Tonight There Is A Full Moon, Allegedly.

The thing about being an astronomy student in England is that you can't do any of your assignments because it NEVER STOPS RAINING. Seriously, I've had this observational assignment for the last two weeks and there has been maybe one night where I could see some stars through the wisps of clouds, but not the entire constellation I needed. I'm thinking of turning it in without the diagram or calculations, but including in my observational log that I couldn't complete the assignments because my local view conditions are I am in England and stars are only a rumor here.

Turkey Day

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow for most of you (it's Thanksgiving for me on Saturday because this is England and no one has the day off). Happy Thanksgiving!

Buying Apples in Essex Is Entirely Rational, So Shut Up.

You know your partner digs you when you announce that you need to go on a two hour drive for the purpose of buying apples, and his response is to book you into a bed and breakfast nearby.

For a country that is essentially one massive farm dotted here and there with cities, there seems to be dearth of decent farm shops, at least within a reasonable, non-crazy person distance of where I live. I recognize, of course, that growing up just south of Cleveland as I did, my access to Mapleside Apple Farm, where my family went at least once a year to buy Halloween pumpkins and a massive amount of baking apples for pies, and where I had at one time planned to get married, gives me a very biased opinion of what constitutes a "good" farm shop. Nevertheless, I feel like a farm shop where I ask "What apples do you have that would be good for baking?" and the woman sitting in the doorway of the dingy, decrepit barn that serves at the "shop" scowls at me and says "That one" while pointing at the only box of apples visible in the entire place could probably be topped. So I googled my face off, and the only thing I managed to find where they seemed to both know shit about apples and also grow more than one variety was a fruit farm whose address is listed on their website as being "near Frinton-on-Sea". I insisted on going.

"Near" Frinton-on-Sea is just over two hours away from here and halfway around the M25 (Hi, Americans. The M25 is an orbital highway that goes all the way around London, has only two rest stops, and is constantly rammed with traffic. Sometimes people don't know where to get off and go around and around it in circles until their family reports them missing to the police.), and as we left shortly after getting home from work without having eaten anything, we decided to stop for dinner in Colchester on the basis that it was a place we had both heard of. Turns out, Colchester is the oldest Roman city in Britain and was once the capital of Roman Britain. We had Italian.

The bed and breakfast StereoNinja booked us into for the night was not in Frinton-on-Sea, mainly because there is nothing IN Frinton-on-Sea. We stayed instead at the Chudleigh in Clacton-on-Sea, the most English bed and breakfast in all the world. When we called them to say we'd be in rather late, the woman's response was "Oh, yes, we just beginning to worry about you!" as though we were people they actually knew. The whole place smells like your grandparent's house in the best way possible and despite its recent renovation, the decor appears to have time traveled there from the 50's. It is amazing and has the world's fluffiest pillows. At breakfast the next day, when I ordered shredded wheat and toast, the woman serving breakfast spent a good ten minutes trying to convince me to order "something hot" because what I had ordered is apparently "not breakfast". StereoNinja had a plate of meat which seems to have been an acceptable choice. I'm going to be staying there every time I go to Clacton-on-Sea now, which will be a lot because it is the most perfectly stereotypical seaside town in all of the world, or as I described it to StereoNinja, "It's like Venice Beach without all the assholes and stupid crap."

The Park Fruit Farm is exactly what it claims to be: a fruit farm. And the farm shop I had such high hopes for is in a relatively small and nondescript barn, BUT that barn has a wide variety of apples, all of which have actual information about when they grow, when they're ready for use, how long they keep, what their apple heritage is, what uses they're good for and their flavor profiles WHICH IS EXACTLY HOW YOU SHOULD SELL APPLES. And! It smells exactly like Mapleside's farm shop, which is exactly what I wanted in a farm shop without realizing it. AND! They even had apples I KNEW, because they grow several varieties of apples that originate in America INCLUDING Johnagolds, which is one of the apples I used for pies back home. AND! fresh pressed applejuice, which StereoNinja managed to drink a quarter of the jug we bought before we even made it back to the car.

The whole trip was a resounding success really, and I'm already trying to figure out how to trick StereoNinja into going back there all the time. In the meantime, I'll just be over here making ALL of the pies.

You Will Be Assimilated. Resistance Is Futile.

Me: Why are you reading? We're supposed to be looking at flights together.

StereoNinja: Why?

Me: Because we're going on holiday together.

StereoNinja: Holibobs!

Me: Oh my god. I just reflexively said that without even thinking about it.

StereoNinja: What?

Me: "On holiday". Jesus. We're going on VACATION together.

StereoNinja: Say "holibobs". Say "happy holibobs!"

Me: I absolutely fucking will not say that.

The Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises

I'm in the midst of a recovery day, my friends. There has not been so epic a weekend since the Epic Austin Weekend of Boobs and Cake. I am in actual physical pain due to its awesomeness and am also having a small existential crisis, and that is the result of only one of the three, THREE!, fantastical events in a roughly 30 hour period.

I would begin at the beginning, but I feel a need to explain something first. I noticed back in autumn that homesickness seemed to be at its worst during times that are important to your culture but just a regular day where you live now. For example, I suspect that Canada Day, for a Canadian who now lives in Spain, is probably kind of a bummer since no one is saying "Happy Canada Day!" or pouring maple syrup all over their naked bodies (is this what you do on Canada Day? I don't know, I'm not omniscient). I felt it a bit at Halloween - because people do Halloween here, but not like it's done in America where everyone goes insane - but when it really jumped up and kicked me in the cunt was on Thanksgiving, which in this country is just known as "Thursday" and everyone goes to work just like a normal day. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my neighbors, but it was on Saturday, not Thursday, and they were all very excited about this novelty dish I made called "cornbread" - I mean, they raved about it (because of course they did, it's CORNBREAD) which was very nice, but delighted surprise is not a typical reaction to cornbread at Thanksgiving dinner. Also there wasn't a shitty Cowboys game going on in the background. It felt weird.

Having experienced this once already, I decided that I would try to head off the "boo-hoo everyone is having fun but meeeeee" feels by having a 4th of July party. Unfortunately this is the time of year that literally half the country goes on holiday so most of our closer friends couldn't make it and also our neighbor The Commodore, so called because he recently became commodore of the nearby yacht club, stole all of our neighbors and took them to a ball at said yacht club, so it ended up being a much smaller affair than I had intended. BUT! It actually worked out great because the people who did come were my American study buddy (hereafter known as the academic) from my masters program and his English husband, my childhood friend the turk, who now lives in London with her English husband, and another American classmate from my program who I don't have a blog name for yet. We did it up American style, with burgers and brat(wurst)s on the grill, florescent yellow mustard, America shaped cookies, buckeyes*, and an enormous pasta salad. I have never seen people so excited about a pasta salad. It's not like pasta salad doesn't exist here- I've eaten some from M&S myself. But it seems using an entire package of pasta to make a party snack is uncommon here. This arrangement turned out to be perfect. We sat in the garden (these people all live in the city and were absolutely knocked the fuck out by the sheer volume of wildlife available a mere 40 minutes from London) drinking beer and/or wine and/or margaritas playing rounds of Cultural Differences and debating the proper pronunciation of words. One I didn't know is the word skeletal is pronounced here as skhe-LEE-tal, which by the way is wrong as evidenced by the fact that He-Man's nemesis is not called "SkeLEEtor". Eventually it got dark (i.e. spiders were starting to surround us) and we went indoors to tell childhood stories of terrible camp songs, fencing lessons (the turk and me, 5th grade) and archery. In the midst of this we saw some flashy lights outside and upon opening the door realized they were accompanied by exploding sounds...IT WAS FIREWORKS YOU GUYS. WE GOT TO SEE FIREWORKS IN ENGLAND ON THE 4TH OF JULY. Having achieved a perfect day, I took some people back to the train station, the academic and his husband (potentially Mr Coffee???) stayed overnight and I went to bed happy and exhausted.

