La Vie En Rose

This weekend was a double bank holiday. I think it's so weird that here we have Good Friday and Easter Monday off work and in the US, where people are much more religious generally, there's no holiday at all. Separation of church and state I guess. Go figure.

This weekend was also my first paid time off ever! I normally work Tuesdays and Fridays but last week I was so sick I didn't even think about it till I went in for the first day on Thursday. But they just said not to worry about it since I would receive bank holidays in proportion to how much I work anyway and sick leave too! WOW! This whole getting paid not to work is totally new to me.

To celebrate the bank holidays and also make up for the fact that Christina fell ill so her visit and our joint birthday celebration in Prague fell through, I went with my friend Jenn to stay at her parents house in a small village in Norwich. Her parents work at a DODDS school at a nearby USAF base. This is very exciting because it meant we could go there and buy American things. Technically, that shouldn't happen, so I won't tell you about the iPod shuffle (for running! Galinda dies after about 20 minutes these days), pair of jeans, enormous jar of Skippy, bags of cheetos, and other American goods that I didn't buy, in dollars and tax free. Yippee! It was kinda like being in a really crappy stateside mall, but you know, beggars can't be choosers. Actually it was really great. Being in an American grocery store and knowing I could buy whatever I wanted and not have to carry it on a plane. Wheat Germ, Cream of Wheat, hot sauce, goldfish, etc etc etc.

I spend most of the weekend meeting random people, easter dinners and pampered chef parties, snuggling with Jenn's dog, watching Pride and Prejudice and reading Julia Quinn novels. All very healthy activities I assure you! We had big plans about running and bike riding but it snowed all weekend so it wasn't really good weather for stuff like that. The snow as the most amazing snow I've ever seen! I always thought the snowflake image was some kind of myth but actually... these snowflakes were huge!! Inches big! I've never seen anything like it! But I am from California and easily impressed. Charming I'm sure. It was really nice to be in a home for a while, with yearbooks and 10th grade English projects lying around, baths and endless cups of tea. It was also nice to be surrounded by yee merrie green hills of england with charming village greens and stone churches and cute pubs and what not. I loved just gazing at the woods as we drove through them. Jenn kept saying it wasn't the prettiest time of year to be there but it was beautiful to me! I mean, I love London but all this constant citying makes me really appreciate countryside and open skies when I see them. I guess growing up in the middle of nowhere I can't really do without that for too long. It's like sunshine. I always took it for granted when I lived in California. Being here makes me appreciate it soo much more. I really notice when the sun is out.

Unfortunately for us they tend to use bank holidays for engineering works, so we had to take a circuitous route to get back to London. However ten minutes into the train journey and the ticket lady told us our tickets weren't good since they were through Cambridge and because the rails are privatized (boo hiss Thatcherites) it's a separate company operating the route we were planning on. But the line from Cambridge to London was being worked on! So in the end we had to get off at Ely, sit on a rail replacement bus for 2 hours, and then get on another train at Royston which took us to King's Cross. Actually it wasn't too bad. The bus wasn't anything luxurious, just a requisitioned double decker but because we got on at Ely with one other person instead of at Cambridge with the rest of the population of London, we hoped up to the top and had the fun front top seats so had a great view of the country lanes we twisted and turned through. Or as much as the headlights showed. It did end up taking like 2 hours longer than it should have.

What with our frantic commissary purchases and all of Jenn's stuff she was bring back (one of her flatmates moved out and took the entire flat with her) we had two heavy suitcases plus some so I took the bus with her to help her and then just stayed the night, going back after work to get my stuff. So all in all I didn't get back till this evening. Pretty adventurous stuff. I really had a great weekend. The one bad thing about relaxing holidays is you never want to leave. When you are frantically busy sightseeing or whatever the thought of going home has some appeal to you but when you are laying in a conservatory reading romance novels with a dog at your feet it is hard to want to go back to London. However here I am and I think my laundry is ready to hand out now.

Yes as Susie so keenly observes, I am alive. Barely.

In the depths of sickie, hoping to be inspired, I picked up a book that was delivered (or not, I had to run to the post office twice to get it. RUN. TWICE.) via parcel force from my loving sister, who may or may not have "opened in to make sure it was what she ordered." Yes! The long-awaited fourth installment of The Pink Carnation series. Once again I am struck by jealousy of not only Lauren Willig, who seems to be able to churn out novels and get them published while completing JDs AND PhDs in History from Harvard and holding down jobs in law firms (explain that one to me) but her heroine Eloise, who manages to succeed in areas where I can hardly hold a candle, including dressing cutely, getting grants, exposing secret agents in dusty archives, convincing good-looking heirs to allow research weekends in their family archives in charming Sussex estates, and landing dates with said good-looking heirs. But I am getting closer, people. I spent ALL DAY in the British Library. (I went to a training day for history postgraduates). I HANDLED Sylvia Pankhurst's toilet paper roll! (On which she wrote letters to be smuggled out of prison.) The manuscripts curator happened upon that little gem in their recent acquisitions. I might not be Eloise Kelly, but I'm a hell of a lot closer to it than I was 3 years ago when I first picked up the advanced reader copy of The Secret History of the Pink Carnation in the break room at Russo's.

