Aims, seeing Les Miz after Christmas was wonderfully cathartic to me, so it sounds like a good plan.

This is a gorgeous slideshow of London Underground posters.

Happy New Year, Bitches.

I'm getting ready to post Mal's video blog about the NYE fireworks here. It's amazingly free of negative opinion, since he announced today that he's done with living here.

Ooo, I'm seeing Les Miz on Friday. Must remember to bring a hankie.

Ginger, sounds like you made the best choice in a bad situation.

Bit of a quandry here - D got me a supernice portable speaker for me to take to work, and I'm worried it's too nice - stuff on site tends to get knocked around. Also, I'd have to take my iPhone out of its case to use the dock (though it does have an auxiliary jack in back). I just took it out of the package and it's damaged, the covering over a speaker is cracked. So, it needs to be returned anyway; should I take the opportunity to explain that this isn't exactly what I need or just say "thank you, sweetie, it's awesome?"

In his place, for a tech thing like this, I'd want him to tell me that it wasn't right. But I'm not him. IDK.

should I take the opportunity to explain that this isn't exactly what I need

Yes. It's honest and that is both good in a relationship and will get you a portable speaker that you can actually USE at work without worrying it will be damaged or stolen. And you can frame it as that - what he got you was really nice but you worry about it being damaged or stolen at the job site.

Granted, some people take it personally if a gift doesn't work perfectly but, in this case especially, it's not always about the gift or giftee.

Cat woke me up at 2am. Can't get back to sleep. Dammit.

Oh, poor Mal. Here's hoping he adjusts pretty soon.

Ginger, it was the only humane decision.

We had a glorious day today, and drove around aimlessly for the first time in a long time. We saw mountains we'd forgotten were on the horizon they've been cloaked in fog and rain so long. We saw boggy fields full of tundra swans, still more dairy pastures converted to berry fields, and it seemed every tall singular tree bare of leaves bore an eagle in its branches.

We've been plotting another Canadian adventure, but it's supposed to rain for the next ten days. Our sightseeing drive today was well-timed.

sj and TCG were great hosts as always, and their new digs are quite lovely. It was also nice to see Victor and Thessaly again; it's been a few years (probably the last NYD party at sj and TCG's, now that I think about it).

Sounds like a glorious day, Beverly.

Poor, Mal tons of settling into the new place ~ma for him.

Frank, it was so great to see you on New Year's! I'm glad you came.