StereoNinja and I got up very early the next day and rudely left our guests to fend for themselves, because we had tickets to the British Grand Prix and it is well known that driving to and from Silverstone on race day is a colossal clusterfuck. Now, I know nothing at all about F1 or any racing really, mostly because I don't have any real interest in cars or going fast and in my country the popular racing to watch is NASCAR, an interest I find fucking hilarious in other people. Conversely, prior to my converting him into an ice hockey fan, F1 was literally the only sport StereoNinja followed or gave a single fetid shit about. I haven't been exposed to his F1 fandom however, because we don't get Sky on principle so he can only watch about one out of every three races which makes it hard to follow. I was excited to go because he was excited and because I got to do a new thing, but my excitement had little to do with with the race itself. We got there and inhaled a shitty hamburger before finding our seats in the grandstand. Which is about when the Red Arrows started flying their impossible formations of awesomeness, complete with red white and blue smoke and a fucking heart that they drew in the sky. I got some sand or something in both my eyes.

And then it was race time. I was all ready to experience my first F1 race and excitedly awaited the first time they would go flying past me. I wound up waiting a long time, since 58 seconds in there was an enormous crash that knocked three cars out before it had even really started and damaged the barriers to a degree that took and hour to replace. But eventually the race got underway again and...You guys. The last thing I needed was another sport to follow, particularly another sport that it was difficult for me to be able to watch due to limited availability. However. FORMULA ONE IS FUCKING AWESOME. It wasn't even a particularly good race as it was clear from about halfway through who the winner was going to be and the only thing in question was who would win the battle for fifth place. But. For serious. Driving inches from each other at those speeds, making a play to get past someone in a corner by breaking later, which is pretty much challenging them to a game of high stakes chicken...I don't know how these cars can even go that fast with how much their balls must weigh. Next thing I know I'm reading in the program about innovations in engine design and strategies for dealing with the new limit of 100kg of fuel per race. So apparently I'm now both a racing fan and burgeoning petrol head. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.

The race ended with with a British racing driver as the winner making everyone mad with joy and patriotism, and me bewildered at myself and realizing that I had a sunburn for the first time in over 10 years (it's all coming back to me now. Having a sunburn SUUUUUUUHHKS). StereoNinja and I hightailed it back to the car in order to drive all the way to London to see Ben Folds with the Heritage Orchestra at Barbican. I've seen Ben Folds with an orchestra before. What I had not seen before was Ben Folds' new piano concerto which he'd spent a year writing and which was a highly unusual mix of classical and modern styles. Nor had I seen him lead an entire orchestra in a spontaneous episode of Rock This Bitch. For the uninitiated, Rock This Bitch is a thing that happens at many Ben Folds shows in which someone in the audience waits til a quiet moment to shout "ROCK THIS BITCH!" and then Ben Folds makes up a song on the spot containing the words "rock this bitch" that is completely different from any version of Rock This Bitch he's played before. This is not the first orchestra he's convinced to play Rock This Bitch with him, but it is the first time I'd seen it live, so I can pretty much go ahead and die now. If you'd like to be ready to die also, here's a video of the whole process:

Once Ben Folds had finished blowing my fucking mind again, we headed home. After a concert, an F1 race, and a brilliant party, I was completely exhausted (also crispy and pink as all fuck) and not looking forward to going home and cleaning up the mess we'd made on Saturday. So imagine my total fucking delight when we finally got home only to find that the guests we had abandoned in our house had cleaned up absolutely EVERYTHING before they left like a couple of magical party debris erasing genies, thus making the entire thing into a PERFECT weekend. Or indeed, the Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises.

Update: I have just remembered another conversation from my 4th of July party between the four Americans that occurred when the turk mentioned she had gone somewhere that had REAL rye bread and the other three of us all sat up and went "Get out. Seriously? With the seeds and everything? WHERE? WHERE IS THIS RYE BREAD?" The reason we all reacted so strongly is that we've all had a common experience, shared I suspect by almost all Americans living here, of having ordered a sandwich on rye or rye toast somewhere and being served instead with bread that is actually white bread and pumpernickel swirled together. Listen, because I cannot stress this enough: that is not rye bread. There's not even any caraway seeds in it, which while some real rye bread doesn't have caraway seeds either, that kind of rye is pointless. If there is one food I miss from America more than any other food it is rye toast to go with my omelette. Without rye toast, an omelette is just eggs with some other shit in it. Rye toast is the shit, man.

I now return you to you irregularly scheduled self deprecation and spider freak outs.

*These were specifically for the benefit of the turk since as a native Ohioan she was the only one likely to have had them before. If you don't know what a buckeye is, as far as I can tell it is a nut (or seed? I'm too lazy to google which one it technically is but I think of it as nut) that is either exactly the same as or indistinguishably close to a conker. The tree it grows on is the state tree of Ohio and it is the mascot of the state's largest institution for secondary education, The Ohio State University. Somewhere along the line, some total fucking snack genius got the idea to make balls of candied peanut butter and dip them in chocolate, which is both delicious and looks exactly like a buckeye. Despite not encountering them before, the group ate the crap out of them and now I don't have any more.

Amberance Goes To [REDACTED]

About a week ago, I was doing this temp job for a few days which turned out to be the single most blogable thing that has happened to me since I've been here. And annoyingly I can't really tell you anything about it, because I had to sign a social media non-disclosure agreement that said I wouldn't tell you where I was and I wouldn't tell you who else was there (this was a pointless concern, since if someone important/famous had been there, I almost certainly wouldn't have recognized them because knowing who people are is not my strong suit (witness my once asking my brother "What is a Kardashian?"), so I couldn't tell you who I may or may not have seen even if I wanted to. I would, however like to point out that posh people generally do wees the same as everybody else in my recent experience). It even had specific words in it that I wasn't allowed to use in conjunction with anything I said on the subject, which eliminated most of the nouns and verbs I could use to talk around the situation.

The only word that seems to be left to me at this point is "hat". SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS, WHAT IS WITH YOUR HATS? First of all, where are men even getting these top hats? Is this an item in every Englishman's wardrobe that I didn't know about? Can you rent them? Why don't more top hat wearers grow mutton chops, which in my mind is the entire point of wearing a top hat? Also, god forbid that you take your hat off. There are people walking around, mostly men, also wearing hats, politely taking people aside and saying "Sir, I am afraid you can't be in this area without a hat" and then the other guy goes "Oh sorry, my bad" or something a lot more stereotypically British and wealthy sounding and goes and dons a hat. And I am not kidding about stereotypically wealthy sounding Englishman - StereoNinja does a joke voice which I call Posh Old Man Voice that I think is hilarious, and I overheard a guy talking like that and started giggling, then realized he wasn't "doing" a voice, he actually talks like that.

