Night Moves

As you probably realized by now, I am a happily married woman.

Oh yes, evenings with my husband are spent in matrimonial bliss, reading Proust to each other in the original French, sipping Bordeaux, exchanging witty bon mots, making up new pet names for each other (Puddly-uddly-umpkins and Mr. Snoogybottom are current favorites), and even, if we are feeling a wee bit naughty, watching a spot of television.*

But sometimes my husband has to work the night shift. Sometimes, he has to work the night shift for a whole week. During these times, I like to play a little game called, "What would it be like if Kate were single?" (Really, really, really pathetic is the correct answer.)

The rules are simple: wile away the hours doing things I normally wouldn't do in the course of a civilized evening at home. Join me for a brief rundown of this week's activities, won't you?

1. Cleaning up after Maddy. (duh)
2. Eating foods I wouldn't normally eat. These fall into two categories: Foods that Dan Doesn't Really Like (garlic bread, Chinese take-out, the occasional Steak-Um), and Meals Created from Nothing Because Kate is Too Lazy to Go Shopping (featuring eternal favorites like Pancakes for Dinner!, Tuna Something-or-Other, and As Long As It Contains Shallots, It Has to Be Good.) This category is often expanded to include cocktails and desserts.
3. Making up many new and dorky dances and songs which I sing to the dogs while doing the dishes.
4. Watching TV I wouldn't normally watch. This includes CSI, Poirot, and Tom and Jerry. I also have new favorite: watching Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away over and over and over again. If you haven't seen this movie yet, I command that you do so at once.
5. Having long, animated, one-way conversations with the dogs.
6. Hogging the PS2. Right now I'm inches away from defeating Rhapthorne, (the Lord of Darkness, duh) in Dragon Quest VIII. And no matter how many news stories I see saying how more women are playing video games than ever before, I still get blank looks from people when I tell them I spent most of Sunday on a Playstation. I’m telling you, it’s a requirement of my demographic!**
7. Getting totally freaked out because I’m in a big house by myself on a busy street. My main concern is that there are so many ways to get in the house, a wandering lunatic could be lurking around without me knowing. In my former abode, I would get freaked out because we lived in a small house in the middle of nowhere. My main concern there was that there were only two doors into the house, so I could potentially become trapped by a wandering lunatic.
8. Updating my blog.

Well, there you have it! It’s like a sneak peek into an alternate reality! An alternate, pathetic reality! Which reminds me, I think there’s an episode of Star Trek on right now!***

* All but the last one are made up.

** This is the 30-year old, Uber-geek, only-child female bookworm demographic

*** See above note

What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw

I saw something last week that was so rare, I almost didn’t believe my eyes. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed my eyes, except that I saw the same thing two days in a row, so there was no denying it.

I saw… God, how do I even explain this? I saw a little boy, about 9 or 10, sitting in his driveway, behind a large cardboard box, which sat on a wagon. There was a hole in the front of the box, and the barrel of some sort of nerf gun or super-soaker was sticking out of the box. The kid was looking very serious and fiddling with the barrel, probably aiming it.

That’s right, folks, I saw a little kid playing with a home-made toy, by himself, outside. At first, I didn’t believe it, but then the next day, I saw him again, this time pulling the wagon across the street. And here’s the most unbelievable part. I caught a glimpse, as I drove by, of another little kid, at the house across the street. He looked to be about 7-8 years old.

I know! TWO kids, playing outside, with a homemade toy! A toy, let me remind you, made largely out of a box and a wagon! A toy with no batteries, no video screen, no lights or speakers! Also, let me point out that this was a real toy – not a sports-oriented ball. I didn’t think that was possible anymore. How did these kids even learn how to build such a thing?

Well, anyway, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call the authorities right away. The school board has to know about this. I don’t know what pabulum they’re spooning into the kids these days, but it clearly isn’t bland enough to crush these two kids’ spirits. They probably don’t even go to school – probably “home-schooled” by their degenerate hippie parents. There’s no room in my America for kids to be outside by themselves, using their dirty dirty imaginations, playing! Sheesh!

Hypothesis Confirmed.

I know everyone thought I was just kidding around a few posts ago in the "Fun with Math" section. A mere jest -- a simple tee-hee. Oh, that it were true, my friends.

Oh, that it were true.

As further proof, Dan went away this weekend to spend Easter with his family. And once again, my dog Maddy took it upon herself to eat a sock and get sick.

