Our wkend was fairly uneventful. Friday we went for a
drink at the pub, watched Seinfeld episodes, had Chinese
takeaway. Sat we went shopping for portable heaters
(the nights are getting pretty chilly
now, and it’s expensive to heat the whole big flat
every night). , watched
eddie murphy’s “delirious” (haven’t seen it in ages -
sooo funny!) started to go to the movies in wimbledon,
realised we were going to miss the movie, so went to
the pub, and watched a dvd. (Warning – big whinging
rant ahead!) Then, at 2:00, our flatmate Arlene brought home a
party from the pub,about 10 drunk-ass people, which I
wouldn’t have cared about except they had the music
ridiculously loud, were shouting outside our bedroom
door (kept trying to come in, but I had wedged it
shut), and saturday night or no, were just too frikken
obnoxious. J, of course slept through the whole
thing. I ended up going and asking them to turn the
music down, and then Arlene was in the whole “i’m
sorry, do you want us to leave?” mode, and ended up
taking the party elsewhere.

the thing that annoyed me most? the fact that she
never cleans, and it’s only *right after* we’ve
scrubbed, that she decides to have people over, or do
her cooking for the next two weeks, or take apart the
beanbag chair all over the lounge. must be nice to
have two live-in maids, so you can entertain whenever
you get the urge.

after her party, she washed only the glasses they
used, and vaccuumed the crushed crisps. didn’t touch
a single bloody other thing. god forbid she should
accidentally wash or put away a stray fork *she*
didn’t use! grrrrr. meanwhile, who the hell cleans up
the stove everytime she makes spaghetti bog? or mops
the tequila she spilt on the floor? or cleans her
hair dye off the bathroom wall? you guessed it. J & J
Cleaning Co.

Anyway – Sunday we went to visit my Aunt Muriel in Oxford for
lunch (my grandfather’s cousin, and I’ve
only ever met her once before, but she invited us
round so we went to visit at her house).
She’s in her late 60s/early 70s, but she’s quite
energetic, and travels a lot. She loves to chat, chat, chat, and
told us all sorts of stories about my grandfather’s
family, etc., which took 5 hours to sit through all her
stories and photos and Sunday dinner. Coming back,
our 1.5 hour drive became a 3 hour odyssey (why is the
traffic only so bad when *I’m* driving??) and finally
got home, relaxed watching a movie, and then Arlene
stumbled in drunk, left her bag in the downstairs
toilet, plugged in her phone, and left her keys on the
floor, then had Michelle, J and I all seaching high
and low while she claimed she’d been ripped off by the
dodgy cab driver… then asked us to wake her up at
6:30 for her new job, b/c she’d “lost” the
aforementioned phone. Grrrr.

Anyway – J’s Mum and 2 sisters and nieces and nephews
are all coming for a visit on 4th November. Don’t
know where we are going to put them all, but I’m
excited! It’s all been confirmed and such, so will
take a day’s leave to spend some time with them.

That’s about all the excitement for the time being.

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useful use of state department resources: from the bureau of international information programs, come the scintillating reads, “explaining barbeque to the world“, “sports in america“, and for you brits, an explanation of the american zig-zag method of eating.

i finally *get* cricket.

bush claims he acted on behalf of the world.

for those of you who already ordered the star wars box set (you know who you are!)

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not much to tell about the weekend, sad to say. friday night, j and i had a “date” – i.e. drinks and dinner. saturday was a washout – boring. sunday, went for a run, then spent the afternoon in wimbledon, shopping for books and dvds, having a late lunch.

forgot to mention that last week we watched “supersize me”, a horrifying look at the destruction fast food can wreak on the human body. the truly scary thing is, it’s not so far off – how many people do you know who order takeaway on a first name basis? halfway through my popcorn, i had to put it down in shame. you could practically *hear* the palm kernel oil bubbling through my arteries.

for your edification:

how to fake a british accent. (and a new england accent – ben affleck, listen up!)

ali g got ralph nader to talk about putting boxes on cows assholes. why america doesn’t get it.

proof that retro is only cool to those who didn’t have to live through it the first time.

i found some of your life in the back of a taxi.

that’s more than enough for a monday. see you on the flipside.

