Picture heavy post

Continuing on with the weekend, after driving around for a few hours aimlessly saturday morning, we picked up Kevin and headed into City Centre. First things first, we stopped at the clock tower for a quick picture and to appreciate the rarity of blue skies in England (shock!)...

then we headed for the York map to figure out where we wanted to roam. Helpful, yes?

There was a street vendor selling doughnuts right next to the map, and while I didn't eat one, I had to take a picture just because of the name. This picture and the next are specifically for Mandy.

Oh yesh, I shimply shcream for your hawt shaushages!

Sorry for the inside joke--Mandy and I are both brain-damaged people. Let's just pretend that little tangent never happened, shall we? Here's a pic of all the Christmas decorations put up in the city--so cute!

I think the point of the rides *may* have been for the kids, but most of the people on the slide were grown-ups, so that was kind of funny to watch...

Ric's coworker, Pete, was the tuba player, if I remember correctly. There are only three bands in the area with permits to play in the *good* locations, and they are one of them. Gotta hand it to those guys--they sounded AMAZING! Fun to watch, too, because you could tell what a great time they were having. People were dancing around in the street.

Dusk. Yes, dusk kicks in at about 3:30.

We also took a walk through the Shambles, which has a really interesting history. Shambles is the oldest street in York (over 900 years old) and used to be home to a huge number of butchers (hence the name; the word "shambles" stems from the medieval word "shamel" meaning booth or bench, and it was also referred to as "Flesshammel" referring to the flesh or meat of the livestock slaughtered and sold there. The streets slope in from the sides, creating a channel out of Shambles--once upon a time, the street flowed with blood and offal twice weekly. Ew. This is the total width of the street...

Thanks to Kevin's feet for giving me a point of comparison, haha! The buildings date back to the 15th century, and they lean forward so far that their roofs almost touch together over the street in some segments. Here's one of the buildings...

and here, you can see how close together the roofs of these two buildings are. Crazy, huh?

One more of some of the buildings...

We roamed a while, then got sandwiches and took them to the square to eat. I got mauled by one of these bastards...

because my husband is a messy eater and kept dropping stuff, so they were hovering around us. Asshole. *J/K! Love you, honeybunches!* After the winged rat flew at my face trying to get my sandwich, I started yelling, "Tippi Hedren, Tippi Hedren!" then threw it away. Nothing says "spiteful" quite like showing a pigeon who's boss, right? If I can't have this sandwich, NOBODY CAN! Take THAT, bird! We sat there listening to some street magician trying to gather a crowd, and by "listening" I mean we were kinda like Statler and Waldorf with a third random asshole thrown in to heckle the guy further. He S.U.C.K.E.D. Would not standard street magician code tell you that the best way to gather a crowd is to do something cool so people will want to watch you? No, the guy kept saying, "Gather round, gather round, I'll be performing in ten minutes. Everyone step closer. Just ten minutes now." Dude. I'm important. Why am I going to stand there for ten minutes watching you PREPARE to bore me? There was a grand total of one and only one booming round of applause. This was when an elderly woman with a cane wasn't paying attention and started moseying through the area the magician ass had roped off for his performance. When people started laughing, the lady realized she was in the roped off section, stopped, and began to do a little dance. See? You want to gather a crowd, you gots to do something cool. Mad props, Grandma. Mad props. Get down wit' cho bad self. Mmhmm. Go girl. What, too much? Okay, fine.

After lunch, we decided to walk the city walls, an absolute MUST-DO when in York. The views are great, you're literally STANDING on history, and there's such an adrenaline rush that comes from the possibility of falling to your death. What? It doesn't have guard rails?! Well, okay, most of it does. Then there's the part that doesn't. Combine this with slick stone and the usual English rains, and you've got the be-all, end-all formula for busting your ass. The rail-less section instead has a picket fence of sorts comprised of about nine zillion "No alcohol permitted" signs. This is bullshit. If I'm going to fall, bust my ass, and catapult off the city walls, I want my blood alcohol content to sound like the score of an Olympic gymnast who just nailed her dismount. 9.5 (the French judge gave it a 6.2, but in blood alcohol content, that's still sufficient). Who wants to die as the sober idiot who just rolled off the side due to being spastic? Not me. Booze me up! I managed to not fall, however, although there were several bouts of "Whoooaaa! Shit! That was spooky. Okay, let's keep going...WHOOOAA! Shit! Did it again! WHOOOAAA! Damn it! How did the ancients manage this without Nike Airs?! WHOOAA!" followed by contemplating being the first person to ever "walk" the walls sitting on my ass and butt-scooching around the perimeter. Kevin, on the other hand, almost fell off the walls, and I couldn't help myself. I laughed. You would've, too. He looked like Snoopy dancing as Schroeder played the piano...check the link for a point of reference. Here's some pictures of the walls and the view of the city from them. Brace yourselves; there's several comin' atcha.