I thought this would be kinda neat to do, before I realised it would take me THIRTY HOURS. But as I discussed with Becca, she and I (and Chris) have become rather OCD in terms of organizing information lately. This is an example. For another example, you can see the books in my library tagged "read 2005" at LibraryThing. This, sadly, though, is not complete, because I've reached my 200 book limit, so I can't add the rest of my books until I magically become a lifetime member.

Anyway, here is a list of books I read all or most of during 2005, in order of most recently completed first. Fun Times.

At the Serbian Front in Macedonia, by E.P. Stebbing (Currently reading for work)
The Truth with Jokes by Al Franken (Currently reading for fun)
The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Angela Bourke (Currently reading for class)
The French Revolution by T.C.W. Blanning (Currently reading for class)
Kosovo: Perceptions of War and its Aftermath edited by Mary Buckley (partially read)
Chamber of Secrets (for the DA)
Red Lily by Nora Roberts
We That Were Young by Irene Rathbone (work)
Divine Evil by Nora Roberts
An English Woman Sergaent in the Serbian Army by Flora Sandes (work)
Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy
Sorcerer's Stone (DA)
Not So Quiet, Helen Zenna Smith (work)
Dear Duchess, Denis Stuart (work)
Half-Blood Prince audio version (I still have not managed to make myself listen to the last three cds)
The Historian, Elisabeth Kostava
French Lessons, Peter Mayle
Cellar-House of Pervyse compiled by Geraldine Mitton (work)
Flanders and other Fields, by the Baroness de T'Serclaes (work)
The Boy Who loved Anne Frank, Ellen Feldman
Paris, 1919, Margaret Macmillian
Strange beds, Joan Conquest (partially read, work)
My War Experiences on Three fronts, Mary Eliza Martin-Nicholson (partially read, work)
Journal of Impressions in Belgium, May Sinclair (work)
With the Lost Generation, Dora Walker (work)
A Modern Victorian by Susan Raitt (partially read, work)
A Nurse at the War, Grace Ashley-Smith McDougall (Partially read, work)
Under Three Flags, St Clair Livingston. (partially read for work)
Undomestic Goddess, Sophie Kinsella
Half-Blood Prince
Field Hospital and Flying Column, Violetta Thurstan (partially read, work)
War memories, Princess Marie de Croy (work)
Condemmed to Death, Thuliez, (partially read, work)
A Noble Woman, Gott (partially read, work)
Women Who Spied, (partially read, work)
The Secret War (partially read, work)
My War Experiences on Three Continents, Sarah Macnaughtan (the Belgian half, work)
Black Rose, Nora Roberts
Quality of Mercy, Monica Krippner (work)
The Rape of Belgium, Larry Zuckerman (partially read, work)
Women With Wings, Mary Cadogan (partially read, work)
Powder Puff Derby, Mike Walker (work)
The Luck of Thirteen by Cora and Jan Gordon (work)
The War in Eastern Europe, John Reed (Partially read for work)
Desert Love, Joan Conquest
Goblet of Fire audio version
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers, Louise Rennison
The Hygiene of Marriage by Isabel Hutton
Memories of a Doctor in War and Peace by Isabel Emslie Hutton (work)
Auntie Mabel's War (work)
Sorcerer's Stone (Audio)
Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them, Al Franken
The Stricken Land, Serbia as we saw it, Askew. (work)
Notes from a small island, Bill Bryson
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Prisoner of Azkaban, audio
Daylight in a Dream by E.M. Butler (work)
Merrily I Go to Hell by Mary Cameron (work)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Lady and the Unicorn, by Tracy Chevalier
The Balkan Wars by Andre Gerolymatos
Birthright by Nora Roberts Audio version
Green Tent in Flanders, Maud Mortimer (Partially read, work)
Red Cross in Serbia by Elsie Corbett for work
Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts, audio
Corsets to Camoflage: Women and War by Kate Adie (work)
Order of the Phoenix audio
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig
Ignorance, by Milan Kundera
Stardust, Neil Gaiman