ugh. london tube was on strike today. I was lucky enough to be able to walk to work, but some people faced commutes of 2+ hours. lots of people didn’t even bother. the tube carries about 3 million passengers a day. now there’s talk of a retaliatory boycott. given the number of people i saw walking and cycling today, a series of rolling tube strikes might be a good way to get londoners in shape. forced fitness: the new central government initiative. I can see it already.

my walk to work, however, was considerably slowed by the fact that i made the misguided decision to play squash again last night. i don’t know how long it will take me to figure out a) the ball doesn’t bounce and b) the walls are stationary. accidentally slamming the racquet into a wall is frustrating and not good for the health of the racquet. deliberately slamming the racquet into the wall out of sheer frustration is not good either. not to mention the prevailing law of physics of squash: when the ball doesn’t bounce (as it doesn’t) and the legs will not move (as they wouldn’t) the ball will, as a rule, thump leadenly and roll to the farthest corner of the court (as it does). it then becomes not so much a game of squash, as a game of “let’s see how frequently jen can accidentally kick the ball away from her in her clumsy attempts to fetch it”, which is definitely not as much fun.

happy birthday to nick! who is sporting a kick-ass tan from her recent holiday in greece (which I was meant to go on). i have decided, in honour of her birthday, to suspend my determined anger with her, over the fact that she is leaving me to return home to new zealand in just 15 short weeks. don’t say i never gave you nuthin’.

elsewhere on this crazy little dust mote we call earth:

truckers as government spies (do i even need to point out how simultaneously ridiculous and scary this is?)

the plight of the black superhero (i’ve had many a conversation about this, surprisingly)

that’s enough for the mo’. talk atcha later…

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Hmmm. Well the weekend was a bit of a mixed bag.

Friday night I met up with J for a work drinks thing (supposedly something of a belated leaving so for J as well, since he changed buildings at his job). I was all prepared to be chatty and social and cute. Except that for the entire two hours we were there, almost all his old colleagues failed to even acknowledge our presence! It started out kind of strange, and got progressively wierder the longer we were there. They all stood around drinking, looking like they were enjoying a root canal, talking about work, whilst studiously avoiding glancing at anything other than the depths of the drink in front of them. After two agonizingly long pints, J decided he’d made enough of an effort and we went home and had a lovely sushi dinner. Mmmm. You gotta love edamame – like nature’s little bubble wrap. Satisfyingly poppy and entirely addictive. And eel, ugly as sin, but tasty as hell.

Saturday morning was downright dreary, putting the kibosh on my plans for a run down to the river, so instead I decided to intoduce J to the uniquely american delights of mixing the sweet and savoury on the breakfast plate, in the form of cinnamon french toast with maple syrup and bacon. Why this seems so stomach churning to the uninitiated, I’ll never understand, but after skeptically sampling a bit, J seemed to come around. To work it all off, J decided to introduce me to the game of squash. He warned me as we were heading to the courts that I would be tired and sore, but I dismissed his cautions as exaggerated. Spent the next hour and a half running absolutely ragged, chasing maniacally (and very ungracefully) after a little hard non-bouncy ball, slamming into walls, and sweating like a pig. I used ass muscles I didn’t even know I had. Came home and spent the evening chilling (well, immobile, more accurately) with a movie and dinner.

Sunday morning, we got up and got ready for rock climbing, gathered our gear, headed out to Bruce (the car)… only to find the window had been smashed and the radio stolen. Argh. Spent the better part of the morning calling in a police report, checking insurance policies, calling autoglass repair places. Bah humbug. Since our morning plans were trashed, J decided to make french toast *his way*. With garlic and ketchup. Definitely savoury – it’s good, but a little disconcerting, as my brain kept expecting a different taste than what my mouth experienced. It’s good, but it takes a little getting used to. Went to Sydenham and got some perspex put into the window (the glass won’t be in for a day or so), went and had a pint down the street (vandalism does tend to dampen one’s spirit a bit, but we enjoyed thinking of cruel and unusual ways to exact our revenge), and J made a lamb roast for sunday dinner.

may you die a long, slow, painful death, you stoopid thieves…

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so then –

wish i had more exciting news to relate about this weekend, but all in all it mostly consisted of drinking, hobbling, and baking.