Being the animal lover that I am, I prefer to start all my pictures from the walls with the world's most obese squirrel, Merle. For a squirrel to be that easily visible from as far away as we were is mind-boggling. This sucker was about the size of a raccoon!

Oh, and since I'm on a wildlife kick, shtop looking at me, schwan!

Back to the walls...

York St. John University...

And another...

York has a long and often sad history regarding the Jews. Just google Clifford's Tower; that alone is bad enough. Jewbury was the Jewish quarter of York in medieval times and still goes by the name today. The area was a burial ground for Jews who settled in York as early as the 12th century, and a lot of controversy has surrounded the burial sites in more recent decades due to excavation, etc.

I have posted some of these out of order, so the pictures from after we walked the walls and went back into town to roam some more are above, but yeah, that was about it for saturday. That night, we went to the Minster to hear Bach's Oratorio, which was sooooo incredibly beautiful, one of those experiences that I will never ever forget. My former chorus nerd was having multiple eargasms. Hope Outkast didn't trademark that term. Since I know you guys just love the Minster, here's about 18 shots of it, including a quick one we snapped inside that night. We weren't sure whether we were allowed to take pics inside or not. Oh, and funny story--at intermission, we all made a mad dash for the restrooms (maybe two beers before Bach wasn't the best idea ever!), so the line for the bathroom was unreal. Being as I think the toilets in the Minster may also be several hundred years old (heh heh), after being flushed just a couple of times, none of the tanks were refilling. There we are, probably 100 or so ladies waiting to pee and with only three toilets, none of which flush. As each woman came out of a stall, it became the trend to say, "Good luck with the flush!" to the woman entering. Well, always one to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing, I go in, take care o' business, come out, and the lady exiting the stall next to mine says, "Good luck with the flush!" to the next person heading into hers, at which point, I say, "Ladies, I think the flushing days just might be over." As I exit the bathroom, you can hear a wave of laughter from the crowd of shocked old ladies (I'm not sure if they were more surprised that I didn't go along with what had been set as the standard entering a toilet stall protocol or if it was the shock of my being American, but either way, they found it hilarious for some reason). As I walk up to Ric, patiently waiting outside the restroom, I tell him the little story, and he rolls his eyes and says, "I wondered what that was all about. I knew you were coming out when I heard everyone cracking up!" Guess I cause trouble everywhere I go, huh? I'm sure you found that all very fascinating. Yeah yeah yeah, here's the pictures. Calm down, people! =D These are all of the Minster and area right around the Minster. Some were taken from when we were walking the walls, some standing right in front of it, and one from within the building. Enjoy!

York Boer War Memorial, commemorating Yorkshire's fallen soldiers from the second Boer War in South Africa. It reads,

REMEMBER THOSE LOYAL

GALLANT SOLDIERS AND SAILORS
OF THIS COUNTY OF YORK WHO
FELL FIGHTING FOR THEIR COUNTRY'S
HONOUR IN SOUTH AFRICA 1899 TO
1902 AND WHOSE NAMES ARE
INSCRIBED ON THIS CROSS ERECTED BY
THEIR FELLOW YORKSHIREMEN
A.D. 1905

St. Michael le Belfrey, an Anglican church built somewhere between 1525 and 1536 (replacing a previous church that dated back to at least 1294). This church was the site of the christening of Guy Fawkes in 1570 (he later converted to a revolutionary Catholicism; this led to his famed Gunpowder Plot in 1605.

