And I don't feel the same...

*sigh* an hour all to myself in the office, is it my birthday???
well here we go kids, get comfortable.

been in london for about six weeks now. definitely had some ups and downs, painful moments of 'why the hell did i do this?' and glorious moments of 'yes, this is why...'

the concert scene in london is out of control. there are shows i want to see *literally* every single night. i wish i got paid (a) more, and (b) more often, but that's universal to everywhere in the world, i suppose. my job is cool, the people are nice, but quite frankly it's a lot more "work" than i'm used to doing. the location could not be better, everyday on the bus i pass big ben and westminster abbey and all that jazz.... definitely cool to see. there's one really nice guy at work named david (ugh, so tired of davids!)... i immediately developed a minor crush on him, but sadly he is married. still such a great friend though.

i finally cracked the IM code, so i can nervously chat away during the afternoon hours to the cool kids back home and that makes me happy. i miss so many people, i wish everyone could be here to enjoy this and help me through the hard times. i think the hardest part has been the recent realization that a lot of goals i had for myself while being here won't play out the way they were supposed to. and that's fine, just surprising.

with the new album coming out in may, the USA is abuzz with DMB news and articles and tourdates and i'm going crazy with jealousy!!! in addition to be horribly jealous of all the DMB activity, i miss lost. (hottest ABC show EVER!) but i nearly laughed out loud today when i realized all my wishes are coming true!! here's to sept. 5th!!!

but, as for london, let's see.... where to start? i've talked about my rufus adventures (more in 3 weeks!) ray lamontange, gavin... so great. tons more shows in the next couple weeks. brian has become my rock, don't know what i'd do without him here. gordon (formerly of murphy's grand irish pub in alexandria) has been making appearances at the Kenwyn Road flat, and much to my surprise (and contrary to my first impression), he's actually a lot of fun. gail and stuart have been down several times, can't say enough good things about them. they're coming down this saturday with leon (the hottie) and paul (panda) and we're going to see winnie the pooh live on stage, courtesy of my former employer feld inc. (thanks nicole and amanda!!) the next weekend is dublin, with the aforementioned gordon. should be fun.

went to see 'whose life is it anyway' starring kim catrell the other day. very good, funny in a sad way, but the audience loved her, which was cool. went shopping in the sunshine in camden market, really cool stuff. it seems like there's hardly a spot in london that isn't constantly crowded. our day trip to brighton last week was nice, to breathe fresh air and enjoy the ocean. it was too cold to go in, of course, but nice to relax on the shore. (the shore by the way, consists of rocks rather than sand. david at work gave me a nice geology lesson as to why that is, but i'll be damned if i remember a word of it.... i was listening but mostly thinking how cute he is!!! hahaha, i'm the worst!!)

my company shares our floor with another company (a company which, coincidently, employs several scottish men, and i must say, scottish accents are hotter than irish or english ANY day of the week!) but anyway, i'm the only girl under 30 on the entire floor and the boys are constantly walking by, which is fine until i try to talk on IM or write on my blog.... which is a long-winded way of saying i must end this.

write more soon, miss you all!!!

~courtney

"I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing
And I don't feel the same "
~keane

Hope it don't rain all day...

the first pictures are up and ready for viewing. more to come very soon.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/kourtanay/my_photos

so good to see you in this country!

so, big story!

tuesday night, left work around 5:45pm, went to a member's only (read: private) club called adam's street (www.adamstreet.co.uk) for a work party. very cool little shin-dig. launch party for the awards ... a lot of networking, free booze, the usual.

left the party early around 8pm to "pick a friend up from the airport"... actually went to camden town to the barfly to see mr. gavin degraw! haha. ;) tina, on the other hand, actually DID go to heathrow to pick up our darling lil' becky, who arrived just after 9pm. they frantically tried to get to the show in time, but ended up missing the whole thing. i, however, caught every glorious note!!!

the barfly's very small, comparable to the Iota in arlington... small, but soldout, crowd... very very into the degraw-ster. :) i think i was the person most into the show, of course. excellent show, pretty standard setlist, but everyone knew every word, which was cool.

so i meet up with tina and the beckster as the crowd's clearing out... we head downstairs to the main bar... run into joey degraw (gavin's brother and guitarist) he was really sick, looked horrible. clutching a packet of theraflu mix... asked him where gavin is, pointed at the bar.

so we get some drinks, sit down, catch up, wait for the mob around gavin to disappear... it looked as if he was heading towards the exit so i run over to say hi... stand next to him as some dude drools all over him, then suddenly (cue music change), he looks over...

me: 'hey gavin! great show as usual!'
him: 'woah! hey! what are you doing here???'
me: 'i live here now!'
him: 'wait wait wait, don't i know you from... i mean, you're from... huh?'
me: 'yeah, i met you 10 billion years ago in DC'
him: 'yeah yeah, wow that's great! i can't believe you're here! wow thanks for coming out!!!'
*big hug*

so i dragged my future husband over to tina and becky, and for the first time in our three year love affair, i actually got a picture with him!! :) it will be up soon, rest assured. then as we left, got ANOTHER big hug from gavin, and he said 'so great to see you in THIS country!'... he's coming back to perform on may 31st. the wedding announcements will go out shortly thereafter.

going to brighton tomorrow, four day weekend for the BRITISH!!! :) wooooo hooo!