I should explain that this dog is nine (9!) years old and has never before eaten socks in the entire time we have shared our home with her. Sure, she gets in the garbage occasionally, but that's it. Socks, never. Well, until now, that is.

My theory is that when my husband goes away, the dog senses something is different. What is it though? What could it be? Suddenly, a flash of insight - there are no longer dirty socks strewed all over the place!* That's it!

So, she takes it on herself to complete this important task. But how? Sure, she could carry them in her mouth, but someone might see her, which would ruin the mystery. Wait - what if she carried them in her stomach? Yes! Eureka!

* For those of you who have not had my husband as an overnight guest, his superpower is to mysteriously leave dirty socks in odd places, throughout the entire house or apartment, even though no one ever sees him take his socks off. Not much of a superpower, really, but there you are.

Perky Perks

The company I worked for recently moved from one office building to another. The details are not blog-worthy, as the process mostly involved lots of utterly stupid, annoying things happening because the new office building was (is) still under construction. Like I had no desk for about a month. Also, I had a sneaking suspicion that, if I told everyone all the petty, bitchy details about the move, I would later have to eat my words if the new place turned out to be good.

The sneaky suspicion was right. (For one thing, I finally have a damn desk.) And also because today, while my bosses were otherwise occupied, I got up from my desk and left the building to take a walk.* The fact that I can do this is one of the biggest perks of my job.

Another perk is the new location of our office: downtown Saratoga Springs. We're in an old school building in a residential neighborhood, so I spent twenty minutes looking at all the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Victorian houses around here. I don't know about you, but I rather enjoy walking around these rich neighborhoods because it gives me a chance to pretend I have money. Also, I get good ideas for how I'm going to restore my own yard once I hit the lottery. I'll miss the little plastic gnomes, though. (Note: I unfortunately do not have actual little plastic gnomes in my yard. They are imaginary.)

Anyway, just as I rounded the corner to my building, the restaurant across the street, which has been closed for months, turned on its new neon sign: Little India.

That's right, I work across the street from an Indian Restaurant. Cue the chorus of angels.

Also cue the sound of many alka-seltzers hitting many glasses of water, because it's not a good Indian restaurant. But still.

P.S. Here is a picture of the office building's parking lot when it was being constructed last fall, which I sorta kinda helped design, in the sense that I put my boss's drawings into the computer!

*I should specify that this was technically during my lunch break, but it felt like I was sneaking out, since I didn't say where I was going. I guess it's sad that it was a little thrilling for me.

Hail Britannia: Introduction

So, as many of you know, my husband and I spent most of last week in London. To make the requisite travel blog easier to bear, I’ve split our trip into several topic areas so you don’t have to read the whole thing. First, we explore the reasons why we went in the first place.

I’ve wanted to go to England since I was a little girl. However, when I say that, I get a lot of blank stares. Don’t little girls like England? Well, I did. I blame my mother, and my maternal grandmother.

My mom started reading The Hobbit to me when I was in first or second grade. She reached into the depths of her teenage Beatle fandom to give the characters various British accents. The Trolls were cockney, as I recall. Anyway, by this point in my life, I had been reading for about two or three years, and I got impatient with listening. So I started reading it on my own, despite the fact that I was seven and only knew about every other word. Of course, I loved it, I cried my eyes out when Thorin Oakenshield died, and my fate was sealed. Soon after I got my first box set of Narnia, and started in with Roald Dahl (my favorite was Danny the Champion of the World). It got to the point where I thought the correct spelling of a mix of black and white was grey, and insisted on showing it in print to my long-suffering teacher so I could get the extra two points on my spelling quiz. Yes, I was a little know-it-all bastard. Don’t tell me you are surprised.

The seeds had been sown. But they didn’t sprout until a few years later, the summer before 7^th grade. We moved that summer, and there was a lag between the old place and the new place. So we spent a few months in the apartment in my grandparent’s house. I only had a few boxes of books and whatnot, and my other grandmother (my mom’s mom) felt bad and gave me a shopping bag full of her old Agatha Christie paperbacks. (This also explains why I watch awful mystery movies on the Biography channel.) When we moved in to our new place, I spent the rest of the summer watching old reruns of Monty Python playing on MTV or PBS, which I had never seen before.

So, when I turned 30 this year, I wanted to do something really special. I thought about taking the trip, but it felt too selfish to go. Little did I know the wily Dan was planning a trip to London in secret. This is why he is the best husband ever.

