August 24-29 Friday - Tuesday
Poole
Rory's house
Catherine was kind enough to take us to Slough to catch a train to Poole where we would be staying with Rory until we left for Thailand. It's been a wonderfully relaxing, laid back last few days.
While Rory was at work on Friday Jon and I cut my hair. I think I started out with some kind of plan but as it bacame more awkward I began cutting willy nilly which is when I called on Jon to help. He was pretty nervous and kept saying that what he had cut "looked bad". I have just enough natural curl to make things a little diffcult. At one point I took the scissors back and told him I would do it myself but then he wanted to keep trying. He had that stubborn look on his face and it made me a little nervous. In the end we both think it turned out pretty darned good!
We've done a few other things here and there but no major outings - really normal stuff. On Friday we went to Bournemoth to watch the fireworks which were cool and on Saturday we were back in Bournemoth tooling around the town while Rory got his teeth cleaned at the dentist.
There was a mountain biking and basketball demonstration going on in the city center and we actually watched the entire show - yep, I was definitely hanging out with two guys.
Unfortunately, Rory came down with a bit of food poisoning which is never fun and probably even less fun when you have out of town guests in your house for the week. I think he's feeling a bit better now, poor guy.
Rory drew us a map to a wooded area that we could jog to and basically run around and get some exercise. It was about a mile from his house. Since we got rid of the bikes the activity level has dropped significantly. Jon had me huffing and puffing up hills, through bushes, over logs and under low hanging branches. He was really good about asking how I was doing as it appeared that I was in need of some supplemental oxygen. It felt good to run around though and not just jog along the road which was our other option. We covered about four or five miles of grass lined streets, woods, heath (I think we call it heather at home) and some bushes with long skinny thorns about an inch long cleverly hidden amongst the pretty yellow flowers on the same bush. They were mixed in with the heather bushes and I didn't notice the thorns until one scratched me. We had such a good time we did it again the next day but with different drills thrown in for variety. Jon is acting as my coach and is always helping me with my form when I jog. I can tell it makes a difference, if only I could be more consistant. Unfortunately, what this means is that he's not getting a whole lot out of the exercise time because I'm slow. On Monday he went out early in the morning and I went out by myself while he and Rory went out to hit some balls at a nearby driving range. Other than that we've been doing a lot of research on Thailand, Mayalasia, Singapore, folding bikes and where to buy them, bicycle trailers, and whether or not to go to Australia with left over frequent flyer miles.
My dad has been having some health issues back home so I've been talking with family a little more this week - keeping in closer touch with home - and I can here my kitty talking to whomever happens to be on the phone with me at the time. He's a pitiful little thing. You'd think he had never been fed or given a proper petting when in fact he couldn't be more spoiled - the silly thing.
I had a small coronary when Jon asked me what time we were leaving tomorrow. He thought we were leaving on the 30th and since I have been confused more often than not on what the day, time or date was either in the country I was in or what it was back home if I was planning to call family I thought I had read the ticket wrong and that indeed we were leaving tomorrow. I was up the stairs and rifling through our paperwork looking for the e-ticket.
Phew! Not until Friday at 2:15pm. Why is that so hard to remember?
We'll need to start taking our Malaria prophylaxis tomorrow...
