blue skies, I should be outside...

Hello again

Well it's Wednesday evening here now and I've just knocked off work and caught my bus, which stops right outside the library entrance. How convenient! Work has been good, quite quiet at the moment which means a bit of me sitting around trying to look busy or sitting around failing at looking busy and staring out the big window in my office outside onto the cherry blossom trees and blue skies. I hope it's the same tomorrow because for the first time at work I will have to go and buy a sandwich as my lunch stuff has run out. It's quite a residential area where I work so it's a bit of a hike to the shops. I've made a few mates at work, there are a few of us from Time Recruitment at the moment and some others catch the bus with me in and out of work so we get to chat then. Things are pretty good!

Briony yesterday accepted a 3 month contract with a real estate publishing firm, which is great. She starts today and has slightly different working hours, 12-7pm as a Customer Service Advisor. Sounds like a bit of a job she'll get bored in but I've got this feeling she might climb up the ladder there. So well done to her! Tonight we are celebrating my "birthday" as Briony wanted to celebrate my birthday overseas with me, so 2 months after my actual birthday, we are going to go to a mosque and have a cheap curry dinner. Apparantly it's really nice and huge serves. We've been hanging out for Indian while we've been here and it's all been a bit expensive so hopefully it'll be a great night.

Briony and I had a bit of a beauty night last night, after tea we washed our hair and painted our nails. This sounds disgusting but my toenails grow really fast compared to Briony's, so we are having a race to see just how much faster mine grow in the next 2 weeks. I'll let you know the outcome. The original polish on my feet I put on just before I left Australia and it was starting to look like I gave myself a french manicure with burgundy polish, so it had to go. Now I'm all summury in some Boots No 7 polish called Vintage, soft pinky colour. It was so good just to take my time in the shower and muck about, now we are in a semi-normal space with only 2 in a room, we still can't wait until we get our own place of course but all in good time.

So over the rest of the weekend Noni, Cheryl and I went and visited the Edinburgh Castle which was open all weekend for free, normally you have to pay to get in. We went pretty early to avoid the crowds, which paid off although it was busy when we left there were huge lineups to get in. We saw the Scot crown jewels and a war prison and also a 21 gun salute to mark the anniversary of the queen's birthday, which was full of pomp and ceremony, but we loved it. It was quite a cool day but after that Noni and I went on one of those open top bus tours around the city. A bit cliche but good fun and good to have a tour guide with us to hear little tidbits of info like how Edinburgh is built on 7 hills, now we know why there are so many stairs! I poo pooed those bus tours in London and didn't do one but I reckon the one hear was definately worth it, it only took an hour and got some good photos, which I will put up shortly (getting sick of hearing that yet?)

We met up with Cheryl again later for some early dinner/late lunch and shared some haggis balls, awful name but were actually delicious. I haven't tried actual haggis yet but I think I will. And vegetarian haggis sounds yum too, maybe I'll try that first. I've just got to forget what is actually in there to really enjoy it maybe by having vegetarian first that will help!

After that we went back and got ready to go out on the town, and met up with a girl called Nic, who works at our recruitment company and is from Bowral in NSW. The four of us had a few drinks in our room before heading out to a few pubs, some were good, others not so but we all had a good night and ended up at Nic's flat drinking lots of water before making the long walk back to our place. I had to go to the toilet so bad and couldn't even stop along the way because it was too late and everything was closed. Thank God we made it, I've never walked with such purpose in my life. The realy disgusting thing about Edinburgh is that piss, vomit and human faeces do line the streets here, you know not to walk close to buildings at night for that reason. It's really disgusting, but there's no public toilets around so people just go anywhere (especially when they're drunk).

On that pleasant note, I'm off for the night, will update you in a few days guys. Hope all is well!