Vanouver bound?

It's looking likely that I'm going to get a load more work over in Vancouver this year. This is a good thing for several reasons, most of which are practical and logical:

• I'll be out of the house and this will help my wife
  
• I'll be able to save some money up for finding a place to move into when I'm back
• I'll be billable at work which is important at a time after we had redundancies

Of course all these practical reasons might not outweigh the fact that I'll be away from my son and I feel bad about that (see previous post "I want you stay with me Daddy") and do wonder how being apart (with the current atmosphere) will affect him.

Also, is it really a good idea to be running away like this?

I do have mixed feelings about it all now when it may be happening, I guess the best I can do is reason that there isn't much choice given the projects available where I work, and make the best of keeping in touch with him and spending serious quality time when I get back.

This may not be such a good thing ...

A really quick post about what happened on Tuesday:

• Annual review - apparently I'm a "nice" and approachable person but need to try harder on the leadership skills (fair point). Thankfully "nice" is enough to get me a good pay-rise so I have, until inflation and my spending kicks in, extra money per month which may help with moving out
• It is now possible that I could have another 6-9months in Vancouver. This is good from a financial point of view (if I can control my spending), it also gets me out of the house and gives my wife space, and of course it means Fiona has free reign and will be getting out and about even more (hopefully)

More money is undeniably a good thing ... not sure about more travel

Hi Honey, I'm Home!

Well, after the rather drunken post I didn't really get a chance to write any blog entries as I was busy packing and sorting everything out for flying back to the UK. FYI: didn't have a bad head in the morning after trying (and apparently failing) to drink myself into oblivion!

Packing took Friday night and a little bit of Saturday morning and resulted in one very heavy suitcase (with almost zero bob-mode clothes in it) and a suit-bag that almost wouldn't fold in half it had so much stuff in it!

Saturday I went for a wander around to kill time before going to the airport, managed to get a few shots of myself; looking both a bit winds-swept (and interesting?) and puzzled - this later look being down to the fact that it was quite bright and sunny and I forgot to take my sunglasses out. Anyway, you can see the pics on my Flickr page, here's one I really like:
So, had to finish my wanderings eventually and get to the airport where I found that the luggage was 27kg over weight (and that's even after stuffing some things into the box my mountain bike was going back in!). Just to put this into perspective, the allowance on Zoom for cattle-class is only 20kg so I had 47kg in actual fact which isn't *that* bad (considering the number of clothes and shoes in there).

Flight wasn't too bad but I can never get comfy and sleep properly on planes. Watched a good film on the flight, Juno, which was quite amusing and moving. Think I dozed through the rest of the flight so didn't get to see any other films.

Finally got back home on Sunday quite tired, jet-lagged and hungry (you don't get much to eat on these flights). And at that point I think I'll leave it there and post again when I've collected my thoughts on being back home!

From WOW, WOW, WOW to OW, OW, OW

High heels hurt! If you go wandering round for a whole afternoon in 3" heels your feet will hurt like goodness knows what! I speak from experience!

So, my plan for today was to go shopping and spend as much of the day in TGirl heaven as is possible! Well to be honest it takes me a while to get everything sorted out for a trip out so I had to do the following first:

• Bath, wash hair, etc
• Run the epilator over my legs (the first burst of pain for today)
• Make-up
  

I was actually quite happy with the make-up in the end, I had some sparkly eye-shadow from The Body Shop in a dark purple and also a bright silver. I also managed to get reasonably straight lines with liquid eye-liner (this is *really* hard to put on!) and I've got some nice Clinique mascara to finish it off properly. See what you think:
Then it was time to pick an outfit - that took a while as well! Settled on purple silk top, black skirt, brown boots. I'm still not sure about the skirt too be honest, not sure it looks that good really but it was the only decent skirt I had (the others were a little short).

Anyway, I wandered through the mall here, bought phone credit (silly phones over here actually time-out credit after 1month!), and then took the SkyTrain over to Metropolis (the big mall in Vancouver) and had a good look round there. The place was packed though and eventually had to try and get some food (yummy sushi).

Even by then I was getting tired - hard floors, lots walking around! Hadn't really found much to buy either - I think it really wasn't a good shopping day OR I needed a girl friend along to help! Anyway, finally found some things I liked and tried them on with 50% success rate.

Was going to try and find shoes to go with the outfits but couldn't see anything I liked in Nine West so decided enough was enough! Feet really tired by this point ... then I had to go to the grocery store on the way back to get more fruit juice (I don't drink anything else) and that was sooo much weight to carry back.

Finally got back to the hotel and just dropped!

Anyway, sucessful shop and now I need to get to bed (after removing the beautifully painted make-up) and prepare for a long bike ride tomorrow that will hopefully help keep the figure in trim!

