This is our online journal of documenting our great escape to Scotland.

October 29.

We have had a very wild start to our Halloween festivities here in Scotland. Friday night we ended up at a Halloween party given by some of Vanessa's friends. We went on over with Jeremy and Jamie. The party was a comic book theme and the costumes ran down like this: I was TankGirl! Jano was Hong Kong Fooey. Jamie was Max Normal from Judge Dredd. Jeremy was a sexy Welshman with a leek (huh?). Vanessa was quite the lovely geisha girl. We had so much fun. We each met tons of people and danced in the kitchen. Jano was driven insane by some silly young English girl who although she's never been to America, was ultra anti-American. How silly?

October 26.

So - we've been the worst at updating and hopefully we'll be better about it from now on.

We've had four visitors since we've been here. In August, we got a visit from Chris and Teri and in September, my girlfriend Michele and her brother Brent came over to visit. I can't believe Chris and Teri made the trip as Teri was busy cooking her little bun in the oven (Badger Eno - born October 12 - hurray!) and they only had 4 days for the whole trip. We wandered them from one end of Edinburgh to the other and back again. For Michele and Brent, I'm sure it was quite an eventful trip for them as just after they arrived, the big petrol crisis came to a head. We had planned a trip to the Highlands for a few days only to find out that there were awful slowdowns on the highways because of the lorries and that there was basically no petrol to be hand in most of Scotland. We gave up the car and decided to take the train instead only to find out the crisis had begun to affect the train service as well! So poor Michele and Brent got stuck in Edinburgh - I guess if you are gonna get stuck anywhere, Edinburgh is better than most places. I'm disappointed that they were not able to see the rest of Scotland as they had planned to, but we all got to Stirling at least and that was lovely. They brought along one of the paintings done by Brent for my birthday gift and it's the first thing I see when I walk in the door now (I've hung it in the hallway).

I was able to spend a couple weeks back in the states in September. During this time, I was able to see my sister Barb, her husband Kirk, and my niece and nephew, Barrett and Kearson. I hated not being able to see the Laguna Beach Baird contingent and other friends, but with the short amount of time I had, I'm sure everyone understands. During the trip, I was able to attend Bear's high school varsity football game (go Highlanders) who beat Cal High. I also attended some movies with my sister, ate yummy American fast food, and just spent some quality sister time with Barb. I was also able to spend 2.5 days in San Francisco at Publicis getting back in touch with the crew. That was neat and let me just say things are exciting in that area!

Jano took me down to London to catch the plane and picked me up at the airport too! :) To do that took quite a bit of hard travelling for him - to pick me up he had to catch a 6:00 a.m. one hour flight, take the 1.5 hour trip into the city from London Louton airport, take the .5 hour train to Gatwick and then wait for me to arrive. What a wonderful husband hmmm? We were able to have tons and tons of sushi at Yo Sushi which was pretty cool. They have this robot drink cart that wanders about the shop trying to pick up women and being a general pest.

So a few of the things we've been doing since we got back - well, we were very happy to celebrate out 3rd year wedding anniversary! We had a lovely view of the castle from the Heights Restaurant. Afterwards we spent the evening drinking and dancing the night away at the El Barrio club where they had a live salsa/merengue band. I guess I should say we did more drinking than dancing, but we did ultimately dance, although I'm not sure my version of tejano went over well.

Oh! We have had the wonderful opportunity to make friends with the local scooter club, the Edinburgh Blues. They meet every Wednesday night and they have been the most pleasant group of people we've met so far. There was a rally at Morecambe (Mocum to you and me - I don't quite get the pronounciation, but oh well) October 14-15 and they went out of their way to find rides for us and a place to stay. I was a bit too sick to head out with them, but Jano went with them and I have to say - well - what can I say? When I spoke to him, he was pretty well under the weather as the whole group of guys had been buying him pints all day long and he still had 3 more pints to go. When he arrived back home on Sunday, he looked a little green about the gills.

The Blues took us to a do out in Dalkeith. The band Bombskare played and they were quite two-toned. Jano and I danced and got cheers and applause from the many Blues wandering about the place. We ended up just having the best time dancing, chatting, drinking and generally making a nuisance of ourselves. At one point, we decided to go forage for food and one of the guys, Richard, came out to look after us because he was worried about the neighborhood. I thought that was very sweet and thoughtful. The ride too and from the dance was probably the most interesting part of the evening because we pretty much could have been speaking Russian for all they understood us to say and what we understood them to say. hehe.

All in all, I would say the month of October has been very exciting and eventful. We had lots of fun while here and as our trip is slowly beginning to wind down, we are looking into staying and extra 6 weeks. Anybody wanna come see Christmas or New Years in Scotland?