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-

Doodles anyone??
Mood:  party time!
Now Playing: The sounds of silence - Earlier Kurt Weil followed by early Faith No More...go figure!
Oh man, I hate to bump one of Elisabeth's rare & wonderfully insightful blogs down one notch (Seriously - she best captures our overall mood of the moment) but I've just bought the best notebook ever!

It's black & called the 'Doodler' and is made by my book company so woo-hoo! 30% off! each page is 1/2 blank and 1/2 filled with ideas for possible doodles and doodle exercises which, if I'm not mistaken equals 100% pure doodling satisfaction + unintimidating note-taking (Because a blank white page can be so ... intimidating.)

Ack! My language skills are leaving me and there's a phone bill >shudder< to be paid! Must be off... elisabeth will pay the bills; I'll cradle the Doodler.

Slooww Dowwwn Weekend!
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: BBC Radio 4
My how gray (or is it grey?) the sky is today. HEY, can anybody tell me why there are 2 spellings of GRE/AY?

Stephen is playing stack attack on the mobile phone waiting for the clock to tick down to "must go to work now" time. Poor guys must spend the day with irritated x-mas shoppers. :(

On the other hand I am going to take the Choo-train to Guildford this morning, where I will look for a dress for the Christmas do. (for the non-Brits reading, a "do" is a party or event. Go figure).

On the radio, they are talking of how Britian is turning into a "Nanny State", as there a motions to ban fox-hunting, ban smoking, ban junk food, and force schools to accept a certain number of "problem students." Oh Woe! Maybe Prince Charles is right: the country will eventually see the merits of the class system, and return to the old-way of life. One mustn't rise above their station.

Stephen's going now...and so am I.

E

Where did all the blogging go?
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: BBC 4's Today programme
Check out this great site for one of the most thoughtful, well researched analyses of the American election you'll find on the net.

You should also click on it because you're supporting a regular contributer to our web page.

Protestant Work Ethic Day
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
After two days of celebratory boozing, it's time to get down to work. Me: 1.5 hours in the kitchen spic'n spanning it and Elisabeth has, for the first time, opened the iron that mom bought us while she was over & now all our clothes look nice. We're going to have to find a new look now that it's physically impossible for us to do 'shabby slacker' any more.

Last night a group of teens drinking beer at the train station showed us how to ride the rails with a child's ticket. Then they tried to steal 10 pounds from us but Elisabeth was on to their scam and they had to give her back the money.

We were in Richmond to attend a party and took the time to walk around it, admiring it's beauty. Imagine old montreal but the size of a whole town with a river running through it and an old, old bridge spanning it. Elisabeth drank way too much and we had to run for the last train or face 7 hours in the cold at Clapham Junction. ...Mind you, we still spent over an hour sitting on the platform and I realized that we'd spent more time in transit that evening than t the party. Yikes!

Catching the last train to Woking's a pain but not as bad as Montreal's night bus. Yeah, there's lots of waiting around in the cold but it's not -30, there aren't dozens of homeless people hanging around, there's no snow and, in this case, it was Elisabeth who was the one everyone was wary of in case she suddenly started puking. As a result of this, we had to beat a hasty retreat from the 1st class carriage we'd snuck into. We also got to be the loud, obnoxious people who provided the valuable service of allowing all the other passangers an opportunity to make their voyage home a little more enjoyable by eves-dropping (How do you spell that?) in on our converstaion.

PS- R.I.P. O.D.B. Rap music will never be as weird.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I just got a letter saying I passed my dissertation.
Which means I got my MA.
Suckers.

All Work No Play
Urf! No updates, no news, just work, work, work, etc... And the crappy thing is that once we've become accustomed to this, I'll be unemployed/changing jobs. Ah well, there's a party this Saturday which will be fun, as well as the fabled BIG NEWS from Elisabeth's job coming soon.

My book of the moment: 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' by Jon Ronson. I don't know where to begin - it's about all the insane 'intelligence' gathering the U.S. military has been carrying out to fight the war on terror. It involves Jedi warrior monks, mind reading and Barny the Dinosaur. It's alteratively hilarious and terrifying and ALL REAL. Hopefully this will get some coverage outside the UK - I guarantee that YOU WILL NOT sleep well after reading this.

The end of the Empire is upon us.

Umm... Elisabeth's making banananananana muffins and (Jenn) if anyone's feeling depressed about Bush's re-"election" then I suggest you click on the Ted Rall link over on the right. And then click on his editorial page and read his last 3 or 4 editorials. He's the only left-wing Yank I trust any more because he was right all along. (Damn him!)

Er...Never eat bananananana muffins fresh out of the oven. Your mouth is too busy being burned to taste their yummy goodness.

Elisabeth's old job is being advertized in the paper. Pretty crazy stuff; for lack of having a life, here's the shoes a new applicant will have to fill:

"I-- E-- is the UK's leading supplier of photo albums, photo frames and home decoration products. In addition to our home market, we export to over 40 countries worldwide, operating in a multilingual and multicultural market.

"We are seeking to appoint an ambitious and well organized full-time Sales Admin Assistant. Resposibilities include: order and invoice processing, organizing and dealing with customer and distribution queries; filing etc. Good communication skills and service minedness essential.

Etc... I'm getting bored writing it all down and there's 2 more paragraphs. I didn't realize there was so much. Must go now; the muffins have cooled off.

OFFICIALLY: This is the stupidest customer
So this guy and his girlfriend come up to me and ask if I know about this book called the Da Vinci Code and where I can find it. I point to it in the fiction section and the guy asks me why it isn't in the 'true crime' section, to which I reply "Because... it's a work of fiction." He gets angry at me and shouts "Naw, mate! It's just one guys opinion on what really happened, yeah?"

However disdainful I am of people who read Maeve Binchy, whenever someone approaches me to ask a question and they're holding a book by her, I know that it'll be a sensible question because people who read Maeve's (Yes, I'm on 1st name besis with her) books are almost always well read and know their way around a bookstore. People who approach me to ask a question who happen to be holding a copy of the Da Vinci Code are always the dumbest in the store because if they're asking me a question, it's because they've never been in a book store before and are only buying the book because it's trendy.

New Picture Alert!
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Love
I added some pictures; more to come ... slowly, of course. Click on 'Photo album year 2' and then on either 'return of the blog pics' of 'Order of the Reindeer - year 2.' I know some are old; I'm doing some tidying up on the web page. At least the new ones are somewhat, kinda Hallowe'en/ Guy Fawlks oriented. Sorta.