20-23 October 2010

Wednesday 20 October

Wednesday was my "day off" after the trauma of Tuesday running errands in the rain. I didn't do anything except walk to the store and back. Therefore the only photo I took was this weird one of my foot. The reason I took it was because I w

as trying to see if I could document the weirdest injury of my life. On Tuesday I noticed this piece of hair stuck on my foot. I couldn't brush it off. It was a hair from my head, possibly from when I cut my hair the other day. I grabbed it and pulled and it was stuck IN MY FOOT. Like it had somehow been there long enough for the skin to grow over it. It was disgusting. I pulled it out and it left a little open wound that has since scab

bed up. So so gross. My only guess is that it was stuck in my sock or something when I had worn shoes for the whole of Monday. Who knows?

Thursday 21 October

I decided to be a little tourist on Thursday and go see the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. This is the Cenotaph on Whitehall, the World War One memorial. I didn't realize that I would find this hear, so it was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me.

Friday 22 October

I did a little bit of walking around Bloomsbury on Friday and snapped this photo on one of the side streets.

Saturday 23 October

Today is the Bloomsbury Fair and this morning I went on a walking tour of one of the local cemeteries-turned park. It's actually what the Victorians called an "outdoors sitting room," for the poor I suppose who don't have sitting rooms in their houses? As many already know, I LOVE cemeteries. Oh I love them. They are my favorite places to go next to parks, and since this one is now a park I was in heaven. Our tour guide was charming and informative and I learned a lot about the history of the place. It is an early 18th century cemetery, the very first one used by Anglicans in London that was not a church yard. It took a few years for people to start using it because it wasn't next to a church, but from 1715 to about 1850 over 50,000 people were buried in the 3 acre plot. I loved to see the rotting tombstones, so very gothic. It was my first English cemetery, the first of many I hope.

15-19 October

I was having internet/body issues the last few days so I didn't upload anything, but I still took some pictures! I'm feeling better now and so is my internet so I thought I'd put up the photos I did take.

Friday 15 October 2010

This is the copy of the book that Simon Pegg signed for me! I'm happy he didn't spelled my name wrong because for Haley and Lindy's copy he wrote "Linda & Hayly"

Saturday 16 October 2010

This is the very first real life Jenny Saville painting I've ever seen. It was at the Freize Art Fair in Regent's Park.

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The sky was also remarkably blue that day. Every time I see the sun and blue sky here I am just blown away. I have a feeling it's not something I'll be seeing a lot of this winter.

Sunday 17 October 2010

After church I went for a walk in Hyde Park. I really liked this giant raven perched on the fountain of Diana.

18 Monday 2010

I spent most of the day in futile search for shoes, internet, and offices, so here is a picture of me on the go, looking for things I can't find.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Yesterday I got caught in the rain and it was kind of a mess so I never pulled out my camera until I got home. I decided to take a panoramic view of my room.

14 October 2010

Let it go down in history that today the 14th of October, the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Ten, I met Simon Pegg, shook his hand, got his autograph and made an ass out of myself.

Simon's book Nerd Do Well is officially released tomorrow and today he had a book signing in London. The signing was at 5:30, and I left around 1:30 so that I could run some errands before finding Waterstone's off of Piccadilly Circus. After I bought a phone I found myself slightly off my intended course, but I suppose this is bound to happen when I don't use a map and make my way around London based only on my instincts and keen sense of direction. Instead of being on the street where I would find my beloved Birkenstock store, I found myself in Soho surrounded by sex shops, walking down seedy looking little alleys where I'm sure prostitutes must have worked probably not too long ago. But I pushed on and finally saw Piccadilly Circus, what I suppose is London's answer to Times Square. It was not yet 2:30 and I was three hours early to the signing, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to wait since I didn't have anything else planned. So I found the line, which was only 4 people long at that point and queued up, as the Brits like to say. I immediately met a very nice young man, Sam, who was quite friendly and talkative. We were joined by a girl who was quite mad and extremely talkative. She was first in the queue, having got there at 9 in the morning. It was cold, smelled of urine, and a pain to wait for three hours, but the time went by quickly as I was surrounded by amusing geeky British people. And here we are!

Sam and I hung out a little bit after the signing and now we're Facebook and Twitter friends! My first British friend!