That is just the men. The women...I don't even...seriously, WHAT IS ON YOUR HEAD? Is that...an aquarium? Mind you, I was also made to wear a hat (which was provided to me because in what universe would I own a fancy hat?), but my hat was just, you know, a hat. And sure, lots of ladies around me were also wearing hats that did in fact resemble a hat, but those hats mostly appeared to have been deliberately created to go with the dresses they were wearing, which I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure mostly were mostly the work of top class fashion designers that people who are not me will have heard of. But then the crazy hats. I am not kidding about the aquarium hat, by the way, but there were others, each one bigger, weirder and less hat-like than the next. Oh and also a camera crew running around the place all day long grabbing crazy-hatted women and stuffing a microphone in their face and saying "TELL ME ABOUT YOUR HAT!" I really, truly, could not have been more out of my element in this setting if it had taken place on Venus.

Oh, as far as who I maybe did or didn't see: I think it is probably within the rules to report that, as predicted, I recognized not one single person. The closest I got was when I was coming out of the ladies toilets (which have baskets full of hair pins and extra nylons and other assorted things it would never occur to me to provide for my guests) and one of the other workers said to me, "Oh, you just missed [REDACTED] going by! She was right over here not two minutes ago!" to which I replied "Huh. Neat." because there was a zero percent chance I would have known who that was without being told even if I had been there when she walked by.

Finally, I would just like to report that [REDACTED]*-drawn coaches look all fancy and cool, but really they just go too slow and back up traffic for miles and shit all over the road.



*For real, the thingy I signed says I can't use that word if I talk about this.

Cultural Differences

American classmate: What is that thing?

British classmate: It's for your face. It sprays mist, for when it's hot outside.

AC: That's so cool! I've never seen anything like that!

BC: They're hard to find here. I got this in France. I'm surprised you don't have them in America though.

AC: Well in America we have air conditioning.

Note: This conversation occurred when it was 72 degrees outside.

Commercials That I Hate - UK Edition

I've been here long enough now to start hating television commercials, and rather than continuing to throw things at StereoNinja's perfectly innocent tv set, I thought I'd come complain about them here.

Watch Dogs - I don't know if they are running the same series of promos in the U.S. as they are in the UK for this new PS4 game (that everyone I know who games thinks is total crap). It's a game set in Chicago, and while the commercial shows a graphic Chicago that is well done enough for me to recognize, the voice over is completely nonsensical. It starts out with the phrase "I hacked the city to make it my weapon". Well I'm here to tell you that, no sir, you did not. You are implying a level of organization to the running of Chicago that I assure you doesn't exist. This statement is accompanied by a scene in which some guy pushes a button on his magical city-controlling remote which stops a CTA train at somewhere that isn't a real stop so he can get on. I fell out of my seat laughing because a) you don't need a magical remote for this, CTA trains stop in the middle of the tracks for no apparent reason ALL THE FUCKING TIME, he could just stand at basically any point along the tracks and at some point during the day the train would inexplicably stop near him; and b) I assure you there is no wireless controlling system on the CTA that you could "hack" into to stop the trains. If there were, I wouldn't be able to link to this video from just a few months back of a CTA blue line train pulling into the station at O'Hare airport at full fucking speed before jumping the tracks and hurtling up the escalator like it was about to miss its fucking flight. The CTA is still working on replacing old track, some of which was laid roughly 100 years ago. An upgrade to a centrally controlled hackable train operating system is something I expect to happen some time after we get flying cars. The voice over goes on to say "My enemies may run Chicago, but I control it." I'm sorry, who are your enemies, the Latin Kings? Tony Rezko? I'm not sure how hacking trains and street lights is supposed to help you defeat political corruption or a street gang that boasts Chicago police officers among their membership. But yeah, go ahead and hack that centrally controlled traffic light system that doesn't exist.

Canesten is a UK brand of creams, pills and pessaries for the treatment of yeast infections, or as it is quaintly called here, thrush. They sell these products individually but also in combination packs, much in the same way as American brands like Monistat. Unlike Monistat, however, their new commercials promoting their combi products are illogical and vaguely disturbing. You wouldn't wash your hair without using conditioner, they reason, so why would you use just one product to treat your crotch infection instead of two? I don't know, Canesten, two medicines are probably better than one, but not for the same reason that it's a good idea to condition your hair after you've washed it. There is a huge difference between using a pill and a cream to make your nether regions stop being on fucking fire as soon as possible, and wanting to be able to get a comb through your hair. These things are not even remotely related, or at least hopefully they aren't because if you're trying to use conditioner to get a yeast infection out of your hair I'm worried that you might have bigger problems.

Currys PC World - I don't know if you know this, but the World Cup is starting in about a week. I know it because pretty much anything that can be sold in the UK is being cross-promoted with it, which leads to me thinking I've bought the wrong Coke Zero every time I go to the shop because the yellow and green World Cup logo makes it look like Coke with lime. Currys PC World, purveyor of fine electronic products, has jumped on the bandwagon as well, reasoning that now would be the perfect time to buy that giant tv that dwarfs the rest of your living room and makes your friends think you're a pretentious asshole showoff because HOLY SHIT THE FOOTBALL IS ON, as if the Premiere League isn't on the air constantly. But whatever, that's a reasonable premise for a commercial. The problem is the tack they've decided to take with their sales pitch, which boasts not one but TWO of my most hated advertising tropes: all women obviously hate sports, and mens are stooopid amirite? Because why be offensive to just one gender when you can negatively stereotype nearly the entire population*? These are actually a series of basically identical commercials in which generic huband tries to trick generic wife into getting a new ginormous tv, ostensibly so she can watch some show that's totally for the womenfolk, like a gardening show or Downton Abbey, when in reality, super man type person wants it so he can watch the World Cup, but, you know, BIGGER. Unfortunately, since MANS ARE DUMM, he always screws up his pitch and half of the word "football" slips out by accident, which leaves wife type person with a shitty look on her face because ohmygod my husband is so dumb and also how dare he want to spend time watching a sport that 90% of the country is also watching nearly all of the time? Seriously, everyone knows that marriage is all about tricking your spouse into letting you buy shit they don't want and then them resenting you for it to an unreasonably disproportionate degree. OR, maybe you could have gone with something less tired, insulting and frankly obvious. Something like man comes home and finds wife planted in front of giant tv she didn't tell him she was buying, screaming at the football match like a lunatic and he shakes his head bemusedly and hands her a beer. Maybe something like that could sell some tvs? I don't know, I'm not omnicient, but it might be worth a try instead of the same boring and unrealistic gender stereotypes that everyone advertising to a household market has already (poorly) used. Seriously, fuck this commercial. In the ass. With a football.


*Those not subscribing to the presumed gender binary excluded, but only because they can't figure out an angle for selling you their crap.

Fifty Shades Of Dissertation Research

So here's what I've decided on the dissertation front: I'm going to compare Fifty Shades of Grey with the movie Secretary in their portrayals of BDSM and in the responses each got from the public in an effort to determine whether mainstream portrayals of BDSM relationships are creating a more relaxed attitude toward it or just reinforcing negative stereotypes that already exist. I also thought you'd like to know that you all got a big mention in my dissertation proposal as my justification for undertaking this particular research project so thank you SO MUCH for being awesome.

