Honey I'm Home
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Stephen's Star Wars Trivia
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
I am surprised to be home right now, and in fact I was home by seven with Chinese takeaway b/c the meeting finished early, gasp! So don't cry for me...but I will still be home early with a bottle of chardonnay tomorrow.

Oh yeah...and more book-token fiascos today at the bookstore...

Hi folks, Stephen here. Look'it! I drew a pitcher. We went and got us some art supplies and I can draw again. Welcome to my subconscious:

I came up with a really good name for it but then I forgot it so I'll try to remember it, though I think it'll stay forgotten.

Mid-Week Update
Mood:  lyrical
Now Playing: They Might be Giants -Lincoln
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
Hey y'all,

So far this week:

Stephen has been disappointing customers who are trying to use out-dated book-tokens...a surprising number have come into the bookstore this week. He discovered today the reason why his new job has not started yet: they only today posted the references. Luckily Stephen was in charge of the post today...

For me, there's a big product meeting tomorrow where the company reviews which products are definitely discontinued, as well as select new products to be introduced in the fall. This has involved a lot of sourcing, and it will probably take 10 hours to go through all the selections tomorrow. While I only got home at 8pm tonight, tomorrow may be more like 10pm.! Crazy... I am going to buy a big ol' bottle of Chardonnay and a fruit pie on Friday, and soak in the tub while Stephan mingles with his co-workers at the pub...in hounour of their departing manager.

I finally received the fruit of my labour today, which means that I can now ride the train without dipping into my over-draft...my bicycle blew a flat tyre! Luckily it was only on a leisure ride to Woking park, and not somewhere along the 7 miles between here and Innova.

And really, They Might be Giants just sum everything: "He wants a shoe horn (the kind with teeth), because he knows there's no such thing."

Psyche!
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Bjork: Vespertine
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
Once again Stephen and Elisabeth have failed to live up to their own predictions, and never made it to the Canal Festival. We apologize to all those funny photo lovers, who were waiting on edge to see British Canal Folk.

Our excuse is that when we went to the canal, there weren't any boats, and then the weather was overcast, and we were quite happy just to stay indoors.

So what have we been doing over this Easter weekend?

Friday: Elisabeth got new glasses. Nobody has posted any comments, so I'm not sure if anyone else is as excited as I am...these are the glasses of my DREAMS! They are black plastic with sparkles all over! Then we saw an insane Easter show at the mall food court, rented some movies: The Mystery Men, Some Like it Hot (surprisingly disappointing), and Elephant.

Saturday: Stephen had to work, so Elisabeth cleaned the apartment, did laundry, brought Stephen's packed lunch to eat with him on his lunch break, and grocery shopped. Then she made a zucchinni goasts cheese quiche, and banana loaf, all washed down with a yummy Spanish wine.

Sunday: We again didn't follow our original plan to go to church, so we had pancakes, easter eggs (yes Stephen hid them for me-but our apt. is so small it really wasn't difficult) and read in bed most of the day. I then made one of our favorite meals: Leek, goats cheese and roasted red pepper lasagne...washed down with some more red wine.

Monday: Stephen is at work again, and Elisabeth is going to have a creative day (so she thinks). I've bought an assortment of tissue paper which I am cutting into shapes, and trying to make neat patterns with. Then there's the Vogue 2004 project which involves cutting out each months trends, and fashion quirks, and then comparing them all together in a kind of collage-y thing.

I need to clean my bicycle today, but it's the kind of thing that easily gets put aside.

To make up for things, Stephen has taken the camera to work, to try to capture the Mad Hatter who is roaming the mall today. So stay tuned!

Don't be Afraid of a Chick in Shades
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: Virgin Radio Best Party Songs
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
NEW GLASSES!!!!

Get Your War On!
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Stephen Says
I've got to get to the bookstore soon, but here's a link to keep y'all entertained as we gear up for the long weekend (That I'm mostly working through) and the super-dee-duper canal festival. And if you like that page, there are 44 more just like it for you to look at!

Everything new is old again
Topic: Stephen Says
I meant to post this yesterday & forgot. All apologies.

You only get one guess where I?d have to be to hear this. And, I swear on my balls, they?re all real:

?Hello, I?m calling from Scotland. Do you have any copies of the highway code in Urdu??

?If anyone tells you that there?s no such thing as dragons, you tell them they?re a liar because dragons are in the Bible. And everything in the Bible is true.?

?It?s my art. It?s magic but not like David Blaine. I use my camera phone to take pictures of the sun and look, you can see faces in the sky. This one?s looking at this one who is looking at this one, which is looking at you. This will change the world and prove that Allah didn?t create the world in seven days. I need a book that has the addresses and e-mails of female artists so I can show this to them. Men wouldn?t understand it.?

Big hittin' pickled onion flava
Mood:  cheeky
Now Playing: A football match in the background and the rustle of empty packets of Discos
Topic: Stephen Says
*Phew!* Not wanting to rub it in, but we went to our first Barbequeue (Damnit! I forgot how to spell that word. BBQ forever more!) yesterday and took in a rugby match on the tele.

The really big news, though is that we went for a walk along a part of the canal that we never go along and have finally found a proper pub. A friendly pub that conforms to our narrow minded view of what a British pub is supposed to be like. One with a nice, big beer garden and children and a mix of people. not filled uniformly with pikeys, students or telemarketers/real estate agents who are trying to act like they're in Straw Dogs. This pub is much more Wicker Man.

