I am FINALLY beginning to feel better after more than a month of being sick. Monday I went to the doctor and got antibiotics. I am still a bit tired, and I am still coughing, but I am much improved.

I haven't posted in a while, so I haven't had the chance to say I am kind of saddened by the fact that Robert Jordan (really James Oliver Rigney, Jr) has passed away. The bad thing is that I only knew because of this comic.

I have a ton more to say, but I can't really think of all of it because a) I am really tired and b) Ray is watching "Road Wars"… The English version of Fox's Most Annoying Cop Show. It's all these assorted UK cops stopping people for various things, getting yelled at, beat up and generally abused, finding all sorts of drugs on these assorted violent people. Then the offenders get a £80 fine. Or maybe just a warning. Now, they are walking up to a house, smell weed, and bust in this house to find 5 rooms full of pot plants. Tons of plants, lots and lots of money to be made and the woman running it was a repeat offender. She got 2 years. That's it.

Oh, well. Not my crappy country.

We Americans think that the DMV is an awful thing of bureaucracy… We complain about it and it’s the butt of many jokes in the US. The DVLA is a nightmare! Americans are allowed to drive on their licenses for up to one year. At which point, we have to have a UK driver’s license. So, Ray and I are going to get our licenses, which is a fairly, long, involved and complex process. First you must apply for your Provisional License. This seems pretty straightforward, except that we have to prove who we are – so we’ve had to send off our Passports to the DVLA in Swansea for UP TO 4 WEEKS!!! We misunderstood the information out there and thought that if we went to the DVLA office in Wimbledon, we wouldn’t have to actually send them passports in. So, with me still sick, we waiting around there for better than an hour waiting for the two minutes it required for someone to stamp our photos (you have to provide your own), stamp our applications, take the passports, take £90 for the two of us and send the whole pile to Swansea. Then, they will mail the Provisional license back to us with our passports IN 4 WEEKS!!! Then, we have to jump through a dozen other hoops to get our real licenses, including taking a class before you can take the tests to get the motorcycle endorsement.

So, poor Emma has hurt herself, somehow. We were sitting upstairs, working, when we heard her yelp. I went downstairs to find her bleeding all over the floor, where her claw got ripped out somehow. We took her into the vet, where they sedated her and removed the claw completely. She just has no luck. And since she’s decided to try to chew the bandages off, we’ve had to put an e-collar on her. Even Dingo was really upset that Emma was hurt. She was shaking and whining and just really upset. Ray thought I yelled at her or something, but I didn’t even notice her at first.

Other stuff… We had a Tube strike earlier in the week. I really think that there are times when striking might be justified, but this was nothing but laziness and stupidity. If your company goes belly up, why should you expect to still get your pensions or not lose your job or anything else? If there is no money to keep the company running, where do you think they can get the money to pay your ass? Despite my viewpoint, the Mayor of London promised that there wouldn’t be any jobs cut, or any pensions gone or even any forced transfers. They were promised this, even though Metronet is bankrupt. And then the assholes decided to strike anyway. They called it off halfway through, but it took another day to get everyone back in place and get things running again. It was absolutely a mess and completely not justified in any way.

As I’ve complained about before, I am sick… Last week, I went to Boots to get cough syrup. Of all the ones that were available on the shelves, none of them looked like the right stuff, but I grabbed one that said it was for “tickly coughs”. It didn’t seem to work very well. That is because, as it turns out, it is just supposed to soothe the throat to stop the cough. Useless. So, I go back yesterday, and I ask the person behind the counter for something for a dry cough. He gives me a bottle from behind the counter, along with the real pseudoephedrine, which I have to ask specifically for. I didn’t look at it very closely at the bottle, though. Last night, I start coughing really bad while I am laying down trying to sleep. So, I get up and take the cough syrup. About 20 minutes later, my eyes fly open, and I am WIDE awake… I start bouncing around, and immediately realize that I didn’t check the ingredients in the cough syrup. It contains pholcodine, which is a codeine derivative. Luckily, it is a derivative, so I didn’t spend the whole night vomiting, but I didn’t sleep at all, either. Stupid me – I thought it would be the same stuff that is in Robitussin. And even stupider because it’s a bottle that is simply and clearly labeled “Pholcodine linctus”. I didn’t even have to read the fine print… Now I am really tired, and today is a vacation day for me, since it’s Labor Day in the US, and I try to take the same holidays that Ray has, since Ray is still working on a US schedule…

There is a certain person at work who keeps asking, “What time is it in America?” And when I ask where in America, he responds “I don’t know. It doesn't matter. Just tell me what time it is there.” Despite the fact that I’ve informed him that the Continental United States spans 4 time zones, I don’t think folks here actually get how big the US is. So, I’ve come up with these numbers, all from Wikipedia since it has a box on the right hand side with geographical info. I did verify the numbers in other places, like Nat Geo’s site or the CIA fact book and while all are different, they are pretty close. In short, NC is bigger than all of England (since they don’t seem to like to acknowledge the Welsh, Scots or Irish as being their countrymen):

My home state, North Carolina:
Total area = 139,509 sq km or 53,865 sq mi
(Nat Geo says 139,389 sq km and 53,819 sq mi)
Width 150 miles or 240 km
Length 560 miles or 901 km
Ranked 28th out of 50 states

England (not including, Wales, Scotland, etc):
Total area = 130,395 sq km or 50,346 sq mi
(I had found another source for this, but can’t find it now)

Closest in size to England is Louisiana:
Total area = 134,382 sq km or 51,885 sq mi
(Nat Geo: 134,264 sq km or 51,840 sq mi)
Width 130 miles or 210 km
Length 379 miles or 610 km
Ranked 31st out of 50 states

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland:
Total area = 244,820 sq km or 94,526 sq mi
(Nat Geo says 242,910 sq km and 93,788 sq mi)

Closest in size to entire official country of UK, probably, is Wyoming, since Michigan is 41.5% water:
Total area = 253,348 sq km or 97,818 sq mi
(Nat Geo = 253,336 sq km or 97,814 sq mi)
Width 280 miles or 450 km
Length 360 miles or 580 km
Ranked 10th out of 50 states

And, if you want to see overall, The United States of America, though this does include Alaska and Hawaii:
Total area = 9,631,420 sq km or 3,718,695 sq mi
(Nat Geo says 9,826,630 sq km and 3,794,083 sq mi)


I have to say, though, I guess I shouldn’t be so harsh about it though. I live here and sometimes have trouble fathoming how small it is. I can’t really expect folks who have never traveled outside of Europe, or maybe not even outside of England, to actually be able to understand just how vast the US is.

Next post… The horrors of the DVLA…