Now that the dissertation proposal is done and I don't have another thing due until July, I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging including writing the last two or three Fifty Shades Freed reviews so I can get that off my docket and light the book on fire. I started writing one many months ago, but it's been so long I might have to actually go re-read those three chapters which is a special form of torture and TOTALLY not fair, but all I can remember about them is being upset with myself for having gotten more angry that E.L. James doesn't understand how a bank works than I did about a man explicitly threatening to rape his wife. Apparently E.L. James has turned me into some sort of horrible rape culture reinforcing monster, you know, like UKIP*.


*Dear Americans, hi. If this reference doesn't make sense to you, it is because our country's major news outlets are crap at covering international news unless it's too sensational to ignore. UKIP is a political party in the UK based on racism and reactionary conservative values, such as that it should totally not be illegal for a man to rape his wife and Romanians are like a plague of locusts and are going to come to the UK and eat all our food or something. I'm not sure exactly, they don't really make any sense and when they open their mouths a pile of bigoted diarrhea sprays out so I try not to stand too close to any of them. Anyway, that's what I was referencing. Straddling two cultures is hard y'all.

Just Where The Hell I Have Been

I turned in both of my papers yesterday. It was much easier for me this time than it was the last time I had two papers due on the same day, less because I had done it before than because I cared about them differently than last time. I say "differently" because last term I had the weird experience of having one class that I thought was brilliant - I had strong opinions which were typically diametrically opposed to everyone else in the class and a massive crush on my teacher, and the other class that I spent every single moment of wishing "class" was something you could stab in the face. So when it was paper time, I was riled up and excited to write a paper on the UK's extreme pornography ban and why it is a load of complete and utter bullshit, and the other paper...well, I just gave no fuck whatsoever about that paper, so I just filled it with buzzwords like "discourse" and "paradigm" and my person favorite "lived experience" and turned it in. I had done the exact same thing on the annotated bibliography I'd had to write for the class earlier in the term and received a merit for it so I figured, you know, fuck it.

I now need to begin work on my dissertation, a task that would be much easier if I had ANY IDEA AT ALL what to write it on. My first instinct was, of course, Fifty Shades seeing as I am apparently one of the world's leading experts on how bad it sucks. But "Fifty Shades of Grey: No Seriously, What the Fuck?" is not an appropriate or even reasonably narrow topic and also the main piece of advice on picking a dissertation topic seems to be "pick something you like because you're going to eat, sleep and breathe that fucking subject for the next six months" and I think we've pretty well established that Fifty Shades of Grey is decidedly NOT something I like. I like being semi-internet famous for creative swearing and pushed to the top of reddit lists, but that is not likely to factor into dissertation research so much. So anyway, about three weeks from now I need to turn in a dissertation proposal roughly the length of a module essay on something to do with "gender" or "sexuality" and I have precisely ZERO thoughts on what that topic should be. SO I;ve got that going for me.

Now, since it's been so long, let me switch topics on you entirely and go back to complaining about my adopted country. Which I LOVE by the way - I know I complain about how homesick I am and how everything is too "not-America", but I do genuinely love it here (the sheep across the river had some lambs and I can hear them from my bedroom and the lambs run around all cute and small and then randomly jump up in the air for NO REASON and it is fantastic; in related nature news, the two gay ducks (we think they are gay because they are both boys and are never, ever more than about three feet from one another so they are obviously a couple) that hang out in our marina have taken to coming right up to the kitchen door begging from bread and one of them will eat it right out of your hand). Having said that, I would now like to complain bitterly about Easter and daytime television.

As Easter approached, I asked StereoNinja why the stores had put out all of the Easter basket stuff yet and was greeted with a blank stare followed by "what is an Easter basket?" Because Easter baskets are NOT A THING. You know what you get here? A chocolate egg. One. THAT IS IT. And unlike a chocolate bunny, that egg is hollow, my friends. It probably has less total chocolate volume than a regular candy bar. In Chicago I made StereoNinja buy real Easter baskets with real Easter basket stuff for his children because I found the situation so unacceptable. But wait, there's more! Even worse than that atrocity is the fact the coloring Easter eggs is ALSO NOT A THING. I just...I don't even...WHY DON'T YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO HAVE ANY FUN, ENGLAND? So I bought the Paas color cups when we were in Chicago so as to show StereoNinja & Spawn (TM) what they were missing. And then immediately ran into another problem: all the eggs are brown. Finding a white chicken egg in this country is harder than finding a burrito. I eventually figured out that Whole Foods in Kensington was selling them, but not until AFTER they had already sold out. StereoNinja went and got some white duck eggs from somewhere, which I discovered don't really work as they are quite translucent and not nearly as permeable. Plus then you have a house full of duck eggs which I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with. So apart from the fantastic ham I made, Easter was a kind of a disaster.

Now then: being a full time graduate student and not having a job means that I spend a lot of time at home during the day with the television on in the background for some noise so I don't go crazy and I have to say, there is NOTHING ON TELEVISION DURING THE DAY. Seriously, nothing worth watching unless you count Top Gear reruns I've seen a thousand times. Mainly all there seems to be are episodes of Charmed and an Australian soap opera call Neighbours. Everyone else at home in the day must be bored too, because what I really wanted to complain about is the sheer volume of commercials for a. online casinos and b. predatory loan companies. It is pretty much ALL they advertise during the day, one right after another. I can't help feeling like these things are related, and that they are preying on the weak as I would assume a significant percentage of the daytime television audience is made up of people who are out of work. Frankly, I think that's pretty shitty and I'm not sure why that's being allowed but watching BDSM torture porn on the internet in your own home is is not.

Coming up: Things I did in Chicago, as soon as I can remember what those things are.

They're Baaa-aack

I've been feeding the next door neighbors' cat all week because they are out of town. I say "neighbors' cat", but it's really a stray cat called Hissing Syd, who won't come within 10 feet of people, but who will sit exactly that distance from his food bowls and look around in judgement if they are empty when he gets there much in the way of a normal house cat. I grabbed the cat food and was about to walk through my back door when crumpled in the door jam I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in England. So big in fact, that I looked it over for some moments actually thinking "maybe it's not a spider. Maybe it's a scraggly piece of something that fell off of a bush." But nothing else in the world has leg joints in exactly those places. Nothing. I seriously didn't know they had spiders as big as this here. I think it must have followed me here from the U.S...from Texas probably (I'm made to understand everything is bigger there). It wasn't moving and looked as if it had been smushed by the door, so I made the assumption it was dead and closed the door on it. Then I grabbed the cat food, went out the front door (after very carefully checking the entire doorway for spiders, because if I missed something and then came back and there was one outside THAT door I wouldn't be able to get back in the house), walked halfway across the island to the common entrance to the marina, and then all the way back to their garden while muttering "ohgodohgodohgod" with my heart trying to escape from my chest the entire time to feed the goddamn cat. I am now back in my own house, have texted StereoNinja to inform him that I am NEVER GOING IN THE GARDEN EVER AGAIN. I am checking everything in the house for spiders before I touch it (I looked inside the Dorito bag) and experiencing a mild to moderate level of general panic that I know will subside gradually over the next few days UNLESS another spider appears.

What I hate about this phobia is not so much that it controls where I can go and what I can do - there are work arounds for that, obviously, as I've just walked clear across an island to feet a cat sitting 30 feet from my backyard - but the (I assume, I'm not a psychiatrist) post traumatic stress that I end up living with for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And the effect is cumulative: seeing another spider in that state doesn't just extend how long it lasts but heightens that feeling. I was already in that state before the incident today from a small spider I saw on the outside of my car a few days ago. I've walked the two miles into town twice since then rather have to face getting in my car. I tell myself I'm getting exercise, but I'm really just paralyzed by the thought that if it has gotten in the car I'll be trapped with it and no one can help me.