We'll be there next Sunday - it's the canal boat festival where everyone dresses up their canal boats & sails them to the pub. Pictures will be taken, etc.

We must get out now & enjoy the weather.

The perverse sexual lives of British men and other issues for a Saturday morning
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: The flip, flip of Elisabeth filing things.
Topic: Stephen Says
Hmm, whats new? I got my 1st good haircut in the UK by Uncle Junior yesterday. Now that the weather's nice, Yobbo's out in full force screaming obscenities at minorities and acting like the scrawny bald psychopath that he is.

So onto this topic's subject: British men & their sexual fantasies. According to Elisabeth (via Red Magazine- she got a free bag with it), the 7th most important thing British women should know about their men is that "He shall have an unhealthy obsession with nurses. It is here that ye code of ye genders be truely cracked. For my husband hath told me that men think that all nurses have a secret method of making them ejaculate by sticking a finger up their bottoms. This, apparently, is the Holy Grail of our menfolk [...] the sex act at it's most sacred."

Ok, Elisabeth's said that I've opened (not for the first time at least) myself up to ridicule because I just don't get it. Is it because nurses are clean? Someone please explain. Or is it just than British men are filthy, weird and perverse?

And another thing, whenever I get my hair cut, at the end of the session, after they've used the floppy white bush on my face & back of my neck, they always give me a square of tissue paper. All of a sudden I feel like I'm in that scene in Scarface where he's given the orange water and, instead of cleaning his fingers in it, he eats the orange. What do I do with the tissue paper? Normally I make a polite wipe of my forehead, back of my neck, maybe wipe my nose and then pocket it. What am I supposed to do with it?? Help!

And another thing, why do so many grown men over here wear sweat pants? The only time you wear grey or navy blue sweat pants is when you're exercising or under the age of 13. Not when you're with your wife shopping at the Peacocks Center. Look, I don't mind that I come across as slightly yobby/chavvey or dodgy by the way I dress, but 40 year old men in sweat pants is alright? Are they intimidated by the fact that I've mastered the button fly? Beause men in sweats aren't intimidating because of the ease with which you can pull down their pants? To me, a man in sweats says 'not taking his medication.' Pointe finale.

Blogging? What blogging?
Mood:  mischievious
Now Playing: A selection of Irish short stories
Topic: Stephen Says
Damn, there's a lack of interesting things going on that I can blog about. Heaven forbid that E or I have lost interest in blogging! Can it be that we have, at long last, acclimatized to living in Britain? It's St. Patricks day and it's 20 degrees celsius outside. What's in like in Canada, suckers? If this is acclimitization, then it ain't so bad!

The dance piece that we saw the other day was okay. It made me pine for the cooless that is Usine C where the performance pieces are much more challenging and contain far greater amounts of nudity. Anyway, here's a link to the show that we saw: Link. It was alright but too tame and easy to get.

Must... blog... more. Maybe.

What Really Happened
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Andrew W.K. (Because Elisabeth isn't home)
Topic: Stephen Says
After all of Elisabeth's predictions as to what we were planning to do with our weekend, let's see how many came true... Trip to London? Cancelled out of laziness. Voyage to Guildford? Nixed due to the train service being down & out so that we would have had to have paid for a train ticket and taken the bus. Please see previous anti-public transport rants. We went to the pub, instead. Outting to see a dance piece? Postponed due to insanely inflated ticket prices (However we've book tickets to see something a little more avant-garde tonight for 1/2 the price and triple the prospective enjoyment value.). Instead, we've had a very relaxing few days, cooking lots of food, baking cakes (2 last night), eating out (A nice Chinese restaurant has opened near us) and watching movies. So without ado, the Movies reviews.

Zatoichi: Holy crap this movie's cool! Samurai's & ninjas! Kick ass fight moves! Digital blood! Transvestite banjo playing hookers! Blind super hero masseurs with reverse-polarity eyes! They break out into song and dance! And more slapstick comedy than you can shake a bamboo stick that's really a sword at!

Straw Dogs: Sam Peckinpah's classic. The harrowing true tale of two Canadians (played by Stephen & Elisabeth Allin) who move to an isolated hamlet in Surrey named Englefield Green. Things turn ugly when they try to integrate into this closed off community which is naturally suspicious of strangers. Or something like that. It was banned in England for 18 years for good reason - the most relistic portratal of the real England outside of The Wicker Man.

Yesterday we started a massive spring clean of our flat (Which we'll probably stay at for the next year - The flat, I mean; not the clean.) and got a bunch or errands taken care of - Elisabeth has, at long last, bought a new pair of glasses which will rrive in two weeks and I've gotten my ring resized (I've lost 2 ring sizes since moving to England. *sigh* I still remember the good old days when I was fat.). Elisabeth's been to the doctor this morning for an ear check up & is taking pictures of the big department store that has gone out of business. It's weird to see an abandoned multi-level store with little pockets of discounted crap and vulture-like customers buzzing around them, picking them apart in the off chance that they are able to buy something they really don't need at 70% off. And me? I'm blogging because I'm suposed to be spring cleaning some more. Must go, now. Elisabeth will be home soon.