Anyway, now you know the background. Next stop: the sights!

Hail Britannia: The Sights

Here is a list of some of the things I saw in London:

1. A woman wearing an enormous gold ring, with a big, pyramid-shaped top. I swear, it stuck up at least an inch and a half from the back of her hand. It looked like a slightly less dangerous version of the ring from the Leech Woman. Maybe she was on her way back from a Nipe-hunting safari?

2. A man on the Underground drinking black currant juice from a juice box with a very serious look on his face. A juice box, people! WTF?

3. A fit-looking guy jogging on the street, wearing black knee socks pulled way up.

4. About 17,000,000,000 French middle-schoolers on holiday. Oh yes, they were a delightful bunch.

5. Many, many fat Americans wearing sweatpants.

6. A pigeon with one foot.

7. An Underground busker playing the clarinet.

8. Every one of the 25 train stops between Oxford and London. Yes, I know there’s a faster train. Well, I know now, anyway.

9. A man who appeared to be a dirty hippie but was, in fact, an organic chemist.

10. Dan pointing at things.

Oh, yeah, and Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, Hyde Park, etc., etc. That stuff too.

Things we did not see:

1. Madame Tussaud’s

2. Changing of the Guard

3. Anything from the top of a double-decker bus

4. Harrod’s

5. The inside of any palaces

6. Nearly enough empty pint glasses to suit my taste

7. Dan or me punching any of the French school kids; a remarkable display of restraint if I do say so myself

Hail Britannia: Comestibles

One of the biggest jokes about my going to London was how excited I was to eat British food. I was particularly excited because we had the chance to go to St. John’s Restaurant. You may have seen this place on TV. It serves locally raised food prepared in the most old-school British way possible. That means trotters, kidneys, tripe, and a variety of fish with comical sounding names. Frankly, I couldn’t wait.

My goal for the trip was to eat one thing every day that would gross out my sister-in-law, she of the no bacon. Also, we both wanted to have some great Indian food, many pints of ale, some real tea, and a full English breakfast. So here is what I ate:

1. Steak pie (no kidneys though!)

2. Sushi from a conveyor belt

3. The meal at St John’s: Roast Bone Marrow, Veal Tongue with Butterbeans and Anchovies, and Honey Cake for me; Pea and Ham soup, Saddle of Rabbit with Dandelion, and Eccles Cake and Cheese for Dan. I had to stop Dan from gnawing on the bones of the rabbit, by the way.

4. A crappy microwaved scone from the Hotel for tea (lousy hotel!)

5. Some of the most delicious chicken tikka I will ever eat

6. British bacon and mushroom sandwich

7. Many chips with Malt vinegar

Also, we discovered that the beer was not as warm as we thought it would be. And we didn’t drink nearly enough.

Finally, on our way home, we bought a bottle of Absinthe at the duty-free shop, just because. It tastes exactly like Nyquil. Lucky for me, I like Nyquil.

Hail Britannia: Transport

We flew into London on British Airways. It was absolutely wonderful. See, last time I flew to Europe, I was on “Pierre and Armond’s Great Canadian Charter Flights, Eh?” Airways and it totally sucked. I was expecting the worst from this flight as well, since we got a super-cheap deal through British Airways. But it was awesome. They even gave you a toothbrush and tiny tube of toothpaste so you could freshen up before you landed. Also, they upgraded our seats on the way back, which was very nice.

One of the biggest kicks I got on the trip was taking the Underground. As someone involved with urban planning, obviously I am a proponent of mass transit. But there is none in my area. So I got way to big of a thrill to ride the tube. It was all I could do to not squeal and clap my hands when the “Mind the Gap” announcement came on. Lucky for Dan, I kept my excitement in check and we did not get robbed or beaten up.

And we took a train trip to Oxford, which was lots of fun. We had a great time, and had lunch in a 500-year old pub. Except we missed our train on the way back by like two seconds. A chipper British lady standing near us commiserated a bit, and said another train would be coming in a few minutes, but that it wasn’t a fast train. But we figured, the next fast train was another half-hour wait. How much slower could the slow train be?

The answer of course, is very, very slow. In fact, I am still on the train right now, living on potato chip crumbs and chewed gum. Seriously, there were about 25 stops, some of which seemed to be only two train lengths apart. Dan got caught up on his jet lag, and I got a great view into some of the little towns between London and Oxford. Guess what, they look a lot like Utica. Take my word for it, wait for the fast train.