I grew up in East Anglia, which is famous in the U.K. for being flat. So living on a mountain is really weird for me sometimes, and I can't get used to the abrupt changes in weather.
Yesterday it snowed all day and there must have been at least an inch and a half on the ground by the end of the day. Today it was still chilly, but there was a blue sky and bright sunshine so by 11am there was very little snow left on the ground. The only way you would have known about yesterday's white out, if you hadn't actually been here, was the occasional snow man built by the students.
We had a terrible time trying to find a parking space today because there is a big football game in town, but we managed to get to the library where the pro-gay marriage march was assembling in time for me to make a banner. In the end I went with lots of red love hearts, partly inspired by the lovely necklace Jason sent to me as part of my birthday package (I also got Malteasers, cake decorations and a bag of assorted fabulous sequins! All of it wrapped up in the most gorgeous paper! Yay for birthday surprises!)
I also wrapped a small hot pink feather boa around the handle, which helped to make it comfortable but was mainly because, hello, it was a hot pink feather boa! That's my kind of protesting!
We marched in a circular route around the town which took about an hour and a half. For the most part we got lots of smiles and thumbs up, with just one or two people expressing their disagreement with our views. It was actually really quite fun!
It did start to rain towards the end, so I was glad to get home, which is when we discovered that Edith is pro gay marriage too. She really loved my banner, and kept rubbing up against it.
Unfortunately she was so enthusiastic about the sign that she pushed it over on top of Nancy, who survived unscathed but presumably less keen on protest signs than our little fluffy radical.
Tomorrow Doc C and I are planning on joining the local protest against Prop 8, apparently there will be co-ordinated protests all over the country to demonstrate a national feeling of dismay that this bill passed.
We're not really sure what our banners will say, but Doc has suggested "Straight, Married and Unaffected" where as I am leaning towards "Breeders For Gay Marriage!", but I'm not sure either really captures what we are trying to say fully. It's somewhat like trying to work out what to engrave on the back of one's iPod, except a lot more socially responsible.
It's been over twenty four hours since the North Carolina polls closed, and the result hasn't been called yet.
The count was so close that it has to be recounted by hand several times, which sounds like no fun at all as well as being incredibly tedious. And we are talking about 4, 232,615 votes here. I don't envy the voting officials one bit.
In case you didn't know tonight is the Presidential election here in the USA. That means after today they might just stop talking about it for eighteen months or so before it all starts again. It's ridiculous! How long do people campaign for in the UK? It feels to me as though they just put out adverts the week before, but I'm sure that's just rose coloured spectacles because this has been so over the top.
We are having people over to our house, and have purchased champagne to celebrate if Obama wins, and Pabst Blue Ribbon to drown our sorrows in if McCain wins.
Doc C is making a pecan pie, and some pizzas. I totally failed to make an elephant shaped pinata, but I have decattified the living room. There are no food bowls, scratching posts, stray fur, or cat toys in sight, because they are in our bedroom with the cats. We thought that would be less stressful for the felines; and as Nancy had to be forced into a pet carrier today to go to the vets, where she was given a steroid muscle injection, I think the less stress for her the better. Plus she still looks terrible still, and I am vain on her behalf.
So this time tomorrow we will know who is the next President of the United States. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.
Tonight the students who live in the dorms above my office were staging Dorm of Doom, in the lobby of our offices. I helped them set it all up this afternoon, then I came back to take some photos and listen to the creepy stories about the building. The tableaux worked pretty well, and I was really pleased with how much
fun the performers seemed to be having. The evil scientist hadn't
known that she needed to bring a costume, so I cut an apron out of a
paper table cloth, and then we splattered it with red food dye. It
looked horrible effective, particularly when paired with the brain in a
jar (or, maybe, it was actually cauliflower floating in red water).
I was really pleased that a lot of the students who came for the ghost
stories had come in their Halloween costumes and they had a costume
contest which was really fun. In third place was a very good home-made
Anne Boleyn costume, in second place was Alf Alfa and the winning
costume was essentially a hospital gown worn over the top of a paper
mache bottom. Apparently the winner had been crafting the bum for
weeks, and it was really effective.
