ho hum.

Hello! It's been a while, as usual. The only reason I wanted to write here is because I haven't for ages.

This summer I went away a lot for work, but also went to Italy on a short holiday for a christening. It was in the vatican. Pretty bizarre experience. We were late (classic Roman traffic jam), and ended up running through st. peters cathederal suited/stilettoed frantically trying to find a christening. It was pretty a-religious which made it bareable. Then there was a posh vatican feast, they treated us pretty well.

Then we got the sleeper train from Rome to Venice, which I thought would be really fun, but in actual fact, the compartments are about a metre wide, no windows, and only a blue light to keep you company. To top it off, it's not actually that long a journey, so we arrived in Venice at 5am with no sleep.

That said, Venice at dawn on a cloudless day must be the best time to see it. Everything was golden and empty. We spent one night there and had a good wander.

So, now it's November. I had a birthday party on the day of my birthday. I decided to cook american themed food, and bought some fireworks (4th July-style) to entertain the guests. Some of them fell over. It's a really small garden where we're living, and there were about 10-15 people there, so it was like being in front of a firing squad. I saved the biggest firework for last - one of those cubes with loads of different fireworks in one. As soon as I lit it, it fell over, and everyone panicked, but they were like deer in headlights, I had to scream at them to get indoors. Wojtek stayed outside and got shot at quite a lot. I managed to get hit in the face with a bit of smouldering cardboard but nothing serious.

The instance that was over, I was standing in the garden speechless, coming to the realization that I'd just tried to kill all my closest friends, and they all came out with a birthday cake (that Yoon baked) and sung me happy birthday. It almost felt like "You've been framed". Pretty bizarre experience. Surprise!

The best present I got was from my sister (although I actually asked for it when she asked me what I wanted for my birthday). It's a waterproof iPad case so I can read my books in the bath!

Up until a few weeks ago, work has been crazy, and now, all of a sudden its totally stopped. I have a few bits and pieces, but really, I'm pretty free. I've been turning down jobs still, because none of them are what I really want to do. I just want to dick around for a while. I can afford it, until the end of the year or so, so I'll probably do that, unless something cool comes along.

A couple of weeks ago, the last job I did was presenting myself to a bunch of people at a well known distillery of whiskey in the scottish highlands. It was totally a marketing event, but it was nice going there being treated to nice food (and whiskey, of course) chatting all day, to interesting people, exploring the distillery, and then getting paid for it at the end of it all. Of course I had to set up some interactive installations in the freezing cold, but that was fun to. More things like this please!