It is a gorgeous spring Saturday morning... We are going mountain biking as soon as Ray gets back from his swim, so that is cool. Just thought I would *gasp* update my blog over breakfast!

Since May 5 is a bank holiday here (May Day), we are also taking off the Friday before, the 2^nd, and going to go kayaking at the Isle of Wight. I am excited because we are actually taking our big boats out for the first time since we’ve been here. It should be pretty cool, and I hope the weather holds. I will take pictures!

So, my employer has changed providers for our mobile phones. Instead of BT or Orange, we are moving to Vodafone. I gotta say... From BT, I got a crappy, but sufficient and indestructible, Nokia phone. Every month, I got a bill from BT, which went directly to my AmEx, and I had to fill out an expense report, get the money back, pay AmEx... Pain in the ass. Now, with the new system, I will get an email every month, then I just chose which calls are personal, which calls are business, and... Done. That is it. Also! The phone... Ooooooohhhhh... It’s a Blackberry Pearl 8100. This is a nice little smartphone, too. I think I am just going to say screw my personal O2 account, and just use this. Yes, I know: That’s how they get you.... Then you are available 24/7 because your number is listed in Bluepages, and anyone in the company can find and call you at any point in time. But that is already the case, to be honest. The Business BT number is just forwarding calls to my Personal O2, so if someone calls at 2AM... Well, I never hear it because I am not permanently attached to my cell phone – It’s probably in the kitchen or somewhere, and I will have no idea that someone called me until much, much later. So, I don’t think it changes anything anyway, it just gives me a cooler phone and I don’t have to pay for a stupid O2 contract.

So, one of the things Ray and I watch when bored is music videos. We have about 20 channels of music videos, with probably 2/3 of them being crap. Anyway, flipping through, we saw this video which was big around the time we were moving here. I’d forgotten all about... Now that I’ve lived here, it turns out that the song is a pretty accurate representation of what the shining wonderful city of London really is. I am still not sorry that I am here, though, despite all that. I am glad to have the experience. I appreciate home more and more everyday.

Ray should be home soon... Off to Leith Hill!

Again, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to posting… (Has it really been 2 months?) Things have been very, very, very, very hectic at work, and a bit hectic at home as well. In the time since I last blogged, I’ve gone to Stuttgart, Germany and Bergen, Norway for work and back home to NC over vacation. Today is the last day of my 2.5 week vacation. I didn’t logon to work except to write my PBCs, and I only did that on 31 March. Otherwise, after I got back from visiting my parents, I pretty much lounged around, played this really cool persistent NWN1 world (Aenea), went mountain biking with Ray. All in all, it was nice to finally have some time off, but I am really stressed now, worrying about what got screwed up in my absence. Oh, well. I guess I can’t do everything.

So, I tried to get a head start on work for tomorrow... I woke up at 6 so it wouldn’t be a shock to my body tomorrow, and then I wandered into my desk around 7:15 or so. I started going through email, checking the status of my cases. About an hour passed. Then I look up, glance out the window. It must have started snowing right after I sat down, and after the hour or so, there was at least 3 cm of snow! Of course, Met Office had only predicted that it would snow to the north of us... Right now they are saying that it will end at noon with an accumulation of 5-8 cm... We will see.... I had to let the dogs out, and predictably, Abbie and Dingo were upset with it, (Abbie looked like a reverse Dalmatian – it was pretty cool!) and Emma ran around and played in the snow.

Now for a Ray story! Ray sold his old TT bike on EBay to a guy with the handle of robertociclismo. Ray specified that he wanted to receive payment either via PayPal or cash in hand. The guy agreed to pay via PayPal, then, AFTER Ray sent the bike, he cancelled the PayPal payment, without explaining anything to Ray. After Ray tracked everything down, he talked to the guy, the guy sent him a check, which cleared, and everything settled ok. Ray decided not to leave a comment because he didn’t see any point in making big deal over it. He was unhappy with the situation, but in the end, he did get the money. However, this Roberto guy kept bugging him to leave feedback. So, Ray posted negative feedback. The guy first tells EBay that the criticism is wrong, and wants it pulled, and then he calls the house all pissed off about it. So, Ray explains why he did it. The guy starts whining about it, and tells Ray to back to America. (Ironic because this guy is Spanish, not British!) Then, they hang up, that should be the end of it. Instead, the guy goes onto gumtree and starts responding to the "men looking for men" ads with:

*******************

Hi, just found your add, would love to change e-mails with you...

Do you have more pictures of yourself?

