Brrrrr

Happy first day of Spring! After our beautiful sunshiny and warm weather all week last week, this week we're back to chilly temps and biting winds. Haven't really used my scarf all winter, but I needed it today. How ironic.

We celebrated here by finding out that the girl who was supposed to be moving in with us in a month is backing out. I wasn't happy about it, and I let her know that I thought she handled the whole process poorly...after swearing up and down that she wanted to save money for a year to buy a house and that she was definitely going to take the room, she then applied for a loan through the NHS and local Housing Association, and is now trying to buy a house asap. However, I do understand that we all have to look out for number one and do what is best for ourselves, and Nicole and I do have a month to find ourselves someone else. The lesson learned being to keep showing the house and advertising the room until someone puts down a deposit, and no exceptions even for friends.

Now my crazy housemate on the other hand, the one who is moving out end of April, she came home with her wrist wrapped up in some crazy sort of homemade bandage. Yes, she apparently punched a wall when she got my email about the physio backing out and how we'd have to advertise for a housemate again. Nicole and I were rather incredulous and queried anger management issues-- her reply was, "Well what must I do with my anger? That was my anger management!" Considering her moaning and groaning and complaints about swollen knuckles tonight, it's going to be a long second half of the week.

However, for me the countdown is on for a week until my flight home, and a week and a half until our flight to PERU!!

A Mancunian Weekend and more

Grrr, I am not having any luck with festival tickets this year :( We had five people online and on the phone tonight, desperately trying to get Reading Festival tickets (for the 3-day bank holiday weekend at the end of August), and they were sold out within 15-20 minutes. And considering the number of tickets now being sold for exorbitant prices on ebay, they weren't sold to people who actually want to go, but rather who wanted to make a profit. Again, grrrr.

I've also been trying to purchase travel insurance this evening, which I have found to be equally frustrating-- it's difficult to figure out who is giving the best deal for the money, since their policies are all slightly different. Oh, and then there's the whole malaria and yellow fever conundrum...it wouldn't be an issue at all except that Viv and I are spending the last bit of our Peru trip in the Amazon basin. The general consensus seems to be that yellow fever vaccination is recommended but not required, and I was able to buy malaria pills at Boots today, but they are not the same kind I used in Africa (since I've taken those before, I know I wouldn't have any side effects), and one of the two types included in this Boots box is known to be ineffective against the strain of malaria found in the Amazon basin. So I don't know whether to bank on the effectiveness of the other type in the box, or just get a prescription for the kind I've used before from my GP. Well, anyway, 10 days till my flight home, woohoo!

News-- Carla is pregnant!! I'm going to be Aunt Allison!

And the weekend update: we did indeed do a ROAD TRIP (haven't had one of those in awhile) up to Manchester this weekend. I drank enough Guinness to earn my St. Patricks Day novelty hat (pic coming in the near future)- ok, so I had a little bit of help. We visited The Shambles, Manchester's oldest pub, which was moved twice, literally. The pub was moved piece by piece out of the city during the bombings in WWII. Then when the city was being rebuilt, they moved it back into city centre, piece by piece, every inch of the tudor-style pub with wooden pegs and all. We did a massive pub and bar crawl to celebrate the holiday, which included Europe's largest pub, in Deansgate...it was a Wetherspoons pub, quel surprise. Our hostel was very nice-- I don't like hostels in general, but decided I could deal with it for one night. It was relatively new, and they provided clean bedding (almost unheard of, most are bring your own bedding) with maid service, plus we took up 5 of the 8 beds in our room. Sunday we saw some of the sights, and did some shopping (window-shopping for my part). And then we had an uneventful trip back home...that is if you count snow, high winds, and a massive traffic jam upon entering Leicestershire as uneventful. The snow was pretty, it was sticking to some of the fields, and a lot of the sheep and new lambs in those fields.

