Days go by...

I literally feel like I'm blank.  Goodness, this week is busy.  Monday was a full day, even though you know from my last post that we had a lovely dinner.  Aside from that, I worked on coursework until 10p.m.

Tuesday was a long day. I went to our office, which is across the city.  That meant, I arrived at the station at 9:30 and travelled an hour on the train.  I arrived to the office and signed in at security.  When I went through the building, all the lights were still off, meaning I was the first one there. I unlocked our door and entered a sauna.  It took almost four hours and as many requests from me to the security desk to get the air con sorted, which meant my first few hours of work were done in 80F in a room with windows all around, but none which open.  Then the air con came on, and the temperature drastically dropped to 66F.  I worked until 7:30 with my jumper on!  Then of course, as soon as I signed out to head home, the rain started.  By the time I got on the tube home, I was ready for the stifling heat that normally exhausts me.  However, heat + damp clothes + many people at the end of the day + 1 hour on underground trains = ...well, let's just say I tried not to breathe deeply.

We had a meeting today, and Paul very graciously offered to give Angelina and I a lift to the office.  He was in front of my house at 9 am and off we went.


Road works.

It doesn't matter what you call it, construction is the bane of drivers everywhere.  We drove 18.7 miles from my house to the office parking garage.  It took us one hour and twenty minutes.  Oh, London.

Our meeting went well and it was much needed.  The two families here will be headed to the USA and Canada for a few months each, and we were discussing projects and such to be carried on in their absence.  We have good meetings, fun meetings, productive meetings, but we never have short meetings.  By two, everyone else except Val left for the rest of their day and I dashed to the nearby polski sklep (Polish shop) to get some bread, cheese and walnuts for lunch.  This particular shop always has nice whole grain, freshly baked bread.  The cheese is always a matter of guesswork, because the labels are all in Polish.  It would not have helped to ask, since I'm pretty sure the cashier today was Iranian.

I needed to use our printer, but alas, the cyan blue cartridge was finished.  There is a Staples store less than a mile away, so Val and I walked over and bought several new cartridges.  Believe me, it was fast to walk than wait for the bus.  On the way, I noticed that my foot was quite sore but I didn't really think anything of it.  Once back at the office, I started printing the booklets I needed and working on a few other things as well.  As I walked back and forth between my computer and the office Mac, my foot really started to ache.  By the time I left (again at 7:30!), I texted my housemate to see if she could drive to the station at the other end of my journey to spare me a walk home.

I don't know what happened to my foot!  I can stand on it, but wiggling my toes or trying to flex my foot really hurts.  It's quite swollen as well.  As I sat on the Tube, praying my foot wouldn't get trampled on by someone stepping to a seat, I realized there is a perfect description for how I was walking.  I was walking with all the grace of a pirate with an ill-fitting peg leg.  It is very challenging to walk without flexing one's foot!  And as my sister well remembers, London is not a city for anyone with mobility issues.  (Joy will never forget lugging her suitcases, admittedly filled with things for me, up and down steps at tube stations while she visited.)

Laura met me outside the station and drove me home.  Once I was home, she promptly had me sit down and prop my foot on a chair.  Joanne gave me arnica oil to rub into my skin, which is an herbal anti-inflammatory.  They even heated up veggie lasagna for me! :) A good end to a long day!  Hopefully tomorrow my foot will feel better, but I think I need to skip my Bhangra aerobics class.  Tomorrow promises to be a busy day, regardless.  And on that note, good night :)