Being made fun of for saying “zee” instead of “zed”

I’m not sure if it’s just the office I work in, but people here have strange bathroom etiquette. My co-worker B started talking to me the other day in the elevator lobby; she chose 5 months after I arrived to ask me about my secondment in London. I was more than happy to answer her questions seeing as how she’s as nice as you’d think a stereotypical British woman would be, but after 5 minutes or so of talking, she assumed I was going to lunch and so we said goodbye. Except before I headed out to lunch, I had to stop in the bathroom first, as did she. That was the first of the awkwardness. Because not only did we walk into the bathroom together having thought we were going our separate ways, but she continued asking me questions once inside. Okay, that’s cool. I mean, it wasn’t an emergency bathroom trip or anything so I could spare another minute or so chatting. But I figured we wouldn’t be talking for that long, so I stood right-in-front-of/almost-in the first stall signalling “It’s been fun but once we cross the restroom threshold, idle conversation must cease.” Unfortunately, she did not pick up on this. So the dialogue continued. And other women kept coming in and out of the bathroom wondering, I’m sure, just who the hell chooses the ladies’ room to have a heart-to-heart about what Lisa likes most about London. Suffice it to say that the whole situation was very odd. And let’s just say I rushed out of there afterwards so as not to have our hand-washing (yes, I did it that time) and elevator ride downstairs coincide as well.

Good grief! Am I really as anti-social as that sounds? I swear I’m not – I’m just against bathroom bonding is all. You feel me, right?

12 eggs for $6

T gave me a word of warning the other day when I told him I brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. “You should say ‘peanut butter and jam’ or else people will think you’re eating peanut butter and jello.” So yeah. Apparently jelly = jello. (I actually should have known this already from The Office where Tim puts Gareth’s stapler in a ‘jelly’ mold. I guess I forgot. Oops.)

I don’t know what people are eating at work. Whatever it is, they are re-heating it in the microwave and making the kitchen smell like a used Port-O-Potty. It makes shrimp fried rice-scented microwaves seem like a godsend.

Things to acquire upon my return to Boston: coffee maker, cat
(If anyone has any awesome cat name suggestions, please send them my way. Or coffee maker names for that matter.)

Yesterday morning two people were standing on some train tracks in London ‘having a row’ (i.e. fighting). (Why they picked train tracks as the ideal place for a fight I’ll never know.) Well. The argument got so heated that they didn’t see or hear the train barreling down the tracks towards them at 80 miles an hour. So it hit them. And they died.

*music – I’m writing pop songs Done it for so long Sometimes I dream about a chorus That’s so clever it’s dumb

I’m in crush with you

Someone sneezed at work and it sounded exactly like a coyote howl. It was a severe ‘achoooo’ with the sound in the shape of a bell curve. I’m surrounded by a bunch of animals. Animals in French cuffs.

Last night, for the first time since I arrived in London, I saw someone fall down the escalator in the Underground. I am surprised it took this long for me to witness it (and even more surprised that it didn’t happen to me) since those escalators are incredibly dizzying. He didn’t fall all the way down the escalator, though. Now THAT would have been something. (I am a bad person.)

How many apricots is TOO many apricots?

London’s Crazy Headlines:
- Sword gang convicted of killing teenager (fyi – it was a Samurai sword)
- Cat poo cuppa for £50
- Girl finds father rotting in chapel
- Woman leaps to death after tick bite
- Jail over 16 imaginary children
- Baby No. 2 from 19-yr-old sperm

One of the little ways London is more polite than your average American city is that if a London city bus isn’t operating, its sign will say ‘Sorry – Not In Service.’ Now, when was the last time an American public transportation system apologized for not running?

I got a free pass to go see the new Colin Farrell movie In Bruges last night. Afterwards, because I’m a delinquent, I snuck into Drillbit Taylor. (I didn’t choose this one; it was the only movie starting at that time.)
#1 In Bruges was kinda lame.
#2 Ralph Fiennes is probably one of the greatest actors of our time (even though his name is pronunciatingly deceitful).
#3 I feel like I could have been Seth Rogan.