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red sox love kerry. the yankees love bush. need I say more?

maybe they’ve all been hit a few too many times in the head with a flying puck.

Maggot therapy. yummy.

creative headhunting

r.i.p. johnny ramone

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so, yet further changes to the wedding plans.

we were all set to go to south africa on 14th december, get married on 21st december on the beautiful beaches of cape town with family, friends and penguins in attendance, spend a few days in a tree house and play with the amazing elephants, head back to johannesburg for xmas with the in-laws, and fly home for new years in good old london.

need i remind you what they say about the best laid plans?

our tickets were arranged through j’s sister, who works for south african airways, and got us round trip tix for the bargain price of £200 a piece. however, s.a.a., in their infinite wisdom, decided to invalidate family courtesy tickets through the holiday season. meaning, that to stick to our original plan would now cost nearly £1400 for the tickets alone.

there’s a lot you can do with £1000 in china, malaysia, or peru.

so, as much as it saddens me, we’re postponing until january. hopefully getting married 15th january.

and, as a consolation prize, we will go somewhere else for my christmas birthday bash. i’m voting heavily for greece. xmas on the aegean is not a bad runner-up. or at least, that’s what i am trying to convince myself.

anyway, it gives me more time to find a dress!

in an effort to distract myself, er… you, from the tragic news above:

get buried in a pod/capsule/bubble

george bush sings “sunday, bloody sunday”. yes, the u2 song.

the saddest product ever sold

dogs. not always a paralytic’s best friend.

the world is a sick and twisted place. deal with it.

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know how every once in a while, you embark on a task which seems simple enough, but before you know it, has spiralled out of control and become an all-consuming soul-sucking time-warping behemoth project? That was what happened to our bedroom this weekend.

It started out all so innocently – the room needed a tidy, and more storage space so we could eliminate the need to fold our clothes in piles on the floor. So we headed to the much dreaded Ikea with a small shopping list: a dresser, some shelving, and a tall, narrow bin for the recyclables in the kitchen. Like heat seeking missiles, we whizzed through the labrynth maze of showrooms and displays. Along the way, we also decided we needed a mattress topper, a bedside light and some pillowcases.

And what did we emerge with? Three hours later we wrestled out a large 63 kilo dresser in two gargantuan flat-packs (with a clever scheme to consolidate *every piece of clothing we owned or possibly could ever own in the future* in one place), mountains of unassembled storage boxes (in lieu of shelving – J has an almost pathological phobia of *shelves*, it seems. god forbid we should actually put things up on the wall, instead of wedged under the bed), a flour sieve (for my moments of baking inspiration), and bags of yummy, yet smelly gelee moss – Swedish gummy rats (what can i say, we went shopping hungry).

Heaved the entire thing through sheer brute force up three flights of stairs without breaking any bones, or popping any lungs, tore open the boxes, and I began to assemble like a woman possessed, while J mucked about with the internet connection and transferring ripped dvd movies from the neighbours pc (heavily weighted towards adolescent slapstick – “dodgeball” anyone?) only to discover after an hour crawling on all fours with little wooden dowels that the flaming dresser was missing about 6 long support lengths.

you know, to hold the thing together.

swearing bloody blue murder, i stuffed all 3,704 individual dowels, drawer rails, washers, and other assorted miscellaneous parts *back* into the two torn boxes, and the next morning we resignedly lugged the monstrosity all the way *back* to ikea.

when I told the woman at returns that there were parts missing, she said snottily, “I can tell you why there are pieces missing. the numbers don’t match.”

to which I replied, “the numbers do too match! see? 400.347.299.116.000.013 *here*, and 400.347.299.116.000.013 *here* on this box! see, see?”

she sighed and rolled her eyes, and in a tone as if she was trying to conduct a conversation on nuclear physics with a fetus, said, “no *here*, this teeny tiny microscopic *Batch number*, you pea-brain!!” (okay, so she didn’t actually say, pea-brain. but it was heavily implied.)

