Category Archive

For the 2008 election I have (another) new blog. I’ve finally kind of got the feel for the content of each of my blogs, so hopefully that will lead to me posting more in all of them.

Absentee Ballot: 2008 From the Expat Perspective is pretty much exactly as it sounds. Following the 2008 election is something of a challenge when you are relying entirely on the internet to keep you informed, and it comes with its own set of pitfalls such as an over-reliance on alternative media that could leave you completely out of touch with the opinion of average Americans. Or so thinks this DailyKos reader… It’s a group blog that is ideally supposed to cover a variety of locations, situations, ages and political perspectives, but so far it is just my friend Jenna and I. We’re studying the same thing at the same university and we both like (to different degrees) the same 2 candidates. Hopefully we’ll expand our writers over time.

Flying (By the Seat of My Pants) is the study abroad, pretty pictures and travel and non-political musings on being away from the homeland blog. Clearly it is not what I originally intended in terms of recounting my every breath, but sheesh people, I can’t handle that!

Nerdgasms is the general interest blog; it’s much like my LJ except it’s for public consumption. It’s definitely my fave.

I’m not really here, it’s an illusion (Michael!). I just want to ask you all a favor.

But first a quick update! I had a rather nightmarish return from the US, where I waited for over 6 hours at Heathrow for a National Express coach back to Leicester. I hate National Express, their approximately 6x a day route to Leicester (and 3 or 4 other places, so the bus is mobbed), the unreliability of an open return ticket, and the unreliability of air travel that necessitates an open return ticket. Thank God my friends Jenna and Kat were at the airport too or I probably would have lost my mind. I went for almost 30 hours without sleep on that particular travel…. no fun!

When back in Leicester I got to speed-write the WORST paper ever. It involved filling out the documentation paperwork that would be required if you were accessioning an object into your museum collections and then–get this–writing a 4,000 word essay explaining how you filled in the 3 forms. There is just no way to make that sound smart. It reads like it was written for small children. If you know anyone with an IQ of 70 who wants to learn how to document museum accessions, I’m your girl.

Then I’ve had some class and stuff. Currently I’m doing laundry. I don’t know how I can stand this whirlwind life of mine; I clearly have exemplary stamina.

And now for my request: If you know anyone (American citizen) currently living outside of the country with an interest in politics who might want to contribute to a group blog about Election 2008, could you please point them in my direction? I’m trying to set one up, and am particularly looking for conservatives if you know any. They’re a bit harder to find outside the US. I’m also NOT looking for anyone who fits the profiles of Jenna and myself, since we’ve probably got the ‘over-privileged white kid with her head up her ass while temporarily living in England’ demographic pretty well covered. Please send people my way if you (and they) feel so inclined. It’s a WordPress blog so anyone who is going to be added to it would need a WordPress account. With a non-pornographic name. But it can be anything else!

Cross-posted approximately everywhere.

I have this half-written post somewhere about how I am not numbering my posts anymore, but clearly I have not gotten around to posting it–or anything else for that matter–in the past month. Perhaps I should have some sort of “at least once a month” guarantee which, if broken, gives you the right to come bang down my door and pummel me with whatever you’ve got to hand. However, it might not translate into practice very well because my door has an uncanny tendency to be on one side of the Atlantic half the time and on the other side for the rest. Odds are that it’s the people who are in America when I’m in the UK who actually want updates and who would likewise want to beat my door down with spatulas.

Well lucky for you, I am in the US right this very minute!

It was a trying process to get here though, and because we all know how fervidly I believe in the power of positivity, I am going to recount it to you. In agonizing detail. So you’ll feel like you were there.

My day started at the sunny hour of 4:30am GMT, when I showered, finished packing, and called a taxi. The taxi picked me up at 7 and dropped me at the delightfully classy St. Margaret’s Coach Station, where I waited until about 8:10 for my coach to deign to arrive. It turned out they actually only had about 10 seats on the coach to Heathrow and about 40 people with tickets, so they had to put most of us on a coach bound for Gatwick. This had to detour to drop us off, much to the delight of the Gatwick-bound passengers I’m sure. Being as parannoid as I am about time I had planned to arrive at the airport very early, so the fact that the coach took an extra hour to arrive wasn’t too bad for me. At about 11am we got to Heathrow and had to get on another coach to go to Terminal 4. Sheesh, I had no idea how far away from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 it was! It took us about 15 minutes! That’s practically in another county!

