Never As Planned

It's been a while -again. History repeating and all that but I'm not going to go into detail, suffice to say it's been a busy six months on this side of the screen.

Work has kept me busy, for the main part. But fear not, It hasn't been all work and no play as the photo stream on my phone would put it. There's been some good and some excellent nights and days spent in the best possible company. Laughing until you're crying is by far my favoured form of ab exercise and there has been plenty of that.

The trip to Dublin in February was a hoot. All really quite well behaved, involving Disney Princess Mirror, an embassy that reminded us of a sauna and some camels in the roof of the hotel. Not to mention the tower room and some Finnish sweets. Also #TrainTales on the way up and down. Check Twitter for details.

Spring came and went in a blur of sunshine, increasingly busy times at work and some more than welcome visitors. Doing the tourist-y thing around where you live is always fun, this really is a beautiful corner of the world and showing people around serves as a perfect reminder of how lucky I really am to wake up to this every morning.

My long-awaited summer holiday came around very quickly at the end of June. Two glorious weeks to spend in Finland with My People. I got to snoop around my old haunts and catch up with people I really wish I could see more of. Those that remain in your life, not matter how long it's been since you've seen them last, who welcome you with open arms and in one hug the years that should've gotten in between suddenly disappear. Pardon my nostalgia here but I cannot stress enough how good it felt to see those who saw me through my teenage years. I love you and will be forever grateful that you are in my life.

I blogged little ode to Twitter over on my Finnish blog The people I've gotten to know through Twitter are, in a word, amazing. I got to meet one of the lovely ladies of Twitter in the flesh during my holiday. As with my namesake who accompanied me to Dublin in February, this lovely lady by the name of Marjo is one of those people who I feel I've known for years.

It seems like I was only back to work a few weeks ago rather than nearly two months. July and August are what we like to call Silly Season. So many people. So very many people. Work becomes all-consuming, and there seems to be very little time for anything else. For two months of the year I seem to be living, breathing, walking and talking work. It's good but tiring and while I love being busy, come the end of August I'm actually looking forward to the quieter days.

It's not all good new, I'm afraid. Our old, distinguished kitty gentleman Tom passed away last week. There is a kitty-shaped hole in the house and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still very sad about it. His final resting place is out in the garden, beside the rock he sat on to survey his lands. To quote a tweeting friend: "May his fields be full of mice".

On a more positive note, my free time seems to be actually free in the coming weeks. I'm itching to get back into the kitchen with time to spend over new recipes. Perhaps I'll even manage to squeeze in a blog post or two.

That's all for now. See you soon!