**Update** She finished in 4:27 in extremely bad conditions. Congrats Carolyn!!!!!!!!!!

In about 7 hours, Carolyn will be running the Boston Marathon. For those of you unaware, she has raised almost $5000 for Cancer research as well as training for the run. I’m very sad I’m unable to be in Boston to cheer her on, Nor’easter or not, so I’m sending her lots of good vibes all day and will be tracking her online (she’s bib #20221). If you’re in Boston, go out and brave the cold and cheer her and all the other crazy runner on. AND, if you haven’t donated, do it now! 🙂

Good luck Carolyn!!!!!!!!!!

I’m normally never too big on birthdays, but this one feels odd. First of all, it’s one of those milestone birthdays. Today, I turn 30 years old. That’s odd enough. But putting myself in a new country with very few people I know makes it a little odder. I turned 21 in Italy, so it’s not the first milestone birthday I’ve celebrated abroad, but this time, I’m right in the thick of relocating as well as working my ass off and, that time, I had already been over there for a few months and was pretty settled.

Anyway, it’s a blog and I figured I’d be a little self-indulgent. Happy birthday to me 🙂

I had my first commute today. If I’d only been going to my actual office, it would have taken 10 minutes. But then I wouldn’t have seen the following from the top of my double-decker bus :

1. A double eecker bus (duh!)
2. London Bridge (the new one)
3. St. Pauls Cathedral
4. The London Monument
5. Tower Bridge (the cool one)
6. The Thames River
7. The Tube

I have a bunch of entries to write with pictures. It’ll have to wait until I have more solid internet access

So I have an apartment. I got the keys this afternoon and, when I got there, there were two people just finishing up cleaning. it’s pretty much empty, but it’s mine!!! It feels a little odd. But the neighborhood is already growing on me. I’m at the office for a brief stop over so I can pick up my stuff (a suitcase and a very large duffel bag) and then i’m off to, ummm, ‘unpack’. then i’ll try picking up some basics so i can do laundry and whatnot. I took some quick shots, but it’s very similar to the original photos I took. woo hoo!!

Time for a little random post not related to the unpleasantness from yesterday. I’m sure all of you are aware of spam. Well, since spammers are the essense of evil, they try to find anywhere they can to post crap for viagra and cialis and so on. Now, I have a pretty good system to keep myself pretty immune from spam in email (my personal email addresses get maybe 3 a week), but the spammers managed to implicate me in one form of it: comment spam. This is where they post comments to any blog they can find (blog software is pretty dumb in that the install usually ends up in a similar URL so they can find them easily) with either those weird psuedo-philosophical/gibberish comments or with links to pr0n or discounted drugs. Well, for a long while, if you searched for my name on google, you would find that some spammer decided to use my name as a spam commenter. Very odd!

Anyway, now I have my own blog and I guess it’s out in the open now because I have some comment spam. Now, you might be asking yourself ‘where is this so called comment spam? I’m on the site right now and all the comments appear to be from people like God (thanks Dina!) and my mom.’ Well, the blog software has a sweet piece of spam catching and the 20 or so pieces of spam that have been posted have been swallowed whole! Thank you wordpress!

Thus endeth my random naval gazing for the day. We’ll be back to regular programming (hopefully with a new apartment, photos of my funky hotel, as well as trips to Cambridge, Brighton and Stockholm) shortly.

So the current tenent in my place is apparently a little dim on what ‘no, you cannot stay until Saturday means’. So, today is supposed to be move-in day and she’s got movers and cleaners coming in on Saturday. Now I’m going back and forth with my estate agent to figure out how to clean this mess up (alas, it’s not cut and dry as always). Needless to say, I’m pretty fucking pissed right now :(More when I know more. It’s looking increasingly likely that today is not move-in day. sigh.

**Update**

OK. I’m stuck in a hotel for the next 2 or 3 days. I’m feeling like a drama queen, but this is extrordinarily irritating. Now I need to re-figure out my first European long weekend and I have to be a nomad for another few days. Anyways, that’s enough whining for one day.

I like public transport. Mass transit systems, like the El in Chicago, fascinate me. I figure on day I’ll end up doing some sort of work for them (and then going insane with the horrible management of it). So, part of the appeal of moving to London was being able to experience the Tube up close and personal. This will be the first of what might be too many posts about it.

Today I wanted to focus on the Tube during rush hour. Now, from what I’ve seen, London has their trains running at full tilt during rush hour. there is maybe 1-2 minutes between each train. And yet it still doesn’t matter. People constantly stream down to the platform. I tried to get on the Tube the day I arrived to go back to my hotel from the office and it took 10 minutes to get through the turnstyle (imagine 200 people trying to get through 3 gates).