It's the worst time of year for me. Spring is when all the spiders come back, and just to reiterate, I live IN a river. In the past few weeks, I've seen StereoNinja lunge across a room to step on a spider I hadn't seen yet and go into the toilet and immediately come back out again to get the bug spray before going back in there calling over his shoulder "I didn't just see three spiders in there." I've seen two in my bedroom when he wasn't home that I had to spray myself before texting completely insane yet wholly serious messages to him: that I needed him to remove their dead bodies when he got home and then burn our duvet, or that I was moving to France. And now it's effecting him too. He used to see a spider and not have any sort of reaction at all but now when he sees one he has almost a fear response - not of the spider itself but more like "Oh god holy shit there's a spider in the house kill it immediately before Amber finds out AAAAGGHHHH".

Ugh. You guys. IT WAS SO FUCKING BIG and it was ALMOST INSIDE MY HOUSE. I don't know how to stop thinking about it. Even the "research" I'm doing on "extreme" pornography for my next paper isn't helping me. SINCE WHEN CAN I NOT CONCENTRATE ON PORN?

Drownin' In The Rain, We're Drownin' In The Rain

Remember when I said the water was receding? Well it's now worse than it was when it crested the last time. Lake Titicacao is indistinguishable from the river and it's all flowing so fast that we've been watching ducks go by backwards since they aren't strong enough to swim upstream or even stay in one place. Also rain is forecast in my town for at least the next five days. The only road out of the island is impassable by anything other than a monster truck, and conversations with other islanders about what we can do about it amounted to "Yeah, you're pretty much screwed." Being as my car is roughly the size of half a semi-truck tire, I'm effectively stranded in my house, conveniently (?) during reading week, meaning I don't have to swim to the station to catch a train to London for class, so I've got that going for me. StereoNinja bought us both waders today, which I put on to try them for size and am now still wearing them. I told StereoNinja it was for safety:

me: I'm leaving these on.
StereoNinja: You're going to just wear them around the house?
me: Well, in a couple of hours the water might be in the house.

But really it's just because I'm pretending to be a fisherman. I'm trapped, don't judge my methods of entertaining myself.

I'd like to point out that the last time it rained this much in England, my country didn't even exist yet. Speaking of my country, sorry about all the snow there most of you, and for those of you in California, if you can figure out a way to get this water over to you, you're more than welcome to have it.

Are You Ready To Explain Some Football?

Last night was my first Super Bowl in exile, and I have to say, seriously, what the fuck. But let me back up a bit.

I had managed to get excited about the Super Bowl in a way that I hadn't gotten excited about Christmas or my birthday. And I prepared for it as well: I dressed up in all the NFL branded clothing that I own, I made Rice Krispie treats shaped like footballs, and I drank an enormous amount of caffeine so I could make it to kickoff at ELEVEN FUCKING THIRTY local time. I commandeered StereoNinja and his teenage daughter to watch it with me because all my other friends have "jobs to go to in the morning" or some shit, and we all ate a cheeseball I had made, despite them both eyeing it with suspicion at first because no one here has ever seen a cheeseball before. StereoNinja had watched some of the Seattle game with me two weeks ago, and so at least had basic concepts figured out like downs and field goals; his daughter had no experience and insisted the game was called "handegg".

The pregame show was that we didn't get a real pregame show. What we got was some Irish guy I've been told is called Colin Murray and is famous for something, and a very uncomfortable looking and disinterested Terrell Davis, whose name Channel 4 managed to misspell. My best guess is that Colin Murray has never seen an American football game before in his life, and I spent the hour before kickoff screaming things at the tv like "FIELD! IT'S CALLED A FIELD." and "NO YOUR HEADSET ISN'T WEIRD THAT'S JUST HOW THEY ARE BECAUSE IT'S A FOOTBALL GAME". Even StereoNinja was annoyed, and displayed his recently gained knowledge: "Yeah. It's not called a pitch goal, it's called a FIELD goal. And why does he keep touching everybody?" because he was, Colin Murray that is, touching his co-presenters on the arm or the shoulder with an an uncomfortable degree of frequency. Meanwhile whatever he was saying was so confusing, Terrell Davis stopped listening to him and and started absentmindedly picking at the edge of the table on live television.

And then the game started. I'm assuming many of you saw the start of the game, and potentially the rest of it, so I don't need to tell you what a clusterfuck that was for Denver from LITERALLY THE FIRST PLAY OF THE GAME. What I did have to do was begin my companions' American football education by trying to explain what a safety is because of course I did. I also had to explain a shotgun formation because I had previously told StereoNinja in great detail and with extensive demonstrations how the quarterback lines up under center, which was not at all an exercise in crotch grabbing disguised as sports education SHUT UP. And throughout the game I was struggling to justify to StereoNinja my belief that Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of our time, AND that the mistakes he was making were not always his fault because the offensive line apparently decided not to play. Based on that game I wouldn't have believed me either.

It was actually kind of fun explaining things that it hadn't occurred to me would need explaining because I've just been watching it all my life. Like how a false start works:

StereoNinja: What happened?

me: False start. That guy jumped.

StereoNinja: WHAT? He barely even flinched!

me: I know. Doesn't matter. You can't move until the ball is snapped.

StereoNinja: What about that guy? That guy is moving. And that other guy is moving too!

me: Oh, right. Some of the players are allowed to move. But not the ones on the line of scrimmage.

StereoNinja: On what?

me: Um, on the blue line.

and flags and timeouts:

StereoNinja: Someone threw their gloves on the field.

me: No they didn't.

StereoNinja: Then what are those yellow things?

me: A penalty flag. The officials throw them when there's a penalty.

StereoNinja: Why?

me: .....because that's how they do it.

later

StereoNinja: Penalty?

me: No.

StereoNinja: But they threw that red thing.

me: That's a challenge flag. The coaches throw them when they want to dispute the call on the field. Um, but you can only do it a few times. Also if you get it wrong they take one of your timeouts.

SN daughter: What's a timeout?

me: It's so you can stop the clock. You get three per half.

SN daughter: But the clock is already stopped.

me: No, the play clock not the game clock.

SN daughter: What?

me: Um.

I did get some amusing help from StereoNinja with explaining the game to his daughter, such as first down: "Do you see that yellow line? That's how far the ball has to go. Also that line isn't really on the field." and she did seem to grasp what was happening overall as evidenced by this comment: "The oranges suck. The catchy man can't even catch it."

We stayed up for the halftime show for some reason where I learned that Bruno Mars can play the drums and thinks he's James Brown and the Red Hot Chili Peppers still can't afford to buy shirts apparently. But by then it was 1:30 in the morning and it didn't appear the game was going to be a contest of any sort so we just went to bed. So my first Super Bowl in exile probably could have been better, but I certainly was having a better time than Peyton Manning was.

