My heart belongs to London . . .

I'll keep this short because my visit back to the eye doctor today involved dilating my pupils and doing a few other things that have left my vision fuzzy and my eyes rather sensitive for the next few hours, but I just wanted to post a note to say the MRI was clear. There is no evidence of the suspected tumor, which is great news ... it just leaves me with no answer as to why my vision suddenly took a turn for the worse. The doctor acted as if he was completely baffled by it (which is not exactly comforting).

The other good news is that the doctor says he can still "fix" my vision by doing the enhancement I'd originally gone in to see about, and he feels confident he can get it back to 20/20 or very close to it. He can't do it until June 12th, but that's still in ample time for me to be seeing clearly by time for my next London trip and my two (so far) upcoming trips to see Equus.

I went home for lunch today and had an absolutely incredible surprise waiting in my mailbox. (Well, it wasn't entirely a surprise ... I had been told it was coming ... but I had no clue it would be as much as it was).

My dear friend, nick730, who has already sent me way more Brit TV on DVD than any girl has a right to hope for, has done it yet again!

I had a packet in the mail from him today that had 17 DVD's inside!!! I was completely blown away by his thoughtfulness. There was more of Dr. Who, quite alot of Torchwood (he knows I think John Barrowman is gorgeous), more of The Apprentice and a couple movies. One was Miss Austen Regrets, and I can't even think if the other at this moment because I'm just so overwhelmed with the whole thing.

nick730, if you see this before I can get back home tonight and send you a proper email, thank you so much for doing all this for me!!! You are THE BEST!

I'M SO EXCITED!!!

I was over the moon about getting tickets with rosepddle to go see Equus on it's first preview night on Broadway on September 5th, but I was admittedly a little disappointed in the seats we were were able to get (Center Orchestra, but in Row O). Still, it's Dan's first night on Broadway, and I really wanted to be there. And if I can't see well enough from there, there's always opera glasses.

Anyway, the seating dilemma is finally resolved for me now as I'll be going again on January 31st with some other friends (Vicki, Dee and Dave) and we will be seeing it from Center Orchestra, Row B!!! Still not quite as good as I had in London last year, but unless they do open up stage seating at some point, I'm fairly confident it is the absolute best I'll be able to do without paying scalper prices at some of the alternate sale sites. I was very tempted for some Row BB seats I found at $437 each (which is outrageous) but I was terrified I'd get to the theatre and find out someone was in my seat and my ticket wasn't actually valid.

So now I'm contemplating how long I want to stay in New York. After London this year and New York in September, I probably can't actually afford to go at all, but it's Dan, so I just HAVE TO find a way. The same friends I'm going with on January 31st are staying through to see it again on February 4th, which may turn out to be the final night, so I'm debating if I want to hang around as well.

I had a very disturbing experience this morning at the eye doctor, and it's apparently not over yet.

On April 30, 1998, I had Lasik (laser) surgery on my right eye to correct my vision. I was terribly nearsighted in that eye due to an accident when I was a kid, but the surgery was able to correct it to 20/25. I started to notice some deterioration in the quality of my vision a couple years ago, but it was minimal and I just attributed it to getting older. But it's continued to get gradually worse and I decided I probably should let the doctor check it out because he had said that "enhancements" were possible if my vision ever got worse again.

The visit started out with the usual process ... they took some sort of digital picture of my eye that maps the shape of it, then did the standard vision tests. The doctor wasn't happy with the result because he said my vision was worse than before I had the Lasik done, but the change was to being farsighted rather than nearsighted. He said the pictures of my eye showed absolutely nothing had changed and he suspected I had a tumor that was pressing on the back of my retina.

From that point, he did a ton of other tests ... many were simple little things like dilating my pupils and looking into my eyes with uncomfortably bright lights designed to allow him to visually evaluate my condition, but he also did some laser photography, a retinal scan, and a digital something-er-other.

The doctor still wasn't satisfied after all that, so he sent me to a colleague of his who is a retinal specialist. That guy did some of the same tests as the first doctor, just to double-check the accuracy of the results, then he did an ultrasound of my eye. That was utterly awful as they use the same goopy gel stuff on the surface of your eye as they would to do an ultrasound on any other part of your body ... it's just really super disgusting when it's in your eye.

