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Extreme sleep deprivation
Aug. 19th, 2004 06:09 pmThanks to everyone who came out for my birthday dinner on Saturday. It was great to see everyone!
After spending too much money to get the train back to London for the express purpose of catching the tube back to the apartment, we arrived just as the doors to the Underground entrance at Paddington were being locked. It was 12:20. On Saturday night. The Burger King in the station was still open, FFS. The taxi ride back to North London was expensive but I got to see some nice architecture I usually miss by being, well, under ground.
Sunday I had to get up bright and early to collect Amelia from Heathrow. Unfortunately I had a pounding headache so I had to endure an hour of the Piccadilly Line without being able to read my Good Book (TM). I would have timed my arrival perfectly to meet her, if they hadn't kept her flight sitting on the tarmac for an hour while they waited for a gate to be free (I thought that all the luggage off her flight was being searched because it had come from Suspicious Foreign Parts).
Anyway, she was remarkably non jet lagged for someone who had just flown in from Kazakhstan and taken the coach for 48 hours through western China to get to the flight in the first place, but we took it easy on Sunday afternoon at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nasratvan Gelder HQ and had a fabulous barbecue.
Despite getting to bed early, I totally failed to sleep on Sunday night.
Monday morning, we lost a couple hours on the Internet trying to sort out Amelia's flight home. Then we went to the British Library for the Silk Road exhibition. I highly recommend this, and indeed the British Library. It's a nice place to chill out in central London. There was a certain element of weirdness seeing the exhibition with someone who just came back from the eastern end of the Silk Road, but she wanted to see it because she only got to see the parts that are technically in China. She still knows a lot more about all the cultures in the part of the world than I do.
And you can tell she's just spent extended time in China - she thought London was clean! and non-crowded! (in august too).
When we finished at the library we caught the coach back to Bristol. As we arrived after 6 (when buses go wobbly) and we had heavy stuff, I asked Jason to pick us up. Which he did, but the exhaust fell off the car on his way. As nobody felt like cooking after that, we opted for curry. Some of you will know that our preferred curry house is of Nepali extraction. Amelia spent some time studying in Nepal many years ago, so she went in and shocked the hell out of them by speaking to them in Nepali. You don't get much of that in east Bristol!
While I've been at work, Amelia has been exploring Bristol and surrounding area. I was giving her very careful directions about how to get around here when I realized that if she just survived several months travelling through the Central Asian part of China, she can probably handle this...
She was off to the airport at Stupid O'clock this morning so I didn't get a chance to see her off, and is due to be back in Boston later today.
Despite being at home and going to bed early again, I haven't had much sleep this week at all. Work has been an unmitigated disaster, and I suspect I'm only coping with it as well as I am because I'm too tired to get angry. Still, only about 6 days left.
Having just spent 4 days with someone who lives to travel, I'm sort of regretting having accepted the new job, but really there's no way I'm healthy enough to spend any extended time on the road.
Oh, I haven't seen Amelia in person in approximately 15 years. We've only met once, in a youth hostel in Cambridge when I was an undergrad and she was about to start university. We've kept in touch ever since, and it was really great that we can still have a lot of fun together.
I understand I'm supposed to be doing Stuff this weekend, but am pretty sure sleep is going to be happening instead. And painkillers.
After spending too much money to get the train back to London for the express purpose of catching the tube back to the apartment, we arrived just as the doors to the Underground entrance at Paddington were being locked. It was 12:20. On Saturday night. The Burger King in the station was still open, FFS. The taxi ride back to North London was expensive but I got to see some nice architecture I usually miss by being, well, under ground.
Sunday I had to get up bright and early to collect Amelia from Heathrow. Unfortunately I had a pounding headache so I had to endure an hour of the Piccadilly Line without being able to read my Good Book (TM). I would have timed my arrival perfectly to meet her, if they hadn't kept her flight sitting on the tarmac for an hour while they waited for a gate to be free (I thought that all the luggage off her flight was being searched because it had come from Suspicious Foreign Parts).
Anyway, she was remarkably non jet lagged for someone who had just flown in from Kazakhstan and taken the coach for 48 hours through western China to get to the flight in the first place, but we took it easy on Sunday afternoon at
nasratvan Gelder HQ and had a fabulous barbecue.Despite getting to bed early, I totally failed to sleep on Sunday night.
Monday morning, we lost a couple hours on the Internet trying to sort out Amelia's flight home. Then we went to the British Library for the Silk Road exhibition. I highly recommend this, and indeed the British Library. It's a nice place to chill out in central London. There was a certain element of weirdness seeing the exhibition with someone who just came back from the eastern end of the Silk Road, but she wanted to see it because she only got to see the parts that are technically in China. She still knows a lot more about all the cultures in the part of the world than I do.
And you can tell she's just spent extended time in China - she thought London was clean! and non-crowded! (in august too).
When we finished at the library we caught the coach back to Bristol. As we arrived after 6 (when buses go wobbly) and we had heavy stuff, I asked Jason to pick us up. Which he did, but the exhaust fell off the car on his way. As nobody felt like cooking after that, we opted for curry. Some of you will know that our preferred curry house is of Nepali extraction. Amelia spent some time studying in Nepal many years ago, so she went in and shocked the hell out of them by speaking to them in Nepali. You don't get much of that in east Bristol!
While I've been at work, Amelia has been exploring Bristol and surrounding area. I was giving her very careful directions about how to get around here when I realized that if she just survived several months travelling through the Central Asian part of China, she can probably handle this...
She was off to the airport at Stupid O'clock this morning so I didn't get a chance to see her off, and is due to be back in Boston later today.
Despite being at home and going to bed early again, I haven't had much sleep this week at all. Work has been an unmitigated disaster, and I suspect I'm only coping with it as well as I am because I'm too tired to get angry. Still, only about 6 days left.
Having just spent 4 days with someone who lives to travel, I'm sort of regretting having accepted the new job, but really there's no way I'm healthy enough to spend any extended time on the road.
Oh, I haven't seen Amelia in person in approximately 15 years. We've only met once, in a youth hostel in Cambridge when I was an undergrad and she was about to start university. We've kept in touch ever since, and it was really great that we can still have a lot of fun together.
I understand I'm supposed to be doing Stuff this weekend, but am pretty sure sleep is going to be happening instead. And painkillers.
