my ID10T error of the day

When I came to the UK, the office in Houston gave my old phone number to a new employee in my department. This new employee happens to be someone whom I call slightly more often than once a month.

Now I find myself having the opposite problem from Todd. Every time I log in to the company intranet to look up her phone number, I’m soon overcome with feelings of embarrassment, because I’ve just looked up what was my own phone number for the last 3 years.

I’m writing this today because it has just happened…again. I’ve been in the UK for five (5) months now…when am I going to learn?

are you coming to visit me?

If you are, you need to check out this little guide.

There's a link to it along the sidebar, but just thought I'd give a shout out to Mike and John and whoever else among the 'early visitors' (Susannah, LB, Heather, Basim, Dennis) who helped create this little guide using an online collaborative document site.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that I currently do NOT have any visitors scheduled for the months of May, June, July, August and beyond...you know...no pressure or anything...I'm just sayin'.

some oxymoron got paid for this

So, there's this show on television tonight called "Accidental Emergencies" and the listing gives the following description: "Dramatic accidents and survival stories. Featuring a drag racer whose leg was broken in seven places; a man with a spear in the face; and a woman who was struck by lightning."

Um...so...I wonder if the person who named this show is coming out with another series called "Purposeful Emergencies", because frankly, I'd rather watch that one.

in honor of robbie burns

I was invited to my first ever Burns Night dinner on Friday night. These dinners are held all over Scotland in honor of their 'national poet', and are not very prevalent in England...but I've got friends in all the right places!

One of the many pieces of tradition during the dinner is poetry reading...mostly works by Burns himself...but at this dinner, folks were invited to read some of their own work. I don't write much poetry, but I threw down a few lines for fun on the train ride to the dinner. I'd like to claim that my hurried efforts affected the quality of the prose, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't be much better if I'd spent hours on it! Here we go...

I'm jut a naive American girl,
Who fell in love with the land of the kilt.
And if the good Lord who lives up above,
Should deem in His heart to give me a pearl,
And send me a husband,
From somewhere among them,
I'll be quite happy,
Right to the hilt.

Now, should the Lord send me,
The one, the only, the perfect gent;
But one who can't really claim the descent,
Well, someone will just have to teach him,
Exactly how to speak with the accent.

tap dancing

One of the few things I just DO NOT understand is the continued usage of the double-tap sinks in the UK, which are even sometimes still called for in new construction.

It may have made sense at some point in the history...or maybe it's just that the 'technology' didn't exist to combine the taps, but come on...




...is there really any market demand still out there for the double-tap sink?

If you've ever used one of these little guys, you may remember doing a constant, delicate dance between the hot tap (which is desperately trying to SCALD your skin) and the cold tap (which is near freezing temperature, even in the summer) to achieve a luke-warm combination, which frankly isn't possible.

seriously?

I was in Edinburgh last week for a training course. This course was part 2 of 4 that about a dozen of us are going through over a two-year period (not critical information, but background is always nice). Because we ALL complained so much about the hotel accommodations for part 1 of the course, the super-sweet girl from HR kicked it up a notch for this session. Note Exhibit A below: the television in my hotel room.



Now, despite my initial giddiness over the size of that screen...as a group, we noticed several constraints to our full enjoyment of all of our respective room screens:

1. We were in 'class' from 8:30 am through to 7:00 pm (on average) each day we were there.
2. Our dinner seating was consistently approximately 45 minutes after each day's session ended.
3. After-dinner drinks were clearly not a course requirement, but we're all so cool that we couldn't NOT hang around and chit-chat, which translated into arrival back in the room somewhere between 11:00 pm and 1:00 am (yes, I was one of stragglers).
4. Such a late arrival back in the room forced a decision between taking advantage of a precious few moments of wonder at the screen and an immediate plunge into the already small amount of sleeping time on offer (clearly, I went for the precious few moments of screen enjoyment, which forced an even later bedtime).
5. The list of channel selections was disproportionately small compared to the size of the TV screen (I think the total was 8 channels, 3 of which were sports-only stations).
6. None of us realized before our arrival that there was also a DVD player hooked up to each TV, and therefore none were in possession of quality viewing material.

All of this rolled up to the following:

1. I came home VERY sleep-deprived.
2. I still don't feel like I got anything close to a justified amount of quality viewing on that screen.
3. I'm definitely going to have to stay there again (I mean, it's Edinburgh, so we KNOW I'll be back there sometime soon).

good times in january

Even though I've spent about 8 days "working", even some of that has been on a training course (in Edinburgh, of all places!), so I feel like I've been on vacation since I left the UK for the Christmas holidays!

So, here are a few pictures of my most recent visitors and our wandering about across the UK.

For the record, I owe all these shots to the collective lenses of Susannah, Heather, Dennis and Basim...so I can't take credit for most of them.

meme of four

I can't not respond to the call...Mike started it.

