8km in the books, baby!

Family,

And a good evening to you from across the Pond after another GREAT DAY in the Mother Country. The Tom/Mike saga took another twist tonight, when "Smokey" appeared on the list of followers. Steve Markham, is that you? Given your Gator roots, I doubt it - but since I'm clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, perhaps you felt the need to offer me a softball.

So today was big - I RAN 5 MILES THIS MORNING!!! Technically it's 4.97, but hey - an 8k is an 8k. I was SO excited! I felt ZERO pain in my foot, and I'm feeling really good about the prospects of getting on the road and running my first road race in over a year.

Work was busy again today, but I still managed to make it to the Music Factory for a pint (or 3)with the Eagle Scout himself - that's right, boys and girls, I was chillin' with Brother Johnson.

I took down 3 Grolsch before heading back to Marylebone, where I picked up a pizza (and chorizo, of course) before heading back to my flat. Dinner, however, was NOT quite that simple.

So a couple of days ago, there was a power outage at my flat. Whilst power throughout the flat has returned, for some RIDICULOUS reason, the time on the oven has NOT returned. Now granted, in the states, this would be less than a minor inconvenience. You'd simply RESET THE CLOCK. But OH NO - not in Britain.

So for the past couple of weeks, JT and I have passively tried to figure out HOW IN THE HELL to reset the clock. I mean, there are just 4 buttons and a dial, and so one would reason that it simply CAN'T BE THAT COMPLICATED TO RESET. However, to date we've been unable to "crack the code," and you can't use the oven until it's reset. Tonight, 3 beers deep and a frozen pizza in hand, I was CONVINCED I could figure out how to work it. But alas, despite pushing (and pressing) every combination of buttons, I was still staring at 0:00 on the screen.

And so, being a man's man, I did the only sensible thing - I called the front desk. And a scant 5 minutes later, I was cooking (for the record - you have to push the first TWO buttons out of the 4 whilst twisting the dial forward. Yeah, because THAT'S intuitive. But I digress...).

The pizza was good, and now I"m sitting here watching Highlander on TV and realizing that, well...it's really NOT a good movie. I mean, don't get me wrong - I LOVE saying "I'm Conner Macleod of the Clan Macleod" with the best of 'em, but WOW - talk about some shoddy effects.

Muffin Puffin is currently bowling and bonding with the Finance team, and so I'm about to call it a night. She's got the camera, so hopefully tomorrow you'll see some classic pics of JT with a Jaegerbomb.

Okay, that's all the news that's fit to print. Chat tomorrow!

Love,

Sam and Jenny