{"id":35328,"date":"2017-03-13T00:36:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T22:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=35328"},"modified":"2017-03-30T23:56:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T20:56:29","slug":"comfy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/comfy\/","title":{"rendered":"Comfy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am so happy with my accommodation in Brighton! So I got that upgrade last night to the larger room at the back of the house with a better bed and that in combination with two glasses of wine meant that I slept eight hours straight! I was so surprised when I looked at the clock this morning. I can&#8217;t remember the last time I slept the night through.<\/p>\n<p>My host makes me feel so comfortable in her home that mornings are a relaxed thing here, just as if I was on my own. I get up when I&#8217;m ready and then go to the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast. This morning, I got ambushed by the ancient, senile, and deaf cat who greeted me in the near darkness with a scream that made me jump high enough to hit the very high ceiling.<\/p>\n<p>Meet Charlie. This is from four years ago, &#8220;before he was senile.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Charlie The Explorer\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-UHXe3G5CMc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Now, imagine being startled by that meowing, but about ten times louder. That got the adrenaline pumping this morning!<\/p>\n<p>I had a stupidly full day of work to do today and hadn&#8217;t factored in the North American time change that made me lose an hour on my deadlines! What didn&#8217;t help matters is that I didn&#8217;t do the work I was supposed to do when I came in from Lewes yesterday. I&#8217;d left it since the jobs for that client are normally super easy and take an hour. What awaited me was a rare difficult file that would take almost two hours! I was just bushed, so I contacted the client and requested an extension, which was no problem. Not very professional of me, but\u00a0she&#8217;s really lax and I know that weekend deadlines are pretty soft. So that meant extra work today.<\/p>\n<p>My host and I had sort of thought to go to a nearby Indian restaurant for their buffet for lunch, but she wasn&#8217;t in the mood by the time lunch rolled around. England has been bad for my waistline, so I decided a buffet wasn&#8217;t a good idea, plus I didn&#8217;t have much time for lunch anyway. So I ran down to the Tesco Extra to grab a quick something for lunch and figured that since I now had curry on the brain, I could get one of their\u00a0prepared meals for dinner. My host didn&#8217;t have a microwave when I arrived, but she asked me if that&#8217;s something that would be good if she has Airbnb guests and when I said yes, she ordered one. The machine was due to arrive this afternoon, so I took a chance on Tesco&#8217;s 2 for \u00a34 curries that are meant to be nuked, figuring that, worst case, I could heat them gently on the stove.<\/p>\n<p>I came out of there like a bandit since I got two of their pizza-type puff pastries for just \u00a30.62 for my lunch, plus the two curries for \u00a35. So that was three meals sorted for half of what I would have paid for the buffet. Getting ready meals is definitely not as cheap as cooking from scratch, but it&#8217;s a good compromise between that and eating out, especially since prepared foods in Europe tend to be fresh and made with real ingredients, just like you&#8217;d make at home. Not having a pantry full of spices and other staples, it&#8217;s also a great way to get some variety and try new things.<\/p>\n<p>When I came in, I helped my host take apart the bed in the room I was in originally, which she&#8217;s been letting me use as an office since the new room doesn&#8217;t have a desk. Talk about a double upgrade! That done, I went back to work.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of hours later, she came to ask if I wanted to go with her to Asda, kind of like their Walmart (even carries the George brand products), to go pick up the microwave. I must have been a dog in a previous life because all I could think was, &#8220;Ooh, I get to go on a car ride!&#8221; It wasn&#8217;t until we were in the car that I realised I&#8217;ve never ridden in a car in this country, just a bus, and let me tell you, it&#8217;s scarier close to the ground to be on the wrong side of the road! \ud83d\ude00 Unfortunately, I never did manage to get to drive here on this trip since all the driving schools I contacted for lessons were booked solid. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>The collection process at Asda was very sophisticated. There&#8217;s a touch screen flat panel by the entrance where you can put in your order info and then someone brings it out to you on a cart. He checks your ID and you&#8217;re good to go.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t feel like having a poke around Asda since it&#8217;s so like Walmart, so I declined the chance to do that, but I did accept the invitation to pop into a Marks and Spencer a little ways away since I&#8217;d heard so much about them. They sure carry some nice things! I was tempted by the sushi, but resisted! We did both stock up on heavily discounted pastries so I have a nice <a href=\"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/IMGP4703.jpg\">pain aux raisins<\/a> waiting for me tomorrow and the almond croissant will go to the airport with me on Wednesday (it&#8217;s in the freezer, so it will stay fresh).<\/p>\n<p>We also popped into another Tesco Express that she said is a good source of discounted stuff at the end of the day and that I should seriously consider checking out on Tuesday to possibly get food for the\u00a0plane trip. It&#8217;s nice having a local guide!<\/p>\n<p>The outing\u00a0was a lovely\u00a0break, but I really had to get back to work when we got in\u00a0and I finished with a half hour to spare before the deadline! I still had another hour to do for the client who had given me an extension on yesterday&#8217;s work, but that would be an easy file. So I took another break to have dinner, breaking in the new microwave to heat up a ridiculously good coconut chicken korma curry with rice. I am going to really miss Tesco. Hope my tikka masala tomorrow is as good!<\/p>\n<p>After dinner, I finished my work and then was finally able to take a hot shower to work out the kinks and slip into my jammies before joining my host in her\u00a0lounge\u00a0to watch some crap telly. I made sure to confirm that she wasn&#8217;t just being polite, but she said that it&#8217;s nice to have the company, one of the nicest things anyone&#8217;s ever said to me. She got up at one point to grill me a small hot cross bun that she&#8217;d bought at M&amp;S a few days ago that I simply had to try as it had caramel and chocolate and was divine. She wasn&#8217;t kidding. What a yummy treat!<\/p>\n<p>With the weather being miserable today, I was very happy to stay in and make some money. The next two days are supposed to be sunny&#8230; I have quite a bit of work left ahead of being off for a while, so I think I&#8217;ll focus on that tomorrow and then go out all of Tuesday to properly explore Brighton. But I might be able to do another wander around Hove for a break tomorrow afternoon depending on how late I get started.<\/p>\n<p>Now, here&#8217;s hoping I sleep well again tonight!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am so happy with my accommodation in Brighton! So I got that upgrade last night to the larger room at the back of the house with a better bed and that in combination with two glasses of wine meant that I slept eight hours straight! I was so surprised when I looked at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[637,636,11,3,56,8],"tags":[853],"class_list":["post-35328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-england","category-europe","category-personal","category-travel","category-uk","category-work","tag-accommodation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35328"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35608,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35328\/revisions\/35608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}