Okay, so for tomorrow, I'll tell you all about our FAAAABULOUS road trip up the coast, so for those of you who are only checking this for the pretty pics, tomorrow will be a favorite for you--pictures to come of several castles, abbeys, the beach, etc. Ciao!

Well, Butter My Bottom and Call Me a Biscuit!

Okay, for some idiotic reason, I thought it'd be a good idea to hold off on blogging until the weekend was over, so now I have to worry about thursday night all the way through to today, and that is a LOT of stuff for all five of my readers to have to worry about, so I'll probably be breaking this into multiple entries, but I haven't decided yet. Basically, it depends on how tired I get of typing (and more accurately, of recoding the HTML for all the pictures I post because my blog likes to do funny things with them). Here goes nothin'...

Thursday night, Ric and I ate at a Cantonese restaurant, and as Ric has been to China before, I trust him when he asserts that the restaurant was extremely authentic and have therefore decided to bring a lifetime supply of snacks should I ever go to China. It's not that the food was bad, but I'm finicky about meat anyway, and the last thing that I want to do is pop a bite of yummy looking meat into my mouth only to discover that 99% of said yummy bite is bones. Maybe the Chinese have no rules regarding table manners and the spitting of bones, but eating something that riddled with them in England is just freaking WEIRD. I spent most of the meal eyeballing things suspiciously. Damned good chicken though. Woot, thursday was nice and simple to blog. Anywho...

Friday night, we were starving, so the plan was to go to the pub across the street from Kevin's hotel and get some food and beer. All was working grandly until we realized that the pub wasn't serving food that night due to a kitchen staff training session. The guys had a beer, I had a rum and coke, we hung out for a bit, then decided to walk up the street to the Fox to get some food. Now I had not eaten anything in something like 12 hours, so let's just say I was already a little happy from my one drink. I paused to take a shot of the church across the street...ladies and gentlemen, please observe Evidence Numero Uno as to why taking pictures after alcohol is a bad idea...

Isn't it a beauty?! For anyone wondering, that's what it really looked like to me at the time. Back to the story here, we get to the Fox, go to order, and are told that they quit serving food at 5 pm. We already walked down there in the cold, so naturally, we decided to have a drink there, too, before leaving to find food. The barkeep jokingly told Ric our tab was about 4 times what it actually was, so a good bit of bystanders got a laugh out of Ric going, "Dude, I may be American, but I'm not that dumb!" *Sidebar*There was a German Shepherd roaming around the building. Yes, I tried my damnedest to convince Kevin that he was seeing things, but to no avail. *End Sidebar* As we exit the building, I notice an extremely large sign with the food service times. So much for not being dumb Americans, heh heh!

And on we go, to Delrio's Cuchina Italiana, which is where I wanted to go from the get-go, but the guys didn't decide to humor me until one of the guys in the pub recommended it--that's what they get for doubting my Google prowess, bwahaha! By the end of dinner, which was AWESOME, Kevin is pretty tipsy, the conversation has migrated to where conversations always migrate when I'm around (my boobs), and I'm wearing about a fourth of my meal. Doesn't it look delicious?

Poor pink sweater. We did a good bit of driving around aimlessly just to sight-see, then called it a night.

Saturday, they were having this huge Christmas bazaar kind of thing in City Centre, and one of the guys Ric's working with over here was going to be there as well (his band was playing), so Ric and I spent all morning driving around town just taking pictures and having a good old time, then went back and picked Kevin up around lunch so we could all head into the CC to check out the festivities. Here's a few pics of our driving around...

The Minster from the street:

The cat burglar...okay, so he only looks suspicious. Actually, he's a postal worker.

Oh, the things I do for you people--in the process of trying to get this picture of the walls...

I wound up ramming my face into this...

and achieving this result--yes, here I am dazed, confused, seeing spots, and pouting.

Please observe the dent in my forehead. Anyway, back to the walls...

The Romans built their fort in about 71 AD and surrounded it with a rectangle of walls; while the majority of the original walls have been destroyed, there's a tiny bit left, and most of the remaining walls date back to the 12th-14th century.

Driving over the river...

A few store fronts and road signs...