Night, night all.

WOW, WOW, WOW! Update

Here's the only pic that is even mildly okay from last night - just as proof that I was actually outside and not all of my pictures have a hotel room as background ;-)


Next time, I'll take a decent camera and get some proper pictures!

WOW, WOW, WOW!

First of all, thanks to ... well you know who you are, for dinner tonight! It was fantastic! I got to be "ME" for a whole evening, in public, for the very first time! This means so much to me I can't put it into words!

Now the bad news: my phone camera is useless! So no good pics of this evening unfortunately, I have shots of me
in the outfit I wore (see below) but none of me outside that actually came out well enough to want to publish :( All I can say is; if anyone wants to see pics of me out and about I need another trip out :D

So, anyway, I got back to the hotel at about 17:00 and needed to get ready really quickly ... which I've discovered it impossible - I need to shower, sort my face out (which is terribly blotchy due to aircon, travelling, stress, and just general bad luck).

Then it was make-up time ... I was so nervous I thought I was going to make a complete mess. I actually managed to get liquid eye-liner on and discovered that this was MUCH easier when I didn't close my eyes; I got a straighter line and didn't actually blink (causing the eye-liner to go up my eye-lid) as much. I wasn't totally happy with the make-up, I think I went a bit silly with the green eye-shadow and my skin still seemed terrible :( Anyway, it could have been worse I guess.

Just as an aside, I'm walking past mirrors alot these days and thinking that I'd really like to just smash my face with a hammer and make it look better! Obviously this isn't a literal thing (it'd hurt too much for a start) but really, I want to look better, and find it frustrating that I can't.

Another thing I'll mention (which isn't in strictly chronological order, but I best say it now before I forget/fall asleep) is that I was seriously worried about not being girlie enough and doing things that I think are guy actions/feelings/thoughts. I actually worried about this most of the evening until I came to be walking home when I realised I was being quite girlie and actually am much like that (though the several drinks I had could have helped with a more positive point of view).

Anyway, what I really felt walking home was that I wanted to do this more, I wanted to get dressed up in nice clothes and go out and have fun, this was right, this was how it should be, I should try and do this as much as possible and keep doing it until I get it right and until there is no doubt that this is me, not the other me, the real me!

Back to more concrete thoughts: Had a nice dinner, lots to drink (sadly not as fast acting and effective as I'd hoped, I still feel relatively sober), a good chat and overall a fantastic evening (thanks again to ...)

Walked back without incident, trying to take photos of myself and failing - note to self: next time take a decent camera out with you to capture the evening!

Didn't really get and weird looks, certainly didn't notice any in the restuarant (Earl's in downtown Vancouver) and the staff were smart enough to say "ladies" and use female pronouns thorough-out the evening which was nice (hint to anyone reading this who fancies attempting to chat me up; good manners count for an awful lot).

When I came back into the hotel I even said "hi" to the girl on the desk (wonder if she knew who I was), I was half tempted to go back and really have a good talk to her as I was feeling that happy that things had gone well (or at least hadn't gone badly).

Another bizarre twist to the evening, which was unexpected and quite pleasant was the very brief chat that I had to the guy that rushed into the lift just after me; he was very pleasant and respectful and I was actually touched by just how normal and chatty he was to me when he could probably clearly see that there was something different about me.

So, overall I feel slightly drunk, happy, less confused (though this may change in the morning) and ready to go out more (I'll probably also be more nervous about this in the morning). And I really do feel that this is "me" ... some people may not understand this, I can't claim that I fully do, but I feel much happier being this "me" than anything else ... well apart from the fact that I'd like to make "me" more "me" but that's getting complicated!

Time for bed as I'm clearly typing fast but not making any sense anymore!

Love to all reading this!

A quick slow walk out

Since I'm having a bit of a crisis of confidence at the moment I didn't actually think I would get anything done tonight. I *wanted* to quickly go out on my bike; feeling bad that a) I spent alot of money on it and haven't used it much (at all) this week, and b) that I'm putting on weight and losing what figure I had hoped (in vain likely) that I was getting. I also wanted to go an have a wander around in one of my new outfits.

I didn't think I'd get anything done.

But I did :D


Only a quick walk out; actually went to La Senza as I noticed that they had an offer on valentine lingerie, sadly there was nothing left by the time I got there - maybe for the best, the credit card is still smoking from the weekends shopping!

Anyway, time for bed.

"Forgive quickly ...."

"... kiss slowly"

Well I like the sentiment but I was quite surprised to see this whole quote on the sign outside a Church that I pass on the way to work! No what I've come to expect from the usual Church signage - they usually have some rather dry quote from the bible.

Things are obviously looking up in the religious world :D