New Blog

Because I am no longer on a 'sojourn' but rather a permanent life journey, I have decided to start a new blog. It has all my old posts, but will be about me as an 'adult'. ha.

the address is

tippyb.wordpress.com

I hope you like it!! And sorry I've been so crap at posting. Working 8-10 hours each day is tiring.

Summer Time

Summer is in full swing. I actually got a small sunburn this weekend while at G's mum's house. Sadly it is only on the tops of the shoulder....not the scary white legs or arms.

This weekend was really fantastic. I spent it at G's mum's. G and I went Friday night and hung out there Saturday while Margaret (his mum) went to a luncheon. G then came back to London to meet up with some visiting friends, but I stayed out of the city. It was so nice and relaxing. The weather was gorgeous and she has a beautiful garden.

I have a new neighbor who smokes weed in the garden we share. Next to my window. I'm pissed. I also have a leaky ceiling when it rains. It rained today. :( So that definitely needs to be addressed ASAP. The management company also needs to fix my smoke alarm which they have not done despite them coming out one day without giving me the requisite 24 hour warning. They hung the same crap one back up so that it could go off randomly (3 AM).


Other than that life is good. Work is good.

Katie and Jackie - if you read this...are you alive? I'm waiting for your responses to all my questions.

Cold, Flu, Pig Flu???

I am home ill today. Have been suffering from a cold for a little over a week...and well it has finally gotten the better of me. :( Moving my stuff this weekend and traveling 5 hours each way to get there didn't really help my body heal.

Slept late which was wonderful! Sadly it's rainy and dreary on my day off. booooooo!

Not much else is happening around here. We met some friends for lunch on Saturday. One of them thought we were all meeting for a 'big announcement'...i.e. that we were either engaged or I had a bun in the oven. RIDICULOUS!! I was so taken aback by that thought...the baby one. OH MY GOD!! No way. Not even possible. So that made for an eventful lunch. ha

Saw Catherine-Rose's new apartment. Basically London prices are ridiculous...for 200 more pounds a month in edinburgh I could have an enormous 2 bedroom, 1 bath, massive kitchen with 6 burners, a study room, and cute features. :( Yet in London I only have a room smaller than CR's kitchen and share a bathroom. Nice.

Back 'home'

I am back in the UK. Loving springtime and so ready for cute summer clothes.

Mileage to 'get' me to Croatia is going well, but I have contracted some kind of cold. Probably from one of the millions of people I share a tube train with each morning. :)

Work is good. Crazy busy this week. Worked 10.5 hours yesterday and honestly didn't get that much accomplished. This was mostly due to me being assigned the work of someone FIVE levels above me. Oh well. After wasting all that time trying to re-design the wheel, I received a similar report already submitted to another client. This morning I was able to spend 3 hours writing up my report for which I was told I did a 'brilliant job'. Go me!!! That was after a long day yesterday, stressing out, a nervous breakdown when i couldn't find my saved file, and alot of coffee.

woooooo i'm tired just writing about it.

I'm trying out Twitter. I don't know what the big deal is, but I hope by doing it my blog will stay updated more often. You won't have to join if you don't want to do so, but my happenings will be posted across the top of the pagE!!

So little time....

many things to update about...

I am currently in the US due to my grandfather passing away.
I have gained probably 2-3 pounds in one week of being in the US.
G had the privilege of meeting the majority of my family.
Chik-fil-a is better than i remember and much more expensive.
The UK should really learn how to cook Mexican food.
Wal-Mart produce is disgusting...as in rotten and rank!
Americans eat way too much junk food, processed food, and fast food. Well too much food in general.

I need to get exercising to prepare for my Croatian holiday in July. I think I'm going to do a virtual walk to Croatia with a few stops on the way. It is 766 miles from London to Motovun, Croatia. Now I HAVE to get walking. Woohoo.


I think I'll start tomorrow. Need to map out a route in my neighbourhood to get my mileage. Sure do wish I had a treadmill. :(

Map below will be my first leg...London to Dover. Probably nothing cool to see, but I can use Google Street View to 'see the sites'.

Mileage Countdown


View Larger Map

London

First off...Jackie is getting married and as she indicated in a comment to the prior blog it will be November 14th. So gonna try to get my ass home for that. :)

In regard to me...I am here. I am alive. My life has been basically a tornado. Here are the highlights...