Clifford Tower. Don't be fooled by this picture. Clifford Tower is right in the middle of the city surrounded by buildings, traffic, etc, but it looks remote! Here's a link if anyone wants some history about it--really interesting stuff!

I took this picture because the advertisement amused me,

but then I got curious, so I googled it. As it turns out, Bile Beans was a laxative created in Australia in 1899 that got really popular in the UK around the 1930s. The York Arts Forum restored the ad in 1986, about the same time the product was discontinued. Perhaps they weren't keeping everyone quite as healthy, bright-eyed, and slim as they claimed? Oh, and speaking of ads that amused me, I present the source of this entry's title...

York Art Gallery (the statue in front is of York-born painter William Etty)...

So yeah, that's about all I'm going to post of our driving around before picking up Kevin...I'll post more of our walking around City Centre and of the rest of the weekend later, promise! Hope you enjoyed the pix so far!

How do you say, "Oh shit, It's the po-pos!" in British?

Okay, so as promised, here's last night's adventure...
Started off as a pseudo-normal evening. I was covered in hives (okay, maybe that part's not so normal), and we're in England...okay, this is bullshit. The night started off all screwy from the get-go. I wasn't really feelin' the whole walking into a restaurant looking all jacked up, so the plan was to go drive around aimlessly and sight see, then we'd hit up McDonald's and head back to the room. Perhaps the plan of "hittin' up McDonald's" went a bit too literally because Ric wound up rear ending the guy in front of us while pulling from window A to window B. He only tapped him, but still, homeboy was pissed. How do I know this? Sheer intuition. British people don't get mad. They're too polite. They look furious while they thank you for being concerned about the ass of their car, which you just hit because you're an idiot American. So we get our food, the guy in front of us drives off after realizing his car really is fine (but he still thinks we're idiot Americans), and we pull over to eat. For anyone who is interested, this is a normal sized value meal in the UK...

Isn't it adorable!? Okay, so a quarter pounder is the exact same size, but the fries and drink are what we get in the states with a big kids meal. I find these things to be fascinating. Oh, and as a random diversion from my train of thought here, I just have to say that we are actively doing everything we can to perpetuate the fat American stereotype. Take breakfast, for instance. Everyone else comes down, grabs a plate, goes through the breakfast buffet line, sits down, and begins eating...a piece of toast. Or some grapefruit. Um...REALLY? You have the option of toast, croissants, muffins, eggs scrambled or fried, sausage, bacon, ham, pineapple, grapefruit, melon, four kinds of cereal, and a plethora of other assorted breakfasty items, and all you're going to eat is ah one piece o' toast?! Screw that shit, and get out of my way! There are eggs to be had, dangit!

AAAAAAnyway, we eat our food sitting in the Mickey D's parking lot in the car, and I just realized that there was a cop car next to us while we were eating. My English nerd calls this foreshadowing. So when we're done eating, we decide to do some more driving around York just for S's and G's, and the plan was to head in the direction of York Minster and take some pictures. So here ya go, a bit of York Minster. Forgive the shit quality of the pictures--it was dark, rainy, and out of a car window!

I have no clue what this is, but it was across the street and also pretty, so yeah, took a picture of it, too...

Afterwards, we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel, and in so doing wound up going down a one way street...going down it the wrong direction, might I add. Naturally, there's a police car directly behind us, and he promptly pulls us over. This is so all the passersby can laugh at the idiot Americans facing the wrong way on the road. From the car comes not one but two officers, the first of whom knocks on the window while the second stands behind the first looking at us disapprovingly. "Sir, this is a one way street," he quips authoritatively as Officer 2 glares on. "Yes sir, I realize that now," Ric says. As soon as the American accent is heard, Officer 2 disappears, laughing her way all the way back to the van. Officer 1 grins like an idiot and asks us where the hell we're trying to go, politely attempts to give us directions back to Tadcaster Road, can't stop laughing, then finally admits defeat and says, "Sir, just follow me and I shall escort you." Don't believe me? Here's our ever so polite escort back to Tadcaster Road...

As we're driving through the city centre walls, we catch the red light, so I decide to take a picture of the walls...hey, if the cop isn't going to get after us for going up a one way the wrong way, I figure he won't object to me blinding other drivers with my camera either...

