Ugh.

Two weeks! I haven't put up a post in two weeks. It's been a fairly laid back two weeks, and a wet two weeks.

Of course, during that time I was back in St. Louis. My interview went well enough (I haven't heard anything official, but I'm not worried). The interview was "round one" so to speak, and presuming I passed will make another trip back to St. Louis in August or September for the final interview. I think I had beef for nearly every meal while I was in town. It was fantastic. I very much enjoyed seeing family and friends. While we are having a great time in the UK, being home reminded me of how much we really do miss America.

The only down side to the trip was Sir Walter, as some of you have read on Amanda's blog. He is on antibiotics now, but not responding as well as the vet would like to see. Hopefully, he will get better soon. He seems to still be losing weight.

Last weekend I went rock climbing at Stanage with a mate from work. Some photos are up on Flickr. There were just the two of us, so no free hands for taking photos of either of us actually climbing. One of the photos is a composition of two photographs so that I could get a decent sky (under-exposed) and a decent rock face (over-exposed). It's been a long time since I did any real photo-editing beyond a bit of histogram tweaking and unsharp masking. I really had fun doing it, and I like the results. It took me way too long though. I killed most of an afternoon playing in Gimp.

Other than that, we did a bit of car shopping for Amanda and not much more. It has been raining fairly steadily since I came back from America which has put a damper on planing outdoor activities. The Monday that I was back South Yorkshire was more or less under water. Flooding in most of the low lying areas. It was a lot of rain even for the UK.

Tomorrow I leave for a conference in Cardiff, Wales. I'm really looking forward to it since its on one of my main areas of research. I'm not presenting, so that makes it double-plus-good because I don't have to worry about my own paper, I can just go and see others.

Anyway, Amanda and I are watching 28 Days Later right now, and I'm going to get back to all the blood and gore. I'll probably write a bit more on the train tomorrow.