Today we got some of that snow here in London, but it didn't stick at all :( I'm on my last full week of this rotation, so I've got tons of work to do, a full caseload of patients to see (ironic since I haven't had a full caseload since November), as well as my supervisor's caseload to cover since she's on a course now for two weeks. Yikes.

A Field Trip

An interesting article in Newsweek about how scientists have used the DNA of body lice (a misnomer, since they actually live in clothing) to determine that 114,000 years ago, humans lost body hair for good and had to make up for it with clothing. Huh. I'm telling you, it's the New Science of Human Evolution.

It was another lovely day, so the new physio Sarah and I took the opportunity to take out one of our patients who is very functional physically but with a lot of higher level cognitive problems. We took her off hospital grounds and across one pretty busy road to a very pretty pond on the edges of Epping Forest. She was able to order some drinks for us from the little shack with moderate prompting and produced the correct change from a palmful of coins independently. After we sat down near the pond, we noticed she was watching the birds. She was able to identify jackdaws and magpies, although we had to take her word for it given our lack of knowledge in that area. We asked her about birds in her garden at home, and she named starlings but then got stuck. We waited for a bit, and then I said we couldn't help her out unfortunately by offering names of birds as we didn't know much about birds. This lady's personality is showing up a bit more these days, and she immediately responded by rubbing her hands, and saying "Well then!" as if she were about to make up a whole list of birds because we wouldn't know the difference anyway. Only she got stuck at starlings again. We were all very loathe to return to the hospital, it was so beautiful, but had lingered long enough we all missed lunch (don't worry, the nurses kept some for her!).

I'm very excited, I get to go along with her for an assessment on Friday morning at the Homerton RNRU, which is a regional unit specialising in working with people who have higher level cognitive deficits. I've heard a lot about it, and am looking forward to having a look at the program in person. Actually, they are currently advertising for a Senior 2 OT, so shhh, don't tell anyone, but I'm going to apply ;)

This lady's husband came in at the end of the day, and was very excited to hear that she could come home this weekend for an overnight visit (she's only been doing short day leaves to home thus far). I took advantage of his presence to introduce both my patient and her husband to the OT who will be taking my place in three weeks' time. And my patient, bless, began to cry because "You're leaving me." I felt my eyes watering up, I was overwhelmed at seeing such emotion from her because she has been fairly blank in terms of emotions up until this point as a result of her brain injuries...I had to rush into the good news about her weekend overnight visit coming up to keep from crying myself.

Man, I really don't want to leave this unit!

A short interlude of snow

So, the snow had stopped before lunchtime, and at it's highest accumulation was probably about 3 inches, but that was all gone by 4:30pm because the temperature had warmed up a bit and it had switched to rain. There are a couple of places where I can see there could be trouble tomorrow on the sidewalks, because it had melted to slush, and people either don't know or can't be bothered to put down salt or sand...so there are likely to be icy patches on my walk tomorrow. Wheee. It sure was beautiful for a short time, though.

Yay!!! It's SNOWING! We've got, oh I'd say about an inch and a half on the ground, and it's still coming down fast. The BBC is now forecasting "heavy snow" all day, and if it keeps up, by the end of today it could be the most snow that Londoners have ever seen!

A little of this, a little of that

Because it is currently taking Blogger more than 10 minutes for each photo I try to upload, I'm giving up after just the one tonight. I'll try in the morning...it would seem that night-time here is prime time for Bloggers to post, making the site extremely slow! If I post photos in the morning before work, it literally takes seconds for each photo to upload. Sorry 'bout that.

I am currently being driven bonkers by a car alarm outside my window that has been going off for the past half hour. I thought they stopped automatically after awhile. I can't wait for Leeanne to move out end of April (she's going home to S. Africa), so that I can take over the bedroom furthest away from the road!! My bedroom is the biggest, but personally I'd rather have a smaller room without the traffic noises.

