One-day weekends

I worked most of yesterday. I got a fair amount done, and expected to feel satisfaction and/or accomplishment, but mostly I felt resentful that half my weekend was consumed by what I do every weekday - sit on my rear in front of a computer. I spend so much of my life seated and staring at a computer screen, which seems completely unnatural. I've read that our distant ancestors would travel up to 20 or 25 miles a day in search of food, and would often go days without eating. Compare that to how we live now! I like my job, but I do fantasize regularly about landscaping or a more active profession. Something that wouldn't involve my muscles atrophying and my hips attaining secretarial proportions. So if I haven't been sitting and writing much here lately, it's because I'd rather be doing this:


No footage of our mats in action, but we like to think we look a little something like this. Or we would, except we haven't figured out how to make them both work on one computer, so we're taking turns or using our own laptops. Fun!

Anyway, today we did get out and about. I met a friend at an art show in our neighborhood, then Jeff and I walked around (not across! see photo below) the Port Meadow and ended up at a cosy thatched-roof pub with a roaring fire and Chrismas decorations (it amuses me that they put fake snow on the windows). We walked back into the city centre, stumbled by accident upon a travelling French Christmas market on Broad Street, and ended up sitting in the front window of a coffee shop (okay I admit it, it was Starbucks) watching shoppers rush by and the city's Christmas lights flare up. I LOVE this time of year! I have so many deadlines to meet at work before I fly home that I haven't really been able to get excited yet. But I'm starting to have that holly jolly feeling. Bring on the mulled wine!

Not that it looks like Christmas around here. It's a balmy twelve degrees, and all is muddy, all is wet. The Port Meadow has become a lake.


Also, just when I thought the British had covered EVERY POSSIBLE REALITY TV SHOW IMAGINABLE*, I've discovered Cirque du Celebrites. Yes, celebrities doing circus stunts.

* Some of the more horrifying: Chubby Children, where kids audition to go on a fitness and diet regimen; Break with the Boss, where a boss takes two or three of his/her employees on a vacation where they compete for a promotion; or Jade's PA, where people fight for the extremely unappealing job of PA to a D-list celebrity, famous only for distinguishing herself as the stupidest person in Britain on ANOTHER reality show, Big Brother.