Wedding Thank You Card

Wedding Thank You Card

Image by Jonathan Vo
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52.16 - Busy, well-travelled & indecisive

Image by dichohecho
It's been a good week. It's been very busy, especially compared with my past few but I think I like it that way. As long as I have a day to recover.
Last Sunday, after posting my 52.15 I decided to DO something. So I got in the car & drove up into the Quantocks and went for a walk. I tried to go up Broomfield Hill but managed to go around the side instead. I'll probably use a map next time I try that. The bottom right photo is from then. Wellies were definitely a good idea what with all the dead leaves and mud. I was slightly uneasy about wandering around on my own, but I decided that Broomfield isn't exactly a hotbed for crime, and I had my phone with me just in case (not that I could've called anyone much with the terrible signal up there).
Later on I went home & hacked up Kate's beautifully carved pumpkin & made soup. It was pretty nice, even if the addition of bacon wasn't quite as good as it might've been. Then I just hung around & awaited the return of (3/4 of) my family. I tried to take photos of myself for a new railcard but it wasn't working and I think the bottom left of the above was the best of the bunch. Sadly it doesn't fit their requirements.
Monday was, I think, just bras really.
Tuesday was till training. Supposedly 9-5.30. We got into the till training room (formerly the corridor leading to the till training room) and were just about to get started when the fire alarm went off. So we all traipsed out into the cold and huddled in Goodlands Gardens with the rest of the store staff, arranged by floor. It turned out to just be a drill & there was a short meeting afterwards so the managers could tell us what went wrong.
Tll training itself was fairly straight forward, lots of it is just following prompts. There are even pictures of chip & pin machines that come up when you select pay by card. We finished earlier than intended so I went back to Lingerie for a bit. Hannah (one of my colleagues who's absolutely lovely and also on a gap year) and I had to move a couple of racks of bras which was entertaining. Luckily there were no customers around to see us knocking everything off the hooks...
My till number started working pretty quickly and I sold a man some tights... not for him apparently, and he didn't seem too interested in a Debenhams card. I've discovered that the most difficult part about being on the till is remembering to ask all the questions, and to take in the answers! I'm sure I've asked people several times over if they need a carrier bag... Apparently Lingerie is very likely to get test shopped in November so we have to make sure we do all of it every time. Eek.
I had Wednesday off and Mum was feeling a bit icky so Kate and I took the initiative and ran away to Wells, narrowly avoiding a large lorry attempting a right angle bend in Westonzoyland. We had lunch from the farmers' market, saw & heard the town crier in action, bought some cheese and searched (fruitlessly) for a spaghetti jar for Granny. A rather chilly looking Starbucks man gave us free samples of Dark Cherry Mocha, one of their Christmas drinks this year, which was surprisingly nice for something cherry flavoured.
We went & looked at the Bishop's Palace & moat, which looks v nice with all the orangey yellowy trees, and saw a few people getting mobbed by ducks, swans and seagulls. Rather too many seagulls for my liking. We had coffee(me) and hot chocolate(Kate) and cake in a coffee shop/café further down the main street and wrote a couple of postcards. They had lots of art, including photos of Arizona, funny abstract paintings and some nice watercolours of geese and other animals. After that we wandered back up to the Cathedral and jumped about like idiots on the green (top left, taken by Kate) which I'm sure counts as exercise and counteracts the cake...
Thursdayyyy. Started with LOTS of traffic in Taunton. I decided to go to Tesco before work for brunch apples and chocolates and discovered that through the middle of town was not the best way to go. I was behind my friend Sarah's Mum in the jams but she didn't see me. Anyway. More bras. Jenny was off sick so we had no-one to do fittings and then Mary went home and I was on my own for about 5 hours, although I did get a break (coffee & apple). I think I did fairly well considering I was on my own on the department. I got a bit confused a few times and had to cancel transactions (which is annoying as you have to have a supervisor sign a slip), as well as forgetting to give a woman her change. That meant I had to run over to womenswear to get someone who could open the draw up but hopefully I'll learn from my mistakes...? At the end of the day I swapped with someone on womenswear and learnt to cash-up a till.
After work I went to Amy's house before going for drinks with Amy & Meg. I went there as going home would've taken up all the time between finishing work and meeting them. Oh and I was invited. The aforementioned chocolates were for Amy's Mum who has put up with and fed me a few times before. I drove Amy into town where we met Meg and had a nice chat over drinks (non alcoholic for me) before going home at the very civilised hour of 10.30pm. (Amy had come back up from Plymouth University for reading week)
Friday was a rather longer day. It started at 7.30am when I got up to take Mum into Bridgwater to catch the coach to London (& Anna). After doing so (and seeing a carnival float in Asda car park) I failed to realise that one can't turn right out of that-street-where-the-Admiral-Blake-is and ended up going back round by the hospital & library. Oh well. Well actually not really. When I got home I went on the computer (which Mum had used earlier) to print myself a map but then Dad pointed out that it was already 9something and I was working at 10. Oops. So I had an extremely quick shower and as I no longer had time to Park and Ride Dad kindly drove me to work, I ended up being early.
