Tag: Travel

Humor, Linkstorm, Travel, Wedding

Friday Links XXIII

“The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

We’re pathetic.

And tomorrow I’m off again, this time to Louisiana for Flyboy’s Wedding Part Deux.  I’m flying in and out in a matter of hours, so I think I officially qualify as a jetsetter.  J. will be playing basketball and hanging out with his mates – and probably still unpacking.  Sunday is our three year anniversary.  Weird, huh? Here are your links, kittens, and have a lovely weekend!

Jupiter Ammon!  Someone deserves to be shot through the lung for this…

Make the call, lady minions: feminist revival, ridiculous nostalgia, or an act of desperation on the part of those for whom the gym isn’t working fast enough?

You guys, it’s my childhood being perverted again.

I cannot decide if one of these would either make my day or creep me out.  I suppose, as with most things, it would depend on the person it came from.

How to break habits.

Overshare alert:  there are days (sometimes several in a row) where putting on makeup just doesn’t happen.  Occasionally in the dark days of Seasonal Affective Disorder, washing my hair waits a day or two longer than in should (it’s why the good Lord created ponytails and dry shampoo).  There are days, kittens, where putting in effort seems just too dang hard.  Well, no more!  I’ve been thinking about it a bit recently and decided to have a midyear resolution to act (and dress) like a real live grown up – which to me really just means taking responsibility and putting in the effort.  And after resolving thus, this article appeared a couple of weeks ago, as if the Fashion Gods approved my decision.  How about you guys?  Do you ever randomly decide on self-improvement, or do you wait for the traditional times (New Year, Lent, etc.) to try and make life changes?  I’m pretty good at sticking with them, but I wonder if I tried implementing them at non-standard times wouldn’t be more effective?

I want to go to there.

Need some culture in your life?  Here’s Gandalf recreating his Royal Shakespeare Company role as King Lear for you.  Sidenote, J. and I regularly refer to actors by some of their more well known characters, are we alone in this?  J., waiting for me to catch up on Game of Thrones will demand, “Is Boromir dead yet?”  Or I’ll ask, “Did you hear?  Watson is going to be the new Bilbo in The Hobbit!”  Or we’ll both exclaim, “It’s Sir Richard Carlisle in Dr. Who!”  Another sidenote: we are hopeless, hopeless nerds…

Nope, first kid on the slideshow, we’re all judging you.

Check out these photo series!  My favorite is the African ladies with the haute couture logos.

Seriously, America?  Or at least certain parts of it?

Speaking of America, regardless of politics, I find this hysterical.  Ahem, exactly what sort of healthcare do you think our neighbors to the North have, you adorable hysterics?  See Caitlin Kelly for further reading.

The weekly sheep.  All together now: awwww!

Friends, Home, Humor, Travel

Post-Vacation Brain

“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away afterwards.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Under The Deodars

We pretend to be all put together and grown up. It’s a front. A sneaky, lying, cheating front.

Ducklings, our house is a disaster zone – I can confess this and you won’t think badly of us.  J.’s suitcases are still spread everywhere, sweaters are piled on the couch, we still haven’t folding the load of whites we did before we left for Arizona, and we just barely got around to doing dishes last night.  At which point J. requested cookies so we made a mess of the kitchen and stayed up late with cookies and milk watching Dr. Who, refusing to go to bed at a reasonable hour.  Adulthood and responsibility, fah!

However this current state has side effects.  For example, with all this travel (not to mention a trip to London upcoming during the Summer of the Jubilee/Olympics) our finances have sort of fallen over wheezing and begged us to stop.  We’re allowing ourselves the chance to eat out once a week, although we’re choosing not to exercise this privilege currently, and restricting entertainment to Redbox and card games.  Of course, I’ve been mostly cooking for one for the past nine months and am remembering exactly how much food the guy I’m married to consumes – woof.

So, in an effort to make a lot of good food at one go to give us lunches for a few days, I whipped up a crockpot full of chicken fajitas.  And you’ll excuse me for patting myself on the back when I say that they were delicious.  Minions would have wept in joy to have tasted them.  However we waited for the food to cool a bit before putting it away – and then forgot about it.  J.’s first words to me the next morning when we woke up were, “Did we put dinner in the fridge last night?”  My first words were, ah, unfit to print here as I scrambled for the kitchen and discovered I’d manage to waste a ton of food.

