Merry Christmas!
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: The chruch service at St. Mary's
Here's hoping your Christmas is a merry one!

Christmas is a-comin'
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: and you will know us by the trail of dead - source tags & codes
>phew<
Christmas is almost here and the exhaustion is setting in. We're still not used to the blanket of darkness that falls on this country from 3 pm to 9 am. I'm getting a sense of what it's like to live in the Arctic.

Pay day came early and by the looks of it, we'll be UK debt free by tomorrow so whoppee! I've just got to get a new freakin' job in a few weeks so that the good times can keep rollin'.

Otherwise, blank. Work, eat, have a tipple, sleep. We've been getting up to date a little bit with movies and finally got around to seeing The Producers. Now I want to see all the movies that Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor did together (I know this is a bit of a tangent BUT) but I can't remember all the movies they did. There's Stir Crazy, See No Evil Hear No Evil and what other ones? There's at least another one or two but my mind's a blank. Anyone?

Quorn bangers & mash for din-din's and I can tell that Elisabeth's going to ruin her meal by using honey mustard instead of the proper British kind.

PS- HAPPY BELATED ANNIVERSARY MARK & JENN!!!

PPS- To my dad: You may think that Elisabeth was wise to stop us from opening your first delivery but with the arrival of the 2nd delivery labelled 'WaitroseWinedirect," she's ordered an immediate opening and inspection of the goods. Go figure.

PPPS- Another exciting arrival from Sweden: Bilar candies and Marabou chocolates. What's that going out the window? Oh yeah, it's my health.

...at least I'm not working 'till 1.30 tomorrow. Ugh, 'till 9pm, though.

Pictures of the day
We went for a walk along the canal today:

Came home and saw a fox lurking around the parking lot:

Now we're just sittin' round, waitin' for the lasagne to cook and feelin' apologetic for not makin' this blog entry a little bit more entertainin'.

Christmas time in woking
As we approach the Big C, life in Woking goes on; shoppers shop, our yob neighbour has bought himself a brand new pair of camouflage pants while his little child teeters around in rags like the village drunk. It's rainy & sunny (usually at the same time) and the cats are fighting in the bushes outside of our window. The pantomime has come to Woking; it's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and, as Woking sets the standard for artistic interpretation, the dwarfs are being played by real dwarfs. So in addition to the usual freaks and geeks roaming the town square, there are packs of dwarfs, usually in 2's or 3's, doing their Christmas shopping as well. If London is supposed to be a microcosom of the world; Woking is a microcosom of the world that time forgot.

Bonus Personnal Ad Follies (From the Woking News & Mail): Gay cigar smoking bloke, 30's, from Alton, seeks non-smoking, shy, cute white lad, around 18 for fun, possibly more.

Let's hope his Christmas is a merry one!

Pooped
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Bad Religion - Stranger than Fiction
Well here's my attempt to get the blog moving a bit more; instead of one blog a week as we've been doing the past few weeks. Except Elisabeth's late coming back from work and picking up the take out pizza. As a result, this glass of wine's gone to my head and I keep accidentally closing windows.
Yikes!

Christmas here is insane. EVERYONE waits 'till the last minute to shop. So have I and I sense that I'm very, very, very close to getting screwed with regard to Elisabeth's present that I haven't bought yet. ... Of course, I wouldn't be had she not come into the book store last week and force me to buy the things that I was going to give her as a present because I knew she wanted them even though she thought I'd probably forgotten.
Bleah!

BBC radio 4 did a special thing about all the insane things booksellers get asked over the holidays and it only pissed me off because it only scratched the INSANE surface and didn't touch on the fact that YOU'RE ASKED THE-SAME-BUT-DIFFERENT QUESTIONS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AD INFINITUM for 8 freakin' hours a day.
RAWG!

These are the 3 simple rules a person needs in order to not be and insane customer and people don't seem to be able to follow them:
1) Know the title of the book you're looking for.
2) Know the author's name
3) If you're told the book is out of print, accept it as a fact; not something you can negotiate.
Bonus tip: Knowing the colour of the cover doesn't do anything except confuse EVERYTHING. YOU CANNOT DO AN INTERNET SEARCH ON A BOOK ON THE BASIS OF THE COLOUR OF ITS COVER.

Who are those sexy people?
Mood:  hungry

Why us at the office party, of course!

The Christmas shopping insanity has kicked into 5th gear and, luckily, I got off 1/2 an hour early. ... Of course that's because I couldn't take any breaks today. Elisabeth's still at work and it's a quarter to seven. Yikes! Thank god for BRRREETO dinners!

I got shouted at today by a customer (whose name, though it's spelled differently, is pronounced 'heiny'. Haha) because the Frank Sinatra song book she'd ordered hadn't come in. Customer queries are becoming increasingly obscure and, strangely, they're increasigly assuming I know what the fuck they're talking about when they ask for the book that explains the origin of the word 'shag' and how it's come from refering to a rug in the 1970's to slang for sex in the new millenium. Ah yes, that one's on my reading list right next to Fuck Off and Get a Life.
(Ahem, rant over.)

Book I'm seriously reccomending: Philip Pullan's His Dark Materials trilogy. The first book's Northern Lights. It's for tenagers but, whereas J.K. Rowling has to warn people two years ahead of time that she's going to painlessly kill off a supporting character, this series is about the Christian Chruch kidnapping and torturing children. It's a massive runaway hit over here with adults & children alike; there's been a stage adapation of it (That takes place over two days) and a movie adaptation coming up. I gained interest in it because the BBC had a story about how the U.S. is pressuring for all references to 'The Church' being removed from the movie. ... Which is kind of like removing all mention of wizardry from Harry Potter. Anyway, I don't often reccomend books here and I reccomend it. Elisabeth's waiting for me to finish the damn series so she can have her husband back.