England: They Have Stuff Too

Here's another example of "little differences": Last night, StereoNinja and I went to dinner at a steak restaurant called Cattle Grid. It was the most American thing I've encountered since I've been here. Now, I have no evidence that its intention is to come off as American, but it absolutely fucking does. It has a very American decor to it, authentically, not "this is what we imagine America looks like" decor, a menu that list its beef and pork dished under the headings "COW' and "PIG", enormous American sized portions of things including a massive rack of barbecue ribs the likes of which I have never seen here, onion strings which I have also never seen here before and which caused me to actually audibly gasp when they were offered to me and a highly American looking desert menu meaning we didn't order any because StereoNinja couldn't get a cheese plate (also that whole thing about the giant portions). There were only two things that gave it away. One was a completely disinterested server - not a bad server, just a man who was clearly not working for tips. The other is a thing that keeps happening to me every time we eat somewhere which is StereoNinja has to remind me to properly arrange my cutlery. Because unlike America, where they are watching you and waiting for you to slow down, or coming by to refill your drink since it's free refills ALL THE TIME in Fatassland, and they ask you while they're there "Can I take your plate?", the only way to have your plate cleared here is to align your fork and knife right next to each other across your plate. If you leave your utensils either on the table or strewn about your plate all willy-nilly in the wrong configuration, you will be sitting there waiting for the check (cheque) for hours. It's like the Bat signal for "I have finished my meal." And I ALWAYS forget.

Right so, anyway, not my point. What I actually meant to do right now was write about some of the things I love about being here, because I feel like all I've done is complain so far, and it's really not that I don't like it here, it's just that it's not home yet. So here's a few things that I think are fantastic that you have thus far dropped the ball on, America:

Roast dinner. Yeah, ok, we have roast dinners in the U.S., but there are certain designated days for them which are Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rest of the year you just are like "Oh won't it be great when it's Thanksgiving and we'll have roast turkey again?" Yeah, um, yer doin it wrong. Because it is Roast Day here EVERY SUNDAY. You can make a roast at home or you can go to a carvery or you can go round someone else's house - whatever. Oh and another thing: Yorkshire puddings. Get in on that, Murica, you are missing out.

QI. There is not a show being produced right now on American television that I am aware of that is nearly as awesome as QI. A show that is funny AND has Stephen Fry AND you get to learn cool stuff? It's like an arrow of joy aimed straight at my little nerd girl heart. I am particularly overjoyed when there's an episode that has either Bill Bailey or Jeremy Clarkson who say they funniest things and know some of the weirdest shit. And I lose my fucking mind every time I actually know the answer and shout things at the television like "NO! It's because it has a three foot long tongue!" or "Oh my god, I know this one! IT'S A THING FOR EXTRACTING BOOGERS FROM A CORPSE!"

Road signs. I find the road signs here to be generally more helpful than the ones in America. Like, coming up to a roundabout or a slip road (this is an on or off ramp), there will be a sign with a picture of the exact roundabout or shape of slip road you are about to encounter. But that's not even what I like about them. The best thing about the signs is how ambiguous they are if you don't already know what they mean. Before I started driving, I started making up my own meanings for some of the ones I thought were funny.

Windsocks are dangerous

WARNING: Killer duck

Sad wiener

No perspective

I didn't make up a meaning for this, I just want to vandalize it and make it into a centaur.

Beware of men with giant umbrellas

Caution: Bra in the road

SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER.

See, so some stuff is great, but it's not gonna get me a slice of Pequod's or an episode of Tosh.0.

Answers That Aren't 42 And Also A Thing About My Birthday

MIXED NEWS, EVERYONE! I have finished and turned in both of my papers (yay!) which I am pretty sure are both complete garbage (boo). But I'm back for now and I'm going to write some blog posts, starting with answering the questions you guys left for me in the comments:

exoticchemist said...

I'm curious as to what exactly triggers you to feel homesick. Is it just randomly wishing you were back in the US? Missing family and friends? Or is it specifically the differences between the US and UK? Maybe this is a dumb question...

It's not a dumb question, but it is a hard one to articulate. For one thing, I am now having a completely different cultural experience from the rest of my countrymen. While I don't miss snow (AT ALL), and I certainly don't want to be living in temperatures that can kill you in minutes, the whole polar vortex episode was hard on me because I felt...I don't know, left out. I still like to imagine that I am from Chicago and Chicago is my home and everyone at home was having this shitty but nevertheless collective experience and I wasn't there. And what made it worse was the UK was having a different collective experience with seriously damaging flooding seemingly everywhere, which is the experience I had, but it was the wrong one. And by the way, I'm crying right now. Sure I miss my family and my friends, but I can talk to them because the internet is magic. What I can't do is go back in time to when everyone was at the terrifying weather party and show up this time and be in on the jokes and know the stories.

Maya's comment was spot fucking on, and I really just wanted to post it and write "THIS ------>" next to it, but I'll elaborate instead. Maya said this: " I think, for me anyway, it was the fact that most things in the UK are so similar to North America that the differences, even the little ones, felt like a personal affront." I would say especially the little ones; the kind of things you never notice until they are different. In America, almost invariably, when you go inside a public building you just walk into it without breaking stride because the door is going to shut behind you. But in England where many of the buildings are older than my country, you walk into the building and you have to remember to shut the door behind you or it will just swing in the wind until the person at the desk gets up and closes it while glaring at you. There are no screens in the windows because there aren't that many bugs; you go shopping several times a week because the bread and the vegetables haven't been engineered to last for 2 months; the toilet doesn't flush the same way. I cannot fucking find wax paper at the store - grease proof baking paper is the closest thing. I know these things all sound dumb and petty because they are, but they add up into this sick feeling that this is not your home, no matter how much you want it to be.

Ok, that was sad. Let's do a different one:

Anonymous said...

44 degrees celcius here in Australia today, nature is bi-polar (and yeah that whole global warming thing). my question - did you ever choose a stripper name? or did I miss the big reveal in one of your posts?

Well anonymous, I'm pretty sure all of North America hates you right now, despite the fact that if it were 44 degrees there (111 F) they would be complaining that it was too hot. I did choose a stripper name and I did write a (half-assed) post about it. For the show I went with Phoebe Moon because I am a nerd. Now that I am in the UK however, I'll be using Poppy Cox because it's better and people get that joke here.

S said...

What have you learned about Brits/Britain by living here that you didn't learn by visiting?

Many many things, actually. I've learned that the words "noodle" and "pasta" are in no way interchangeable. In related news, I've learned that I'll need to bring a shit ton of Ramen back with me when I visit the states because the equivalents here are yucky in comparison. I've learned that people will fall over laughing if you pronounce squirrel as "skwerl". I've learned that driving students aren't allowed on the motorway, which means that when people get their first driving license, they have not learned to drive on one, which seems kind of dumb. Just last week I learned that when I say "look at those cans" no one realizes I'm talking about boobs. I've learned what stollen is, and that I hate it (raisins. why must everybody ruin perfectly good bakery with raisins? Knock it off already). I've learned that Christmas tree skirts aren't a thing here. I've learned that StereoNinja can't say prosciutto correctly. One thing that I already knew, but can't seem to get used to is being greeted with the phrase "You all right?". The American equivalent would be "How are you?". "You all right?" is what you would ask if someone just fell down the stairs or slipped on some black ice and landed on their head or just was walking around looking all sad. So whenever I'm asked that I immediately am confused about why they think I might not be all right. Gets me every time.

Thank you all for your questions. I like answering questions, so send more if you like and ask about whatever you want: stuff about me or why do Americans do that weird thing or where can I buy dildos or what is it about Patrick Stewart that makes him so sexy or Chris Christie, seriously, wtf is with that guy - whatever you want.

