May

31

A photo

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | 7 Comments

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A rose petal on the pavement. Found on my walk home from town.

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May

27

A random mish-mash of older photos

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I’ve uploaded a handful of photos to flickr.

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No conscious theme; no reason for picking any of them tonight, but they all have London in common. To see the rest of the shots, go to my flickr page. (You can click the above picture to get there as well.)

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May

26

Mom, is there something you haven’t told me?

Filed Under expat, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

Several weeks ago, I sent my driving licence and the paper counterpart forms off to the DVLA to get the address updated to reflect our new residence. Neil was slightly more on the ball — in this household, it’s an ADD crapshoot as to when things get done — and sent his off more than a week before mine. His returned corrected and mine went out soon after.

The postman delivered my licence and new counterpart document today. I checked it over for errors. Thankfully, I was sharper than most mornings with credit due to the accidental use of espresso instead of our typical coffee—

My place of birth has changed by about 14,000 miles.

Indianaindia

Indiana had become India.

I phoned the DVLA in Swansea right away and have been instructed to hand write a little letter about the error and to send both my licence and counterpart form in again. Fortunately, there is no charge for updating you address, or apparently, birthplace.

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May

22

This shit wasn’t on my Citizenship test

Filed Under expat, tout le fromage | 14 Comments

So I saw our landlady in town today. We’ve been meaning to get in touch with each other for weeks but she took an “emergency holiday to Egypt” and I’ve just been forgetful. Anyway, we chatted for a few minutes, I got the go-ahead to install an adjustable height bar for the shower (lets the shower head slide up and down for the vertically challenged such as myself — 5′3″ without shoes. Right now I’ve rigged the shower head to hang lower on bungee cords — pure f’in class.), and we agreed to get together to alter the inventory, thereby removing a few more items that we’d rather not use. She mentioned calling us to arrange a meeting and so I put on my bravery pants and invited her over for tea. She enthusiastically accepted the invitation.

I went about the rest of my day (working the part-time job) and then later, during dinner, let Neil know about the loose arrangement. As we stuffed mounds of perfectly cut vegetable medley into our faces I thought about what having the landlady over for tea might mean.

First, it means I need to get some neglected areas of the flat tidied up. No problem. We’ve only been here a little over a month so if I tidy up a few more places I think we’ll look like highly organised people. I have been really good about unpacking but a bit more wouldn’t hurt.
Second, it means I need to learn the British ritual of tea. I asked Neil about this between bites of tasty dinner bliss.

“So, uh, this tea thing… do we need snacks for it?”
“Well, yes— some biscuits* or cakes of some sort. For biscuits we should have a few kinds out: custard cremes, thingamabobs, and thingamabobs.”

OK— he didn’t say thingamabobs and thingamabobs, but I can’t remember the other — WAIT! One was digestives! I can’t remember what the other thingamabobs signifies. Anyway…
“Three types of cookies? Cakes? Do they make this stuff in a medley pack or something? A tin?”

Hallelujah, evidently, they do. Not that I’d screw up and buy the wrong sweet treats for tea— I’d buy too many. I would want to be extra sure that I got it right so I know damn well that I’d buy up half the shop’s stock of cakey-cookiesy-biscuity-tastiness. It would be the most expensive tea ritual ever. Well, for me anyway. I’m sure Chuck and Camilla have fair-trade gold-leafed organic angel toes on their table. I digress.

So then I asked about what cream tea is. It is a whole different spread of stuff and has nothing to do with putting cream in your tea. The cream goes with a baked good on the side. You still offer milk with the tea. That’s about all the information I managed to retain about it. I’m just never offering cream tea on our menu and that takes care of that.

At least now I know a bit more about having someone over for tea. Toast is not on the upcoming menu for tea either, yet for some weird reason, toast is an acceptable and almost expected snack if your guest gets the munchies. In a country where it’s hard to find late-night restaurants — let alone something like a Waffle House, Denny’s, or Perkin’s — you work with what you have in the cupboard. And I’m about to fill mine with biscuits…

~smooches~
jEN

*Yup, that’s cookies for American readers.

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May

21

Like a thousand tiny short circuits in my brain

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

What’s a nerdier* art project than making yourself a Star Trek costume? (Or in my case, the Xena costume I haven’t whipped up yet.)

This: Postcards from Second Life
I’m actually having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I don’t get it, yet it teeters on genius.

There are a lot of Second Life fans (and entrepreneurs) out there — some are my friends — but I just can’t get into it. I tried once. Couldn’t do it. Then deleted the application. I have plenty of other distractions to keep me busy…

Seriously though, if that is the artist’s passion, then more power to her and I hope she sells a loads of books. That would be awesome. To each her own and is the way it should be. It is a great idea, no matter how much I don’t understand the appeal.

Now if only I’d known this was in the making before I deleted the application— I could have gone sightseeing for the places in the book! :D
– — –

Thanks to CC Chapman for bringing the project to my attention. And this link too.

*And by the way, being nerdy is cool. Smart kids rock.

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May

20

Short and Fuzzy: Episode 9 out now

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

Short and Fuzzy podcastShort and Fuzzy episode 9 has been released. Fresh, current content recorded from the sofa of our new flat.

About the show:
Short and Fuzzy is an all talk podcast and I’m fifty percent of it. It’s around a half hour of Neil and I gabbing on about whatever is in our heads. It’s unscripted and, for the most part, unedited. This means not necessarily safe for work, y’all. ;) You’ve been warned and now you’re getting the link
(pick one that appeals to you):

There’s also Windows Media Player, Winamp, Real, and RSS feeds on the BTPS page.

Episode Notes: We’re back on the sofa! OK, so we kinda never left.
Find out about the house move, the difference between what is fluffy and what is fuzzy, and creating objects from bits of animals (including a mouse mouse). How can four ADD geeks move house, missing Sky+ and the control of our television viewing, and more about our new home.

Thank you for listening!

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May

18

My 24 Hours of Flickr submission

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

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24 Hours of Flickr is a group pool of photos taken on May 5, 2007. With a deadline looming, I finally chose a picture and submitted it.

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May

18

Real conversations: It was a brief exchange

Filed Under conversations, tout le fromage | 1 Comment

His excited eyes met mine from over the computer monitors.

N: “Amazon is running a contest to win a life-size Lara Croft mannequin!”

J: “It’s not living in the bedroom.”

I believe this means he’s pre-ordering the latest Tomb Raider video game.

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