Yaarr Matey! Thar be pirates!

For those of you who weren't aware, September 19 is international Talk Like a Pirate day. In honor of this oh so important holiday (why didn't we have the day off??) my matey's and I got all decked out (er..partially decked out..) to wander along the river and cause a ruckus. Actually...I think the odd accessories were the only things that made it different from any other Friday night, but it was good fun anyway! Here are some pics of our crazy night out...


Captain Eamo


Pirates and their rum


Makin' friends with Nelson


Me hook


The crew


Land-lubbers


Preparing to set sail (that's a ship behind us...no really!)


Going...


...going...


...Gone! (oops...I'm a klutz!)

Yoga for charity

When I was a full time student, I was running all the time. And after my half marathon, though I was utterly exhausted, I was exhilarated too and it made me want to do more runs for charity. I considered another half marathon, but the timing wasn't right, and a 10K, but I have 3 parties to go to the night before (not good for training!)

Then I discovered an entirely different way to do exercise for charity! On 2 November I'm going to join 499 other people to do 108 yoga sun salutations for charity. Nice and slow (I hope...) but it should be fantastic...and I get to go to the 2008 London yoga show for free and be led by 9 of the top yoga teachers around the world.

This is where the plea for money comes in. You may notice I've added a new widget to the blog for my Justgiving page. I'm trying to raise £1 for every sun salutation I do. It's only £108 so even a tiny bit will help!

Click on the widget to go to my donation page. The charity I've picked is called The Special Yoga Centre, a charity dedicated to providing yoga for special needs kids and people who wouldn't otherwise have access to yoga.

Gee Whizz where'd the weekend go?

This weekend was so jam packed full of activities...it whizzed by faster than I could have imagined. I'll leave out the less exciting activities (gym and laundry...yay!) but here's the play-by-play from this weekend:

3pm - Met up with my nutty friends to buy crafty supplies to make masks. Why you ask? I'll tell ya in a few hours...

5pm - Regroup at friend's house for mask making with mojitos (this hour was sponsored by the letter M)

6.30pm - Don my newly created and amazingly coordinated geometric mask and then realise I only have 1.5 hours to go home and get ready before dinner reservations..aack!



8pm - Meet with the masked brigade for a super posh dinner at Just St. James (sans masks of course...we're not that weird). We had live jazz...champagne..and amazing food followed by cocktails in the basement bar.





10:45pm - Hop in a taxi to the masquerade bash and serenade the taxi driver with an oh so random array of song including 'Wade in the Water' (he loved it...really he did)





11:15pm - Find our Irish crew in line, don our masks, pose for ridiculous photos and enter the masquerade ball where we meet some veeery interesting characters (Jessica rabbit?)





Time fuzzy - Dance with bubbles and...vegetables? Yes...weird party...





Early AM Sunday - Wander off home (acting all odd of course) to get some sleep before busy day #2



8:30am - Wake up and wonder why I planned so many things in one weekend (shakes head...)

9.30am - Hop on the tube (love the tube) to South Kensington to attend an Alchemy of Voice workshop

10am to 5.30pm - Meditate and chant and have a fantastic time! I highly recommend people looking up The Alchemy of Voice by Stewart Pearce...amazing stuff.

6pm - Don't rest...just go to find friends among the crazy crowds at the Thames festival on the Southbank. Discover they're watching Korean break-dancing in the middle of the crowd...so settle for some tasty Korean food and Korean break-dancing audio (he he...)

7.15pm - Wander along the river and get distracted by all sorts of pretty stalls with crafts, and shirts, and CHURROS! That's right...I said churros...YUM! Stand in the longest queue in London for the tasty fried treat. Then wave hi to Albert Einstein in the sand.



8pm - Locate the dancing Greeks (my friends...not performers) and hit the dance-floor under the watchful London Eye for some jump-n-jive and swing dancing (err...some people did that dancing...I think I did the jump-n-flail but was good fun anyway and yes that giant pink blur is the stage)





9pm - Wander to the other side of the park for the Petebox guy and the dare-devil free-runners. Dude...cool! (picture is fuzzy...but imagine big blocks and guys doing flips and throwing themselves at walls)





9.30pm - Walk across the Jubilee bridges - give props to the Jamaican drummer man - consider staying in the cold for 30 more minutes to watch the firework display over the Thames, but then remember that a whole weekend has gone by in what felt like the space of a Friday evening...and I have to work tomorrow. Oi...time flies!

Blog Slacker Squared

Wow...June, July, August...yup...I was blog useless! Rather than do a detailed recap, I'll just summarize those months for you and move on.

June - Rain in London
July - Work and a lovely sunny holiday in the states
August - 80% unenjoyable...I was ready for September
September to date - just plenty of work but things are looking up!

A random bit of information...one of the pictures I took on my trip to Venice has been added to an online travel guide. Neato!



And in just a few weeks I get to dash off to Istanbul for 5 days to relax and spend time with my American girls who...(sniff) will be leaving me all alone in London very soon. Yes...there will be all those Brits...but it's nice to have a bit of homebase in London. The people who don't give me a funny look when I say 'high school', 'awesome' or 'trash can'.

I'm not going to make any promises in this post...cause I'm not sure I can take the pressure. I'll just say over and out for now until my next random blog post arrives :)