stuze my photodump

right. the blog. as an exercise in overcoming my deeply ingrained conviction that i can't blog unless i've written the greatest. post. ever., i'm just going to post these photos of the last few weeks to give you an idea of what i see when i leave the library. 

rainy malaysian festival at trafalgar square:

bloomsbury trees 

on the walk home:

thames views:

columbia flower market (3 bunches for a fiver):

sometimes i go on short walks and turn down the wrong canal and then the walk becomes 10.5 miles:

feed your head

[It turns out that posting is considerably more difficult when you don't have internet access at home, and you're terrified that someone at the library will see that you're not involved in Very. Important. Research. My apologies. Stay tuned for a long post concerning all sorts of exciting things like my birthday (not really: it consisted of attending a lecture on half-uncial), the Malaysian Festival (rainy, as I assume is appropriate for Malaysia, and cold, as I assume is not), and the un-Higginsed descendants of Eliza Doolittle.]

Five brief points:

1. Every day I walk past a restaurant called Mother Mash. It advertises itself as a "purveyor of fine mashed potatoes." Somehow, mind-boggingly, this specialty is of enough considerable enticement to people that it is inevitably chock-full of the bankers and lawyers and traders who people that particular portion of my 3.5 mile trek. It boggles the mind (and turns the stomach).

2. I just spent a considerable amount of time researching the difference between a cooker, an oven, and a hob. The distinctions I found don't seem to hold particularly well when searching for manuals for my specific cooker, whose oven component I have yet to discern how to turn on.

3. If you want to while away your time reading exquisitely written prose about where I'm currently living, look no further than this other blog which is not mine, though I wish it were.

4. The best thing about my hair right now is that it looks like black licorice when wet.

5. I don't really have anything to say here; my OCD demanded that I have a list of 5 rather than a list of 4. And thus I reveal myself to you, my weaknesses utterly exposed. (though I suppose I could add, in a nod to some semblance of substance, that if you for some reason want to capture my mood of the last week, the soundtrack has been a mix of Jeff Buckley and Laibach. Needless to say, I've been stalking around with a glint of madness in my eye.)

store of the day

peter the pleater. (he sells blinds.)

adventures in jet lag

in honor of my first post, i would like to share three extraordinarily important things that have happened since i arrived in london four days ago:

1. on sunday, i roused myself from my sloth jet-lagged stupor and fulfilled a long-standing dream of seeing the pearly kings and queens in person. even better, it was as part of the costermonger's harvest parade, which included morris dancers young and old, donkeys, and a west highland terrier. (video to follow, at a time and date of blogger's choosing, apparently.)

2. having just had our hot water heater at home replaced by our extremely affable plumber (who revealed to us that it is not inexpensive to have one's daughter be married on the grounds of copsaholm), i arrived in london only to find that there was no hot water in my flat. after much fiddling with thermostat covers and wires, as well as prayers to ward off electrocution, i managed to fix the hot water heater tonight. here's hoping it stays long enough to finish the load of clothes i just put in the washer. i can handle sponge baths and washing clothes by hand, but not together.

3. i learned that the answer to having the lid mysteriously fly off the enormous canister of salt you're about to scan at the self-checkout at sainsbury's is to brush the salt off the scanner into the basket, scan all your other sundries, pay, and then walk as quickly as possible out the door before anyone notices. if you don't turn around, you won't see the enraged stares.

here's hoping they let me back in. costcutters just doesn't have that great a selection, and the owner of the organic food store seemed rather offended when i asked if they had reusable bags for purchase so that i could feel extra-sanctimonious as i carried home my over-priced flax seed (he didn't).

stay tuned for even more exciting london adventures, pictures of old clocks, and searching questions such as "do the brits really think that selling freezer bags with naught but a twist tie closure will really keep food from getting freezer burn?" and "which is more addictive: the great british bake off, or cocaine?"