Everyone is in a tizzy over here tonight because we may be getting up to 10cm of snow tomorrow. That's a grand total of 4 inches, at which Americans wouldn't do much more than blink an eye. However, it is more likely to be 1-2 inches of snow if it is even snow at all-- British weather forecasters being notoriously bad at forecasting, no one is apparently able to say whether it will be snow or rain. This has not stopped many of the London area schools from declaring themselves closed for tomorrow, in anticipation of "the storm." IF we do have snow, and IF it does somehow manage to accumulate to 4 inches, I may possibly be the only one at work tomorrow as public transportation will grind to a halt. Now that would be funny. I don't know, with all this supposed climate change, I'm thinking England had better learn how to deal with snow sooner rather than later.

Climate change was one of our interesting debates this weekend. I have known people who have studied this kind of thing, so I don't claim to be any kind of expert...I don't know if it's been big in the US, but a major news story this week has been the latest report that the average temperature will climb by 4 degrees centigrade by the end of the century, and they are 90% sure that this change is caused by humans. Some of you may have read State of Fear by Michael Crichton, which is the popularized version of the theories against global warming (natural cyclic trends of the earth's climate versus human-made global warming), and some of you may have seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. I have not seen it myself, but apparently some head honcho of Marks and Sparks (Marks and Spencer dept store) did see it, and allegedly freaked out about it. The next day he gathered together his M&S think tank to make changes. Whether this is true or not, Marks and Sparks is now committed to cutting their CO2 emissions, and even putting labels on their products about the amount of CO2 required to make the product and get it to their stores, to help people make environmentally conscious decisions when shopping.

News

Hello hello! I am back. And what an amazing, gorgeous, refreshing weekend I had in Cymru! (Or Cambria, or Wales even-- all names for the same stunning corner of land in the UK.) We were based at Buckland Hall, in Bwlch, which pretty much turned out to be 5-star accommodation. We had twin ensuite rooms, and the entire manor to ourselves, a very attentive staff, open coffee bar, big wood fires in every room of the main part of the manor, amazing gourmet vegetarian food, 2 sessions of yoga per day, with hours of sun-drenched/misty hiking in between (yes, in Wales you can combine sunny and misty), and the gorgeous grounds of the manor itself to explore. Not to mention the wonderful people I met, and fascinating conversations we had- boy, do I have food for thought! I have loads of pictures, but it's about bedtime here, and I've spent so much time this evening organizing other things, the pics will have to wait.

Big news- Viv and I have booked our trip to......Machu Picchu!!!!! This has been Allison at my best, ridiculously indecisive to the last. Viv was no help (well, you weren't, at least not until the final moments), and each day I'd wake up and think ok, Costa Rica, we're booking that today, and I'd say something to Viv to that effect, and then be texting her the following day to say, no it's Peru. And so on and so forth. To the point where I'd finally decided upon Costa Rica today, picked a package that I loved, which has a stay at a gorgeous eco lodge as part of it since Viv keeps talking about this program she saw on eco lodges in Costa Rica, or little bungalows as she says. I'd filled out the confirmation form, entered credit card numbers and everything, when Viv called and said we should do Peru since I've had my heart set on it. Long story short (too late, I know), we have put down a deposit on Peru! And actually, what Viv said was we should do both- save the other one for the end of the year ;) Somehow I think it may be a bit longer than that until we get there, especially if we actually do intend to do Thailand and Philippines next spring. I can't believe it, I'm going to see Machu Picchu at long last! My fascination with the Incas began with a report I did in the 6th grade, but that's a story for another time.

I was also trying to coordinate a chunk of 2-3 days while I'm home to go and see my grandfather in Michigan-- it's a bit tricky, what with the wedding in Boston and the trip to Peru, and trying to work with my parents' schedules, so I don't know if it will happen yet. Unfortunately, no one was at home when I called this evening, so I haven't gotten very far at this point.