Let me explain. Seth Rogan is one of the great minds behind Knocked Up, Superbad, Freaks and Geeks, and Drillbit Taylor. I’m pretty sure every movie or tv show he has written has referenced a Bar Mitzvah, and his hilarious writing always centers around the nerdy kid in high school; so basically, he writes about HIS adolescent experience. But this could have been ME, I tell you!!! I’m funny! I had a Bat Mitzvah! I’m a nerd! I got wasted at a bar and knocked up some random girl! No wait…that’s not right. Okay, everything but that last part is true. But I think I know the reason why I wouldn’t be as successful as Seth Rogan. If I made films based on my youth, the following scenes would be the reasons behind the movies flopping:

Scene #1: Amy and Lisa make two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese and proceed to inhale them without the slightest thought of chewing, all the while instructing Amy’s Apple IIe to say things such as ‘Lisa is awesome’ and ‘boobies.’
Scene #2: Lisa joins her high school marching band unknowingly destroying any chance of a successful social life. She is shunned by the cool girls who once used to talk to her in elementary school. On the bright side, she can now play You Can Call Me Al by heart on the trumpet and she has scored a fabulous pair of black Drillmaster sneakers.
Scene #3: Lisa and friends return to Eisner Camp to smoke weed out of a hookah acquired on their recent trip to Israel. Since they aren’t technically campers and are merely hiding out in a random building at camp, they are obviously caught by security who proceeds to kick them out at 2 o’clock in the morning. 6 stoned people sleep in her father’s Oldsmobile sedan in the parking lot of a Great Barrington pharmacy. Camp sends a letter home to our parents tattling on us. The letter is intercepted by Lisa who feels guilty and shows her mother, but insists that she not tell Dad.
Scene #4: Cut to fun, out of control party at a ‘cool kid’s’ house, complete with sex, drugs, and booze. Then cut to Lisa sitting at home at her desk trying to complete the matrices due in AP Calculus the next day.

*music – Look he’s crawling up my wall, black and hairy very small Now he’s up above my head, hanging by a little thread Boris the spidaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

That’s SIR Fatty McGee to you

I sit across from a fat British man at work. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m sure that G is a very nice person. But for some reason, he’s a very nice person who has body-sound-A.D.D. The man is always making some sort of noise. He wheezes, he hums, he eats, he slurps, he sighs, he talks to himself, and most of all, he talks to his computer. The man is always moving, too. Today he organized his desk about 4 times. He went to the kitchen for about 7 cups of coffee (or tea perhaps…actually it probably was tea since I’m in the official Land of Tea and Crumpets). He made a deliciously aromatic cinnamon thing around 11 in the morning. And around 4 o’clock he told a co-worker that he had already had ¾ of a gallon of water today and does beer count for that last ¼ he’s supposed to drink to put him at his 1 gallon goal for the day since beer is mostly water anyway? But what makes him ALMOST endearing instead of bordering on homicidally annoying is that he does it all with the most proper of accents. How can I possibly fling my stapler at his bald head when he says, “Yessuh, but isn’t beeruh mostly wahter anyway, isn’t that riught?” (That was possibly the worst alliteration of a British accent ever, but it was the best I could do.)

I also happen to sit next to T. Just so you can picture him, he kind of looks like Ralph Fiennes only with inconsistent facial stubble. T is one of two people who I met today who I thought had a great personality in addition to being Britishly nice and polite. Seeing as how he sits next to me and my only other option was to talk to G about what kind of pie he brought for lunch, I chatted it up with T for most of the day. About four hours after we started talking (not continuously), he mentions something about being from Australia. At this point I mentally punch myself in the face for having JUST spent three months in that country and not being able to recognize the accent once I step foot in another land. Seriously. What is WRONG with me?!?! I can tell if someone is from Philadelphia within 4 seconds of talking to them, but trying to tell an accent from one side of the world from another is like rocket science.

Anyway, T was talking about going to Sydney earlier this decade for the Olympics and he said “…it was fairly special.” How did the word ‘fairly’ become one of those lost in translation words even though it’s the same language? Clearly he meant it was a VERY special thing, but I could have, and given my level of intelligence in the past 3 days alone I’m surprised I didn’t, mistaken him for thinking it was just a ho-hum affair. I’m fairly short. I’m fairly paranoid about alphabetizing my cd collection. I’m fairly in love with Pierce Brosnan.

Okay here’s something that is completely unacceptable. The computer keyboards in this country are f-ed up. They had to go and mess up everything by putting a British Pound sign where the # sign is. That means the keyboard creators had to improvise with where they put that instead. And so you know what they did? They cut the Enter key in half. In HALF I tell you!! Not to mention they cut the Shift key in half to make room for a backslash key. My pinkie fingers will be so strong by the end of my stint here from reaching half an inch further than they normally do. This might seem like I’m being nitpicky, but it’s ruining my world. Oh!! And get this! They put the quotation marks where the @ key is! I have to SHIFT AND USE MY RING FINGER! I’ll bet whosever idea it was to drive on the other side of the road came up with these ideas. (Obviously he was very old when he came up with the keyboard ideas. But old people can have ideas too, albeit terrible ideas right up there with drinking prune juice and then trotting around in Depends.)

Weather report: Rained today. Cloudy tomorrow.