After the prizes had been given out, and everyone had got their hot chocolate the ghost stories began.
The stories that explain the origin of the ghost are pretty much the
old stand-by creepy story about a girl who fell hopelessly in love with
a professor, and then killed herself. There is a delightful variation
involving an unplanned pregnancy, but generally the message is "Don't
have sex kids!", as with all classic slasher movies. My favourite part was the repeated assertion that the building was so old, my guess is that it was built in the fifties at the earliest, but there was talk of the civil war! Not to mention that apparently our building was built in the centre of a pentagon! Good thing it wasn't built in the middle of a dodecahedron, eh?
Tonight Barack Obama will be the guest, via video link, on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" at 11 (central).
I was trying to think of a British equivalent, but it appears that currently the only intersection between British comedy and politics is when the Prime Minister comments on "inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour" by comedians who actually think prank phone calls to a 78 year old man are funny.
sigh.
And even worse the matted hair buffoon is starting to break America. So I have to keep explaining that yes he's popular, but no he's not what I would call the cream of current British comedy.
This evening my department had an event for the students, so I stayed late and then headed over to the library to catch a film in the queer film series "Saving Face" (which is not the point of this post, so I'll just say here it was a really terrific romantic comedy and I enjoyed it very much. It's out on DVD, so rent it now!).
It was snowing a bit, so I cut through the Student Union and as I was rushing along the corridor I saw a man walking the other way who looked exactly like Carver from "The Wire".
Which was because it was Seth Gilliam who played Carver in "The Wire".
Oh. My. God.
I actually stopped dead in my tracks and blurted out "I love your work!". Bless his heart, Mr Gilliam stopped to shake my hand and talk to me, he was a very nice man! When I asked what the hell he was doing in North Carolina he explained that he was here campaigning for Barack Obama; and that Gbenga Akinnagbe and Sonja Sohn who played Chris and Kima where here too.
And they were! In a meeting room next to the bookshop! I called Doc C and as soon as he answered I said
"Carver,Chris&KimaFromTheWireAreInTheStudentUnion!!!" "What?"
"Carver, Chris & Kima from "The Wire" are in the student union!
Get over here NOW!"
Both Ms Sohn and Mr Akinnagbe were talking to students, and I didn't want to interrupt (after all they were there to talk to prospective voters, and I'm not a citizen so I can't vote), so I ran off to the screening, so I could tell Kim and Jill (they organised the film series) who are also big Wire fans. It was one of the most surreal and most exciting celebrity spots ever! It almost tops that time I saw David Beckham topless at Broadcasting House, but I wasn't wearing my glasses, so he was blurry!
If only Doc C had been there too it would have been perfect, because he would have thought to say what a travesty it was the "The Wire" never won an Emmy. Unfortunately by the time Doc got to the Student Union they had already left, so he is very jealous of me. He says he's not letting me go anywhere with out him now, after all it's not just that I spotted three celebs in one go, but they were stars of one of the greatest television series of all time. Which you can't argue with really.
We are planning to have an Election Party on Tuesday 4th November, Doc C e-mailed some people about it yesterday and he's started to get RSVPs back.
Unexpectedly Doc also got a phone call from his brother, who is very excited about the election too. In fact he's planning to fly from Boston to join us for just for the evening; because he thinks that it would be more interesting to be in N.C., which is being counted as a swing state in this election, rather than Massachusetts which is a strong hold for the Democrats.
So far we don't have a theme for the evening, other than nervous tension of course, but we are thinking about having an elephant pinata. Well I'm thinking about having a pinata, and trying to talk the Doc into it, mainly because we have the perfect stair case to hang one from, and I've never destroyed one before. They look like fun to me!
At the University the students are starting to gear up for Halloween. One group will be telling ghost stories in the lounge/lobby outside my office, and I was talking to the organiser about what she had planned. She was saying that a couple of years ago they had a girl pretending to hang herself in the ladies loos, but they were told in no uncertain terms that they are never ever allowed to do that again. I can't think why.
