Sunny, with a chance of more sunny...

That is the beauty of SoCal at the end of the summer... I flew in yesterday to San Diego. My arms were very tired. Sorry. Anyway, I was up way before the crap of dawn yesterday, at 430. Took the bus to the train to the Gatwick plane. Sat my but for 9 hours to Atlanta. Got a 'randomly selected' (my ass) full body scan at Atlanta and was then patted down because of a 'male anomaly'. Excuse me? I managed to get to San Diego about 6 last night and was met by Karen and Bob at the airport. Deliriously tired conversation in the car, then had a shower and brushed my teeth. Ah - a new lease on life! K and B and Poppa and I all went for dinner (I'd been eating all day, but hey, what's more food?) and then Poppa and I stayed up and talked. I've had very few chances in my life to sit around and talk to just Poppa at length. It's kinda funny how everyone seems to assume he's delicate and can't cope with difficult family news items. That is so very far from the truth. I mean, the guy's 93 and has seen a lot - it does always make me wonder why people seem to assume that old people will break if they are let in to all the various gory details of life. It's not like they haven't experienced it themselves!

Anyway... I suffered surprisingly little jet lag today. I managed about 7 fitful hours of sleep, then got up, ran up to the top of Mt Soledad (823 feet up, not that I checked). I love that run, even though I think I had a heart attack and a hernia, or perhaps my heart attack had a hernia. Had a perfect afternoon - nice gay gym, walked around downtown San Diego, went to Horton Plaza and bought - wait for it - socks. (I tried, but that's all I could find on short notice...), and also wandered around Seaport Village, which, I have to say, is pretty damn kitschy - it was adorable when I was like 10, whereas now I just think OMG... Oh well. And finally, Poppa and I finished out with the perfect dinner - burger, fries and a milkshake at In and Out. I will be running again tomorrow!

Oh, and something I always notice but have never understood... US grocery stores, particularly in CA, are always beautiful inside - it's all about the presentation - esp in the produce section, even if the actual quality isn't all that great. In Europe, they just sort of throw things in boxes and you rummage. I really do wonder why there is such a difference in presentation...

Anyway, I might actually get to bed at a reasonably early hour tonight. How strange...

Grammar Patrol...

Amusingly, I seem to have taken on the unofficial role of grammar patrol for the department. I 'grade' all of my boss' essays before she hands them in for her Master's course (I will never to an MBA as long as I live after this...) and I'm always pointing out bad grammar usage by the council. All this as a bloody foreigner in this supposed land of the English language. Innit!:-) One of my continual pet peeves is the inappropriate usage of the apostrophe. I never thought I would say this, but I do actually believe that Americans, as a whole, might well have better grammar than the Brits.

Anyway - the cause of all this - two car ads that have irked me. One, an ad for a Volkswagen, blathers on about how cheap the car is, and then concludes with 'Eyes on the road please'. Hello? How about 'Eyes on the missing comma, please'. But the real winner of the bad grammar award, produced by the 'We Speakum Good English' ad company, is an ad for a new Alfa Romeo. It has a picture of some vaguely tarty woman on it, wearing too much lipstick, and says, 'Giulietta. I am the stuff dreams are made on.' Oy vey, mamma mia! Where the hell did they come up with that slogan, first grade? That ad is on billboards all over London, and I have to say, it really frosts my muffin.

Unless, of course, they are being coy and talking about having sex on the car, which I suppose is possible.

Oh what a crotchety old thing I will become...

I've got one more day before CA trip, and about a million things to do before then. So, off I go to do.

Microclimate!

So, I went for a bike ride yesterday after work (I usually do). Part of my ride goes up Highgate Hill, which is the highest hill in North London (not very high, about 300 feet). On occasion, the hill seems to attract weather. This was the case yeterday, when it was raining quite heavily on the hill, but none at all back on the south side, towards central London. How exciting! And squishy. Today's ride was slightly less fun. Some of the nice little ghetto shits, I mean, children in Hackney decided it would be fun to shoot my leg with some sort of plastic bb gun - this on the same street where I had a tennis ball thrown at my face. Perhaps I should avoid that street. I could wish death and destruction on them, but that will probably come later when a drug deal goes bad, or someone doesn't give someone else the requisite amount of 'RESPECT'. Ooh, did I say that? How very un-pc of me. Tsk!