friday night, ja nd i met up w/ andy to exchange musical memorabilia. andy brought me back a jealous sound t-shirt and a signed cd, as he got to rub noses with the band whilst out in cali. nice to know they haven’t been tainted by stardom. perhaps I’ll even get a chance to see them when i am home for holiday in august (did i mention that? j and i are headed to nyc/boston to visit the folk and peeps. it’ll be his first visit, so should be fun to show him the old ‘hoods). here’s a pic of a and blair shehan:

the pixies fairy brought him a t-shirt and a downloaded copy of the gig he missed.

spent much of the evening discoursing on the sad state of the american government, world politics, and how to make a bomb out of matchstick heads and a needle. aided, of course, by plenty of liquid refreshment.

saturday morning, i was feeling quite brave and suggestes j and i go for a run down to the river and back (nearly 8 miles). this went rather well – plenty of sweat and fresh air and sunshine. until my knee gave out – again. rather than take the prudent course of action and baby my recurrent injury, i (being rather chilly) decided to try and keep running. bad idea, capital b, capital i. upon reaching home, it was quickly ascertained that i could no longer ascend even the most measly starcase, as anything requiring bending my knee whilst putting my weight on it, brought on a severe case of the “owies”. (need i point out that my flat is two flights up, and two floors?). managed to limp heavily to go see “harry potter” that night, but moaning with every step is not the most joyous of sounds.

sunday, rock climbing was out of the question, so spent the day baking loads of carbohydrate confections instead, and watched a bunch of dvds in the evening.

not all that exciting, but there you have it.

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Welcome to the intermittent weekend blog – no real reason, just found some interesting stuff to share.

fahrenheit 9/11 opens in the states next friday – go see it. sure, michael moore is a blowhard. but he asks the questions that will hopefully get people thinking before they go into the voting booth in november. and underneath all the hype and hyperbole, you just know there is a grain of truth.

envirnmental terrorist confession: shell oil boss admits his product might be bad for the planet. now if we can only get tobacco giants to admit that cigarettes cause cancer.

father’s day gifts

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In case you cared, today is the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday – the day celebrated in joyce’s “ulysses”. Reading it is on my list of 101 things to do before I die, but i have to admit, I’ve only ever managed to muddle through about 50 pages of it (too many footnotes!). If you’re like me and want to sound pretentious and overeducated, here’s a cheat sheet.

here’s a shocker: saddam had nothing to do with 9/11

I couldn’t make this shit up: apparently the newest trend is cockroach racing.

fucking, austria. no, really.

ho hum: madonna’s newest incarnation? the mystical mother

go, kerry, go

The sheer stupidity of Brit footie fans knows no bounds. Fer crissake, they didn’t even play last night!

that’s enough for today. keep smilin’

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so here are some pics from the fucking fantastic pixies concert:

and here is jonno’s bungee jump:

now your curiosity as been sated

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Weekend was lovely. Friday night we just chilled and watched a dvd. Saturday, slept in til 11:30! (I used to sleep until noon or one in NYC, but I was also 26!)

However, I have now come to an important realisation in my realtionship with J. Namely, that if I want to spend a whole day doing *nothing*, I’ll have to do it without him.

The boy is incapable of doing nothing. He woke up at 8:00 to run and put the parking permit on the car. I had to practically drag him back to bed. When we woke up again, he had to run out and return the tent we had borrowed. Came back and had to do the washing up while I was making banana bread muffins for breakfast. He was itching to wash the car, but I forbade it. Then got him to sit and play a video game for about an hour while I was tinkering on the computer. But then he had to jump up and go return the dvd. Got back and he was anxious about when we were going to the bbq our flatmate was having at her boyfriends. Finally, I capitulated.

The *only* thing we had to do was return the dvd, everything else was completely optional. And he just could not sit still. Ah well. We went to the bbq (a huge spit braai, with two whole lambs on spits in the garden)and stuffed ourselves silly and had a few too many beers. Got home and I had a bad headache so I went to bed, but he went next door where the neighbours were having some drinks with our climbing friends.

