More Stupidness

Today I was wandering down the the British Museum (like you do) to go check out their bookstore again for research for my dissertation.

Now usually I go in the back door because it's small, not being photographed by Japanese tourists, and it always kind of feels like I'm sneaking in.

Well not anymore. As London is now on high alert, the BM in its infinite wisdom has decided to close the back entrance forcing everyone to use the front doors. The front doors covered and clogged with tourists. Tourists that stand too close. Tourists that get mad when you walk through their photo ops. Tourists that are in MY GOD DAMNED WAY!

Anyway, I wandered around to the front of the BM because research is important I guess. I didn't go in though. The line was a bazillion miles long because they were doing bag searches and other dumb shit.

I don't think I'm going to go anywhere for the next two days...

Get me away from these idiots

So yep. Terrorists managed to build completely harmless, ineffective car bombs and I come back to a city of morons.

Imagine a girl who's been travelling for 24 straight hours; buses, trains, planes, you name it. This girl has a heavy duffle bag and a head cold. She arrives in central London and immediately goes in search of cold medication. She enters a Boots (like a CVS). This Boots is the size of a postage stamp, or, if you would like me to exaggerate less, the size of a living room.

Giant bag proceeds to start knocking things off the shelves and this tired girl is getting dirty looks because she's in the way of everyone. So she sets the bag down and moves two feet away to grab vitamin c tablets.

Entire store bugs out and starts yelling at this girl for leaving her bag unattended. Two. Feet. Away.

Girl is tired. Girl is not in the mood to be yelled at by self-righteous businesswomen and a guy who looks like he's had about 4 course of methodone treatment (none took). Girl yells back, buys her vitamins and sudafed and storms out knocking as much stuff over as possible (surprisingly little unfortunately).

Now normally, I would have actually apologized for being that lax a day or two after a somewhat scary event, but these were the people that were glaring at me for knocking stuff over and blocking their paths 5 minutes earlier. It's one or the other until I work out how to magically shrink my red bag into a handheld clutch purse while not squishing its contents (think "I dream of jeannie" lamp).

No one needs that at 8 am.

Odds and ends

I just looked and I've written 50 posts for you guys. This is pretty good for someone who never remembers to mail postcards and isn't the quickest in responding to important emails.

Today was drop off the visa applications day at the Turkish Consulate. I was expecting a sit down meeting and got the DMV. There were lines and number calling, but all under the "controlled chaos" umbrella. It was actually a bit fun.

Yesterday I went to Canterbury and the week before I went to Bath (which I don't think I wrote about so I will here). Bath was amazing, a lot like Saratoga, to be honest, which isn't suprising since they're both spa towns. The buildings are mostly Georgian and are yellow because of the local stone used (called.. wait for it... BATH STONE! YAAAY!).

I didn't go into the Roman Spa because I've seen them... and they all look the same. And I don't wanna pay £15 for something that lasts 15 minutes that I've already seen. Interestingly, I just described going to a strip club...

Anyway, back on topic. That's the problem with the Romans- there's no real creativity. If you've seen one Roman monument, you've seen them all. There's only so many damn trepidariums that you can look at before you say "yep. that's a trepidarium." Same goes for the frigidarium, except that frigidarium is slightly more fun to say. But not for £15!

Instead I geeked out by visiting a fully restored Georgian house, the Jane Austen museum, and went to high tea at the Pump Room. The Georgian house was great and I want to line my walls with damask silk now! The Jane Austen museum was a blast and I'm going to send a nasty email to Rough Guides Travel Guides for saying it wasn't worth the visit.

Basically it was myself and a bunch of ladies of a certain age the got all bubbly about a 15 minute Jane Austen lecture, a 5 minute movie about the costumes that were used in the new ITV Austen miniseries, and a brief discussion about which movies stayed true to the book. Suprise, suprise, the people that work at the Austen museum haaaaaated the new Kiera Knightly version. So much so that the woman giving the lecture went off on a 5 minute rant about it.

These were my people.

The pump room was awesome because not only was the high tea (meaning little sandwiches and cakes) delicious, but this place was the center of society in the Georgian period. It's where everyone went to be seen and find out the latest gossip. I, of course, made a mess of it.