Four Jobs You've Had

1. Dead President Counter
   
2. Drive-thru Princess
   
3. Wireless Communications Interface Manager
   
4. Corporate World Flunkie

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over

1. Pirates of the Caribbean
   
2. Finding Neverland
   
3. The Princess Bride
   
4. Elf

Four Places You've Lived

1. Inside the Loop, Houston, TX, USA
   
2. Outside the Loop, Houston, TX, USA
   
3. Strasbourg, France
   
4. Woking, UK

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch

1. CSI: New York
   
2. House
   
3. Friends
   
4. Grey's Anatomy

Four Places You've Been on Vacation

1. Edinburgh, Scotland
   
2. Aberdeen, Scotland
   
3. Udine, Italy
   
4. Minocqua, Wisconsin

Four Blogs You Visit Daily

1. Catch Me if You Can
   
2. Mike Hon
   
3. B.Y.O.W.
   
4. For What It's Worth...

Four of Your Favorite Foods

1. Camembert
   
2. Granny Smith apples
   
3. Beef fajitas
   
4. Italian cream cake

Four Places You'd Rather Be

1. Venice, Italy
   
2. Paris, France
   
3. Any place that ends with "Spa"
   
4. Anywhere, Scotland

Four Albums You Can't Live Without

1. Gypsy Kings - Cantos De Amor
   
2. Chris Isaak - Baja Sessions
   
3. Gavin DeGraw - Chariot
   
4. Derek Webb - I See Things Upside Down

Four Vehicles You've Owned

1. 1989 Nissan Sentra
   
2. 1999 Saturn SC-2
   
3. 2000 Audi A4
   
4. 2003 VW Passat

jazz hands strike again

Confession: this picture comes directly from the blog of my new friend Crystal, whose blog I found from a link on my good friend John's blog.

Crystal's only comment was: "i can speak only for myself, but i know that when i’m falling on ice i always do jazz hands on the way down".

HYSTERICAL!

She's my new favorite unknown friend because of that post, and the one just before it (but you ought to go to her blog and check it out...I don't want to keep thunder stealing)!

my little girl

Well, she's not the love of my life (that would be my new girly-pink-ribboned-bag-from-Scotland), BUT she does treat me well and carry me all about Surrey and everywhere else I demand.

I decided to name her Stella, in honor of my good friend John, who along with Mike, was one of my first guest passengers.



(Click on her to see a close-up)

Thou droning common-kissing strumpet!

IF I had participated in any street snogging on Prince's Street in Edinburgh on New Year's Eve, and IF I were going on and on about it...I'm pretty sure this is what Shakespeare would have said to me.

There are so many moments in any given day where it would be SUCH great fun to whip out a good insult and yet sound quite posh and proper at the same time...I wish I had one of those fancy always-connected-to-the-Internet mobile phones for on-demand access to the online Shakespearean Insult Kit.

(Thanks to Mike for reminding me of this wonderful corner of the Internet.)

Susannah-Jim

When Heather, Laura, and Susannah agreed to come to Edinburgh with me for Hogmanay (aka New Year's Eve), I knew it was going to be a great trip. What I didn't know is that we were going to have our first 'trip story' before we even landed in the UK.

It started with the rival girl group at the departure gate...as soon as we saw them, the competition was ON. (I'm sure they're cool gilrs...but business is business!) We had no idea how or when we were going to win...but shortly after breakfast was served, it happened. Susannah was visiting the rest of us (no, she wasn't in first class...but we were separated from her in the commoners cabin), and somehow, as flight attendant Jim came around collecting breakfast waste, before we knew it, Susannah was wearing Jim's apron and hard at work!



The whole back half of the plan was laughing, and we were the stars of the show (ok, well, Susannah-Jim was the star of the show, but they laughed at us too because we were taking pictures)!

After Susannah-Jim finished collecting the rubbish along her aisle, we were all invited to the galley in the back of the plane for the presentation of the wings.



We left that other girl group in the dust...even if it is because Susannah was picking up trash!

the new love of my life

Well...it's probably a temporary state, but I've fallen in love...with my new bag!



It may seem silly, but I actually smile just looking at it. See, a few years ago I realized I was an impulse-buy shopper, so in an effort to rein in my spending habits, I've actually OVER-corrected, and now it takes me what seems like forever to even decide to buy a CD most of the time.

I first met my bag when I was in Edinburgh in early September. I visited it two times while there, and left the city without it because I was concerned that it was a bit too 'girly' for me (I mean, it's got a bow, people).

However, I have thought about my bag many, many times since those early September visits, and was looking forward to seeing it again during my stay in Edinburgh to celebrate New Year's Eve. As soon as I saw it last week, I knew it was going home with me. And it's official...I'm in love.

(Yeah...I know...I need to get out more.)

happy new year - here's to scotland

Or...here's to Edinburgh, at least. Somebody up there really knows how to put on a fireworks display.

Although the fireworks were enough to make everyone on the street feel like a 7-year-old seeing the phenomenon for the first time, I have to say that the activities on the street were much more tame that I would have imagined.

We did see the odd guy walking round in a kilt, the occasional party-goer that was returning all their food and drink to the ground (circle of life and all that), and the obligatory crowd rendition of Auld Lang Syne (written by none other than Robbie Burns, so singing it this year did carry a certain je ne sais quoi).

I'm convinced there are as many Aussies in Scotland as there are Scots (which I've determined is a direct result of their unwillingness to endure the return flight to their homeland once they've arrived). There was a small group of them next to us at a pub the night before New Year's Eve - and they were OUT OF CONTROL on THAT night. As we showed up to the restaurant on New Year's Eve, they turned out to have a reservation at the SAME PLACE. What are the odds? If we had thought to think that they couldn't have been more wild...we would have been wrong. Someone in their group actually managed to set herself on fire over dinner...let me just say that the combined smells of burning sweater, hair and a bit of flesh are NOT appetizing. It was only a flesh wound, however, and all that happened was the waitstaff's removal of their table candles.

Cheers to Bobby and Katrina and Matt and Jemma - new friends (by extension from Susannah May) we met in Edinburgh. And cheers to Russell and Hamid - new friends in my neck of the woods, who seemed to enjoy the Americanisms of Susannah, Laura, Heather and myself as much as I enjoy my daily dose of Britishisms.