My brain is clearly having trouble reengaging after all my bouncing around and living out of suitcases.  Tonight, though, it’s getting a break as we say farewell to J.’s old flatmate as he and his wife head off to grad school – and that means a barbeque!  One more meal I don’t have to cook, and potentially ruin.  Even I can manage to whip up a communal salad without incident.

Friends, Humor, Travel

Of Weddings and Heat Stroke

“It was a nice wedding.”
“It was.”
“Great family.”
“Aren’t they lovely?”
“Yeah.  But let’s never come back to Arizona.”
“Agreed.”
– J. and C.

Last weekend was an adventure, ducklings, complete with forgotten IDs, lack of sleep, an Indian Casino, and a very happy bride and groom.  I got to wear a boutonniere and received a pocket watch as a groomsman’s gift, so we can even add a clever bit of gender bending.  Honestly, just writing this recap makes it sound like a Shakespearean comedy!

But Flyboy was very happy, and so was everyone else, so we’re going to call it a crashing success!  His wife (which for continuity’s sake we’ll herewith christen Flygirl) planned the whole wedding in Arizona from Alaska and as far as any of us in the wedding party could tell, it went swimmingly.  Her organizational skills are incredible.  As soon as some pictures make their way to Facebook, or alternatively as soon as I can find the camera cord, we’ll show you the evidence.

My only complaint was that it was 120 degrees in the shade the whole time, which makes the whole of the state an unfit place to live – and that’s before getting politically snarky.  Walking from the car to the hotel entrance to check in made my whole body freak out – I flushed bright red and couldn’t cool down on my own, leading to a cold shower (which I normally hate) to get back to normal.  At one point J. burned his hand on a car door.  Whose brilliant idea was it to settle that scalding wilderness, pray?

First settlers (in the style of the penguins from the movie Madagascar): “Well. This sucks.”
Humor, Husband, Travel

The Proverbial Straw

“The camel has a single hump,
The dromedary two;
Or else the other way around,
I’m never sure, are you?”
– Ogden Nash

I put J. on a plane yesterday morning, and it was horrible.  Somehow the first six months of this project were awful but doable, but the prospect of the last three months somehow feels unbearable all of a sudden.

I was determined to get him off to London with a stiff upper lip, lots of support, the usual sort of thing…and then on Tuesday night we went to Target to pick up a few last minute things for him.  We walked into the store and I froze like I’d slammed into a brick wall.  The whole thing had apparently undergone a massive renovation in under a week.  Every single department had been shifted around, the layout had been completely changed, and I couldn’t find anything.

And I can carry a lot of damned straw.

And apparently that was enough to trigger the randomest of neurotic collapses. Minor existential crises, a husband leaving the country, and work concerns and ambitions piling up I could handle.  But screw up my local Target and that poor camel of legend is done for.

J. held back howls of laughter as I marched through the store muttering, “What is this doing here?  Who’s idea was this?  This is all wrong!”
“Look,” he said, trying not to snicker, “now you’ll have to come back and explore it.  It’ll make for a fun shopping trip.”
“I am never coming back here,” I vowed.
“Why not?”
Because…because…”  I looked around trying to put a name to the problem before settling on, “Because someone moved my cheese!”

After making it home, having a cute cuddle and a quick cry, I felt better.  But only marginally.  After dropping him off at the airport I was so out of it I missed my exit and had to go on a bit of a highway adventure to get back on track.  Two days later, I still feel like the cosmos have moved my cheese.  My equilibrium is off, kittens, and I’m struggling trying to get it back.

Basically, I’m sad and having a bad day.

Humor, London, Travel

The London Chronicles: To the Theatre

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
– Oscar Wilde

We did manage to cram in two shows on our hectic house hunt from Hades, and thank goodness otherwise I might have staged a minor revolt.  We saw “The Mousetrap,” because I’m a huge fan of Agatha Christie and “War Horse.”

