The Shrubbery is useless. He is more useless than, say, the French and not surrendering. My mother keeps making little hints about me moving back to the States, and how wonderful it will be, and it's just not going to happen. After living in a country where I know more about what's going on in the world by actively avoiding the news and newspapers, going back to a country where avidly watching the news give me the warm fuzzy feeling that a dog in the United States has just had puppies and look at them, aren't they cute? just doesn't appeal. I'm not saying that this country isn't f*cked, but maybe it's a little less so than the good ole U. S. of A.

I went to Salisbury this week to try and find my father a birthday present, and as his interests are Belgium, computers, and geneology, this was more difficult than I was expecting. I spent 4 hours trying to find him a polo shirt with 'Salisbury' or 'Stonehenge' embroidered nicely on the left breast. My quest was in vain. You wouldn't think that it would be so difficult to find something as simple as a tourist-y polo shirt. There were several other shirts that I could have gotten, mostly cheap scary ones that say such clever things as 'Stonehenge Rocks!". And yes, it did have an exclaimation point. On the other hand, I also got to sit in a field for a while. And sitting in a field is a really underrated thing.