Yet more bras. And Sheila (my nice supervisor) taught me to bra fit! She'll be checking all the ones I do for a bit to make sure I'm not getting it horifically wrong. I fitted two people on Friday & they seemed pretty happy with it.
After work I went & found Lydia (who's currently planning on 2 gap years) and Dad picked us up. We went home, packed up my stuff and set out for Oxford! Yess. I had Saturday off so I decided earlier in the week that I wanted to go somewhere. York and Norwich (Steph & Caroline) were too far away & too expensive so I went for Aletta in Oxford (whether she liked it or not) and on the spur of the moment decided to invite Lydia too. I drove because the train was very expensive (especially without a railcard) and the only coaches left before I finished work.
The driving itself was fine (and Lydia read to me about Henry VIII), although Cheltenham is now one of my least favourite town centres due to its ridiculously complicated and incomprehensible road markings. Ee did get stuck for a bit on the A40 between there and Oxford but it cleared up just as Lydia was considering getting out for a wee.
When we got to the ring road I asked Lydia to look out for Park & Ride signs, and when she immediately said "there it is" I assumed she was joking. She wasn't. But I managed to realise and turn off in time. We left the car in the park and ride (overnight is allowed there, it seems safe enough and is a LOT less than city centre overnight parking) and hauled our bags onto a delightfully green bus.
After being deposited at the West end of the High Street we trekked along, past Queen's, out to the Florey Building (where they put the first years) and found Aletta. After a lot of excitement over seeing each other (largely from Aletta & Lydia) we calmed down and got ready to go out again. A gang composed of Aletta's neighbours and college friends and us went to Pizza Hut (where they were very slow, got my pizza wrong, took ages to do another and gave us our starters after our pizza) and thence to Queen's College's "Beer Cellar". There was karaoke so naturally Aletta got signed up (without her knowledge) and she & Lydia sang "It's Raining Men" with a lot of passion (I wasn't drinking enough to want to join in...). I got a couple of lovely photos of that. Aletta also decided it would be funny if she introduced Lydia to the guy who plays Dean Thomas in Harry Potter (who goes to Queen's) and then we all ran away. Hmm. Then Lydia threatened to (and apparently did) walk on the precious grass before we left. We trekked across Oxford and back, and eventually ended up in a bar/club called Escape. But then I appropriately enough escaped and went & had coffee with one of the guys I met at interviews last December (Mark).
When I joined the others again they'd misplaced Lydia but she eventually turned up back at Aletta's room with soemone else from the building. Then Aletta's neighbour (Dai, who was with us) discovered that his lock was broken and he(and his girlfriend who was visiting from Wales) couldn't get back into his room. He tried to get the caretakers but it was 3am so not much happened on that front. After a good haf hour of desperate key turning and door rattling he gave up and Aletta sorted it out that two of the other people we were with (Ben & Nathan) would share one of their rooms and Dai & Tash could have the other. It was eventually sorted out in the morning by a carpenter who changed the lock. But, back in the early morning, Ben & Nathan hung around in Aletta's room talking until 4.40am.
I woke up at 7 feeling time-of-the-month type icky and pretty tired and managed to get to sleep again for a bit before Aletta had to get up to go rowing at 9.15. Lydia & I dragged ourselves out of bed and into Oxford proper again. I went & had breakfast and a walk around Christchurch meadow with Mark(top right, Japanese tourist impression taken by Mark) while Lydia wandered, bought overpriced soup and agonised over chips and dip. It was nice seeing Mark and I'm glad we still got on pretty well 11 months after we last saw each other, althoguh I did feel guilty about abandoning Lydia (even though she insisted it was fine).
Later on we found Aletta again and ended up having lunch and hanging around in Subway with more Queen's people before packing up, saying goodbye and dragging all our stuff across Oxford to the bus stop. The journey back started out an hour later than planned due to long goodbyes and slow walking crowds on the way to the bus but we made pretty good time (2.5 hours compared to 3 on the way up). The weather was lovely and sunny in the morning in Oxford but it deteriorated steadily and by the time we got to Bristol there was heavy rain. Luckily there wasn't too much traffic and it was dark so I had lights to go by.
We had arranged to meet Lydia's Mum at the Bridgwater South services but as we were about to pass Bridgwater North (junction 23) I noticed a sign saying "North Petherton Carnival 08/11/2008 - for Bridgwater use junction 23". So we did. The bit of road coming up to the roundabout where the services are was full of police, ambulances, pedestrians and cars & tractors parked on the verge, and the services themself were (grammar check?) full of people parking for the carnival. But it turned out ok, Lydia's Mum managed to find us in the end.
When I got home I found that Dad had gone to Sherbourne to be in a concert and Mum & Kate were waiting for me to get home so they could go to one. So I sat at home with their supper leftovers and a computer. Since then I've slept a lot, sorted out photos, rectified a drag-and-drop accident Mum had and kept very warm to try & shift a sniffle I developed from the coldness of Oxford at night and walking around puddle-infested meadows.
Congratulations on reaching the end, you must've been very bored.
Right, bedtime!

