Ah, Chocolate

In the spirit of the high academic endeavour on which I've come over here, I'm reading my way through the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series, by Louise Rennison.  Each takes about an hour to read, and they're highly enjoyable.

Today was really only half a day for me, because after arising, putting in my lenses and eating my delicious healthy breakfast, and getting dressed, I found I was so exhausted I couldn't open my eyes, so I went back to bed.  That was at 10am, and I didn't get up until 2!  Since I was hoping to do some work that was a little disappointing, but since I actually AM doing some work tomorrow (I have to meet someone at the British Library, which forces me to go there and do work), I don't feel so bad.  

At 3:20 I went down the road to the nearby hotel to meet one of my made-through-the-internet "friends."  We were meeting in the bar of the hotel, which sounds skeezy but isn't, because like most bars in hotels these days it also had a cafe/lounge area with tables and chairs, which is actually where we met.  The chairs (well, and the tables, I suppose) were those very low ones,

where you're about two feet off the ground and even my knees angle up. They were quite squishy, though, and so very comfortable.  My internet friend turned out to be about 48 (I calculated based on the college dates he gave me), and to be very pleasant. Actually, it worked out quite well:  he's a nice man, and he's just about old enough to be a contemporary, but because he has four children and is 8 years older he feels slightly too old for there to be anything romantic possible (although, being me and thus currently trying to figure out the whole "how will I ever find a boyfriend?" situation, I did ask myself if, based on him as evidence, I would date a 48-year-old, and my answer was, "Yes, but not this one").  We spent about two hours talking, and although the conversation did have to be kept going with some pushes and some of those fractionally awkward, "So, do you like the cinema?" kinds of questions, those questions happen at the beginning of most friendships, at least for me (I've had friendships where that hasn't happened, and those have been the best and closest of my friendships, but they're few and far between).  As it happens, he does like the cinema, so after he goes away on his family holiday for three weeks, starting next week, we may get together and go.  

He may yet turn out to be creepy, but at the moment I think this experience bodes well for future meetings with internet friends (one of which is tomorrow).  At the very least, it did make me feel that I had had contact with a pleasant person, and had a conversation, which did no end 

of cheering me up.  Funnily enough, so did the weather, even though it was in the mid-60s (max) and rainy all day.  In any case, I was feeling much more cheerful, and as I walked along looking at the wet pavement (which one can legitimately call pavement, because it's made out of what looks like big paving stones, totally different from American sidewalk (see, there's some on the left)), I asked myself, "Am I happy?"  And I thought, "Yes.  I mean, I'm not ecstatic, but I feel a lot happier and more at home than I did where I was, or at my parents'."  And you can't say fairer than that.  Although I think I might need to buy a new umbrella.  I bought a bigger-than-normal one because I hate the way that, if you hold a regular umbrella in one hand, the other side of you gets wet - especially problematic if you carry a bag on that shoulder.  But I think this one might be too big for London, because people keep giving me black looks as I pass, and because I keep having to get out of the way of other people with umbrellas.  So I better buy a smaller one. I just hope I can find one with polka dots, like this one.

Along with the meeting with my (now) fracquaintance, I also did some grocery shopping.  I'm not going to bore you with a description of my shopping.  Suffice it to say that yesterday I purchased as my dinner dessert a KitKat crunchy, a chocolate bar delicious, in my opinion, only in its English incarnation, in which delicious incarnation it is like the succulent food of the gods.  Today, however, I decided to purchase as my dessert a Bounty bar.  A Bounty, for those who don't know, is best described as an Almond Joy without the

almond:  chewy coconut enrobed in chocolate.  Like an Almond Joy, a Bounty can be taken apart and eaten, with some fiddling, so that you eat the chocolate bottom and the coconut, but are left with the (actually quite thick) chocolate top to eat separately - actually, you do it the reverse way with an Almond Joy, because it's hard to detach the almonds from the top.  ANYway, the Bounty also differs from the AJ in that it comes in two flavours, milk and dark chocolate.  The dark version is in a red wrapper, and so is known as a "red Bounty."  This is what I ate today.  And, oh! the difference to me.  Oooo, moist without being too juicy, chocolate-y without being overpowering, coconut-y but not cloying... Up until the moment I re-encountered this I was certain that the KitKat crunchy was the finest chocolate bar known to humanity (a phrase that always makes me think of Withnail & I), but suddenly I find this certainty undermined.  I knew coming to England would change my understanding of myself, but I wasn't expecting it to undermine that understanding to this extent.  What next?  Will I give up eating meat?  Oh, wait...

And I LOVE my new phone. Tee hee.