Oh. that.

deciding to get a smaller, more manageable piece of furniture, we went back into the evil warehouse, and emerged only one hour later with an only-marginally-lighter dresser unit, wicker baskets (for socks), a lamp, and a little jewelery-accessories-perfume-dressertop-organiser-thingie with no fewer than 6 little drawers to individually build.

loading up the car, went to “homegoods”, still in search of the increasing elusive recycling bin, and mattress topper. no luck, but did manage to add a new mop to our laundry list. went to “argos” (which is a subject unto itself, however, suffice it to say, it’s catalogue shopping for boys) where we finally found a matress topper and a mop. still no recycling bin.

tossing in the towel and conceding defeat, we headed home and began cleaning the room from top to bottom – organising, discarding, dusting, clearing, stowing, and hoovering, finishing just in time for bed.

our room is so pretty now – except for the large flatpack in the middle of the floor that I keep smashing my toe on. i’m too afraid to open it.

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as always, the weekend flew by, all the more so because there was a last
gasp of summer, and the weather was beautiful.

a balmy friday evening found us having a pint at the local bar, enjoying the
warmth and watching the world go by, then off to the cinema to see “hellboy”, which was entertaining and appropriately kitschy for an an adaptation of a comic book. however, my enjoyment of the movie was dampened and chilled (literally) by the unfortunate dumping of a supersize tub of coke directly onto my crotch just after the opening credits rolled.

what does one do? go home and waste the £25 quid just spent on tickets and
refreshments? or suffer in silence? needless to say, i spent the next two
hours trying to forget that i was wearing jeans and underwear completely
drenched in icy syrup. (call me cheap, call me stubborn – i prefer
“stoic”.) was the movie worth it? probably not, but i like to think i
passed some sort of test of fortitude which will serve me well at some
point.

saturday we were awakened by a dazzling flood of sunlight, and mustered
ourselves for an early morning run. after showering, we headed down to
the south bank toward the tate. en route, we had sandwiches (my roast beef
was thoroughly inedible) and turkish food (i ditched the sandwich in favour
of some stuffed grape leaves from the festival on the river). arrived at the
tate, anticipating seeing the edward hopper exhibit I have been dying to
catch, only to find the next available showing wasn’t until that evening and
unfortunately we already had plans. resolving to try to catch it the next
day, we headed home and chilled out. Saturday evening we went to a “drinks
thing” at kim and andy’s place in balham, in honour of the arrival of kim’s
sister (who just managed to escape florida before the second hurricane
hit). good company, good food, good conversation meant we rolled home around
2:30 am, more than just a wee bit tipsy.

wham! sunday morning hit me like a brick – i’m suspecting it was the revenge
of the tequila (for which i blame andy’s aunt lesley, who manhandled me into
doing slammers, and thought tequila, vodka, and soda was a perfectly reasonable cocktail mix). J, of course, was as bright and cheerful as the
sunny day, and kindly went foraging for bagels to make me my never-fail hangover cure: a greasy egg and bacon bagel sandwich. Perhaps it’s the difference in the bagels here, but it failed to do the trick, and i spent most of the day trying to maintain a static status with minimum motion. Regardless, even in my pitiful state, the day was simply too gorgeous to waste, so we packed some sandwiches and beer (hair of the dog, you know) and headed down to the park by the river, to play scrabble and bask in the warmth. i managed to rally for a very short game of catch (okay, so i wasn’t all that enthusiastic, in my queasy state), and heading home, we
decided to have a little bbq on the terrace and listen to the red sox game (they won!). A mellow end to a relaxing (if somewhat inert) sunday…

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First off, belated and early congrats to alex and mike – alex is preggers and they’re getting married on 25th September. between all the protests, world travels, fine dining, and designer labels, they will no doubt have the most socially conscious and fashionable child on the planet. (I secretly think alex is just having a baby to have someone besides herself to shop for…)

okay, so she’s going to hate me for this… but kim has a new site as well, www.misitio.co.uk lots of travel photos (it’s been a busy year for her!)

realised I never put up pics from canterbury, so here they are.

also, crap random photos from richmond and eastbourne

that’s it for the mo’, peace out…

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The whirlwind tour of the states was overall very good. Not as relaxed as I would’ve hoped, as there were too many people and things to see, and a lot of travelling back and forth, but all in all, really good.

