Back from hiatus

After nearly 3.5 years of letting blog drift into obscurity, I have decided to do a new entry! Yay new entry! Of course as I haven't done one in 3.5 years it is rather  unlikely that anyone will actually read it. Oh well.

So what has happened in the last 3.5 years? Much. Much has happened.  For example, I got married in April of this year, in a church in Westbourne, West Sussex. People keep asking me about married life, and I always just reply that it is pretty much the same as non-married life.  Key differences: I have changed my last name at work and with sporadic other places I do business, but have not yet changed my passport.  I also feel like more people call me 'ma'am' at stores, which is not really that great. We also attended 5 other weddings this year. I am pleased to say I was able to get away with wearing the same dress to 4 of them as they were different crowds (although now I suppose everybody might find out...).

Another key event is the arrival of a little fury bundle in the form of our ginger kitten in July. She is a very intimidating animal, as can be seen in this photo. She is currently 4.5 months old. She like playing with her toys, playing with paper bags and jumping on the counter (bad cat!).

I am still at the same work, essentially, only now we have been bought by a bigger, Australian company so we have a hyphenated extra long name, have moved from Paddington to London Bridge as part of a bigger office seemingly teeming with Australians. This change of office location has, to be honest, had a bigger impact on my daily life than getting married, so it will require quite a bit of discussion that will I suppose be upcoming.

My ability to speak American has continued to deteriorate. I have gotten enough comments from people during recent visits to the states that I must accept that my accent has gotten to a point where many Americans think I am English. No English person has ever thought I was English so I still have that going for me. So this is a battle lost, but my new challenge is to avoid picking up words from these rogue Aussies wandering around the office (while I admit I quite like the word jandals, I would never actually use this word in lieu of the much more reasonable 'flip flops'). 

While my travels have been someone sedated this year, I have managed a few trips to Greece in the last few years, the first a two-week jaunt with the folks in 2010 and again in 2011 for a wedding. I went to Rome in October 2010, have worked in a few trips to Paris (and will go again for a quick weekend in a few weeks) and spent a week on an island off La Rochelle. I have been around the UK a bit for work, although this mainly involves day trips to the East Midlands (catchy name, I know). I'll be up in Glasgow next week for a conference, and my last conference was in Liverpool. I must start going to conferences in places where I can understand the locals!

All for now. Hopefully more soon.