When the World Swallows Whole All You Have Known, There Are No Landmarks You Can Recognize
Strangeness and disappointment, confusion and exhaustion.

1. I picked up a new coffeemaker the other day, since the current one is 6 years old and used to be white. The timer does weird things and it sometimes leaks. So, I saw a Melitta with an insulated carafe on closeout for $18. I picked it up, but it's weird, too. It heats up the water, shoots it out and then turns itself off, leaving the coffee to fester in that not-quite-sealed carafe at a temperature certainly no hotter than when it arrived there in the first place. It's also murky, like french press coffee, which I don't usually care for. No wonder it was on sale for $18, while the Krups and Cuisinarts were $70.

2. Gabe went to Sam's daycare at the Y since it's Spring Break week for the kids here and got poked in the eye by some inbred redneck hoodlum. The story from the boys is that this kid went up to Gabe during snacktime, gave him a noogie, then poked him in the eye.
What?
It looked all red and puffy, but no eye goo was oozing out, so I took him home and and about 2 hours later he just started screaming that it burned and hurt and he was beside himself. So, off we went to urgent care to discover with that blue light thingy that he has two nasty scratches on his cornea. Ouch! Eyes heal quickly, we were told, but it will be very painful until it does. Ouch! We were sent home with a prescription for Tylenol 3 and instructions to look for any goopy discharge. Poor kid! But the thing is, he wants to go back, since Hunter is there. (Hunter is the girl he insists should be his girlfriend.)
Someone's gonna pay!

3. I hate Spring Break week.

4. According to certain interviews, Morrissey is living in Rome, warming up to the Roman Catholic Church and having sex. If so, I don't know what to think of things anymore. We've always been brought up in our folklore to believe that Moz is a celibate vegetarian.

5. I left the Saint Morrissey book in the bathroom and now I bet the cleaning lady thinks I'm gay.

6. I moved out the "2005" painting since I was tired off looking at it. Unfortunately, as it is 6 feet wide, I dropped it on one end, it bumped something else, and one of the larger-than-a-Matchobx metal toy double-decker buses rolled off of something else and landed on an expensive acoustic guitar, putting a nice ding in it right where the top meets the side. It looks like a baby vampire bit it.
So, for whatever reason, I am working on a "2006" large drawing (in situ, no less!).

7. She's the Man was actually cute, even though I went into it (with the boys) expecting to hate it since the Amanda show annoys me greatly.

8. All kinds of other disappointments and defeats lately, I'm just too tired to get into it all.

Please! Please? Please!
Can we get a monkey? Please? Oh, please! Please?

When the cat's away...
The mouse will have insomnia, be up at 3am, fiddle with a recording of a favorite old Go-Betweens song, and take a picture of it all, in the grand tradition of hubris and narcissism that is my personality. After having taken over the living room, that is. And, no, that's not a real AC30, it's an AD50VT, though it is an upgraded one that looks like a real AC, without the ugly metal grill that comes standard on those ADs.

Can't Build a Palace Without any Drains
If there is a speed to which one should be "up", I have not yet attained that velocity.


Windsor Castle

A Home Built of Packaging Foam
March Song of the Month clip.

London
The rest of it:
Monday was the finish up day, to take in sights we hadn't yet but had planned to. Sorry, Tower of London, the boys were all too tired. Next time, Beefeaters?
The stomach flu was still with us. Gabe even threw up on Heathrow for good measure, before we vacated the country.
I have a few observations:
1. Don't give me any more of this "Americans are all fat because they eat ridiculous portions" crap. Not once did I ever feel slighted in a serving. Not once did I think, "Oh, that's a rather small pile of fried meat." I SAW with my own eyes the mixed grill platter that Sarah and Chris ordered at our last dinner. On a bed of fries and onion rings: salad, an entire roast chicken, and a rack of ribs, all garnished with an order of hot wings. And did you see that rodeo burger at Burger King? Three Whopper patties, all covered with cheese, then a potato patty and some foul sauce. And what about all the pubs that had burgers covered in sausage, bacon, cheese AND fried eggs? Huh? I saw plenty of porky Brits.
2. The national greeting must be a lilting "Sorry!" Everywhere we went, people were nearly brushing into one another and going, "Sorry!" "Sorry!" "Sorry!"
3. I like the trains.
4. Gabe said he would like to live in London.
5. A 21 hour day of travel is no fun with two little boys and too much luggage. And no one has any business driving home 3 hours at the end of it.
6. It is a somewhat damp country, and we didn't even have rain until the last day.

All in all, I pronounce the trip a huge success. The boys say we should go back over summer vacation.

London
Day 5
Is it really day 5? I must be miscounting.
Anyway, we saw a lot of famous stuff today. Enough to make the average Art History undergrad's head explode. Why do the Brits have all the good art?
More details later.
At least the stomach flu has left us (or we've passed it on to all of greater London).

London
Day 3 and 4
Friday: Sights: Windsor Castle. Then St Martin’s. Snuck into an internet café, paid too much, got email. It was there that the stomach flu finally caught up with me. Well, I didn’t puke there, but I wanted to. That didn’t happen until about 1am.

Saturday: Woke up feeling like a big balloon of stomach acid that could burst at any moment, so Gabe (who also said he was too sick) and I stayed in and slept. About 2pm we wandered out—Gabe had made an amazing recovery and wanted to get a kid’s meal at Burger King—and took a walk in Hyde Park. Right where we went in was the building and fountain where they filmed the end of the second Bridget Jones movie. (I shouldn’t even know this sort of thing.) Hopefully the flu has decided to leave me alone from now on. I’d like that, thank you. Better days ahead! It would have been fun to go to Cambridge.

London
Day 1 (and 2)
Left Defiance in a timely manner. TSA guys blocked off the parking garages without an explanation, so we had to go to one of the off-site lots and take a shuttle. Still, we got there in plenty of time. The flight to JFK was Sam’s first, so it was a lot of fun. The flight to Heathrow was frustrating, only for little reasons, since none of the food was to Sam’s liking, and the video channels were limited to 10(!). Sam slept a few hours, Gabe made it a point of honor not to sleep a wink. When we got to Heathrow we found our way to passport control and waited for a half hour while both boys whined about the wait. A nice lady pulled us out of the queue and we were in the baggage area, only to find that our stroller had been decapitated. Well, it was de-pedicated actually. (While we were looking for our bags, Gabe came over with a wheel in hand, saying, “Isn’t this from our stroller?” We found the rest around the carousel and saw that it was never gonna go back together. I took off the tags and propped it up against a pillar. Let’s just call it impromptu performance art.) We had seen Uncle Matt way far back in the passport control line and waited for ages upon ages, but he never came, so we decided to get on the Heathrow Express. We knew we’d end up in the same place, and Matt had said prior that if we met up, fine, if not, we’ll certainly see each other later. I made the rookie mistake of buying First Class tickets and paying a small fortune for them, but ended up in the regular coach with two totally zombified children. A porter said we were welcome to move, but with too much luggage and the boys, I said we were OK (but still felt dumb). We found the hotel without any real trouble and checked in early. Pretty soon Uncle Matt came by and we went to a bagel place on Praed Street. Soon after that (well, a couple hours maybe of napping) OtherMom came by and we ALL went on the Tube to the V&A and Natural History Museum. We made our way back in rush hour busyness and our body clocks still thought it was only noon. All in all, we feel pretty good for people who have been living in one very long day (I hate night flights, where you leave in the afternoon of one day and arrive the next morning of the other, without really getting any sleep and having to face a whole day still ahead.)