Poussin - Tastes like Chicken!

So, we all went over to Paul and Ali's last night for dinner, along with two other friends of theirs. Paul is a certified 'foodie', and can go on ad nauseum about the magical powers of this that or the other spice to bring out the amazing flavour, texture, aroma, sensual experience of something that most other people would just consider yummy or gross. Anyway, as per usual, the food was fantastic and we rolled out of there feeling somewhere between a manatee and Oprah. We learned all about how the medieval rich folks like to stuff various animals into others to show how wealthy they were at banquets (here I was imagining something like a chinchilla stuffed into a badger stuffed into a pteradactyl or something...). One should have thoughts like those and eat that much food straight before bed. I had a rather vivid dream about being in the departures lounge, at the airport, getting ready to go to the USA. Some woman from customs was going through all our bags, looking for meat products made with brain material. She kept yelling at us for having food made with brain, and we kept asking, 'but how do we avoid food with brains?'. She finally got annoyed with us, said 'I don't have to take this anymore', and stormed out of the room, leaving me to ponder this awkward situation, along with the fact that David was poking me, my alarm was going off, and I had to pee. So, a great start to the day.

Anyway, it was a fairly non-eventful day - lots of boring busywork (we are in the middle of a restructure and have to do very important things like write essays about times that we've shown initiative, rather than getting on with actually showing some initiative. Local government at its finest...). Tomorrow I'm having a nothing day (well, a gym/run/see Alice in Wonderland day, and then an absurdly long bike ride on Sunday.

Hmm - what else - well, Robin is suffering greatly from his excess of fun last weekend - I do feel bad for him, but I have to admit there is some degree of me thinking 'dumbass'. Oh well - these things happen, and sometimes we learn... On the plus side, he can't ever say that I am not stoic... And that's about it - off to the bathroom now to look for some anti-barf meds for Patsy Poops-a-lot. It's all fun and games here in urban gay central! ;-)

The things we do...

So, at one point, in a conversation that I think was actually entirely sober, David, Robin and I decided what animals we most resembled. David is a polar bear. Robin is a fruit bat (so much so that I once bought him a fluffy stuffed bat at Yosemite b/c it reminded me of him), and I’m a budgie. Anyway, upon Robin’s return last night from a big leather/rubber/fetish party weekend in Berlin (they do those things very well in Germany, go figure), I came up with a new term for Robin – he’s now the “hodent” of the house. No great mystery there, with the bat reference, what that might mean… Anyway, Robin is home today, feeling ill and sorry for himself – pulled a sickie from work, which I’m sure they aren’t suspicious about at all. I’ve suggested plastic on all the furniture. I am actually quite sympathetic, especially given the number of silly situations I’ve gotten myself into over the years, but yeah, there is a certain amount of schadenfreude inherent to the situation, I’m sure… Sigh – the things we do in the name of fun.

Anyway, my long Easter weekend was a little less exciting. Friday I did very little, to the point where I can’t even really remember what I got up to, though David and I did talk about the possibility of buying here at some point… Ooh scary! Saturday we went over to Adrian’s, in East London, for an afternoon roast, then walked out around the Olympic grounds. I was actually fairly amazed at how much building is going on there, and even more amazed by the 20 or so foot tall, unclimbable fence, topped with multiple strands of electric wire, going around the perimeter. I guess they don’t want Parisians getting in there and burying stinky cheese, or other such things… Sunday I hung out with friends, and then Monday I went for a very nice 77.5 mile ride. I got David along for about 35 of it, with some amount of whining. The spring flowers are really finally getting into the swing of things, so it really was a very pretty ride (out around Windsor again), and I was very happy for my anti allergy nasal spray!

David and I are heading in 2 weeks for our big East Coast trip – heading down from CT to AL, via tidewater VA, Charleston and Dollywood (we’re going to really hit the big culture spots in the South!

And now I should probably do some work, before boss gets back from meeting and wonders why I am blogging… :-)

The dangers of Vegas, and other things on a train...

Las Vegas is, apparently, a very dangerous place. I learned this on the train today, on the way home from town. It's not dangerous b/c of crime, or gambling, or anything like that, but because of the weather. Apparently, it is so hot that you can't go outside for more than a few seconds without passing out. I learned this from a conversation in (on?) which I was evesdropping. Two teenagers - both very middle class, one girl and one very gay guy. She had been there with her parents, 'back in the day' (back, apparently, when they had CDs). It was so hot that kids couldn't go outside unless their parents drove them. In fact, it was so hot that she had to abandon her CD player outdoors because it was too dangerous for her to venture into the sun to go get it. I'm thinking that perhaps all this sunshine fried her brain as well... Anyway, fun on trains.