However, I am going to Dartmoor National Park with a bunch of people on another Backabush tour for the first holiday weekend in May. And I've started to look at fares for Vermont week with the fam (Heilalas and Johnsons and Burks, oh my) in July. Heard back from Virgin Airways finally, in regard to my complaint following my flight back to the UK after Christmas. They gave me 5000 miles back in my account, which I suppose is something, although I would have appreciated say 250 pounds toward a future flight a lot more. Especially knowing I will need flights to the States mid-summer and again in November for Jenn's wedding. Ah well.

I hope to post more about Wales and put up some pics tomorrow night. Namaste. :)

Some "Me" Time

I am off for my yoga and hiking weekend in the Brecon Beacons in Wales, later on this afternoon. I am very much looking forward to it, and it seems like the weather may be in a mood to cooperate. I'm packing my rain jacket just in case though, it will be Wales after all!

I was on the verge of booking the Costa Rica package for me and Viv last night, when I suddenly realized I'm thinking about Peru and Machu Picchu all the time....specifically thinking it will be "Holy Week" while we are there, and although I'm not very religious, I am very spiritual. And I guess I'm thinking the 4-day trek (camping) to Machu Picchu will be more meaningful in that sense. Hmmm.

Back online Sunday or Monday.

Mind games

A big pet peeve of mine-- people who bottle things up until it is too late to do anything to address the problem because it has gone beyond the stage of possibly being fixed before the other party had any idea there even was a problem, or until they explode inappropriately. We had a bit of a bru-ha-ha at the ole homestead this evening over our recent electricity bill. As has been all over the news lately, there has been a huge rate increase for electricity and gas here in Britain. Actually in everything it seems, because they just increased the fare for all public transportation too, as apparently they do every New Years' Day. Argh. But anyway, I recently bought a decent size electric heater at Homebase, which I then left in our lounge until I brought it into work. Our office, which is on an abandoned ward, can be very cold, and we all decided to contribute a few pounds each toward an electric heater. Now, our recent electric bill was pretty high, higher than our gas bill in fact, and someone decided the huge increase from when the bill was last paid in October until now, must have been due to the fact that I'm using electric heaters all the time. And wrote a nasty, accusatory email with offensive language, stating they were not going to pay a full third of the bill when I was the one using so much electricity. I now have an apology, after I gave an explanation of where the electric heater actually lives (as above), but I really don't like this style of communication. There was no reason for this whole thing to ever have been played out with such drama and disrespect, when it could have been dealt with diplomatically face to face. As it eventually was, once everyone was home together tonight-- But the damage had already been done from the awful email earlier in the day. Final tally: it's the electricity company to blame with large rate increase, not any individual in our house using tons and tons of electricity.

Now, this person is not British, but it did get me to reflecting over the past almost year I have lived here... I have found that the British stereotype of being very reserved and not discussing feelings and not bringing up problems until (quite often) it's too late, is still alive and doing very well in Blighty. I've run into this obstacle in several important instances, and it's like banging your head against a brick wall, "If you'd only said something to me, I had no idea!..." Very, very, very frustrating to know a situation might have been avoided or resolved, some compromise reached, if only you had known what the other person was thinking or feeling. Again, this is not to say that every British national fits this stereotype, but you do get to often wishing you were a mind reader over here. Sheesh.

It was a very mild day here today, around 60ish (15 degrees Celsius), which would have made for a nice run, but I'm very much not inclined to run in Leytonstone-- let me just diplomatically say it's not inspiring at all. So it was the treadmill at the gym again for me. However, as a birthday gift, my parents gave me a 3-month subscription to demandfitness.com, which came with a 4th month free. I signed up yesterday, and I must say I am very impressed! Over 150 classes, which include everything from yoga, pilates, fitness ball, ab workouts, cardio workouts, you name it, different levels available for each class, all available on demand via streaming video. Very cool. I'll let you know in a month or so how I'm getting on with it as a supplement to my gym membership!