This year all they were planning to do was have someone dressed as Fade-Away (My lobby's resident ghost. Oh yeah, I have my own ghost. Did I not mention?) walking up and down the corrider.
My office has windows on two of the lobby walls, so I suggested they put on some sort of grand guignol tableau in my office, so that they can be seen from the lounge. I got the permission of both my manager and the building manager, so now we are in the planning stage of three different scenes.
Murder victim sprawled across my desk in a pool of blood. The murderer will jump up at the window to scare onlookers.
An operation performed by the occupants of an insane asylum (or something along those lines), with maybe a black light for some reason.
Just so you know I have signed up for this year's NaBloPoMo.
That means I will be blogging every day through out November. Which is pretty much what I would have done anyway, so there should be no perceptible change to our scheduled programming; although I am hoping that being part of a big group blogging event like this inspires me to write about something other than cat poo, and I am reasonably confident that you are hoping that too.
You may already be aware of this, but you can do NaBloPoMo any month you like now, but November is still the big one with prizes for different categories. I'll be brutally honest here and say I would absolutely love to win a prize for blogging, that would be brilliant!
Actually I'd love to win something full stop; I spent ten minutes filling out a questionnaire for the University's library last week, even though I have yet to check out a book from it or use it to do anything except attend meetings. I did it purely because they e-mailed the thing to me and said I would be entered into a prize draw for an iPod Touch if I graded their performance on a scale of one to ten.
Alright then, I'd say you were, oooh, about an 8 as far as Libraries-that-I-don't-use go. Could perhaps do a little bit better, but you're not bad at all really. Carry on!
This weekend there is a Woolly Worm Festival, where there will be Woolly Worm races, they are surprisingly nippy little fellas.
The main reason they are interesting is that they are supposed to predict the weather. The more brown stripes there are, then the milder the winter will be apparently. Wikipedia claims there is no truth in the weather predicting capabilities of our furry friends, but according to the Woolly Worm Festival website they have had an 85% success rate over the last 30 years. Not bad!
I think this one looks pretty brown myself. I'll report back in the spring.
When not catering to the whims of our new overlords, after all they graciously allow us to go to work during the day to earn enough money for the better quality tuna, and I have been doing a few other things. For example on Saturday I attended the University's Homecoming Tailgate, an event I will now attempt to explain as best as a British woman with no understanding of the appeal of organised sports can.
Essentially every year the university (and as I understand most American universities) have a specific weekend which they designate as Homecoming. Former students come back to town from all over country, and there is a big football game.
Before games people gather early in the car parks and set up deck chairs to have a sort of picnic involving quite a lot of beer usually. This is called tailgating. Um, I think that is all there is to it but I feel like I must be missing something because I just do not get it. The Homecoming Tailgate was much larger than is usual so, instead of just using the car parks, it involved a large field full of mini marquees, who all seemed to have barbecues on the go. The marquee pitches had been assigned to different societies, clubs and departments who were giving out information about themselves along with the hot dogs. Pretty much every single person there was wearing team t-shirts, or team colours.
I was manning the program's marquee, so I was sort of working but it was quite fascinating from an anthropological viewpoint.
Scurvy curses! Yesterday was International Speak Like A Pirate Day, and I didn't know until it was way too late. Why does no-one tell me these things? I love a good "Yarrr!"
Of course if I did speak like a pirate round here people would probably just assume it was some quaint English phrase they'd not heard before. This was something I realised the other day when I got tongue tied in the middle of a sentence, and as a result completely mangled a perfectly normal expression; later in the conversation the person I was talking to then repeated the phrase exactly as I had said it, clearly under the impression that was the British way of putting it. I managed not to laugh, but how funny would it be to convince people that Pirate speak is in fact just the way people talk in South London? It is SO tempting!
Is it just me, or is time really whipping by at the moment? I feel like it was just yesterday that I was bemoaning the passing of the weekend and now here's another one about to begin. Not that I'm complaining, it's nice when the working week is so busy that it truncates like that.
