Food thief

I have a food thief. It has been established that food from my cupboard often disappears on its own. Like, much more than you would expect. This seems primarily connected to snack foods, such as things in bar form, bread, and cheese (although this is from the fridge). It is hard to tell if the crunchy nut has been affected. What is up with this. I mean really. My food selection is not that great. For now I have resorted to keeping things in bar form in my bedroom. The cheese is remaining in the fridge for obvious reasons, and the bread is still in the cupboard. I often check the loaf to see if its contents have changed, but I have trouble keeping track of how much bread I have a lot of the time.

And what is one really to do in this sort of situation? Before answering that, I am not willing to plant food laced with laxatives, nor am I booby trapping anything. I mean, it's not fair for my food to just keep disappearing like this. I don't even know how long it's been going on. I don't normally have much food worth stealing, so it has only caught my attention in the last couple weeks (I went to rearrange some things and noticed my boxes were empty despite them being mostly full at last check). I mean really, there used to be food on that plate!

Croydon.

I went to Croydon today to learn about their light rail scheme. Now, if London were New York City, Croydon would either be New Jersey or Queens, it's a bit hard to know which. It is a burrough of London, whatever that means, and the people there tend to look a bit, interesting. For example, the ladies hair-styles are a bit plastered with hair spray. And there are a lot of people walking around with their hoods on. Oh, and there is an Ikea there. But we went for the 'tram'.

After a nearly 3-hour coach ('bus') ride, we arrived at the operational headquarters of the scheme, where we first waited in the lobby for ten minutes until we were shown into their kitchen and shown the coffee machine, which was free. So everyone got to pick their coffee. Then we learned a bit about the scheme (3-lines, consortium, expanding, 22 cars in operation at a time, etc), and then we got to see the control room (second control room in 2 days, impressive, I know), and then go to the maintenance place. The maintenance area was quite exciting because aside from learning about tire wear (a LOT of metal comes off those things, like, seriously a lot) we got to go into an empty tram and sit in the drivers seat and take pictures of each other (see above). After this they even gave us a free pass to ride the tram, so we went over to East Croydon and got a pub lunch before heading back to Southampton, which luckily only took 2 hours with the lighter traffic. Sadly, most everyone fell asleep on the way back as only a few of us had gotten Diet Coke. Luckily I then used my camera to create mischief and take pictures of people sleeping. And that was my trip to Croydon. We did not go to Ikea.

Big Things

En route to a field trip at the traffic control 'centre' in Southampton today I saw the Legend of the Seas, the uber-giant-biggest-in-the-world cruise ship that's in port that has warranted two consectutive nights of fireworks. The ship was impressively large and was considerably larger than both the nearby leisure world and Holiday Inn. There are also 3 other ships in port right now. This apparently is enough to warrant the hanging of signs down by the ports saying 'Southampton - The Eventful City', which, I'm sorry, is a bit ridiculous. Although there was that Titanic exhibition and that fun fair a couple weeks ago...

Speaking of big, Chris was nice enough to let me tag along and gawk/buy food on a trip to big Sainsburys up in Eastleigh after the field trip. Sainsburys is really ideal because it is large and reasonably priced yet free of the stigma surrounding Asda (because it is wal-mart and evil) and Tesco (which is the English equivalent of wal-mart and is taking over but I don't really have anything against it myself). But Sainsburys has orange plastic bags, which makes it exciting in its own right. Anyways, it was very exciting to go to a grocery store in a car because that meant I could buy more than I could easily carry back on the bus. They also had black bean salsa, a flavor of Muller rice I haven't tried yet (blackcurrant), clothing and electronics sections, and I even got a six-pack of Diet Coke (they're heavy so I don't normally buy). I was also able to bring either amusement/shocking disappointment to at least two other people while there. The first was a patron in the paper towel aisle who was amused when I didn't know what 'bog roll' was and had to ask for it to be repeated three times before the fact that I was American needed to be mentioned. The second was the check-out stand guy who must have been in awe of A) my inability to open the plastic bags and B) my inability to put items in them in an orderly manner. Luckily I don't mind looking a bit silly from time to time.

Tomorrow is my field trip to Croydon to look at light rail. I bought some road trip food to share with the others to make up for the stuff I ruined before the last field trip.

St Georges Day and Boats

Today is St George's Day, with St George being the patron saint of England. I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean. But I get the impression it doesn't mean much. Let's just call it a 'holiday', much like 'Columbus day' is a 'holiday'. Only slightly less politically incorrect.