It was cream tea, meaning scones with clotted cream.. mmm... And in my excitement I ate the scone first (supposed to eat the sandwich) but shattered it into a hundred pieces trying to put the clotted cream on (think consistency of hard butter on a very dry biscuit). So there was small pieces of scone all over the table directly in front of me that were too small to slather clotted cream and jam on.

If you're actually interested in this story other than to laugh and think "oh that Casey, what trouble will she get into next?" don't worry, I managed to eat all of my scone pieces and no one there made me feel like an idiot. For such a fancy place, they were incredibly nice and they just kept filling up my teapot with more tea to the point that when I left my bladder was going to explode.

For as pleasant as Bath was, Canterbury was just eh. The cathedral is amazing, and it was incredible to be going someplace that was such a major pilgrimage site(I did not feel the same about Fatima for reasons I will not go into here)for hundreds of years. In the crypt there's this pedastal with a bunch of sticky notes on it that you can write a prayer and they'll place the sticky note on the altar during mass. Before they collect them, though, they just sit on this pedastal. It was incredibly moving to read the prayers that some people wrote. The most tongue in cheek that I read was "Please let the teachers survive this field trip..."

The rest of Canterbury was pretty boring. It's all high street shops built after the Germans bombed the crap out of the city in the Baedecker Raids. So there wasn't really much to see or do that was of particular interest after the Cathedral.

To sum up- Bath, yay! Canterbury, eh.

Wait.. it's almost over?

I've really been feeling London coming to an end and I'm sad. As much as I want to come home I do really really love it here. I went to Hampstead Heath today. I didn't realize it was so close! I walked for 20 minutes then took a 15 minute busride. Crazy.

I don't have much exciting to say about it other than its gorgeous and wild and in the middle of north London. I didn't see any craziness that is associated with the Heath, just strolled around in the woods and got to see two bunnies playing in a clearing.

I booked a trip to Bath for tomorrow and Canterbury for next Sunday. Those were the two cities that I had left that I wanted to see. I could also book a 5 hour busride to Thirsk to see the Herriot Museum but I may wait until my next visit to England. :) If I book a train ticket in advance it will be just as cheap and shorter.

I'm busy making lists: things I need for Turkey, things I want to see before I go, things I'll miss, things I want to do/eat when I get home..

So many lists!

Invasion highlights and wrap ups.. potentially with pictures!

So the girls have come and gone leaving behind a room that begs to be vacuumed and now feels far too big to be lived in by a single person. If either of you three are reading, thanks for coming and I'm going to miss the company. Now stop reading, because you guys were here for everything that I'm going to type and you should instead use this time to keep my horse from killing herself in the remaining month.

I dragged The Girls(tm) to various London landmarks, many on their first day while they were still trying to process that they were in another country. We did a fast tour of Trafalgar down to Westminster and Big Ben and ended up at the Red Lion pub for a delicious dinner where The Girls (or at least 2 of them) learned that lasagna (or any Italian dish for that matter) is not going to be decent in an old English pub.

Other London sights- the B.M. (patented "that's a fake, that's a fake, that's stolen tour) where we got to hang out in the Parthenon Gallery after it was closed because we asked nicely, the Royal Mews (missed it), Picadilly (also not there for it), and Hyde Park (rode a punk horse and had a blast). We also saw the Tower of London (rained, Shira got her coffee late, giant effing ravens) and Camden Market (punks, hugging saltshakers, Stacey found her holy grail- a toy smart car).

Every night we ate delicious food, and while I'd like to take credit for it, my town boasts a ridiculous amount of good restaurants. The big hit seemed to be the Thai place because of its yummy fried rice and pretty Thai Ladyboys.

Shira's quest for a good cup of coffee in town was finally ended when we stumbled into the healthy food/free interwebs cafe. This also ended Stacey's quest for free Wi-Fi for her everpresent PalmPilot (it had solitaire.. I bet it could have minesweeper installed which means I want 4). Jaime's quest for beer ended the night before they left when she was introduced to the joy that is the Jerusalem Tavern. We all became better people that night for learning about the delicious drink that is a half pint of Guinness and a shot of Tia Maria. I know you have those ingredients handy, Mom..