I'm particularly delighted that time is on fast forward because I love this time of year, and I have bunches of fun things to look forward to over the next couple of months:
My friend Jason from Brighton arrives on Sunday to stay with us for a week. Yay!
We will be getting our cats in about a fortnight. Let the choosing of pet names begin!
My one year anniversary of living in the USA. I believe that calls for something, probably a pint of Guinness!
HALLOWEEN!!!
The Ghost Train! (I know this may technically seem to be part of Halloween, but we will probably go on another night so as to drag the spooky joy out as much as possible)
Bonfire Night - Some of the students will be trying to approximate the holiday in their dorm without a fire or fireworks! I find this very amusing!
Thanksgiving. The holiday which involves eating a lot, and I get time off work!
Doc and Mine's Birthday!
Christmas, and I'm hoping that will include a visit from my parents, if I'm good!
New Year. Quite honestly I've never understood New Year as a major reason for celebration, it always seems like an anti-climax to me. But more holiday, yay!
Let's hope it all slows down a bit for all of that!
Generally speaking I am not a fan of the way that some channels in the US have of putting a commercial break every seven seconds in programs. Why run the opening credits and go straight into a break? I do not understand that at all, and the same thing happens at the end. There will be a break followed by a final snippet of the show and then the closing credits. It's just weird.
However, I do have a current favourite advertisement which features Dr Horrible himself, Neil Patrick Harris. I find that I just really like NPH these days, and his line delivery in this amuses me greatly.
As I'm on a roll with the embedding of YouTube clips at the moment, please enjoy:
Something unusual happened on Thursday, I had an e-mail from a nice lady called Daphne who works for BBC America and wondered if I would be interested in writing a post about "Skins". I hasten to add that I am not being paid to write this, and, although I did use to work for the BBC, I no longer have any professional connections with them.
That out of the way, here is a thirty second trailer (with what sounds like a middle aged American man doing the voice-over, which I find odd):
"Skins" is a drama about a group of friends aged between 16 to 18 who live in Bristol, and although it's about to begin it's third season in the UK, it has only just reached the US.
As it happens I was very pleased to see that the show was coming, because I didn't really get to see much of it when I was living in London and it's good to get a second chance to see it. The only reason I didn't watch the first two seasons the first time around was frankly because Doc C didn't want to watch it. I think he was put off by the marketing, which is weird because that was precisely what I found fascinating. It had a fantastic poster campaign (despite one image being banned after complaints), and the website emulated an internet social network idea to introduce all the characters. Very clever I thought. The BBC have used the same Facebook-esque format on their website for the show, and you can see that here.
So far I've seen two episodes that I hadn't seen previously, and I honestly enjoyed them both (Doc C, however, left the room). Whilst I wouldn't say that it's my new favourite show, I would be interested to know what is going to happen next to the characters and I will try to see it again. I particularly liked hearing the Bristol accent, and the fact that some, but not all, of the dialogue has been deemed in need of subtitles! I can understand all of it perfectly, so to me it seems to be pretty much at random, but I'm sure it is just the thicker accents, or perhaps a more regional use of slang, that's being picked up on.
(Click on image to go to the Skins Flickr set)
If you are at all easily shocked by teenage sex, drugs and bad language than probably you won't like "Skins", (for example Doc C doesn't like it, because he doesn't think the characters have any moral sensibilty and seem unaware of how selfish their actions are). However if you think you might enjoy watching a group of articulate intelligent teenagers who are definitely not the saccharine, boring, cardboard cut-outs of the "High School Musical" type, than just maybe this is a show you would like. At the very least, it's nice to see a drama not set in London and the fine city of Bristol is most definitely worth a look.
"Skins" is showing on Sunday nights at 10pm/9c on BBC America, and/or is available to purchase on iTunes
Tonight I am going to the cinema with my friends Jasmine and David to see "The House Bunny". The trailers looked too intriguingly tacky for me to miss, but Doc wanted none of it, so it's lucky I found two people who did want to see the heart warming story of an ex-Playboy Bunny's search for new meaning in a university sorority house. For the record I deplore the Playboy empire and all it stands for, and I find Hugh Hefner a little bit creepy, but I do adore a cheesy movie, so that's why I'm going.
