Bits and Pieces

In contrast to my usual thoughtful and coherent posts, this one will be a bit random. This is because this week has inspired me with a quantity of mostly inconsequential things:

1) My Car has survived it's M.O.T test. For you foreigners out there, a 'MOT' is a UK government mandated safety check that must be undergone yearly by every car over 3 years old. And a great way for garages to make money. We were a little worried that 'old bessy' would present us with problems that warranted the purchase of a new (heavily used) car, but got off with only 320 pounds of repairs! That brings the tally for keeping old bessy on the road to a hefty ~2000 pounds since we got her. That's alot of pain, obviously, but the hurt was dealt out in almost bearable quantities over time, so that I never said 'thats it, we're getting a new (heavily used) car!' Still, she is still reliable and I'm pretty confident she'll make it for the remaining seven months of service... Unless her transmission fall out. In which case they'll be trouble.

2) We just took our fourth trip to London since getting here. We came in on Sunday morning, leaving at ~9:00am and arriving at ~11:00. That's twice the normal journey time, thanks to ongoing engineering work. The UK is constantly under refurbishment. Not once since I've been here has my commuting route been construction free. Currently, there are several spots, the major ones being an 18-week long redevelopment of a roundabout in Huntingdon. Our London trip was to visit with my 'British' relatives, those being my Aunt on my mom's side and her family, and to force Jane to walk much slower than she would have liked through the Tate gallery. I should say that in no way does this make for my having to wait while Jane eats on a geological time-scale. For dinner, we went to a Chinese place and had 'Dim sum' providing the perfect opportunity for Jane to tell her hilarious 'a la carte' story again (for those of you who don't know, here it is - I mistakenly thought that 'a la carte' meant that people would be getting their alcoholic beverages from a cart at our wedding. Yes, I did go to French immersion and yes, that makes me extra ignorant for thinking that 'a la carte' involved an actual cart).

3) We saw Borat. Very funny, but not the kind of funny where you want to laugh. No, it was more more of a covering your face and squirming in your seat kind of funny. Sortof like a more intellectual version of Jackass. You're sitting there the whole time thinking 'this guy has no fear' 'I can't believe he did that' and 'crazy bastard'.

4) Jane would like me to write a blurb on the fact that motorists in this country have little moral difficulty in ploughing right into you if they think you are braking a rule. Jane experiences this alot as part of her commuting experience. I got a nice taste of it when, this past Saturday, as we were coming home from the market, we made the near-fatal error of walking on the sidewalk across a driveway. When you do that here, you have to sortof glance behind you to make sure that no car is wanting to turn in. If they do, you'd better stop, because they won't. Actually, in this case the guy did reluctantly tap the brakes to keep from killing us, but did feel compelled to honk his horn and give us the finger on the way by. Classy.