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!