Even quicker update...

Waking up at 5am England time (that's midnight Washington DC time).

Two trains from Harrogate to Manchester Airport.

Two flights from Manchester to Glasgow to Philadelphia.

Three hour wait for each in the airports.

Two hour and twenty minute drive home courtesy of my dad.

10:00pm Washington DC time and I'm home.

Twenty two hours straight without any sleep.

Cats are alive and fed.

Goodnight.

Quick update!

Well... I'm going to try and keep this a truly short and quick update. There will be much more to post once I get home.

That's right, once I get home.

I'm sitting here in an internet cafe in Harrogate. I had hoped to get a flight home yesterday, but unfortunately there were only 3 free seats and I was number 4 on the standby list. Then I was told that they had changed the aircraft type - my flight over was on a A330 Jumbo jet - very big - and after Sunday they were changing it to a 757 (not a jumbo jet) and were like 80+ people overbooked for the remainder of the week. Lovely. Anyway I need to get home, so DH and I bit the bullet and paid for a very expensive one-way flight home. That only gets me to Philly. On Tuesday. At 630pm. I don't know yet how I am going to make it the rest of the way home - whether I am going to take a train to Union Station and then Metro home, or try and get my Dad to drive me back, or I don't know what. Once I get back to Philly, I guess I can try and figure that all out. Fun!

Things here have otherwise been pretty good. It's a nice little town, decent little house, and except for all of the little annoyances (it takes like 4 weeks to set up a telephone, and then another 2 to get internet - what is this, the stone ages?) it'll be pretty easy to adjust. Much easier than I anticipated, really. I've got tons of humorous observations (when the Romans left, they clearly took all knowledge of plumbing technology with them), some minor complaints (see plumbing issues) and lots of things to like well enough. I think it will be a fairly interesting but comfortable 3 years.

Enough for now... I'll write again when (if?) I make it home.

BTW Jeffro - you would LOVE Harrogate. You could just sit on a bench on the main "roundabout" coming into town and just marvel at all the various cars.

So it begins...

Here we go. I leave for the UK tomorrow, am no where near being packed yet, have a bunch of housework that I want to get done before I leave, have to come into work for an early meeting before going to the airport, and on top of all that, my pre-flight nerves are working overtime right now. I don't fly well, and the whole situation of flying stand-by and whatnot is really working my last bit of stamina.

I've got a 6 hour layover in Philly, so I think I'm going to try and use the time productively and go into the city for a little shopping. The R1 goes right downtown, so that shouldn't be a big deal for an hour or two. I will make sure that I am at the airport nice and early so that I can be sure of getting a spot on the plane. Of course, it's not the ride over to the UK I'm worried about. Seats are going to be tight on the return trip, and I just hope I'm able to snag one!

Seeing as I am scheduled to arrive in Manchester at 9am UK time Saturday morning (4am local DC time) I'm guessing that there is now about a 36 hour countdown starting just about now to when I am going to be a quivering, jibbering, emotional mess. I feel bad for whatever immigration officer I have to deal with. Wish me luck!

I knew it was going to happen

Today was a long but wonderful day! I drove up to Jersey for lunch with some friends from high school - some of whom I hadn't seen in 14 years! We had a fantastic time, and despite the fact that we were together for 4+ hours, we only scratched the surface of all the stuff we could have talked about.

There was one event which threatened to mar my day. I had just gotten onto the DC Beltway off of 270. A woman in a white car in the far left lane was yammering on her cell phone, drifting occasionally into the near-far left lane and going about 15-20 miles slower than the speed of traffic. Naturally, I was in a bit of a hurry, so I downshifted, punched it, and passed the woman on the right, going about 75 miles an hour.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot the cop sitting on the far right shoulder. Sh*t.

Sure enough, 2 minutes later I look in my rear view mirror and see the cop closing in fast, lights off, but unmistakably coming after me. I begin to pull to the right, and finally he's right behind me, lights flashing, and I know I'm toast. Ever since I got the car and started appreciating how much pep there is under the hood, I was pretty mentally prepared to get a speeding ticket.

