Sorry:

For those of you who I owe email to, I'm sorry. It's nothing personal, it's just that in the last week, I think I've been both at home and awake for an average of about an hour a day, and I'm really too tired to look at the computer during that time.

Yeah:

So there are no updates, because: my life is boring. This morning I got up, went to work at 8, left at 6 (don't ask), went riding, got home about 8:30, ate a leftover hotdog (the last one from the barbecue!!), and read some email and Orwell essays. I'm about to take a shower and go to bed, because I am exhausted.

Mostly that's because I went to see my friend Jason in the Rocky Horror picture show on Saturday night. By which I mean Sunday morning, since it started about 12:30 am. It was mad fun, though I got hit with some toast that meant business. We brought toast and newspapers and a flashlight and playing cards (which we forgot about) and party hats apparently meant for small dogs from the size of the rubber band holding it on. Jason was awesome as Dr. Frank N Furter, and the rest of the cast was really into it too. The audience was not so much unfortunately. And I am not so much of a dork to really know what to do most of the time, so I wasn't much help.

I got home at 4, but am totally unable to sleep past 10:30, so I got up then. Sucks. I must be getting old.

Oh, I also have started swimming at the free gym on the military base. I thought I might be really intimidated by the muscles and maybe the weight training area would be scary, but the pool is fine. No hot guys though. E--, I'm sure you're disappointed.

I'd forgotten how much I liked swimming. The feeling of the thin curtain of water that covers you all the time, the last lap you swim when you're so tired you can barely lift your arms but your form is finally perfect, the joy of doing exercise so that you feel sad when it ends, when you wish you could keep going after you hit a mile. I'm in no kind of shape yet, so I have to stop during (right now, I swim 300-350m before stopping, but I'm going to try for 400 m tomorrow). I'm really looking forward to going, except that I have to seriously shave my legs tonight.

See, that's why I don't update more. Because my life is boring.

London:

I just learned that my friend Mike was burned badly in the face yesterday at Edgeware Road Tube station. He will be OK, though, and we're pretty sure that everyone else that I cared about there is safe.

I don't know what to say. London is a place where I was very happy, and I have fond memories. Eating peanut butter, jello, and tuna fish with C-- and E-- in our cozy tiny flat in Gilbert Street, drinking vodka and fruit juice from water bottles on our way to the Three Tuns, T--'s rat-infested barely West End flat with her roughly a hundred roommates, going to see Slovakian modern dance and a fashion show at one of the fine social events we got to go to, spending hours wandering around Spitalfields or Camden market, watching the parade of humanity that goes through London every day, sending country clearances and trying to avoid answering the phone at work, meeting a Countess (though she introduced herself to me as Sophie Limerick and I had no idea what to call her) while visiting a hospital in Cambridge, eating salad in the cafeteria with the other interns, walking home late at night down Oxford Street when it was so empty you could walk down the middle of the street and stopping at Cafe Zeynah for late night falafel, dinner with Ali our insane landlord, and a dozen other totally banal things. And yes, the Tube. I was the Trip Planner, because I had a Tube map in my head almost from day 1 there. I could tell you what lines a stop was on and how far it was from where we were going. My first thought when I heard the news today was: Liverpool Street-- Circle, Central, Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City... You just take the central line straight from Bond street.

London is such a civilised city, a place where you can spend a good afternoon getting a cup of tea and going to the British Museum, or a morning working on a pint at your local. It's a city that I love. I don't like to think of it like this. London can take it, and so can I, but not quite yet.