be up to 6). Not thrilled ;)

• Emma's dad and his wife came over to stay with us for a long weekend, which was fantastic, and we all drove over to Wales together, staying in a house near Merthyr Tydfil. We saw some beautiful countryside and rented a canal boat (a small electric one) that we piloted down a canal for a couple of hours to a pub, before heading back again. On the way back, the battery started conking out, and swans began to overtake us! Luckily, we limped back into port before the boat died, and drove back home.

• During the time that I was ill, I managed to write my very first commercial proposal, which was accepted, and I now have the management of one of my company's projects. It's an interesting experience, but can at times be stressful. I was just impressed that I was able to write a proposal while in the full swing of glandular fever!

• The UK has slowly bloomed from the stick-like appearance of winter (which I happen to love, for the coldness) into the lush spring and summer that we're now appreciating. While it is still chilly on occasion (the temperature here, mid-summer, is almost identical to Brisbane's mid-winter), the trees look so beautiful with all their leaves. I can understand now why people in the colder climes have folklore such as the Green Man and rebirth stories. The birds are also flying around, and we get a lot of swifts around here, and also had the pleasure of seeing skylarks flying around.

• I bought a bike! It's a very lightweight Specialized hybrid, with a very convenient shimano gear changing mechanism, mostly operated by trigger finger and thumb. I was surprised by how much I enjoy bike riding, and we've taken a few small trips up through the reserve close by, and also over to the next closest town, where we have a pub dinner before riding back. I really love it over here!

• On the weekend we drove up to Bridlington, and saw some puffins! They are very cute with their 'breeding beak', which is striped in reds, oranges, blues and whites. They're kinda smaller than I pictured, and look very cute as they race over the water, wings flapping furiously.

So that's the major points of what we've been up to recently, although not totally inclusive. I'm going to try to write more (although the number of times I've written that... ;) ).

Have a good one!

Tags: 2008 uk travel
Current Location: study
Current Mood: chipper
Song that tickled my fancy: car sounds, birds

My. God.

Russia just won the Eurovision Song Contest?? WTF??

And here I was, hoping that boy bands (even though their representative was a one-man boy band) were finally on the way out.

*sigh*

I liked Greece, Serbia, Bosnia & Hercegovina (for the most awesome weirdness) and Norway was good too. The UK entry was very good, being of a disco funk beat, but unfortunately didn't score well. And the commentator, Terry Wogan, was very funny and acerbic. Next year, I'll have to go to a party for it :)

Hope you all had a great night too!

Tags: eurovision 2008

Just finished watching Next, which is a great movie with Nicholas Cage in it. See it if you haven't already :)

I'm still coughing and spluttering as this head cold refuses to depart. Apart from that, the world is fairly peachy.

Just a quick post for tonight...seeya tomorrow!

Tags: uk 2008

Today was a very enjoyable day.

As far as first sentences go, I think that one is a good one to have in your diary. It started with waking up to find that the day was absolutely gorgeous, and that the depressing cloudy weather for the last week or so has finally buggered off; an icy blue winter's sky with a headless tree sitting outside my window promised much.

Which is ironic, as I spent the first 5 or so hours of the day playing World of Warcraft inside ;) I'd seen a rather nifty cloak, the [Bogstrok Scale Cloak] for my feral druid bear tank in the Slave Pens instance, and I really wanted to give it a shot. So logging onto the game and seeing most of my guildies, I quickly organised a Slave Pens run. We slew the boss with the cloak, but it didn't drop. Luckily for me, the server then rebooted on a rolling restart, and we decided to do it again...and it dropped! So, with a Major Armor enchant on it (+120 armour), it now suits by bear tanking efforts well indeed. All in all, a very fun instance.

After the WoW effort, emmaco  and I went out for a drive to check out a local farm shop. It was quite good in the array of meats, and I loved the sign on the driveway - "Warning: Free Range children and animals". Ended up getting some pork and sage sausages and free range chicken breast. Should be sampling some of that for dinner, so looking forward to it immensely.

Continuing on the drive, we headed up to Bedford to check out some computer gear (in the market for a new graphics card - eye on the nVidia 8800GT, which looks awesome), and then heading home we stopped in at a pub at Moggerhanger called the Guinea. It was really nicely done out in the restauranty area, so I'm going to have to take the folks out there when they come over for a sunday lunch.