Resigned to my fate, I pull over onto the side of the road - pulling over as far as I possibly can, since this is the Beltway and I don't want it to be dangerous for him. I roll my window down, leave my hands on the wheel, and wait for him to come to my window.

"Hello ma'am. Do you know why I've pulled you over today?"

Internal response "Hm. Was it the speeding or the passing on the right or the reckless driving or all three?"

Actual response "No sir I don't."

At this point I'm waiting to hear how fast he's clocked me going, how dangerous it is to pass on the right, yada yada yada. What I didn't expect to hear is this:

"Ma'am. Do you know that your front license plate is missing, which is required by Maryland state law?"

Internal response "WHAT?"

Actual response "Yes sir I do know. I haven't had it installed."

"Ma'am. Do you have your front plate?"

"Yes sir. It's in my backseat on the floor."

"Ma'am, I can't see it back there. Can you show me?"

So I reach around to the back seat and luckily can reach it fairly easily under the roadmap. I show it to him and he seems satisfied.

"Ma'am, can I have your license and registration please?"

At this point I remember reading somewhere that a cop can get nervous when you start digging through stuff looking for these things, because for all he knows you're pulling out a gun or something. I remembered reading that you should always state what you are going to do before you do it, so I tell the officer that my license is in my purse and I'm going to reach in and get it. I do exactly that and hand it to him. I then tell him that the registration is in the glove compartment and that I am going to open it up and reach in there and get that, which I do. This cop is like 10 years old, he's clearly young and new. No need to spook him or anything.

Anyway he takes my info and goes back to his car for like 10 minutes. He comes back and I see a white slip of paper in his hands.

Internal response "Sh*t. I'm getting a ticket."

"Ma'am. Since you have your plate, I'm only going to give you a warning today."

"Thank you sir, that's very kind. I'll have it installed as soon as possible."

And then... thinking that I've basically gotten away with murder at this point, since he clearly didn't catch me speeding or passing on the right... he says:

"Have a nice day ma'am. And please drive safer."

HAH! He totally pulled me over for the speeding, but since I was so cute in my Bug, with my sunglasses on, iPod in the cupholder, he just couldn't bear to give me a real ticket.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Fun fact: The song playing when I got pulled over - "Just Stop" by Disturbed.

Why can't a man be more like a woman?

I've decided that the real problem with men is that they don't think like women. I've proven to myself today that when I put my mind to it, I can do things that most women would defer to a man. Today I received a replacement battery for my iPod Mini. I like my iPod Mini, but the battery on it died a long time ago. I begged DH to just change the battery, but he couldn't be bothered, saying that it was just better to buy a new iPod. Well I rejected that idea, and went ahead and ordered myself the replacement battery kit (came with instructions and a little tool to pry it open). Anyway, I've now got a working iPod Mini with a brand new lease on life. Go me! And that was for only $26 (paid for the 2 day FedEx shipping, vs 150+ for a new iPod.

Moreover, DH has also failed to think like a woman, and that had made me very, very angry. He can almost do it... he even says that the things I wish he would think about he did indeed think of, he just didn't think them all the way through. There's no explanation of why he didn't follow that logical line of thinking (like hm, Erika probably wouldn't want to spend the first two nights in the UK on some smelly borrowed air mattress on itchy sheets with crummy pillows in an otherwise empty house; she might like to be in a nice comfortable bed in a hotel room instead, where breakfast will be served rather than cobbled together and all the conveniences of our modern era are right at hand). He just stops at "well, I won't mind, so Erika probably won't."

Why do men stop at "probably?" Or "maybe?" Or "Should I?" It's as if they think that initial thought, which begs a thorough examination of the possibilities, ramifications, and unintended consequences before choosing a course of action, and rather than taking the time to think it all the way through, they just stop and default to whatever their preference is. There's a whole world of unexplored thoughts and considerations that men never dare enter.

It's puzzling. Prof. Higgens definitely had his song backwards, but is the perfect portrayal of what happens when a man pursues a course of action without thinking of all the consequences for all the affected parties. Poor Eliza. Poor Erika.