In other local news, there was/is an uber-giant boat in town. I speak not of the QE2, which left here on Saturday, but an even larger one that came to town yesterday or so. It warranted fireworks. And they only do fireworks around here every other month or so. Although I just heard some more fireworks, so it may just be a busy week.

In more exciting personal news, I have finished Tom Jones, the novel by Henry Fielding. Yes, that's right, all 801 pages, done and dusted (please tell they use that phrase in America, or I have totally lost touch with my people and should feel shame). It only took approximately 7 months (I started it in September). This meant I got to make a trek to Borders yesterday to pick out a new book, bolting straight for the Wilkie Collins section. No, that's not true, I spent a good twenty minutes looking at other stuff first, but I ended up with Wilkie's Armadale. I've read three pages so far and I think it's gold. Although nothing, I fear, will ever be as good as the Woman in White.

Please enjoy really scary picture of me at a bowling alley in Uttoxeter. It allows for some viewing of my haircut and I hope it appeases the masses.

The English Barbecue

I was pleased as punch to go to a bonafide English bbq yesterday. Despite what you may think after the recent episode of Desparate Housewives, the people over here are familiar with the concept and seem to openly embrace it. That gets them some points in my mind.

First of all, there was no actual barbecue. There were disposable barbecues. Which I found quite strange, but I suppose these could exist state-side as well and I've just never seen them. For non-grilled grub, there was your chips, dips and veggies, as well as other things of that nature, and grilled food consisted of hamburgers, some ribs, and sausages (not American hot dogs, but plump meaty English sausages of bangers and mash ways). Basically, much of the food was the same. To me the main difference was the presence of Pimms as a beverage. The English really like their Pimms, and it has seemingly broken out in a big way since we have been having our summer weather the last few weeks (high in the mid-70s today!). I don't know what it is exactly, but in general terms it is a liqueur mixed with lemonade and, if done right, some fresh fruit tossed in. And it's not cloudy American lemonade, its Sprite-without-lime English lemonade. But don't worry, there was still beer. I don't think you can call it a bbq if there's no beer.

At the grocery store today I was trying to find an equivalent to graham crackers to potentially make smores. Apparently the closest relative is a digestive, but the digestives seem like they might be too thick, like they would overwhelm the chocolate/marshmallow presence. Really I just want to try a smore made with Galaxy (which is Dove) chocolate. That would be mighty tasty, I think. Now I just have to wait for another disposable bbq to come along so I can get a shot at some open flame.

Heat Wave!

Despite the fact that it's April and this is supposedly a rainy land, it's been freakishly warm here the last week or so. Warm as in it apparently reached 78 here in Southampton last Saturday. It's 'break out the shorts and the flip-flops it's summertime' weather. Much like Seattle, this seems to mean that people have generally lost focus and instead of doing what they should be doing, they are sort of freaking out and opting to chill outdoors. All of the eateries/drinkeries have suddenly acquired outdoor seating/beer gardens and so pretty much wherever you go you are confronted with people having a jolly time eating/drinking in the sunshine whilst you, on the other hand, are on a bus and/or headed for a computer lab. There's no way this will last, and I'm pretty sure there are quite a few days of torrential rains in store, but for now it's certainly enjoyable and I can finally wear the skirts and dresses that have been lying dormant in my closet since September.

Oh, and I got a haircut last Saturday. The girl was quite intent on putting in layers to give my hair something, although I can't remember what. I find it a little short, but it was a bit too long before so it's really just a bit of a shock.

I fear they are going to stop selling Cadbury creme eggs soon, as Easter has past. Perhaps they will have the creme egg bars again. They gave everyone creme eggs when we left Alton Towers on Monday, which was nice but I sort of got the impression they were just trying to get rid of them. But it would have been foolish not to accept!

Alton Towers

I'm fresh back from a mini-roadtrip! We went up to Alton Towers, well, we went up yesterday and went to the park and drove back today. Alton Towers is a rather major theme-park, especially by local standards. It's up north in the middle of the Staffordshire country-side. As I don't know where that is and I was just there, let's just say it's somewhere north of Birmingham and west of Nottingham. It took more than 3 hours to get there.

The park is located outside of Uttoxeter, which is nearly as exciting as it sounds. I was quite excited that we got to go to a Little Chef for dinner, which is sort of like a Denny's/Shari's wannabe. Knowing how those places are, I opted for an all-day breakfast situation because they are the most difficult to make nasty and Denny's-like. It was not too bad. They have a weird interpretation of 'pancake', but I did not partake. After dinner we hit CineBowl for some bowling. I did not play well. It was horrid, really.

