I'm not dead yet!

Sorry, sorry, I promise I'm not dead. I was in London, though, with the very lovely Streets, which was just wonderful. And now she is at my house and actually reading in my room this very minute and buying me things like chocolate chip Scottish shortbread, so life probably couldn't actually get any better.

So here are the London highlights and lowlights. Ready go!

Highlights:
Seeing Streets!
Dinner at an English pub, where one orders things like lasagna, chicken korma, and shepherd's pie. Yay for pubs.
Sunny for the first half of the day, rain only once.
The National Portrait Gallery
Golden Jubilee Bridge
Green Park
St. James Park
Saw all our favorite spots. So lovely.
Streets found a candy shop at Picadilly where she could buy American gummy candy.
We thought we had the name of the Guys & Dolls theatre wrong when we couldn't find it on the map and we were running out of time, so I called Savvymom and Savvydad from outside the Charing Cross Underground station, and they were willing to get out of bed at 5:30am to look it up on the Internet. Her sleepy words: "Hey. That's what we do in our family." This is because our family is made up of terminally lost people with cell phones. Only then Streets found the info in a free paper and so I hung up on them.
Noticed two British guys trying to throw a football back and forth in the park. Was one of the funnier things I've ever seen. Picture me and my sister Savvymom (for those who know us, finish your food or beverage before you start imagining) tossing a pigskin around while resembling two British men in nice sweaters and you would about have it. Lotsa fumbling and bad spirals. But bless their hearts for trying!
Fish & chips--the first I've had since since I've been here!
Saw all the fireworks from Guy Fawke's Night during the drive back home.
Am listening to Christmas music Right. This. Second. Guy Fawkes' Night was last night, so now the Christmas season is ON.

Lowlights:
Did NOT see Ewan McGregor in Guys & Dolls, because he actually wasn't in the Saturday matinee, so it wasn't even worth buying the tickets. Also the student tickets were gone and the regular returns were 55 pounds, which I wouldn't even pay to see Colin Firth recite P&P speeches while holding my face in his hands and staring into my eyes. (Um . . . okay maybe I would, actually, now that I think about it. But still. Not for Ewan McGregor's stand-in, I won't.)
I got very tired from all the walking and still have not had enough sleep.
But these lowlights barely even count, really, because it was such a lovely weekend and I was with great people and had a great time.

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Word of warning

The packaged sandwiches here can make you want to kill people. Or, I should say, the ones available yesterday in the library cafe made me want to kill people.

Every single one of them is gooey and contains mayo, usually as the main ingredient to which the other ingredients (like meat or cheese) are added.

Some of you may read this and go, "Great! I love mayo!" My dad, for instance, has been known to grab a jar of Miracle Whip and make an entire sandwich with just huge gobs of Miracle Whip in it. This usually makes me want to dry heave, but hey, I guess if dinner's late (and you're nasty) that's what you have to do. (Love you, Dad! And this is not me putting your personal life on the Internet, okay?)

So anyway, back to me and my problems in the cafe. I'm hungry, I don't have a lot of money, I don't have time to go somewhere else because I have to get back to work, and my only choices are these horrible sandwiches that are all soggy & gooey & mayo-based. Tuna & sweetcorn mixed w/mayo. Chicken salad mixed w/mayo. Cheese & spring onion mixed w/mayo. Ploughman slathered in mayo. You get the idea. The only non-mayo sandwich was ham & mustard, which didn't appeal either. In the end I went for the cheese & spring onion & fresh tomato mixed w/mayo sandwich. I could only force down half, and I only did that because I needed calories.

I really wanted to just let everyone have it, though.

"AAARRRGGGHHH! What is with you people and the sandwiches? All this time--all this time I've been defending your cuisine! Defending it, I tell you! I've sworn up and down that no, your food is really great, and that I don't even mind things like boiled Brussel sprouts! And after all this you can't even give me a flipping sandwich that is not the equivalent of eating phleghm between two pieces of bread!?!? AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!"

But then the calories started kicking in, and I turned in a paper, and had a lovely choc ice, which is something that is really good about living here, and I started to feel like a normal person who wasn't on the brink of taking a semi-automatic weapon up a tower. And tonight I'm going to see The Deranged Marriage, and it will be lovely.

Crisis averted for now.

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This is my 100th post

And I'm too swamped to even make it a good 'un. (See, Mom and Dad? I do homework!) Instead I will leave you with a survey, which I just stole from Danalee, which she stole from somewhere else.

Also I will tell you that last night for dinner I had a toasted baguette with slabs of warm brie, thick bacon, and cherry tomatoes inside. And oh my gosh it was good.

Ahem. Here is your survey.

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY
1. Stephanie (I don't know why)
2. Tee (to my sweet baby niece)
3. Nemesis

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF
1. I look sexy and vulnerable in pink
2. I can raise one eyebrow to give foolish people the Look of Impending Death
3. I have great calf muscles, which makes people think I'm a runner even though I'm not

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF
1. My milkmaid shoulders
2. I am so white that you can actually see my veins through my skin
3. My complete lack of abdominal strength--I will probably just slump over one day and be unable to straighten up

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE
1. English
2. Irish
3. Southern

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU
1. Spiders
2. The old men on LDS Linkup who try to write me
3. Scary clowns

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS
1. My keys (turns out to be a problem when I don't have them)
2. My mobile, because I like to think that the world will stop if people can't reach me
3. Four different lip-gloss products, since I lose them all the time

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW
1. Jeans
2. A librarian bun
3. A saucy grin

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS
1. "At Last" by Etta James
2. "In a Little While" by U2
3. "Hang on Little Tomato" by Pink Martini
(Wait, I just realized they sort of all have the same theme, even though that's not why I picked them. Huh. Betcha Freud would have a field day with that one.)

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE PREFERRED SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU
1. Sense of humor
2. Shoulders
3. The accent
(My preferred sex is male, btw.)

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW
1. Stop studying. (Oh wait, I just did! Hah!)
2. Go out and play.
3. Drink Ghirardelli hot chocolate next to a fire

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING/YOU'VE CONSIDERED
1. Superpower
2. Librarian
3. Queen of the Universe

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION
1. Paris
2. Prague
3. Anywhere with clear blue water and a beach and people who will brink me the slushy fruit drinks

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE
1. Travel all over the world
2. Become the scary old lady on the porch who yells at the neighborhood kids
3. Not go sky-diving

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A GIRL
1. I cry at commercials sometimes.
2. I have a princess canopy bed with pink ribbons and flowers and streamers all over it
3. Wait, what do you even mean by that question? Are you saying that it's acceptable to refer to women as "girls"? What kind of sexist pig are you, huh?

THREE KID'S NAMES YOU LIKE
There is no way on this green earth I would tell the Internet that, because every time I so much as think of a name I like, it shoots to the Top 20 list. So I'm just keeping that to myself, you nasty bunch of name poachers. You know who you are, and I hope your kids have perpetually runny noses and that they will wear too-small sweatpants constantly just to make you look like bad parents.

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