Anyway - how exactly did I get from microclimate to shitheads? These things happen, I suppose. Not a lot else at the moment, really. I got two job rejections in one day, just before I was told they are cutting our capital budget by 40%, so that made for a pretty groovy day. But I should probably take some solace tha the financial sector is picking up and the bankers are making huge boatloads of profit again. How nice that we all get to suffer now while they go back to doing lines of coke off their desks. Or maybe they just did that in the 80s? Unlikely.

Ooh, I am bitter today! I suppose I should go have a shower and eat a bowl of cereal. Life often looks a bit better after a bowl of cereal, I have discovered.

Grumble...

A Country Ramble...

Well, the weather was pretty crapalacious yesterday, so I didn't get to go cycling. I did go for a long, hilly run, for which I'm paying today, as well as going to the Gap, hanging out with Paul, and generally farting around in town, so, not a bad day. Avi came over last night and we ate junk food and watched Terry Pratchett's 'The Colour of Magic'. Needless to say, I had some pretty wacked out dreams last night...

Anyway - today we had a big way walk in the countryside. Met up with Adrian and co this morning at 1030 at Paddington and took the train about to Cookham, about an hour west of London, in the Thames Valley. The Thames Valley is kind of a strange place - it has several small cities in it - Slough, for one - most of them horrible. The countryside though is very genteel, as are most of the small towns. Lots of Range Rovers these parts - not a pickup truck to be found. So, we tromped through the woods for about 10 miles. The great thing about England is that there is, codified in law, a 'right to roam', which means that you can walk across just about any private land - fields, forests, etc, as long as you stay out of cultivated areas and stick to designated public rights of way. Very different from the US! Anyway, you get six notorious homosexuals in one place, add a long walk, bugs, nettles, and a pub with good food and alcohol, you get a lot of creative carping that goes on. I'm not entirely sure the other pub goers appreciated our clever wit, but I'm sure it was good for them... ;-)

Pictures of the day:

I'm not sure I can come up with a politically correct comment for this one, so I will refrain...



Ah, another silly sign...



Don't we all look like we are having a good time? I think this is when Adrian was trying to figure out where we were supposed to be going...



Beech trees are cool.



David in the forest...



The village of Marlow - apparently Britain's 'Best Kept Town'. Much excessive cuteness... (and lunch).



Pretty view from Makeout Point (not actually sure what it was called, but it seemed appropriate).



Enormous willow in the Thames floodplain... Lots of mud!



David holds up an English Oak...



Lone oak in a field...




'Mos on the move (handbags at the ready!) ;-)



The Thames in Cookham - lotsa money here!



I have decided this is going to be my house - not entirely sure how, but that's beside the point!

Excitement at the Gym...

Well, there was a little bit of drama at the gym last night, which demonstrated exactly how oblivious people really are in that setting… I was just finishing my workout, and this (very young) guy was on a machine, directly across from me. Quite suddenly, he just sort of rolled off the machine, struck his head on one of the bars, fell on the floor and started convulsing. I ran across the room to see what happened. By this point he’d stopped having a seizure and was lying on his back on the floor. Almost straightaway the guy regained consciousness and I helped him reposition himself on the floor so he wouldn’t bang his head again (he was still pretty confused, and totally shocked at what had happened). I probably should have yelled for someone else to come over, but there was no one else at my end of the gym, so I told him I was going to run to the front desk and have them call an ambulance. I ran downstairs and told the girl at the front desk, then ran back upstairs. Amazingly, despite the commotion, and the fact that there were several other people in the gym, the guy was still lying on his back, on the floor, by himself. Don’t these people notice anything outside their little mp3 world? A trainer followed me upstairs and, trying to be helpful (but being, as he was, thick-as-shit), offered a glass of water. Um, hello, the man needs an ambulance, not a drink… So then the manager appears, asking what was happening. I ask if she’d called an ambulance. No, not yet – she has to ‘assess’ the situation first. Um, excuse me? Not much to assess – man falls, bangs head, has seizure, says this has never happened before – sounds like a pretty clear-cut case for emergency services to me! Fortunately, he has the presence of mind to request an ambulance directly (he’s pretty much OK at this point – just looking a bit green). I mean, I understand why large corporations have policies where they ‘assess’ the situation, even after someone says that an ambulance is needed, but in some cases, one should just trust what the person is saying, b/c to not do so is to, possibly, risk someone’s life. Anyway, I will be writing a letter to the parent company of the gym… (My God, how middle-aged am I getting? Writing concerned letters, complaining about the youth of today, getting a mortgage… Gack!)