A brief interlude with snow

Lots of things happening around here. I woke up this morning to find an inch of snow on the ground- good packing snow too!!! It was gone by the time I left work this afternoon though :( Most of you probably know I absolutely love snow, so unfortunately this was just kind of a tease. Guess I'd better put together a ski weekend in Austria or something if I want to really see some snow this winter. It's finally starting to act like winter, what with this small bit of snow, and I actually had to wear my winter coat one day this week. I suppose it's too much to hope for a real snow storm around these parts.

I've got some more pics from my birthday weekend, although I've realized I didn't take any at the pub on Friday night. Oops. It was such a crazy day at work, with me running around like a chicken with its head cut off, I guess I was just too busy relaxing with friends and colleagues to think of my camera at the bottom of my bag.

Speaking of birthdays, my blog is officially one year old today. Who knew I'd keep this up for that long?! It certainly helped to keep me sane during my day hospital rotation. I don't blog as often now as I did whilst working there, but I still look forward to writing, and getting emails with people's responses and comments. Although, y'all do still remember you can click on the word "comment" and leave a comment right on the blog, yeah? ;)

Oh, and speaking of birthdays again, my Dad's is coming up. He and my mom were in Florida this past weekend for a surprise 60th birthday for Jenn's mom, at the Disney World resort. Yup, whilst I was partying here in London, they were partying in Orlando. Oh yeah, and Tress was partying in DC since she is still hanging around home for medical treatment of her arms (poor thing, she's bored stiff and can't wait to be cleared to go back to Africa). We get around as a family, eh? So my mom, sister, and I arranged for a luxury bass fishing trip for my Dad whilst he was down there-- I initially wanted to send him deep sea fishing, but for various reasons, we switched to bass fishing closer to Orlando. I think that's probably the first original gift I've ever thought of for my Dad. I always try to get personal when I give gifts, and I'm usually pretty successful, but I've been stumped for as far back as I can remember with my Dad. Oh, he's a Terry Pratchett fan, so I always buy the latest books, he loves puzzles, so I get interesting puzzles for him...but I was very proud of this fishing idea, and apparently he had a great time. Yay!

Tomorrow begins the second module of my Bobath course, which I am very excited about, so I'll just post a few more pics now, and then I need to read through the material we were given for tomorrow. One of my patients has been chosen to be our patient model, so I'm really looking forward to getting normal movement treatment ideas for her!

"Go shorty, it's your birthday...

We're gonna party like it's your birthday. We're gonna sip on Bacardi like it's your birthday"
# # # # # # # #

"Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day. I got a beautiful feelin', everything's goin' my way"
# # # # # # # #

I know, I know, it's a horrific mix of genres, but it is my birthday, and for the first time in a while, it is a beautiful day. The sun is shining, and although there are setbacks happening on the stroke unit this morning, it seems like nothing can get me down. Many thanks for the birthday messages and e-cards I have already received earlier today!!!! I woke up and stumbled downstairs as the zombie I normally am in the mornings, only to find a big sign plastered onto our hallway mirror that said "OVER THE HILL" highlighted in bright orange with a picture of an old lady knitting. I think I woke up both Nicole and Leeanne, I was laughing so hard. It is such a typically American way to take the piss, I knew immediately it was Nicole who put it there.

I have two sad stories this morning-- one of my little elderly ladies was scheduled to go home on Monday, which was already a delay from the original date of discharge this past Wednesday. She is the first person I have ever met who was "in service." She was a maid in the household of a posh Welsh family, and has loads of fascinating stories. She now can't leave on Monday, because they want to do an MRI and see if she needs surgery for a blocked carotid artery. If I were her family (and they are very unhappy about this), I would complain, because her D/C had been scheduled, she'd had a previous scan where they told her they thought everything was ok, and now at the last minute have changed their minds. And then there's another lady in her 60s, ready to go home for a visit this weekend, and then be discharged a week from Monday, but she did something very unsafe last night (poor insight and safety awareness can be such a problem with patients who've had a stroke), fell, and fractured her femur. So, no weekend visit, and she's being transferred to the orthopaedic ward.

