So that was the summer...

After we got back from our visit to Kenya (see previous post), we found out we'd passed our Strategic level exams. Hurrah!

We had a couple of visits - first from me mate Dave, who joins my other friends Will & Tom in thinking it would be a great idea to go off and live in Australia. Ironically, the only Australian friend I have, Jlo, thought it would be a great idea to come and live London.

The second visit was from Danny - on the Saturday night we go out in Brighton and meet up with some friends, all of whom are on Facebook. Jo gets jealous that she is being left out of this exclusive club, and promptly joins up the next day. The next day, as we're walking down the beach with Danny, we bump into the Brighton carnival (www.brightoncarnival.co.uk), a funny event, and an example of the kind of random thing you encounter on a regular basis down here.

A couple of weeks later, Lin & Krish had a BBQ at their new place, and combined it with a game of rounders in the park, and water-balloon fighting. I was envious of their George Forman outside grill.

The most exciting news of the summer though was our moving house (well, flat). We were moving up the property ladder, indeed up the property stairs too, to a bigger flat on a different floor of the same building that we've been living in since we moved down here. It's a lot bigger, and we now have space for visitors to stay, so they don't have to walk thru our bedroom if they want to use the loo in the middle of the night! It was fairly stressful sorting out all the paperwork, legal stuff etc, as these things invariably are, but all came together in the end. We moved most of the stuff ourselves, with the help of my brother and his girlfriend, and got in some removal people to help with the "big stuff". We thought the sofa bed would cause the biggest trouble, but in the end they just dismantled the bed part and stuck it in the elevator.

Of course, now we're in the place, there's loads to do, sorting out painting, light fittings, furniture and all the rest. Almost immediately after moving in we painted the hall, kitchen and toilet white, which really brightened up those rooms. Jo's mum came to visit for a few days, still in recovery from her broken wrist. She instructed Jo on how to wallpaper, and now our living room has some stylish wallpaper at both ends. Getting paint that matches however, has been problematic - B&Qs colour matching service gave a colour way too dark, and there are about 5 different colours from various tests dotted about the wall.

Just last weekend we had our first proper guests over for a moving in and saying goodbye party, as Karo & Robert are joining the ranks of our friends that have gone off travelling. They had just had vaccinations which meant they couldn't drink, leaving it up to me to make up for everyone else. They brought over their Nintendo Wii and we had fun playing with that - Jo taking to the boxing game a little too easily.

Now we've just got to do our TOPCIMA case study exam next week, the last of the exams we need to take before becoming qualified management accountant. Then no more studying - whoop de whoop. Just in time for Autumn.

Also, I've just made a website for University Radio Exeter alumni - http://www.geocities.com/urerewind/
The site aims to bring together all the various links, and materials relating to URE that are floating about on the internet, with a bit of a bias to the time i was there). If anyone wants anything added, let me know.
You can tell i'm supposed to be studying, I get distracted easily.