Update on the burn. I've never had a burn like this before. Usually the skin gets a bit red or at worst, I get blisters, which usually break) and then it gets scabby and starts to heal. This time, no visible blisters. The skin is a dark reddish brown and swollen where it was burned and I suspect the blisters are deep below. It hurts. It hurts a hell of a lot.

So, deciding to take advantage of the much lauded NHS "free" medical care which I pay vast amounts of my tax money into, I stopped at the A&E walk in clinic. The so-called medical person who looked at my hand advised me, "that's burned innit?". No shit, Sherlock. So what did he propose to do about it? A nice perscription burn cream to take away the sting and pain? Oh no, he suggested "don't do anything rough with it" and "let nature take its course". And that I should take some paracetomol is the pain kept me from sleeping. Nothing else, not even some sensible advice like wash gently to keep it clean.

Waste of my time. This is a serious burn. The NHS can be good at times but sadly, most of the time they are little better than the witchdoctor.

It took over 5 hours of iced wraps and painkiller tablets to bring the burn pain down to function level. It's 9:30 pm now and the hand still hurts and is stiff. There aren't blisters yet but the skin is swollen in the pattern of the boiling water inpact.

damn, damn, damn! I burned my right hand this morning making coffee. Splashed boiling water all over the top of my hand.

I stayed calm and grabbed for the "cooling burn spray" we keep handy on the kitchen counter. What garbage! Useless and didn't work. I turned on the cold water and stuck my hand under the running water as fast as I could. Now that is relief. I don't know why the spray didn't work but it didn't. So here I am an hour later, after soaking the hand in bowls of ice and water to cool down the skin and prevent further damage. And it still hurts like hell.

And so tomorrow my little "vacation" comes to an end. Wednesday morning at 9am will find me at my new job. That's the good news. The bad news is that my agency has a monthly pay schedule. I know that a monthly pay cycle is the general rule in the UK, especially for higher level jobs, but I've been lucky in that, up till now my jobs paid on a weekly basis. The money is obviously exactly the same either way. The only difference is that I have to wait a l-o-n-g time for my first paycheck and have to budget a bit more carefully.

In other news, the time has come for me to make a decision on my name. Do I switch over to my married name completely or do I keep using my former name which most people know and use? If I intend to switch, I need to call the US Embassy tomorrow, sort out the details, and overnight my passport to them to replace. Then at the end of July, I will be able to renew my visa in my married name - the UK authorities will only issue a visa in the name on my passport.

Whatever I decide, July is going to be a very tight financial month and August only a little less so. In August I'll have the pleasure of paying the UK gov't £1000 (yes, one thousand pounds sterling) to issue me my new visa. All so that I can continue working and paying that same UK government my obscene taxes for which they provide amazingly little in return. (Other than the opportunity to loathe Gorden Brown.)

Despite Alan's ambitious plans for spending my salary, I plan to pay off my credit cards as fast as I can and do some serious saving to create a reasonable safety cushion. I've already made a mark in the sand on IBgames. I'm not putting a single penny of my money into it. I know the annual company taxes/business license/whatever it is will soon be due. Last year, we paid half the cost because the claim was made that the company's income was only barely enough to cover its expenses and no funds were being used to pay the CEO a salary. This is bullshit. She is actually withdrawing a small but tidy amount every month. (An interesting point to me since ALL income in excess of the data center monthly charge were supposed to be divided evenly between the CEO, Alan, and me but I've never seen 1 penny out of it.) So I've informed Alan that when the bill arrives from the Isle of Man for the annual company accounts, the CEO will have to fund the £2-3,000 it runs. If she can't, then the company will have to dissolve or find some other source of funds.

Anyway, I had a lovely day in Calais with Asti on Saturday. We had lunch in a restaurant that I would happily recommend to anyone - La Sole Meuniere in Calais, old town near the yacht basin.

I start a new job on Wednesday as a project manager in Disaster Recovery at GlaxoSmithKline. The offices are a 5 minute drive from my house - astounding!

The night too quickly passes

And we are growing old,

So let us fill our glasses

And toast the Days of Gold;

When finds of wondrous treasure

Set all the South ablaze,

And you and I were faithful mates all through the Roaring Days.

Henry Lawson, "The Roaring Days"

How can they not have cottage cheese?

So here I am trying to move to a healthier diet. More fruit and vegetables, less bread and pasta, you know the drill. So I was shopping at Tesco's and for crying out loud, they don't sell plain cottage cheese.

They sell disgusting low-fat cottage cheese with it's plastic texture and taste. They sell plain low fat cottage cheese, low-fat cottage cheese with cheddar, with pineapple (and lots of pineapple juice to make it a soggy goo), with alien vegetable combos, and with corn and tuna and sweet chili - I can't even begin to describe how revolting that sounds to me. And yes, they do sell one variety of regular cottage cheese - with added creme fraiche - which makes it a loose, liquidy, creamy strangeness, tasting like you are eating lumpy cream, forget the cotage cheese.

Ugh! All I wanted was some plain regular cottage cheese to provide protein for my lunches.

But no, not in 3rd world Britain.

You can't even trust your familiar old brands to be safe here - they "localise" the recipes. Thus Cheerios that are sweet from the box, 7UP that is tooth achingly sweet, Heinz ketchup and Hellman's mayonaise that have strong distinct vinegar tangs.

It's not that I am being jingoistic about American products. It's quite a different story on the other side of the channel in France and Belguim ( not to mention Switzerland). Asti & I routinely do day trips over the Channel and shop in the French Hypermarts or the Bruges farmers market and their food is gorgeous.

I've heard a lot of talk about the "New British Cooking" all full of self-praising accolates. It's rubbish. Whatever they make might manage to look pretty but by and large it tastes pretty mediocre or gross. (We won't even start with the cost of food here because that itself is enough to sicken you!)

Not to say you can't go to some restaurants and find fantastic food. You can. We do. I just had dim sum at Yauatcha in Broadwick Street, Soho, London. Oh my god it's fantastic. Must orders: baked venison puffs, almond prawns - and the beef ho fun is to die for!

But sometimes all you want is some cottage cheese for a simple lunch with sliced fresh fruit on top. And fuggeddaboudit, it ain't happening here.

Went to see Cabaret at the Lyric theatre with Asti today. Awesome, awesome, awesome production. The actress playing Sally Bowes was no Liza Minella, not in her dreams; she was adequate and passably good in a few bits. The rest of the cast was ok. The orchestra was great. And the MC, ah the MC...the MC -was- the show and he was fabulous. From the moment he peeked his head out of the dilated iris in the wooden front "curtain" and said Wilkommen! he drew in the audience and had us eating out of his hands - and replying to his demands. No way to describe it, but he was sensationally good. Wow! I am so impressed. And the ending of this version of Cabaret was stunning - they slowly drop their clothes and walk naked into the showers as the clouds of zyklon B swirl. Wow!

