Merry Christmas!

I'm finally home, and it's wonderful. We're doing Christmas presents when everyone else gets home from church, so in the meantime I have time to catch up on e-mail, make my laptop stop acting stupid, and go through the skyscraper stacks of mail that came for me in my absence.

I originally started this blog to chronicle my adventures during my London Semester, and as a secondary purpose, to bitch about law school applications. Now that I'm home and I'm accepted to law school, there's nothing left to do, except to list a few of the things I've done over the last four months, in no particular order.

I have attended the opera with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I have waded knee-deep and barefoot through autumn flood tide in Venice.

I have eaten every meal outside for four days straight in Paris.

I have mastered the art of descending from the top deck of a double-decker bus while the bus is moving.

I have slept on a houseboat in Amsterdam.

I have defied death twice: once by crossing the Place de la Concorde on foot, and once by going shopping on Oxford Street three days before Christmas.

I have visited places I've been reading and dreaming about since I was a little girl.

I have peed in Trafalgar Square.

I'm still in Newark until tomorrow evening, but life is much less stressful right now. The airline put me up in a really nice hotel (Wyndham), with insanely comfortable beds, a huge TV, Aeron chairs, and a nice shower, so after getting clean and getting some sleep (and food), I feel 100% better. I may not have my luggage, but I have essential toiletries, my computer, my iPod, and my antidepressants. Things could suck a whole lot worse right now. In fact, they don't suck at all right now. Sure, I'd like to be home on Christmas Eve, but I'll be home tomorrow night and we'll do Christmas when I get there. My family will be happy to see me, whenever I get there.

Seriously, though, this has reaffirmed my commitment to travel with toiletries and a change of clothes in my carry-on bag. I always do, but the idiots at the check-in counter made me take it out, as I said in yesterday's post. (Other than that minor incident, I have had nothing but the best experiences with Virgin Airlines, and I highly recommend them if they go where you're going.)

Man, this post sounds like nothing but an advertisement for various hotels and airlines, doesn't it?

Okay, I lied. I'm not posting this from Cleveland. I'm posting it from Newark, because, well, I'm in Newark (which ranks just above Detroit on armpit-of-the-USA-ness). As you may have guessed, my flight to Cleveland's been cancelled for weather reasons, and I haven't even attempted to get in the customer service line, because there's honestly no point hurrying. Plus, every single person I've talked to here in the last two hours has told me something different, and I've talked to at least twenty people in search of assistance. I'm not getting home tonight, that seems pretty sure. I'm trying not to be too pissed off about it, because my travel mantra over the last four months has been Your Plans Will Change, but the fact remains that I don't even have my toiletries bag with me because upon check-in in London, they made me put it in checked luggage. Apparently flights leaving the UK make sure that each passenger has less than 6 kg of carry-on baggage. Ha, say I. My computer probably weighs more than that (well, not really, but you know). It's all going in the plane in the end, so why do they care what part of the plane it's in?

Anyway. At least this place has internet (which has been my other travel mantra). God, that wireless card I splurged on before my trip has been worth every single penny, and then some.

So, it's my last day in London.

I got up early and went over to the Tower of London, and since it's chilly and drizzly today, it was a perfect London day to see it. I had a great time exploring all the different things to see, but my absolute favourite, of course, was the Crown Jewels exhibit. I've heard people say it's a letdown, but after seeing it myself, I have a sneaking suspicion that people say that after they've queued for two hours or more to see it. Today, there were only about fifteen other people there, so we were able to go straight through to the shiny stuff. And it is indeed shiny! I'm a fan of sparkly things to begin with, and there's enough sparkle in the Crown Jewels to keep me satisfied for a long time. There's also a convenient shop nearby selling faux sparkly things, so I treated myself to a pair of earrings and picked up my last couple of Christmas presents. I'm down with the bling, yo.