So finally we were moved upstairs to spend the last hour waiting indoors, which was welcome but the stench of urine followed us up. At that point I overheard one of the old guys in line, which was hard to help since he was shouting, go on and on about all the celebrities he's met. He collects autographs, apparently, and has 600 signed books. It's interesting because the lady who was second in line was telling us about how she's seen him at several book signings (she also is apparently a bit of a collector) and she thinks he's mad. Which was obvious, of course, but she told us stories about how rude he is to celebrities while in pursuit of their signature. The man himself even told a story about one celebrity who didn't sign her name quite to this man's apparently rigid specifications and he tore the card up and said "if you arent going to bother with a proper signature, you might as well not bother at all" and walked away. I'm sure the celebrity was crushed.

Anyway, finally the moment came to meet Simon and I was trembling. He signed my books. "Are you Linder?" He asked, "No, I'm this one. Jasie" I said pointing to my signed copy. (Incidentally he spelled both of my sisters' names wrong on their copy: Linda and Hayly). "I wanted to tell you I wrote my master's thesis on Shaun of the Dead" I said, "Oh really?" he asked. "Yes, they let me! I'm even publishing an article on it" "Oh, what aspect did you write about?" I wanted to tell him. I desperately wanted to say "spiritual transcendence" but the words were lost. Instead I said, "I cant think of words right now. I'm very excited. I'm very happy to meet you" "Oh" he said, "that's ok." and I shook his hand. As I walked away, feeling also very stupid he said, "Let me know when that gets published, somehow. Twitter me!" "Ok," I nodded eagerly and walked away. What a sweet man. I just love him.

So that was it. It was pretty incredible and I'm very happy. It's honestly one of the highlights of my life. Well, that and @MrsStephenFry on twitter retweeted one of my comments I sent to her. I think that might rank highly on my list of achievements. I've gained 6 new followers since that! What a day!

13 October 2010

I decided to spend most of the day in today since I overdid it a little yesterday and I'm still a bit jetlagged. So I decided to take a picture of my bathroom. It is very yellow.

12 October 2010

I got lost in the Gordon Square building looking for my class room and entered this very interesting hallway. I kind of love it.

11 October 2010

I made it to London in one piece, and this is the view of Cartwright Gardens from my bedroom window. London so far is just too adorable. It's killing me.

10 October 2010

Tara T. Cat loves to sleep on my luggage, so I left it in Salt Lake for her.

9 October 2010

I'm posting more than one picture today, and the first one was taken probably 5 or so years ago. I am fortunate to have a very tightly knit group of friends who have been consistently blessing my life for years now. Amazingly, we have all managed to stay in Utah for the most part, and have continued to spend time with each other whenever we had the chance. On Saturday we all spent one last time together before I left for London, celebrating Brittany's birthday. It was a really special couple of hours for me, and I'm so glad I made it down to Provo.

(So the boy in the middle was Amanda's boyfriend, and the girl on the top right was a roommate we never really kept up with. The core 5 of us haven't changed that much. We're just old now.)

8 October 2010

View from my mom's back door.

7 October 2010

Got that email today. I'll be flying out on Sunday. WOO!

6 October 2010

5 October 2010

4 October 2010

I'm at my mom's house right now, and while there is a gorgeous view outside the back window and lovely flowers in the yard, there is also a crazy little dog named Jackie and when I was outside taking pictures she shoved her nose in the camera. I liked that one best.

3 October 2010

On Sunday after General Conference Igor and I went to Ensign Peak just above the capitol building in Salt Lake. The view was stunning.

October 2

I went to a little Greek restaurant on Saturday with Darci on State Street in Salt Lake. The food was good, the owner was crazy (he's been in close vicinity of 9 people dying, and he gave us lots of free food), and the view from the terrace was lovely as the sun went down.

October 1

I've been thinking about doing a photo a day thing on my blog for a while now, and I decided I would start on the first of October when I got to London. Well, I'm not in London yet, but I decided to start it up anyway. I couldn't put the photos on my computer until today, so i'm starting late, but I'm still going to do a separate post for each photo. For October 1 all I have is this blurry walking photo of my friend Amanda. I was trying my hand at kinnearing, a surreptitious style of taking photos of celebrities to avoid them noticing. It's a real word, coined by Yarn Harlot after she took a bunch of photos of Greg Kinnear's feet at an airport in Canada.