In the middle of the night on Thursday (Friday morning at 3:30am) I woke up with terrible chest pain. It was as if someone wrapped a belt around my upper chest and was pulling it tight, along with that I had difficulty breathing. I felt clammy and slightly nauseous and light headed. So of course I thought to myself - is this angina/am I having a heart attack? I also considered, was it just a bad reaction to the aspirin I'd taken about an hour before at 2:30 am? Should I wake up Alan and have him drive me to the hospital just to be safe or should I risk dying rather than feel like a fool with a false alarm. Then the pain got bad enough I didn't care about feeling like a fool. I poked Alan awake and told him I was having chest pain and take me to West Middlesex Hospital (which is basically next door to our estate). Alan was dressed in a flash, and in moments I was in West Mid's A&E where a jobsworth behind the counter nevertheless took my details, slowly found them in the database, printed them out and alerted a passing doctor that I was having chest pain and trouble breathing. (Hold onto your seats, ladies and gentlemen) Within literally 2 minutes I was in a spotless emergency room being hooked up to a EKG machine and other state of the art kit we Americans take for granted but the NHS seems to regard as indulgent and optional. Technicians were taking blood, Emergency room technicians/nurses were getting details and prepping for the doctor who arrived in short order. And - they were all serious, listened to details I had to say, gentle, careful, thorough. The doctor on call that morning was a young woman with fantastic bedside skills who listened and explained lucidly. I'll skip to the end now..it turns out I was not having a heart attack. After 3 hours of intensive checking, testing, 4 sets of blood tests, x-ray, etc they could finid nothing wrong although it was clear to them I had been in extreme pain and brathing distress. The doctor referred me for further testing with a specialty group. However, she explained in detail they could find nothing wrong except that I was anemic as I had told her.
So false alarm? Not really, the pain was absolutely genuine.
Not the way I like to spend my nights. I was exhausted when I got home about 7am and slept most of the day on and off. Of course Alan stayed home - his night was also disrupted. I am unkind enough to have wished he went to work anyway since I just wanted to be alone and quiet.
Anyway that was how I spent my night. I was very impressed with West Mid's A&E staff.

And after all that, it might well have been the aspirin.

Andrew - graduation day

Wow, long time since last posting. So much has happened. Adam and his partner Geri were here for a long Easter weekend visit. They managed to catch the most miserable weather of the year here - sleet, freezing cold, snow. Hopefully they enjoyed the holiday trip anyway.

Then Andrew came over at end of April for a week or so during spring break. We had a ball - he lucked out with generally warm and sunny weather. The last full day of his visit was gloriously warm and sunny and Asti, Andrew, and I left at 6am for a day trip to Bruges. Fast drive down to Dover, the P&O ferry across the English Channel, then another quick drive and we were sitting back, basking in the sunshine, drinking excellent crisp pilsner at a street cafe by the T'zant plaza in Bruges. Lovely little place where we had grilled steaks with Bearnaise sauce and sizzling fites.

It was a really excellent day. We dragged Andrew to our favorite chocolate shop and loaded him down with some goodies to take back to NYC.

At work, I finally completed the dread London Disaster Recovery Test. Nightmare! Four weeks+ for what should have been simply an intense 5 days. That's what happens when you neglect your DR environment for over a year, possibly close to 18 months. I ended up expanding an EVA into a 2ndary cabinet, reconfiguring another EVA, building our first DR ESX system (a descent into IT hell!), and building 14 replacement servers for ones that could not be repaired with simple parts replacements. Ugggh! I just finished the Gantt tiimeline chart and the Issues matrix on Friday and handed them in just before the bell at 4pm.

On a lighter note - I found this website sweet - http://colorwar2008.com/submissions/youngnow?page=1

In 9 days we fly to New York for Andrew's graduation from CCNY. He's getting a Research Honours BA in Chemistry and even won a prize. He's been accepted into the Chemistry PhD program at CUNY so school resumes in the fall. We'll all be at Capsuoto Freres Friday night celebrating after the commencement.

I'm looking for a new contract this week. My contract with A&O finished a month ago and was extended but it was only covering a secondment of the regular DR guy so now it's finished. Such is life for the IT contract worker.

Ringing changes at Bishops Square, Spitalfields

Going off to Oxford tonight after work to meet Alan at the annual ACCU conference. Tonight's the "Speakers Dinner". As usual the food will be utterly horrible and generally inedible and offend meat-eaters sensibilities with their uncanny ability to turn protein into reinforced cardboard with extra carbon on top. And to add insult to injury its £50. Ouch.

Tube to work

Amazing, a gentleman on the Tube offered me his seat this morning. An
almost unknown custom in the UK these days.

I'm so sick of gray skies and winter. I need sun!

So, sketching in the most recent void of silence, in no particular chronological order but more that of importance to me and interest:
1. Andrew will graduate from CCNY on May 30
2. Andrew was admitted to the CUNY PhD program
3. I'm working (yes, I know I mentioned this previously). So I'm still working - for an International law firm. Doing Disaster Recovery work - planning and testing.
4. Asti has a new job with a prestigious EU agency
5. Adam is flying to London with his fiancee Geri on Thursday night for a long Easter weekend visit.
6. Andrew will fly to London for Spring Break in April
7. Alan and I (and Asti, too) will fly to NYC in May for Andrew's graduation
That's all the good news
On the minus side, I'm going completely nuts in our small apartment. Gotta move, no choice. Seriously, seriously awful tiny place.

Boulogne

Finally made it to Vicomtesse Jeanne's home town!

The end of week 1 at my new job. What a relief to successfully complete the first week. My timesheet is signed and ready to be sent to the agency and hopefully produce a salary deposited into my checking account next Friday. I really like this job and I think I'm settling in and producing some value for them already.

Well, Happy New Year! I didn't realize I hadn't posted here in a month. Main reason is, my contract at work wasn't renewed and I think I sort of freaked. Thing is, it wasn't renewed for the worst of reasons. It was due to some nebulous corporate push-back in Houston. Nothing to do with me, gov. I got work ratings of "superb" from my manager and director. My manager was actually in tears when she told me. They even managed to get me an extra week to run my work up till Xmas by sheer balls and deceit. I know, I know, that's what contracting is all about. But, I was still shocked. Everyone I worked with sent me emails at my personal address asking to keep in touch, inviting me to meet them for drinks, etc. But still, I went off to my Xmas hols feeling miserable.

So, a week in Vienna at Xmas - Alan's idea, not mine believe me. I like to be home for Xmas but if I had to be away it would be someplace warm and sunny. We managed to have a good time in Vienna and I'll eventually post some photos.

So the new year starts and I started job-hunting. If you know me, you know how soul-destroying I find job hunting, Hence the absolute silence here.

But, voila, the silence is over. I have found a new job. Bigger and better! And I start on Monday. The people rejoice. Solvent again. The proverbial wolf chased away from the door.

It can't be 23 degrees - It never gets cold in England

There's a widely held belief here among the natives that it never gets hot or cold, hence there's no need for air conditioning in the summer nor any need for central heating in winter or heating on public transport. There's absolutely no shaking the locals from this belief, even as they slowly turn blue from the cold, shivering and frost forming on their noses.

So this morning I had the joy of commuting in to work, at 23F, on buses with no heating. Not just not turned on or broken, but non-existent. Two hours, three buses, no heat.

The joy.

If It's Friday, This Must Be Bruges

Today is my birthday. To celebrate, Asti took me on a day trip to Calais on Friday. At least that was the original plan. On the channel ferry from Dover to Calais, we decided to drive through to Belgium for cheaper cigarettes. Once in Belgium, the friendly cafe owner recommended Bruges' Christmas market as only a short 30 minute drive away ... so it was on to Bruges for the day! And what a lovely city it is. We shopped and strolled and looked and ate Chateaubriand with Bearnaise sauce and drank beautiful Bruges Blond beer. We bought gorgeous Christmas presents at really low prices and had an absolute ball.

Thanksgiving!

I'm off to Asti's house for a massive joint family Thanksgiving dinner. Stayed up late last night baking homemade apple pie and pumpkin pie and making chopped liver and other savory bits. Now off to Asti's where the real cooking begins.

Rumour has it that Katz's deli is for sale/about to be sold. This is too cruel to contemplate.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
- Shana Alexander

Left Luggage

from the reviews - A beautiful, warm picture filled with compassion and humanism.

This is true but the film is so much more. It's exquisite. It's worth watching. Please just watch this film.

As far as I am concerned, today is the first day of winter here. It dropped below freezing last night and this morning my car's windows all needed serious scraping. It took the car a noticeable 5 min to really warm up well - at 10 minutes before 6am.

