Who sucks?

Jeremy does.

He passed his germs onto me and now I am sick.  It is only day one of being sick.  Tomorrow I will probably be more sick.

He totally sucks.  A lot.

Busy doing nothing

Jeremy was sick this weekend so we did a whole bunch of nothing.  He found this frustrating.  I found it pretty awesome.  We watched movies (Arthur, Little Children, Away We Go) and the Olympics.  My new favorite event is Ski Cross.  According to the announcer on the BBC it ‘could only be more exciting if you added shark infested pools!’  Not only were there crashes there was also plenty of barely restrained animosity between the commentators.

Guy 1:  This is really a man’s man’s  sport!

Guy 2: The women’s ski cross will be taking place on Wednesday.  I’m really looking forward to it.

I want these guys to narrate my life!  Well, them or Stephen Fry a la Pocoyo.  Maybe they could share.

To make up for a weekend filled with sloth, I exercised this morning.  This sort of thing is meant to be good for me.  I’m reserving judgement.

Big day!

Today I started re-learning how to drive.  I spent 2 hours with my new friend, Aston the driving instructor, while he taught me how to shift gears, use a clutch, and drive on the left hand side of the road.  I’m not so good at it yet, but I’m also not as bad as I thought.  Still, citizens of Nunhead, beware, there will be a very slow moving menace on your streets for the next few months.

Then after my first driving session I went off to the postal depot and collected this!  Mine plays the theme from Love Story and I love it.

Then I came to work.  But that wasn’t very exciting at all.

Spectacles

I have new glasses.  I was getting headaches and my GP told me that the first thing to do in such a situation was to get my eyes checked (also I need to have some blood drawn so they can check my iron levels but the queues at the haemotology lab are ridic) so I went to Vision Express and got my eyes checked and discovered that my right eye has been letting my down.  My left eye has been working hard and holding steady, but the vision in the right has gotten a bit worse.

You know what that means, right?  That means new specs. 

These new specs to be precise:

I was kind of surprised that I liked a pair of Diesel glasses.  I’m not generally much for name brands, and in fact was very firm in my disdain for a pair of Gucci frames the sales guy tried to push on me, but these really bring out my eyes.  When he handed these to me I put them on and he said, ‘Now that style is sort of geeky.’ And I said, ‘I can do that.’

Jeremy says they make me look ‘sort of owlish, but girls like that.’ He’s such a sweet talker.

I also got the lens in my old glasses replace so I can keep them at home and actually wear them when using the computer or reading like how I’m supposed to.  I think I’m supposed to wear them while knitting too.  Growing old is tricky stuff.

Valentine’s Day earns another black mark

Jeremy and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.  We haven’t since 2002 when his mom last her battle with cancer and died on Valentine’s Day.  His paternal grandmother died on the 13th a few years ago as well.  It’s a sad day.  We let it pass by.

Last week we went out to dinner on Thursday and the waiter asked us what we were doing on Sunday and we looked at him blankly, neither of sure why Sunday was supposed to be significant.  He looked back at us with disbelief and said ‘Valentine’s Day?!?’ and we said ‘Oooooh!’

So Sunday rolled around and I was knitting and flipping channels between  Dune and the Olympics and Jeremy was upstairs working when the phone rang.  And the phone brought the news that a friend of our living in Tokyo, Iain, had been found dead in his apartment there.  I am not actually sure what day he died.  No one had heard from him for a few days.  Regardless, he was gone. 

Neither of us had spoken to him in a few years.   Not since he left London for Tokyo, but we would occasionally hear updates from friends.  He was working as a teacher there.  It had been his dream to move to Japan and everyone was so happy for him when he moved.

He was one of the first people Jeremy met when we first started coming back and forth from Chicago and when we moved to south east London he told us about some friends he had in Peckham.  He told us about those friends for a year, saying how he had to introduce us to them.  Finally in May 2006 (the day we got Oliver actually, which is why it took me and etra two days to meet them) hi introduced Jeremy to these mythical friends at the Intrepid Fox in Soho.  A few days later we all went out for pizza at The Gowlett (our first time there actually, funny to realise) and spent a boozy afternoon with the people who would become some of our closest friends in London. 

