popping my blog cherry....

hello...this is waterloo...

a few random thoughts...
- its not that mainland europeans (not brits) don't use deodorant...its that they don't use enough deodorant (at least this is what i was told)...unless of course they believe that B.O. is a good scent...which i'm sure certain people truly believe over here...imagine running into a brick wall...this is what it feels like to run into a wall of B.O.

- workdays here are based on 7 hour days...35 hours a week...if you work more than 48 hours a week, you have to actually fill out some sort of form required by the European authorities basically saying that you weren't forced to work the 48 hours and actually agreed to do it...in the States, I worked 48 hours in a 4 day span quite easily...i think i'm going to stay here...only 30 more years till retirement...

- brits dress well...i've found my people...

- myra won't practice her "english" with me...so its just me randomly talking to myself outloud trying to say certain phrases...so, basically, i'm just talking to myself all the time...i've found that i can annoy myself quite easily...i'm just confused because i work with a scot, an aussie, and a bunch of brits (our resident irishman just quit, so i'm safe from that)...so, i can't get a beat on any sort of accent...oh well...i'm from shickago.

- i had a pint three times for lunch last week...we'd actually just go out to grab a pint for lunch...and then pick up food and eat our small sandwhich in the office...so, i'd basically be drinking on an empty stomach...no wonder these guys only work 7 hour days...its tough in the afternoon, but i will press on and assimilate...beer is pretty good here though...feels so good on my lips...

- coming home from my work party in a cab the other night, we passed by the london eye, parliament and big ben...so weird.

.how.we.spent.our.saturday.night.

taken with our Logitech quickcam

archie's company had a summer party last night. it was a 'black and white' themed party, and of course i wasn't too thrilled to go with my limited wardrobe. luckily i found something that fit the theme. i don't have my black cocktail dress with me, but i made do with the white summer dress abby got me last year.

his coworkers are really nice, so it was nice to get to know other people here. it was one of the wierdest company parties ever. there was a big white tent which housed the tables. but it was a bbq buffet, with no burgers. only sausages, roast beef, cole slaw, couscous, tuna, and real potato salad. and they had games: life-sized versions of connect 4 and chess on the fake-grassed lawn, and inside, next to the reception room was an area for bumper cars! can you say random? oh and the dessert was walked around to the different tables by the waiters/waitresses, and then they had a chocolate fountain in another room.

the picture at the top was taken when we first walked in. can you believe archie actually made me stop and wait for the photog to take a pic of us? since when does he want our picture taken?! we didn't know they were going to print the pic with the OK! background, but when we saw it later, we couldn't stop laughing.

good times.

.now.on.skype!

if you want to talk to us, we have now downloaded skype and installed the fancy webcam the munoz family got us. so we can talk for free thru our laptops.

download it now! http://www.skype.com/

taken by the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (with Carl Zeiss optics)

.an.alley.i.would.avoid.in.the.middle.of.the.night.

a street sign near my place of business.

.scalding.hot.

next time you order black tea in london and you want milk in it, do not order it as "black tea" and then when they hand it to you, ask for milk (or white, as it's known here). they will look at you all funny, and say, 'but you ordered black tea. over here, when you order black tea, it means black tea.'

oh - and it's also usually scalding hot, so you'll have to let it cool before drinking it.

.more.settled.

so we're getting more and more settled in; almost to the point of boredom. i think we see each other too much. and it's just the 2 of us. our offices are so close to each other, we even eat lunch together sometimes. it's all a bit...ick. and living in a studio doesn't help either. ha.

we've tried getting cell phones twice now and each time we can't because 1) the 1st time we didn't have a bank account open; 2) the 2nd time, we had the bank account open, but we didn't have the debit card so that t-mobile can perform the proper credit check...hopefully the 3rd time we go in there will be a charm. i am itching to get a blackberry curve. WOOT!

work for me is starting to get a lot more busy. ugh. it's going to be a stuggle to keep regular business hours, but i have to put the kabosh on meetings that are scheduled outside of my regular business hours.

and i probably don't need to state the obvious, but the tube is so much better than chicago's L. it takes me only about 25 minutes door to door to get to work, and that includes a pit stop at starbucks. the tube is so quiet, and so quick! the only downside is there is no a/c. so when it's crowded, it's also sooooo hot. icky hot. and i hate sweating before getting into work. blech.

there's a gym here at dolphin house, and it's free for us to use. it has a regular fitness room, squash courts, a pool (with swim lanes), hot tub, and sauna...i don't have my running shoes here with me, so i think i'm going to try to go for a swim at least 3 times a week, in order get my endurance up. i'm outta shape!

if only we could transport these faces to london:

our two pence.

can.you.guess.who.thought.of.the.blog.name?

yeah, not me. i'm not that creative. but 'gus in london' could have jinxed that exact fact, and well...whatever i would have thought of would have been ex-nayed by the husband-ay. here's a quick recap of our moving weekend...

so moving day and the day after were hectic. more than i thought. the movers came at 8:30am. and worked all day until around 7pm. such hard workers, and just continuously packed up and moved on out into the huge moving van. gus was tired from the previous day at daycare, and was all out of sorts:

gus had not slept up until the movers went to lunch; so when they left, he found a nice sunny piece of carpet to collapse on. when it got to hot, he struggled to get up, slowly crouched his way to my closet and collapsed again in my closet. HAHAHA. he's so cute...but maybe i'm just biased.

we had so much crap in the condo. and i mean SO MUCH.

then towards the end of the day, gus decided to check things out:

and then when all was packed up and we were ready to leave, gus still just wanted 1 thing:

we had a total of 4 checked in bags, and 5 carry-on bags. well we're on our own for 5 weeks, you can only pack lightly for so much, right?? i'll skip talking about saying bye to gus...anyways, the family came to the airport to see us off, and all was fine until the end when some tears started, and then didn't stop.

the flight was about 6.5 hrs, and after about a 1 hr wait to disembark, another 40 minutes in immigration, we found the man holding the sign with our names, and piled our stuff and ourselves into the minivan:

our 2nd full day, we checked out the location of our offices (we're only 2 blocks away from each other), and then toured the area. we're both by st. paul's cathedral:

and millenium bridge; the sky was so beautiful, it didn't even look real!:

so that's the quick update from this side of the atlantic...our first day of work was today, and we both had it pretty easy...my office is frickin nice! and from what arch says, his office is just ok, and cramped. we tried to get cell phones at t-mobile today, but we needed a UK bank acct which has the proper credit checks completed. so we opened our bank accts, and hopefully we'll have our new blackberrys tomorrow. WOOT WOOT! i will finally have external email access while i'm in the vault.