Tonight, I made myself matzah brei for supper. A little drizzle of honey over the steaming plate and it was perfect comfort food. OK, it wasn't the Virginia Slims, coffee, and a bagel I heard Andrew order from the cart while we chatted on the phone, but then, I'm in a 3rd world country.

We have a brand new bus on the route to my office but no heat because the transport company hasn't enough mechanics to turn the mechanism on. They decided to save money on the buses by ordering them without standard turn mechanisms (a little handle!) to switch from heat to fresh air (forget about air-conditioning!). So now they need to have a mechanic dig into the bus innards and turn the heat on or off with a spanner. Charming, eh?

The matzah brei is fabulous.

Wagons East

I just watched a theretofor unknown to me film starring John Candy. What a little gem, a delight. No, nothing world shaking, but a classic warped comedy that had me snickering for almost 2 hours. I understand that John Candy died just before they completed the film. What a loss, I love his films, all of them including the serious dramas as well as the hilarious comedies.

Anyway, watch this film. Especially if you are a New Yorker or other Big City Slicker.

In Civilized Countries they have traffic lights. In Third World UK, they have traffic circles and pedestrians cross any road at their own risk. The joy.

The Shoulds

You know what they are. They're all the gratuitous, unhelpful, obvious, passive-aggressively hostile comments people make under the guise of helpful advice.

You should lose weight
You should stop smoking
You should get more exercise
You shouldn't spend money on that
You should buy a house
You shouldn't take drugs for that
You should ask for a pay raise
You should get a new job
You should cut your hair
You shouldn't take a pram on a crowded bus at rush hour
You shouldn't take 2 or more children by yourself on an airplane

You should. You shouldn't. You should have this, you shouldn't have that.

Yeah, well, woah! Let me write that advice down. Why didn't someone tell me this sooner. I'd never thought of that myself.

What sort of unsolicited advice is more unwelcome than "you should believe what I believe" or "you should act as I would act?"

John Ferriby - passed away Tuesday, October 2nd

I am sorry to report that John has passed away after fighting a Glioblastoma Brain Tumor for almost one year.  At the end, he was very peaceful and I was able to be with him.

Barbara Ferriby

Thank heaven for aspirin and codeine. The pain and swelling in my hand got so bad last night that I woke up about midnight with pain shooting up to my elbow and the finger swollen to immobility. The bandaging the hospital put on my hand became too tight and exacerbated the problem, so I cut that off and took 3 aspirin and codeine tablets. It's not just a matter of pain control, the aspirin brings down inflammation which is almost as important and gives great relief.

Anyway, what a miserable thing this broken finger is.

I'm working from home today because - drum roll - I sort of broke or fractured some tiny bone in the base of my pinky finger. It's in the joint where the finger connects so it effects the entire hand. Of course, the timing is perfect because Monday is my UK drivers license road test - and with this broken finger it's almost impossible to move the gear shift lever without excruciating pain. Assuming I can get it to move at all - sometimes I simply can't. Gonna be a fun test.

Anyway, my thought for the day - some simple obvious rules for life:

Do not touch a hot stove.
Do not to reply to an email message from the wife of a deposed Nigerian ruler.

(Note: no stoves or deposed Nigerian rulers were involved in breaking my finger.)

What do you say to a friend who is dying? A friend and professional colleague of mine just went into hospice with end-stage brain cancer. He and his wife decided not to do the desperate-crazy-witchdoctor-alternate therapy route, thank goodness. Part of John's immense charm was his intelligence and rationality.

But what do you say, what do you think, what do you feel when you must face that you are losing a friend? (I won't even try to get into what John is facing)

Damn! Damn!

Goodrich Castle

I'm still alive. But I never quite regained the level of well-being I was at prior ro falling ill in May. Perhaps it's exhaustion. Once I have my driver's license here I will save over 4 hours commuting time a day which may be the factor to regain my life.

I'm taking this new medication my doctor suggested I trial and see if it worked for me. So I've been taking it for about 6 weeks now and wondering every day - does it really work, does it really do anything for me? I feel perfectly normal, feel like my usual self, what can it be doing for me if I don't notice anything different?

Well, it certainly must be doing something because yesterday morning I forgot to take my tablet and by mid-morning I could feel the difference. As the day went by I felt worse and worse and it was made very clear to me that this was what my life was like before I started the medication. Amazing how fast one forgets.

Oh yes! First thing this morning when I got up I took today's tablet. Not going to let that repeat again.

What the world needs now is definitely not love sweet love. It needs a no calorie potato chip. Or 10 calorie pizza. Or no calorie cheetoes.

Who told them they could put * SUGAR * in shredded wheat???

I kid you not! I am finally recovering from that nightmare kidney infection. I have lost over 3 stone in less than 6 weeks. So, I am finally tying to start eating modestly but more normally again, keeping to a low calorie but nutritious diet. I go to Tesco and there's a huge long aisle chock full of alien cereals all of which seem to be primarily sugar when I dig thru the distracting and misleading info. We're talking even Cheerios and Special K! They were both too sweet as is from the box. Yuch! I actually threw out the freshly opened boxes.

So, I was just delighted to see good old reliable Quaker Oats Shredded Wheat (bite site). I get it home, measure out a cup and add milk. Taste...

Arrrghh!!!! SUGAR!

What is with these Brits?

Anyway, I'm back. Sorta, kinda. I'm starting to go through all the backed up mail and reply to it. I'm paying bills, filling out forms. All my personal stuff that I deal with not Alan. I'm determined to clear it all out by the end of the weekend.

Stay tuned, same Bat Channel, for my adventures in learning to drive in the UK.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride,
superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

It seems forever I've been ill but I'm still not completely over this infection. What's more, I am still profoundly weak; too weak to get to work on my own and too weak to survive through a full work day. My Doctor is sending me to a team of specialist haematologists to look into the "peculiar" results she received to my latest, and more thorough, blood tests.

In a more cheerful note - Asti called and made reservations for us to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Savoy on June 22rd. This is incredibly lovely and I really look forward to it.

I presume the infection is basically over. I don't have a thermometer so I can't tell if the fevers have gone. I know, what an idiot I am, but I will pick one up this week.

I call my doctor tomorrow and see if she wants me to come in for another check up and to see if the new antibiotics she prescribed did the trick. I finished the course on Thursday night but Friday she was away for the weekend and her partner is one of those vile arrogant African Moslem's (a man of course) (and did I mention he hates Americans? He was so snotty about it that last time I spoke to him I said, I'm not just an American, I'm a JEWISH American and proud of it!) So, I decided to wait to see my own doctor.

Anyway, I'm putting off starting the Acomplia since I have no appetite for it to control. I'm so food-apathetic I could just sit and look at a dinner plate and just push the bits around till it was time to throw away. That's assuming food is placed in front of me. If I have to get it myself, I eat stuff like an orange or half a banana. I am, sensibly, drinking lots and lots of low cal cranberry juice. But food holds no appeal for me. Partly I think it's the stomach pain I fear. My brain has decided food = pain (or at least serious discomfort.)

Still taking antibiotics and painkillers. Still running night fevers. Still feel like death warmed over. Still no appetite.

Yes, it's true, only death would have prevented me from being at the generator installation on Thursday.

Still direly ill. Have lost 2 stone in 8 days - and that is after allowing for excess water loss. Not exactly what I had in mind as a quick start diet.

I just want the pain and fever to end. I seem to pass in and out of fever cycles. The pain never ends.

Back among the living again!

