Lazy Saturday (Some random notes.)

So, life in London has settled down some after a week of orientation and generally getting my bearings down. It's really a wonderful city, but that flushing noise you hear off in the distance is the sound of my bank account draining - ouch. The people are generally nice, if hardened city-types: iPod rocking, walking quickly, make no eye contact, and so on. I'm having trouble with the not-exactly-subtle fact that Brits drive on the wrong side of the road-- not because I have to drive, but because I keep looking the wrong way before crossing the street.

(I never want to drive in London. Ever. The whole of the city becomes quite literally one gargantuan parking lot and street-level transport becomes a guaranteed impossibility. It's difficult to describe the complete and total mob scene this city becomes during rush hours. Rail advocates, sing your hearts out. Metro/Pierce/Community Bus riders, I feel your pain, and then some. Sound Transit, get your act together and build some reliable trains already. But I digress.)

As I've written about before, I've grown fond of professional socc-- football. Now that I'm in a country that seems to take it seriously, I can fully indulge my fledgling passion for the sport. I've been offered tickets by some wonderful family friends to an Arsenal FC match, this coming Tuesday. I'll have pictures and a post about the (so I'm told) singularly unique experience of attending an English sporting event. I'm sure that I'm going to get a crash course in culture not soon forgotten.

The Days Are Just Packed.

So, I haven't had much time to do much of anything lately. This, however, isn't unexpected; it's the week before university classes start.

I'll have something substantial up this weekend. (I've got a few topics.)

I've Been Here Before...

Greetings from across the Atlantic, where it's....raining. Sound familiar?

No in-flight movies (overnight flight, so I wasn't too annoyed) because the system was broken, but the food was passable by airline standards (there aren't too many ways to screw up pasta) and we got in early.

And, predictably, unlike Northwesterners (and the rest of Americans), English folk drive on the wrong side of the road. Just as slowly, though.

Travels, or You Can Go Home Again But Everything Goes Haywire When You're There

So today is the big day - after a ridiculous week at home (more on this in a sec), tonight I cross the Atlantic and live it up UK-style for a few months. I've been sitting on my hands for weeks (months, even) waiting for today. And I'll come up with plenty of new material as I explore. I won't do a heavy travel log/journal thing, but I'll stick with what I've been doing (unless someone wants me to write something else?).

Back to the absurd week I've just lived. The best overview is by the numbers:

8 days
6 stores visited
3 power outages
1 fried circuit breaker panel (in its entirely)
1 tropical storm
1 oddly-behaving fox scared out of the garage


Here's the details:
I needed a wool coat for London, otherwise I'd look far too much like the foolish American that I am. (Subtlety works for me.) I went through stores all over my county until I found one. The power outages were caused first by an overheating main circuit breaker (the big one that shuts off power to the entire house), which melted some of the panel and caused a partial power outage for two days and required the entire panel to be replaced. Then the tropical storm caused another one. And another thunderstorm caused another brief one. Then the fox starting slinking around. Foxes are nocturnal, so seeing him out in the morning was slightly off-putting. Then as I was taking out the trash, I step into the garage and the fox bolts from a crawlspace and out into the yard. All I know is that I want nothing to do with that fox.

So, I guess you can go home again. But it's just not the same. Seriously. Now I'm going to find an apartment back west and never return. (Well...)

But in any event, it's off I go. More to come from far side of pond. Cheerio!