This is a list of things (and a tangential footnote)

A. Things that are good about this fine Saturday in Bristol:
1. Just after 5 a.m. I talked to my favourite person in the world, who is one of the reasons I'm moving back to Vancouver despite my longstanding Never Move Anywhere Because of Some Boy policy.
2. After that I went back to sleep, and didn't get up until almost 11.
3. When I checked my email before getting out of bed, several friends had written me funny things. Yay for witty friends!
4. I got to the Post Office in time to pick up two items.
5. I now have a mint blue Canadian passport, good for another 5 years. I paid the extra pound for the 48 page version, because in Canada I would have had to pay an extra five or ten dollars for that feature and I like bargains. Through a prodigious feat of mental accounting I count this a win, whisking away the line item noting that in Canada I wouldn't have had to pay a consular fee, or for a notary public to be my witness-in-lieu-of-guarantor.
6. I am also now once more in possession of my BC driver's license and my birth certificate, as well as a mini tripod (not from the Canadian High Commission).
7. After the Post Office, I stopped by a bakery and ordered a delicious veggie sausage roll and a Welsh Rarebit panini*. As I was leaving, two women told me they loved my hat.
   - "I must ask, where did you get it."
   - "A TieRack in Paddington station... I think it was 5 pounds."
   - "It's lovely, very Jane Austen."
8. My quote from Excess Baggage arrived today and, while more than I'd like to spend on shipping, is reasonable.
9. Despite the recent snow and crap weather, the daffodils in the backyard are looking quite chipper.
   
10. In a few hours I will be at Channings Hotel, celebrating Andrew's birthday with most of my Bristolian friends.

B. Things that are less than good about this fine Saturday in Bristol
1. I'm already starting to miss my friends here and in London, and this nostalgia in advance is not very motivating.
2. Thus I haven't yet done any packing.
3. Nor have I done any generating of my final report for work.
4. Due to lack of appropriate footgear, I did not spend the day hiking in Welsh mud with Andrew and whoever else was properly shod.
5. It's kind of chilly and grey and blah out. On the plus side, this mutes my disappointment about the previous item.
6. Because the queue for mailing things was different from that for picking up mail, I neither mailed in my Canadian tax return nor Kevin's quite belated Christmas present. Kevin has provided me with several choice graphical and aural items by post, and deserves better. Given my post office issues, I should have just ordered him the coasters I couldn't resist getting for John because I'm all about sending ambiguously gay items to my straight male friends (and also they were on sale, see above re: bargains).

C. Things to do before moving back to Vancouver
1. Visit Prague and write about it.
2. Apply for and get new Canadian passport
3. Visit friends in Sweden.
4. Fill in Canadian tax return and mail it in.
5. Visit Venice during Carnevale and write about it.
6. Get new Canadian passport
7. Procrastinate semi-productively by checking out Flickr, 43 Things and del.icio.us.
8. Change address at work before Payroll cutoff date.
9. End (regretfully) account with Riverford
10. Cancel Prospect subscription and change address with Economist.
11. Change address with NHS and National Insurance.
12. Pack, give away things I'm not packing, and fill in one of these forms (more info here).
13. Hang out with friends in Bristol and London (in progress).
14. Watch the Night of 100 Dancers.
15. Learn all those fancy airsteps I've always wanted to try.

D. Things that will not get done before I move back to Vancouver
1. Walking in Wales
2. Getting to know barley grist in Scotland.
3. Going on a Round The World trip.
4. Visiting Wales, Scotland, or any African or Asian countries at all.
5. Trips to Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain (again), France (again) and Greece, for that matter.
6. Probably a lot of other things but I'm done with this list.

* if the veggie mince didn't contain anything carcinogenic, it's possible the Worcester sauce in the panini did. I chose not to ask. This was also a topic of conversation yesterday at lunch.

After speculating about which cafeteria items are probably tainted with carcinogenic food colouring, we branched off into discussing the wrongness of veggie-meats, and from there to sausages, and from there to "things that might make Christina stop being vegetarian", namely:
1) sausages (this also involved a discussion of the proper way to make/flavour sausages)
2) living in France or Greece or Italy for a few years
3) if FrenchCo-worker, GreekCo-worker and MoroccanManager finally implement their plans to have a traditional Moroccan lamb meshwee.

Then GreekCo-worker and MoroccanManager had a difference of opinion over just which parts of the lamb go on the spit, after GreekCo-worker told of how the police got called to last meshwee she'd been at, in Cardiff where there's apparently a small Greek community. Someone had seen something of the lamb's head and skinned body on a spit, thought it might be a dog, and reported them for cruelty to animals.

"Head? No!" said MoroccanManager.
"Yes, you must leave the head on," said GreekCo-worker. "Head yes, bollocks yes..."
"No, we don't leave the head on," said MoroccanManager. "But bollocks yes... The bollocks are very tasty. The head we put in a pot and steam it. Some people eat the eyes... I think OtherFrenchCo-workerWithARussianName had an eyeball in Tunisia."
"Eyes, yech," said GreekCo-worker, FrenchCo-worker and I.
MoroccanManager agreed: "I don't eat the eyes. I like the tongue though."
- posted by Christina @ 3:06 pm