stuff??
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Radiohead
Man-o-man, 2 incomes = nothing to report. Except, perhaps the Boggle score: Elisabeth: 1.5 / Stephen: all the rest. I give her a ".5" because I was tired last night, making dumb mistakes and she would have beatem me [maybe] if we'd kept it up.

>sigh< so many silly customer questions, I can't single any one out to type out. Jeeze, shopping malls make people dumb.

Your mission for this weekend: watch Dawn of the Dead (The original not the remake) to see what I deal with for 37.5 hours a week. Except in a British accent. With the occasional American-who-thinks-they're-reconnecting-with-another-American. Except I don't play along; just give them the condescending-with-a-side-order-of-pity smile all the other booksellers give them.

update
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: BBC news at 1
Oops! Almost no updates for a week. Well honestly, nothing much has been going on. This past weekend was our first weekend in a month where we had absolutely nothing going on so we spent Saturday at the French & continental market and splurged on some tasty French pastries. Oh, and I got socks mom; I finally got socks.

...otherwise not much; catching up on sleep and counting down the days to the time change where England will be plunged into 20 hours of darkness a day.

Back to normal
At long last... we're eating spicy potatos with mayonnaise, grilled cheese, tomato & onion and the last of our gift vino.

Tired
I'm tired and I know I've made a million-billion typos on the photo galleries tonight. I'll fix them up tomorrow. Or whenever.

New gallery

Susan Allin's Visit

New Gallery
Thanksgiving 2004

Things are NOT back to normal
Mood:  lazy
Oops! What with mom now left, balancing work & chores is a tad tricky. It's been 2 days and so far the only thing that stinks is our neighbour's apartment. Lets see... my job is awfully slack but not so slack it's boring. The nice thing is that I'm working with a bunch of reading-type-people so we don't have to hide our introverted/anti-social natures. Bliss.

Elisabeth's busy, busy, busy. Jack the Ripper's nearing opening night and what with 2 rehearsals a week plus random meeting plus Italian classes, she's a touch busy. Biking to work is much less of a pain in the ass for her. Ironically though, her biycle seat is giving her a pain in the ass. Go figure.

Thanksgiving was pretty fantastic with Jane, Glenn & their two boys coming over. I built a tent for the boys to play in but they seemed to take more pleasure in wrecking it. This tent thing, I suspect was a ploy to get me out of Elisabeth's hair so that she could cook up a fantastic feast: Quiche, stuffed peppers, spaghetti squash, mashed potatos, brussel sprouts, apple pie, caesar salad, corn on the cob, veggies & home made dip, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. We've just finised up the last of the left-overs.

Pictures will go up soon of mom's visit plus Thanksgiving and yes, it was requested that we should put more up but damn, it's such a pain in the ass. Knowing basic Html looks good on a CV but actually having to type it kinda sucks large.

Getting back to normal
Mood:  lazy
Working on Saturdays kinda sucks; maily because it's one less day a week that Elisabeth and I can spend with each other. That said, at long last she gets 'Elisabeth time.' Mom got away alright (Another downside to working Saturdays - I couldn't see her off) and we're re-adjusting to life as normal. Expect that I'm employed so how normal is that?

I'm sipping peppermint tea and she's cooking a quiche for tomorrow - our first steps to the Thanksgiving feast that we're preparing for our South African friends and their two childern tomorrow. Elisabeh's cooking and my job is to build a huge tent upstairs to occupy the 2 and 4 year olds. I'm eagerly anticipating my charge.

Woking's been voted the 31st crappiest town in England. Woo Hoo! Windsor is 5th so all in all, we're moving up in the world. Perhaps in a year or two we'll live in the 49th crappiest town! Oh, and a note to anyone who wants to work as a bookseller in England: DO NOT tell any customer that you agree that Windsor is a crap town - he'll lecture you for a long time about why it isnt crap while you try to deal with customers.

What Blu Tack and hammers cannot cure...
It's my mom's last day in Britain which meant an afternoon at Wetherspoons for lunch and beers. It's Oktober Fest over here which equals over 30 micro-brews for 1.49/pint. My advice: Get on the net and seek out Old Slug Stout. Toffee + honey X dark stout = 4.5% of yummyness.

The airing closet door broke & I had to fix it with, what else, Blu Tack and a hammer with a healthy dose of the ol' Swiss army knife. Just think: Vogue says that these knives are for poseurs. Huh. I use it every time I open a bottle of wine... Won't get into how often that happens...

PS- Oh yes, and once mom's gone, I'll put up some pictures to chronicle her visit. Yep; we're listening. More pictures on the way.

Biker Chic
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: Stephen's sizzlin' Chillie
Just letting everyone know that I am having a kawabunga time on my bicycle. Although it's exhausting and draining to ride 16+ miles a day (can you believe) it is really nice bicycling along the canal. I often look like hell on my bike, because there's lots of mud, sweat, etc... but I feel very down to earth, splashing through puddles and inhaling gnats, etc...

This morning a large bird flew over the canal (at first I thought it was a vulture come to finish me off), and lo and behold, a beautiful heron landed in the tow-path in front of me. I stopped my bicycle and gazed in appreciation of its long graceful neck, and massive wings. Soon it took off and the wing-span must have been 3 feet or so!

So lots of ducks, swans, coots, squirrels, and even little pony's by the canal.

Let me tell you how much I hate bicycling on the roads in England. The space available is so narrow (one must cycle directly on the yellow line) and the cars are merciless. Often I end up on the side-walks but it is too slow. So I will stick to the muddy canals, and will hopefully get mud guards for my bike soon.

Otherwise, Stephen has been enjoying all the literaly insane people that visit his bookstore, and Susan seems very much at home reading, and going into town.

Time for un vino rosso.

Ciao!