A Lovely Day for a Bike Ride...

So, I'm sitting here trying to pay attention to the computer (difficult when David and Robin are watching 'Allo 'Allo repeats). Just making late dinner on a Sunday night. I was supposed cycle 100 miles today, but, as luck would have it, I got a flat tire, which wasted a good hour. Blah. I did manage 68 miles - decided to pick random roads, which is always an adventure in a city with as silly a road system as this.

David and I spent the day yesterday looking at kitchens and bathrooms - ooh how very domestic (and very expensive)!.

Anyway, not much exciting to say at the moment, but I do have some pics...

It's generally rude to make fun of other people's fashion choices, so I will just put this picture here and let you make fun of them...



Greetings from the planet purple!



My lunch spot on Box Hill, about 25 miles south of London - that's the lovely town of Dorking (giggle) below...)

I'm surrounded by nerds...

So, one of the fun things about living in a house with two big nerds, I mean, IT professionals, is that the appliances talk to each other (and not just if I've drunk too much). There are five working computers set up in the house - four of them in the living room (two of them on the dining room table), and many an evening passes with us all tippety typeting away in our own little universes. Sometimes David and Robin will speak nerd to each other, and I can only but hope to catch a word or two - 'delviating the ramafram, BRD'. Occasionally, I've even messaged Robin across the room, which tends to result in something being thrown back the other way (usually sarcasm). There is another computer in our bedroom, and, oh, I forgot to mention, a server sitting on the shelf behind the sofa. Both TVs are connected to the computers as well, and I'm waiting for the toaster to strike up conversations in the next little while. (That said, we seem to have an enormous collection of movies and TV shows, all of them perfectly 100% legal I am sure (of course!), and all the computers are named after Muppet characters, so it can't be all bad. Actually, at the moment we are all on different computers - David is ordering a new computer, Robin is transferring data from one computer to another (both of them 'borrowed' from work - must be nice to be an IT manager at a big company). Our happy little very strange household...

Oh, and David and I got the mortgage approved today - woohoo - we are going to be London houseowners! How very posh! David is already picking out new bathroom fixtures - how cute.

David related his very exciting story of cycling derringdoo when I got home today. Some motorist in a big shiny new Chrysler 300 cut off him and a number of other cyclists at a light, so David 'accidentally' left a huge scracth along the side of the car. Big scary car driver makes a big thing about threatening to run over David and says he'd better pull over, blah blah blah, so David pulls over, plays all sweet and dumb and innocent, and gets away with it! Ha ha! I admire the ability to do that - I wouldn't have managed to keep my cool. (Just yesterday I had an altercation with a motorist who honked at and nearly hit me - I caught up with him at a light - he's shouting and honking and making a huge scene (he was a bit of ghetto trash), so I shouted into his open window that 'I have the right to be anywhere on the road I goddamn well please, so f*ck off!', and then planted myself right in front of the car (making sure he doesn't actually get out of the car, doesn't have a gun, and that I know my escape route, of course). Ooh, the excitement of urban cycling! I think I need a Maalox.

Not much else - I'm still sleep deprived, tired and crabby - I should probably go to bed early tonight - that's what I skipped the gym for today, after all. Hmm.

Of Rain and the Coming Republic of Bikelandia...