So, I was on the train b/c I was doing all sorts of clothing shopping today and didn't feel like schlepping it all home on my bike. I was also on the train b/c I stripped out the screw on one of my pedal cleats, so was tryint to find new shoes. No luck on that - though I did find some cool 'go out' shoes at TKMaxx (I love TKMaxx). I tried also to remove the screw by drilling it out, but no luck, though it did make some terrible noises and smells. Oh well - off for a bike ride tomorrow with one slightly crapped out cleat, which hopefully won't be a problem.

Anyway, it's another exciting night in this gay household. Robin is actually wearing clothing tonight (it happens once in a while), David is on the phone with his mom, there is some crap 007 movie on TV that seems to have shown all the major sites of Lonodn within about 2 blocks of each other, the washing machine sounds like it's going to launch itself into outer space (it's in the kitchen, as are all washing machines here, coming to the end of its 3 hour cycle). And I'm starting to dribble, so I think I will stop now. :-)

Flying tits

So, the neighbours have tits under their eves. It’s true! Last year, we had tits in our ventilation shaft, and came home one day to find a young tit fluttering about the bedroom, pooping on everything.

What did you think I was talking about?

Sheeesh!

We’ve definitely gone into spring-mode. The daffodils are daffodildoing (what?), the cherry trees have started to bud (ooh, I’m having a good time with this) and my eyes are watering.

It is entirely possible I need to get out more.

The big drama today at work is that we have no water. Apparently a main burst somewhere around here (they do that a lot), and we have enacted ‘business continuity planning’, whatever the hell that is. I mean really – this is the country that supposedly survived the blitz, and a little water main blows up and all hell breaks loose. Not very impressive.

Ooh, speaking of not very impressive, I just noticed the other day that work (which is trying to save umpteen bazillion pounds in the next few years) has decided to replace their chauffeured Lexus (used for driving around the Speaker) with a chauffeured Mercedes E250, which retails for about £33,000. I’m sure that is money well spent.

Ooh, people are having great fun here trying to figure out why Americans are having a cow about the whole health care thing. From what I’ve read, it seems like pretty small potatoes (and will probably just make the health insurance companies richer). I will never ever be convinced that socialized medicine isn’t a good thing – God knows I’ve made fair use of the NHS!

Anyway, I should probably look busy again… The weekend is coming up (planning a long bike ride tomorrow)… What shall I do? Maybe something really exciting like buy a bag of chicken shit to put in the planters upstairs to get them to grow… It’s just one wild and crazy thing after another…

Spring has sproing...

Four score and some odd number of seconds ago, I had a look at my blog and noticed how small and feeble and neglected it was. Well, mostly I'm not at work at the moment (where I have actually been having to work a lot and haven't been able to screw around on the internet as much!). Days go by and I have these fun, witty and amazing observations (I think, anyway), and I don't get off my butt and write them down, then pfft! Gone! It's the end of the week again - another week gone and not much to show... I used to dream of Friday, as the long... week... dragged... on, but now Fridays seem to come with alarming regularity. Not sure if that's getting older, having things to do, or some combination of the two. My big accomplishment the other day, after work, was heading to the dept store to buy a new wok and frying pan. Living la vida local, it would seem...

So, David and I are going to finally get around to filling in the HUGE application for citizenship, where we get to answer questions like are we terrorists (don't think so), have we committed genocide (hmm) and have we ever done anything immoral (of course not!). I mean really - who thinks up these things? We'll have to start travelling around Europe now with large groups of "lager-louts" - maybe go to a stag do or something, get absolutely shitfaced drunk, pee in the fountain, and get arrested while dressed as nuns (with no knickers). I'm pretty sure that's what one is supposed to do as a Brit abroad...

Oh, one minorly crapalacious thing happened... Two weeks ago I took the day off sick from work. However, there was a meeting I really felt I should go to at City Hall, so I biked my poor little self into town to go to this meeting. Turns out I had confused it with another meeting the next day (I was ill, don't forget!) and the person at the front desk had no idea what I was talking about. So, big old dumbalina had to call his boss and ask about the meeting, which turned out to be the next day. Smooth move.

