Woo Hoo, I'm a Cyclist!

Rob bought me a bike today; it's fab. I took it out for a 6-mile spin with him and Ben this afternoon, and I like it a lot. I haven't done vast amounts of cycling since I hit my teens - 4 days at Center Parcs earlier this year, one day cycling round London with Sarah last October, and about an hour in St Lucia in 2006 - but I'm excited to get started again. Particularly because Andy told me he lost a load of weight through cycling...

Weather permitting, I'm going to ride to the office and back a couple of days this week. This will greatly increase the amount of exercise I do - I currently do about half an hour a day, whereas the ride to work will take me the best part of an hour, then I'll have to ride home as well. I bought myself a load of kit to go with the bike - helmet (of course), panier rack (am going to borrow Rob's spare panier), little bag to go underneath my saddle for my keys, a spare inner tube and tyre lever, a pump and a bottle cage, plus a couple of cycling jerseys and some gloves. The extras came to half the cost of the bike itself!

Here I am after we got back from our ride this evening. In hindsight I should have had Rob take the picture before I got red-faced and sweaty...

Washout

As Ben's already mentioned, we were supposed to go to the cricket today, but it was rained off. It would have been my first live match, but I'll just have to wait till next time. It was a shame, because Rob's parents were here this weekend, his Dad's a big cricket fan and today is his birthday so it would have been the perfect birthday present, but as ever, the unpredictable British weather stepped in. Tomorrow the forecast is for warm, dry weather, and yesterday it was cloudy but dry in the morning and sunny in the afternoon. It's just today that it's been pouring down for 12 hours straight...

Yesterday we took advantage of the fact that the coast was due to have some good weather and went to Poole, which is about 40 miles away. It has the second largest natural harbour in the world after Sydney, and we had a great afternoon walking along the harbour and round the old town. We would have gone on a boat trip round the harbour, but Rob's Mum doesn't have sea legs so we decided we'll come later in the year with Ben and Jill to do the boat trip, and we'll also stop at the pottery shop and paint some mugs, and go to the 'all you can eat' oriental restaurant. A choice of 65 dishes for £8 per person...

For those who didn't know beforehand...

... and apparently there were quite a few who did know ;)...

Rob asked me to marry him on Friday.

And I said Yes.

Here's a picture of the ring he brought back from Tiffany in San Francisco. Can't believe I have a Tiffany ring!


Oh, and also: Wicked was fantastic. Rob even enjoyed it, so it must have been good. It was just overshadowed by what happened an hour before the show started...

We're Off to See the Wizard

I spent all day last Friday listening to the 'Wicked' soundtrack while sitting by the pool. Then Rob called from San Francisco that evening to say that he had booked tickets for us to go and see it in London tonight! I know, I only saw it 9 months ago but I've been desperate to see it again. Rob's already in London with a client, and I'm travelling up this afternoon to meet him there for the weekend. We're staying in a suite - a suite! - at the Radisson Hampshire on the south side of Leicester Square, which looks lovely. Can't wait!

Is Everyone Expecting?

I'm so glad I'm not struggling to get pregnant - the number of people I know who are expecting or recent parents would seriously get me down. Since April we've had three new babies born to work colleagues and we're expecting another 6 (that I know of) before the end of the year, including the lovely Nikki, who's been doing her best in the past week to ensure that Elena doesn't arrive for another few weeks. Plus there's the other lovely Nikki, who sent me a picture of her 20-week scan today, and then there's the equally lovely Clare, whose pregnancy I mentioned back in November. I sent Clare a text on Sunday, asking her how she was doing in her final couple of weeks. I didn't get a reply all day, but I then got a text yesterday morning saying that Harry had been born on Sunday night! Congratulations Clare and Wes!

21 in Turkey, 26 at Home...

Turns out it was hotter in the UK than in Turkey this past week... but better to be in 21-degree heat by the pool than looking at 26 degrees from the inside of an office building. Actually 21 was the lowest temperature all week, and it was on Thursday, the day that we went to Ephesus and what remains of the Temple of Artemis, so we were quite glad it wasn't too hot for walking around all day. The other days it was more like 25 with a slight breeze, which was just right for me - not so hot that I felt the need to jump in the pool to cool down every 10 minutes, but warm enough to get a nice tan, even with only four days in the sun.

Apart from Thursday, we spent the week doing very little. There was a mosque not far from the apartment, and the muezzin (not sure if it was an actual man or just a recording of a man singing) woke me up (just me, not Jen) at 5am almost every morning with his call to prayer, then I went back to sleep for a couple more hours. Then we got up, had some breakfast, sat by the pool, went inside in the middle of the day when it got too hot, had some lunch, went back outside for a couple more hours' sunbathing, went inside, showered and went out for some food or stayed in and cooked. As in every Mediterranean resort town, there were blokes in their twenties standing at the entrance to each restaurant, shaking people's hands and trying to persuade them to eat there, and the fact that we were two girls on holiday made going out for a meal a bit like running the gauntlet, and definitely contributed to our decision to eat in some nights. Still, we found a great Chinese restaurant that didn't require us to walk past too many other restaurants to get to it, so we ate there a couple of times.

In true going-on-holiday style, I woke up with a sore throat last Friday, but it didn't turn into anything - phew! We had a great week and got home yesterday without any problems - which is more than we can say for the flight to Dublin that was supposed to leave Bodrum at 5pm and by 3pm was already 6 hours late...

This is me and Jen at Ephesus, and a shot of the Celsus library. More pictures here.










Back to work tomorrow...

Countdown

This time tomorrow I'll be in Turkey. A car's coming for me in less than an hour to take me to Gatwick - Jen's driving down to meet me there and we're staying over tonight then flying to Bodrum tomorrow. So radio silence for a week - which probably won't even be noticeable from a blog point of view, given that I only post about once a week. Not got vast amounts to talk about at the moment.

I realised today that it's a year since I started blogging. If you look back through my posts, two are dated April 2007, but I pre-dated them; it was definitely May Bank Holiday weekend that I signed up to Blogger. I remember because Rob was at JavaOne in San Francisco and I was at home watching the snooker while I was setting up my Blogger account. One year on, Rob's going to JavaOne in a couple of days and I'm currently watching the snooker while blogging... Can't believe I'm going to miss the final - but I'm not so hooked that I would plan my holidays around a sporting event. I'm going to put my cards on the table and plump for Ronnie to win - not exactly a risky choice, as there are only four left to choose from and I'm sure Ronnie's odds-on favourite.

Passport, tickets, money, camera...

More in a week!