Yay – it rained finally! We’ve been having a pretty serious drought this summer. Granted, it doesn’t rain much in London – only about 22 inches, but the rain is usually spread out fairly evenly. With climate change, however, this evenness seems to be being compressed into much shorter, heavier rainstorms. The summers are tending to be either storm-filled or entirely dry. This has been a dry one, though, fortunately, not so hot as the rest of northern Europe. London in a dry summer is not very pretty. The parks all turn to straw, the trees look unhappy, and the general level of crud and birdpoop on everything increases exponentially. But, this afternoon, the heavens opened, and there was at least one anaemic burst of thunder (it doesn’t thunder much here).

I’ve been tired and headachy today – I always seem to be tired and headachy. Wonder what it is like to be awake and alive and alert? Our new intern seems quite bright though, which is good, as he’s been made my responsibility. It does mean though that I can’t just hunker down behind my desk and ignore everyone. Ugh – the burden of responsibility! ;-)

Oh, and in bike news, I saw someone cycling up Mare Street on a double-height bike (a bike attached to the top of the bike), sans helmet. Not sure if that was brave or stupid, being up there six feet above the ground like that, weaving through the busses? Oh, and I learned that the UN is trying to take over the world through bicycles. I am very proud to be part of the revolution, and I’m not even wearing my tinfoil hat! Anyway, seeing as how I am at work and probably should be working (hah), that’s it for now. Trying to be more regular about this though… Oh oh – and finally – more evidence that this is a strange little country (in case that wasn’t inherently obvious already).

Oy vey and a half (Indeed!).

Well, I've not been at this in a while. You'd think that as life got more stressful, I'd want to write more, but the actuality is that I get home from work and the gym, feel like a big braindead blob, and park my butt in front of the TV. We're still mid-throes of buying a house. What a big pain in the butt. And not in a good way either.

Robin just got home - he's complaining that they sent him the wrong colour blades for his hair clipper (he got replacement blades). Oh major tragedy ensues...

Anyway, back to things I care about... The house buying process in England is a little bit more fraught with uncertainty than in the US. For starters, the prices in London have not gone down at all, and make New York City look almost affordable. It was my job to find the place, as, after 7 years, David still can't find his way out of a paper bag in this city. So, while unobserved, I looked at several hundred places online, and we actually went out to visit about 12. Each place is listed by any number of 'estate agencies', and the estate agent works for the seller only. This means that it is very very much a 'caveat emptor' type situation - you can't trust the estate agent much farther than you can throw them. Much research is needed to make sure the house isn't actually a big piece of crap and is being sold for a (semi) reasonable amount. Once we decided that the place is, indeed, a good house, we put in our first offer. Rejected. Wait a few days - put in a 2nd offer. Wait. The offer is accepted. However, nothing is legally binding. Now comes time to apply for a mortgage (they now require 25% down payment for a decent rate), and hire a solicitor, who is responsible for talking to the seller's solicitor, as well as checking the local planning permission, the title, etc. The house has to be valued by the bank as well. As it dates from 1893, we're going to get a full 'building survey', to make sure it's not going to fall down. Once this is all completed, we exchange contracts with the sellers, after which it becomes legally binding. Finally, on an agreed date, we meet with the sellers and the estate agent and receive the keys. The offer was accepted about a month ago - we don't really expect to be moving until about October. I don't want to be doing this again any time soon!

So, lots of stress, not much sleep - general blahness.

On a completely unrelated note, London just started its bike-hire scheme last week. 6000 or so big, clunky blue bikes that you can check out and drop off, all over central London - 24/7. A brave new world of numbnuts, toodling about on 45lb behemoths. The very first one I saw being used was, appropriately enough, being run through a red light. Ah well - some things never change.

TfL Bike Hire

I'm sure there have been lots of other things to have happened, but I'm too tired at the moment to think about it - plus I have to fix a few things on my bike.

How butch.

I suppose I will try to be a bit better about this (hmm) - so many times I think 'Oh, I should write this down', and then I don't, and I forget...

Sigh.