So there are a lot of lamb in the UK. In particular, lambs are quite prevelant in Wales (which ends up with the stereotype involving the Welsh and sheep-love). Half of my trips to the countryside involve some sort of lamb sightings. Last Easter, we went down to Rye and, during one walk, we noticed that it was the time of year for new born sheep. So there were tons of cute, skittish sheep trying out the whole walking thing. Very cute.

This year, the whole lambing season seems to have come up quite a bit. Dina and Adrian actually went out and took part in assisting in birthing them some lambs (Dina - feel free to provide some insight if you want!). OK, so this doesn’t sound particularly exciting. And it’s not, since i had nothing to do with lambing. But then, while looking for some interesting British television to show Carolyn’s friend Mehreen who was visiting, we found something rather odd. On BBC2, there was a show called Lambing Live (the “Live” bit is most important) on. Well, we had to check this one out. And lo and behold, the name of the show was exactly right. An entire hour long show about birthing lambs. On primetime. On the second biggest BBC TV Station. They tried to add a little excitment to it, with a profile on the family whose farm they were showing. And I’m sure, if we’d watched the whole thing, it might have included drama like death and financial fun. But the best we saw is that the lamb stands there and the baby just suddenly slides right out.

Anyway, just an odd observation about an odd show that someone felt aided in “Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence”.

So on this, the shortest day of the year, Mother Nature has decided to mess with us fine Londoners by snowing a bit. I know you folks in the US have seen a bit of snow, so I’m not complaining, just observing. Just like earlier this year, the city doesn’t quite handle things when it snows. This morning, there was some remnants of ice and at lunch, we had some rain. Just another nasty winter day in London, with the darkness coming before 3pm since it was overcast. Then, in the course of an hour, the big flakes started coming down and we got a whopping 2 inches of snow. A sense of panic came over the office, with the head of the UK office saying we should all leave early to beat the misery. I hung around and the snow ended. But then the fun began. The buses, which normally show up every minute or two, were taking 10 minutes to appear and were packed. The bus stop was full and people had been waiting for 30 minutes for a bus.

After waiting 15 minutes for the first bus to show up full and pass us all by, I decided it might be a good idea to walk. So I start trekking through the icy pavement. And, lo and behold, it was a good idea. I suspect I beat the bus by 30 minutes because every main road was moving at glacier pace. The Brits do *not* know what to do with a little snow. I passed a virtual graveyard of buses that seemed to just have given up and gone out of service. I made a smart choice walking home, the city is in chaos of sorts. Here’s hoping the wet stuff melts and doesn’t freeze.
Anyway, I’ve been writing on this thing for almost 3 years now, so consider this an attempt to break the silence that’s been on here for a few months. Let’s start by filling in the gaps of the autumn that are here and not just post links to pictures.

We went to bed last night with snow falling and about 1/2 inch of snow on the ground. That was cool. What we woke up to was even cooler. It seemed unusually quiet outside and when I opened my windows, what did I find? There is maybe 4 inches of snow!!! Even more amazing is that the city is basically shut. Hell, a huge chunk of the entire country of England is shut! Trains coming into the city are not running. All buses are suspended and the tube (yes, the London “Underground”) has severe delays or complete closures. This is absolutely amazing.

The Victoria line is the only line which is almost entirely underground, hence the “Good Service”. They have zero idea what to do with snow. No plows, no shovels. Nothing. It just doesn’t snow enough here to be worth it. The bad news? I can walk to work. So I guess, I’ll at least try to go in. Bummer. But it’ll be a pretty walk!

We hope everyone has had a wonderous 2008. Ours has been event filled, mostly full of happiness but with the occasional sad moment. We’ve been making the most of our life abroad. We hope all the dedicated readers here (all 5 of you!) have an excellent and fun 2009!

From our honeymoon in Scotland.

Well, consider this a political neutral election day entry. I really truly don’t care who you vote for, as long as you vote. What about us ex-pats? Well, we (Carolyn and I) voted absentee in the last state we resided in. Carolyn had a chance to vote for this guy. I won’t say if she did or not since that’s not ethical. Alas, Illinois only has boring choices.

Since this is a blog about my life abroad, it has been interesting to view the whole thing from afar. There has been intense interest in the outcome of this years election. It makes you realize how much power and influence the US has and how important things like this are to a lot of people who have no choice in the outcome. It’s also a little weird being able to vote for positions in government 5000 miles away while I can’t even choose the mayor of the city I live in.

