Tuesday 7 July 2009

Sturm und Drang...

Well, summer was fun while it lasted - gave me something (extra) to bitch about - being hot and all that. Today has been pleasantly cool, with occasional giant pissings down of rain, thunder, general hoohah and whatnot. Suppose it's what keeps it green.

The battle of the air conditioner has heated up again, so to speak. We have at least 3 thermostats in this office, as they keep adding to them to try to keep the peace. They do actually all connect to different air conditioners, and they did actually turn the radiators off at least a month ago (from Brigadoon). The local thermostat sits right by me. I have a tendency to turn the temperature down. Some of the other people in the office have a tendency to turn it up. I sit at my desk with my shoes off, usually, and occasionally with a fan blowing. They tried to turn it off completely today - I held my ground, but conceded 1 degree, and taped up the offending vents pointing towards the particular delicate flower of the day. I will stand up for my right not to sweat in my underpants at work!

Mr annoying telecoms manager is yapping away on his phone - I can hear him all the way across the office in his irritating Essex accent. He reminds me a bit of Humpty Dumpty. At least he hasn't shredded any CDs lately.

Ooh, I was hit by a Mercedes yesterday. Very exciting. Granted, it happened at about 2mph and just sort of doinked into my leg, but I still managed to have a pleasant discussion with the driver about his lack of driving finesse afterwards. Brings me to the comparison between a Mercedes and a porcupine - something about the location of the pricks, I believe.

Ooh, and our 4th was a rip-roaring success. We had about 12 people over, and all congregated out on the roof. We took the skylight off, so as to afford easy access (can't expect drunk people to limbo out underneath the skylight door. Robin printed off suitably tacky patriotic (or ironic) posters, which we stuck very subtly around the entire flat. In the place of red white and blue bunting, he printed out sheets of paper with flags and beefy men on them - much more tasteful, I think. Ooh, and it's gone all dark out and it's pissing buckets - more fun for my biking to the gym! We put together a compilation of American songs, ranging from the classy (Kid Rock) to the sublime (Dolly Parton), and poured enough alcohol to, well, to get a bunch of British folks drunk (always a laudable goal in this country). David cooked up lots of dead stuff, and we gnoshed down buckets of Doritos, corn on the cob, weird little snacky things I'm not sure what they were, and everyone had a lovely time. One person though forgot his sunglasses, b/c he got down to the street on his way home, and realized he was too drunk to navigate the steps coming back, and one person had to be put to bed (again - not bad for a bunch of British folks). Robin and I played party babysitters, while David let his hair down once he'd finished cooking. And no one lost any fingers or toes. We'd saved up a bunch of fireworks from Guy Fawkes, back in November, and Robin shot them all off the roof at about 1045, once it finally got dark(ish). Despite his safety precautions (standing well back, putting fireworks in a big clay pot full of soil), have of them exploded in the Plane trees across the street, a few landed on the neighbouring buildings, and at least one went into the street - and the flower pot blew up. So, a good time was had by all, nothing caught fire, and no police were called - a rip roaring success! :-)

Thursday I'm off to Scotland on my bicicleta, where I am sure it will NOT RAIN. Toying with Ireland in the fall... Hmm.

Anyway, I am now going to devote my energy to making the thunderstorm pass so that I can leave here to go to the gym to become buff und huge.

Right...

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