We flew in to NYC. The flight was pretty cruddy – I will never fly Air France again! We barely made our connecting flight in Paris, and the plane from Paris
to NYC was really old – no screen in the back of the headrest, uncomfortable seats, etc. Despite checking in hours early, we still didn’t get seats together and had to ask this poor teenager to give up his window seat. (poor soul! he then got bumped again about two minutes later by the flight attendant.) We got in about 9:00 pm on Friday evening, and had a surprisingly easy time through Immigration (i got a hearty “welcome home!”, while jonno got fingerprinted and photographed like a sex offender). Got to my friend Johanna’s flat and caught up a bit over a few beers and some food. Woke up at 4:30 am (!) Saturday, and wandered around Brooklyn – went
to Prospect Park and the Botanical Gardens. Went shopping at Target, a baptism in american consumerism! Had a nice dinner and some olympic viewing.

NExt morning took the bus up to Boston, and just spent the day touching base with my family, getting fed every 5 minutes. MOnday, picked up the rental tank, er, car. we reserved an economy compact, we were given a massive extended cab pickup truck, with a front bench as big and cushy as a full size couch. we have brek-fy with the family at the early american (my former “regular” diner, and the scene of much chick-trip planning, relationship analysis, and hangover therapy over gallons of coffee), did the whole Red SOx experience – tour of Fenway (mecca!), shopping for Sox gear, and of course, the game (which we won!). Tuesday, we took a one day walking tour of the entirety of Boston and Cambridge. Took the ferry into the North End, walked through Fanueil Hall, to the Commons and Public gardens, through to Copley Square, over the Mass Ave bridge into Central Square, and then Harvard Square. Lots of walking. Dinner with the whole family (including the little ball of hellish terror that is my 2 year old nephew). The next day we went down to the Cape to stay at my sister’s. Had lahhhbstahh rolls, then a a half day at the local little beach, then went to Hyannis for evening beers by the ocean. The next day the weather was crap, so we spent the day shopping for running shoes and getting lost in the texitle maze that is Old Navy. Friday we went and visited my friend Vanessa and her baby in
Wellfleet, and then drove into Boston for an eye-talian dinner in the North End with my dad and his wife. Saturday we spent the day with my sis, eating seafood and going to gay old ProvinceTown. Sunday we took the bus back to NYC and hung out with Johanna and her husband. Monday we walked nearly all of Manhattan – started off walking over the Bklyn Bridge, then up through Tribeca, Chinatown, Soho, Washington Square, the East Village, Little India, over to midtown for the Empire State Building, Times Square, then took the subway up to the Upper west Side, went through Central Pk, saw a movie, and took the subway home. We must’ve walked ten miles if we walked a step. Tuesday we took the Staten Island ferry out into the harbour for the view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline, then went to the SOuth Street Seaport for lunch, then went to the Upper East side and the Metropolitan Museum, walked down to Rockefeller Centre, and then went home and had a lovely dinner at a south african restaurant just near Jo’s house. Wed, we just did some
errands, and then it was time to go home again! I didn’t sleep at all on the flight home, and when I finally went to sleep Thur night, I slept for days.

This weekend we went for a run on Sat morning (which didn’t do my knee any favors) and spent all of Sunday playing drinking Rummikub, and then monday just vegged (was going to go to the Carnival, but the weather was not so hot, and J was wayyyy hungover).

That’s it in a nutshell! you’ve already seen the pics. now go away.

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