Overheard

And for my hundredth posting, I've got a fantastic one.

Him - "Have you heard of The 120 Days of Sodom?"

Her - "Yeah, that's a story from the Bible, right? About salt?"

Him - "Um. No."

(For those of you out of the loop, The 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade and who the word 'sadism' was, essentially, created for)

Canterbury Tales

I'm finally managing, on Wednesday, to do a post about going away for last weekend. I am very much feeling like one of my favorite quotes: "I try to take one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me at once." Perhaps if I just took to carrying a sword around with me, people would be less likely to give me things to do.

Canterbury was wonderful, and so was seeing Ginie and Rojer. They made Matt and I a wonderful 3 course meal the night we went down. We had some great wine that I'd brought as a gift, and played a fantastic game called Apples to Apples (which I first experienced when I went home in September) which was the cause of much merriment. And much making fun of the Irish.
Saturday we went into Canterbury, and I got to indulge my obsession for old religious building by dragging everyone around the Cathedral. To the left is a picture of Matt and I in front of the cathedral gates. Ginie and I windowshopped for clothes, and the boys followed us around for a while. We met up with Peter, his sister, and Lukas for dinner at Canterbury Uni and went out for drinks which was great. I've really missed everyone, and seeing them was wonderful!

Sunday we just bummed around, went to the biggest Tesco's ever (EVIL!), and then went home.

All pictures from the weekend can be found on my Ringo page, but here are a few of the ones I like best.

I have a Ginie!

The Cathedral, through the Cathedral Gates


Canterbury Cathedral

Geoffery Chaucer

Matt and I are heading down to Canterbury this weekend to visit some wonderful friends of mine.

I'm really excited, because I haven't seen them in a while (especially the girly!), and I'm looking forward to a fun weekend of drinking, silly card games, and getting to finally see Canterbury.

I hope all of you in the States had a wonderful Turkey day. Matt and I ended up going out to Indian, and then he watched 24 while I played Civ. Not the most traditional day, but then again I don't think you could fit a turkey in our oven even with divine intervention.

Other conversations

(Following a lengthy explaination of rocket science and how the space shuttle works)

"So...do you think their ears pop?"

"No, I think the space suits are pressurized."

"Because my ears aways pop when I fly. It's really painful."

Dead bodies everywhere...and a guy with a dislocated jaw

This is fucked up.

I mean, the PS3 makes my brain melt just as much as any one else's, but I don't need to shoot people just to have one. Or go bankrupt, or sell my children, or do any of the other stupid things people do. It is just A THING. It will not solve all your problems, help you achieve enlightenment, or make you go to heaven!

For (insert applicable deity here), get a life people.

I have never been so uncomfortable in my life

So from Tuesday this week to Friday, I'm travelling down to Sutton (south of London but still kinda part of London) to take a two design courses, one on Quark Xpress 6.5 and one on Adobe InDesign CS2. This means that instead of my usual refreshing walk to work, I have to walk to Tottenham Court Road station, then get the Tube to Victoria, then get the train to Sutton, then walk to the building that my training course is in.

Since I haven't had to take the Tube during rush hour in ages, I'd forgotton how awful it truely is.

I was coming back from Sutton yesterday in a fantastic mood. My trainer is/was (I finished up the Quark course today, and she's my trainer for InDesign till Friday as well) great, it was just me in the first course so we basically sat around and chatted about veg boxes and sustainability and BookCrossing all day, and I was going to get home earlier than I usually do. I got the fast train back to London (25 minutes, as opposed to the 50 minute slow train), and hit Victoria at around 5.

Then I entered Hell.

I queued to get on the train at Victoria station with the 5 billion other people that needed to catch THATTRAINRIGHTNOW, and although I was sort of bent over because of the doors I was okay and on the train. At the last second, this guy shoves his way onto my carriage and I'm suddenly in one of the most uncomfortable positions of my life. I'm being shoved into the older gentleman (who looked very dapper in his suit and yellow tie) behind me, and due to how crowded the train was....well, every danced with someone in a club and your ass is grinding into their crotch? Yeah, kinda like that. And the guy in front of me is doing the same thing to me. So I'm kinda in that guy sandwich, with two complete strangers, and none of us can move because there's no where to move too. The guy behind me is trying to do some sort of weird contortionist thing around the plastic that his back is against, and I can feel the guy in front of me trying to shove the person in front of him forward with his umbrella. I just stood there thinking "Wow. This is embarassing." and turning red. We all kept mumbling sorry in a vague sort of way, because that's what Britons do when they're embarassed, and trying to shuffle in any direction, any direction at all.

Isn't public transport marvelous?

Things that make me love him more

I open my eyes and realize that my nose is almost touching his.

"Aarrrggghhrraaaraaarr."

I blink stupidly.

"That's panda for good morning beautiful."

The worst bit is, they have to wear a shirt that says 'Republican' on it.

Wow.

How sad is this? I mean really guys, surely you've lied, cheated, and stolen enough. Could you at least have the human decency not to involve the homeless, most of whom probably did it just to get a free meal?