Yes, last Friday morning at work I sort of collapsed. I managed to be discrete about it, call a cab and get home to bed toute suite. From there it was a descent into hell. Monumental pain and cycles of high fever breaking to drenching sweats only to start over again. The pain? No way to describe it, bad enough that I could not read, think, at times could not stay conscious. But there was no way I would go to an emergency room on a Friday night. Assuming I could make it down the stairs to a taxi, which is a lot to assume since the 12 foot journey to my bathroom was a major effort. There was no way I could sit in a waiting room.

So it went through the weekend, till Monday morning when I phoned my doctor's office and was immediately given an emergency appointment. So - 4 days in absolute agony, no food, only ice water to drink and it turns out I have a raging kidney infection. No nonsense about NHS budget drugs, my doctor prescribed new heavy duty specific fast acting antibiotics.

I called Alan to let him know what was up and ask where I could get the script filled and he offered to come home immediately and get it filled for me so I could go right back to bed. I gratefully accepted - and just that - called a cab, went home and fell into bed. Just as well Alan was on the way home as I had trouble making it up the stairs and it was possible he might have found me on the stairs waiting for him. By 2pm I had taken the first antibiotic tablet. Its 2 a day for 3 days.

So no food for 4 days - I finally had a croissant and some sweet coffee at 6pm. I may have a soft boiled egg later with a slice of toast.

I'm starting to feel somewhat human again and the pain is reducing. The fever is still running but that will break soon.

Spoke to my old friend Bo today. Good to hear that he's surviving. Life's hard; survival is a triumph and a daily struggle for some of us. Bo's still programming and working on projects and occasionally writing. I hassled him to write more because I wanted to know the ending of an unfinished story he'd sent me last year.

I met my doctor after work Monday night - yes, at her office, my first NHS office visit. Not an examination like they'd do in the US. She just wanted to meet me and talk about my blood test results. Apparently everything was normal (in fact she admitted the results were perfect/ideal) except I was severely anemic. What a surprise. I did warn the practice nurse that I was chronically and seriously anemic with episodes of profound anemia. She was seriously worried that my test reult was 7. I was amazed and delighted it was that high. Normal range for female is 12-16. My doctor in NYC was always telling me to aim for 10, 10 would be nice. I would love to have my test results at 10. But 7 is a hell of a lot better than I expected considering how bad I've been feeling lately. And no, nothing really can be done. I'm trying out a new liquid iron supplement. It would be nice if it helped. We shall see.

Work continues. Next week the 400 Kva emergency backup generator for the new Alpha data centre arrives. I will take photos of the crane lifting it into place. I'm all ready for it - got my shiny new safety helmet and my eye cringing green safety jacket.

I just put a rabbit casserole in the oven for dinner. It's freshly caught wild rabbit in red wine with shallots, button chestnut mushrooms, and chantenay carrots. The flavourings are juniper berries, bay leaf, garlic, mustard. I added a glug of good Port, too. In about 90 minutes it will be gorgeous.

Raining all day here - now it's 6:30pm the sky has finally cleared (probably for all of 30 min) to give us a glimpse of blue skies and sunshine to end the weekend. It will then rain all night and gues what, tomorrow as well.

Once the week starts, I have no energy for anything outside of work each day. I need to sort out my drivers license and get a car and put a stop to the craziness.

Like sheep and marmalade

haven't been posting - anemia is very bad lately. Also my new fridge died so I'm not a happy bunny. Damn John Lewis! Their customer service/repair service takes forever. Over 1 week wait for a repairman and they refuse to schedule when he will arrive - just stay home the whole day and lose a day's pay. Bastards.

I made a classic Sunday Roast Dinner today.

Rare roast beef
gravy
Jersey Royal potatoes
Very fine green beans (those tiny French kind)
Yorkshire pudding
horseradish sauce

We also had prawn dim sum for starters
and
Bread and Butter pudding with custard for dessert (I opted out of the dessert but Alan enjoyed it)

Only problem was the dinner didn't like me very much and I ended up crunched on the bed waiting for the pain to end. This hasn't happened to me in several years and I thought it was over. Guess not but then I've been super anemic lately. So anemic that I have to stop after a block or to. I need to get my blood tested again soon.

Why do I know that the 3 meter Cat 5 cable on my desk is a cross-over cable? Worse, why do I know what a cross-over cable is and what it is used for, much less be able to tell that it is one from looking at the terminals. Actually I had a feeling it was one before I even snagged it out of the box of odds and ends in the comms lab.

That's just so sad.

Sent to me by my old AboveNet buddy Aida Salah.

Shangri-La is in you mind, but your Buffalo is not

Spent the morning researching what Google hath wrought and fixes thereof. Got my archives sorted after much misery. Lost my blog's original design tho. No choice about it. I'll create a new design tho since life has moved on, my blog design may as well, too.

You may notice that all my years of archives are missing. Thank you Google. Google forced users to migrate to the new blog version without warning us we'd lose all our archives. I guess that counts as a great big F U from Google to users. If they'd warned me, I would have saved the archives onto some other media or location before I migrated my account.

I thought Google's mantra was "Don't Be Evil". I guess that's for other definitions of evil than I know.

Just arrived back from Oxford. I was up there with Alan for the annual ACCU conference. Alan spoke on Network Programming. I was surprised how he packed the room for his talk since his time slot was in direct competition with Bjarne Stroustrup. Some of them were clearly fans because I see them at every talk Alan gives regardless of topic. Anyway, it was a really good talk despite Alan not creating the slides/slideshow he was supposed to have done. He actually (figuratively) kicked me out of the house for 2 days at Easter so he could supposedly create these slides. Instead, he write code for Federation's new front end and he played Sim II. Gotta lotta 'splain' to do there, Alan. For next year's conference, he's going to have his whole talk ready to be sent in by Xmas so it gets on the conference CD.

Anyway - stay clear of the Oxford Paramount hotel near the Peartree roundabout. It's crap and the food is dire! They have the facade and trappings of a luxury hotel but absolutely no foundation or follow through to make it actual luxury rather than just pretension.

ACCU - shame on you for the ghastly Speakers Dinner. Perhaps it was just as well that the food portions were so shockingly small because the food was so horribly bad, there was no temptation to eat it after the first taste. Many of us went out afterward missing the chip stand in Oxford since we were stuck way outsaide town this year - the hotel is at a park & ride roundabout so no walkable alternatives to the provided food. Even the food at the hotel restaurant, lunch bar and coffee bars was indifferent at best and generally revolting.

On the other hand, the speakers were great, the people attending were a really good bunch.

We're eating dinner at home tonight. I've had enough tough, overcooked, sugered and salted food to last me the rest of the year.

This is Andrew standing in front of the British Museum on Saturday. He wanted to see the Elgin Marbles, which he also photographed. We mostly wandered around the museum looking at the wonderful red & black ancient Greek pots, monumental statuary from the palace at Ninevah, and cuniform tablets - which are absolutely amazing! The BM is wonderful for simply wandering around and looking.

On the way to the museum we stopped at The Lazy Dog cafe for really excellent Hong Kong style dim sum nibbles. It was a whole day of serendipity because after finding the dim sum place, we then walked on to find a graphic books and comics store where Andrew garnered a few very choice items ( ask him what they are and for a peek at them). Then we stopped in at the Games shop and were sorely tempted to buy the (anti) Terrorist game complete with balaclava of Evil.

Andrew got a set of miniature canopic jars at the museum and other assorted lovelies. We then cabbed it over to Asti's flat in Bermondsey. The sun was shining, the day warm with a slight cool breeze. Can this really be London with such magnificent weather?

In a sense, I knew it would come to this - spam has so obscured my legitimate email that it has become too lengthy and demanding a task to filter it out anymore, the noise to signal ratio has gone beyond my limit. I've had my IBgames email address for so many years, probably about 15!At this point spam is 99+% of my total mail.