An hour in the check-in queue, an hour in the security queue (which wrapped around the outside of the terminal), and several vows to never fly at Christmas ever ever again later and I was standing around unbuttoning my fly for the nice security people. While they were touching me rather thoroughly I of course I apologized profusely for causing trouble by setting off their metal detectors for no discernable reason, which I think is proof positive that I wasn’t leaving the UK a minute too soon! I also apologized quite a bit to the woman who came up to me when I was pulling my boots back on to inform me that they were going to perform an explosives test on my toiletries. Apparently I was very suspicious looking yesterday. She took me off to the side where they have this little makeshift lab on a cart, and she squeezed bits of my toiletries out onto some paper strips. I guess they were supposed to change colors if I was packing radioactive material? Or something? I thought bomb components could be quite innocuous things when not combined, so I’m not sure how useful this testing is, but I guess it’s cool that they’re able to do it.

I then proceeded to kill a lot of time in the duty free shops. My flight was supposed to be at 2:45, but at around 2:30 they came out to tell us that it was canceled and we’d better go to the customer service desk to reschedule. We made a mad dash to the desk and when we got there were informed by the alarmed looking lady that our flight was delayed until 4pm, not canceled. Wherever could we have gotten such a silly idea? 3:30 rolls around and we go to board our flight, walk down the gangplank (what do you call the aeronautical equivalent? I don’t know) and into our awaiting…buses.

No one said anything, we were just loaded into buses like little, sheep-like sardines. We were then driven away from Terminal 4 and brought to British Airways shipping and freight area, where we boarded our plane.

And then the plane didn’t have sound on the entertainment system, so half our viewing options were only available in Spanish. Yo amo Hairspray!

And then there were about 10 immigration lines open for non-US citizens and only 4 for US citizens. This is an exact reversal of what it’s like in Europe, where EU people breeze through and non-EU people have to wait forever. Which, if you have to make some people wait forever, is as it should be. WTF America? Of course I got in the line for the VERY slow immigration officer, who wanted to chat with everybody and got nasty when people didn’t want to chat back and just wanted to get the fuck out of there. He moved 4 people in the time it took every other line (all 3 of them) to move 12+ each.

8pm EST (1am GMT) and I was finally home!

I think I might be substitute teaching or something to make a buck while I’m home, but for now I’m just delighting in my new mattress, spending US dollars and eating good food.

I was going to elaborate more, but I have to pack up this computer now and send it off to be fixed.

To my dear family and friends, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving! I’ve been terrible with updating this blog and I’m sorry to those of you who keep up with me mainly by reading about my exploits. I’ll try to be a bit better about it, but no promises. Things are fluid and I kind of hate pretending they’re concrete. Updating and saying anything seems so definitive, and it seems dishonest because it isn’t definitive. That said, I do owe you an update on my trip to Canterbury and Dover which happened about a month ago!

The Thanksgiving celebrations in the UK are a bit scant, obviously! I’m missing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is surprising as it’s something I usually watch only grudgingly at 9am. I’m missing my family, which goes without saying. I’m missing the glories of antipasto! However, I’ve decided today still marks the start of the Christmas season, much as it would if I were home. Granted, at the time I’m writing this Santa probably still hasn’t gone down the parade route so I’m a few hours early. Also, we’re having an expat North American Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. We’ve combined US and Canadian Thanksgiving and are throwing in a fair few people of other nationalities who just like to eat tasty food. I’m providing the stuffing, though I’ve been unable to find good Italian sausage so it’s not my Nana’s delicious stuffing, just some boxed stuff. We’ve got some vegetarians at dinner, so perhaps it’s good that we’re not throwing meat into everything!

I hope this Thanksgiving finds you with plenty of things to be grateful for. I love you and miss you.

(And never forget that Jamestown was settled before Plymouth! An infinitely better settlement, that Jamestown :P) Edit: My dad has pointed out to me that President Bush has given his Thanksgiving address from Berkeley Plantation in VA this year. The site of the first Thanksgiving in America! Boo friggen yah. Very rarely do I say this about Bush, but good for him.