The very last vestige of respect that may have been lurking in the back of my mind for the Republican party just suicided off a cliff because even it couldn't stand up for them any more.

Someone needs to be made accountable for this type of thing.

k. = killed, murdered, or beheaded

Did you know that Egbert (King of Wessex from 802 - 839) is descended from Woden?

Joan, The Fair Maid of Kent, is the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent and Margaret Wake.

Your fun facts today are brought to you by the poster-sized chart tracing the line of succession and all recorded marriages in the British Royal Family that I got in my newspaper at Starbucks. Anything with a Key that includes the title of this post is worth having.

Aren't you happy that your brain now holds more useless information?

Hope Springs Eternal

Thank you, whatever Powers That Be.

I am more relieved than I ever expected to be. I saw this morning's headlines, fully expecting another massive fuck up by the American public or more illegal doings by the Bush Administration to force things their way again, and instead I almost cried.

There is hope again. There is something to look at and think, 'Hey, maybe we can change things around and make good decisions.' I'm worried, however, that the Democrats are going to royally screw up their chance to make things get better with petty infighting and policies that, instead of acting for America and the world as a whole, are simply to fuel their agenda.

Please, please, please, try to keep America on your side for the next two years, Democrats. We cannot afford another President like Bush, who makes the entire world despise our country, culture, and people. We already have a problem because of what he has done, and we don't need to make it any worse.

But at least I have hope again, and that means more than I can say.

Drops in the ether

I got an unexpected email from someone that I'd pretty much given up for dead. I hadn't spoken to her in years, and didn't really know how to contact her, and so I just wanted to say:

My life is better with you in it. Let's not lose contact again, okay?

Ikea is evil, and we must stop their plans for world domination

So, 6 days into my plan to post every day I've missed 3 of them. Part of that is not entirely my fault, as the evilness of our internet connection not being so, well, connected, plunges us into darkness for the weekend. So instead of trying to post every day in November, perhaps I'll just try to post every weekday.

The weekend was filled with work, and going to Ikea. Every time I go to Ikea, I walk away with a headache, hating small children more than I already do and wanting to kill the little man drawn on all their instruction books. And every time, after two or three weeks, I completely forget that I hate Ikea.

Matt and I went to buy a desk for the beautiful new Mac, and a sofa bed, so that we could watch films in comfort instead of both elbowing for space on our bed. It took us three and a half hours to find a desk and sofa bed. We'd decided to go with a desk that we thought would be big, but not too big, for the space we had in mind for it, and the sofa bed that would take up more space but seemed more sturdy. We would, after all, be sleeping on it every night. So, we (read 'we' to be 'Matt') agonized over the exact ones to get, until we went to find the Home Delivery people. Because although I am not smart enough to avoid lugging a Mac Pro tower from Oxford Circus past Tottenham Court road, I am smart enough to realize that I cannot take a bed on the Tube. We thought they could deliver everything next Saturday, after we contacted our landlord to get them to take the current bed and desk out of the flat so we would have some room.

However. Our options for delivery were £40 to have it be delivered by 8pm yesterday evening, or £45 for delivery Right Now. And they would take us home too. So, being the highly intelligent people we are, we went with Right Now.

Everything about Ikea is complicated. Getting your stuff delivered in complicated because it has to be done Right Now (or by 8pm), and then putting the crap that you've bought is complicated because your only tools are little bits of metal that make no sense. I hate Ikea. They are evil. They are trying to take over the world.

Hopefully, I'll remember this in two weeks time.

Let me count the ways I love thee

There is a blog that will probably start getting me in trouble at work in the near future. This blog's name is the unassuming Exploding Unicorn. For most of the entries, I can't stop the sniggering quietly and occasionally have to restrain myself from all-out laughter. This guy is inspiring as Lewis Black, Eddie Izzard, Red Dwarf, and Monty Python combined. At least if you have my sense of humour.

My last post is lovingly titled after a reference he made in this article. Can't help but love the guy.

Halfway to Godspeed (almost)...

Matt and I have been thinking about getting a new Mac for a while. Being the art-y geeks that we are (with our film and photography fetishes) we, meaning Matt, agonized over what Mac we should get. The new Intel iMac is so sleek and sexy...but the Mac Pro could be upgraded and then I could game on it. So, being as I am in possession of the feminine wiles in this relationship, we got the Mac Pro.

Then we did something monumentally stupid.

We walked from Regent Street to our flat, opposite the British Museum, carrying the box holding the Mac Pro. This fragging thing weighs the same as the moon, and has very sharp cardboard handles. Plus, the distance between the Mac store on Regent Street and our flat is roughly the distance between Anchorage, Alaska and Peru.

But it's wonderful! We also bought Civ4 to go with it (which, honestly, might have been the entire reason for getting the new computer as both of us are completely addicted to the series of games), which is also exerting it's sexy pull. As Matt has just spent the last 20 minutes looking at the tower from different angles though, I don't know how much influence Civ 4 will have in the next several days.

As a side note, one of the blogs I regularly read (which I shall provide a link to shortly) mentioned a November challenge - mainly to post every day for the month of November. I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Cause bandwagons ROCK!