I've given up on filters, believe me I've tried them all, carefully and patiently training them. Useless. I saw an email fly by as it downloaded - from my friend Gordon, with a photo attached and before I could catch it, the filter had eaten it never to be seen again. Changed filters at that point and the next filter found other ways to mangle my mail. I just do not have a spare hour or more each day to go through my email any more and what's more I don't want that m,iserable task. It's not the US this crap is coming through, either. I did some experimenting and the bulk of the crap is from Japan and cyrillic addresses. Why spammers think I read cyrillic, I don't know.

Anyway, I'm moving most of my personal mail over to my gmail account. I hate the awkward email address on that but at least I do get my email there. I get so little spam there - perhaps 40 pieces a week tops, and Gmail manages to trap it all.

It's snowing. And it's even sticking. Heavy snow, big fat flakes and lumps of it. And it's cold.

Blech!

I just washed the windows - inside and out! and polished them to gleaming streak-free clearness. So of course there's a sudden hailstorm! Yowser!

I decided I had to to - something- about the apartment, so this weekend's project was the balcony. We have a berautiful view of the Duke of Northumberland's River/Silverhall park. But the balcony was dirty and dusty and unused and littered with stubbed out cigarette butts. So I cleaned up the litter, washed the windows, bought a really sturdy and comfy director's chair and bought a large rosemary plant in a terracotta planter. I need to add more planters of herbs and tomatoes and flowers and some hanging baskets and another chair and voila! It will be lovely and inviting very soon.

What's new here? Well, no point mentioning my work since it's still a 2+ hour commute each way which sucks up most of my personal time and leaves me exhausted - although my job and my workmates are still wonderful.

What's new is that Andrew is coming to visit for Easter weekend. He'll leave JFK Thursday night and arrive here Good Friday morning and return home on Tuesday. So a short but hopefully sweet Easter/Passover weekend together. The plan is to keep this visit firmly in the relaxed and leisurely category. Per Andrew's request, one whole day wandering aimlessly around the British Museum- yay! This is a wonderful thing to do. Other plans are for sitting on the terrace at the London Apprentice, overlooking the Thames, and drink and chat. A walk to Syon house, perhaps. Basically leave things relaxed and open to possibilities. No schedules, no rush, just float and relax.

Our friends Ginny & Nigel have sold their house and are about to leave for a new life in Spain. They have a posh new apartment on the beach near Alicante. We're going to a farewell do for them on Saturday. We're also dragging our friend Jude down from Leeds to be at the farewell bash since Ginny is her best friend and she needs to be there to say goodbye or more like aloha - till we meet again. We all plan to visit Ginny & Nigel and guest it in the sun. They're good people.

The chiller unit for the Data Centre build-out at work arrived on Wednesday. Great fun watching the giant crane hoist it into place on the new plinth outside the Alpha data room.

Same words - different food!

To start with, be aware that all your familiar brand name foods are generally made locally to a different, local tastes adjusted recipe. This means familiar comfort foods like Hellman's Mayonaise and Heinz Ketchup have a LOT more vinegar than you're used to in the US. Even old reliable Philadelphia Cream Cheese is not exactly the same. Still the best you can get here but not the same.

Two ubiquitous kitchen standbys to also be wary of are canned Tuna and Cottage Cheese.

They do not sell White (Albacore) tuna here. Period. End of story. Ain't available. The stuff they sell in cans here is more closely related to what we'd give our cats. It's not the lovely, firm, mild, and clean tasting Tuna we know and love. Don't even think of buying it. How I miss Starkist, Chicken of the Sea and BumbleBee's best solid, white, albacore.

The other gotcha is Cottage Cheese. I don't know what you'd call the dairy product sold here as "cottage cheese". It's nothing like Breakstone's", that's for sure.

Yes, yes, yes , of course there's scads of lovely food available here. The point is, it's different. And sometimes you just want the comfort of familiar tastes.

Alan and I are going out shortly to start taking photos of the lunar eclipse. It should reach peak totality about 10:45 pm or so here, so I should be awake enough to go outside and get some good photos then. I'll try to get a cycle of shots through the whole eclipse actually.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention - I bought myself a new camera. I love taking photos and I have not been happy with any of the cameras I've been given or used since my old wonderful Minolta 35mm film camera. This new camera is the first that is entirely my own choice. It's the Sony cyber-shot DSC-T50. In bright cherry red. I'm a happy girl.

I also paid off all the outstanding back bills I had except for 2 personal loans. I'll be starting to pay those off with my next paycheck.

Have I mentioned my husband and his lust//need for a new laptop? (For family members, think "Space shuckle" and you will understand everything.) The campaign for a new laptop began in early Dec 2006 with subtle murmurings about how long code was taking to compile. I'll spare you the remaining details.

The object of desire was a "Copper Toshiba" with a 17" wide screen monitor, full size keyboard with keypad, harmon kardon stereo speakers, blue LED lights along the front edge, and all sorts of cutting edge specs including a 200 GB HD, 2 GB ram, Intel duo core processor, top of the line Nvidea graphic card with 512 MG, etc. The people rejoice, the man is happy with his new laptop. We added in a new USB external HD - a 500GB red (lego) brick. Totally adorable - as cute as the laptop is sleek and sexy.

We staggered into a restaurant for lunch afterwards since we left the house only having coffee this morning. The happiest thing besides getting exactly, precisely what we wanted (and for an excellent low price) was that we paid for it - didn't put it on plastic, not going to have to pay it off. We agreed to wait till we set aside enough to pay cash for what we wanted - and we did.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

I just got a Samsung 20" widescreen LCD monitor. Can you believe this is my first brand new monitor ever and what's more, the first one I have picked out for myself. I really hate when people give me something technological or push me into buying it (even worse!) but it's not what -I- want. (Yes, my husband in Mr #1 for things like that.)

I really needed a monitor because otherwise I just had the standard little laptop screen as my main monitor and recently a 3rd hand 8 year old cast-off 17" LCD wit5h major brightness issues. (As in dark and murky and belongs in the trash bin which is why the other 2 former owners dumped it.)

So, I survived the install and configuration and adjustment process (You do know that "Plug and Play" is one of the 10 Great Lies, right?). Now I just need to get a new computer or laptop - of my own choice, to my own tastes. I would get one now except my nearest and dearest has been putting on a "Space shuckle" scene daily for the past 3 months and I'm so worn down by it that I'm letting him buy a new laptop tomorrow. His former laptop will go to my son Andrew whose laptop died recently. What I realty wanted to do is get a new laptop for myself and give Andrew my Thinkpad which is less than a year old (no, I'm not happy with it because I did not choose it and it hasn't the features I want, but I got it for free so I've used it) I think it is powerful enough that Andrew would have found it very useful.

But my aim at the moment is to pay off debt not buy optional new equipment.

Anyway, I like the new monitor.

Health report - I'm still feeling exhausted and achey. I wish I had a real idea how long this post-flu whatever will take to go away, recover from. Useless to ask a doctor here since most of them seem to have become idiots following the politically correct line. According to them, I probably had a mild cold and my anemia is negligible and I am focusing too much attention on my high fever, heavy lung congestion, low hemoglobin test results, etc. The NHS has spoken. All hail the NHS.

Back to work, I think.

OK, someone asked for the recipe I used so here it is...

2 cups butter                                
2 cups sugar                                       
2 cups brown sugar
            
4 large eggs                                                     
2 tsp. vanilla
                                    
4 cups flour                                         
5 cups blended oatmeal*(see note below)
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. baking soda (also called bicarbonate of soda)

24 oz. chocolate chips (or more, more is good, I used more)
3 cups chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)(yes, I used more of these, too!)

*Note about what blended oatmeal is...Measure oatmeal and blend in a blender or food
processor to a powder.