So, I thought, well, I'm in town anyway, so I thought I'd run some errands, have a cup of tea and a muffin while reading the paper, that sort of thing - very civilized. Civilised even. I come out to get my bike after that and discover, to my absolute astonishment and horror, that someone has removed the brakes. Or, rather, the brakes, the cables and the levers. They left the rotors, as the wheels have locking skewers. Now, David had just gone that very day off to a nice B&B weekend up north, which I bought him as a Christmas present, so poor Robin had to deal with me having a complete meltdown on the phone. I had to push my bike the 2 miles to the bike store I go to, in the middle of evening rush hour, getting funny looks the whole time b/c it was obvious there were large parts missing from the bike. £250 later, my bike has new, very good brakes. To these new, very good brakes, I have added a good dollop of black enamel paint - over all shiny parts and all brand names. I have also filled in the eight mounting screws (allen) with superglue, as well as painted around the edges of them. They won't be coming off without a fairly hefty helping of fingernail polish remover. But I mean, my God - to keep my bike (relatively) safe, I now do the following:

1. I have an enormous magnesium coated chain that weighs about a billion pounds that I bought 12 years ago in New York. It's on its third lock (they keep improving them as the theives get better), and I wear it as a belt when I ride. I've cycled tens of thousands of miles with this stupid chain around my waist (it's actually fine there, though I'm not so sure I'd want to fall over on it).

2. I have a cable lock to lock on my seat and seat post when I leave the bike (having lost 1 seat, 2 seat posts and 1 seat post clamp - not all at the same time).

3. I have locking wheel skewers that require a 5-sided wrench to get them off.

4. I remove all lights, bike computer, water bottle.

5. I never ever ever ever leave it out overnight.

But then, my brakes were taken off on a busy street in broad daylight. Un-flipping-believeable. People will steal absolutely everything - they probably sold it onwards on e-Bay. It's probably not nice to wish death and dismemberment on such people... OK, I'd settle for kneecaps and castration. I'm willing to show mercy.

Harumph.

Anyway, I need to go cut my hair, as it's gotten rather fluffy, and is getting to the length that emphasizes just how white it is. Yucky.

Oh yeah, and the spring bit. Finally, after what was billed as the worst winter since possibly the Pleistocene (it was moderately chilly with a few inches of snow -ooh scary), the crocuses have just finshed and the daffodils are starting up. So are my itchy eyes. Oh spring, my favourite season. Now where did I put the antihistamine...

Dur!

So, I intended in my previous entry to mention our trip to the Cadbury chocolate factory, on the 13th. David and I were trying to find something nice to do for V-Day, and he came up with the idea of a chocolate factory tour. I'd not been on a factory tour since going to the Tillamook cheese factory when I was eight, so I was game for the idea. And, as I've seen Charlie and Chocolate Factory, I was pretty sure what I was in for.

As if.

So, we shlepped on Virgin Trains up to Birmingham and spent the morning wandering around the centre of town.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=birmingham&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=17.969195,32.255859&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Birmingham,+West+Midlands,+United+Kingdom&ll=52.486165,-1.899197&spn=0,359.98425&z=16&layer=c&cbll=52.479133,-1.902768&panoid=cLcrkqjYtEBsi_h5PnfcVQ&cbp=12,300.92,,0,5
Robin is from Birmingham, but doesn't like to talk about it much. Could it be something about the number of pinched, in-bred looking faces, Jesus-freaks, and general flotsam and jetsom that seemed to be wandering about? Birmingham was, officially, the first city in the UK to be designed around the car, which means that the city centre (I have to do British spelling, btw, or the website grumps at me), at street level, is laid out in the general spaghetti fashion that is so popular outside of North America (ie., no pattern whatsoever), with the addition of huge viaducts everywhere, packed with traffic. This, combined with the rather high level of empty stores, makes for a very strange place. There is a huge market right in the middle of everything (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Birmingham_Wholesale_Markets.jpg) selling just about everything you could possibly imagine. All was happy and fine until we got to the rack of skinned sheep's heads, sitting among brains, tripe, hooves, entire legs, and things I'm not entirely sure what they were - I wasn't very hungry at that point. ;-) We also went up in one of those huge Ferris wheels they plop into state fairs and whatnot. David, Mr. Totally-Afraid-of-Heights was less than entirely pleased that the glassed-in car was, well, very glass. Oh well. Like big dummies, we spent £10 on pictures of us looking like dorks.