Anyways, so Alton Towers was exciting. I hadn't been to a roller-coaster based theme park since going to Great America outside San Fran like, five years ago (Disneyland is the best place ever, but not roller coaster based). Oh! Background. So Alton Towers is sort of based around this massive old house that people used to live in but it's sort of ruins now and so they built a theme park on the grounds instead, so there are old ruins in the middle. It's a bit strange. But there are quite a few good roller coasters at Alton Towers, as well as a respectable number of non-roller coaster rides, such as the log flume. Only you road around in bathtubs instead of logs. As could be expected when going to a theme park on a Monday, there were quite a few 'interesting' people around, but theme parks seem to be sort of like that anyways. Aside from the old house, there was nothing too great that made the park different than a Six Flags or Great America or those places, aside from the prevalence of England sports memorabilia, that is.

Oh, and the people up north 'have funny accents' that certain Southern-types like to mock. It was sort of like a cross between standard English and Canadian. The scenery up there seemed nice. A lot of green fields with green borders and sheep and cows and such. But I didn't really see too much, I must admit.

Bit more London

Yesterday I gave the most hectic whirl-wind walking tour of London quite possibly ever. Due to delays at Gatwick, we didn't get in to Victoria until 1:30 or so in the afternoon. At this point, we managed to go to Westminster Cathedral (not the abbey, it's separate and free and has really neat mosaics), to Westminster Abbey (not in), see Big Ben, then Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, the British Museum (went in to that one), St Pauls (went in, they weren't charging), over to the Millenium Bridge (look, river), to Covent Garden for food, then to Piccadilly Circus and finally to Green Park and Buckingham Palace. Yeah, I know, all that in 6 hours. Including sit down meal. My legs were tired.



Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was discovering a candy store near Covent Garden that sells 2 liters of A&W root beer. They had cans of cream soda. Needless to say, I indulged. Oh, and they also sell Mountain Dew and Laffy Tafffy and Twizzlers. And exotic flavors of Cadbury, like Black Forest and Rocky Road, but they charge an arm and a leg for everything in there so you really have to be desparate to indulge. Now I just hope that I will be able to find it again should I go searching. It's by a Tesco, I think, and that totally narrows it down...

And I'm working on getting new photos up on picasa, I swear. Hopefully will be there soon.

Edinburgh

I've made it to the north and back! It's a tad windy up there, but Edinburgh in general is all full of tall buildings made of stone that are older than you. Soooo, we got there while the hotel was still serving continental breakfast on Monday. I stole some crunchy nut because that's how I role. After that we strolled up the royal mile and went to Edinburgh Castle, then continued to stroll down the royal mile to the other end. And then went and watched tv and had mashed potatoes for dinner.

On Tuesday we stayed in the new part of town, which involved going to a couple of free museums and shopping. The national galleries in Edinburgh are a lot smaller than the ones in London. Which is understandable. As there is less of Scotland than England.

On Wednesday we climbed around on these big hills right by town to get in some nature and then went to the Museum of Scotland, which tells the history of Scotland and its people through random items. Like a beheading machine from the 1700s. Nice, I know. And then we hoped a flight back to Southampton.

Edinburgh is totally way cute, yet there seems at times to be a bit too much interest in mooching up tourist dollars. Aka, the sheer number of stores selling kilts and Scottish rugby tops with bagpipe music blaring out of them. Plus all the random people playing bagpipes on the streets. You just end up with bagpipe music stuck in your head all day. Ah well, it's green and pleasant. I have lots of pictures, but I don't think I'll get them up on picasa today. So this is the only one you will get for now. And yes, that is me with my head in a cannon. It's a big 'un, too.

Fun with vending machines

These two vending machines are down at the passenger ferry dock. Now, I don't know about you, but I would probably get by on a meal of potato chips and candy from a normal vending machine before giving these bad boys a gander. However, I must admit that there is the overwhelming urge to see what sort of things would come out of a panini or French fry machine sitting near the end of a pier in Southampton. The sandwich one is especially intiguing, as you kind of want your sandwich ingredients to have a semblence of freshness. How often do they stock this machine? How do they keep things fresh? Just refrigeration, it seems, if there's no microwave involved. How long does it take for the panini to pop out? Is it wrapped? Are there napkins involved? And what if you want some salt or ketchup with your fries? Perhaps there needs to be a condiment vending machine in close proximity with available packets of said ketchup (and mayo for the so-inclined). It all makes you wonder. Quite a bit.

