Merry Christmas!

It doens't feel too much like Christmas without all the trappings, like the tree or the turkey, but, hey! Have a Happy Christmas anyway!

Back in NC

So, I've made it back. The flight was okay, not too crowded, not too many screaming babies. It left a little late, but it wasn't too bad. We were only 5 minutes late in landing. I wish I could have gotten a pic of the fog from above. We flew straight through it, and around 2000 feet up, there was this solid looking layer of fog/clouds that we broke through. It was pretty amazing to see the fog that has been grounding Heathrow flights for a few days from this other perspec

The problem is that my body is insisting that it is ~10AM, when here in NC it's only ~5AM. So, I am wide awake and tired.

But, yay! We are going to breakfast with Marcee in the morning, and heading down to Fayetteville this afternoon.

Oddly enough, Dingo didn't seem to care that much that I was home, but Emma and Abbie were really happy to see me. Abbie did her butt waggle dance for me. :-)

Damned Fog...

So, the fog is extremely thick, and has been for the last couple of days... This means many flights have been cancelled or delayed. Luckily, it looks like Gatwick is faring a little bit better, and the overseas, long haul flights are getting priority clearance.

So, I tried to take a good shot of the fog, but, it's fog. It isn't very easy to do. But, this is my train station in this interminable fog:


Hopefully, everything will go okay tomorrow, and I will get in on time. But, even if I don't, I will get there eventually. Yay! I get to have Mexican for dinner tomorrow night! And The Loop, and Brigs, and Elmos! And I get to see Ray, and the pups and Marcee and... Anyway. I am really excited to head back to collect Ray and the animals.

Freezing fog?

I have never heard of, nor had I ever really conceived of, a concept such as "freezing fog". But, it exists, and that was what I walked home from the train station in. Despite the ability to suck all warmth right out of your body, it is a really neat thing... Basically, it's 100% humidity, but rather than some sort of falling precipitation, there is just fog... Fog so thick that it is impossible to see more than about 20 feet in front of you. Fog that causes water to condense on absolutely everything. But that is only half of it. It is also right at or just below freezing. So, the water condenses on stuff - windows, cars, your jeans - then proceeds to freeze. It was really just plain interesting, and it wasn't that terrible. It only took a minute or two of being inside to thaw out and stop shivering, but really, I am still much more accustomed to NC weather.

I tried to take a picture with my kick ass 3.2 mega pixel camera phone, but I couldn't because the flash kept going off, and reflected off the fog, which made the picture filled with white dots. Oh, well. I'd thought that having a really good camera phone would keep me from ever saying, "I wish I'd had my camera." But so far, it's only made me say, "I wish I had my real camera." :-)

Now I need tea to warm up a bit because my living room is a bit chilly

I have stuff now!

So, the movers came by today, on a Sunday, to deliver our household goods. But the problem is we have too much crap. We can't fit all of our stuff into the house. It's too tiny. The couch, the recliner, the box springs, the 17' boats, the chest-of-drawers... Those all had to go into storage, plus a handful of other things. But, at least I have a real mattress, even if I can't put it on a bed frame. And I have real pots and pans. (Not that I cook – that's Ray's thing… But if I WANTED to cook something, I could.) I have a bunch more items of clothing, though there is no where to put it, since this place has no closet and I have no dresser or anything. And I have boxes everywhere. I can't move for the sheer number of boxes. But my stuff is here, and that is the important thing. I can sort it all out later.

Also, I have my pretty red Volvo 740 estate. (I'd said in the last post that it was a 745, but the last number designates the number of doors. So, a Volvo with a 5 at the end, like a 245 or 965, it means it is a wagon or estate.) Okay, it's not that pretty. I mean, it is a 15 year old box with wheels with 168K miles on it. But my last Volvo lasted well over 300,000 miles. (I can't really saw how far past – the odometer died at ~292,000 miles and I drove it for another 2 years after that.) And it has plenty of room for pooches and bikes and boats. We can worry about getting a real vehicle later, if we want to. Right now, being new to driving here, I think we are better off with something that we don't care about aesthetically.

I have to say, getting the car back to the house was a nightmare. The roads are really bad, in the sense that they aren't well marked or well signed. All of the sudden, where there were two lanes, there is now one. No merge signs ahead, no marks on the asphalt. Just *poof* there is only one lane. And figuring out where you are now and how to get where you are going is really tough. It was nothing more than pure luck that I got home. Since Ray took the GPS receiver home with him by accident, and the directions from MapPoint were just plain wrong, I was absolutely lost. I ended making a fairly random decision to go towards Croydon, because I have a vague sense of where it is on a map, and there were a fair number of signs pointing the way to Croydon. I'd hoped I could find Banstead from there. As I drove in the general direction of Croydon, I eventually saw a single sign that said something like Sutton, Gatwick, Brighton this way… Since Sutton is really a straight shot from Banstead, I would have been perfectly happy to find Sutton. So, I went that direction, but after that, there were no more signs for Sutton for a very long time. (I don't know how far distance wise, but it was at least 20 more minutes.) Then, from out of no where, I get to a random roundabout that tells me Sutton is to the right and Banstead is to the left and, just like that, I was on Banstead High Street. I was so happy that I found my way home.

Well, that's my news for now!

FSM and other thoughts...