So, we took the local train down to Bournville, a leafy suburb of Birmingham (purpose-built by Cadbury, apparently). As we got off the train the first thing I noticed was that the air smelled like chocolate. So far so good! The Cadbury factory itself very much resembled a huge, old fashioned, Midwestern school building - all red brick with playing fields around it. Cadbury World, here we come!

http://www.cadburyworld.co.uk/CadburyWorld/Pages/CadburyWorld.aspx

The reality is, well, a bit more of a very small version of a chocolate-themed Disneyland done with some chewing gum, a shoe lace, and a little bit of tape. OMG, what an amazing bunch of schlock that was! £11 each to wander around inside a corner of the factory, surrounded by horrid children, listening to various Cadbury propaganda films (my personal fave was the one showing how cocoa is produced - the bits shown in Africa are all in black and white, and look like they are about 75 years old - the bits in the UK are all in glorious colour. PC police on line 1!). There was a little ride that we went on - very much Small World but with little dancing brown turdlike things that I think were supposed to be cocoa beans. We got to peak into a corner of the wrapping plant (we weren't actually allowed inside the factory itself, for 'Health and Safety Reasons'). But yeah - well done them for getting us to pay that much to wander around a cheaply done set and learn all about how fabulous they are! Still though, we did get some free chocolate, and I will admit (secretly) that I had a great time. I neglected to mention the takeover by Kraft while I was there... ;-) Next stop, on our schlock tour of England, is Legoland!

Anyway, not much else. It remains grey and miserable (though it is a lot warmer), and my bike really needs to be washed - the brakes are screaming like banshees at the moment. It doesn't make one look very cool when one pulls up to a light and the pigeons all take off b/c of the noise. Sigh.

Suppose I should do a little work now.

Grumble whine...

Oy vey...

Once again, a huge amount of time has passed without me bothering to write anything here. I suppose part of that is because I've actually been busy at work lately - several very big mapping jobs. I still want a better paying job, but at the moment they seem few and far between, so looks like I'll be here for the immediately forseeable future. Annoying smoking man is behind me, coughing up a lung. I've been to that now for over a year and a half, and have resisted throwing a brick over there. I think that shows admirable restraint.

It's cold and grey and generally horrible out. Apparently it's been the coldest winter in 30 years or something - Britain really ain't a cold country. The palms, eucalypts and acacias dotted around town don't seem to be terribly worried. Actually, I was thinking the other day, there is a Canary Island Date Palm at one of the roundabouts (http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lambeth+bridge,+london&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=17.969195,32.255859&ie=UTF8&hq=lambeth+bridge,&hnear=London,+UK&ll=51.495011,-0.125184&spn=0,359.9685&z=15&layer=c&cbll=51.494909,-0.125142&panoid=7G5tqRo01oP7GDFwbuRdkQ&cbp=12,171.25,,0,5) that I noticed recently actually has a trunk on it. When I first lived in London, in 1996, there was no trunk - shows both how slowly it grows, and the fact that I've been around these parts, on and off, for a while. There are, however, no huge palm trees in London. I wonder if that is because it wasn't the fashion to plant them before fairly recently (I can hardly believe that, given the Victorian's obsession with all things tropical), or that it just wasn't warm enough until recently for them to survive the winter? Interesting question.

Anyway, after several months off, I've started back with long distance cycling. I went out for a 62 mile ride on Sunday, out through the hilly suburbs south of London. I got absolutely dumped on with rain, after which the temperature dropped, resulting in some very numb tooties on my part. Wooly socks are no match for downpours, especially when one's Gore-Tex lined shoes just pool the water inside.

At some point this spring, preferably before April, David and I have to do our citizenship - I think the only two things holding us back at this point are the forms themselves (very very long and tedious), and the cost, which is pretty astronomical. But, the thought of it getting even more astronomical might actually spur us on.

Right - I've got a map to finish. And, as usual, I will say that I will try very hard to do this more often - interesting things happen, and I have interesting thoughts (well, I think they're interesting anyway), and I never get around to writing them down, and then poof, they are gone.

Oh, and person sitting behind me now is eating a pear. Very loudly. What is it with people being gross and annoying in public places? I want a laser cannon and I want it now.

Blah.