Right now the trees are bending dramatically and heavy rain is lashing the house due to VERY strong winds. I miss Florida !
In an effort to cheer myself up, I'm planning trips. Hopefully warm and sunny trips....even though three of them so far are still in the UK. A weekend in the Lake District, a few days in Wales and a week in Northern Ireland.
I haven't been to Norn Iron since my mum's funeral in 2003 and never went over much before then anyway. But absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that good stuff and these days, I'm looking forward to showing off the beautiful parts of the country to my friends.
Having spent almost all of my non UK time in America since 1989, I've done very little exploring in Europe. So over the last couple of years, we've gone across that somewhat smaller pond to do a bit of touring there too. Holland, Belgium, France and Italy have all been toured and conquered (Ha ! Take that Caesar. Payback's a bitch) and this summer we plan on driving down through France again but this time touring mostly in Northern Spain.
An ex ASDA/IBM work colleague has a restaurant south east of Perpignan and just over the Spanish border so as our route to Barcelona would take us very close, it'll be a great opportunity to pop in for a meal and a catch up. I've always wanted to visit Barcelona but I'm not a city person as such and so I'm more looking forward to exploring the Spanish countryside and small villages. Our trip around Tuscany in 2009 set the bar very high but despite knowing nothing about Northern Spain, I have high hopes for that region too.
I took a blog writing break there to fix a late lunch and it would appear that all this talk of holidays has had an effect on the weather here too. It's a lot brighter now, the wind has died down, the rain has stopped and there is actually sunshine. Maybe I'll be able to put last night's plans into action after all.
The power of positive thinking.....or holiday planning at least.
5 comments:
Yessssssssss! Holidays! Yesssssssss!
"an ex ASDA/IBM colleague"
Really? You worked for IBM? I retired from Big Blue eleven years ago. So that would make us colleagues as well.
Verification word is conflogi. I am absolutely conflogied.
This just in: The new volcanic eruption in Iceland has something to do with your current weather in the U.K.
Yes I worked for IBM but only after the ASDA IT dept was outsourced to them. My service record and pension was passed across too so now IBM pay my pension.
I worked for historic IBM for 12 years and left in 1978. The rest of the story is similar to yours. I rejoined IBM (Global Services) in 1996 when Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent), which had been spun off from AT&T the year before, outsourced its IT people to them. My service record and pension also passed to IBM, but my original IBM clock started ticking again as well. When I had accumulated enough service to collect both pensions, I retired and receive two checks each month. Well, three, actually, counting Uncle Sam's Social Security.
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