Indulge me minions, but I’m issuing you an order.  If ever, ever you get the opportunity to see “War Horse,” do it.  Drop whatever amount of money, take whatever roadtrip necessary, hitchhike to the theatre if you must, but see this play.  It is hands down the best production I have ever seen in my life.  It is one of those rare productions that the acting was excellent, the plot was good, but combined with the creative, it was stunning!

It tells the story of a English farm boy and his beloved horse who is sold to the cavalry just before WWI (when tanks and machine guns were about to break the world apart).  The problem the producers had to solve was how to make a play where the main character is a horse when having an actual horse in a play is simply not possible.  The solution they came up with is spectacular: they employed the Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa to develop puppets for the animal, and even some of the human characters.

Before you roll your eyes and picture a bunch of cheap marionettes, you need to see what HPC came up with.  Here’s a TED Talk about the development and creation of Joey the War Horse, watch it and you’ll see what a feat they pulled off.  Out of plastic, wood, and some easy mechanics, they created a living animal.

Pardon my enthusiasm, but it really is that incredible.  It’s currently playing in London and New York (watch the previews to get a sense of the feel and creative of the play), but next year it’s going to start a national tour of the US.  Apparently Spielberg has bought the rights and is making it into a movie, which I’m sure will be the new Black Beauty, or whatever, but I think that books, theatre, and movies are entirely different mediums and hit different chords in our psyche.  Enjoy the movie, by all means, but if you ever get the chance, see the play.

It’s magnificent.

Home, Humor, Husband, London, Travel

The London Chronicles: House Hunting

“I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends.  Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.”
– P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

The school website told us to allow two weeks to find a place to live.  We had to do it in six days.

We’ve been living in the same place for over 2 years now.  That’s two years without having to worry about finding flatmates, divvying up utilities, spending all available time setting up and meeting appointments to view small and dingy rooms that look nothing like their photos online, and trying to determine exactly how much Ramen you’ll need to eat in order to make rent.  Two years of knowing where all the local shops are, having transportation sorted out, and a settled routine of laundry, shopping, and housekeeping.  Two years of being settled.

In other words, I – at least – felt woefully out of practice.  But we dove in with gusto.  Every morning we got up early and made our way to the school library to take advantage of the free internet and spent hours combing through university housing website.  We sent off dozens of emails and counted ourselves lucky if anyone responded.  We set up at least three appointments a day (which inevitably turned out to be on opposite sides of London, requiring an hour’s travel time a piece).  And time after time, someone got there before us, the landlord wanted to rent to females and neglected to inform us beforehand, the residents didn’t want to live with an “old married man” (not even 26, mind) who didn’t want to go clubbing and drinking with them every night, or just found somebody else instead.

I won’t lie, both J. and I were starting to have visions of him starting grad school living in a hostel with raucous German roommates, unable to set up a bank account or phone service without an address.  But then, on Friday, my second to last day there, the heavens opened and we found a place.

It’s in Zone 2 and only about 30 minutes  by tube from the school.  The tube station itself is a 10 minute walk from the house, as is the High Street with all the local shops.  The house itself is privately owned by a pair of eccentrics (more on them later) and shared between three students – a girl from China, a British guy, and now J.!  Each have their own room (which was larger than our hotel room, incidentally), the rent is half of what we’d initially budgeted, and utilities are cheap.

Saturday we moved him in, unpacked, and stocked the fridge with food and wandered the neighborhood.  Turns out it’s the center of both a large Hasidic Jewish and a Brazilian community.  Apparently the only languages spoken in the area are Portuguese and Hebrew.  We saw a large number of men in large fur hats and black satin coats, accompanied by women in grays or black dresses meeting up and wondered what the occasion was, before thunking our heads.  Duh.  Saturday, it was Shabbat.  We found a Rabbinical and Hebrew school just down the street from Sainsbury and a Brazilian takeaway restaurant.  Gotta love London!

In spite of all the crazy we did manage to catch two shows in the West End and an afternoon at the Tate Britain, but this was primarily a working vacation and in the end we were able to land J. a place to live.  Vigorous huzzahs and appropriate sacrifices to the gods of flat hunting are in order.

Next time: the landlords!

