London is an autumn city

I like London in Autumn much better. The skies are clear, there next to no rain, the temperature is more comfortable (ie not too cold or hot at work or on the tube) and there's leaves falling everywhere and because London is a really green city it looks beautiful. Theres more blue skies than there was in summer which means a) you have a sense of 'yay look blue skie' and b) ooo golly why is it so cold its a nice day. apparantly the clouds return in winter.



What ive done this month... hmmm
9th Oct, I went to a lolcats meetup which was great fun at the 02 centre in greenwich. LOLCATS is a website upon which the owners and mere folk such as ourselves place photos of cats, dogs and politicians and everyone proceeds to plaster them with funny comments. YES its actually really funny. And YES I went to a meetup to meet the other people that enjoy these photos as much as I do. There was a crowd of about 100-150 and it was free drinks all night. Everyone ordered cheezburgers (it was an american steak bar) and the waiters had no idea why everyone was ordering cheezburgers! we had a laugh at their expense. It was great fun to meet new people and talk about geeky stuff and jokes like 'its ok, we're from the internet!'. I felt like I was at a star wars convention or an iPhone launch party, such were the numbers of iphones popping out taking photos (or in my case updating our twitter status and watching diggnation as the night went on. yeah, someone did point out to me that updating my twitter, on my iphone, while at a geeky website meetup, was pretty nerdy) Anyway we all swapped facebook/twitter/blog details and parted as happier geeks with a few more friends than before.

On the 11th/12th I went to a friends party then the next day a bunch of us went to the church. 'The Church' is the home of getting boozed in 4hours flat on a sunday with other kiwis and aussies and saffas. Most of the people going to the church get dressed up in all manner of obsurd ways and run yelling up the street to get in line. 12pm, doors open, let the drunken revellry begin. For £7 you get a drink token which gets you 3 beer cans in a plastic bag. The boys down 9/10 cans each in the 4hours and there is a big pile of crushed cans at our feet and ripped plastic bags everywhere. I will not tell you, dear reader, what else goes on at the church it will hurt your eyes. Anyway we all leave in a calm and orderly fashion and proceed quietly to the nearest tube station *ahhhhh NO* everyone spills out onto the street and hoards of us head to the underground in as noisy manner as possible and go to the walkabout (chain of aussie/kiwi/saffa pubs in london) to continue our drinking. The whole tube platform was full of us all yelling that chant people start up at rugby games and when the tube came we all piled on - the carriage behind us were actually making the train carriage bounce up and down, such was their enthusiastic singing and jumping!
Might I point out I had a cold this week and only had two beers. Hence i observed this whole charade in such a bemused fashion.

Next week, went out with a friend for dinner monday 13th, then went out with workmates on weds 15th to dinner and a comedy where this guy called Mitch Benn and his two band mates sing parody songs that are his jokes.. very clever actually.
Then the next night I go round to a friends for dinner and spend the whole night laughing cos her friends a comedian.
The following weds 23rd I go see Spamalot (monty python musical) for the second time with a friend and we have dinner and a drink and a good laugh.
Then this sat 25th we all went to our friends halloween party - they'd decorated the house and everyone dressed up and we had a really good night. I went as a spider queen - got some costume acessories from Camden and worked with what I had.

Other than these few things, Ive not been up too much... cooked dinner for my flatmates last week, cajun chicken with vegies (excellent) and berry pie (needs some work) and made two batches of cookies both of which didnt end up as perfect as id hoped cos I forgot they are meant to be soft and crumbly when they come out of the oven - so i rather overcooked them a little.
At home, weve got the heaters on nearly every night and we all huddle under duvets and watch a movie a night... we have a dvd player that has a little usb stick so we can take files straight from pc and play them on tv. weve seen a fair few movies now!!
Work is still really good, im now also a PA for the new head of branding and communications aswell as being administrator and helping other comms managers with events and other campaigns. The company stays open over xmas so I might just do a short 3-5 days in scotland over xmas and work the other days that I can.
anyways remember you can comment on my blog posts and i always enjoy getting emails from everyone.

Updating you

Last weekend I went for a weekend course at Arthur Findlay college in Stanstead. Gorgeous weekend enjoying the sun and nature and watching the horses in the paddock next door. The sun was out so caught a few beams which was lovely. Relaxing break out of the city to save my sanity and came back refreshed.

Working hard at the moment, its really good being busy and learning more. Really enjoy job variety so its great. Im never sitting still for long (unless im creating posters in photoshop or editing a swedish website that ive been working on for weeks, then it takes me all day to spell out words like ventigulingsing hogprofil z-och c-balk. But i like web editing and photoshop work so i dont mind :)

Tip to myself - get to work by 8:30 so I dont have to endure being squashed in the tube with peoples arms and breifcases pushing into me on all sides and peoples arms going right infront of your face. If you get on the tube around 7:45, you have room to read the paper or maybe even sit down :0 bonus.

The free papers in london are great, and thankfully we've moved on from amy winehouses adventures and are now focussing on the credit crunch and hearing blow by blow reports on the state of the economy around the world.

This weekend, well yesterday I did a one day course in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) at the City Lit Uni (its a uni devoted to adult learning and has an amazing range of courses) it was really interesting. It was good to recap some of the material that I have done with previous life coach and personal development courses. Plan to go on and do the NLP practitioner and life coaching courses.
Today the weather is miserable and so me and my flatmates are all cooped up inside listening to music, the guys are getting their DIY on and building some shelves while us girls stand by and critique their work :P

What i'm most excited about though is the fact that Russell Peters (comedian) and Russell Brand are both doing shows in London next Feb! I am soooo going. Just have to find someone else to go with. (Anyone?)