happiness is my default position

It's been a while since I posted. I miss LJ so much, I am going to make a concerted effort to get back on here when I get back.

Where am I going? Rome tomorrow, then Florence, Venice and Paris. All with my wonderful ditchwitchbitch who I'm meeting there! There will be lots of stories and photos no doubt. See you in October!

I seem to be missing quite a few photos now, but like I said, I've already done this in depth and I'm kind of scared this is all going to disappear again.

( California Adventure and Comic Con Part 1 - image heavy )

Dear 2010

Thank you for...

- my rabbits, Gus and Shawn, I love them more than anything
- my 30th birthday with my darling sister and darling ditchwitchbitch at Harry Potter World in Florida
- Psych, how do I love thee? let me count the ways. Carlton Lassiter ♥ Juliet O'Hara ♥ Shawn Spencer ♥ Burton Guster ♥ Henry Spencer ♥ Chief Vick ♥ ♥♥♥
- my new house, it's so quiet and lovely and perfect
- my California Adventure: Santa Barbara, Monterey, THE COMMUNITY SET!!!
- my Floridian Adventure; driving all over the state with my sister
- Weight Watchers and losing 22lbs (8 to go!)
- Sherlock; Steven Moffat I will never stop loving you (nor you and your gorgeous voice Benedict Cumberbatch)
- Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows; everything about it.
- my new job; I'm so much happier now, I feel like I have friends and purpose.

Please make 2011 a wonderful year for everyone I love.

xxx

After a week back in the cold, wet UK, getting up early and going to work, I'm sot of back to normal after my holiday. I still feel tired (and I think I'm getting a cold) but that's pretty much my default these days.

Anyway, I still have stories and photos from my vacation to post. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have everything sorted.

There are 1029 holiday photos uploading to Photobucket as I type. I won't bore you and post them all, but yeah, there may be a few large posts when it's done.

I stayed late at work to do some overtime, since my credit card bill is so big. The holiday was worth it, but really is so tiring for not really doing anything. And despite nothing major happening while I was gone, there were still 100 emails in my inbox this morning. It feels like I never left.

So, since this is not a holiday post and not a fandom post, how about a song to make it more interesting. This is about the ridiculous, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, senationalist (and every other -ist and -phobic you can think of) rag that passes for our 3rd best selling newspaper. Sometimes I despair of the people in this country. Then I see stuff like this and it makes me happy.



And then of course there's Russell, who makes everyone happy!

Right now I'm sitting in the living room of my hotel suite which has a bathroom as big as my living room back home. Just wanted to get that over and done with.

I've had an action packed few days at Disneyland and in LA. Disney is always lots of fun and we managed to avoid queuing for long periods of time (except on Space Mountain) and did all the best things twice. The Tower of Terror in California Adventure was so good it made me scream. No ride or rollercoaster has ever done that before, not in 29 years. It was fantastic.

Also, during a break from Disney on Thursday, I got to see the movie "Luck of the Irish". If you know what it is, you'll know why I mention it. If you don't know what it is... you're lucky.

On Friday we got a tour of Paramount studios and I got to go and poke around the Community set. I'm never going to be able to watch it again without squealing with glee. Speaking of Glee we saw "Mike", "Brittany" and "Santana" as we walked past their stage. That was a great day. *g*

Now we're off to explore Vegas before we go to see LOVE this evening.

Thursday we had a lazy morning and drove to Hot Doug's for the best hot dogs in Chicago. There was long line but they were worth it. I managed to buy some new clothes at Target too which made me very happy. That afternoon we went to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play the Padres. It was a surprisingly fun experience for my first ever sporting event. I had a giant pretzel and got annoyed at the people sitting in front of us and wondered out-loud quite often why no one was actually hitting the ball. It was great. Afterwards we went back to the pier for a sunset cruise around the bay. Kerry and I raised a sail all by ourselves, which was an experience. The city is so pretty at night, all lit up. The lights and the water are beautiful. We had dinner at 44th Ward Dinner Party again and Cory remembered us (I got a photo with him, but it's sadly lost forever now). Then we headed out to Angels & Kings to see what it was like when it wasn't so crowded. I really like it there, even if the drinks are a bit strong.

( Friday - Fall Out Boy in Indianapolis )

I'll post about my trip home when I post my pictures which will hopefully be tomorrow. There are far too many photos.

On Tuesday we woke up to a bright and sunny day in Milwaukee. We drove to the Pabst Mansion and waited for a tour. It was a gorgeous building but it's a shame we couldn't look around it by ourselves. Only the two of us were there and if we weren't standing next to the guide at all times she assumed we were bored.

We went into the city for lunch and found the espionage restaurant. Without a doubt, it's the most fun place I've ever eaten. We spent forever in there. You have find the secret passage to get in, and then you're seated in this private little booths with doors. The food was very good. All the cocktails are named after people from Bond movies and their martinis are mixed by shooting the cocktail shaker through a shoot that goes through every room in the building. You can get up and wander around to look at the displays. They have autographs hanging of famous people who've visited the restaurant (James Masters, Britney Spears, Mark Hamil, etc) and a giant mechanical puzzle that Kerry and I still can't figure out. They have secret passages out of the building and when we were ready to leave we used the one in the phone booth. I'm glad we went to Milwaukee just for that.

We got our photo taken with the Bronze Fonz statue (what visit to Milwaukee would be complete otherwise) and then drove back to Chicago to do some shopping. Sadly most of the stuff we looked at was out of our price range. After dinner we went to the top of the Hancock Observatory and we could see the whole of the city. It was incredible.

Yesterday it rained most of the day, so we went driving around the suburbs (yes, yes, Glenview, Wilmette, we weren't stalking, just curious) and we went to Legoland and had our photos taken with lego Darth Vader and lego Harry Potter. We went to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner and then watched Lost. We were going to go out after that but then the thunderstorm started and what with the rain, wind and lightning, we didn't really want to be outside.

Today looks like it's going to be a beautiful day though.

Well I'm having the best time in Chicago. I love this city. It's gorgeous and we're such a lot of fun. A lot of that admittedly comes from Fall Out Boy so far.

( In which I ramble for a while about meeting Patrick Stump )

Watch out for my next post, which will consist of adventures on Navy Pier, amazing pizza and Star Trek.