Before I dash off let me leave you with a picture of the Chinese takeaway I just ate:
Look at that! It came in the little cardboard cartons with the wire handles and everything! It's just like in the movies!
For those keeping track (Hi Mum!), I had shrimp with broccoli from the low fat menu, and then ruined that good intention by having prawn toast and fried rice too. It was tasty.
My fortune cookie said that I have a deep appreciation of the arts and music, so clearly those things are a lot more accurate than I had previously thought.
When I was a little girl I remember being astounded at my Grandmother drinking a cup of tea black, without any milk (I don't remember if that is how she always drank it, but I must have observed her doing so at least once). I don't remember if she had a slice of lemon instead, but I do remember being really horrified at the idea and not being able to imagine myself ever liking tea without milk. Actually my Grandmother also peeled bananas from the bottom end up, which meant she could use the stalk as a handle. I have no idea how she got the peeling started on the slightly tougher green bananas though.
Anyway, since I've moved to North Carolina I've been trying to have my cup of tea as I normally would and I'm finding it surprisingly difficult. Here when you order tea in a restaurant or sandwich shop, you have to specify hot tea, or they will assume you want iced tea (sweet or unsweet). Not just that, but when the cup of tea is brought to the table in a restaurant, it's typically delivered black. Naturally to counter this I've also been asking for milk, but what I usually end up getting get is coffee creamer, and, after some months of lying to myself, I now have to admit that synthetically creamy tea is not very pleasant, frankly. So I recently started ordering a slice of lemon instead, and I'm getting used to that now.
However I also would like to drink tea in the office, and we have neither milk nor lemon slices available, so I have purchased a Twinings variety pack, and I am going to experiment with which tea works best without any additions to it at all. I suspect that Earl Grey will be the winner here, but English Breakfast Tea, or perhaps one of those spiced orange teas, may yet surprise me.
Continuing my occasional series on how chocolate is different over here, we come to the the equivalent chocolaty snack for the glorious Malteasers, which go by the clunky moniker of Whoppers.
My verdict it that Whoppers are no Malteasers, but they will do until I next have access to the real thing. The main difference is of course the taste, it seems less malty to me, but also the consistency of the malted centre is really weird, and doesn't shatter in quite the same way.
The packaging is nice though, the biggest size is a cardboard carton similar to a tetra-pak of milk, and that means it has a nice spout to pour the chocolate out of.
So apparently hummingbirds are very territorial. Our balcony is now the scene of a thumb-size territorial dispute, complete with miniature mid-air dog fights. It's like Snoopy and the Red Barron out there.
It's really interesting to watch them, and work out their techniques and strategies. Mainly it involves flying very fast at the other bird, with maybe some high-pitched squeaking, but they don't appear to physically fight one another, thank goodness. If that happened we would take down the feeder immediately.
Of course now we're starting to recognise some of the different birds, so I'm sure we'll start to take sides soon. And actually wouldn't the Fighting Hummingbirds make a great team name? For a netball team maybe? Very girly, but it has a ring to it I think.
Today has been a really exciting day. We walked two really sweet dogs, and I was very pleased to hear that one of my favourite dogs has finally gone to a good home. Then we went to the cat room, and one of the cats that I really like made a bee line for Doc's lap and started to win him over too.
Then we went to the garden centre to buy plants, we choose a nice trailing plant with purple flowers because the butterflies seemed to particularly like it, and a pink one because Doc liked the way the bees were climbing all the way into them to get the nectar.
We also decided to get a hummingbird feeder as well. I put it up as soon as we got home about an hour ago, and they are already using it!
I got one blurry picture of a hummingbird hovering just below the feeder, but the moment they see any slight movement in the living room they zoom off. So Doc and I are just sitting very still on the sofa watching the feeder. It's amazing!