I've decided that, indeed, the Flying Spaghetti Monster must be real. I have had the most wonderful food – Pumpkin Pasta – and as it is pasta, and it is divine, there can be no other explanation except that the FSM is real.

Also, good news! Our household goods are set to arrive very, very soon. I will hear back by end of the day to find out specifically what day. Yay! I will be sleeping on a real bed soon!
I've managed to find us a car - an old 91Volvo 745 that was cheap enough to pay cash for, but actually runs well and is in good shape. It will fit all of the dogs at the same time and is long enough to handle the 17' kayaks and bikes and everything else. Yay, again!

And, a final yay… I purchased a soda at a train station yesterday from someone who was both POLITE and FRIENDLY! It is a very rare thing here. There is no such thing as customer service. The customer can go to hell. Like the other day, I was on a bus and as the driver stopped at the stop, a very old guy ran up to the bus as fast as he could (poor fellow had to hobble along quickly) and then, just as the old man got in front of the doors, the driver took off. That was just mean spirited and cruel. Ok, I know nothing about the situation. Maybe the old guy was rude to the driver at some point in the past. Maybe the driver didn't see him (though I doubt that). Maybe there was something more than what I could see, but it seemed awfully and malicious to me.

That is it for now.

Ray...

So, the other day I was talking with Ray on gtalk and he says, "We had sloppy joes for dinner last night." I responded, "You mean you and the dogs? Or is this the royal we?" He hadn't realized he'd said it, but is so used to it being me and him, he thinks of everything in a plural form like that.

I realized yesterday that he is such an integral part of my life when I was trying to braid my hair. First, he has been braiding my hair ever since I dislocated my shoulder, so I haven't had to braid it in over a year. Second, he does this funny thing with the scrunci at the the end of the braid that covers the end of it completely, and I can't do it! That seems a silly thing, but it really emphasized to me the reliance I have on him. I mean, he's my best friend, my lover, my... a lot of things. I've missed him since he left to go back to the US a week ago or so. (Has it really only been a week and two days?) And, yeah, I get to be back with him in two more weeks, but, damn...

I miss Ray. I miss my pooches. I almost miss the cat... Okay, fine, I miss the cat. Though, if they are getting sloppy joes, I am going to guess that my pups don't really miss me at all.

The world is a rubbish bin...

Or, at least that's how it looks walking around in London. Everywhere I look, there are cigarette butts, beer cans, assorted other beverage receptacles, McDonald's bags, old appliances, etc. Hell, there was a mattress on the sidewalk for a couple of days, and there is a baby bottle still filled with milk that has been on a window sill down the street from where I work since I started working here 3 weeks ago!

And, it's everywhere. There isn't a street I've walked down where I haven't seen any trash, and the areas along the train tracks are covered in crap. I don't know about other places, because I've never noticed it to this extent, but I know that in North Carolina, we have crews that clean up the sides of the major roads every so often, and people will clean crap out of the ditch in front of their own yard.

This could be attributable to the size of the population here vs NC. I understand that the more people you have the more trash that will be generated. Add to this the idea that the larger number of people guarantees a larger number of thoughtless people who don't really think about what they are doing when they throw their paper coffee cup onto the tracks at the train station, etc.

This could also be due to a lack of trash bins. Sometimes, it seems impossible to find a place to throw out my stuff, and I carry around an empty Pepsi bottle for a long time before I find a bin. I doubt that is the reason why, though, because even in places where there are trash bins, there is still a bunch of crap thrown around.

Oh, well, that was my observation for the day.

Rainy...

I am really happy that I've bothered to invest in decent outer wear. As I walked to the train station, it rained, and it poured, and the wind blew. My jacket was wet, but I was perfectly dry. I've noticed that it rains every day here. Sometimes, only for 5 minutes. Usually, it's overnight. However, since I've gotten here, it has rained every single day. Funny, because before I got here, there was a drought and they had hosepipe bans and everything. Ahh, well.

I am trying to learn my way around, but last night, I decided to take a short cut home from the train station, and I got lost. But, on the positive side of that, I saw a fox. I've never actually been that close to one so, it was really cool to see. Though, I gather that they are very common, and I've heard them referred to as "urban foxes", so I am guessing that it isn't all that surprising that I saw it. I just wish I'd had my camera!

Good morning!

So, I awaken to something that sounds like thunder and I look out the window. It's only the wind blowing that hard, driving rain down the street, against the windows.

Wow! I am so glad that I don't have anything I have to do outside the house today!! (Though, it's too bad I don't have my whitewater boat yet, or the means to transport it somewhere....) Sigh.

Wrong damn side...

You know, in a car, it is one thing - You have a steering wheel on the wrong side that keeps you cognizant of the fact that you have to drive on the left, but on a bike, it requires a bit more attention – especially on the back roads where 1) there isn't a lot of traffic and 2) there is only one lane because the other is taken up by parked cars facing both directions. I gave up on the way back from the bike shop and decided to ride on the "pavement" (the sidewalk). I will figure it out eventually.

Appliances are good...

So, we got this place with 2 bedrooms and 2 reception rooms and a little tiny kitchen. When we got it, there was no washing machine, dryer, fridge or freezer. Yay! They were delivered and I have a tiny washer/dryer and a bitty fridge and a freezer next to it that is the same size.

Woo-hoo! Clean clothes at last! :-)