Now obviously that wasn't the city walls. No, that's the roof of our voltswagen passat, also known as evidence that I can't aim. I thought it was funny, so I kept it. Here's a pic of the city walls, and yes, it's also a bad one, but I wasted most of my picture taking time taking the first shot of the roof of the car, so what do you expect?

Luckily for us, the cops in England are just as polite as everyone else, so we made it back to the hotel safely and with little other hilarity...okay, that's a lie. When the cop went to wave us past him when we got to Tadcaster, I did kind of forget that my window was up and yell, "Thank you!" into the pane of glass--this also got laughs (not that they had quite stopped yet from their first encounter with our idiocy), so yeah, those two police officers will be mocking the idiot Americans for a long time to come! We did at least get back to the hotel alive and none the worse other than some mild embarrassment. Who knows what we'll get into tonight, God help us this weekend, and there's no hope for the week we'll be in Paris and London! Brace yourselves, people!

A few things you should know about our present digs--firstly, it's pretty damned sweet. We have a stellar view of York Racecourse, home of the Ebor Handicap...this is from the balcony of our room.

Told ya, not too shabby! Oh, and in addition to the view of the racecourse, we also have a huge tree full of wildlife. Case in point:

These guys have been nesting here for pretty much the whole time--I feel very Tippi Hedren circa The Birds. We also have a number of reDONKulously fat bunnies who come out every night, graze, chase each other around the lawn, and consistently avoid my camera (stealthy little fat asses!).

The hotel staff is extremely nice, and the chef of the restaurant downstairs even told us to let him know a day in advance, and he'd make us whatever we want just because he knows eating the same thing over and over again can get dull. We kind of wound up doing that anyway for a couple of nights, firstly because we were jet lagged and by the time we woke up, McDonald's was the only thing still open, and we returned there last night because I'm covered in hives, look like a leper, and prefer avoiding public until it dies down a bit. Not sure if it's because of the damned feather bed or the bath products in the room, but let me say a word or two about said bath products. This shit right here...

smells distinctly of what a nursing home would smell like if submerged in lemon-scented pinesol. It's UNGODLY putrid and shall be my Christmas present to you all, BWAHAHAHA! Whoa...sorry about that. The crap must be gettin' to my brain! Also putrid-- and I believe it must simply be the lemon as that's the common thread between the two--the 7Up. Don't let it fool you! This 7Up tastes fine...until 3.47 seconds have gone by. Then it hits you. You pause, smack a few times, then realize that the only possible conclusion is that you just drank a canned cocktail of urine, lemon, battery acid, and a hint of vomit (to be fair, that could be your own as a result of the first three ingredients, but one can never be quite sure). I hope you appreciate your introduction to the 7Up of Death! Doesn't he just look ominous?!

Okay, just two more things about the hotel, then I can get to the fun stuff. First order of business, I have henceforth decided to tell people my weight in kilograms without specifying which unit of measure I'm using...DAMN, that's not going to work so well now that I've told you all my plot. Nonetheless, the scale in the bathroom amuses me. Please observe the two units of measure on this scale...

For those of you with less than stellar vision, that's kilograms and stones. TEHE! Okay, so maybe it's silly that I find that so hilarious...kind of like my amusement over the aging of the Queen on their coins. Oh, didn't mention that? Please observe the growth of the chins of the Queen--but do so respectfully--she's the freakin' queen, yo!

The papers here have been discussing a lot the weather phenomenon about the marked increase in precipitation in the last 40 years...I think the queen's hair in these effigies should be considered as further evidence. Doesn't increased rain make your hair get bigger, too?

Okay, so back from that tangent, it's time I introduce you that other most important aspect of our hotel life...our alarm clock. Meet Prudence.

What? Prudence is a plant, you say? Well, yes, yes she is. She's also an alarm clock. But...but HOW? Well, my dears, the answer to this is quite simple. Prudence likes to come out to play...and as an alarm clock, she helps us greet the brand new day. Ten points to everyone who gets what the hell I'm talking about. =D Prudence loves Lady Gaga. She loves Lady Gaga so much that she begged me to sing along with her as she serenaded Ric yesterday. This is how we woke him, this is how Prudence prefers it, and well...Dear Prudence simply must have her way. That's that, folks. Rules are rules. Anywho, must get last night's pictures together, optimized, etc. so I'll be back later to tell you all of last night's adventures...yes, cops were involved. 'Til then!

