Remember when I said that I had lost my enthusiasm for writing kickass blog entries?  Well that was before I was sitting blankly in front of a computer screen for seven hours each day.  Work!  It rules!  Anyways, seeing as I have an hour and fifteen minutes to kill, I think I'll talk about the awesome things that have happened to me over the past few days.

1. Getting 2 minutes of hot water this morning.  Better than sex.

2. Buying an Adidas track jacket (and a sweet hat).  Yes, the hat is sweet, but let's talk about the jacket.  The thing that I am about to say will make me sound like the biggest nerd ever, but that's never stopped me before: owning an Adidas track jacket has been a life long dream of mine.  Not joking at all, by the way.  I mean, Run-DMC, man!  So on Saturday morning, I woke up early(ish), rode down to Covent Garden, marched straight into the Adidas Originals store, and marveled at the glory of my soon-to-be very own track jacket.  I may never have a son, but now I know that I have some to cherish, something that will always be a part of me and will carry on my legacy after I die.  Also, I got the aforementioned sweet hat across the street on my way out, but I'm not sure that I'll wear it too much, as it will only distract from the majesty of the jacket.

3. Perfecting my route to work.  To think, the entire first week I was taking the Piccadilly line to the Central line like a common sucker.  Now, instead of shoving myself into a throng a sardines at Gloucester Road station, exiting with the masses at Holborn, wading through the station to transfer, getting on the Central line only to get off 2 minutes later, and walking up the endless escalator from hell at Chancery Lane, I am treated to the peace and tranquility that only the District Line can provide.  My new route is better for about 38, chief among them that I can leave the house a whopping eight (!) minutes later.  It does add an extra ten minute walk to and from the office, but the Temple station on the District Line has a fruit stand in front!  Yay me!

4. Dover.  Probably the best thing I've done so far on this trip.  Before going, I knew absolutely nothing about this town, except that I had to wake up at 7 am to get there.  Needless to say, I was not too high on Dover in the beginning.  After an eventful fake train/real train/bus ride/train ride to get there, we finally made it to beautiful Dover Priory Station.  I should probably mention that there were only four of us on this particular trip, which is probably the primary thing that made the day so enjoyable.  Previously in this weblog, whenever I used the pronouns "us" or "we", they were probably used in place of "giant mass of 20-24 people".  Having a bunch of people around all the time is fun, but it certainly wears thin after a few weeks.  Four people is the perfect number for a day trip of hiking, picnicking, and tennis watching.  We stepped in the English Channel, hiked the chalky white cliffs, and watched the first half of the Nadal-Federer final is the supposedly third-oldest pub in England.  I would believe that claim, by the way (the bartender said it was built in the 1300's).  After an exciting train ride home (may I just reiterate that no open-container laws=awesome.  Get on board, America!) we made it into our neighbourhood pub just in time to see the latter half of the final Wimbledon set.  I've decided recently that tennis kind of rules.  I've certainly watched more of it in the past two weeks than in the rest of my life combined, and now I sort of feel that I've been missing out this whole time.  Anyways, I had called Nadal winning it three days prior.  Go to hell if you don't believe me.

You know, I want to talk about trains some more.  Train rides are the best.  I want to take a train to every destination I go now.  Someday when I have nothing going on, I may just take a train to nowhere is particular, get off, go to the bathroom, and take that same train back home.

5. Finding a huge bike store a block away from my office.  I think I spend about 3/4 of my lunch break in there today.

6. Realizing how awesome that the newest Kanye West album is.  I know, I'm the last person in the world to do this.  Where do I collect my ribbon?  I also know that I'm jeopardizing my status as a card-carrying music elitist with that statement.  Well you know what?  I listened to it on my entire ride to work today and my entire lunch break.  And you know what else?  I may just listen to it on the entire ride home.  And I'll put Homecoming on repeat one or two times when it comes on.  That's how I roll.

But with regards to this whole "Kanye" business, let's be serious for a moment.  I like to listen to my iPod on my commute and I like to listen to it when I'm walking around the city on my own.  And I've discovered something: I have a disturbing lack of "city" music.  Let me elaborate.  I believe that every piece of music has a specific environment that it belongs in; an environment which complements the music perfectly.  Some music is beach music, some is dark smoky nightclub music, some is driving through the desert at night music.  But what I need is city music.  Music for which the constant chatter of cars, people, and jackhammers will complement the music, not distract from it.  Take Stronger, for example.  If they were making a movie of my life on this particular day and they needed to score the scene of myself leaving the house and walking down Palace Gate, that song would have been a perfect choice.  It simply fits the scene.  The Good Life is definitely myself sitting under a tree at the park enjoying my crayfish and rock sandwich.  And Flashing Lights will be me walking out of my building in 25 minutes as I triumphantly ponder the wonderful evening ahead of me.  I need more music like that.  The experimental folk binge that I was on before I arrived here simply isn't cutting it.  M.I.A.'s Paper Planes is another great "city" song, I've discovered, but only because that it the most perfect song the universe has ever beheld.