The rest of the Tower was equally fun, but I think I got more out of just wandering around and soaking up the history than any of the interactive displays (most of which are geared toward kids anyway). I could definitely have stayed all day, but I had an appointment to keep.

The London Eye is the world's biggest observation wheel, and it's run by British Airways, so the whole experience is promoted in terms of a "flight over London." It is definitely not for those afraid of heights, which fortunately I'm not, so I enjoyed myself greatly. Most of my friends never went on it while they were here, claiming it's too expensive for a student budget (which, frankly, it is), but those that did went on it in their first few days in London. I can see it being good for that, as a way to acquaint yourself with the city, but for me, the best part of the experience was seeing all the places I know in this city I've grown to love over the last four months. As a goodbye to London, it was unbeatable.

After my "flight," I went over to the Marriott for the afternoon tea part of my package. The tea room is done up like an old library, which makes a nice cozy atmosphere, and I had a lovely view out the window to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. The tea was good, the champagne was better, the food was abundant, and the staff treated me like a princess (or at least minor aristocracy). It was an excellent way to celebrate all the things I have to celebrate right now, and well worth the money.

I got some great photos today, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload them tonight or not (depends how the packing and cleaning go). If not tonight, they'll be up sometime on Friday.

Next post, from Cleveland...

Forgot to mention that the new pics are all in the London gallery within the London Semester gallery. One of the ones of St. Paul's and the moon is currently my computer desktop.

Here's my progress so far:

Laundry
Book London Eye ticket
Sort through random crap accumulated during stay and throw away/save/give to charity shop
Mail last things that need to be mailed
Return library books
Clean house, especially kitchen
Arrange for taxi to airport

Other than one library book I forgot, that's pretty good, I think.

Today I did most of the aforementioned errands, and went to the Museum of London. I highly, highly recommend this for anyone visiting London... it has a lot of interactive displays which are always fun, and it's a great look at London life from prehistory onward. It also has a couple of sections of the ancient city wall preserved nearby, which I took a photo of and which should be up shortly if my internet connection behaves.

I also went to St. Paul's, getting there too late to take the tour, so I just wandered around for a few minutes before the service started. It's a beautiful, grand church, very different from the medieval cathedrals I've seen so far. It reminded me most of San Marco in Venice (although it's decorated quite differently), mainly because of the neoclassical architecture and Italianate dome so unusual for a British church at the time. I plan on going back at some point when I can spend more time there, because it's worth far more than the few minutes I had for it. I did get some great shots of the outside, though.

Tomorrow's my last day in London (how the hell did that happen??), and the plan is to get up earlyish, see the Tower first, and then head over to the London Eye for a flight and an afternoon tea with champagne. (It's my birthday in a month, as most of you know, and I usually get myself a slightly extravagant Christmas/birthday present. This is it, this year.) The evening will be spent cleaning and packing, although if there's a carol service on at Westminster, I may go to that.

Well, I just got home from running a couple of errands, and the heat seems to be working again, so at least I can finish out my time in London and get to see the rest of the things on my list! Due to errands and laziness, I'm not going anywhere except the laundromat today after all, but I'll use my evening productively so I can do touristy stuff all day tomorrow and Wednesday. I'll put my to-do list here to keep myself honest (although not all of this needs to get done tonight, just before I leave).

Laundry
Book London Eye ticket
Sort through random crap accumulated during stay and throw away/save/give to charity shop
Mail last things that need to be mailed
Return library books
Clean house, especially kitchen
Arrange for taxi to airport


I think that's everything...

The girls have left with their luggage... apparently what happened was that the landlady shoved it all in their room and locked the door with keys inside, so they'd have to call the office to come and get their stuff. I was sleeping, so I don't know if they had to pay or what, but they were pissed.

The same unspeakable landlady apparently wants me out, as she's cut the heat off. I've sent an e-mail asking what's up and whether it can be turned back on before Thursday, but I somehow doubt it. I have plans for the next couple of days, but there's nothing booked or set in stone, and I am so tempted to just cut my losses and go home. I'd go to a hotel, but I can't afford it.

