Picture Update!

No Ellen, this isn't of Colorado...settle down. I'm brilliantly only a month behind now and am wrapping up photos from being in England during June :)

England

Everybody should be glad to note that I pared the scary amount of 400+ photos down to 119 photos! This visit involved a sworn oath to myself to not visit all the stuff I'd seen before from previous trips, but to focus places and things I'd not seen before. It was well worth it. There was one day of "walking downtown" and I'm sorry, but the Tate is an addiction (more specifically, the Tate shoppe is an addiction); otherwise I really enjoyed new places! I did sneak into the British Museum a couple times, but who couldn't resist amazing free history at that level.

Kew Gardens is definitely my favourite 'new' place, Egham was a typical village (where we stayed) but it was fun to explore, and thank you Bekki for telling me to get to Rochester! That was great. Brighton was good too, but not a place I'll probably visit a lot.

Habits and Hobbies

What are the differences between habits and hobbies? This question cropped up when I downloaded the Habits app for my iPhone to help me regulate some activities since my life isn't so consistent. This is probably an easy answer for some but it's a deeply philosophical question for me.

Since habits can also be bad, I tend to think of habits as those things that humans tend to do systematically due to addiction, boredom, or just rote behaviour. An example for the stereotypical person might be that they always have a glass of wine with dinner, or play online games at night, or watch specific TV shows. A hobby is something that I believe occurs because a person loves doing it, but doesn't necessarily get to enjoy it as a habit, although it can get to that frequency. Categorization of hobbies can be painting, reading, tennis, or whatever is enjoyed. As you can see, all of these items can easily transform into habits, but if that happens, are they still enjoyed as hobbies? Is that full measure of happiness met when you sit down with a good book, or is it so habitual that you don't notice or appreciate it as fully?

Then comes along me. People often compliment my discipline or focus. I want to seriously laugh when that happens because I am one of the least disciplined people ever. I forget to drink water. I'll have a perfect week of eating the right size of meals several times a day and feel great, then get stressed and space eating entirely. I have very few hobbies because I can barely get what I should get done to treat myself and my family right before I can transcend into even knowing what I enjoy.

Reflecting on this has brought me some realisation that I am so terrified of wasting away my life that I fill it with the long term goals and focus on getting to the end, leaving the end very anti-climatic and and empty void when it's complete. This is probably why whenever free time comes my way, it gets filled. I won't stop aiming for long term goals, but it's time to focus on taking care of myself (eating, drinking, exercise, spending time with family) by stop treating those items as hobbies (is it convenient to eat? No, I have to get this course finished) and make them into habits... then perhaps I can consider having a couple hobbies without stress of something (always something) needing done.

Bringing this tail around to make a circle, it's my hope that downloading the Habits app will help me realise that major accomplishments are great, but to take them one step at a time after the most important things are done...and enjoyed. People who know me very well will be happy to know that I've added habit maintenance items on the app to include

• drinking at least 3 pints of water a day
• sitting down and doing nothing at tea time
• doing a bit of Tai Chi, TKD and iBurn each day
• spending an hour of teaching Elle things each day
• spending an hour of actively playing with Elle each day
• reading an hour a day

Yes, there is still 4-5 hours of my career work to do each day as well as 3-4 hours of PhD work to do each day, but I think ensuring these habits are effectively ingrained in me is the first building block to enjoying the journey of my life. I'll worry about the other blocks when this one is fully embedded in concrete! Maybe this way I'll notice the pretty sky, how cute Elle is, and how damned lucky I am.

Oh crap. This stuff has to get home!

It's so interesting to see the price differences on certain items between the UK/Europe and the USA. The USA is rife with great stuff that's pretty cheap - yet the UK has such great prices on books, antiquities and unique artifacts. Items found in an antiquarian bookstore in the USA would cost no less than double, and usually triple than what I easily find in the UK. Global Gifts is one of my favourite stores in the USA because it sells unique items made from the countries, and the money goes back to those people. However, the UK's Fair Trade programme totally crushes Global Gifts in coolness and price.

I say all this to say that I got myself into a small peck of trouble. The 1866 engravings I bought for a song will be easy to pack because they are flat. Unfortunately though, my brain somehow justified the purchase of an Iranian tile that is quite heavy, and my brain simply went into a coma before purchasing a lovely carved Pakistanian wooden box. It is not gigantic, but the heavy and thick 12x6x6 box isn't exactly a 'toss in the luggage' kind of thing. I was quite proud to only bring my Kindle for reading, but totally failed on refraining purchase of books here. Even with the limitations of 'only printed in Britain' and 'something truly unique', I have a serious problem in that area too. We're not even going to go down the acquisition of awesome new clothes topic. I was reasonable with the amount of things I bought for Elle because there are cool toddler things everywhere, but I did find a couple really unique items that I of course couldn't pass up.