But at the risk of sounding uncaring (which you all know I'm not), the sun is still shining, and I am not going to be brought low today. I will deal with these problems as they arise, comfort my patients, and keep my sunny mood. Happy Friday to you all, and Happy Birthday to me! Lots of love, Allison.

I've got to admit, it is a "White" Christmas here in London

Happy first day of winter everyone...and hurrah, the shortest day of the year is now behind us!

I have now checked in online for my flight tomorrow, and Virgin's web site says their services have not been disrupted by the fog. I looked out the window at one point today, and because of the density of the fog...or something...for a split second I thought it was snowing, a white-out of small flurries, falling fast and furious. Of course, almost instantaneously I realized how ridiculous that would be in London, but boy, was it still a disappointment to come screeching back to reality! (Incidentally, it was hard to take the new movie The Holiday all that seriously, with what looked like a good 3-4 inches of snow on the ground in Surrey. Ah, what I wouldn't give to live in Surrey- my parents had a good life there.) But hey, if there's a stereotype of London weather that people think of, this is it...pea soup fog. And I'm lovin' it for that reason-- especially since my flight is not grounded ;)

Planets, Planes and Potter News

I apparently missed this...one of the papers has done a review of 2006 in today's issue, and around August, Pluto was demoted. 70 years after it was discovered, Pluto has lost its planethood.

In other news, for those of you Harry Potter fans, check out her website, jkrowling.com to find out the title of the upcoming 7th and last book in the series.

As reported by MSN, "If you go to her home page, click on the eraser and you will be taken to a room — you'll see a window, a door and a mirror.

In the mirror, you'll see a hallway. Click on the farthest doorknob and look for the Christmas tree. They click on the center of the door next to the mirror and a reef appears. Then click on the top of the mirror and you'll see a garland.

Look for a cobweb next to the door. Click on it, and it will disappear. Now, look at the chimes in the window. Click on the second chime to the right, and hold it down. The chime will turn into the key, which opens the door. Click on the wrapped gift behind the door, then click on it again and figure out the title yourself by playing a game of hangman."

However, you have to do all these things in the order listed, or they don't work. Yes, I've tried it, I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a kid at heart!!

And finally, no, Heathrow is not closed, and no, I don't expect to be stranded here for Christmas. Whilst we are in the midst of a pea soup fog that apparently will not lift until Sunday, it is domestic and some European flights that are being affected. Heathrow was operating at about 60% of its normal flight volume today, according to news reports here, and I have it on good authority (the sister of a colleague for works for the airlines) that thus far, flights to the US are doing just fine. :-)

"A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight..."

...walkin' in a winter wonderland.

Well, we pretty much had our first frost overnight/this morning. The Epping Forest area looked just gorgeous on my walk into work, with everything covered in a light dusting of white. The only way it could have been better would have been if it had snowed. And this- this is what I'm talkin' bout!! This feels much more like Xmas weather. If it's warm, it just doesn't seem like Christmas somehow. Maybe I should wear my PJs inside out tonight, like I did when I was a kid hoping for snow days from school- it makes it snow if you wear your PJs inside out, you know ;)

Weather Watch

The weather has been all over the map today. This morning it poured rain, then there was a blue sky and sun. Then it hailed and poured rain, then the sun came out again. Then the winds picked up, to the point where whistles and moans could be heard on the wards and in our offices. And just now, as I've been sitting here in the office, trying to catch up on discharge report paperwork, we've had two powercuts due to the high winds. And let me tell you, it's not fun sitting on an abandoned ward, alone, in the pitch dark. Luckily, they didn't last for long. I'm here because I'm running the once monthly relatives' group this evening, after which I will brave the elements to attend a Christmas thing with Nicole at a famous bar in trendy Shoreditch. I have heard, from some of the family members who are already here, that the news stations have been reporting a tornado touched down somewhere in North London earlier today. Well, they do say the weather is very changeable in London ;)