Moved to London on Sunday February 8th in the PM to start Monday February 9th. There was a teary good bye in Scotland. G and Catherine-Rose came out to see me off. And after I departed comforted each other (haha).

I arrived in London to be greeted by 4 gay men. Holy shit it was a dream come true! Luckily they were stronger than I am and helped me carry my big ass bags.

I'm sleeping on G's friends' sofa. It sucks. Enough sad.

Because of the above, I'm really hardcore looking for a flat. Unfortunately they are expensive and I don't really want to live with 35 other people. So I'm looking at bedsits. Basically studios where you share the bathroom....but really how much time do you spend in the bathroom? And we all know I clean everything too much anyway, so it should be fine. I'm going to see one tonight that looks really nice and is close to G's friends.

Work is good. Very interesting. Some of the health economics stuff is really complicated and one girl had me analysing some data tables....um do what? I feel bad because I returned what I did to her and she had to adjust alot of it. BUT let's be real, she has 2 MSc's in economics/statistics. I do not. End of that.

Other than that I like coming to work. I'm starting to leave 'home' at 7:45 so I can be at work early (8:30). I was leaving at 8 which put me to work at 9. Amazing how leaving 15 minutes earlier shaves off 15 minutes from travel time. And it means I get to sit on the tube instead of standing like a cow going to slaughter jammed into my neighbours' armpit. Gross!

In response to Alison...haven't had time to even consider touring the city. Last weekend the tube line was down near where I'm staying so everything required a bus ride around the world to catch a different line. boo. So I stayed in and did venture out for Valentines night.

Oh because G's flight got cancelled due to an 'incident' at London City Airport, I spent Valentines with 3 singles. :( We won't go into this story because he was kind of a jerk about it...supposedly he decided not to rebook on the Saturday afternoon flight because it wasn't worth the money. Hello! It was f-ing Valentines and I just moved to a new city. But whatever. He's coming tomorrow afternoon (boss is now giving him Friday afternoons and Monday mornings to travel since they won't let him move for at least 2 months...douche bags) to visit for the weekend. ha. Lucky him we're going flat viewing bright and early Saturday morning...that is if I don't like the one I see tonight or tomorrow night. :)

Ok, that's enough. I'm at work and should be 'billing' a project right now instead of doing 'admin'. My head hurts and I'm sleepy. Bad combo.

Peace out and more to come!!!

1 more week

1 week to go before I move away from Edinburgh. I’ve had a wonderful year and a half here in Scotland learning and living amongst the crazy Scots. Although I love this country and I love my boyfriend who will still be in Glasgow, I know it’s time to move on to bigger and better. (only problem is now I’ll be in the biggest city this country has to offer. Ha)

So this weekend will be all about packing, cleaning, binning, moving, and crying. It’s my last weekend with Graham. My last to see the friends I’ve made during my time here. Time to reflect on what I’ve learned, who I’ve become, and what I want for my life.

I miss you all terribly and have done fine here by myself, so moving again isn’t scary. I can’t wait to get paid to research. Woohoo! Nothing better than reading stuff you are interested in and getting paid…a lot…to so.

Tonight I am going to see Frost/Nixon with my best mate Catherine-Rose along with Liz and Graham. Ha. He was extremely keen to see CR so has now been invited to ‘girls’ night’. He currently is ‘working from home’ at my flat since he came through last night. It did save him £20 by doing so.

Also, I need some new clothes. My clothes are bland, worn out, out of style, etc etc – you get the point. So if you have seen anything recently that was cute and affordable and you think it would suit me please pass on the link. Doesn’t matter if it’s in the US. I’ll just have my mom mail it over.

Only 30 more minutes til quitting time. :)

Moving to the Big Smoke

My new job starts on February 9. Eek. So I have to move next weekend down south. I’m a little nervous, but it will all be fine. To start I will only take a few bags to get me through. Once I have secured accommodation I will move all my stuff down.

The job is with UBC (United Biosource Corporation)…sounds intense. My post will be ‘Research Assistant’ which I am super excited about. Not sure exactly what type of research I’ll be doing but it is Health Outcomes research if you want to Google it.

I am going to make this blog ‘private’ next week due to my future in the corporate world as well as my article which is in its end stages of editing. I don’t want any of the sillyness I write here to have an impact on my life professionally. So let me know if you read this by writing a comment stating ‘I want to be included’. I will then ‘invite’ you to read the blog, and you’ll just have to log in to read it.

