Reading Patrick's new entry inspired me to finally write in here again (it's been days and days!!! horrors!) but, of course, now that he's talked about the really cool stuff we've done ("Beware the Strid!"), I have little of real interest to write about. Going out to Bolton Abbey, as Patrick says, was in fact amazingly cool. Having a car has made an exponential improvement to our weekends--now, instead of going into crowded downtown Leeds to line up to sit in a noisy cafe on weekends, we drive out to the Yorkshire Dales and hike through woods and across rivers. Well, okay--I actually wimped out on the river bit. There's a gorgeously weird river crossing just by Bolton Abbey, where someone--who? when?--set up a series of stepping stones across the very deep river. Patrick crossed them, as did many other brave people, occasionally making great leaps from one stone to the next (especially in the middle of the river, where a couple of stones have become submerged). Nika and I, on the other hand, walked over the bridge and watched (Nika whining loudly with worry about Patrick, and me reassuring her while taking pictures). I am not a stepping-stone kind of person. I tend to slip and fall, windmilling my arms wildly.

Apart from that, I've been doing a lot of thesis work, organizing and typing in my notes, and I'm six pages into my new Vienna/Istanbul historical fantasy novel. We've also, of course, been doing tons and tons of wedding work. What's most impressive, I think, is the scope of the globe covered by people not coming to the wedding. Even apart from those of our American friends and relatives who can't afford/schedule plane tickets out to Leeds for it, there's just an amazing range of vacation spots around the world that will be filled with English friends and relatives on August 7th. We've got invitees vacationing in Cornwall, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the Galapagos Islands. They've all promised to toast us during the wedding, so I plan to feel an international glow.

Sadly, getting up at 6:15 isn't getting any easier. Last night we stayed up a bit watching our new favorite British sitcom-on-DVDs, Black Books, and this morning I stumbled around at 6:15 and afterwards, banging into walls and falling asleep on buses. This afternoon I crashed out and took a nap for two hours, before taking Nika on her hike through the woods. Must wake up for dinner. Must wake up.....