Starbucks, The Lord Mayor's Extravaganza, and the Drunks of Muswell Hill

Today being the end of another long week over here in London, saw many new eventful things.

First of all, Will is now employed, by Starbucks (Flashback to 2002, when Will was ALSO employed by Starbucks...as a shift supervisor...not making enough money to cover the rent...) so being in a similar situation when you're 27 as when you're 22 is...not cool. But as many people keep telling us (although I'm pretty sure none of those people understand how much it costs to LIVE in London) this is a step, it will lead to other things. Hopefully, the good people in water quality will agree with them. But since Will and I have agreed that this is probably not the case, we will both be looking for jobs the old-fashioned British way (which we didn't know,but are glad to be enlightened) we will volunteer (yes, for free) our time in the field that we desire to work in, in order to gain "real life experience". While we both thought our 5 years in the USA was "real life", apparently, we were gravely mistaken. Anyhoo, I'm remaining positive that this NEW outlook will be the thing we've been waiting for, and will grant us both the jobs we need...to live...because Starbucks, rent it does not pay.

On another note, the Lord Mayor's Show was this Saturday. I would LOVE to tell you that this was awesome, as there WERE more fireworks, but sadly, we didn't go, because, we overslept, and then decided that we'd rather go to the V&A, as they have a couple of exhibitions that are soon closing. So being the cultured Americans we are, we took 3 buses to said museum, and were able to see 3 rooms before the museum closed, but it was worth it, and we're both going back as soon as we can. The textiles and pottery and misc. other things are amazing, and well worth any amount of time you can give them.

Other than that we've had a fairly lack-luster week. I started updating my proposal for the millionth time (but this time WILL be the best), am in the process of writing another paper, this one on the history of University Museums and Public Engagement (my topic minus the history), trying to approach writing a journal article AND figuring out funding and conferences for the 2008 year. Good times.

We've had a more social week than normal as Piero is back from Italy and about to leave for his fieldwork in Chile this Thursday, so we went out a couple of nights to catch up, and hopefully that'll continue into this week. (Although last week being Reading Week was a lot less pressure :-)

The cats seems fine, they are out more as there have been less fireworks, but since you can still purchase these in off-license shops, there are still rogue fireworks every now and then scaring the crap out of them (literally, we've bought more litter the past two weeks than the entire time we've been here).

Finally, the drunks in Muswell Hill are out and about as normal (on a Sunday evening), one of which is talking to no one underneath our window. I just think that someone should tell him to take a night off, for all our sakes...