At this point, neither could "see" any evidence of a tumor, but the pictures from the ultrasound showed a flat spot on the back side of my retina that both doctors agreed should not have been there unless something was pressing on it...a tumor being the most likely culprit. The first doctor "assured" me there was probably nothing to worry about, but the two doctors together ultimately decided I need to have an MRI done of the orbits of my eye (whatever that means), just to be on the safe side. The MRI is scheduled for this coming Saturday at 3:00 pm. The "theory" is that the MRI will tell them for sure if there is a tumor behind my eye...of course, I won't know what they find until May 21st, which is when I'm due to go back to the first doctor.

If there isn't a tumor, or some other "cause" for the change, the doctor I went to originally will go ahead and do the enhancement to fix my vision again.

And if there is a tumor, I have no idea what happens next.

I got confirmation back today from the owner of the Bed and Breakfast where rosepddle and I plan to stay in London ... our deposit has been received, and we definitely have a room for the time we'll be there. This will be our "home away from home" later this year:



The hard part now will be getting the plane tickets purchased. When we first started checking prices, I was stunned to see how much airfare had gone up since last year!

I have the money set aside for my ticket, and I think rosepddle does as well, but there were such good specials available if you were traveling up through mid-May that she and I are both a little reluctant to book at the current awful prices for fear of missing a better deal later (of course, that may backfire on us because the prices may only get worse).

I hope I don't jinx us by posting this now, but rosepddle and I have booked a place to stay for our trip to London later this year. We've sent off our deposit at least, and hopefully it will arrive at the Bed & Breakfast by the end of the week, making our arrangements truly confirmed. At least I've had an email back from the owner telling me she will hold the room for us.

As it stands right now, we plan to leave the US on July 30th and return (reluctantly) on August 10th. Although we've not worked out the details of our trip as yet, I know at the very least we will see Avenue Q with my friend, nick730, and visit my friend, Janet, who was kind enough to share her flat with me last year when I went to see Equus.

rosepddle and I have tickets to see Equus on Broadway on it's first preview night ... September 5th!!!



(Yeah, okay ... this was a promo pic from the London run last year, but I'll take advantage of any excuse to post it again).

We have orchestra seats 111 and 112, in row "O" ... which isn't quite as close as I'd hoped, but it was the best we could get for the first night, and we are planning to go again later in the run.

I am SO EXCITED!!!

By now, it's no big secret that I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. I've been acquiring a few Potter "collectibles" over the past few years, and on Easter Sunday, I bought a new piece for my collection. It arrived today.



I think it's particularly cool because, aside from the fact that it's a Harry Potter piece, a small part of the work I do involves record keeping for the four cemeteries owned by our town. I'm going to display this piece on the credenza behind my desk in my office because I've been wanting to have more of Harry in my office and the fact that the piece contains the Riddles' gravestone makes it at least "job related" enough to somewhat justify keeping what would otherwise be considered a children's toy in my office.

Another thing that is particularly cool about this purchase is that I got it on eBay for just $9.99 plus another $13.77 for shipping, making the total spent $23.76. The item generally retails for $40-$45 not counting the shipping, so I feel like I got a really good deal.

Happy 30th Birthday, Fred and George!!!

Yeah, I know Fred was supposedly killed in the final battle ten years ago, but I'm in denial. It should've been Percy.

My friend rosepddle just sent me a link to an article, which I couldn't get to open, telling of some rather sad news about Dame Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, not to mention other characters in countless other fabulous films). Rather than try to recount the report here second-hand, I did a bit of research and found another account that would open for me. You'll need to scroll all the way to the final item, but you can read the article here.

Although I can't actually vouch for the "truth" of the article, it is being reported widely enough without any apparent denial by her representatives that it would "appear" it may be valid, in spite of the fact that the article got her "return to the stage" date wrong. Lady from Dubuque opened on March 6, 2007 ... I know, because I was there and I had the incredible privilege of meeting her after the performance.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Smith in what I am sure will be a trying time for her. I truly hope that she will make a full and speedy recovery.

I just slowed down enough to open my mailbag at work and there was a surprise waiting for me. Janet, my dear friend and hostess for my London trip last year, sent me a Harry Potter Dumbledore's Army Poster Book...