Love,

Ray

x

ray’s email addr_@gmail.com
*******************
(Notice the poor spelling and grammzr of a non-native English speaker...)

Now, Ray isn’t homophobic, or insecure in his sexuality. So, he isn’t upset by the fact that he now has a dozen responses from gay guys who now think he wants to exchange emails, and pictures... It’s just the fact that this guy could be such a petty little bitch over negative feedback. For some stupid reason (he says he feels pity for Roberto’s crap existance, because obviously Roberto feels small and powerless and needs to lash out at others) Ray decided to remove the negative feedback... (Probably after the guy started responding to ads, but before Ray saw the effects of it.) Then Ray told me not to post this in my blog, but to drop it. Sorry, it’s my blog, and I want folks to know this guy is a little bitch, and how he probably managed to get such a high approval rating. And, what a screwed up, passive-aggressive way of dealing with it! Why mess with some complete random strangers to get back at Ray? Oh, because they are gay so they aren't people in his Catholic view of the world, so he isn't really messing with them? What a piece of crap! (NOTE: Yes, I know plenty of Spanish Catholics who are NOT like this - I am just lashing out at this guy in particular. It's the only explanation I could see for such a stupid action...)

Anyway, many very random observations collected over the past 2 months:

A 50+ guy on the train a couple of weeks was listening to Nirvana. Scary.

In the hotel in Bergen, while eating dinner, the local radio was playing the Limp Bizkit version of "Behind Blue Eyes".

I hate Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) because I always have a stop there between London and Bergen, so the only thing in my wallet is GBP or NOK. Because I never have euros on me, I have to pay by CC for everything. Besides, it’s annoying to have to go through passport control AND security for plane transfers. (This is all true of Zurich as well, except they use Swiss Francs, but both the currency dilemma and the transfer woes are the same.)

People don’t seem to bother switching off their phones in flight any more. Two different phones rang on a flight between Bergen and Amsterdam. Oddly enough, the plane didn’t crash.

At 9AM, in Schiphol Airport (connecting flight from Bergen back to LGW) a guy was drinking a beer. Alcoholic much?

In Germany, (or at least Stuttgart) it seems that coffee is specifically to be consumed standing around a table, discussing business for very short periods of time. Apparently, you aren’t to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee like in Austria. (Ray says this was true in the other locations he went to in Germany as well...)

After a couple of days, of being in an environment with both Austrians and Germans I could distinguish their accents as being either Austrian or German, but still don’t know enough German to make out more than a little of what they said.

All announcements in Schiphol are in English + the native language of the airline for which the announcement is being made. But the message when you reach the end of the people mover says "Mind your step." In English.

KLM is the "Royal Dutch Airlines", but because they’ve been purchased by Air France, they have a French flag on the planes. The on board announcements, however, are only in Dutch and English.

Swiss Air makes announcements in English, German and French. The order seems to vary by the native language of the person speaking. I had an American pilot on one of my Swiss Air flights.

I got one of the last direct flights from RDU to LGW... From now on I will have to fly from Heathrow. While it makes sense why they are changing it, I hate getting to Heathrow. Gatwick is just closer and better organized as far as drop offs and pickups go...

The British government now has my retinal scan on file. The first time I actually got to use it since I registered was on the way back from RDU. (The damn things were not working the last 2 times I flew into Heathrow.) It’s more important when flying back from a non-EU country... See, on a flight from within Europe, pretty much everyone has an EU passport, and I, with my non-EU citizenship don’t have to wait as long for an immigrations officer. But on flights from the US, about half the passengers are American, so you have to compete for a space in the non-EU immigration line. I cleared immigration in less than a minute, instead of the normal 20-30 minutes it normally takes!

I actually had an absolutely wonderful flight back from the US... I got an entire center row to myself, so I lifted all the armrests and stretched out across all 5 seats and slept for most of the flight.

Mountain biking in the UK is not like mountain biking in the US. At least, not like in the Triangle, in NC. Here, it’s straight UP the hill then straight DOWN, with very steep (one was 18%!!) grades. I really suck at descending. I hold on to my brakes for dear life, and I get sooooo nervous... Well, I can definitely say that my descent skills have improved now. Though, I still think it’s not as much fun at the easy stuff back home. Here there are not as many obstacles – it’s mostly just a lot of hills.

I love gmail’s spam filter – I very rarely see spam in my inbox. (Yay!) However, some of my BCC emails keep getting marked as spam... (Not yay...)

And that is about it for now... It’s 11:45 AM and still snowing really heavily... Though, the flakes have become smaller.