plotting

I'm sitting at work right now waiting for the drawings to plot that I need to send out to the engineers and contractors for Heat's big job right now. Waiting for prints is mindless for sure, but it allows me some time to update my blog, so I can't complain. I also can't complain because my waiting for drawings to print means that I've actually been doing some drawing while at work, which is a wonderful change. I was beginning to feel like I would explode if I had to make one more excel spreadsheet. However, after a six month break from designing anything, the glasses have come back out and I'm a CAD nerd once again. It's been an interesting transition getting used to this part of my job. Not only have I had to learn a completely new drafting program, but I have to learn to draw in milimeters. I usually sit with one window open of my drawing and another window of a website that converts measurements between milimeters and inches. Tonight one of the main contractors that we work with is taking our office out to dinner, sort of a belated holiday party. He is Indian and is taking us all to his local social club for a traditional Indian dinner. It should be interesting.
January in London is dark and grey. From my desk at work I have a perfect view of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, except in January when there is so much fog that you can barely see down the block. I think it was a combination of the weather and my emotional exhaustion of being around people all the time that drove Ross and I to get out of London this last weekend. We really wanted to go to Paris, but it was last-minute and was going to cost too much. So, we decided to go to Oxford and the Cotswolds. We didn't spend much time in Oxford, because I had already been there and it was raining. We did go to Christ Church to see the Harry Potter sights, and had lunch at the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien spent their days. Saturday night we went stayed in a little b&b in Moreton-in-Marsh, the most accessible of the Cotswolds.

The Cotswolds are a cluster of little towns that are very quintessentially English. They all have funny names like Stow-in-the-Wold. There is a bus service that runs between the towns, except on Sunday when there is no transportation whatsoever. Somehow we didn't get that memo, and of course were planning of visiting all the towns on Sunday. So, following advice from the woman who owned the b&b we took a train one stop to Evesham. From Evesham she said that we could catch a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon, or enjoy walking around Evesham because it's a nice place to visit. Well, Evesham didn't exactly live up to its reputation. There were no busses or trains running out of the town for 2 hours, and it was not a nice place to walk around. We felt like we were in a back-country hick town...and in England that's really hard to find. We found a little cafe to kill some time in and drink tea. When we walked in it felt like one of those scenes in a movie when the music screeches to a stop and everyone stops what they're doing to look at the crazy hippie kids who just walked in. Overall, Evesham was a humuorous experience, but we were glad when the train finally rolled back into town. Luckily that train was headed for London Paddington, which would have been perfectly convenient if the trains were running properly out of Oxford. When we arrived in Oxford we had to get off the train and onto a replacement bus service to Didcot, where we boarded another train for London. Finally we made it back home; I was amazed at how exhausted I was from just waiting for trains all day. Despite the frustrations it was good to get out of the city, and both of our black lungs felt much better after taking a break from bus exhaust and city air for a couple days.