(Mosaic because I'm too lazy to choose one, and wanted to include a couple that I didn't take...)

My Maple Tree

Image by Striking Photography by Bo Insogna
My Maple Tree is just starting to change colors in this 2010 autumn season. Oct. 15, 2010 james-insogna.artistwebsites.com/featured/my-maple-tree-j...


Buy Fine art striking Autumn fall season nature landscape photography prints, posters, greeting cards and stock images for licensing. www.BoInsogna.com Questions Direct: 303-834-2524 Toll Free: 1-888-682-0122

Maple Tree Portrait

Image by Striking Photography by Bo Insogna
Big Maple starting to change colors in the autumn fall foliage season. Looking up. james-insogna.artistwebsites.com/featured/maple-tree-port...




Fine Art Poster Print. Buy striking Colorful Autumn Fall nature landscape photography prints, posters, greeting cards and stock images for licensing. www.BoInsogna.com Questions Direct: 303-834-2524 Toll Free: 1-888-682-0122

Maple Tree Portrait 2

Image by Striking Photography by Bo Insogna
Big Maple starting to change colors in the autumn fall foliage season. Looking up. Orton Effect. Fine Art Poster Print. james-insogna.artistwebsites.com/featured/1-maple-tree-po...

Buy striking Colorful Autumn Fall nature landscape photography prints, posters, greeting cards and stock images for licensing. www.BoInsogna.com Questions Direct: 303-834-2524 Toll Free: 1-888-682-0122