Needless to say, no climbing Sunday. No one was really motivated being a) hungover and b) not wanting to be indoors. So we had a nice fruit salad and bloody mary breakfast in the sun, then went down to Tooting Bec where our friends were playing frisbee, and went back to their house for a bbq lunch. Got home in time to see France kick Englands ass in the footie match. (J hates the English team, and I have to agree that the Brits have been pretty insufferable about the whole thing…)

From the quasi-real world:

The Brits complain they don’t get enough holiday time and they’re sorely overworked. Meanwhile, the Japanese just put up and shut up.

dunno how much I believe in the future of nanotechnology, but here’s a cool article about it

hmmm, parallels between kerry and bush srs. foreign policy?

just for shits and giggles – pussy scott stapp (of suck-ass neo-christian group “creed”) wants strip clubs to stop playing his songs. but of course.

that’s all for now, folks.

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weekends like this one, just plumb tucker me out. i’d be a miserable old bitch to complain about having too much fun stuff to do, but the weekend just flies by, and before you know it, you’re dragging your sorry tired ass back to work even more exhausted than when you started.

friday night we went out for drinks and a late dinner, which in itself was not tiring, however we didn’t get to bed til very late, and had to get up quite early saturday morning to hike all the way out to fairlop for…

j’s birthday bungee jump! when asked how the experience was, his immediate reply was : “a lot higher than it looks!” disappointed that his jump was less like a graceful swan dive, and more like a clumsy trip (apparently it’s hard to jump gracefully when your feet are hobbled together), he still said it was quite a rush free-falling with the ground coming at you fast and furious, and is very keen to go again when we’re in s.a. later this year. i hear tell they have some mighty big bridges down there. after the adrenaline wore off and a celebratory pint drunk, we went home for lunch to get ready for… the pixies!!!

(which I’ll get to in just a moment – bear with me)

after the concert, came home to watch half of game six of the stanley cup finals, hoping for a thrilling Calgary Flames victory. Unfortunately, it was not to be, and fans will be holding their breath as it all comes down to Game 7 on Monday night.

Woke up early on Sunday for an invigorating (if somewhat shortened) session of rock-climbing. It’s finally starting to get easier, which is tremendously satisfying. Headed home to shop (why do we always do this on a Sunday when the rest of the world is at the store?!?!) and do a massive house-clean, and then baked some homemade bread. Yum! By 10:30 I was wiped, and glad to have an early night of it.

So now,

*the pixies*!!! sadly, andy and kim weren’t able to come. but at the risk of rubbing salt in the wound, it was fucking kick-ass. a pixie fan’s wet dream. Ageing and thickening, less charismatic than a sack of potatoes – they have no stage presence, no ingratiating patter, and a large amount of thinly veiled disdain for the fans who adore them (claiming the only reason for their “sold out” reunion was an influx of cash) – yet they rocked the place to its core. the venerable brixton academy was a house of worship shaken to its foundation. i’ve never heard so much noise at a concert – the airplane runways at heathrow would seem a library in comparison. it started building in anticipation from a full half hour before they came on stage (in spite of the sleep inducing lullabies of badly drawn boy who did an opening set), and there was no letup from the time they stepped in front of the microphones to a deafening roar of complete adulation, till the house lights came on and concert-goers had to be picked up and thrown out. every single one of those 5,000 people was so fervent in their appreciation – die hard fans, who shouted along with every screaming verse and cheered every derisive sneer. most of them had been waiting for over 13 years for a show like this – and it was worth every second of the wait.

The Pixies set it on fire. They ripped through the set like a buzzsaw through paper, with no pause for breath, no letup from one fantastically twisted and hyperactive song right after the other, laying authoritative claim, commanding their rightful place in rock history. Creepy wailing anthems bleeding directly into full-out brain-assault discordant thrashing, decisively reminding the pundits that (in spite of their breakup timing) *they were* the seminal band of the nineties, riling up the likes of nirvana and daring them to turn the establishment on its ear, put a steel-toed boot firmly on the back of its neck.

They tore up the place, chewed it, spat it out – and the crowd cried out for more.