... she had mentioned awhile back that she'd gotten the book, so it wasn't a complete shock, but I wasn't expecting it today either, so it was quite a lovely surprise.

The picture you can see on the front above is actually a hologram sort of thing and depending on the angle, Harry is either surrounded by Voldemort and a Death Eater as shown, or has Hermione and Ron standing by his side. The inside is great as well, and although more of it does focus on the fifth film (in which Dumbledore's Army is born), it has a sort of "history" of Harry's war up to that point.

This would make a phenomenal autograph book because it has pictures of most of the important characters with sufficient blank spaces (or spaces that could be written over without covering faces) to get the actors to write their names. Pity I'm not geographically in a position to get it all filled up with signatures.

Because rosepddle challenged me, I've created a list of fictional characters I wouldn't kick out of my bed. (And anyone who can't guess who tops my list without looking DOES NOT know me very well).

( Click here to have a look at my list . . . )

For a long time now, I've been wanting to have something from my Equus experience last year that I could actually hang on my wall at home without raising as many eyebrows as if I hung my autographed Equus Promo photo in the living room.

Well, I've had a stroke of genius I think. Or maybe I've just had a stroke.

I decided I'm going to cross-stitch the Equus poster ... the giant one that adorned the front of the Gielgud in London while I was there, and doctor it up with the show's run dates (both the West End and Broadway) and that lovely quote of Dan's about people not being able to say he hadn't challenged himself. (I loved that!)

The actual cross-stitching is no problem. I have the talent, provided I can find the time. What I didn't have was any way to get the design into a pattern, so after much internet searching, I finally found someone who could do it. I've been working with Andrea at Black Cat Studios, and between my design idea and her pattern-making expertise, we've come up with this:



I think it's gonna be gorgeous when I get it finished!

I heard back from the lady at the B & B and she is reluctant to book a reservation for rosepddle and me until we have confirmed flights. She said her rental fees are her sole source of income and she can't afford to have us cancel because we couldn't find a well-priced flight and then she's potentially lost a booking opportunity for those dates.

Well, I'm reluctant to buy a plane ticket that looks as if it could cost over $1,000 until I'm sure I have a place to stay! But yes, we did intend to wait on buying our tickets for a bit to watch the fares in hopes of a better rate.

I hate to just lie to the woman and say we have our flight booked, because then if something does go wrong and we have to cancel, she'll be reluctant to reserve for us when we do make it work.

Yes, we could stay somewhere else, but this location has the best prices we've found and I'm really partial to this one because I saw it when I was in London last year, so I know what we'd be getting in terms of location/quality...which I think is an important consideration when going that far from home.

Within the past couple days, rosepddle forwarded me an email from her Dad announcing some really great airfares to London, and I got emails back from both of the bed & breakfast places we were considering confirming that one has availability in May and both have rooms available in early August (our two preferred travel times).

Of course, it turned out the really great prices posted in the forwarded email were EACH WAY - meaning you had to double them for actual cost of a roundtrip ticket, but they were still much better than what we'd been finding. The hitch was that to get the special rates, your flights had to take place on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday AND you had to depart the US no later than May 15th.

In all honestly, May has always been more of a preferred travel time for me than for rosepddle, and after talking with her boss about taking the time off for a trip in early May, the bottom line is that it's really not the best time for her to be away from work due to some potential organizational changes.

So ... as of right now, our goal is to leave the US for London on July 31st and return on August 10th. We're going to go ahead and book a place to stay and start watching airfares. If we don't find a decently priced flight by the first week of July, we will cancel our reservation and rebook for sometime next year, probably in March.

Well, it's official!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released in two parts. You can read the article here.

Oddly enough, today is exactly one year from my trip back home from London last year. Depressing thought, really, but just maybe I have another thought to keep me cheery instead.

Nothing is definite yet, of course, but rosepddle and I have been talking for quite awhile about taking a trip to London together, hopefully in 2008. It was beginning to look a bit questionable if we'd manage it because of the outrageous cost of air travel, which I assume has been due to the soaring gas prices we've had here lately, and because the availability of the timeshare we'd been hoping to use was slim to non-existent. It seemed almost more than we could manage to have to pay the higher airfares AND pay the full price at some London hotel (the timeshare would've been quite economical ... we'd have only had to pay transfer fees to get the location we wanted).

