I accept Visa, Mastercard ...

It's almost midnight and I'm exhausted, so I'm only updating this because I love you. Remember that. Warning: This will be written in Bridget Jones-style shorthand.

Overview:
Sunday -- Met up with a CatholicMatch friend, Matt, for dinner. We went to an Italian restaurant near Embankment where I finally tried gnocci (potatoey-pasta with cheese sauce) and then headed over to a pub near Earls Court for drinks for a couple of hours. We had a lot of fun and Matt's a very, very nice guy - who also reads my blog. :) Hi, Matt!

Monday -- Work. It was the first day Jenni was gone, and I was late. I left an hour before I was supposed to be there and there were severe delays on my tube station line. I called up retailers to ask for the romantic proposals they've heard from their customers, which is a short "vox pop", as they say, for our December wedding issue. I learned that people are horribly unromantic. No one has any good stories. Fran and I both agreed that we would turn any guy down who came to us with such sad a proposition. Today I also discovered the joys of gmail IMing. I talk to Wendy at the American Embassy all day long. Yay! That night I hurried home for International Issues class with Clyde (6-9 p.m.). Such a long day. He is so disorganised. We spent an hour and a half discussing nothing, then we went down to the student pub where he bought a beer and we discussed more of nothing, THEN we headed outside to a couple of picnic tables where we sat in the cold for 45 minutes discussing ... nothing.

Tuesday -- London Fashion Week! I met up with the gang (Fran, Marie and Ash) at the Natural History Museum, where the event was being held. I felt so cool flashing my (err, Jenni's) press badge and walking through the wraught-iron gates. We sat around in the press room for awhile, where they had magazines and free bottles of Evian and Red Bull galoure. Then we split into teams of two - Ash and Fran covering the jewellery booths starting with the letters A - M, while Marie and I did N - Z. There were sooo many pretty pieces of jewellery. A lot of ugly ones, too, but I definitely found some I would wear. There were also booths of clothes, shoes and handbags. We didn't stay too long. Ash and Fran hit up all of three booths before they stopped in the cafe and then back to the office (where they were meeting people for lunch). I was researching ideal bridesmaid and groomsmen's gifts, so Marie and I stuck around for awhile longer. No celebrity sightings, unfortunately. I was asked to do a bio-sketch of my co-workers so y'all can keep them straight, so I will try to do that ASAP. Tuesday night, BLC lecture on Shakespeare. The class is so messed up. We have to do journal entries once a week on our trips and lectures, but all of the teachers have different grading habits and writing preferences and no one can agree on the style the paper should be written in - rhetoric? opinion? random flow of thoughts? It's such a mess.

Wednesday (today) - We went to Warwick Castle and Stratford-upon-Avon. I love castles so Warwick was cool, I guess. They had wax figurines in all of the rooms, trying to recreate various parties and household occurrences. I call that creepy. We then went to Stratford, home of Shakespeare, where I had already been way back in 2003. Stratford is a place that you don't really want to go once - but when you go twice, you really just want to kill yourself. It's all so touristy and hoaky. A bunch of us were starving afterwards, so before we hit up the bus on the ride home, Nic, Wendy, Rachel and I went to a little cafe where I got a spinach and ricotta crepe (gross), while two others got an English breakfast. I'll have to post a picture of an English breakfast. It looks absolutely DISGUSTING. Nichole, Diana and Katie all stayed in Stratford to see The Tempest at the Royal Shakespeare Company tonight. Standing room only for a 2 3/4 hour show with the bus arriving back at 1 a.m.? No thank you.

Hope all is well! Longer later.