Weekends - They just aren't long enough

So... this weekend was eventful...

We got up fairly early on Saturday morning because we had planned to drive down to Bournemouth for an apartment viewing at 10am and to look around a bit at possible areas to live in. Just as we were walking out the door, a neighbor (Shirley) was standing in the communal entry-way. Her car was blocked in by someone and she wondered if it was us (it wasn't). She needed to get to the Samaritan Centre for a volunteer shift. It was raining and she had a bit of a limp, so walking wasn't really an option. She was about to call a taxi, but we offered to give her a lift. Despite this slight detour, we made it down to Bournemouth on time for our appointment. The apartment was fantastic! I'll leave it for K to talk about it because that's more her department. In a nutshell, we loved it and said we'll take it. Looks like we'll be moving to a new place in July. A fruitful morning out of the way, we took a meandering path through the New Forest to get back to Winchester, saw some of the wild horses and ponies that wander around out there.

When we got home we had a late lunch while we finished watching the Oscars, which Mamma had taped for us when it aired back in March. I was about to finish re-stringing my banjo when my mobile phone suddenly rang. It was Q, someone I know from my film production days in LA, and his friend L. He called to tell me they had gotten to London and that they had gotten bus tickets to Winchester. Holy crap! Uh, OK. I had suspected this because I had exchanged a few emails with him when he told me they were coming to England. They were flying standby so he wasn't sure which flight he'd get on. They asked if they could crash at our place. I told him that'd be fine, but that we're nowhere close to London (a common misconception amongst our American friends and family is that England = London and if you live in England, you must live in London). We didn't think they'd actually take us up on the offer. Anyway, we had to do some quick tidying up and then figure out what we would do with them.

About an hour later, we were sitting at a pub with them hearing stories of film/tv production in LA (Martha Stewart using the f-word and treating people like trash, Robert Deniro wanting to jump out of a van to throttle someone who had cut off them off, etc.). It was great to see Q again (he's quite a character... a sort of Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski) and his friend L seemed like an alright guy e had some dinner and then I suggested we go back to our place. They were up for an early night because of their jet-lag and were aware that K was going to run in a 10K the next day. However, on the way back, Q wanted to go into another pub (the one across the street from us). K went home and I went in with them. At around 10pm, L was hungry again and wanted to go to a fast-food place. I directed them up the street to the kebab and fish'n'chips shops, then I went home to wait for them. They didn't come back until about 2:30am. I napped on the couch so I could hear them knock. K was supposed to be in our bedroom sleeping, but I later find out that she's had a tough time of it due to the noise the neighbors were making upstairs until about midnight.

Next morning, K leaves for the 10K. I had planned to be at the finish line to greet her, but now that we had our two unrulhouse gueststs, I had to stay behind to try to orchestrate their departure. They were due for a flight to Dublin from Stansted on Monday morning. There were a few options: a) cheap Megabus trip to London at 4:30am and then to Stansted from there; b) a more expensive National Express bus to London leaving every hour or so; c) a National Express bus to Stansted leaving at 4:30am Sunday night/Monday morning. Despite hinting several times that the 10:40am bus would be the best for them, they were clinging to option 'c' so I had no choice but to just tell them that they had could not statillil then. I offered to drive them to Heathrow so they wouldn't have to take the bus, then they could get to Stansted from there. They took my offer and booked a B&B near Stansted. Then they offered to take me to breakfast at the pub up the road. Q went up to the bar to order, but forgot to order for me which he didn't realize until he was halfway done with his own plate. Then I showed them around Winchester a bit, pretty much just the Cathedral. Then I ushered them back to our place and into our car to drive them to Heathrow. K came with me. They offered to pay for the gas, offering £20. I told them £10 would be fine, but by the time we were finally home again, we had burned that £10 worth of fuel and more. See, after we dropped them off at Departures and had gotten back on the M25, my phone rang. It was L. He had left his digital camera in the back seat, could we please turn around. He was very apologetic. It took us about 20 minutes to get back to the airport again because traffic had picked up. It was after 4pm when we finally got home, so we did our best to enjoy the precious last hours of our weekend.

But, hey, we found a great apartment to move to in July!

Needless to say, we're severely looking forward to this coming long weekend. I want to play my damn banjo!