All in all, a really nice day so far. Also watched the start of the first series of Heroes last night - looks very cool, and am looking forward to seeing more of it.

Tags: uk 2008

Unfortunately, the snow that was forecast for today didn't eventuate in all its glory, although we did get a couple of small flurries of tiny snow particles at work which was quite cute to watch. Apparently it didn't get completely cold enough for snow - it only hit around zero degrees, which just didn't cut the mustard in this case. As the weather for the remainder of the week is predicted to be around 5 or 6 (Warm! ;) ), I don't think I'll be seeing snow for at least another couple of weeks.

I've got the curtains open though, and a keen eye out, just in case...

Tags: uk 2008
Current Location: Teh Study
Current Mood: snowless

Happy New Years!

Last night was spent most enjoyably, having dinner with an old mate and her partner at our local indian restaurant, followed by much geeky enjoyment introducing emmaco to the old Star Trek: The Next Generation tv series. It's been a while (read: 10 years, at least) since I last saw the series, and it's amusing how hammy (in some sections) the acting is, and also how overbearing the music is in some places. I can't remember ever thinking that when the show came out, so I wonder when it was that I started developing a sense of appreciation for subtlety in composition.

Not that musical melodrama is a bad thing - I mean, look at Holst's Planet masterpieces, especially Mars, God of War. Incredibly heavy-handed, but beautifully done and called for.

Anyway, after the ST:TNG we chilled out on some Veronica Mars, which is awesome. Also during this time was much champagne appreciation. We saw the new year in with texting and celebration, and missed having seafood and going swimming as we would have in Australia with our friends.

So, the new year is upon us - 2008 will hopefully be a happy year for everyone. I've got some good thoughts and plans for this year, and my single resolution for this year is to write an entry on LJ every day, whether friends-locked or not. I've had well-intentioned diaries in the past, which I found while preparing to move to the UK. Stressing the well-intentioned part - most of the diaries had two or three entries and a lot of dust. So hopefully, me being on the computer every day, will make this year's diary a little more fleshed out ;)

So hope your new years was fun and hangover-free, and the year ahead a grand one!

Tags: uk 2008
Current Location: Study
Current Mood: relaxed

Today was a day of WoWing. My darling SO headed into London to meet one of her favourite authors and friends from an LJ community, so I got to be very lazy and played World of Warcraft all day. As I'm originally from Australia, I play on the US server of Muradin, and due to time zone differences don't get to play with my Aussie mates for long periods of time anymore (like doing spontaneous instances). Today was an exception though, and it was awesome.

As soon as I jumped on, I joined a group of guildies and we headed out to Redridge with our n00bish characters for questing. After kicking several shades of Orcish arse (we're Alliance, if you didn't guess), some retired for dinner, and then I put up the suggestion of doing a Blood Furnace run, and we shortly headed off. I'd never run Blood Furnace, let along tank it, so it was a new one for me. I found it quite enjoyable, and several decent pieces of equipment dropped including the [Bloody Surgeon's Mitts] for our priest and the [Mindfire Waistband] for our mage. We're still a fairly young guild, so new pieces for our peeps are always welcomed!

We had one wipe on the run due to miscommunication, so no biggie :)

Afterwards, we decided to see how quickly a group of 4 level 60+ peeps could do a DM/VC run, which turned out to be 6 mins 48 seconds, which isn't bad when only one of the characters had any decent AoE. We were laughing the whole way through it though, which was great :)

We then turned our attention to the Stockades, and blitzed through that in 4 mins 57 seconds. Gnomeregan was next to go down, with all bosses cleared in a leisurely 14 mins.

All in all, a great day, and my high level character Teldra is now a 63, and almost half way through. Most satisfying!

Tags: wow

It's sleeting/snowing! Right outside my window!

It started off light, but now it's actually coming down in quite a moderate fall. I don't think it's actually snow, as it tends to melt shortly after touching the ground/my hand, but..

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!

It's such a beautiful scene...I'll have to see what it's like when I wake up. My first sleet/snow where I'm actually living. :)