Humor, London, Travel

The London Chronicles: Air Traffic Control

There is an art, or rather a knack to flying.  The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
~Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Our flights were uneventful and our luggage didn’t go missing (which was a major stress point, as J. had packed literally everything he owned into those two suitcases and one of mine).  But, as is so often the case, people were the main problem.

We flew from Washington D.C. to Iceland, Iceland to the UK.  The first leg of the journey was fine, the second was stressful on account of a passenger seated behind us who talked – nay, shouted at the top of her lungs from Reykjavik to London.  She is a grad student going to study in the UK, even though her research is on American military provisioning, for the next two years.  She’s 32, from Boston, former Navy, and divorced.  Really, if the flight had lasted to Hamburg I’m sure I would have learned her medical history and social security number too.  People all around her cast pleading eyes upon the stewardesses with meaningful glances in this banshee’s direction, but to no avail.  She wouldn’t shut up for love or money so I clutched my seat arms and tried to drown her out with my iPod, as I was frankly too tired and feeling too stressed about all the things we needed to do once we touched down to turn around and tie her tongue into knots.  So we sat there.  And listened to her defend her dissertation to total strangers all the way across the North Atlantic.

Unfortunately, her whole clan must be airborne this week because flying back (alone and miserable) another woman I can only assume is a relation was seated behind me on the flight home from Chicago.  This time I was treated to a expletive laden account of her recent life and troubles and her vivid hatred for the final destination, which therefore merited an explanation as to why she was going in the first place.

Ergo, I didn’t get much sleep on the trips and arrived both in London and at home looking pretty haggard.  I’ve written before of my hatred for That Woman On Every Plane who shows up at the airport looking stylish, comfortable and impeccably dressed, and the disembarks in the same pristine condition.  Well, I am not That Woman.  I am the girl who, no matter how many vitamins she pops, how often she hydrates, or how much moisturizer she slathers on, arrives looking like a plague victim.  You’d think a lifetime of travel would have helped, but it doesn’t.

In the case of the return journey, this situation was further deteriorated by sniveling and crying halfway to Chicago (on account of having walked away from my, you know, husband at Heathrow airport and leaving him alone in a foreign country).  Circumstances were not helped by the fact that I was self-medicating heavily with Cadbury chocolate for all of my meals.

Next time, the hunt for a home!

Humor, Travel

Et Je Suis Revenu!

“Ugh.”
– C.

Hello, my well beloved minions!  How have you been, darlings?  Yes, I’m back stateside and J. is in London – let’s not talk too much about that now, the wound is still pretty fresh.  I’ve got to tell you about his eccentric landlords (that’s right, we found him a house!), the inevitable humors and horrors of modern air travel, and about the trek to find him a place to live.

But all in good time, because I can’t lie: my brain feels alternately bruised and stuffed with wool.  I was up for 20 hours straight yesterday, everything’s a fog, and I’ve got to catch up on a (modest) pile of work on my desk.

So!  Tell me about you!  What marvelous adventures have you had?

Grad School, Humor, London, Travel

Travel is Imminent, Repeat, Travel is Imminent!

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
– Ayn Rand

Or, in my case, blog.

Floors: swept and mopped
Bathroom: reorganized and purged
Oven: oh dear…
Packing: commenced
Produce: nearly all eaten
Living Room: a disaster zone
Bedroom: not much better
Kitchen: let’s not talk about it
Dry Cleaning Pile: large
Bags of Clothes To Be Donated: three (so far)
Moping/Sulking: over with
Excitement Levels: rising
Stress Levels: ditto
Things Left To Do: legion

Ducklings, we went to work this weekend.  And, ducklings, we are tired.

J. has his final check out at work today, we have more things to eat so our fridge isn’t a possessed cesspool of rot and evil when I get back, and we can’t find a garment bag that we were sure was in a suitcase.  I’ve started deep cleaning everything so I have fewer things to worry about while I’m gone and things are more pleasant to come home to.  The living room is carpeted with piles of clothes and paraphernalia in and out of suitcases.  Also!  We cleaned the oven just for kicks and discovered [quit reading here, Mum] that the interior is blue instead of black.  Let’s not dwell on that.   Onward!