For those reading just for travel stories, here's numero uno...

Maggi here, writing from Jolly Ole England, and yes, our flight was rather amusing...because when do I ever behave myself, and when does an airline ever let me through without some sort of silliness? Answer--NEVAR.

Let's start with the evening prior to departure, shall we? Melinda, Dessi, and Bobbity came over and hung out for a while, during which my inebriated husband had a chat with Christy thinking she was Bobby, so yeah, wee bit o' confusion but kind of funny. Dessi and Bobbity dipped out, and Ric crashed, so Melinda and I decided to watch a movie because I came up with the brilliant idea of not going to bed in order to force myself to fall asleep on the plane, thus avoiding a great deal of jet lag. This actually worked well except that I was totally loopy the morning of our departure. Marlene stopped by to wish us well, then we piled into Melinda's mom's car so Melinda could take us to Groome. As previously mentioned, I was loopy, so we were almost there when I realized that I had left my purse and had no ID with me...or Burt's Bees (God help us all should I travel to the UK without my crackstick!). U-turn, back to my place, grab purse, and go for round two. Thank you, Melinda, for being accustomed to my absent-mindedness and for being ever so very patient!

I spent the ride on Groome as the bologna to two coughing, snotty, disgusting individuals, one of whom was a grown man who kept grazing in the van and was incapable of doing so without leaning forward to chew in my ear, and the other of whom was a toddler who only shut up when I gave her the death stare...then would promptly turn around and wail even more. Perhaps I shall go to hell for this sentiment, but I spent the rest of the day wishing hemorrhoids and extensive diarrhea upon a three year old child, and as of yet, I have experienced no guilt, only a few annoying cold symptoms of my own--this is where I pause for a moment, gaze thoughtfully into the distance, and decide it'd be more appropriate to wish hemorrhoids and extensive diarrhea onto the mother of the screaming little snot rocket for not either drugging, beating, or muzzling her obnoxious little booger trove of a miscreant...and my family wonders why I look at them like they're crazy when asked when I want to have children!

We arrive at Delta, I loudly exclaim to Ric what a blessing that child was for being such a cheap contraceptive as I now have no desire to ever procreate even if the future of the universe is utterly dependent upon my uterus and mine alone, the mother looks at me sadly as if she wishes I had adored her child enough that she may have been able to sell her to me, I shake my head no just in case she were thinking of attempting to barter anyway, and we continue on our merry, now phlegm-free way. Perhaps there's something about Thanksgiving that briefly abducts the normal Delta employees and exchanges them with happy little airline elves, or perhaps they're still too full to be their normal pain in the ass selves, but we met the most chipper, kind, wonderful baggage check guy ever, and he saved us $150 by ignoring the fact that our bag was 6 pounds overweight, and he even thanked us for the $10 we slipped him as compensation for playing dumb. We shmoozed with him for a bit, I told him he was the nicest, best-looking Delta employee we had ever met, and then off to security, where I was ordered to remove my belt (just in case all those missiles and bazookas I was transporting were magically hidden within the thin metal buckle). Comedy is what happens when you try to make your way around Hartsfield Jackson while lugging a carry-on suitcase, laptop bag, a pea coat, and a diet coke from the airport McDonald's, all whilst attempting to keep your pants up, a feat in and of itself when you have all those mini-missiles and bazookas hidden on your person, right?

Watched the latest Harry Potter on the plane (rather disappointing, but I'll cut it some slack since it is coming before a part one of two sitch, so I guess they decided to make a movie with nothing but back story in it...whatevs), fell asleep, woke up long enough to inquire to the flight attendant about the GA/ Ga Tech game, and being the delightful lady she was, she got the pilot to ask dispatch, then reported back to us with, "Well, I would've figured a bee could take a dog, but the dogs beat the bees!" People several rows ahead of us turned to stare (glare?) at me...perhaps yelling "HELLZ YEAH!" on a plane full of homeward bound Britons was a bit much...somewhere out there, some Brit is probably lamenting the horror of their plane ride with the exuberant American and her profane mouth. C'est la vie!