So that's it.  Six awesome things have happened to me since I last wrote.  No more, no less.  Well, me winning a free drink after Nadal won was also awesome, but that's more of a sub-awesome thing, and I'm trying to keep more a a macro-view of the larger awesome picture.  Dublin is this weekend, I may not write again until after that.

Whine whine whine.  Some people (no names will be named) seem to feel a sense of entitlement to read about the kick-ass adventures of your author.  While this sentiment is entirely understandable, I would like to stress that reading this blog is a privilege, not a right.  I, and I alone, hold the power to grant or revoke that privilege at any time.  However, it is a well-documented fact that I succumb very easily to peer pressure, so without further introduction...

So I suppose I should talk about my job.  I work for an economic consulting firm that deals primarily with the European Union.  In all honesty, I think that the work they do is fascinating, and I've learned a lot about economic analysis and about the EU in the four days that I've been there.  I wish I could speak more positively about the other aspects.  Admittedly, my experience working in offices is extremely limited, but I feel confident that this one is particularly boring.  Basically I would define my role as the office bitch.  There are two other interns in the office, but they're actually paid interns who had to interview for the job and work full-time.  As such, they're much smarter than me and they get all of the good bitch work.  My responsibilities include data-mining, making spreadsheets, proofreading reports, and facebook chatting.  I wish I could say some more about my job, but there really isn't much to talk about with regards to it.  I can say that our receptionist has kind of a Beasley thing going on.  So that's nice.  I can also say that getting on the Piccadilly line every morning is one of the less-enjoyable experiences of my day.  I had to punch a pregnant woman the other day just to get a spot.*

Hmm...other stuff.  Yesterday was the fourth of July, as I'm sure my American readers will know, and I did my best Bill Pullman impression.  As much as I'd like to say that someone made a cape out of an American flag and got in a fight with a member of the British National Party, nothing of the sort happened.  What did happen was that we booked an open-air double decker bus sponsored by Corona.  I'm not 100% sure why Corona would give a group of college students a free bus tour around London featuring unlimited free drinks, but I can say that I did not complain once during the entire journey.  Always look on the bright side - that's my motto.  The bus trip culminated at a restaurant called the Texas Embassy, which, despite it's unintentionally hilarious name, actually had really great Mexican food.  Perhaps it's the fact that I haven't had real Mexican food in 3+ weeks, but I thought that this Mexican food was actually good Mexican food.  Like, this restaurant would have made it in Southern Arizona.  It was terrific.  However, I may be biased by the fact that they were playing baseball on the TV's upstairs.  I have never been happier to see Johnny Damon in my life.

Today we took a tour of the BBC.  It was relatively enjoyable, but it could have been better.  I was hoping to see a taping of Golden Balls, but you can't have it all in life, you know. (Aside: Golden Balls is perhaps the most fantastic hour of television ever created.  I really hope that some American billionaire buys the TV rights to syndicate it in the US, because I think that I will go through withdrawals once I leave the country.  It's that good.  I would try and explain it, but it's perhaps the most hopelessly convoluted game show in the history of the genre.  That's part of the appeal, I think: I enjoy it simply because I'm so proud that I understand it.  At the Imperial College pub tonight, they have these machines where you can play these quiz games and win 20 pounds.  I played the Golden Balls game about six times.  That's three quid down the drain.  One time I had three Killers in my opening draw and I still couldn't close out the game.  It killed me.  Anyways...)  Oh yeah, BBC.  It was fun.  I got to read the news and I won a free BBC tours pen.  Probably one of the top ten moments in my life.  My tour guide described my news reading performance as "probably the best in the entire second half of the afternoon."  High praise if there ever was one.

So...that's all I've got for tonight.  I'm going to Dover tomorrow.  Hope it's fun.  Also, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine today and bought an Adidas track jacket.  I'm still kind of on a high from that.

p.s.  No matter what rumours you've heard, I've never snuck into the Hyde Park playground after closing.

*That's not actually true. 

I know.  I suck.  When I started this blog, I had really grand ambitions for it, but like almost every project I ever start, they disappeared pretty quickly.  I had a really great post planned for this weekend but I just couldn't muster the energy the sit down and write it.

I started by job this week, by the way.  It's okay.

So here's the deal: I know that there are a few people who actually read this blog.  If you want to know what's going on with me, that's awesome.  Please write to me; I can almost promise that I will be more inspired to write you a good, long response.  I really am having a great time.  If anything particularly interesting happens to me, I'll probably still write about it here.  But it would have to be super-interesting, like meeting Orlando Bloom in a nightclub or something.  Otherwise, I think my prolific blogger career is over before it started.  Seriously, though...write to me.  I suck about keeping it touch with people so give me an excuse.

p.s. A semi-homeless guy hugged me today.  It was weird.