Fancy a bit of numbers, do you?

Well even if you don't, I do. So here goes!

0: Sightings of/lunches with/kisses from Colin Firth. This is odd, surely? I mean, I've been here for a couple of days now.

1: Bath since I've been here. And no, I don't want to talk about it. It's because of a home renovation project my landlord was working on before I got here, which has been extended by circumstances out of her control, like crap workmen. So we finally got the lumber and paint cans out of the bathtub today so that I could use it, since a swarm of flies had begun following me around in the manner of Pigpen from the Charlie Brown cartoons. She is installing a shower head, since people have told her that students like showers. Those people would be right, too.

2: Bus rides back home from the center of town. Still haven't managed to get off at the right stop yet, because I have problems in both navigation and assertiveness. (Didn't go far enough the first time, went too far the second time.)

3: Guys at Institute on Wednesday. Was very confused when none of them stayed to help all us girls put away the chairs and tables. Considered giving these guys what was coming to them, but I'd been awake for 48 hours (it was the day I'd flown in) and didn't trust myself to do it properly. Also didn't know if English girls are territorial about the reaming out of their men.

4: Cadbury bars eaten, all courtesy of Streets. I love you the most!

5: Minutes it takes me to walk to the library, where my department is. Brilliant!

6: Months of Yasmin, completely free, free, free!

7: Times it has rained. But, there has been at least a bit of blue sky for at least one part of every day, which causes me to run outside (if I'm not already there) jabbering about the blue sky and sunshine in the manner of that one fish from Finding Nemo who's obsessed with the bubbles in the tank. ("Aaaahh! It'sthebubblesthebubblesthebubblesbwahhahahah! My bubbles!")

8: Pieces of clothing I really wish I'd brought. What was I even thinking of?

9: Prayers of thanks uttered when I finally stumbled into the UK semiequivalent of Wal-Mart. I found a duvet cover there that I fell in love with, even though it's not something I would normally buy. And it was on sale. The picture is kind of washed out, but you get the idea. The pink part has threads w/graduating shades of pink running through it. I think it will work later and works well w/the room now. So that's a start, anyway.

10: Pounds spent on new jacket at a store called Peacock in town, so now I can stop wearing my nasty grey sweatshirt thing.

11: Digits in my new mobile phone number! And no, I'm not going to post the number here, because I don't want perverts who may possibly be lurking to call me. That would be gross. But as soon as it's up and running I'll send it to those who want it!

12: Minutes in the country before I started slipping into an English accent. It started with a softening of my "r"s, and now it's progressing so that I swallow my "t"s (the ones at the ends of words) when speaking quickly.

15: Varieties of sandwiches (seems like) at Marks & Spencer. You've got your basic stuff like tuna & cucumber and BLT and egg salad & greens, but then you get things like salmon & cream cheese, prawn & mayo, seafood salad, or Wensleydale & carrot chutney. I got the Wensleydale sandwich today, just because it made me think of Wallace & Gromit and I'd never tried it before. It was sweet, but good.

45: Pounds it cost for my friend to fill up her Ford Focus over here. I don't even want to think of the math in converting over to American. Her dad says it's something like $9 a gallon, which . . . just--yeah.

50: The age of my cute little house, which is very cozy, even if I don't have my own bathroom. But my bedroom is possibly the biggest room in the house, for which I am very grateful.

112: Prints offered at the Print & Poster sale in the Student Union. Good to know those are alive and thriving all over the world. They carried a lot of the same stuff that BYU gets every semester, with the added bonus of the alchohol prints and the pornographic vampire women posters. Also they have the Kurt Cobain poster, which stymies me because these kids were seven years old when Kurt Cobain died. How could that possibly have any meaning for them? Of course, I never got why it had so much meaning for any of the students who cared so desperately about the whole thing at the time, and who have apparently kept on caring for years and years and years.

160: Pounds to use the fitness center on campus for a year, which translates to $283, or $23 a month, which in turn translates to why the crap isn't the fitness center free??? In their defense, it's a very nice fitness center--more like Gold's Gym than the BYU weight room. But hey, I didn't even spend 23 bucks a month on fitness when I had a friggin JOB, okay? Now I'm all torn, because what if I buy this membership and don't use it? Trick is, if I don't buy the membership I'll never do anything. So which is worse?

And now you have played my numbers game!

Posted in: England