We didn’t see Iain a huge amount during his remaining time in London, he lived north of the river and rarely came south, and when he did it was with much humourous grumbling.  He won the award for Least Effort Made at Paula and Harvey’s dress like a song contest, as he made no effort at all.  Wait, no, he was wearing a name tag with ‘The Man in Black’ written on it.  I think someone put that name tag on him though.

He was a good guy.  I didn’t know him especially well, but I know that he was a very good guy.

The world is a darker place for his loss.

Scary things!

Did you know that since October of 2009 a grand total of 57 people have found this blog by searching for ‘List of Scary Things’ or some close relative of this phrase.

I would like to formally apologise to you, dear searchers, because you have undoubtedly landed on my very unscary list of things that I find scary.  I am a wuss you see.  Sad but true. 

But here are some truly horrifying things:

1. The movie Fog of War.  No joke.  You will need to force yourself to forget large chunks of it in order to go on functioning.
2. The American health care system.
3. People who use quotation marks incorrectly.
4. The look on my dentist’s face when she tells me I ‘really, really need to start flossing.’
5. Taking driving lessons in London in order to learn how to drive a manual even though you know how to drive all ready, but only an automatic in America.
6. Sarah Palin fans
7. Spiders.  Seriously, they’re gross.

Hazards.

I currently have about 5 million paper cuts (actual number more like 6) because I’m in the middle of a big archiving project (saying this makes me think of the Kids in the Hall sketches with Gavin, in one he claimed that he was ‘in the middle of a big bike race!’  Gavin was also responsible for informing as all that ‘In Russia you only get one spoon and one bowl and if you lose either one you never get another and you have to wait for a relative to die so you can take theirs.’).  I think I deserve hazard pay, you know like the contract workers in Iraq get.

Probably the company I work for is not going to give me hazard pay.  But they would probably disagree with this sentiment.  My once smooth and beautiful hands are now a scarred, frightening mess. Children run away in fear at the sight of them.  It doesn’t help that Oliver is a bitey maniac at least once every day. There’s a reason his first nickname was Senor Chompers.

My life is full of dangerous situations.

Announcements

• I signed up for driving lessons, therefore, if you are in or around the SE15 area on Friday monrings for the next couple months, exercise a little extra caution whilst crossing the street.
• I’ve started going back to bikram yoga.  I should not ever have stopped.
• I bought this and cannot wait for it to show up at my house.
• I finished reading The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters yesterday.  I enjoyed it despite the lack of torrid love affairs or gender bending and the running strand of sorrow and loss.  Sarah Waters is officially one of my favorite authors.  I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear this.  I expect to see it added to the front of all her future novels “Officially one of Carolyn Kohl’s favorite authors!  Right up there with Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood and Michael Chabon!”
• Typing the words ‘Favorite Author’ was an activity fraught with indecision.  That’s right, fraught!  Which spellings to use, English or American!  Delete add delete add.  I finally, as you can see, went with my roots and kept it American.
• We are going to see tUnE-YarDs on Monday.  I last saw her at ATP last May and am really REALLY looking forward to seeing her again.
• I’ve taken Tuesday off work so I won’t feel nervous about staying up late also so I can have cocktails with lunch!

Oh my.

I am about to book driving lessons.

Driving lessons to learn how to drive a manual (Stick shift to the Americans) in London so I can get an official UK driving license to replace my current provisional license and my about to expire Michigan license.

This is scary.  I’ve only ever driven automatic cars on the right side (and I don’t mean that in an Ameri-centric we drive on the correct/right side of the road kind of way, I mean it in a right v. left kind of way) of the road and generally not in an urban area.  On top of that in the last 9 years I’ve only driven about 9 times total. And one of the last times I drove I ended up in a neck brace with whiplash and Jeremy had a concussion and my father-in-law’s car was totalled.

Totally not my fault.

Driving makes me nervous (though to be fair MOST things make me nervous).  I’m going to do it anyhow.  I have to.  I just don’t want to.

My head is an idiot!

I have had a headache, on and off, for the better part of 3 weeks.  It is not nice.  I am not a fan at all. I’ve taken tension headache stuff and it works but it also makes me queasy.  Probably what I really need is a trip to a tropical island for about 2 weeks.  Could somebody set that up for me?  Thanks. Much appreciated