I was just playing a move against Doc C in our inaugural match on the official Scrabble game now on Facebook (To be fair it does look better than Scrabulous, but won't let me play anyone not in Canada or the USA. Grrr!), when I saw a movement outside the living room window.
At first I thought it was an enormous butterfly, but, when I saw it clearly, it was a bright green humming bird. The bird flew over to our new lavender plants, which are right by the window, and hovered around checking all of the flowers for nectar.
I still can't quite believe that I live somewhere that has humming birds! They still feel so exotic to me that they may as well be mythical, so I sat and watched it quietly; rather than risk disturbing the bird by running upstairs to get my camera. I will have to try and get a picture next time I see one. They are so tiny, and the wings really are just a blur of movement.
Beautiful!
They are also cheeky little birds, the last time we saw one we were leaving the house, and the bird had been checking the flowers by our front door for nectar. The bird flew up to eye level with us, and had a good leisurely stare at both of us before zipping away. As I say they are tiny, but this one clearly didn't feel threatened by us, it was just being nosy. Very funny, as well as beautiful.
So why do I believe that pavements (US translation: Sidewalks) are A Very Good Thing? Because you can walk on them without fearing for your physical safety! It's genius!
We parked the car on Friday evening (and believe you me that in itself is a whole other post, I believe it's scheduled for bullet point eight) and did not feel the need for it again until Monday morning when we left. We walked all over Washington, felt safe doing so and not once did anyone stare at us or honk their horns or yell at us.
It sounds like an odd thing to say, but since moving to NC I find that I honestly miss the excellent pavements of Great Britain. Now there is a coffee table book waiting to happen.
I got up at 6 this morning to get ready for work and it was still dark. I hate getting up when it's still dark outside, I'm grown up enough to be able I can make allowances in the dead of winter, but right now we're slap bang in the middle of August.
I know logically it's only because we're at a different latitude than I'm used to, and that effects how many daylight hours we get, but still, it feels very very wrong.
I really like the new ones, but I've only had them for an hour, so my eyes are adjusting to the new lenses still and making me feel slightly queasy. I really like that the glasses look different from different angles, because the frames are made from plastic with a slightly sparkly grey grid pattern to it. And the corners are blue, which you can't see at all here! Clearly I'll have to take some more pictures to capture these in their full glory.
Whilst we were at the opticians, one of the receptionists asked me what the legal drinking age was in the UK. Apparently she has a British fourteen year old staying with her, and he's been swearing blind he can drink all he wants back home. Even better he's been telling her how dangerous his home town is, apparently you can't walk down the street without getting stabbed. In Thetford.
I had an optician's appointment at 11.30 this morning, which was very exciting because I'm getting new glasses and I haven't had new frames for about ten years. Doc C dropped me off at the mall at about 9.30, because he had a class to teach so I was planning to just browse the shops before my appointment. The only problem was that none of the shops were open before 10, so instead I sat and read for an hour, then I went and tried on jeans until it was time for my appointment (I'm definitely between sizes, it's really annoying but also very satisfying!).
The optician's itself was really fun. They have loads of equipment I have never seen at a UK opticians, let alone had used on my eyes before, and I even was shown an image of my own retina on a computer screen! It's really interesting, in a disgusting sort of a way! I wish I'd taken a picture for you!
Then I got to sit down with one of the opticians, and look at new frames. I had a look yesterday and noticed some that I liked and those were the first pair that the optician handed to me. Doc C came back to pick me up just after I'd chosen my shortlist, so he came in to help. Naturally it turned out to be the very first pair that I tried on out of the twenty odd that I looked at that I decided to buy. They should be ready on Friday.
Before we left they gave me a pair of disposable wrap around sun glasses because as part of the eye exam I had been given eye drops that dilated my pupils, and they stay like that for about two hours. Not only was everything really bright, but it meant that my near vision was really bad too! Doc took a picture of the dilated eye, I'll put that up tomorrow.
When I got to work I was pretty useless still, so Kaye suggested I go and sit in Doc's office where the lighting wouldn't be as harsh. I had a nap on the sofa for about an hour, and now I can see sort of normally again.
