Milestones and Circuses

So I thought I should probably catch up a bit before I actually leave the country and start posting pictures from England here... A few weeks ago my car hit a milestone...100,000 miles to be exact. I made sure to catch this one on film...or in picture rather:


I marked this occasion while I was on my way to meet up with Tommy and Heather to go to the circus. Yes, that's the real Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey circus...my first real circus in the U.S. (The one I went to in Russia was cool but a bit sad). The RB & BB circus was quite exciting!

Heather and I enjoyed the zebras. They brought back fond memories....

And the clowns were very entertaining...even the ones that were really elephants...

Here we are at intermission:

And they really truly shot a couple of people from a cannon! Impressive! (They also had tightrope walkers and trapeze people, even trained tigers and poodles (particularly amusing!))

Off to England....

So, wow, time is flying and my and Jana's trip to England is now only 2 days away! I have been crazy busy trying to pull everything to together for that...and then I found out last week that my company wants me to do a project at University College London for 5 weeks! So the prospect of staying in England for 7 weeks as opposed to 2 has made this past week even more crazy...but, hey, I'll take it! I can hardly believe that I'll get to spend so much time there! And it all worked out so perfectly....I applied for the London position making the project manager aware that I would be on vacation and should the project start while I'm away would obviously mean I couldn't do it. But lo and behold, by the grace of a higher power, the project was set to start the day after Jana and I would fly back home. So instead of flying home with Jana on Nov. 4th, I'll be dropping her off at the airport and then taking a train down to London to start work on the 5th. I've rearranged my flight and will now fly home December 10th...Hurray for England!!