Then again I don't have a clue about boxing day

so why should I expect England to do Thanksgiving right?
But the company was good. :) And all things considered I have much I'm grateful for
...even if there was no stuffing.

Thanksgiving: the Plan

In the absence of time to cook and several necessary ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal, a party of five of us have planned to go out tomorrow night for Thanksgiving. We're going to a restaurant near Buckingham Palace in London that is allegedly putting on a Thanksgivingesque feast for £19.50 a head.
It's important to note that since Thanksgiving isn't just about quality of food but quantity of food, it is of course a buffet.
Then will come the difficult task of finding a pub that's showing the Cowboys game.
Let the gluttony begin.
Will post and update after the event if I'm not still in a turkey-induced stupor.

No kidding

This email was actually circulated around the office where I work, though the names and places have been omitted:

If you left your socks (black) in room 3 please collect them before 12.00noon today when I will bin them. (Its not very pleasant entertaining guests in there with dirty socks sitting on the table!)

Wow.

p's and queues

So here's something that happens most mornings...

I get to the National Rail station, from where a train to central London leaves approximately every 15 minutes. I go to the counter to buy an off-peak travelcard (after 9:30 the price goes down by half and I take the 9:31 train). The teller informs me that the train that was supposed to come at 9:15 is late. I check the clock; it's about 9:25, which would ordinarily give me enough time to buy a ticket and get to the platform HOWEVER, since the 9:15 train still hasn't come, the teller can't sell me an off-peak train ticket, for fear that I might jump on the 9:15 train when it comes at like 9:25, thereby bilking London Transport out of six quid.

So all of us waiting for the 9:31 train and the coinciding cheaper fare, have to queue so that when the 9:15 train finally pulls in and out of the station at about 9:28 or so, we can all rush to the counter to get our off-peak tickets before the next train comes at 9:31.

Ah, efficiency.

Next up on Survivor: London...

now that she's finally obtained a bank account, Noe will attempt to get a National Insurance Number. Stay tuned....

Only slightly better than ripping out my arm hairs one by one

is the process of obtaining a bank account in the UK.

Fireworks Explanations

I finally had the whole fireworks/ bonfire weekend thing sufficiently explained to me last night; I mean, not sufficiently enough for me to understand why I was awoken by blasts and flashes at 4:45 AM the other morning...but sufficiently enough for all other practical intents and purposes. :) I'd go into the explanation here for all you Americans out there, but hey, I'm lazy and that's what google is for.

I was also able to explain in kind why I find the whole thing so fascinating. You see, in the U.S., we are lectured practically from birth that if you set your own fireworks off, you are guaranteed to lose an eye...or a limb, or some appendage. I can remember frequently being shown pictures or videos on the evening news of some poor disfigured kid "whose Fourth of July antics rapidly led to a night spent in the Emergency Room."

I guess those American scare tactics worked. Cuz one of the last things I would do is set off my own fireworks in the backyard of my own house while inibriated. But British people have been doing it for years, convinced that, as M* said at the pub last night, "If you're stupid enough to injure yourself setting off fireworks, then it was only a matter of time before you were in some sort of kitchen appliance accident anyway."

So all this to say, while I'm still at heart afraid of the inevitability of losing an eye that would surely follow my own attempts to ignite my own fireworks under the influence, in the spirit of the weekend, I'm happy to watch other people do it.