You can get what you want or you can just get old...

Vienna: city of coffee, cobblestones, and crowds of tourists horking down glühwein and buying suitcasefuls of holiday trinkets, nice or chintzy. My mental image of the Christkindlmarkt was one centralized entity, perhaps set in front of a picturesque medieval church or the like. In reality, for the last six weeks or so of the year, the city is all but overrun with little faux-wood stalls, shoehorned into just about every nook and cranny of the downtown area (and, Vienna being an ancient city, nooks and crannies abound). The defining characteristics of a Christmas market are apparently the presence of a mulled-wine vendor and at least one stand selling Traditional Artisan Handicrafts^TM; anything else is gravy (or lebkuchen, or pretzels, or whatever). The upshot of this is that two clusters of stalls, though they may be no more than a block or so apart, are considered two separate markets; the upshot of this is that there were just enough tiny tantalizing differences between markets to compel me to browse through every one that I came across. It is no mean feat to Christmas me out, but Vienna nearly managed it.

I think I've spent more time in planes over the past three weeks than probably the previous three years combined. Between flitting hither and thither, finishing up at Bournemouth, and trying to get Christmas happening at home, I've fallen a bit behind on the blogging. Apologies for that; let's see if we can catch up.

Yes, I am done with the ONP! I was even commended by the instructors on the "detailed work" of that idiotic workbook, which naturally irritated me with its implication that I put more effort in than was strictly necessary. But it's finished now, and the NMC is in possession of that last piece to the puzzle that is my licensure. All that's left now is to pay one more fee (of course), and I will finally be an official, full-fledged registered nurse in the eyes of the United Kingdom. This year has certainly put the relatively simple process of taking the NCLEX in perspective... I also have an appointment to be fingerprinted for my visa, having pinky-sworn that I am not a terrorist, have never been a terrorist, am not intending to become a terrorist, etc. etc. I rather wish I'd been forewarned about the hefty sum I'd have to fork over for the visa processing, but at this point, what am I gonna do? At least it's valid for three years; hopefully I'll be able to stick it out long enough to get my money's worth.

Job-wise, it's looking like I might be interviewing for a position in Oxford to start out. London would have been nice, but I'm not too bothered; the John Radcliffe Hospital is the main teaching hospital for Oxford, so maybe I'll be able to hook myself an up-and-coming English doctor to eventually retire to the countryside with. Mission accomplished!

So much for the boring bits -- coming up, the reasons I've been so often a-wing lately: namely, tripping eastward to Vienna, and westward to good old Cali...