Anyhoo, just wanted to post a quick message to tell all 4 people who read this to take the time today and vote. If you have to, write in Mickey Mouse if you think the US should be run by an animated mouse. I’m planning on drinking a shitload of coffee today and trying to stay up through as much of the election returns as possible (keep in mind the first polls close at midnight in my neck of the woods). And if ever there were a reason to vote, it’s because your neighbours are probably lunatics and your lunatic vote will cancel them out. See here:

Update: From the UK, the BBC is giving a generally good overview. It’s fun to watch where the Electoral College needs to be explained. But, holy shit, they have John Fucking Bolton for their commentary. It’s soooo soooo painful. He is a complete asshole. I know it’s 315am here and I’m probably tired, but this man is a disgrace to all Americans. Anyway, things look good for partisan Democrats and Liberals in the US. Keep your fingers crossed.

Out in the blog world that I roam in, there’s a time-honored tradition of Friday Cat Blogging. This is exactly what it sounds like: pictures of cats. Since I’m a silly cat owner, I thought I would add this to my currently infrequent blogging. Let’s give it a try:

We bought Chewy a cat tree a couple of weeks ago. He’d started gaining weight when Anna wasn’t eating (I guess he decided all the food was for him since she wasn’t interested). We figured this might give him some new perspectives on the flat and make him excercise a little more. So far, with a special diet of food as well, it seems to be working. He likes to hop up and lounge on it.

OMG!!! He’s got frickin’ laser beams in his eyes! That’s just a nice full on view of his cat tree.

Coming up, I have tons of trips to fill you in on. Ludlow, the Lake District, Dublin, Cambridge and a parental visit!

It was a dreary, lazy Sunday in London. We’d been sitting around generally relaxing but we needed to get out of the house. Carolyn had recently been to an outdoor show in a scooped out section near City Hall called, appropriately, The Scoop. Over the course of the summer, they show movies, music and plays. Well, on this night, there was a Spanish play which we were interested to see. However, we were also quite hungry and headed towards City Hall in hopes of finding a place to eat beforehand.

Alas, one of the big drawbacks of England is Sunday evenings. Basically, many things shut down on Sundays and it gets even worse after about 3pm. In particular, along the south bank of the Thames, it almost seems like nothing is open that isn’t a crap chain. Add to the fact that it was raining and the Scoop is outdoors and our plans were kind of shot, since we didn’t want to watch fine theatre in a downpour. This left us a little crabby and feeling out of sorts. We decided to turn up onto Tower Bridge and make our way back north to just get some sort of food. Well, what did we see as we stepped up to make our way across the Thames:

(click on the image to see a much larger image. Or this much much larger one)

The rainbow was literally from one side of the river to the other. There we are standing in London on one of the icons of the city and there’s a rainbow. Needless to say, we just sat in awe, and all our irritability just melted away. Take another look:

By the way, that’s two complete rainbows, not one (it’s not a reflection).

We almost didn’t get it on film. Carolyn had her camera, but when she hit the power button, nothing happened, no batteries. Luckily for us, every mobile phone nowadays has a camera too. These were taken with my crackberry. Not too shabby!

So, my lovely bike, the wonderful Apollo Jalapeno, has been called a disgrace to all other bikes by my coworker with the obscenely expensive carbon fiber road bike. I think that means it’s pretty good then! And I’ve getting to be a pro with navigating the streets of London. I have pretty much all the routes around North London down pat. They’re basically the back routes that the cab drivers with “The Knowledge” use. That means that there are few traffic lights or buses. I’ve also noticed the pains the English goverment goes through to keep cars on specific roads. They will randomly make a road shrink down so the largest thing that car fit through it is a smallish SUV. Roads suddenly have barriers across them. And best of all, roads that would be an alley way in the US get cut in half with dedicated bike rights-of-way. That is very cool. A bike road. Oh yeah, there are also one-way roads that have bike lanes for going against the traffic.

Anyway, two fun things I’ve found. First, at least for now, if you search for “Apollo Jalapeno” on google, one of my pages is the top choice! Second, I figured that my bike, not being the finest in all the land, was probably not that popular. However, two weekends ago, we were down in Brighton for the weekend (more on that later), and we stumbled upon its doppelganger:

If you look closely, you’ll notice the back tire (or tyre, if you will) is totally flat and the chain is rusted up, so mine is sooo much cooler. But it was funny to just walk into one sitting on the street. I also saw someone up north selling a smaller, childs version of it on eBay. So clearly, I have a pretty hip bike! Long live bright yellow!

Just a little quick update on things. Carolyn moves here in 4 days (yeah!), my place needs work to get ready for a second tenant (boo!). I’m cat-sitting for my coworker who’s on holiday and they’re both very cute (yeah!), Anna hasn’t been the healthiest I’ve ever seen her since she moved here and I’m giving her medicine to settle her stomach which she just loooooves taking (boo!). With that in mind, my life this week will pretty much be cats, work and cleaning. But I enjoyed seeing some spirited debate about these bags. I’m excited to see these snazzy new ones they seem to be selling in the US. All we have here are canvas bags which aren’t exciting, they just work.