We went on two daytrips- one to the incredibly beautiful Leeds Castle where the guides were friendly (chatted up a retiree that volunteers.. me talk to an old man???!!! noooo). They took every chance to tell us that we could rent it out for weddings and parties. We got lost in the hedgemaze, talked to a parrot in the aviary, and got to watch a birds of prey demonstration that involved the castle peacocks chasing around the performing owl. If it doesn't make sense I'll put the video up on youtube.

And for the highlight- Cheeserolling in Gloucester. For those who haven't been privy to the joy that is double Gloucester cheese, let me tell you, it is the finest of cheeses for use in the grilled cheese sandwich.

The festival involves a steep hill and people racing to the bottom after a cheesewheel. One would think that the contestants in the race were the heroes of the day, but I beg to differ. The heroes of the day were the spectators, specifically the one that was kind enough to step in a ditch of water and throw the 4 of us over the barbed wire/hedgerow keeping us from the cow pasture full of cows. That man has so much good karma coming to him..

After the efforts put into getting to the base of the hill, I think we were all at the stage where if the cheeserolling was anything short of spectacular we would have rioted and stolen the beloved cheesewheel. Thankfully it was nothing short of amazing and this did not happen (and I say thankfully because from our original viewpoint we couldn't see the "catchers" at the base of the hill that were rugby tackling the runners to stop them from hitting the crowd- they would have messed us up had we got anywhere near the cheese).

Some pictures from the carnage:



For some reason I can't add more photos but I'll post them on facebook and maybe in another post later. I'll also try and add the videos to youtube with varying levels of success. They're worth it, way better than the photos.

Invasion of the horseback riders!

The girls come tomorrow to hang out for a week, and not a moment too soon as Mike started his new job and is in no mood to be pestered/harassed/nagged by me. Which basically means we won't talk as that is what I'm good at. :)

I had all great intentions of coming to school today to get a bunch of work done on my thesis before they got here. Let me walk you through my day:

Wake up on the couch at 10:30. This is bad because if I'm not awake before 9, chances are today is a wash. Also, my bed is super uncomfortable, so sometimes I sleep on the couch.

Do my patented Soup Can Arm Workout (tm). Don't judge- my arms look less like sausage rolls.

Make a veggie burger and put on as many perishable ingredients as possible in an attempt to clean the fridge.

Listen to the radio. Take a shower.

It is now 12:30 and I'm not at school. Contemplate not going to school because I owe the library money. Read a book about Queen Isabella which has absolutely nothing to do with my thesis but she's really interesting (I will regale you all with facts when I come home until you buy me chicken wings to shut me up).

Talk myself into going to school. 40 minute busride where I stare at the two fat chihuahuas sitting on their owners lap. One growls at me when I walked by. It knew I wanted to pet it..

Arrive at school, take out money from the ATM to bribe the library into allowing me to take out books. You all know I'm going to library school, right?

Go to the masters room where its a bazillion degrees. Go up to the library instead. Proceed to use the internet for two hours.

Have a moment of brilliance (about 45 mins) where I crack a book and write 2 single spaced pages of my thesis (it has to be about 50ish). I am well on my way!

Congratulate self by playing on the internet until about 5:30.

Pay library my fines and take out a load of books I won't read at home.

Go to the cafe and buy a chocolate croissant and tea for my efforts. Eat in the masters room while playing on the internet some more.

It's now 8. I got here at 2:30. I have done 45 minutes worth of real work. The upside is if I continue at this pace, it will take me 25 days to write my thesis.

An email I sent..

The only thing you need to know before reading the following is that I've been bitching nonstop about the babies in my local free wireless, healthy food cafe.

So I decided to fart about town before I went to school. I'm in the
healthy food cafe. I now know what happens when there are no babies.

The guy sitting next to me won't stop talking to me. And he keeps
adjusting himself.

There's this woman across from me from Long Island that sounds like
the nanny. She is talking to her two Long Island friends and it's
seriously like being transported back to Suny Albany, land of the
downstate transplants. She has covered: her friend Tina, antisemitism,
how when they were looking for place to live she didn't like the idea
of a flat and made her husband buy the whole house, the fact that they
have a spiritual entity in her house called the green man, and she is
now reading from an inspirational book.

I throw up my hands. Give me screaming babies. Anything but Long
Island women of a certain age talking about their spiritual paths.

Oh god she's talking about crystals and going to see the "Indians" to
get turqoise. I am not sure if she means American Indians or the
people of India.