A small deviation from the routine

It's funny how we make assumptions, even little ones, on a daily basis. Like me this morning for instance. I never think I'm going to run into anyone I know on the Leytonstone high street, mainly due to the fact that in the seven months I've been living here, I've never randomly encountered a friend or colleague. So this morning, as I'm walking up the high street, lost in my thoughts, I pretty much screened out all the noise as usual. There was a very loud honk directly across the street from me, but I ignored it, since there are people honking all the time, it's just part of what you have to put up with, living on a busy road. The honk sounded across the road again, and this time I looked...as it turned out, it was my friend Andi, another OT who now works off site at an intermediate care facility. But she happened to be driving to the hospital today to get some bloodwork done, and saw me walking, and thought she'd give me a lift.

Anyway, a little factoid for you: This past summer was the warmest the UK has had in 234 years, which is the amount of time for which they have been keeping records of such things. So basically this summer had the hottest average temp in recorded UK weather history. And September was the warmest September that anyone can remember too-- I must say, it was really nice. October has been somewhat gray thus far, but still, fairly warm...

Autumnal Equinox

It's the first day of fall, officially!! This has always been my favorite time of year, though I suspect I'll have a much different experience this year, over here in the UK...not least of all for lack of fall foliage.

Wake me up, when September ends

I had to bring the bag of candy corn into work, or I would have eaten all of it myself. Most people seemed to enjoy it, although one of the nurses thought it was a bit too sweet. And as far as working here at the day hospital goes, I've only got one week left!!! Next Friday is my last day. I can't believe all the things I've done in the past seven months...I've been to Italy, France, Bosnia, Turkey, the US (Vermont and Hawaii), and have been many places in the UK as well, from Durham and York on down to Bournemouth and Poole. It feels like it's been more than 7 months actually, more like a year. And it feels odd to say that because usually it feels like time is flying, so I should be saying something more like the last 7 months have felt like only 3 months, or something.

Anywho, September has been "unseasonably" warm over here, with yesterday's temps being in the low 80's I believe, with bright sunshine. This morning has been a bit rainy and cool, but generally speaking it's been a lovely month. I hope it continues into October, or that we at least have an Indian summer toward the end of October/November. As usual, this time of year has been making me nostalgic for field hockey, not just because of my love of the game, but the excuse to be outside for late fall afternoons.

"Sunny day, chasing the clouds away"

Today is yet another gorgeous, in the high 80s, bordering on 90 degrees, or so the BBC weather web site tells me. All I know is it's sunny and I'm stuck inside. And of course, later on this week, when I have tickets to go to an evening performance at the Shakespeare Globe theatre (an outdoor theatre) it is supposed to be rainy and gray. Figures.

But I'm out of here in about 15 minutes or so, and I plan to run for a half hour or so in the park next to Whipps, before trying out the pilates class they've just started up here at the hospital. Hopefully it will be good, as it's only £2 per class.

Goodbye Summer :(

It's another gray and rainy day in the urban sprawl of London. Looks like it's sunny and about 80 degrees in Sarajevo, cooler this weekend- still sunny but low 70s, and then on Sunday we take off for Turkey and temps in the 90s!!

You know, I need to start asking around whether fall actually happens here...does it just go from summer to rainy and chilly weather, or do they have crisp mornings that open up into warm, sunny fall afternoons?? Do the leaves turn beautiful colors? I have heard that on occasion they have an "Indian Summer" along about October or November, but not often.

Anyway, I'm off to do a last check of things, have some brekkie (breakfast), and head for the tube. Unfortunately, it takes me about 2 hours to get from here to Heathrow, and I want to leave extra time, given all the recent upgradings of security measures. To those of you heading to the lake, have a great time, can't believe the season is over already! Take the motor boat out for a spin for me--I'll be thinking of y'all on Labor Day Weekend. And to the rest of you, talk to you in September! Lots of love, Allison