Sorry for the lack of updates
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: The fat blow-hard on the radio going on about yobs
Jeeze, the blog's been pretty dead. Elisabeth and I have been awfully busy and, frankly, talking about our jobs is kinda boring. I cannot stress the insanity of the questions & attitudes of some of my customers but everytime I try to comment on it, it gets turned into a rant and becomes one of those 'you had to be there' situations.

I don't start until 1.30 today but I'm getting to work 'till 9pm so this should be interesting. Aparently the evenings are very, very busy.

Elisabeth's big Christmas office party is tomorrow night & we'll bring the camera so that y'all can see us dressed up all fancy-like and lookin' purdy at the golf club.

I still can't get over how mild the weather is over here - not at all condusive to getting into the Christmas spirit. I'm also still amazed at how much people complain about how bitterly cold it it when the temperatures hovering around just under 10 degrees celsius. We still haven't turned on our heat.

Picture Time
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: BBC Radio 2
Here's where Stephen is going to be working on this dreary Saturday:



And it is located above this monstrosaty:



And I will be going to the market:



So we don't have to eat the Local cuisine:

Kinda pooped, bored & lookin' forward to dinner
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Some ridiculous Israeli woman on the radio saying that everything wrong with Israel is wholly the Palestinians fault. Yikes!
Ahh, a quiet Monday; the sizzle of Persian rice with a tahdeeg on the oven and Brit?s and Germans arguing about who goes on more about war (?Don?t mention the War?) on the radio. The calm before the retail storm, I suspect. I?ve voluntarily agreed to work at the bookstore ?till 9pm on Dec 21, 22, & 23rd (On top of the Christmas eve marathon) so that I can get the full impact of Xmas-retail-mania.

E&I have bought puppets and are preparing for the Christmas puppet show we?ve been asked to put on for her friends children on Christmas day. Me: a hippo and her: a rather worried looking tiger named ?Eugene?. (After Eugene Levy ? he and the tiger possess similarly triangular eyebrows.)

The bookstore job goes on and stupid customers continue to come by in droves (?I?m looking for a children?s book ? how is your section organized?? ?0-5 years, 6-11, young adult.? ?How do I find a book by a specific author?? ?They?re listed in alphabetical order.? ?Silence? ?In what order?? ?Alphabetically. ? By last name.? As if let into the world biggest secret: ?Oooohhhh.?) (?Do you sell movies?? ?No but the HMV next door does, so does the Virgin Mega-store downstairs.? ?Ok. Can you look something up for me on your computer?? ?Sure. [title is given] It?s not coming up on the computer. Was this book published recently?? Incredulously: ?It?s not a book it?s the movie I want to buy.? ?Um, this is a bookstore. Our computer can only look up books.? Customer huffs and storms out of the shop.) and I?m going to miss having access to unlimited free books come January. Hopefully my next job will carry similar benefits, though I doubt it. The big benefit will be that it?ll allow us to not be poor. There?s something a little bit discouraging seeing 500 pounds of your pay cheque being used to pay off less that half of the credit card. Yikes!

Otherwise all is quiet. We took a bunch of silly pictures of Woking on Saturday and we?ll get around to putting them up soon. There are some charming ones of the mall I?m working at in all its zany Christmas glory. No, scratch that; grotesque Christmas gaudy is more like it. So to speak.

Countin' Down...
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Bob & Doug's Mackenzie's Great White North

(Above is something we saw at a steam-fair...digitally re-mastered for full effect)

It's Saturday, and we've both gotten paid! Wooo-hooo! We've paid a large chunk off the credeit card and are off to spend the day in town.

This last week has been chock-a-block with happenstances:

-Monday: Our phone died! Late one evening whilst Stephen was playing D & D in Camberley, Elisabeth picked up the phone to call the mobile, and alack, the thing was unresponsive. The next day the damn thing was in the bin, and a wonderful new tephalone with a CORD was in its place. It actually provides clear reception, and lots of fun features like memory-dial, holding-music (just give us a call, and we'll be happy to put you on hold so you can try it out), and best of all...speaker-phone. Mark and Jenn, you know what this means...hours of trans-Atlantic hands free talking!

-Stephen has been applying for jobs, and hopefully he can get one in Weybridge where I work...but that would be too conveninent, and British natural law will conspire against it I'm sure.

-On Thursday a few people from Innova got together for an Alternative Christmas party at a Weybridge tapas bar, which was quite intoxicating...But best of all come mid-night, after intaking an unknown quantity of wine, you could see a blond-haired girl swerving down the streets of Surrey on her bicycle in a black-velvet shirt, bicycling furiously to get home in time to wake up well-rested at 7am the next morning...trust me, I was not well-rested!

-Last night our neighbors below broke-up and a screaming match ensued at 3am which went something like:

She: You bastard! You pushed me too far
He: Go home, go home!
She: I hate you, you stupid .....
He: Go home, get away from my car!
(louder now)

She: First you ..., then you....I can't believe...
He: Go home you stupid cow
She: (even louder) ARHHH! I can't believe you're leaving me etc....

It was NOT pleasent.

Ok---enough from me. Now it's to market, to market, to buy...vegetables.

Have a good weekend all!

E-