I GOT A JOB!!!!!

I finally got a job and could not be happier. Well sad to leave Edinburgh (and Graham) but happy to be employed. I will have to move to London for the job. :(

So in the next 2 to 3 weeks I'll be moving all my belongings south to live with G's friends for a few weeks until I find a place and settle in. It's probably the most bittersweet thing to happen in a while, but Graham is being super supportive which makes the decision to move easier.

There are a few Rhodes girls in London along with friends made since being here, so I won't be all alone. My mom and family are happy that the prospective of supporting me is now diminished. ha.

well i need to get some sleep before one of my last weeks as a Temp! woohoo!!!!!!!

Weekend Travel/ Interview

The weekend was crazy. Spent Friday night out with G, my flatmate and a few other friends. Wasn’t really up for it, but Graham said we had to go so we wouldn’t upset my flatmate.

Saturday we wandered around town all day. I love just walking around and doing nothing. I bought a bag to take with me to London so I would look professional instead of having a back-pack. Ha.

Took the train to London on Sunday. It was clearly a 1970s model. :( Not the newer luxurious one they have. So cramped and smelly and achy was the name of the game. Luckily Matt (Graham’s friend) picked me up from the station in his car. Hallelujah! No tube changes to get to their flat.

Sunday night I had a roast dinner (pork, broccoli, potato, carrot and gravy) cooked by Matt. We then played Monopoly…everyone else was really competitive, but I just wanted to go to sleep. The flat is really small but big for London standards and there were 2 other people staying (Judie the actress who is currently touring in Germany with a company that using drama to teach English and Ben, who is a sweet idiot but honestly dumber than a brick). So I slept with Matt (he has a boyfriend). Judie slept with Dom. And we left the ‘sweet idiot’ to himself on the couch.

The interview went well. I know for a fact they are contacting my references (emailed me to ask my permission and one of the references contacted me about it). So I think that’s positive. Seeing as how my reference just contacted me today, I’m assuming I won’t hear until Thursday-ish to give them time to collect the responses and read through them. So may be employed by the weekend. May still be looking.

But I’m up for the adventure, and Graham…well he’s sad but already plotting ways to make it easier for us.

Training it to London

Today is a beautiful day in the UK. Sunny and freezing cold. I am currently on a train to London for my interview tomorrow morning. Using the online Wi-fi to write to you and study up on the company I'm interviewing with tomorrow. Luckily this train is the East Coast National Express line. It literally is going down the coast so far, so beautiful villages along the coast come in and out of view. Absolutely amazing!

Graham dropped me off at the station this morning. We were running late (my fault) and so got there a little flustered and without much time to say goodbye. We got in a quick kiss and then I had to find me seat. The seat numbers are really confusing, and I thought I had a window seat. Unfortunately I'm in a tiny seat on the aisle. :(

Graham stood at the window of the train (awkwardly) waiting for me to get settled. I finally had to wave him away so the other passengers didn't get freaked out. haha. He was trying to tell me through the glass to put my bag on the overhead rack. What he didn't know is I was trying to get myself settled and get out my computer before we left. OH well. Sweet boy was just trying to watch over me. :)

When I get to London I'll meet up with Matt and Dom. Not sure what we'll be doing for the afternoon and evening. I arrive at 16:15 so that leaves plenty of time for some wandering around. Unfortunately my bag is a little heavy due to my laptop. But I figured the 4 hour train journey was the perfect time to study up on UBC.

Will write more later!

Life is so hectic

Hello my loves. Sorry to be MIA for ages, but life is just moving along.

Quick updates...

After 2 interviews for a job, I was not chosen for a 3 year policy asst post. Well I'm just considering it fate as I know life holds bigger and better for me.

On that note, I received a phone call 3 days after my 2nd interview for another position. This position is a Research Assistant post down in London. I had a phone interview on Tuesday at 2:30. Got a phone call at 4:45 asking if I could come for an interview on Wednesday. ha. The girl didn't realize I live in Scotland. So after checking with my supervisor (who is completely cool about me going on the interview), I have booked an interview for 9:30 Monday morning. This is 3:30 AM CST. I go down on Sunday morning and will stay with Graham's lovely friends Matt and Dom.

In the meantime I absolutely love this inspiration spread...


day 4 at charlotte ronson by nadiya is a trendsetter.