And it's like, summer now in Southampton. I don't know warm it's been the last couple days, and I have still been wearing jackets and all, but if you look around the tanks and capris are out in force, the restaurants all have outdoor seating, and everyone wishes they had a boat. Not sure how long this will last. I predict two months of cold rain before its really summer.

Beaulieu

As mentioned at some point in the past, Beaulieu is this wee little town in the New Forest, which as you recall is neither particularly new or particularly a forest. So Beaulieu is home to the national motor museum, which also houses the old Beaulieu Abbey and a Palace House, which was at some point ages ago the gate house to the abbey. To add zest to the voyage, we left the cars behind and hopped on a bus from Starbucks to the ferry dock, took the Hythe Ferry to, well Hythe, home of the world's oldest pier train (it's from 1922, and has not been updated since). The ferry was running a bit late and we were worried that we had missed the only bus from Hythe to Beaulieu for two hours, but luckily the service proved unreliable and showed up 20 minutes late and took us to Beaulieu.

After quaint home-style freshly prepared and reasonably priced baguettes for lunch, we trudgeoned over to the motor museum to look at cars and old buildings and such. There are a bunch of buildings and various attractions at the motor museum, none of them seeming particularly new. There is a country monorail, an old style bus, the main building full of cars, and a playstation 2 dome. It's got to be really neat if you like cars. Being not that into cars, I found it moderately entertaining. The palace house and abbey were really cute. Overall, not too sure if it's worth the 13.75 entry fee.

Post musuem, I was pleased as punch to finally get close to a new forest pony, and while we set out for a pint, there is no place to have a pint at 4 pm in Beaulieu, so we went and got some tea and scones because it was another hour until the bus would come. Clotted cream was involved. It's basically crisco but it's something you gotta do. Back in Hythe, we discovered that there is exactly one place to get a pint. A short rickety train ride and a cool ferry ride later, we were back in Southampton for a pretty sunset. Oh, the ferry goes sort of across the River Test, you can get there by other modes, it's not like the IoW or anything.

Today is Good Friday. It's like, a holiday here. As is Monday. So it's a random 4-day weekend. Although they don't get Thanksgiving or 4th of July, so I suppose it sort of balances out.

The return of the family

The family made it back to England from Italy on Sunday. They were a bit delayed, but they made it in the end.

I got up to London at high noon on Sunday and post-M&S sandwich, headed on a long tube ride over to Notting Hill Gate so I could finally cross Portabello Road off my list. So, Notting Hill is really cute. And there are a lot of cute colored houses on cute streets and cute little shops and cute antique stores (which is Portabello's 'thing', apparently). I walked along said road on a nice sunny, relatively warm afternoon, and came a cross an adorable little cupcake bakery a la Magnolia or Cupcake Royale and so I had to go in for investigative research to see how things truly compared. Delicious, but could have used a little more moist I think. Overall, cute cute cute.

Headed over and after pacing around and killing about an hour and a half, met up with the family at their hotel, walked back to Portabello Road to show them the cuteness, then had a pub dinner over on Kensington Church Street.

On Monday morning we went over to Kew Gardens for 'Mother's Day'. It involved going to zone 4 (well, zone 3/zone 4 border). Kew Gardens is a big park with a variety of really old plants and some buildings with other plants in them and a sort of small palace that no one has lived in since the first half of the 19-th century. In the afernoon, I went shopping with the mother-type while the boys went up to Abbey Road to take pictures of each other walking across the street. We dined on some cheap Belgian food in Covent Garden for dinner, and then I high-tailed it to Waterloo and hopped on a train back to Southampton.

Sometimes I think that visitors should go to Notting Hill just to go to Hummingbird Bakery. The visual story of these two days has been added to Picasa.

Additional high tech stuff

So I went to the gym yesterday and used the treadmill. I assure you, this was one complex treadmill. The interface on it was bigger than this laptop. Huge. Took me forever to get it set up. But the coolest (literally) part was that there were built in fans!! So the entire time I was running I had a nice cool breeze blowing in my face. Made the whole process much more enjoyable, I assure you. I'm sure these things exist in the US (as it was an American machine), but I have yet to come across them. The only thing that sounds better are those machines with built-in televisions. Are there machines with fans and tvs? That would almost be too much.

Aside from that, I tried a muller rice yogurt yesterday. It's really just rice pudding with fruit. It was unnaturally delicious so I have made the decision that I shall live off of them for the foreseeable future. Only I don't have any more, so it will be a few days until this takes hold.

Off to London to meet back up with the family for a couple days. I'm going to Portabello Road if it kills me!