I am very happy to have thought ahead on some level and brought two essentially empty carry-on bags for the return trip, and ensured that one suitcase would be 1/2 empty, but I still am facing a challenge.

Postive note: I got some really cool shit!

Our Village

Egham is a nice little village filled with all the necessities of life...pubs, one good French, Italian and Indian restaurant each, train/bus station, parks, several small charity shoppes, couple churches, and lastly without prejudice, a greasy chippy. It's important to have visuals of our haunts though! I was going to include the view to our 3rd floor flat and Eric's work building, but for some reason Blogger's not letting me add more images, so I'll let it go with these more important introductions.


This is our favourite location of course, The Crown. With eight hand pumps for wonderful cask beer, the bartenders know us very well! None of those silly rules about children not being allowed in a bar (except past 7pm, for which you then sit outside at the picnic tables).



Monsoon is a very very special Indian restaurant where all the servers know us by name. We've tried nearly every single item on their menu. He uses all fresh ingredients, which makes every dish excellent.



While delicious, fish and chips certainly can't be a common meal simply due to the delectable amount of grease involved. However, our local chippy certainly makes a fabulous serving with the best curry sauce ever.

I totally forgot to get a photo of the Italian restaurant, but that's no indication that I dislike the place. In fact, it's fabulous. The pizzas are southern Italy style and unique. That's not even mentioning all the fresh sea creature pasta they offer, or their torturing dessert cart. Meanwhile, here is the French restaurant. Slowish service, but a really nice atmosphere with delicious food. Eric's German stomach mostly rejects French food, but it's probably my favourite.





Of course we can't leave out the Egham version of Hogwart's, or the wonderful fenced and gated park across the street. This is especially helpful for the wild little thing we often refer to as Elle.

Bones of the Dragon by Margaret Weis

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars


View all my reviews.

Catching my breath....

I just realised that the last two weeks have been a little crazy, thus possibly accounting for overwhelming exhaustion from which I've finally started recovering this week. It was awesome having Ellen here for the first week and am annoyed that it took this many years for us to realise that we travel together really well. It's so nice to not have to finish sentences because the other person knows what I'm trying to say, and vice versa. Conversation was not stressful. Our humour is similar, as well as our penchant for...'oh, I'm feeling tired' and blowing off something that felt minorly important only hours ago, and feeling no guilt. Elle was a little beastly on occasion, but other than a couple remarkably horrible occasions, she handled it quite well given the circumstances of so much travel in such a short period. It helped that everything we did was dappled with 'oh, there's a park, let's have Elle run.' I've never been to so many parks in such a short time, but I think we all found it relaxing. The best and most exhausting day was hitting the charity shoppes in Chelsea. Finding Lush in the middle of that "expotition" was easily equal to finding a gold mine. That day was also special because it was Saturday, which is roughly translated as 'Eric's home and can watch Elle' :)

This second week has involved a lot of beer, sleep and work. There's been investigation of the adorable village and plan-making for the upcoming weekends. We're going to train out to the Virginia River area this Saturday, Pooh Country the following Saturday (although I'm not going to walk all over like I did last time...gah), and then hit the beach the last Saturday and possibly Sunday (can't decide between Brighton and Bournemouth). The discovery of five charity shoppes in this village alone defines my plans for tomorrow if I truly catch up on my work today. Woo!

Holiday Albums!

Some day I'll always be caught up with the most recent photos. Some day. Not today or tomorrow or next year! I'm just happy to be only one or two holidays behind on my albums. North Carolina represents my two glorious weeks on a river or beach (depending on the week) this spring. It was very relaxing and I'm not understanding why I didn't do that before. I'm sad that the job transition worked out so that Eric was only able to come out for a few days, but the sacrifice was rewarded with a fun new job!

North Carolina

Miami's photos are far less...mostly the Everglades and around the resort. My brain skipped taking photos during that week, but we have a few for memories. Despite the gorgeous weather and location, we were all pretty busy with my working with some deadlines that week and Eric being at conference. Below the album is a cute video of Elle being a little monster because the second that I started filming her, she refused to jump in the pool like she was doing previously!

Florida