A Good Day!!

So according to the horoscopes read out on Z100 on Thursday morning my day - for Gemini - was supposedly a 10!!

A ten!! Hurrah!! I never get a 10!! It's usually a 4 or a 5, so a 10 is marvellous news. Not that I believe all that guff of course :-)

To be honest the day felt like anything but a 10, I was completely exhausted after a fitful night worrying about packing for my trip home. I flew to the UK for the Christmas break on Thursday night and while I slept soundly from 11.30pm-3.30am on Wednesday after 3.30pm I kept waking up with a start remembering something I'd forgotten to pack.

"I'll pack it in the morning," said the half of my conscience that knew I needed a good night's sleep

"You'll get up and pack it now or you'll forget" said the other half of my conscience that likes to channel my mother

"Okay, okay, stop nagging, I'll do it now for God's sake!!"

And that was my beauty sleep shot for the night, because once I got up to retrieve the one item I'd forgotten about the floodgates opened and I couldn't manage to quiet my mind from worrying about whether I'd packed everything I needed, so I was up and down every 30-45 minutes or so retrieving various plug adaptors or going out of my tiny sleep deprived mind for 10minutes looking for my passport and green-card, which of course turned out to be under my nose all along, on the dining table where I'd put it with a pile of important documents - flight booking references and the like - that I needed to remember to take with me. I'd go back to bed in between and try and will myself back to sleep using various relaxation techniques, but my brain just wouldn't co-operate and come 5am I gave up and got ready for my last day of work in 2010!!! The last day in work for the year, bliss, I guess that's a good enough reason the day is a 10, although when I heard my day would be a 10, I was kind of hoping to run across the Creative Cutie* one last time in the cafeteria. Sadly it was not to be, although in hindsight I suppose it's a plus that I didn't, because I looked a fright after my lack of sleep. I did make an effort with my hair and make-up, but what with the dark circles under my eyes and the strange little bumps** on my forehead that are not entirely contributing to my allure, the hair and make up was kind of a lipstick on a pig situation if I am honest.

I did have a good celeb spot at the airport, Jake Gyllenhaal being escorted through the terminal by an airline employee. He passed within about 2 feet of me and when our eyes met he gave me a worried look and ducked his head. Yeah, don't worry Jakey, I'm not about to run up and ask for an autograph or a photo, I'm a nonchalant New Yorker for goodness sake, although perhaps experience of supposedly nonchalant New Yorkers have taught him we are often anything but, because when I texted two friends to inform them of the sighting they both responded excitedly "JAKE GYLLENHAAL, he's on my list." Well look out ladies of New York, because he's in the area and let me tell you he looks just as cute in real life as he does on the telly!!

Unfortunately my airline connections couldn't come through on an upgrade to business class on my overnight flight to London - oooh the bliss of a fully flat bed after my sleepless night - but at least I was able to be moved

from my seat in the middle to an aisle seat, so that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick eh!! Sitting in seat 44D pre-take-off I kept hoping that one of the flight attendants would come hurrying over and say "I'm sorry madam, there's been a terrible mistake" and whisk me off to business class, but sadly that wasn't meant to be and I was stuck in economy a row in front of the red-headed Felix and his ill-behaved siblings, however since the middle two seats of the central row of 4 were unoccupied myself and my row buddy in 44G did get to enjoy the benefit of the old 'Croydon upgrade' and I managed a smidgen of sleep.

We landed in London right on time and I was at Miles' place come 11.30am and enjoying a disco nap an hour later. I later learned that bad weather had forced the cancellation of many flights into Heathrow and the airport was chaos, so I was lucky to have slipped into the UK when I did. I guess the day was a 10 after all.

It's snowing quite heavily today which has scuppered my plans to head down to Kent to visit a friend as the trains are up the spout, so I am enjoying cosying up on the sofa at Miles' place, drinking copious cups of tea - I usually only drink 2 cups of tea a day in New York, but as soon as I step foot on UK soil I drink hot milky tea on the hour every hour. There's something about being in the mother country which turns me into a total tea-face.

Snow on Miles' balcony

*Now that the paranoia over him staring at me has abated I am starting to see his appeal more and more which is just typical now that he is no longer showing any interest. Men!! Bad timing is the story of my life. Unfortunately there aren't really any opportunities to reverse that situation since our work lives don't intersect at all. In my line of the advertising business it's rare that I encounter creatives of his ilk, art directors that focus on above the line channels. Oh well!!

**I am optimistically assuming the bumps are as a result of an allergic reaction to the new hat I have been wearing, since I didn't have them pre-hat, but there's a nagging little voice in the back of my head that says 'are you SURE its not bed bugs in your hat?'.

Raging paranoia??

Perhaps, but there's nary a day goes by in New York without some infestation scare. It's gotten so bad that I am afraid to go to the cinema as there have been numerous reports of outbreaks at the larger complexes.