So – I was awakened this morning by a 105 pound German Shepherd who has developed a fear of thunder and/or lightening... C'mon!! She spent most of her life, her formative years, in NC, where we have thunderstorms how often? The poor thing was so freaked out. Then it only got worse, we had a couple of lightening strikes nearby, then it started to hail. Then started actually trying to climb into the bed. Ray finally got her to calm down, and once the storm passed, she relaxed, sort of... High strung giant dogs can be not fun.

I tried to get a picture of the hail and stuff...

From Assorted UK Stuff

It's a bit difficult to make out, but if you look in the gutter at the slushie type ice, then on the ground near the dead flower pot... Not giant hail, golf ball sized hail or anything, but enough to be annoying.


Other interesting things...
We don't have grits here, but I do either 1) bring them back with me when I visit or 2) ask Mom and Dad to include them in care packages. So, I have grits. But grits require bacon, at least for me. And British bacon is not exactly... bacon. It's more like country ham but a bit less salt. It's not a bad food. But it's not bacon, either. So a couple weeks ago, we were in Sainsbury's because our ASDA was closed for renovations, and I discovered Oscar Mayer bacon! Actually shipped from Madison, WI to here via Spain, it seems, but still... It was real American bacon. Yum! Then eggs, and I had a perfect breakfast last Sunday. A friend from here who had an American girl friend at one point, who had made him southern biscuits lamented that I couldn't make those as well. I suppose I need to learn, as mine become these hard lumps of... ick.

Anyway I need to end this so we can get going – We have to go to the mall... We've got a couple of presents left... I've got something for Dad, but need to get something for Mom too...

Quick note: My "lesson of the day" from yesterday.

Ok - I make it sound like I learn something cool and worth commenting on every day... :-/

Anyway... So, I was plying my L3 team lead who is French with cookies in hopes of cheering him up. At the same time, we have our colleagues (never co-workers for some reason) from Romania here (thus the reason I'd made the cookies to start with). When one of the Romanians looked up and realised it was Vince, he started speaking to him in what sounded like pretty good French. (Alan, of course, turns to me and jokes, "What was that? Are they slagging us off?" which is even funnier as my French is worse than Alan's could possibly be.) Then Vince proceeds to explain that legionnaires, after 10 years of service to the Roman army, were given land. Norman Roman soldiers were given land in Romania. Thus, the Romanian language is actually a Latin language instead of the Slovak tongue you'd expect. And more so, it's closer to French than say, Italian or Spanish.

Cool, huh?