The set-list in full on Saturday ran:
? ‘Head On’
? ‘U-Mass’
? ‘Monkey Gone TO Heaven’
? ‘Cactus’
? ‘Caribou’
? ‘No.13 Baby’
? ‘Broken Face’
? ‘Crackity Jones’
? ‘Isla De Encanta’
? ‘Something Against You’
? ‘Hey’
? ‘Mr Grieves’
? ‘I Bleed’
? ‘Velouria’
? ‘Dead’
? ‘Gouge Away’
? ‘Tame’
? ‘Gigantic’
? ‘River Euphrates’
? ‘Debaser’
? ‘Wave Of Mutilation’
Encore
? ‘In Heaven/Wave Of Mutilation (UK surf)’
? ‘Where Is My Mind?’
? ‘Blown Away’
? ‘Here Comes Your Man’
? ‘The Holiday Song’
? ‘Vamos’

Pictures still to come, so check back.

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amazing and exhausting weekend.

drinking, bungee jumping, pixie-ing, rock-climbing, bread baking.

full blog with pics to come soon.

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So jonno and I went camping in Scotland for the bank holiday weekend. Originally we were going to go camping in the Lakes District, but the place we wanted to go didn’t take bookings, and all out backup choices were full up as well. So sitting int a services carpark just outside Birmingham, we decided to wing it and just head for Scotland instead.

Camping here in the UK is very different to my camping experience in the States. First of all, I did not realise there really is almost no wilderness in the UK. It is all farmland. Second of all, when people go camping here, they tend to take their home with them. They either have a campervan with them (complete with telly, satellite dish and lounge chairs), or they buy one of those semi-permanent tincan houses with the deck porches and gas bbq grills, and call it camping. When we pulled into the first campsite, and it was pretty much just a carpark full of campervans with a few fields, in the middle of a town, and looked like camping on the village square, I said “huh uh”. And so we spent the next 4 hours driving to various campsites fruitlessly searching for something a little more like communing with nature, and a little less like a trailer park on the high street. After exhaustive searching (tin can towns in hamlets, tin can houses in the woodlands, tin can houses on the seashore), we reluctantly concluded they are all the same, and that in fact, Castle Douglas was the best of the bunch. So we decided to make the best of it and ended up “camping” on the village green at Castle Douglas. It was very much like camping in a town park, which is pretty akin to going on safari in a zoo. We vowed that next time we have to go somewhere there is actual wilderness. You know – trees and dirt and rocks. Otherwise it just reminds me of “camping” as a kid, when my brother and I would put our puptent out in the backyard.

So we pitched our tent and walked to the local pub for a much needed pint. J was insistent we cook our own food (in spite of the plethora of chinese takeaway readily available) so we had instant mash and curry from a can, and then toasted marshmallows for uk-stylee s’mores, smooshed between two chocolate covered digestives, instead of hersheys squares and graham crackers.

The next morning we made camp coffee and decided to go to Edinburgh. I drove! On the wrong side of the road, wrong side of the car – everything. I went on little windy A roads and B roads, roundabouts, merges, motorway, etc. It was fun, but I had to concentrate a lot. We got to Edinburgh and had a picnic lunch on the green in the sun, walked around the city, went to the castle, went to the churches, took lots of pictures. We had dinner at a cute pub (I had haggis with neeps and tatties [turnips and potatoes] – which is actually tasty). Then driving home, we saw a rainbow, which was cool.

The next day we left early for home, and decided along the way to take a short detour pilgrimage to Liverpool, to see the famous Cavern Club where the Beatles got their start. There’s not a whole lot to recommend Liverpool. In fact, it is without a doubt, the most depressing city I have ever seen. Industrial and gloomy, without a hint of vibrancy or charm. I swear to god, it’s positively horrible. But we had a drink in the Cavern, goggled over the memorabilia, snapped some souvenir photos

and got back on the motorway, leaving Liverpool far behind and vowing never to return. Back in London at tea time, a nice long hot bath and a hearty dinner put a finish to an unexpected and enjoyable weekend.

See the rolling green hills, dramatic cliffs, and castle douglas carpark here

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Camping this weekend – didn’t end up in the lakes district, but scotland! camped at castle douglas near the galloway national forest, took a day trip to edinburgh, and passed through liverpool to pay homage to the beatles on the way back.

full blog to come soon, but in the meantime, pictures here

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