Plan of Action

Rare for being a day ahead, but tonight I am fairly confident that I will be doing some packing. This is for two reasons.

The first is that my flight is at 10:05am (i.e. leaving the house a little after 7am to get there on time) and so I feel that the morning will give me limited time. Tomorrow evening I will be going to the pub after work so that will again give me less time to actually do the packing in.

Second reason is that more than most trips, this one actually requires some thought and consideration over what is put in the suitcase - I actually need to remember the important things, for example. I have already started making a list. We'll see how it goes.

Weather Turning

So as we're now only a couple of days away from October, it's appropriate that I came home tonight in torrential rain and increasing dark. It's what you start to expect for autumnal weather, and I actually took a coat today in addition to my jacket for the first time in ages. It was needed, too.

One of my thoughts as I left the station was that I'm glad in a matter of days I'm off to the warmth of California. I'm still wondering how Chrissi is going to adapt to this weather when she comes here!

This evening was marked by the annoyance of trains - typically, when one is late, and the connecting train is on time, meaning that the connecting train leaves as my first train arrives in a delicious mocking fashion. The following train then was also late, but I did make the last 'regular' bus and get back only about 20-25 minutes late in the end!

Dedication Irony

So this afternoon at work I was at a meeting in central London which finished at 4pm, and by the time I was back to Waterloo it was a little after 4:30pm. Had I been on my own, I would have been sorely tempted to go home, however I was with my line manager / team leader type person. While he suggested I go straight home, I was in my 'I am dedicated' guise, knowing full well that he would be going back to the office, so I claimed I had some things to tidy up too.

Then on the train back, he called our manager just to check on something else, and was told that he shouldn't go back to the office and should go straight home. We were at this point already on a train that took us back to Raynes Park but also on to Surbiton. At this point, I could have gotten home at about 5:15 had I gone directly from Waterloo, but I didn't.

Of course, having already committed to going back to the office to do something, I couldn't very well change my mind now and talk myself out of it. Annoying! So I did get back to the office at 5pm (although I was sorely tempted to get off the train, walk down a couple of carriages and sneak back onto it). I got home a couple of hours later.

Day 1 Achievements

So my day one achievements on my grand list are pretty minimal. I do have a replacement bag though, wich means I don't need to go and purchase one this week. I have also obviously been reminded of something else I need to do this week!

Today was football in the evening and a good game it was, as I put in one of my better performances with some well-timed tackles and a couple of well struck goals, a not-too-shabby performance. As there are people on after us now, we seem to be vacating the pitch earlier - meaning that today I actually got back home around 8:05 and thus have an additional half hour of the evening to enjoy!

Challenge is now to do something with it ...

List for the Week

As I realise time is increasingly counting down, I suppose that I should make a list of things that need to be sorted this week, so that I remember to do so. So this is what I need to get sorted before the end of the week:

1. Money. This one should be relatively self-explanatory, I think. It's about getting the correct currency to spend when I am in the USA, as they do so tend to be intolerant of people paying in pounds.
2. Visa Waiver. I am never sure if this is required or not, but there is something on the ESTA website that needs to be filled out before travel if you are going to the USA, except that it never seems to be required once you go there. I'll look into this.
3. Packing. Most trips I will typically throw the majority of the necessary clothes into my suitcase the day before, or morning before my flight. As I have a little more that probably needs to be packed this time, it might make sense to plan a little further ahead for this trip.
4. Suitcase. This is a surprising one as I actually have a very nice suitcase, which is both easy to move, lightweight and solid. Unfortunately, it has been kidnapped by Rachel on her trip to Turkey, and she doesn't return until after I depart to America. I may need to find a replacement bag - well, obviously I will, but I may need to purchase one too.
5. Any Pre-Wedding Organisation. I have a nagging feeling there should be at least something that I will need to do on this, but I can't for the life of me think what it is. I'll put it down here as a reminder though.

That should be enough to be getting on with for the week at least. I'll let you know as we go through the week how I actually succeed at these tasks.

Beating the Counter

So unlike my typical Saturday or late night posts, this one is utterly genuine and is in fact being posted a fraction before midnight. In fact, it is being posted at 23:58 as opposed to the official "oops, I forgot until after midnight" time of 23:59.

I nearly didn't make it though as for the third consecutive week I was dozing off during Match of the Day. Today I didn't fall fully asleep though, just dozed a little and found myself closing my eyes at times. I think it was during the highlights of the Blackpool-Blackburn match, and it was a case of I'd close my eyes and something would happen then, so I'd have to open them to see what it was.

My increasing tendency to doze during this does somewhat suggest though that the football this season is struggling to hold my attention!

For Better, For Worse

So if I'm honest today was a much worse day than yesterday. Although there may be some light at the end of the tunnel, but we will see on that one.

I did manage to get WoW downloaded and installed though. Not a great amount of consolation really, but there it is - that much at least is done. It does look pretty with full graphics and on widescreen, that much I can say.

One of Those Days

This evening I was meant to be going out after work - I was going into London with a couple of work people and would meet other former work people for a drink and general convivial conversation and so on. However, this plan did not transpire.

Mainly because I had a not-so-good day, which meant I was not in the mood and recognised this fairly well, which was unusually smart of me. Several irritating things happened today at work which I am trying to put down to a day of bad coincidences and not an overwhelming landslide of annoyance.

Also, it was raining torrentially at lunch and I got absolutely soaked through. I didn't have my umbrella with me either, although I don't think it'd have done to much good anyway - it was that torrential. This was the only time throughout the day that it would do that too.

Then when I got home, I found the answer to my WoW patching issue, about five minutes after I'd uninstalled WoW and deleted all the libraries in an attempt to start all over again. So we start the whole process from scratch!

As I said - one of those days!