I'm not going to do a birthday wrap up post because it was overshadowed by paper writing and homesickness, but I did want to mention that StereoNinja bought me a telescope. HE BOUGHT ME A TELESCOPE. A FUCKING TELESCOPE. This feeling that I'm feeling is I think what it would be like for a normal person if their partner bought them a surprise Ferrari or a diamond as big as their hand. I HAVE A TELESCOPE YOU GUYS, and I live somewhere that I can actually use it. If it ever stops being shitty weather, that is.

A Question Deserves An Answer

Anonymous said... 

Where for art thou Amberance? 

10:49 PM 

Very good question, anonymous. It's been a rough couple of months. Moving to a new country, even one that you love, is emotionally more difficult than it is possible to prepare for. Christmas, which is normally my FAVORITE THING IN THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD, was mostly a nightmare, and my birthday, which is Sunday and which I would normally have been reminding you all about on a daily basis for the last six weeks is only being observed at all this year to appease StereoNinja, who has made it very clear that my strategy of hiding in the bedroom ignoring him (and everyone else) while failing to engage in any of my beloved hobbies (blogging, my birthday, gratuitous nudity) is no longer acceptable. Having now spoken to a number of people who have already done this, I've had to severely lower my expectations for the foreseeable future, as the collective wisdom of those who have gone before me is that I will continue to burst into tears at completely random intervals due to vicious and overwhelming homesickness for at least 18 months. I don't even want to talk about how miserable I was on New Years, though at least I managed to leave Devon the day before it disappeared into the sea.

I have two papers due in a week, so as I said in November, let me get those written and turned in, and then check back here as I plan to reward myself by writing the next Fifty Shades review and/or going to Prague (oh yeah, I've decided I want to spend a weekend in Prague though I have absolutely no idea what is actually in Prague or why I want to go there - my main motivation seems to be the ability to say "When I was in Prague over the weekend..." - so advice on what I should actually DO in Prague would be lovely). I've been ready to write it for a while actually, but have been putting it off because I felt that I was upset about the wrong things and was trying to adjust my rage to match my logic. It hasn't worked, so I'm just going to write it the way I'm feeling it and then pack my bags for my journey to Hades since I am a terrible person.

Where I am at this very minute is sitting in my living room looking out at the sea. While all you guys in the U.S. have been at the travelling Antarctica Experience exhibition this week (the first time I saw someone write "Chiberia" made me laugh much harder than was probably warranted), the U.K. has been dealing with its own disastrous weather since roughly Christmas, mostly in the form of massive rainstorms combined with extremely high tides and a recent habit of building homes on floodplains. In typical British fashion, this was described on the news in the most hilariously understated way possible as "unusual weather". Living on an island in the Thames as I do, it is impossible not to notice. The field directly across the river from us which is typically filled with sheep first became a lake (which I named Lake Titicacao because tits! and chocolate! and I'm a massive child!) and then a few days ago even that was swallowed up and now the whole thing is just part of the river. Our marina is entirely flooded, the water covering not only the gangway that goes around the outside of the marina but also the first two steps leading up to our garden It is an inch from covering the third, which would leave only two more stairs before we go from living on riverfront property to living in the actual river. There are two roads leading into the island, but only one road that leads away from it, and that road is also flooded, meaning I actually drove my car through the Thames twice this morning. I was lucky I made it through - on my way back, there were two cars stranded on the road who had tried to drive through the river but were too low profile to get through and were now stranded in non-working cars waiting for rescue. If the river doesn't crest today I may be stranded here all weekend. Every once in a while, a helicopter flies over and I imagine them looking down at us and saying "Yep, still flooded." I think I should write a really rude message for them or draw some tits so their day will be more interesting.

Anyway, give me a week to finish my papers and I will write you guys a scathing review about how E.L. James has apparently never been to a bank and being threatened with rape is super romantic. 

P.S. I have enjoyed answering this question. Feel free to send me more questions you would like answers to and I'll answer them in a future blog post. It will be like a conversation!

Doctor Who-Do-You-Think-You-Are

So my first interaction with the medical system here didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I went in this morning to get my prescriptions here, because they don't transfer when you move countries. And in all fairness, I did get them written for me, at least enough to cover this month. But not without a long lecture about how no one should be on depression medication long term, from a man who 1. had only met me about three minutes earlier; 2. isn't a specialist in mental health; 3. hasn't reviewed any of the records from my previous doctor; 4. has no idea what it's been like to live with me these past few months while I've been freaking out because I have literally changed every single thing about my life; 5. has no idea what I'm like without medication. He said, with no basis whatsoever, that I needed to look into some alternatives - alternatives he didn't bother to specify or ask me whether I was already doing, but which I assume would include the exercise I already take four or five times a week, the meditation I do,  and the friends I turn to when I need to talk. Apart from not eating a healthy diet, which is never going to happen because, let's face it, Doritos are DELICIOUS while green vegetables taste like pee, I'm doing all the things you're supposed to do. Oh except seeing a psychiatrist here, but when I asked him for a referral, he told me that psychiatrists in this country don't treat "minor problems" and it's really not for me unless I'm on an anti-psychotic (he did eventually give me a phone number).

Is that what doctors are like here, or is this guy just a judgemental ass who thinks he knows everything because it says "Dr." in front of his name? Should I just make sure I always see another doctor from that practice? It's much easier to get the healthcare you need when you don't have a completely adversarial relationship with your doctor.

The Luckiest

Today marks two years since the day I met StereoNinja. He's spent the entirety of it in bed moaning or running to the toilet to be sick. I spent most of the day wandering around a friend's house checking out all the Doctor Who toys they have (it's A LOT) waiting for him to be well enough to go home, and then I got to drive home on some of England's darkest, twistiest, scariest roads trying to get him home as quickly as possible without going so fast he gets sick in the car (or I hit a badger or a deer or something). I'm going to go make him a piece of dry toast now and see if he can keep it down. It's all been incredibly romantic, I assure you.

(I am also missing Bizzybizzers Steve and Maya's game party and therefore Cards Against Humanity because god hates me. I plan to buy the new UK version of it in protest.)

For Reference, My Home Team Won The Stanley Cup Last Year

You guys. YOU GUYS. Did you know they had ice hockey in the UK? Because I didn't know. But there is. And last night, StereoNinja and I decided to check it out a game OH MY GOD it was the best* thing I've ever seen in my life.

We went to see the Bracknell Bees take on the Guildford Flames at Bracknell's home ice rink at the John Nike Leisuresport Complex. Driving up to it I thought it looked like a youth center, and I said so. I also said the car park was about a quarter of the size of the one for the high school down the street from where I lived in Chicago. The was a massive banner on the side of the building advertising that the rink was Olympic sized, which based on the exterior of the building I was loathe to believe. "With about three rows of seats going around it," I estimated sarcastically, at which point StereoNinja threatened to put me back in the car and take me home if I didn't stop it.

We were early for the start of the game because we weren't sure how the parking situation was going to be (HAHAHAHAHAHA), and we were hungry, so we went to the cafeteria and ordered two "cheeseburgers" that turned out to be made of grade triple Z meat which was grey and may have had chunks of hooves baked in. StereoNinja described this athletic event fare as "typical" of such things in the UK, and for the first time I think ever in my life, I couldn't finish my burger because it tasted that bad.

