Why I'm not posting anything about the Queen's Jubilee...or some more inadvertent awesomeness

Because what you are about to see is infinitely interesting compared to an analysis of the flotilla. I did watch the whole pomp and pageantry of the day the Royal Family went to St Paul's for the service and ohmygoodness wasn't the Archbishop of Canterbury a prig?

So this happened...

I have video of this lovely event, but after two days of waiting for it to upload, I declare myself defeated.

C'est la vie.

If you have me in your Google+ circles, you can view the video there.

Here's to random events of frivolity!

Not-so-super-ninja-edit, Sunday 11:03 pm... got it to upload to YouTube. Wheeeeeeh!

How I'm celebrating Leap Day.

By shaking my hands...one as a fist, with rock concert elan and the other as a fist also, but old-lady-yelling-at-whippersnappers-style

Fist Pump 1. I'm hanging out my laundry for the first time this year. I'm so damn excited about this!

Sure enough, the signs of spring are here... The gal I work for (this is the couple who own their internet business) said she couldn't remember the last time crocuses, snowdrops, and daffodils were out at the same time. Usually, they're out in stages, one blooming and fading as the next takes its place.


Fist Clench 2. I'm getting the new Samsung Galaxy S II (?) today. The contract's up and Vodaphone's been bugging me to upgrade. To shut them up, I'm going to get a free phone that I can use when I move home. Because I will move home someday.

Yeah, am celebrating Leap Day with some major homesickness issues. Got an email from MomUnit that sent me into a blubbering spiral of drippy snot and leaky tear ducts. It was an attachment! It was a picture of my dear friend's three children, two of which I've never met. Her children are just beautiful and it's like looking at her from across the classroom that first day I met her in junior high. I want my kid to be friends with her kids.

And there's other children I've never met, which bugs the hell out of me. Because they don't know me and because I've just figured out that I really like other people's kids. I like mine just fine, hell, I LOVE her...but I like other people's kids. Not when I was younger, like baby-sitting age...couldn't stand that. But now, I guess it's because I've got one and I'm all like, ME TOO! So, yeah... a niece that's new last year, SciMan's bestie has a kid and another coming... another couple have two children, one I got to spend time with, the other was born two years ago or so... I don't even know when! My brother and sister are becoming adults without me buying their first legal beers. Who's gonna drive them home? DadUnit's going nuts and no one's stopping it. My former students... I can't observe them from my corner of the school and feel proud. I can only just feel a pale imitation from memory. Some dear friends are getting married this year and I've no way to know if I we're going to be there to see it.

So I want to put everyone back home in a time capsule and insulate them in tree sap so that when I come back I can just Jurassic-Park scientist them and resume where I left them. I want to reel in that false sense of control I had over everyone and cast it back out among them. My pot, it is not stirred.

This is the part of living overseas that I knew was going to happen and I accepted it, but it doesn't mean that I have to smile about it. I had it in my head that I wouldn't go back until this "three-hour tour" was over. If I wanted to be illogical about it, it's mainly because I thought that if I did come home just for a visit, a taco and some Ted's queso filling in as a carrot or a crowbar threatening to pry me off the couch wouldn't be able to get me back on a plane for the exhaustible flight. There's been an exodus in the Americans in the UK online community and I sure as hell am jealous about it.

Because they're getting to not only have the very best in laundry drying equipment (a dryer), they're getting to be present, stirring the pot, making a difference, participating in the life fabric that is quilted by shared experiences.

It was a bad decision to come here when viewed in this context.



But then again, if not for that decision, I wouldn't have the trifecta of spring flowers in bloom in a graveyard that has been converted into a playground next to the Kiddo's school. So, really, little things give back and  compensate for other little things that take away and negate.

Snowdrops you can see, crocuses you can't.

In which I compare the local law enforcement to cats

Here's the 411 from a 405'er... Living in this part of Durham is like living with a cat. Without fail, every night, police sirens go by our window, heading south to Brandon (and Crook, I assume but that's just too obvious).

Making the connection yet? Well, it's like this: you cat owners have a cat. Cat is in a room. Cat decides to run at breakneck speed from that room to another, bottlebrush tail bristling. Cat comes to full stop. Cat sheepishly looks at you as if to say, "What? Haters gonna hate." Yep. That is just how the Durham vehicularly mobile constabulary behaves.



I imagine the police cars in some sort of rank, a la taxis. All of a sudden, they leave at breakneck speed, sirens blaring. They're tearing down the A690 and  upon reaching some chav's terraced council home, come to a full stop.