This morning it dawned on me that the London Underground is about one step away from becoming the Tokyo during rush hour. Right now,there are not people with white gloves. But there are 2 or 3 people standing along the platform to signal that the trains are as full as they can get. A train arrives at the station and there is NO room. Two people get off and somehow, 10 people squeeze their way on the train. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced in the US. And, having a blog and all that, I thought I’d share. Soon I’ll secretly snap a photo of it so you can really get an idea of how crowded it is. Once I’m moved (tomorrow, I hope!), I’ll be taking the bus! 🙂

Those of you who read the comments might have noticed this entry by Carolyn. Anyone who has looked in the back of my now-former apartment might have noticed the lovely white car that was always sitting in back there. On my grandma’s 90th birthday, she gave that car to me. While it was a pain in the ass, it was a wonderful thing to have as I was previously without a car. My grandma died about a year and a half ago and the car didn’t last much longer than that. In usual Matt fashion, I didn’t get rid of it immediately. Finally, push came to shove and, as I was leaving the country, I finally dealt with dontating it to the American Heart Association. Carolyn, being the saint that she is, was kind enough to be available for the tow truck to take my fine little car on its last journey.

Anyway, if you are reading this, would you be so kind to raise a glass to my car and my grandma. May they both rest in peace. And a special thanks to Carolyn for being so helpful and wonderful.

I just posted some graphical representations of my new home (well exteriors), but I wanted to write a little bit as well. Since arriving on Monday, I really haven’t done much more than work and commute. I was pretty jetlagged the first few days so, after I went to work, all I wanted to do was sleep. Finally, I hit the weekend.

While I’m still living in hotels (4 more days!), I decided that it would be a smart idea to check out the surrounding area near my apartment. This is not the first time I’ve moved to a new place and, in the past, my first home in a new location might not always be the most ideal location (whether it be crime ridden or far from the necessities like groceries). I have been very nervous that this new place might be another one of those places. I hopped on a bus outside my office and was there in under 20 minutes (first plus!). When I got off the bus, I started looking around the high street (that’d be a commercial strip for those of you living in the US. They tend to have many of these so as to provide plenty of services for all the residents). While there were plenty of off license places (stores where you can buy beer), the shops around my street looked a little bleak (OTB and things that appeared shuttered). I trudged on, talking to Dina on the phone and suddenly hit upon the swanky part of Highbury (that’s my neighborhood. it’s also home to the Arsenal Football Club). Big ass houses and lots of green. Very pretty.

Once I made a loop back around to where I live, I found my initial concerns were unfounded. Within 5 minutes of my place, there are 4 or 5 smaller grocery stores (which is a normal size in England), a fish shop and a vegetable and fruit shop (that one is about half a block from me!). Here’s the vegetable shop:

I also managed to get a library card and just had a nice time soaking in the reality that this will soon be my home! I can’t wait until Wednesday.

I can’t move into my place until Wednesday, but they can’t stop me from wandering around and taking some pics! 🙂

That’s my street!

That’s the exterior of my apartment. I’m the second floor (here it’s the first floor)

Looking down Beresford Rd

Looking down Beresford Rd again

Hello all.

I’ve made it to London. I now officially live here, even if I’m stuck doing the hotel/couch surfing thing for about 9 days. I’m very very tired, but it was a smooth trip, even when lugging around 50 pounds of crap. And with a good night’s sleep, i’ll be raring to hit the ground running tomorrow.

Anyways, just a quick hello from London! Those of you I’ve left behind in the US, I miss you all.

Just a quick note. This morning is my last day in the office. It’s really a half day as I have to meet with movers in the afternoon. Then I make a massive push to get my shit together in the next 2 days and then hop a plane on Sunday night and begin my new life. I’m completely freaked out at the moment, but it’ll all be worth it very soon! 🙂

I have pics and some fun info about last weekend (lots of fun activities) and I’ll write about them soon, I swear (mom!!).

So I promised a while ago I’d lay off the lamentations of missing my cats. This is not one of them, but it is a short little ditty about my cats.

I don’t know if I’ve gone into details, but the way the cats can come over is by being free of rabies (the UK apparently hasn’t a single instance of it). This must be proven by a blood test. If they show enough of the vaccination for it and they are not symptomatic, then they are ok to move over to the UK. Well, right before they went away with my parents, I had them have their blood test. The blood test is then sent to Kansas. As soon as that lab gets their blood samples, the clock starts ticking.

Now, my vet promised to contact me as soon as they heard the results. Well, I assumed that there’d be no problems and, being a little wrapped up in all the other things in life, I didn’t really follow up. The prospect of being able to have them move over with me soon (since my apartment is cat-friendly) reminded me that I’d heard nothing from the vet since I brought the cats for their blood tests. So I called them yesterday and they realized they’d never heard a peep from the lab in Kansas since they mailed the blood to them. Gulp!!

Thankfully, they got in touch with the lab and the official day the 6 month clock started ticking was January 10th. Which means the cats can move to London in mid-June July! Very exciting!

Well, I am making it fully official. Today I purchased an overpriced ticket to London. The return date is technically sometime in May, but I imagine I’ll end up changing it and stuff or not using it all. But it does mean that on the evening of March 25th, I need to have all my shit in order and be ready to uproot the nice little life I have to move to London. How nerve wracking! 🙂

In the meantime, I am going up to Michigan tomorrow with a load of things to start cleaning out my apartment. When I leave, there should be nothing but furniture, pictures on the walls and stuff in boxes.