Also note - most civilized people with a well equipped kitchen will have a sturdy
mixer to cream the butter and sugar and then mix the dough and a blender for the
oatmeal. We still have a basically bachelor kitchen from Alan which I am slowly
upgrading. So I made these cookies using nothing but a food processor to cream the
butter and sugar and a bowl and big spoon to hand mix the rest.

Cream butter and both sugars. Take time to make sure it is light and fluffy.
Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.
Mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder and soda. 
Add chocolate chips, and nuts.
Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Lightly flatten balls
with the palm of your hand.

Bake for 10 minutes at 375F. (I baked them for 9 1/2 min at 170C in a fan convection
 oven.)
Makes a LOT of large cookies - like about 100 or so. You can halve the recipe but why?
They will all be quickly eaten and everyone will be very happy and grateful. Nah,
they'll be happy and ungrateful and demand more cookies!

I've been slogging in to work each day, making it barely, clawing my way through the day to get home and collapse from bronchitis or whatever it is I have that the NHS refuses to take seriously. Luckily I survived. There would have been a morbid satisfaction in Alan suing them as - She Told You She Was Sick and Needed Antibiotics- but alas I was strong enough to survive. However, this is NOT how modern medicine should be. This is medicine on the same level as 1 million years ago. Yep, that's about right for the NHS. Bastards!

Anyway, I'm Project Manager on a major data centre buildout for my company. It's to be the showcase model for all our corporate data centres worldwide.

Moving along, Alan's dat took the train down from Leominster to visit London for a few days and see some art exhibitions. We had dinner with him every night. Lovely to see him again but we are now all restaurant'd out and just want to eat home cooked dinners for a while. Which we are doing tonight - shoulder of lamb roasted with applies and shallots and cider and finished off with double cream. Yum!

Alan has 1 week left at his old job and then it's on to his new job - Infrastructure Director for a new Massively Multiplayer Game company. He's really happy to be going back into the Games industry and out of gaming. So to say goodbye he announced he would be bringing into work a huge pile of fabulous American cookies his wife wouldbe making for everyone.

Umm yeah- I'm making them now. The infamous Million Dollar/Neiman Marcus/Urban Legend cookies. I'm in luck because they came out georgous. Perfect. You would die just from the lucious smell. Let alone the taste.

"I have given instructions that I be informed every
time one of our soldiers is killed, even if it is in the
middle of the night. When President Nasser leaves
instructions that he is to be awakened in the middle
of the night if an Egyptian soldier is killed, there will
be peace."
-- Golda Meir

I managed to make it thru today at work - barely. I definitely sounded like I was spreading plague with my awful deep congested cough. I definitely would not have wanted to sit next to me. And I knew it wasn't as bad as it sounded.

The awful strength of addiction (and the morbidly ironic amusement) was brought home to me as I was leaving to go home. I had managed to fairly painlessly reduce a 40+/day cigarette habit down to about 4 (yes, really!) a day. It was working, I was holding at 4 or so a day, month after month. Not even buying any, just using up the American cigarettes my sons brought over before Xmas. Then this -illness- hit me on Friday and I was just too ill to even consider smoking or eating or even drinking coffee. Basically made it through the weekend sipping hot sweet mint tea or spiced black tea.

So I'm back at work today and people are going out for a smoke break and even the thought of it sends shudders of horror through me. And I'm thinking, wow! it's been 4 days since I smoked so maybe I might as well not start back again. The day passed and I was getting my coat on to go upstairs and wait for the cab to take me home (I'm really still too ill to be at work, no way could I make it thru my usual 2+ hour commute each way) - and I find myself thinking - not bad, I have enough time before the cab comes to smoke a cigarette. And a part of my mind was reacting with pleasure looking forward to it! And I thought, am I nuts? With me still hacking away like Typhoid Mary? And why not just give it up anyway since I haven't smoked for 5 days now. And then I thought, yeah but I still have a full pack of Virginia Slims Lights in my pocket! And that mattered to me.

This is nuts. This is addiction. Luckily I am far too ill to seriously consider smoking anything at the moment, no matter my addicted brain's yearnings. My body is digging its heels in saying OUCH! No! HURTS!

Back to sipping Pellegrino water, for me.

I had no idea that ...Land of Hope and Glory was sung to the Pomp and Circumstance tune. Yes, Pomp and Circumstance, known to most of us Americans as "The Graduation March".

1911 performance sung by Clara Butt from www.firstworldwar.com

The tune is much better used for graduations. It was first used at a graduation in 1905 when Yale invited its composer, Elgar to accept an honorary doctorate of music. It quickly spread to become the ubiquitous choice it is today.

I'm working from home today - feeling better than I did this weekend but then, I felt close to death much of the weekend so it doesn't take very much to say "feeling better" than that.

Anyway the fever seems to slowly be drifting down, the congestion is slowly breaking up , and my voice is starting to slowly return although I sound exactly like a croaking frog. I even managed to keep down a cup of coffee and 2 slices of toast this morning. Not bad considering that's the first food I've been able to manage since Friday night.

Of course, in the US, I would have called the doctor Friday to say I was feeling worse and it felt like my cold/flu was slipping over into bronchitis (because by this point in my life, I do know when that happens) and he'd have called in a prescription for antibiotics for me. I'd have started them Friday night so I'd never have gotten as sick as I did and I would have been up and lively by Sunday and back to normal (and back to work) on Monday morning.

But no, this is the UK where a call to the local NHS health practice got me the cold comfort of a suggested stop in to see the nurse - NEXT WEDNESDAY! When I asked for a prescription for antibiotics to halt the rapidly increasing infection, it was pointed out they don't believe antibiotics are necessary. Really! The NHS is psychic and able to tell this over the phone. So despite the NHS taking taxes out of my wages every week they are good for NOTHING. This is soviet socialised medicine at its best. NHS - the 3rd world standard for heath care.

It's not just me, either. The NHS decided modern medicines were too expensive so they would roll back prescriptions to older, cheaper medications. The promise was that if the changed prescription didn't work or had bad side effects they would restore your proper prescription. (Didn't medical experimentation on non-volunteers get addressed at Nuremberg?) So my husband's medication was changed to some vaguely related but totally different chemical. Too bad because it not only didn't work, it had horrendous side effects. When he informed his doctor of this, she switched him back to his original medication - but only for 1 prescription, no renewal. That was just to give the NHS time to come up with some other cheap alternative chemical for him. So he tried the 2nd cheap NHS stuff and again had major bad side effects. Now, in the US, we'd have been sitting in a good lawyer's office by this point and the issue would be settled because harm was knowingly done. But would the NHS accept that their 2 idiotic attempts to save a small amount of money were a failure? No, today we were informed they want to try a 3rd strange chemical. Obviously I told my husband to just say no and get a private prescription. What this country needs is a good major class action lawsuit - no, actually it needs a lot of major class action lawsuits. ::sigh:: No, even that won't help. People get the government they deserve. And it follows they get the institutions they deserve as well.

Readers in the US, no matter how bad you think the US heath care system is, it's heaven compared to the UK.

I am sure I will be able to find a private doctor who is willing and able to give me the quality level of health care I'm used to in the US. But it will cost me and it will be more than it cost in the US. No question about it.

I shall now return to my medieval level medical care - crawling into bed under a pile of quilts.

I spent almost all yesterday in bed, sweating and ill. This cold or flu turned into bronchitis and breathing was painful and difficult. Same through the night and all of today. I'm just drinking clear fluids like mint tea or sparkling cranberry juice.

Thanks, NHS - you run a perfect 3rd world country medical system. They tell me antibiotics are unnecessary. So now I've got a full blown 2ndary infection. No private doctors with weekend hours out this way or I'd pay and get proper medical treatment.

