Thursday, February 16, 2012

Coffee and a Journal Entry

Today it’s finally nice out, though overcast. Eight whole degrees above - that’s Celsius, of course…so that’s 46 Fahrenheit. It's sticky and relatively humid (76%) when traipsing around town in a heavy jacket and layers, sticky, but at least it's not windy and raining. The snow we got a couple of weeks ago is long gone and everything is green again.

We managed to get out of the flat today, other than grocery shopping for Valentine’s Day dinner; pretty sure we haven’t been out of the flat since Saturday. That’s unacceptable. However, we’ll be going to London on Friday night, for the weekend, to visit a friend…so being home-bound a few days was probably just fine. We're already feeling anxious about being away from "home" for two days.

We find ourselves at a little cafe in town center, opting for a scrumptious caramel shortbread bar and a strong black coffee, rather than go to the library; James finally got a paycheck and gave us “housekeeping” money, which is his British term for an allowance, so we decided to have a treat today. It made us giggle when he first offered an allowance.

We know what you’re thinking. Well, look at you, an allowance…must be nice.

When James first came to visit in July (2011) he had virtually no cash for the five weeks, so we paid for all the food and expenses; when he came to live with us permanently at the end of September he couldn’t work (international/immigration rules, he hadn't come over on a work visa), so again we covered expenses, food, travel, household goods, we even paid for part of his ticket to come back to us, because we missed him, and he us. Six months later, now that we are in his country, and he found a good job for the time we are here, he wants to be able to treat us, for treating him. Also knowing that when we return to the states, the table will turn once again and we will have to be the bread winner.

So you see, he’s not giving us money, exactly…only repaying the favour. It’s awfully nice of him. We've never dated a guy who did something like that (except when we were married that once, and that was a whole other, awful “deal”), even though in many a relationship we had been the one to pay for much of everything.

So, we’ll be going to London on Friday night to meet a girl we became friends with on Twitter, Serentiy_X, who created our Halloween avi for Twitter back in October. She’s the first person from Twitter (besides James/The Boyfriend) that we have met in real life - though we have had Skype meetings with several of our Twitter followers, some with the camera, some with just audio, plus all of our podcast interviews; but this will be different, we (James, and us – those of us who decide they are cool with it, anyway) will be spending two nights at her flat.

Scared or nervous? A little.

Excited? Yep.

We'll see what kind of trouble we can get into over the weekend. <grins mischievously>

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