lovely weekend

Friday afternoon Joel and I took the ferry from Hoek van Holland to Harwich; it's about 6.5 hours, not counting the time change. We arrived early enough to scout out comfy chairs near one of the windows towards the rear of the boat, and hung out there quite comfortably. Joel got quite a bit of work done, and I ended up falling asleep for about 2.5 hours (in my defense, I was reading a book Andrea sent me, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and there's a limit to how much you can read the words "doze", "yawn", "soothe", "heavy lidded", "drooping eyes", etc., before it becomes contagious). We got in around 8pm and as it was getting dark we decided to get a taxi rather than walk to the hotel. We stayed at the Tower Hotel, a converted 18th C Italian manor house, which was lovely on the inside and out, and the bar has outdoor seating in a gorgeous little garden. We were both quite impressed with the food; I had some of the best battered fish ever (both white fish and pink fish, which was a bit unusual), and Joel has his first tasty of minted (mushy) peas. He had pork belly in a cider sauce, which had some first-rate crackling. So if you ever have a need to take the ferry to or from Harwich and want to spend the night there before heading to London or something, I can highly recommend the place.

Saturday morning we took the train over to Chippenham, getting in about half an hour earlier than planned as crossing London on the underground took less time than budgeted. Even though we were early, we were still able to check into our room at the New Road Guest House. Because I procrastinated so much in making arrangements, we ended up with a room with two twin beds, instead of one double, but for one night it wasn't so bad, and again, I can highly recommend the place. There was free internet, breakfast in the morning was quite tasty, the proprietors very gregarious and friendly, and the back garden has a few of the original pear trees from the 1880s still producing away; the pears at breakfast were from those trees. They weren't quite ripe, so we were encouraged to bring some home with us. I just had mine this afternoon (I prefer my pears to be less rather than more ripe), and it was great.

We got to the village hall where jpgsawyer and edith_hedingham's wedding was about half an hour before things were scheduled to start, and already there were lots of SCA folks -- including most of the people that Joel has hung out with at Raglan, which was nice for him because that meant he had plenty of people that he knew and spent time talking to.

The wedding itself was great: it lasted all of about 10 minutes and had all of the important bits. And then there was food, food, and more food, and then it was dinner time, and then dessert. Then came the party! There was SCA dancing (and I am much proud of Joel for joining in in that, even managing when one song ended and another started and we changed dances without any warning or pre-teaching), and then out came the 80s music. He then spent most of the rest of the evening drinking beer and chatting with Master Paul, while I was out on the dance floor for about 2 songs out of every five. (Let me tell you, it's a very different experience dancing when you're already using a lot of those abdominal muscles for other things!) I'm quite proud of myself, I managed to wear my Paris heels all afternoon and most of the evening before my feet hurt and I danced the rest of the night barefoot. (I'd brought a spare pair of flats along in case my feet gave out earlier, but ended up only putting them on to go back home). It was a perfectly grand evening.

Our plan for Sunday was to try to head over to Avebury before going back to Harwich, but it's amazing how bad the public transportation is on Sundays in Wiltshire. Luckily, Kiriel, who was staying at the same guest house, was going to Avebury with Alaric and Nerissa and they were planning to meet up with maryf and Finn, and the latter happened to have car space -- so they very kindly swung over and picked us up and we joined the 5 of them for the rest of the morning/early afternoon. We walked around the Henge, seeing parts of it that I hadn't seen when I was there 6 years ago, had lunch at the Red Lion (which actually wasn't as good as I remembered it), and then drove to see the sanctuary and then Silbury Hill. maryf and Finn then very kindly drove us to the train station in Swindon. Our goal was to head all the way back to Harwich and hopefully get in earlier enough so that there'd still be enough light for Joel to go find the Napoleonic-era fortification in the harbor. Unfortunately, due to train works, we got as far as Liverpool street and found we could either wait two hours for a bus that would take us directly to the ferry about an hour before last check-in, or we could take a route involving 2-3 changes and still not get there before it was dark out. So instead we decided to walk around a bit and then spent an hour or so at a cafe.

Since we had the night ferry back, I booked us a cabin. We were quite surprised at how luxurious it was -- the main room had bunk beds with a decent-sized couch, and then there was an attached bathroom with toilet and reasonable-sized shower. It was weird that for the second night in a row we were in the same room but not the same bed. (We just don't both fit in a single bed, at least not any more.) The rhythmic rocking of the boat and also the sound of the engine are really quite soporific, but even so I didn't sleep as well as I would've liked because wake-up call came at 6:30. We both dozed for another half an hour and then packed up and got a quick snack for breakfast. We were disboarded and waiting for the train by 8:00, which meant I had enough time upon getting back to Amsterdam to go home, get my computer and a few things I needed to mail, change my clothes, and head out to Science Park as my research seminar meets at 11:00. By the end of the day I was awfully tired (and I slept miserably last night; if I'm not lying down, the muscle I pulled near my diaphragm has recently been really, really hurting; but as soon as I lie down the heartburn kicks in and the maalox isn't quite cutting it any more). Luckily, once I actually fall asleep, neither of these things is likely to wake me up -- in fact, nothing is likely to unless it's Widget being bad.

Today has been a rough day what with the intense, jabbing pains. I have not been nearly as productive as I should've -- I've gotten maybe three paragraphs (out of a possible 358!) translated, and still don't really know what I'll be saying at the workshop this weekend in Stockholm. On the other hand, it's been mostly sunny, a large group of us went and got pizzas for lunch rather than going to the cafeteria, and tomorrow Joel is going to see an apartment in den Bosch which could be just the thing if the inside matches the outside (unfortunately the listing had no pictures of the inside). So it's not too bad. And now that I've spent some time writing this up, I've only got about 15 minutes before I go catch the train home (or rather, catch the train to Amsterdam for the next prenatal class, after which I won't get home until about 9:30pm).