Busy, busy, busy

[dagibbs]

It has been a busy time... and continues to be so.

Will I get some Christmas shopping done? Will I get packed to leave? Gad.



Trip to the UK was, while not uneventful, at least successful. Flight over went fine, though there seemed a high incidence of babies on the flight. Drive from Heathrow to Loughborough "loffburro" (which is near Leicester "lester", kind of north-east of Birmingham) was more interesting (and longer) than expected as an oil refinery blew up, and the M1 was closed. Navigation is fun, cause if you're looking for signs on the roundabouts, they will usually tell which highway is heading out that particular road, but they won't supply you with anything useful like North/South or East/West, but instead the name of the next little town that the highway is heading for, and you need to desperately guess, or try and read your map in the middle of the roundabout. And, yes, lots and lots of roundabouts.

I didn't find driving on the "wrong" side of the road, or shifting with the "wrong" hand all that much of a problem, though if I weren't comfortable with a standard, and didn't occasionally shift my car left-handed (if, say, my right-hand was occupied), I might have had more trouble. I did find that sitting on the right side of the car really helped, I just had to make sure to drive such that I was closer to the centre of the road than the rest of the car. I did frequently, though, reach for my seatbelt with the wrong hand when I sat in the car, and occasionally walked up to the wrong door of the car. But, no on-the-road mistakes, which is a very good thing.

Oh, and the Brits do this crazy thing on wider two-lane (not dual carriage way) roads, where if the road is moderately wide, they'll drive towards the outside of their lanes, and people will pass up the middle of the road, straddling the centre line. At 60+ mph.

I was worried about my flight home, since I got Ottawa weather reports on Thursday evening, calling for 20-25 cms of snow on Friday -- and if Ottawa was getting snow, so would Montreal be. While the flights both to and from Amsterdam (route home was London->Amsterdam->Montreal->Ottawa) were late leaving, I got in to Montreal in reasonable time -- though it took them over an hour to get my luggage to the carousel, and I wasn't last. But, once I cleared customs, I found that all flights from Montreal to Ottawa had been cancelled, so I ended up taking a Voyageur bus, using a voucher supplied by Air Canada. Amazingly, given the weather, there was no lineup at the transfer desk to wait in to get that voucher and deal with things. The bus ride was fine, and in the end I think I was about an hour late getting home -- so not too bad at all.

So, Friday night spent at home, then...

Saturday morning get up, get packed, wander by kattale's for some waffles and socialization. leolac was delighted to find a piano, and played a little bit. Then, on to Toronto, heading for metalana's for dinner. Made a poor route choice into Toronto -- DVP then west accross Bloor to west of Danforth, should have gone down Avenue Rd, I think -- and missed finding her place, called on cell, and got rescued. Drove by a very bright orange (glowing!) tiger twice. Had a good dinner at metalana's, and despite being worried about being late, actually arrived earlier than her other two guests.

Then, off to the party that was the reason for the trip to T.O., northbard's Vigil, Saturnalia, and (mild this year) debauch. Met some good people, got to spend some good time with horsetraveller who I hadn't seen in far too long, got to play a bit with leolac, and otherwise had a good time until 4:30am or so, then back to metalana's place, sleep, coffee, breakfast, and headed for home.

Arrived home, and start preparing for dinner, as pezchica and scubajim was joining us for (the now a tradition) Sunday dinner, with vegan chili by me, and meated chili, salad, and buns by pezchica. Cat joined us for dinner, and Ali joined us after dinner for socializing and on-the-couch puppy-pile snuggling.

Looking to the future... next post. ;)



P.S. Party, my place, December 30th.

Comments

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Made a poor route choice into Toronto -- DVP then west accross Bloor to west of Danforth, should have gone down Avenue Rd, I think

If you're coming along the 401, in my experience as a passenger the Allen Expressway is usually the fastest way down to Eglinton. From there, though, I'm not sure what the fastest way down to Bloor is.