A day in the life

I have a bad habit of completely forgetting my blog. Especially when I'm home and living amongst the normals again. My favorite Belgian brought it to my attention that I should keep updating it. So here I am, talking about the monotonousness that is my life at home. Buts lets return to a little but before that.

So after Norway, which would have been a blast if Lonely Planet hadn't lied to me, it was London. Along with being one of my favorite cities, it is also the most expensive city. People say Moscow is the most expensive, but I disagree. Which is why is helpful to have a good friend to crash with when you're in town. While in London, I spent a great deal of time at the National Archives researching my family tree. I don't care how long it takes or how far I have to go, I will answer the age old question "Can I weasel out some inheritance cash from the Winston Churchill estate?" And the answer is.... I dunno yet. Same as last time I went there. But I did learn tones of stuff that I didn't know about my family before. For instance, my great grandfather was a newspaper delivery boy in 1901. I also went to his prior residences. The apartment building that he used to live in the early 1900's is still standing. I rung the doorbell to see if I could have a peek inside his old flat. No one was home. I later took my friend, Antonia, to see if his house from his early 20s is still standing. It is not. Just a big empty space where his house would have been.

After strolling through his old neighborhood, its pretty easy to see why he fled the country. I know it was a hundred years ago (how many people can use that phrase and actually mean it?), but it was pretty nasty. After that, I went out drinking with Antonia and her friends from work where I threw up from drinking for the first time since high school. I vaguely remember looking down at the ground at the beer garden and thinking 'Red? What did I have that was red? Oh, wait a minute, it must have been the 11 glasses of Rose that I had tonight.' Antonia and I also saw a play while in London. I don't remember what it was called, but I sort of liked it and Antonia really hated it. "Mind numbingly mind numbing" were her exact words.

Anyway, after living the London life for a week, it was off to Amsterdam again for my flight home. And you can't just pass through Amsterdam, you have to stop and smell the ganga-scented roses. So after I few days of sex shows, getting high on city property and wondering how I woke up in a tulip garden, it was time to put this journey to an end and go home. So I arrived at the Schipol Airport bright and early for my AM flight to NYC which would later bring me home. I arrive at the Airport and check in. I go to the bag drop off and I get stalled. For whatever reason, they can't let me drop off my bags. After sitting on my bags at the drop off desk for an hour, they tell me there has been a configuration change and the flight is cancelled. They send me to the next flight gate to NYC where I'm put on standby. No luck. My only chance of getting back to North America is to take the same flight for the next day. After shoving some cash (600 euros!) and hotel vouchers in my hands, I'm off the Crowne Plaza hotel where I'm to spend the night courtesy of KLM until I can get me a flight. And as you can imagine, the Crowne Plaza was pretty suite. And I say 'suite' because it was an actual 'suite', not just a single room. But I'm still pissed off at KLM for constantly making my life unnecessarily hard. After taking what I assume was my complementary bath robe, variety of mini hard liquors, and pocketing my 600 euros in compensation, I was off bright and early to Schipol in an attempt to arrive at my flight and actually get on it. And I did. The flight back to North America was pretty uneventful. No mid flight u-turns, babies, decompensating elders, or anything of that matter. KLM did step up their game with the entertainment on demand. But it will take alot more than all 3 seasons of 'House' to get me to fly with them again.

The travel agent that I bought my tickets from could not fly me out of Canada, so I chose to fly out of NYC. Which means returning to NYC. And like with Amsterdam, I decided to stop and smell the garbage and urine scented roses of NYC. You don't really realize how much changes until you leave home for several months and then return. This could not have been any more evident then when I arrived in NYC. I'm walking down Times Square, minding my own business and BAM! New Kids On The Block are staring at me from a ginormous billboard. As a child, I loved them. But my parents never let me see them in concert. So when I found out the they were performing at the Today Show the next day, I had to go. And after 'seeing' that performance, I knew I had to make it up to the 7 year old outcast that still resides deep inside of me to make the absolute best of their reunion. I am going to get as many dates as I can and I'm invoicing my mom for every one of them. So after nearly enduring a stroke from all of the New Kids madness and further maxing out of my credit card, I was ready to head home.

Back to life as I knew it in the T-Dot.

My first order of business was to get a job. It was a little slow a first. I hadn't worked full time since before travelling abroad. So about 3 years. But I eventually was offered a job as Office Manager for a TV company, which I took. Not too shabby. Most of what I do is tech support for the rest of the office. The people here are somewhat behind the times of technology. Not that I'm particularly ahead. But I try to keep them in the dark as much as I can in regards to that. Its not bad, but I definitely won't be spending a great deal of time there.

My second item on the agenda is to buckle down and buy a house, condo, or someplace to call home that is as far away from Scarborough, but still in Toronto, as I can get. I started looking seriously a few weeks ago. Its alot of weighing of the scales. I like this unit, but this building. I like this location, but these views. I don't know if I'll ever find one that suits my fancy. Other than that, not much else is new. I really miss being on the road. There is something about the fact that every day is a new experience that is so exciting to me. It doesn't seem to matter that I could possibly be risking life or limb. If you don't take risks, where is fun in anything?

Next stop... who knows.

AC