It was back in February that I finally got my Social Security Number and could start applying for jobs, and it took another six weeks for me to start work after receiving that. The only problem being that my current job is part-time and temporary, so I have been scouring the job pages still. Since February I've applied for twelve permanent jobs, and I've regularly re-applied for the temporary posts pool as well, and nothing was coming up. Twelve doesn't sound like a huge number, but writing a fresh covering letter and fine tuning the CV each time was getting to be really demoralising.
Doc C was starting to develop some startlingly convoluted conspiracy theories and, as the end of my time with the Philosophy and Religion Department comes closer, he also started to throw in some fretting about money. When I finally had an interview last week he relaxed a bit. Since then I've had another interview, an informal networking chat (that might actually lead to something really interesting) and also scheduled another interview for next Tuesday morning, so now Doc's taking bicycles on test rides. That is an excellent sign that The Doc is feeling better about things!
I'm finding the sudden flurry of interviews really weird, it feels like my CV has suddenly activated after months of lying dormant. At the moment I am virtually living in variations on the combination of smart grey pencil skirt and crisp white shirt that make up my standard interview outfit. Hey, it obviously worked at the American Embassy Visa interview, and if it got me into the country with any luck it will also get me behind a desk!
The hardest question in the interviews (apart from the inevitable "What is your best quality? What is your worst quality?", which are ridiculous questions anyway, because who actually answers those honestly?) is "Why do you want this job?" It's the hardest because Doc has told me categorically that I cannot answer that one by saying "Because then I can have two kitty cats all of my own!" Apparently that doesn't look very professional, or something.
At brunch today Doc C had the breakfast burrito and a cup of coffee. I had Scandinavian Eggs (scrambled eggs, with salmon, red peppers and lots of dill), which came with toast and a salad.
I was a bit surprised by the salad because on the menu it said "fresh greens", which I thought would mean something else, perhaps sauteed spinach or steamed broccoli. The salad was tasty, it just wasn't what I would have paired with scrambled eggs.
I also decided today was the day to try a southern favourite: Sweet Tea. I've been sticking to nice familiar hot tea with a splash of milk, but sweet tea is much easier to get here, so I thought I should try and acclimatise.
It was nice; unsurprisingly it tasted exactly like cold sweet tea.
I took this picture on our way home when we were stopped at the lights. I took it to record that humongous Beatles bumper sticker, mainly because I find it a bit odd that The Beatles are still so freaking huge over here.
In the UK you can easily go for months without hearing a Beatles song; here I think my record is about a week. It's a Fab Four fixation, and just walking down the street today we were subjected to "When I'm 64" played far too slowly by a school band busking on the high street. I never had particularly strong feelings bout the mop-tops, but now, frankly, I am getting really quite sick of them.
There I've said it.
Anyway, Doc C pointed out that there was in fact another bumper sticker on the left hand side of the (here blacked out) number plate.
Those would be metallic relief bumper stickers depicting Uzi machine guns.
How weird is that? "All We Need is Love" and some serious firearms?
The plan of driving out to the parkway to watch all the fourth of July fireworks would have worked brilliantly, were it not for the fact that the section of the parkway that overlooks the town is currently closed.
So we headed back into town, and we were able to park and watch some of the town's display from a car park. All of the pictures I took had the silhouettes of telegraph poles in the way, but I quite like how it looks as though the electrical cables are exploding with pink light.
When we got home we could hear the explosions of fire works echoing off the mountains around us, but all we could see were fireflies. That was until midnight, when someone across the golf course from us started setting off their own rockets and we had a perfect view from our sofa as we watched a documentary about Bukowski.
I'm not working today so we decided to go for a walk around one of the local lakes; at least that was the plan. Unfortunately we couldn't park the car anywhere, because everyone else in North Carolina had decided to go for a picnic.
So we ended up just driving around to see what our town and the next town over were doing today. The answer was mainly displaying an impressively varied selection of American flags, or red, white and blue banners.
