Amnesty is Amazing!

I say Amnesty is amazing because this morning someone put up an ad on our 'intranet' saying they were going on holiday for two weeks and needed someone to housesit and watch their two cats. And their house is in Edinburgh! It was on a first come first serve basis... and... I was first! So end of June-early July, Matt and I are going to have a two week holiday in Edinburgh! Matt's already requested the time off, and I don't get paid so it doesn't matter for me. We're thinking of all kinds of things we can do, such as take daytrips out to go walking in beautiful, beautiful Scotland. If I could live anywhere in the world (other than Iowa of course) I would live in the Scottish Highlands. I've never seen the lowlands, but I will in Edinburgh. I'll also get to see all the things I missed when Mike and Rob came over to visit, because then I was stuck taking final exams for my master's. That includes Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle... some fancy house that they saw... Loch Ness! I can't think what else, we have to consult our Scotland book.

We'll also be on this holiday over our THIRD wedding anniversary, if you can believe it, so it will be very special and nice. Our first wedding anniversary was in India, and my relatives woke us up at midnight to wish us a happy anniversary and gave us a cake, which was really nice, but kind of strange procedurally. This was followed when we got home in August by a proper meal in Iowa City at Givannis, where I had a steak I still think about sometimes. (Givannis is also where we went for dinner on the night Matt proposed to me, so it's a good thing it has good food, because we're going back there as often as we can when we move back to IC.) Our second anniversary we were in London and Matt's parents said we should have a nice dinner on them, and we had an amazing dinner at one of Marco Pierre White's restaurants called L'Escargot, and I HAD l'escargot and they were tasty! After dinner we had a rare treat and got a taxi home! Such bliss!

We don't know what we'll do on the day this year, but we'll be doing a lot of walking in the country around Edinburgh and on the sea coast. Those are the kinds of trips we like these days, now that we've done the major European site-seeing. If anyone fancies a week or two in Edinburgh with two cats and no accommodation costs, let us know and we'll see what can be done.

UPDATE:
I forgot to mention that, yes, Matt did that 'Everything's coming up Clancy!' thing, only it was 'Looks like everything's coming up Clancy and Thommandru!'. I cannot get him to stop doing this.

UPDATE II:
Also, we got tickets to see Picard and Gandalf (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan) perform "Waiting for Godot" in May, from one of Matt's coworkers! Also, sometime soon we will make a post about what it was like to see Judi Dench in a play.