~courtney

"You'll be my vacation away from this place
You know what I want..."
~g.d.

catch a falling star...

beautiful weekend, great times! :)

more details to follow.

also - putting up some pictures tonight!! :) yay!

gavin degraw concert tomorrow!!!!

I found myself face down in the ditch

hello ladies and gentlemen!

i am definitely breathing a lot easier these days. GOT A JOB!!! :) woo hoo!! :) it's about time!!!! working for Medicial Futures, (www.medicalfutures.co.uk), a non-profit group that runs the "oscars for the british medical community"... or so i'm told. the big event is in November, and i'm doing marketing for the entire process until I leave. it's a very small company, everyone's really nice, and our offices are right downtown in Oxford Circus. basically i'm surrounded by all the high-end shopping of London. everyday as i leave or go to lunch i can window shop for things i'll never, ever in 10 billion years be able to afford!!! it's GREAT! ;) it's going to be a really busy next six weeks, while the nomination period is open for the awards, after that it will settle down to planning the actual logistics of the awards. i'm told that if all goes well and i'm interested, they will fly me back for the ceremony in November! woo - hoo!

of course the first big event is a launch party to kick off the year's events... and what night is the big shindig? March 22nd, of course! and why is this important? oh it just happens to be the night Becky comes into town for her week's visit... and it's the night i have tickets to go see Gavin Degraw!!! lovely!!! :( but i'm not missing gavin, no way no how.....

speaking of concerts!.... last tuesday i saw the wonderful Mr. Rufus Wainwright at the Carling Academy in Islington... pretty similiar in size the Black Cat.... very small, that is. Rufus rocked, but sadly that was day one of my plague- experience... so i didn't enjoy it as much as i should have. THEN... this past monday, Rufus did a signing and a short performance at the Virgin Megastore at Tottenham Court Road... so of course i stopped by that!! :) he did about six songs, to mark the release of "Want Two" here..... course i got MY copy in the states when it was released there several months ago,,,, but it was cool cause i was one of like 2 people (out of a TON that came out to meet him) that was obxiously singing along since no one knew the words....

so then LAST NIGHT.... , Ray LaMontange was playing, and tina and i knew it had been sold out for a while, but i reallllllly wanted to go... and i kept telling tina 'where there's a will, there's a way' and we should try.
so by god, we went, and got in line, and acted like we had tickets, and TOTALLY GOT IN!!! :)

who rocks the house? this girl rocks the house!!!! and it was a GREAT show.... even better considering we got in for FREE, fools!!! he had a five-piece orchestra with him, sounded amazing. even better than the vienna show in january.

anyway, this weekend is still our house-warming party. looking forward to that.

~courtney

"Been so long since I seen your face
or felt a part of this human race
I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long"
~Ray LaMontange

but my god, don't you know it!

hello everyone!!! :) :) :)

ahhhhh i miss everyone more than you know! so much has happened, and i have truly slacked on this blog, which is so unlike me. .... which should make it easy to understand how incredibly stressed out i've been. i can't believe i've only been here for just over two weeks. it feels like just over two years. ahhhh..... where to start?

basically, (DAY ONE) i arrived at 6AM, spent the day crazy apartment hunting with tina, settled into our hostel "the generator" (slogan - "the generator: hangover included!), went to a pub to have a couple drinks, started to go to bed and saw some fellow hostel-ers with pizza. thought pizza seemed like a grand idea (it was around 1AM at this point) so we inquired where they got it and went across the street to get some of our own. (cue the music change) we walk in, and there are two drunken irish men arguing about something stupid. i see tina staring at the one, and i laugh to myself, thinking 'i see i'm not the only sucker for a hot accent...' and then suddenly tina goes "brian? Brian from 10 years ago here in london, brian??" brian, one of the drunk irish men, looks over and goes.... "OH MY GOD TINA!!!!!"........ the rest, as they say, is history. brian and tina were friends 10 years ago for two months right here in london. they completely lost touch, and just happen to wander into each other on my night one in london. sooooooooo weird! brian is a FABULOUS irishman who's traveled and lived all over the world, and now lives with his boyfriend tomasz (who's polish)... right across the street from the generator! brian has since become my new UK best friend, something i remind him of every single day. brian and tomasz have an ADORABLE 6-month old puppy named Murphy, and since i'm still job-less, i'm his offical babysitter. :) dogs definitely aren't cats but murphy's filling the void.

so, yeah, what can i say? that was day one! insanity. brian's gotten both tina & i cell phones (mobile phones) and has backed us up on paper for our apartment since it's f'in impossible to get a place til you have a job, and of course impossible to get a job until you have an apartment.... insanity. but we finally have an apartment! it's a cute two bedroom in clapham, which is south of the river. about a 15 minute tube ride to the heart of downtown london. we moved in monday, after a solid week of insan-o apartment hunting.... then we both promtly came down with this plague-like flu. sucks! i spent about four days in bed, tina was about 24 hours in the cycle behind me but she's sick as well. ugh!!!! i could have gotten sick in the US, you know?

anyway, we did have a fantastic weekend in Swindin (near stonehenge) with our friends gail and stuart and some new (hottie) friends of theirs, just before we got the plague. there will be more details on this and pictures up soon!

we're having a housewarming party next weekend, assuming the plague is done. please come! ;)

i miss you all. eat drink and be merry, especially if you don't have the plague!

~courtney