Bug Unit

Hey all, sorry for the radio silence of a week. I have no excuse except that both Kyle and I are Bad People.

Well, last weekend was the mother of all weekends. If you are Kyle’s friend on Facebook you can check out the photos of Face, Muppet, Chicken and Repunzel (um, that’s Tam, Gavin, Kyle and me) on our weekend. If you aren’t a Facebooker yet, fear not, I will try and load them onto flickr, in spite of breaking out into a cold sweat when i think of technology. Which is probably why I didn’t get the production analyst job.

Ok so Tam and Gav were up for the weekend, and we had an amazing time, saw the sights, drank cocktails, met the people, drank beer, took in the nightlife, drank anything we could get our hands on. You know, that type of thing. We had an amazing Friday night where we went to the Assembly, Frankensteins and ended up being drastically out of place at the Nicol Edwards (Edinburgh’s most haunted pub, allegedly) because we had had quite a few more cocktails than anyone else at the bar. My sympathy goes to, in no particular order, the bar staff, especially the guy tasked with finding a bottle of Jagermeister, the poor guy doing open mike who was asked (by me, hang head in shame) to sing happy birthday to Gavin at least three times, and the other patrons who had stopped in for a quiet drink.

On Saturday we went up to New Town and happened upon one of those parades with marching bands and everything, celebrating 300 years of Union. Weird, but cool nonetheless. On Sunday we went touristy during the day, and went up to Edinburgh Castle. Then we went onto the Haymarket and in an amazing show of bravery we each had at least one bite of the dish they call Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. So now I have tried haggis, and from now on can say that I have tried it whenever anyone asks. From that point of view it is totally worth it. We also went on a night tour of the Vaults, which was cool, a little bit fake, a bit scary, a bit not scary, and all those sorts of things. We saw the torture instruments used in about the 15th to 16th century Edinburgh. For me that was the worst part of the tour. It is disgusting what people can do to each other.

On Monday we bid farewell to Tam and Gav, and said hello to Louise and Rob, who were arriving from a bit of a road trip. Louise and Rob are recent arrivals in the UK, and are still horrified by how much everything costs, so it is good to have other people validating your opinions and horror of having to live off the rand. Louise, Rob and I missioned around the city on Monday, telling Rob everything we could remember from the tours we have been on, and then we had lunch at the Baked Potato Shop, a place that will surely go down in history for its buttery potatos with avo and cheese on them.

Life has pretty much gone back to normal now, although I have two trips on the horizon. Kyle and I are thinking of hiring a car for the Easter weekend and driving up to Northern Scotland to see St Andrews, the Lochs and various other things. I have also booked for five days in Florence, Italy, to go and see Simon, Tanja and Natasha. This is the benefit of being unemployed. I am really excited, but a little apprehensive as to how I am going to find my way around a country where I am alone and don’t speak a word of the language. Ah well, that is what adventures are about though.