Having never seen Co. Durham police in action in my sleepy village, I can only infer that this is all they do. I picture it like this: they tear down the road, wahwahing at top volume only to stop abruptly and park the police car.





Oh, it's quite within the realm of possibility that arrests are being made, but riddle me this... why is it that the sirens don't come back?

Alcohol is the best thing about this.

I follow MichonMichon/Jules and she had a video on yesterday's post. It was Epic Meal Time's Breakfast of Booze. I think I was in some way inspired by that yelling man, hence all the curse words.

This is the ingredient list. We're in England, so weights are grams and kilograms for the dry fruit ingredients. Yes yes, Derpina, there are some tsps and tbsps but those aren't necessary to the story.  

Assembly table #1

The cauldron. Normally used for the Christmas Chutneys, but this year, it was decided that the making of the chutney was far too dangerous for their relationships with one another. So, cakes it was.

 This is Ruth's mother, Susan. She's lining the cake tins with parchment paper. Notice the coffee mug. The cuppa is ever present in this house, in this country. Omnipresent, really...like a Route 44 Sonic drink in a teacher's classroom: ubiquitous.

 Commence round 1 with all this butter!

 It goes in the cauldron! Add lots of sugar! That's smart.

Count those mutha-fucking eggs! 12! And we ain't even done yet!

The stuff that goes in cake.

Put some peel there, bitches. Life's too short to drink alone.

Mixed fruit and currants soaked in Courvoisier

They all go in!

Divide it evenly, yo. Make some divots in the middle for the alcohol collection. Was told that one of these would be mine. Dammit.

Start round two. That's me folks. I was a mixin' fool! Roo's mom brought an industrial strength one because she learned from last year's mishap: the mixer's motor burned out.

 Whoomp! Dere it is! Shakalaka. This one was mine. It has crystallized ginger, dates, nuts, and other mixed fruits too. I think there was mango. Not positive. It too has a divot for the alcohol. It was my "practice cake".

 Take it to the pub and eat that brick. Fucker was massive. This was only half of it. Gave the other half to Peter the Bartender. Haven't heard back from him about it, so it must've been alright.

So theoretically speaking, there'd be a cake in a tin on my counter (aka 'bench' in this neck of the woods) and I'd be "feeding" it spirits each week... Like I have some minor cake god to appease.

I couldn't wait for that though. I wanted to try it out. And you know what? It was like fruitcake. I don't like fruitcake really. Neither do SciMan and Kiddo. But you know what else? When Roo gives me the Christmas Cake that I helped to make, I'm going to eat some and be grateful that I have such a great friend in her. She drives me places that would take me an hour by bus (not counting wait times). We have a lot of laughs together; our taste in alcohol is similar: I like it straight from the bottle and not in a cake, so does she. My kid loves her and vice versa. She's my first grown-up friend* and I'm very very lucky to have one like her.







*to all my other friends that I made before I was "grown-up": I love you realhard. It isn't that I don't think you are "real" friends, it's that you met me when I was young and stupid and you liked me. You even like me now when I'm older and more stupid than before and I imagine that you'll keep on keepin' on when I'm way old and catatonically senile. I sure as hell hope so. You know my skeletons, so to speak. And maybe, just maybe it's because of that that I'm wondering what's wrong with you.

SciMan and Kiddo are forced to get to know the natives on a very intimate level

I take today's general bemusement from SciMan's Google+ entry from earlier today.

"Today's cultural exposure hit a bit of a new low. While Kiddo and I were waiting for a bus at Durham bus station, I heard something that caught my attention, turned, and sure enough, there was a man standing in the corner of the room peeing on one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Clean button up shirt, black slacks and sport jacket. He was less than 10 feet from the public restroom, which costs 20 pence to use. There is a restaurant next door. There is a pub across the street. He chose to pee on the floor inside the bus station and then trail footsteps of urine as he walked away. It was 2pm on Sunday afternoon."

This is England. Land of the pee, home of the depraved.

Want to know more? Tough.

I made Christmas Cake. In October. I'm still reeling from it. I have pictures, just have been too lazy to find the cable to connect my phone to the laptop in order to upload pictures. But really, who cares? It's a damn process of making cake, that after baking is soaked in alcohol. The only reason why I'd bother is to show the magnitude of ingredients and the size of the cauldron it was mixed in.

That's right, bitches. C-c-c-c-CAULDRON!

 So, let me know what you want me to do. If there's enough interest, I'll get off my fat ass and find that damn cable so you can see my lovely long hair tied back in a ponytail as I struggle with the mixer of mixers in the massive cauldron of a 14 egg cake.