We decided to wash that horrifying experience down with a beer. This was much more challenging than it needed to be. The bar was at center ice, and from where we were sitting in the third row (out of four. Four.) behind the goal, we started walking around to get to it, only to find a barrier set up blocking off the section of seating directly in front of it. So obviously we climbed right over it because, duh, beer. This brought a kid in some sort of official staff shirt running over telling us we couldn't go in there because THAT IS VIP SEATING and OMGWTFBBQ. StereoNinja explained that we had no intention of sitting there, we just wanted to go get a stupid beer, and the kid countered that we would have to go all the way downstairs, through a series of tunnels and possibly a coal mine and back up a different set of stairs in order to get a beer from the bar that was literally 15 feet away from us. We ignored him.

Back at our seats, the pregame ritual had started. This included a 16 year old Zamboni driver who I'm pretty sure is a member of One Direction resurfacing ice which does not appear to have ever been replaced since the structure was built. Certainly no one has repainted the lines underneath the ice which are more a suggestion of where one might draw some lines rather than actual markings. The visiting team skated out first which the PA announcer did not deem important enough to mention, and then the Bees were introduced (following an air raid siren sound effect because of course there was), in numerical order, with no positions given, and each with their own individual sponsor (you can sponsor a player for £200 and make the announcer say pretty much whatever you want, as evidenced by one player being sponsored by "Damned: Pleasure and Pain").

And then they started playing.

Sorry if you're a fan, but Bracknell are a TERRIBLE hockey team. They managed to make it through the first period with no score from either side, mostly by skating slowly and passing the puck to just about anywhere on the ice that didn't have a player nearby to receive it. I also noticed a stunning lack of checking players into the walls. Earlier I had been perusing the game program (which is HILARIOUS) and had noticed that boarding was not among the penalties listed on the "Why is the ref gesticulating like that?" page, so presumably it's missing because it would never occur to the players to do any such thing. There was one minor skirmish in the first period which prompted a man in our row to shout "YEAH! Knock his teeth out!"

"What teeth?" I wanted to know. "Why does he still have teeth? Is he new?" StereoNinja thought this was hilarious, but I swear I heard an audible sigh of disappointment coming from the direction of Canada.

The beat down began in the second period. The Flames (who by the way seem to have just taken Calgary's logo and added a little hook at the end to make it a G and not a C) scored 4 goals inside of about 6 or 7 minutes (it's hard to tell since the scoreboard is either broken or not plugged in and the only time you know how much time is left in a period is when the announcer deigns to mention it), prompting the Bees to pull their goalie, only to have the replacement goalie scored on 30 seconds later. The entire period was just painful and embarrassing to watch, with the Bees making such basic pee-wee hockey mistakes that I postulated I might be able to carve out a career as a coach here (note: I have never played a game of hockey in my life). I noticed a sign on the wall behind us warning about the danger of flying pucks. "Ice hockey is probably the fastest team game in the world," it began, but not the way they were playing it.

At the end of that disaster (which may have been a full 20 minutes or may have been called for mercy, I couldn't tell), there was a contest during intermission that seemed to involve people throwing rubber duckies on the ice. I don't really understand what was happening, I was busy diagramming plays to show the Bees front office during my interview for the head coaching position.

After three more sad goals in the third period, the Bees suddenly decided to actually play hockey for the last 10 minutes, which was a large and pleasant surprise, but which was also far too late and they ended the game losing 8-0 which can only accurately be described as getting bitch-slapped.

What followed was the politest post game ritual I have ever been witness to. First the teams lined up for the center ice handshake, a tradition in hockey, but one normally reserved for games during the playoffs in most leagues. In the NHL that would pretty much be the end of it. But here, as the players got to the end of the line, they then skated to the opposing teams' bench to shake the hands of all the coaches, trainers and equipment managers, then circled back to the other side of the ice to shake hands with all four officials. After THAT, the opposing team got together and did a full skate all the way around the ice applauding all the fans in the audience. AND THEN the Bees went all the way around the rink doing the exact same thing. I have never seen anything like it. I was half expecting the players to be waiting outside when we got downstairs to personally walk everyone to their cars. I turned to StereoNinja and said "That was the most English thing that has ever happened."

So, yeah. There's ice hockey here. And it is hilarious.

*Worst.

Let The Posting Begin

So it's NaBloPoMo starting to day, which seems as good a time as any to remember that I have a blog which has an audience that I enjoy entertaining.

I thought I'd start with an update to get that out of the way and force me to (mostly) write real posts going forward. Many of you were touchingly concerned about my financial situation. After an extraordinary number of phone calls and bombarding them with every document I could possibly think of, I have finally got PayPal to reinstate both of my accounts and lift the withdrawal limit on my UK account, so I can now get at my money, at least temporarily until I start actually sending it and they block everything again. I've also been able to pay back StereoNinja who had to front me the money to buy my car because of the whole my money was stranded issue. I bought another MINI because it seemed like a bad idea to be learning to drive a new car at the same time that I was learning a new road system, particularly since I live in between a terrifyingly busy roundabout and a terrifyingly narrow bridge and I was thoroughly convinced I was never going to be able to leave the island at all. I named him Basil to make a point about the difference between a person's name and a herb that goes on your pizza. It hasn't gone well.

I had been under the impression that moving here wouldn't be a terribly big adjustment, given that I've been coming here almost exclusively on holiday for years and I thought I knew the culture pretty well. But having knowledge about a place and actually living it day to day are two very different things. For example, the other day the toast got stuck in the toaster and despite the fact that I am perfectly aware that the voltage running through the walls here is twice as much as it is in my home country, StereoNinja ended up more or less vaulting the countertop to prevent me from trying to fish the toast out with a knife. Not that you should fish things out of the toaster with a knife in America either, but it's far less likely to kill you.

I've also struggled with doing the shopping. For the benefit of other Americans who may be considering moving here, allow me to give you a few tips:

• If you ask for tomato sauce, you will invariably be given ketchup. Even though it says ketchup on the bottle and not tomato sauce. If you actually want tomato sauce you'll have to look for a package that reads "tomato passata" and it will be in a box, NOT in a can. Knowing this ahead of time could save you an hour or more.
• The bread here is delicious, but the reason it is delicious is that it's not made almost entirely of preservatives, so if you're buying a loaf of bread, you better be prepared to eat all of it in about 2 days or else feed it to some ducks. Or swans. Feel free to come over - we have both.
• The powdered sugar you're looking for is called icing sugar and no one knows what you're talking about if you say frosting.
• The things over by the milk that say "milkshake" on the side in no way resemble a milkshake. Similarly, anything that says lemonade is actually Sprite. There is no actual lemonade here.
• Hot dogs come in a can. Make of that what you will.
• There are a ton of different kinds of sausage for sale. None of them are the sausage you are looking for.

School has also started. In typical fashion, on a course made up almost entirely of women, I've managed to befriend three people, all of whom are men. So far I haven't been shouted at for any of my t-shirts, although I was worried on Wednesday about the "I should be in the kitchen" one I was wearing. Fortunately I ended up sitting behind one of my new dude friends and no one noticed. I've also managed to use the phrase "bitches be crazy" without any adverse consequences. Though I should probably stop pushing my luck.

So that's what I've been up to so far here. Stay tuned all month for daily posts that may or may not be more interesting than this one!