Free Enjoyment

So, there's been very little updating of the blog. Truthfully, I've not done much worth writing about. This last weekend I took a trip over to the mall that my hotel is near. Mistake. Seems all of South London decided to do the same thing. Same old stuff. I choked at the prices of things. Near 16 pounds for a CD. 7 pounds for a paperback. I stopped into an outdoors place and chit-chatted with one of the workers there. The place was tiny and didn't hold much. If I wanted high quality camping and hiking gear, I was in the right place. However, if I was looking for anything that wouldn't be considered basic, bare bones equipment, I was screwed.

At any rate, I spent most of the weekend programming. Yeah, I know; BORING. But, I've got a number of things that needed to be done and I wasn't going to be interrupted with other tasks while doing it. I made a ton of progress, but burned my weekend in the process. Such is life. However, I did take breaks during the day to relax. In that time I got some reading done. Finished off one of the books that I brought (Benighted) and started up on another (A Walk in the Woods). I didn't make it 6 pages before I laughed out loud at the writing of the later. Not the uproarious laugh out loud. Kind of the quick unexpected laugh.

I've also been listening to an audio novel in podcast form (Podio Book apparently) called Seventh Son. I'm actually on the second novel of the trilogy, Deceit. It's enjoyable and not too contrived :). Enjoyable and free are two great tastes that taste great together! It also makes driving to and from work interesting. I can't listen to it while I work if I'm coding. Too much of my attention is pulled away from the code. There's actually a coded message in the second book that tore me away from my coding for a couple hours. Well, it didn't take me away from coding exactly, as I threw together a program to decode it. Yes, I know that later in the chapter it will decode it for me. But, I wanted a shot at it myself. I made quite a bit of progress. But, it finally bested me. I went back to listening to the novel. Sure enough, there was one piece of the puzzle I hadn't thought of. And that was the key. Dammit! Oh well, it gave me a couple hours of entertainment outside of the story :).

To answer a bunch of people back home; No, they don't *really* celebrate Halloween over here. It's apparently caught on over the past couple of years or so, but, nothing like it is back in the States. I missed it :(.

I've been watching a lot of football while I've been here. Hell, there's a game on almost every night in the pub. So, I get some good eats, good food and good football staggering distance from my room. Life can't be too bad. I still want to try and get to a live game while I'm here. We'll see how that goes.

I can't wait to get back home and sleep in a bed that doesn't have a crack running down the center of it. True, I haven't found a surface that I can't sleep on. However, I would like a bit more comfort.