Why don't I just save myself the trouble and kill myself now

I love hot, humid weather. I was born in August in Florida, for crying out loud. I crave the sun, revel in the heat, bloom with humidity.

And unfortunately I'm moving with DH to the UK for three years. Even more unfortunate I am leaving in 12 days to spend a little more than a week with him. During the time of year when it is supposed to be the best weather they get.

And then I see this article posted on Fark.com. Basic summary is in this quote, "With the thundery showers expected to continue, forecasters predicted that the country may have seen the last of any lengthy periods of sunshine." Mind you, these aren't the humid heat driven thunderstorms of our summer, these are the miserable storms of our November/March.

I gotta tell you, when DH said this weekend was cold, windy, and rainy when they were out, he tried to make it sound like an anomaly. Now I know that nice weather is the true anomaly. And it's going to kill me.

I'm going to be a very frequent flier to the Mediterranean, I predict now.

Why I miss having a man around the house

It was another productive day around the house/yard. I got the lawn mowed, some housework and sorting done, and cleared out the weeds from the side garden. Still haven't figured out what I'm going plant there.

Anyway, the title of the post refers to an unfortunate discovery I made in the backyard. A dead young robin, almost full grown. Normally I would have called DH over immediately to deal with it. Instead, I had to pick up the lifeless, limp little body with a shovel, bring it to the corner of the yard, dig a little hole, and bury it. Just awful.

Then, as I set about mowing the rear yard, I was attacking some of the weeds growing at the edge of the deck when a very small bunny hopped out and ran into a little patch of wildflowers growing near the garden. I immediately cut off the mower, terrified that there might have been another under there or something. I finished mowing the rest of the yard as best I could, completely avoiding the area where the little guy had escaped to; I was worried he would hop out in fear and end up.... well I'll say no more. I got most of the yard finished when I went over to check out whether he was still in the little flower patch. He was, so I grabbed some lettuce and tossed it at him. Note to self: all this does is scare him. He hopped out the open gate into the side garden among the stargazer lilies. I go ahead and finish the rest of the yard - the areas I avoided when he was in the flower patch. Then I was ready to tackle the front yard, so I wanted to shush the bunny back into the backyard where he had been hiding originally. It took me like 20 minutes to convince him to come out from under the lilies and hydrangea and around the gate into the backyard again, but he finally did it. He was so frickin' cute - you could have held him in the palm of one hand.

I hope he's one of the lucky ones. He must be the offspring of one of the large bunnies I've seen eating the lettuce out of my garden. I wonder if I should lay a piece of wood down and give the little guy a ramp up to the lettuce for himself.

Productive 4th!

So admittedly I haven't been extremely productive - house-work wise - for the past several weekends. However, today I did get a good bit of needed work done.

My number one priority was cleaning out my front garden of weeds and dead tulip stems and getting a little color back into it. I went up to my favorite nursery first thing this morning (Home Depot had jack for selection) and bought three flats of impatiens (not my favorite, but good value since the season is almost over). I then got home and weeded and planted the impatiens in the front garden; the whole ordeal took about 3 hours! Anyway, the front garden looks like a showcase now rather than an embarrassment, and I can plant something more permanent (a perennial or something) in the fall when the impatiens poop out.

Next I needed to get a wireless router. With my new roommate (who is working out like gangbusters - I'm so happy about that) we needed internet access in two rooms for two computers. The wireless router we did have is sitting on a ship in Antwerp right now, so I just went out and bought a cheap one that I can easily resell in a couple of months. While at Best Buy, I found what I've been looking all over for - Seasons One and Two of The Venture Bros! I'm totally excited! It's one of the funniest shows I've ever seen.

For the remainder of the day I'll try and figure out what I am going to do with the side garden, which is completely overrun with weeds and choked plants, and the other side of the front garden, which is bare because I yanked those four bushes out. Then I have to hit the backyard!

Last night I caught the last 3/4s of Jane Austen's Persuasion and Jane Austen's Regretson Masterpiece Classics on WETA last night. They're rerunning the absolutely fantastic BBC/A&E version of Pride and Prejudice next weekend, so catch it if you can. I'm still hoping to see Persuasion in its entirety.