Happy Birthday, My Love...

It's Alison's birthday today. We both had the day off. The plan was this:

1) Breakfast at Starbucks.

2) Look for new specs for Alison (she wanted to buy some really nice ones, as she currently only has one pair, and it's always good to have backup).

3) Enrol at Stratford College for Sign Language Classes.

4) Go to IKEA and look at kitchens for the new house.

We made a good start. Both of us woke at about 6, and by about 6.45 started doing Alison's presents. Then when she'd finished unwrapping them all I flaked out.

I woke again at about 10:40. Alison had been watching daytime TV and had left me to sleep in. I obviously needed it. So anyway, this meant that eventually we made a late start. We were in Starbucks by 11:30.

This meant we didn't start looking at glasses until almost 12:30. I had to move the car twice because of parking tickets running out, LOL. But the outcome was that Alison has ordered some Giorgio Armani glasses, with the ultra-light frames. They're quite a different sort of style for her, but they're really cool.

Given that I'd imagined that 1-3 on the original plan would've taken us until about lunchtime, and then we'd have the afternoon in IKEA, we were really slipping by leaving Leamington at gone 2pm.

The Stratford stuff was probably the quickest stuff of the whole day. I enrolled again for British Sign Language Stage 2, which I did two years ago but failed the exam on. I would think that I'll find it a lot easier this time around, but that's the idea. I'm quite out of practice, it must be getting on for 6 months since I've done any properly. At the same time, I'm not expecting to get through without working towards it. It means a lot to me to get it, so I'll be making a real effort. While we were in Starbucks Alison decided that she was going to enrol for Tai Chi classes (partly because they're the same nights as Sign Language), so she did that too while we were there.

Then... what was next? Oh yeah, we called in at Alison's work so she could have a quick chat with her boss about pensions (don't ask). The quick chat actually lasted about half an hour, which meant it was getting on for 4pm by the time we set out for IKEA. And then we had the M5/M6 interchange to contend with. Earlier on in the day I had predicted it would be 5pm before we got to IKEA. I tell you, I wasn't far wrong.

Two hours later, we had a quote for a rather nice kitchen with Birch units, that I think will take some topping. We're going to look around other places too, but I'm doubting we'll find anything to match.

And now we're back. We grabbed quick and easy food from Tesco on the way home, then sat and watched the first episode of Will & Grace (I bought Alison all 3 DVDs for her birthday).

And now we're off to bed. All being well, by this time tomorrow we will have exchanged... *shudder*