There are going to be a couple of big fireworks displays later, but I'm not sure if we will be going officially to either of them. For one thing parking is going to be a nightmare, and for another there will be huge crowds of people, and I'm just not a happy bunny around huge crowds of people. We are thinking about driving up to one of the overlooks on the parkway, and seeing what we can see from there instead.
It's going to feel really odd watching fireworks on a warm night in the middle of summer. I'm used to associating fireworks with bundling up warm on Bonfire Night in November and wondering where I can get a baked potato, or a hot drink.
Today is the Fourth of July, and it's my first one in America.
I already had a fairly good idea of the history behind American Independence; you try being British and moving to America without being told chunks of it at really odd moments. However my husband being the very thorough man that he is, Doc C prepared me further for this holiday by bumping "John Adams" up to the top of our Netflix queue.
I can't pretend have been anywhere near as captivated by this as the Doc was, but it was a very good series, particularly as I do like Paul Giamatti and it was nice to see so many British actors in full American drag (David Morse as Washington gets a particularly fine prosthetic nose). I was also pleased to see that, on this occasion, the British weren't being stereotyped as effete yet sadistic swines; we were merely wrong, which was a pleasant change of pace.
As the series was fairly long there were three disks to go through, and also, for once, Doc wanted to watch almost all the features, so it has sort of felt like we've suddenly discovered the American Revolution Channel.
Doc C has been wanting a burger for days now, so we stopped off at Cook Out which we hadn't tried before. They are take away only, and, as this was our first visit there, we were totally unfamiliar with the extensive menu, which made us feel intimidated and very rushed. Doc C got the required burger and fries; but I couldn't see any vegetarian options so I decided not get anything, in fact I waited until we got home and made myself a spinach smoothie!
It wasn't until after The Doc had finished his meal that I really looked at the bags that it came in. The bag in the photo on the left is the main bag everything was in, the bag on the right held the fries. And yes I painted my finger nails black this weekend, and my toe nails are maraschino cherry red:
Ok I'm confused, do they have 40 Premium Milkshakes or 36 Premium Milkshakes? But it really wasn't that which caught my attention, it was this:
Wow. So, I'm guessing that Cook Out is a Patriotic Christian business then.
After I got home from work I suddenly felt exhausted and so I lay on the bed and had a nap. When I woke up, a couple of hours later, I felt yucky. Not really ill, but as if I was made entirely from cotton wool, and I wasn't at all hungry; which is very rare for me, particularly as I really hadn't eaten much during the day. Doc insisted I should eat something, so he made me a plain veggie burger with baked beans, which was all I felt like eatting, and I curled up on the sofa for a while before deciding to go to bed early.
When I was getting washed, the water trickled to a complete stop, and the taps just made gurgling noises at me. Whilst I still had a face full of soap. Fortunately I could get just enough water out of the bath taps, so I got my face rinsed and then called down to the Doc, because it looked like our well had run dry.
One of the cool things about having a well as your main water supply is that you don't have to pay any water bills; the less cool things include the slight smell of sulfur (I don't mind that, I find it less offensive than chlorine, but the Doc hates it), and the well can run dry. We had a phone number for the complex's handy man for just such an eventuality, but it was too late to phone so we decided to call in the morning. Just as Doc came to bed too, I heard the downstairs toilet (which makes a very loud groaning noise). Doc rushed back down to see what was happening and reported back that it was filling up with muddy water. There was nothing we could do about that, so we went to sleep.
This morning the water was running, but Doc spoke to the handy man anyway, and apparently what was most likely to have happened was that some sediment had got into our pipes and caused enough of a block to kill the water pressure temporarily. Once that sediment had moved on, our water came back, albeit a little bit, um, gritty.
I think I'm going to be the first one to risk a shower, because my bed hair is not a great look for me this morning. I'm slightly concerned that I might come out significantly dirtier than I went in.
As I understand it Barack Obama has now achieved the necessary number of delegates, 2118 (in fact he got 2132), but he won't be the actual official Democrat Presidential Nominee until he receives the party mandate at the party conference on the 28th of August.
Is it just me, or is this whole thing really starting to drag now?
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