So immigrations in the UK was rather funny...we were expecting the usual passport flash, stamp, and continue, but they asked us a number of questions about the purpose of our stay. At one point, the woman questioning me asked me where my husband was and without really thinking about it, I pointed to Ric and said, "He's that guy over there in the Yankees cap." The lady glared at me, bemused and seemingly irritated, then snarkily responded, "The who?" I just giggled, said, "My bad," hollered at Ric to wave, and mentally congratulated myself on having resisted the urge to make a Pete Townsend reference in response to her question. I know, I'm lame. I do believe this is the point where she chalked me up as a clueless American and passed me through missiles and bazookas and all, so we went to Avis to get a car.

DRIVING IN ENGLAND IS A FREAKING BLAST! We spend an hour and a half in the car laughing at me trying to figure out how to operate the f'ing radio (helps if one turns the volume up; Ric's co-worker Kevin got a great laugh out of that brain fart). The radio station we were on was hilarious--think American radio from about a decade ago, so we rocked it out to "The Thong Song" and Nelly Furtado, admired the woolly sheep adorning the gorgeous countryside, and exclaimed about every 14 seconds, "This is so weird!" Now, Americans are aware that the English drive on the opposite side of the road, but it never dawned on me (and likely on many others as well) that this reverses everything. The McDonald's drivethru was in reverse (and they had employees writing down orders rather than speakers, which was also odd to me), and I had a stand-off in the hotel hall with an elderly couple trying to figure who was to pass whom because they even pass each other on the left when walking. I moved to the right, the woman looked at me like I was nutty, her husband waved me through, and I had a Sesame Street flashback of the little monsters going, "Up. Down. Opposite!"

Anywho, enough for today. Stay tuned for the pros and cons of our hotel, pictures, the death can of 7Up, obese bunnies, and lemon geriatrics shampoo and conditioner, among other things. Seacrest out!

If You Give a Moose a Muffin Top...

Okay, so it's been a really long time since I've been on here. I know, BAD BLOGGER! BAD! Things have been a little crazy. My babiest sister turns 18 the day after tomorrow (memo to me--mail her a lotto ticket, porn, and a pack of cigarettes), my younger sister is getting married in less than two weeks (scarier things have happened...like...well...hmm...I'll come back to this...), and I have been in JBFC cabin planning frenzy mode because I'm a total militant nut when it comes to orchestrating shit. I mean, what if, by some crazy coincidence, all 11 of us mysteriously forgot to bring deodorant? There's enough stank going around with 11 beer-burping, farting, shitting women trapped in a log house for a weekend, and that's WITH the use of antiperspirant, so the risk of all of us forgetting ours or it being lost in transit or it being stolen by psycho deodorant thieves is just far too great. This is why Wal-Mart has that handy dandy aisle filled with miniature versions of, well, everything. Is it a little nuts to feel the need to bring shrunken versions of deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, body wash, tooth brushes, hair brushes, dental floss, and Scope? Possibly...but we'll be covered in the personal hygiene department, and this happens to be important to me. "Why?" you ask? You have obviously never been trapped in a log house for a weekend with 11 beer-burping, farting, shitting women!

Now onto happier news...I have lost 12 pounds. Well, technically, that's not true. I didn't lose them. I know exactly where they went--off my boobs. I find it highly inconvenient that my weight loss always starts with my boobs. I would much prefer to keep the woobles and lose the wobbles in the gut region, but God doesn't care so much about my personal preferences. "How have I accomplished this task?" you ask? Man, you're freaking inquisitive today! So yeah, I'm losing weight by threatening myself. Hey, it works! I'm feisty and intimidating. I have decided that come hell or high water, I'm going to be something slutty and scantily clad for Halloween next year. This gives me a year to not look like a slutty moose...because if you give a moose a muffin top, then it won't go home with anyone, and I kind of like to go home with that guy I married. He's cute, and he liquors me up. A moose with a muffin top...at least I finally thought of something scarier than my little sister getting married in less than two weeks! POINT! MOOSES! Meese? Yeah, we're done here.