We'd almost resigned ourselves to having to wait until next Spring to make the trip when suddenly today I discovered a bed and breakfast with rates that won't completely put us in the poor house, and I ran across a flight option that is at least under $1,000 round trip. It's still expensive when you compare it to the $566 I paid for the flight last year, but MUCH better than the $1,200-$1,300 I've been finding in recent searches.

The difference seems to be the choice of departure airport. rosepddle & I live several states apart and had originally thought to go either from her home airport or mine, but on a whim I did a search for one halfway between us and that's where I found the better rate.

It's actually starting to seem like this will work! Of course now, the key is whether or not the B & B actually has a room available for us at the time we want to go (or at any time we can go ... we're flexible, after all), AND whether or not I can convince hubby to let me go a second time. I've been telling him all along I planned to, and he's not said I had to be out of my mind, but I'm not entirely certain he's taken me seriously.

I've emailed the B&B for info on availability, and if we get lucky and there's something open, then I'll just have to break it to him gently.

Right now, rosepddle & I are hoping to leave the states on July 31st and return (well, really, we'd rather not return at all) on August 10th.

WISH US LUCK!

My lack of patience got the better of me, so I took a bit of extra time at lunch today to watch the DVD of Being Human that nick730 sent to me. Well, lack of patience, and the fact that I realized all my evenings this week were going to be consumed by work I'd have to take home as a result of a project due out at the end of the week.

The show was really good! nick730 had said quite a few complimentary things about Russell Tovey, and I couldn't help but wonder a bit if that was influenced by the fact that the guy is sort of cute and spends a fair bit of time in the show taking his clothes off.



Certainly those are two compelling reasons to enjoy the show, but there really was substance there as well. The story will obviously focus on the lives of the central trio, being George (a werewolf played by Tovey), Mitchell (a vampire played by Guy Flannagan) and Annie (a ghost played by Andrea Riseborough), but it didn't take long at all for me as a viewer to begin to care what happened to their characters. I felt rather bad for George when his former fiancé discovered his condition and determined she was too weak to go through it.

There was also a pleasant surprise for me in the appearance of Adrian Lester, whom I was familiar with from his time playing Mickey Stone in Hustle. In this, Adrian played Herrick, who I'd call the leader of the Vampires, for lack of any proper terminology.

Like nick730 and many others, I hope they make this into an actual series. Of course, that just means he'll have to tape more stuff more me. (I love you, nick730, if you're reading this).

I just had to take a moment to say what incredible friends I have! Seriously ... last week I went home and found Harry Potter poster and sticker books in the mail that my friend rosepddle had sent to me, and the week before, she sent me an absolutely gorgeous Harry Potter book mark.

Today I got home and had a DVD sent from my friend nick730, who lives in the UK. The DVD is a recording of the pilot for a BBC3 show (hopefully to become a series) called Being Human starring Russell Tovey.



I'm really excited about watching this, but unfortunately, it could be as late as Thursday evening before I actually get to do it due to work commitments. (I just HATE when real life gets in the way of having fun).

At any rate, for those who aren't familiar with Being Human, nick730 gave a great review on his blog when it came out. Not having seen it yet, I won't attempt a review, but I will "borrow" a few little plot details from his description that got me interested in the first place (as if the picture above isn't enough to attract some attention).

I'm summarizing what he's already said, and he said it so much better . . .

Being Human is a comedy-drama (emphasis on the drama) about a werewolf named George (Tovey) who has been cursed for the last two years and has had to move around the country to protect himself. His best friend, Mitchell (played by Guy Flanagan), is a vampire and they get a flat together in an attempt to live as normally as possible. Turns out their flat is haunted by an agoraphobic ghost, Annie, (Andrea Riseborough) and she completes the trio.

Well, I have to love the story ... just look at my journal name! And this is a story about a trio.

Add to that the fact that there's a conversation at the end of the episode, where the main trio are discussing Harry Potter, and it's a MUST SEE for me. (Not to mention nick730 says Russell Tovey spends most of the episode naked, and I think both he and rosepddle will back me up when I say I've had a thing for naked Brits here lately).