(3) Sun Dec 02 2007 19:42 No place like...: When it because December I suddenly realised less than three weeks before my visit home! I am very, very excited and have been describing in immense detail to everyone who will listen the places I am going, the people I am going to see, the food I am going to eat, and the precise measurements of my cat.

Wed Dec 05 2007 22:39 How to save a life: well, wow. It seems I am making up for my incredibly lazy weekend with a life of hecticosity. On Monday I did all the things... well most... that I had been putting off for the duration of nanowrimo. Yesterday I got very little sleep, did some work, had a meeting with my supervisor which went really well, went to a seminar, came home and collapsed.

Today I went to lunch with Jenn, one of my nano friends who happens to work for the IRS in London, which means she works at the embassy. Ostensibly the purpose of my visit was to get more passport pages. I had about 10 spaces left so theoretically should have been good through march, but it's never a good idea to push it. You're supposed to apply by mail but I get nervous having my passport in the post and from now until... the end of the foreseeable future there isn't a period of time where I would be comfortable without my passport for a few weeks. Add to that it's my only legal id and I need to to do things like pick up my bank card and, well, I decided to call in my new connections and Jenn took me up to get it done. It took all of 5 minutes and now I have lots of lovely, lovely blank pages that I am sure immigration officials will stamp all over once they get a chance. After that we had very American grilled cheeses in the canteen and I came out. Really, too, I wanted to see the embassy, and guess what? It's HIDEOUS. Inside and out. It's in mayfair so I've walked by it a million times on oxford street but I never had seen it before today and I was shocked, shocked, by how ugly it is. Someone explain to me why what is arguably THE most important US embassy and it's one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen? (I have seen plenty of ugly buildings. I've been to Eastern Europe.) Add to that there are constructing some sort of wall around so there is all this construction fencing and jack hammering going on... I didn't have to wait in any lines, thank goodness, because she put me on the official visitors list, but wowo what lines, thank goodness I do not have to apply for a US visa!! The UK consulate in LA was comparatively luxurious. There were a bunch of people walking around with machine guns and I held my passport to my chest, almost as it THAT would stop a bullet as much as saying "Don't shoot me... I'm an American citizen." I also forgot that I was bringing Jenn one of my phones (She gave me a much nicer one that she got free from orange somehow so I gave her my guest phone to use when her friend is over for Christmas) so I had it and the charger in a plastic bag with a book she'd lent me. And forgot about it. "There's a phone and charger in your bag, you have to take it out," they said at security. "There's not!" I cried, over and over, until I was starting to wonder if there was a charger secretly hidden in the lining of my bag like that makeup brush that somehow made it into the lining of my coat years and years ago, and then I remembered it. And felt like an idiot.

After that experience I ran home to do some pre packing then walked to King's Cross to return the umbrella (ella ella... argh) of another nanoer who had left it Friday. She works at a publishing company and gave me the second book in a series I discovered via an ARC I got at Russo's. It turns out the whole thing was her idea! It all felt very surreal. Then work. Blah, but at least it wasn't horribly slow and boring, and they let me off early which means I have been sitting here eating couscous when otherwise I might not even have gotten home till an hour from now. My flight is at 8:30 tomorrow which means I have to wake up at 5 at the very latest. In the end it doesn't really take any longer to get to Stanstead than it does to Heathrow, it just costs about 4 times as much (that will probably be the most expensive part of my trip). My goal was to spend £100 total but since we are still on the bloody pound, that might be a little bit too optimistic. I've been really pinching pennies to make up for it though... I can't wait to be in the US and back on dollars! Then again if I start converting dollars back into pounds I might go a little crazy and start buying everything in sight.

(1) Fri Dec 07 2007 10:12 Be ye never too busy to be stupid?: I'm really pissed at myself because I managed to miss my Giant's causeway tour by about 10 minutes because of a misunderstanding about the departure time, so I don't really feel like updating but I have nine minutes of paid internet time that I don't know what to do with so I might as well. All is not lost; there is supposedly an express tour I can join, but this one was going to stop at all these really cool places on the coast. The guys were really nice about it, they said they were pacing up and down the street looking for me and gave me my money back, no problem, and said I could join the tour for free if I somehow got my flight changed tomorrow. Which somehow makes it all more crap. I know it's not the end of the world but I feel so, so stupid, I could have made it but I lingered over breakfast because I thought I had plenty of time. I'm soooo lame.

Sun Dec 09 2007 00:52 Back: whoa, so tired.

(1) Tue Dec 11 2007 13:09 Yay: I am now the proud owner of an illegal microfridge. It is seriously tiny but it will hold things like my milk, jam, plus some pasta sauce and a thing of cheese. There is definitely not enough cheese in my diet at the moment, I keep waking up in the middle of the night craving it. Though while I was at woolworths I should have gotten a power strip because the cord isn't long enough to have it hidden under my desk as i planned. maybe if I put it in the other side... Nope, not long enough, I guess I will just keep it on my desk for now and stick it behind my bed when the celaners come on Thursday.

Also there is a 50% chance I may have a new job. I hope I'm not jinxing it by saying anything. I won't tell about the job, just that it would be AMAZING and something so fun I would do it for free (theoretically). Except now I am thinking I should have asked for more than £8 an hour. I can live on that, but it is barely scarping by with no room at all for buying things like new iPods or saving for things like trans-Siberian railway trips... or tickets home. Plus with tax subtracted, I would only be able to live on it if I didn't eat outside the halls ever. So. Anyway we'll see!

Tue Dec 11 2007 21:56 So that's where the potatoes went: Enough trying to solve the world's problems. (I do this, you know.) A commenter at tonight's seminar reflected that we have to go back to post-war reconstruction for our vicarious thrills, these days. Not in my region, I muttered. Is it too early for bed?

(4) Thu Dec 13 2007 11:48 Things I gained from nanowrimo:

a somewhat disturbing familairity with tutti's and the BL cafe
a 50,000 word novel which may or may not be any good
new friends/travel companions/potential roommates

a biproduct of the above but still directly related to nanowrimo:
extra passport pages and a trip to the US embassy
a new job!!!!!

It's a little bit hard to describe what my new company does. Basically they come up with story ideas and plot lines, commission freelance writers to write them, edit them and sell them to publishers. My friend Sara, who gave me the hookups introduced me, works in the children's literature branch which is the main one. I'll be working on the somewhat newly established adult branch, idea side, for romance and historical fiction.

Um, yeah.

wow

How did this happen?

(1) Sat Dec 15 2007 01:02 Just back from work (again): someone forgot to tell me close means 12 on Fridays... I never thought I would be too tired to eat but here I am. However if I had cheetos that would not be the case!!!

Sun Dec 16 2007 13:22 I certainly haven't been spreading myself around: I got my hair cut and it looks great! I'm going to try and see how long I can go without washing it...

As usual I am switching between tres excitement about my trip and panic about how much I have to do before I leave. I am working another split shift on Tuesday (Can you believe there is no overtime in this supposedly civilised country?) so that pretty much kills the day, leaving this afternoon and tomorrow morning and evening to get everything else done. Wheee....

Tue Dec 18 2007 08:57 a short poem:
tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow
panic panic panic
want to throw everything to the wind and just get on the place
I suck at getting things done

Tue Dec 18 2007 16:02: Hurray, nothing much to do but survive the rest of the night, pack, clean my room, sleep a little bit and go to the airport. yay! US here I come!

(1) Thu Dec 20 2007 16:42 Thought you ought to know: safe in utah eating cheerios and cheetos for breakfast and watching mags being fed. What appears to be snow is coming down outside.