I haven't eaten at all since Friday night so I need to think about that

Blech! I have the most incredibly awful cold or flu or something. So bad I don't want to eat or drink anything except hot mint tea with lots of lemon. Sleep- that's what I want to do. Except I'm so ill I ache too much to sleep very long. An hour or so and then I'm awake and miserable again.

By sheer force I kept going all week and worked through each day, tho I'm definitely paying the price now. Even with the snow on Thursday where it took me 3 hours to get to work in the morning, I did it. Needs must. It's not just the money, tho that is a BIG part of it, it's that I've just been handed a major new task - I've taken over the Alpha Building Data Centre build out. My manager Gordon is off to Houston to repeat his magic with their data centre so this one here in the UK is being left in my delicate hands - must be the dark red nail varnish does the trick.

First project team meeting is Tuesday the 13th. I worked like a madwoman Thursday & Friday to get all the vendors, contractors, and staff committed to the time and date and prepped with the questions I need answered and details they are expected to commit to.

Other than that, it's been all blah!

I really, really wish we had a TV. I could flop out and veg in front of it and relax. As it is, I can use the computer or go to bed and read. This flat is way too small even for 1 adult, let alone 2.

I think that's enough moaning, back to shivering under the duvet.

In the news- before I end this - last Saturday I went with Hilary to The Sanctuary Spa. Woah - total luxury, total pleasure. Full body aromatheraphy massage, pedicure, manicure, foot massages, jacuzzi spa, steam room - way too much to mention it all. Total indulgence. Worth it for 1 day for hard working women.

Next Saturday I'm going with Asti to see a play called Sit & Shiver. Black comedy about a family sitting shiva. Good reviews, I'm looking forward to it.

Andrew built his own white box PC. Clever kid.

Alan starts his new job on March 12th. Game company - multiplayer games - massively multiplayer games.

For real now- back to bed.

Happy New Year 2007!

I see the holidays have come and gone since my last post. Yep, that's about it.

Well yes, all things considered they were reasonably nice holidays. Incredibly lovely to be with Adam and Andrew again. Incredibly frustrating not to have enough time to sit down for a leisurely meal and long chats with them. Next time I will send them tickets to come over, one long weekend each. Then it's the Kew Steam Museum, Syon Park and several long leisurely meals and visits to local traditional pubs.

We did New Years Eve at Ron & Hilary's with Ron, Hilary, Laurie and Pete, Alan and I as usual but this year I did the meal. A sort of Communist/Russian theme - Borsht with blinis and smoked salmon, dim sum (tiny chinese dumplings - yes, of course homemade!) beef stroganov with rice, onion and tomato chutney (with great thanks to Richard for the recipe. It was a complete rave! Everyone snapped it all up.) Dessert was Leningrads - a creme brulee made with kirschwasser and black forest cherries in the creme bit. The brulee bit was perfect and crackled and shattered deliciously. Watched fireworks on the telly - amazing display we want to watch live next year.

So the holidays have come and gone.

We definitely need a house. This flat is impossibly small.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm going out with Alan and some friends for a late Sunday lunch.

Pancakes. Must have pancakes. Must. Must.

I cleverly made sure to add Canadian maple syrup to my shopping list and bacon and little sausages. This is the grocery shopping I have Waitrose deliver every other Saturday morning, the heavy stuff I don't want to drag home and up the stairs. Things like tonic water and household cleansers and canned chick peas. The fresh food I mostly pick up on my way home from work.

The only thing I was not clever about was milk. I should have ordered another liter of milk. So now I'm trying to figure out how to make the pancakes with npot enough milk but I do have cream. I do have a container of milk in the freezer but that will never defrost in time.

And yes, I -AM- too lazy to go down to the corner show and pick up more milk now. Especially because it is cold and raining and gray outside.

No sane adult moves to the Bay Area for lifestyle; they move there
because they think they can make money. So, while I think it's nice
people like to ski, hike, bike, climb, surf, and golf, I don't care. I
want people who are greedy, competitive bastards who would move to
Fargo in January to make money, and who don't know any other way to
work than hard. The rest of it is a distraction.

I baked a huge and absolutely gorgeous Christmas cake yesterday. Yes, with booze. Cognac actually. And loads of pecans and cherries and pineapple and other good stuff. And then drizzled it with some more scotch whiskey. Yum, it smells wonderful!

In other news, I still feel totally beat up from my nightmare commute to work every day.

I'm off to bed at a bit past 9:30pm . Getting up at 5am is a real bitch.

Yay! The US election and Yay! the US voters! I'm proud of you but expected no less. And yes, I'm one of you because I absentee balloted.

So, still working, still making my insane 2+ hour commute each way, every day. I'm going to try a bus alternative to the trains tomorrow. I don't expect it will be that much quicker but it's worth a try to see if it is gentler on my body. I feel so beat up and bruised from the enormous amount of travel.

Yes, I still love my job. It's still interesting, exciting, and challenging.

I was able to buy some basic work clothes. That makes a HUGE difference. Oh my god, what a difference that makes. We're only talking about a few bits and a pair of shoes. I hadn't realised how worn out and awful my old clothes had become. I feel actually human once again.

Last night Alan and I went through our clothes and threw out all the old crappy stuff we would never wear again except in desperation. Threw out a full, large shopping bag. There was also actually stuff that didn't fit but was still in good shape, and that is folded neatly into a bag to go to the local church.

I'm off to the supermarket now. I'll be online later. Need some time to hang out online.

See you all soon!

I finished my 2nd week at work yesterday and...ta da! I got paid! Yes, everything managed to go right and a big lump of British Pounds Sterling (paper version sterling) was dumped into Alan and my joint checking account Friday. (They call that a current account here in the UK)

So I dragged myself home from work and we went out to dinner with Ron & Hillary and Pete & Laurie. Very nice evening. Excellent food and really interesting discussions. The only problem was that both Alan and I started fading by 10:30pm and finally Alan called a cab to take us home. We get up at 5am all week and leave for work at 6am so by the time it's night, we just can't stay up that late. We'll have to stick to weekends for social outings.

So- of course with my first paycheck sitting in the bank, I finally was able to get some things I desperately needed - like a small but reasonable selection of smart business wear for work. We also were able to get food and household stocks in this morning. And I picked out Andrew's birthday present and ordered it online.

Next week I get my 2nd paycheck and that will be a full one. I'll use that one to start paying back money I owe family and friends. I ant to get everything clear eventually.

And, Alan was able to order a stack of books he's wanted for while - AND the CCNA textbooks so he can start studying and preparing himself to add a major new set of skills to his professional array.

Yay! Completed my first week at my new job! (Ok, it was only a 3 day week but still...)

I completed my first week at my new job yesterday. I really like the work, like the people I work for and with. The only real negative is the nightmarish commute but once I have a car and a UK drivers license it'll be golden.

Now I'm looking forward to my first paycheck. Yay! Shopping ;)

I completed my first week at my new job yesterday. I really like the work, like the people I work for and with. The only real negative is the nightmarish commute but once I have a car and a UK drivers license it'll be golden.

Now I'm looking forward to my first paycheck. Yay! Shopping ;)

I completed my first week at my new job yesterday. I really like the work, like the people I work for and with. The only real negative is the nightmarish commute but once I have a car and a UK drivers license it'll be golden.

Now I'm looking forward to my first paycheck. Yay! Shopping ;)

I completed my first week at my new job yesterday. I really like the work, like the people I work for and with. The only real negative is the nightmarish commute but once I have a car and a UK drivers license it'll be golden.

Now I'm looking forward to my first paycheck. Yay! Shopping ;)

I start my new job tomorrow. Have to leave the house damn early to catch the 6am train since it's the first day and I'm not sure of the timing.