So I’m not always the most environmentally friendly person in the world. Carolyn does a much better job of it than I do. But, I’ve always been confused about how plastic shopping bags suddenly appeared at some point in my youth and became the standard for buying things. I know there’s always some study out there claiming paper bags are worse for the environment overall, but that seems a little suspicious. Anyway, lately, I’ve noticed people have slowly been picking up on a newish trend which is going towards reusable cloth bags. This seems like a nice idea.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, aside from my more environmentally conscious friends, I hadn’t noticed a whole lot of increased use of these bags in the US. In the UK, there’s definitely a nation-wide trend towards cloth bags. The government is sabre-rattling about getting stores to charge for people using plastic bags. I’ve got a cloth bag I try to bring with me all the time so I can use it for shopping. If I don’t always have it, I never seem to have it when I need to go shopping.

Today, I had an interesting experience. I went to a bakery to get something tasty baked goods (there are seemingly tons of them around me) and, instead of just handing me my roll and baguette, the woman behind the counter put them in a free cloth bag. I looked on the bag and the local borough council seems to be sponsoring this giveaway.  That’s a really nice idea. And all the major grocery stores either sell reusable bags or give them away.
On a related note, back in 2002 (yes, 6 years ago) Ireland imposed a €0.15 (later increased to €0.22) tax on any plastic bags which decreased its usage by 90%. That’s impressive. Seems like a smart idea. People aren’t necessarily going to do this on their own initiative and if you leave it to the grocery stores, people bitch to them and they give in. Countries like China and Taiwan and Singapore are apparently putting bans on them outright.
So, my question to my US friends and family: Is this something that is becoming more of an issue in the US? Or is it confined to the damn dirty hippies in the cities and university towns?

I see this is making some news. There was an earthquake about 200 miles north of me. Did I notice it? Well, no. I was sound asleep Ooops!

By popular demand (aka. my mom’s request), I give you Dina’s dish:

(and the garden below her flat in the darkness)

Now, let’s get a little mundane. We have two things at work here. First, I have a TV now. One thing you learn about having a TV in the UK is the licensing scheme. Like all things in life, the BBC is not free. It gets paid for by a yearly fee you pay. If you own a TV, you pay about £11 a month. This alone is no big deal. Why they just don’t deduct it out of a payroll tax is beyond me. But, regardless of that, it goes to a worthy cause as the BBC has come out with some great shit and most of the quality programming in the UK that isn’t Simpsons syndication comes from the BBC. My issue is the collection method. The BBC has paid a bunch of companies to act as Big Brother, checking address databases with who has paid the fee and who hasn’t and allegedly roaming the streets and looking for signals from places that haven’t paid. Earlier this fall, they had adverts up with things like “We’re watching you so pay up” all over the city. It’s creepy and overkill. On top of that, there is a presumption that everyone has a TV and if you haven’t paid, they assume you’re hiding something and harass you and threaten so show up and inspect your home. I have no idea what authority they have, but my colleague, who really doesn’t have a TV has had to call repeatedly to get to stop sending threatening notes about their obvious guilt because everyone has a TV.

Anyway, the point is, I have a TV and I wanna get a real signal, so I’m paid up on my license and I’m looking at the two big TV providers Sky and Virgin. As I started trying to sign up for Sky, they asked about installing a dish which confused me because i thought they were terrestrial cable. So I asked Dina who mentioned it and I realized I had some sort of dish outside my window so I asked what hers looked like so she sent me a photo. I’m obviously ignorant because Sky is satellite TV. Very exciting, no?

Here ends a daily mundane post. Was it boring as shit?

OK, this is about the longest I’ve gone without posting. It’s January and I’m basically working and doing the usual day-to-day things. If you’d like me to write about the mundane, I can try

In the meantime, the first Super Bowl in ages that was actually a game (well, I guess lately they haven’t been total jokes) and it starts a little before midnight my time. Not only that, but the Giants freaking ruined the Patriots perfect season. How cool is that?!?!

Anyway, I need to figure out what to do with this blog when there isn’t tons of exciting things to be written about/photographed. In the meantime, I’ll jump in with whatever random I can come up with.

I’m back in England again and just getting back into the flow of things. I’ll be posting some stuff over the next few days. In the meantime, here’s some Chicago news for you:

1. Looks like calling Cook County Hospital (where ER takes place) Stroger Hospital is no longer so creepy. The man they named it after, former Cook Country Board President John Stroger, died yesterday. He suffered a stroke a few days before a hotly contested primary almost 2 years ago in which his family used some shameful tactics to have his son put in his place.
2. After many years of political bullshit, the Illinois legislature has actually passed a funding bill that’ll stop the CTA (local public transit) from whinging every year or two about not having enough money. I bitched about this late last year when they yet again dodged a doomsday situation.