old lady alert: i'm so bad at sleeping in these day.  i used to be a champion sleeper, my peak coming when i slept until 3pm one day during a visit home from college.  now i'm lucky if i can sleep until 10 or 11...and i feel so gross when i do.  this morning?  awake at 7:30am, unable to fall back asleep.  now, my room is not the cave that my room in atlanta is, so the light streaming through the cracks in the curtains isn't helping matters, so perhaps that is as much to blame as my impending 30th birthday...

yesterday liz, jen, and i went on this adventure!: http://goo.gl/maps/54JI6

we walked from downtown oxford to port meadow and along the isis river...

(very wind in the willows, huh?)

...to a pub called the trout, where we had a great lunch before walking back home.  it was hot here yesterday - in the 80s - and we sweated the whole way, but it was a great adventure and we earned our lunch.  along the way we passed the ruins of godstow abbey, which is REALLY OLD and very pretty.  it dates from almost exactly the same time as the events in the pillars of the earth, which i just started reading...so that was fun to think about.*

i am accidentally a little sunburned now.  for the past four weeks there was no physical way to get sunburned through the rain drops and dark clouds, so i kind of forgot what the sun can do.  it's just a baby sunburn, though, so i'll be okay.


*as a side note, people never told me how awesome the pillars of the earth is.  yes, they told me i should read it, but it has also been described to me as the story of the building of a cathedral.  to me, that sounded dry and hard to slog through, so i put it off.  they should have to described it to me as the story of the PEOPLE who were involved in the building of a cathedral, because ohmygoodness i am loving this book and it is so readable and not dry at all.  now that i'm awake far before my shift in the office today (i'm on from 4pm to midnight) and the weather is just as beautiful as yesterday, i'll be spending most of the day reading my book in christ church meadow, and i couldn't be more excited.  the kids leave on saturday, so we're preparing for the run to the end - i have to take as much claire time as possible before the chaos begins on friday!