Stop the presses!

Yes, I have a job! I start on Wednesday. Yay!

You lucky readers of this blog will be relieved to learn there will be no further moaning about the soul destroying horror of job hunting.

It's a very nice job, indeed. (You can email me for details, they don't belong on a public blog.)

Alan woke me this morning before 6am to inform me there was a power outage (read: blackout) but he was sure it was only local and would soon be back on. Umm right thanks, I'll return to my regularly scheduled sleep, thank you very much. I guess he wanted company in the dark as he got ready for work. Fair enough. A couple of candles did the trick since he'd already managed to make coffee before the power went off. Shaving would have to be a writeoff since his razor is electric. His office will survive. Outside there was a faint light as the false dawn began.

As soon as he left I went back to sleep. Twenty minutes later I was woken up again as one of the laptops started beeping and compaining that its batter was failing. I don't touch Alan's kit so I let it beep and just closed the door. Another 20 minutes and the power went back on at about 7:30 am.

My exciting morning ;)

I expect to get either a job offer or a rejection from 2 companies today. It's in the hands of the gods. Meanwhile, I got a call for an interview with MTV; they found me on their own. We'll see how that goes. I keep making it through several rounds of interviews and testing and just not getting the final nod. But sooner or later that will come.

DON'T EAT THAT SALAD!

I'm disgusted at the recent Big Lie campaign targetting crisps as a vile, disgusting food by showing some girl slobbering down a liter of oil and proclaiming that if you eat a small packet of crisps a day for 1 year you would be ingesting 4.something liters of oil a day.

Well, using that same logic - DON'T EAT THAT SALAD, EAT THE CRISPS!

If you eat a small salad with a minimal amount of salad dressing, daily for 1 year, you would be ingesting 5 and 1/2 liters of oil a day!

So using their insane logic, you are better off giving your child or yourself a packet of crisps rather then a fresh salad. That's playing by their rules.

I hate bullshit like this from supposed do-gooder groups. Come the revolution, those helpful groups should go up against the wall even before the lawyers.

As my son Andrew noted in his blog, it was just Yom Kippur. A time of self-reflection and renewal. Time to grieve over the losses of the past year, to forgive hurts, to undertake to be a better person in the coming year. I hope all those who shared in this day had an easy fast and wish everyone a healthy and happy and prosperous new year.

I've started this new year with a fresh start myself. I've finally moved completely out of my former flat and now moved in with my other half. It's a real squash here since the place is so small. It's officially rated for 2 adults and others in this development live in idential flats with 2 adults and a child. But that's them and it's not us. I'm going down to Coop Homes today to talk with them about moving up to a larger place.

Anyway, it's ok so far. Two days and we haven't killed each other yet ;) Nah, only joking. We know we have very different personal lifestyles and that the real solution is just to have enough space to allow us to do what we really need to do and not prevent the other from doing what they need to do. Once I'm working we'll sort things out.

It's been a while since I posted here, mostly because I've been deeply depressed by job hunting.

It's not that I don't get responses to my CV, I do. In fact I get a high response to my CV and I get a large number of interviews. The interviews also go pretty well since a large number of them produce an invitation to return for the "shortlist" 2nd tier interview. But, after all those successful steps, I keep failing to succeed at the final stage where I would get a job offer.

This is soul destroying. To put yourself out on the public stage, the marketplace, day after day and to be rejected time after time. It's a very personal rejection. Because once you make it past the primary interview, they know you have the skills and experience required to do the job. Then it's all a beauty contest. They are just judging you as a person and rejecting you personally. Saying I'd rather work with someone else, I like someone else better.

Think back to grade school where everyone used to line up to be picked for teams and think about always making it to the 2nd or third round and getting left standing there rejected at the end. Then think about if that happened to you day after day for months.

Nightmare, isn't it?

So no wonder I am depressed. Personally rejected by the professional world time after time. And not working means not getting paid which creates a cascade of disasters which further depress me.

And there's no relief because day after day I have to go through the process again and again. Smiling. Smiling and being bright. Smiling and being earnest. Smiling but being dignified. Smiling and being knowledgable.

It's so completely irrational and random and luck of the draw. And the deck is stacked against you. The house always wins.

Very depressing.

Not that anyone cares but I am boycotting Jamie Oliver. Shunning the pretentious, arrogant, condescending, political-correctness overgrupenfeurer.

Fresh criticism of Pope's remarks
Criticism is still pouring in from Muslim religious and political leaders over the Pope's remarks about Islam.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/europe/5351324.stm

I'm disgusted but not surprised at the Muslim response. The Muslim attitude for the past 5 years or more has been WE are allowed to insult the West and the Jews and YOU are not allowed to say anything remotely critical of Islam or the Prophet Mohammed. But the West tolerated this outragous hypocrisy. And so it comes to this. I hope the Pope refuses to apologise since he did nothing wrong. I hope the West wakes up and tells the Muslin world that they will just have to deal with it, that the West allows people to speak their opinions.

I hope we ALL remember the following -

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

30 questions to elevate your awareness (and literacy) of the greater place in which you live:

1) Point north.

2) What time is sunset today?

3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.

4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?

5) How many feet above sea level are you?

6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?

7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?

8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?

9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?

10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.

11) From what direction do storms generally come?

12) Where does your garbage go?

13) How many people live in your watershed?

14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?

15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?

16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?

17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water?

18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?

19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)?

20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?

21) What was the total rainfall here last year?

22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?

23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today?

24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?

25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.

26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable?

27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated?

28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?

29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it?

30) How many days till the moon is full?

The Bigger Here Bonus Questions:

31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?

32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude?

33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago?

34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.

Have you ever seen a fox? A real fox, live, close up, in the wild so to speak, not behind a fence at a zoo.

They are not cute or cuddly. They are not beautiful, fluffy feline creatures. No. Not a bit.
Foxes up close are cold, creepy, predators. Much more doglike than one imagines after being raised on Disney animations of adorable foxes. Believe me, foxes are not adorable in any way.

They are killing machines and nuisances. They rip open your bagged rubbish, they kill the harmless small wildlife like squirrels. They attack and kill your small pets - kittens are favorite snacks of foxes.

I've seen foxes when I had the farm in Jeffersonville, NY. They are common in the Catskills. But yesterday I looked out my kitchen window at the back garden and there was a fox. Ugh. It had that same cold, predator stare. It would, it's a wild animal. It's not cuddly Disney fantasy.

But it was an interesting reflection on the nature of cities and life and survival to see one in a London back garden.

What's good for the Imams is good for the Pope.

Bravo to Pope Benedict, I say, for his courage in speaking out about Islam and the current conflicts, etc. I'm not surprised at the outraged response of Islamic leaders and communities. They are HYPOCRITES. I can't say that often enough. They want to insult and condemn the West and Israel with the most outragous insults and lies and accusations. But no one is allowed to say anything even mildly critical in response.

Let me repeat myself - Islamic leaders and communities are HYPOCRITES.

Anyone who knows me also knows I have little to no use for the Pope, the Vatican, and Churches in general. Hey, I read history, I know what they've done. But they have evolved and in general they accept that people will express critical views and should not be immediately condemned to death as heretics.

This time the Pope was spot on in his comments about Islam. And as usual, Islamic leaders and pundits and self-appointed spokespeople called out for the death of the West, the death of the infidels, force us all to accept Islam or die and how dare we express an opinion at all critical of Islam.

My message as a woman and an American is - suck it up, Islam. This is called Freedom of Speech. And as we all should know by now, Islam does NOT allow freedom of speech.

Think about that. Think about it very carefully.

9/11 - five years later

Humans are extremely good at getting used to things that were once unbearable. The site of the greatest mass murder of modern times no longer has the power to horrify those closest to it.