Goodness gracious great balls of fire!

So the weekend isn't even over yet, and so far it's been pretty great. A rundown:

A few days ago I got an email from the director of the Comm. School at my old uni (where I still teach, so he's technically my old boss). He told me he was going to be in London, and asked if I wanted to meet up on Friday or Saturday. We worked out Friday, and he said he would take me to a play and out to dinner. Awesome!

It was the first time I had traveled to London by myself. I got off the bus at Marble Arch and spent a few hours wandering up and down Oxford Street. In addition to having some really cool stores (Selfridges is my new spiritual home) it is also the name of the street where my dad grew up, so it has some personal significance for me. Then I navigated the tube all by myself to Leicester Square, where I met my boss. We had dinner at a lovely Indonesian restuarant in Soho, coffee at a corner coffee shop* and then went to a play called Someone Else's Shoes.
He actually chose the play quite well - it was about advertising and globalization, which as you know are what I studied in grad school there. And there were no seating arrangements, so we got to choose where to sit - and we got front row center seats. And trust me, with the gorgeous male lead, front row center was the place to be! ;) It was great fun.

Today, for St. Paddy's Day, Chrissie and I spent the day in town doing all sorts of shopping. Our shopping included lots of book shopping - Waterstone's was having a sale on children's books, so I bought a lot of great books for PJ and Maggie. We then went to the street show Luminox, a giant fire display on Broad Street in honor of the 1000th (yes, that's thousandth) anniversary of the city of Oxford.

After the show, we went to O'Neill's, one of the specifically Irish pubs, and got some Guinness. It was a crazy ridiculous idea to go to an Irish pub today, but it was worth it. Usually, on St. Paddy's Day, they give out Guinness hats and badges and stuff, but I was too late to get one. So, I traded my unfinished Guinness for the badge off of someone's hat. (I didn't want it anyway - I drank a lot of it, but I just can't really drink beer, especially not whole pints of it!)

A year ago today, my fellow Master's students and I were handing in our theory papers and heading out to celebrate. I can't believe how fast a year has gone by, and I hope I continue to have as much fun in the years to come here as I still do every day.

*The view at the corner coffee shop was, ummm, interesting. I'll leave it at that, and let those of you who are familiar with the Soho area of London fill in the blanks. ;)