I don't really want to go home, because I want to see the Tower of London and St. Paul's, and I have to pick up my urban studies journal (although I don't care so much about that). I'd just like to be able to come home to a place where the heat's on and the landlady doesn't move people's stuff without so much as a freaking note to let them know where it's gone.

Update: those of you who chose option B were correct! Housemates are home, royally pissed off (and quite rightly), and we don't know where the luggage is, although we have a pretty good idea. Getting it back before they leave tomorrow is going to be ugly, probably expensive, and maybe impossible (if our horrid landlady did the worst-case scenario, giving it all to charity).

On a happier note, there are new pictures up, including the ones from Bath which I finally managed to upload.

I'm back from having a fun weekend in Guildford. Laura and I went to Hampton Court Palace (more about that later), wandered around the shops, and met up with her friends at a pub for some drinks. Lots of fun and very nice people all around! I think it's a minor miracle that Laura and I still get along so well and have so much fun together, considering that the last time we spent any significant amounts of time together, we were nine years old and playing in the sandbox. People change a lot in a couple of years, never mind thirteen, so it's pretty amazing and cool that we're still friends! I had a really great time, and Guildford is a very pretty town with a lot of beautiful old houses and a ruined castle, so it's a good place to wander (it's nearly as hilly as Ithaca, though, so I got a bit of a taste of what walking around town would be like if I end up at Cornell).

Unfortunately, I returned home to find that my housemates' luggage, which they had stacked in front of their door (next to mine), is gone, and there's no note anywhere explaining where it's gone. I came home tonight specifically because they told me they'd come to pick it up around midnight tonight.

This is a mystery, and not a good one, because one of two things have happened.

a) They came home early and collected their stuff, which is bad because their laptops were in my (locked) room for safekeeping, so I'll have to figure out how to get them back to Canada safely and if I got the date wrong, they'll be mad at me.

Or

b) our horrible landlady came and took all the stuff away, which I think is the more likely possibility, because other flatmates' stuff is gone too (and why would the girls have taken the boys' stuff if they came to collect their own?). This is good because in that case the landlady didn't get the laptops, but it's bad because I don't know if they'll be able to get their stuff back in time to make their flight home, and the landlady will be pissy about it.

Argh. I don't think this will end well.

Still haven't heard from Duke, either.

Thanks for all the congratulations... you guys are going to give me a complex! : )

Most of the pics from yesterday are up, all except the Bath ones (which for some reason don't want to upload). I'll keep trying on those, and hopefully have them up within a couple of days.

Today I'd planned to go to both Tates and Vinopolis, but my bank account protested at the thought of Vinopolis and I wasn't really in the mood to see classical art, so I had a mostly lazy day and went to the Tate Modern. I am really glad now that I didn't follow my original plan of getting wasted at Vinopolis before the Tate Modern (as fun as modern art is when you're in an altered state), because I got lost coming out of the tube station in a very skeevy area. Fortunately, my good sense of direction prevailed and I eventually found the place, but that is not a part of town I'd have wanted to be lost and drunk in. Lost for ten minutes was bad enough!

The Tate Modern is now right up there with the V&A on my list of favourite museums ever. Most art museums organize their collection chronologically and/or by media, but the Tate Modern organizes by theme, which I think is a much cooler way to do it. You go into the Nude/Action/Body series of galleries, and media and periods are all mixed together in a way that produces much more integration than most museums. Plus, their collection in and of itself is just stunning. I had a most enjoyable couple of hours wandering and admiring, and occasionally laughing at places where the pretension could be cut with a knife. That's the downside to modern art.

This weekend, I'm going to Guildford to stay with Laura, and we're going to Hampton Court at some point over the weekend, so there will be more pictures! Hopefully these will be a bit more amenable to uploading than the Bath ones.

Today was one of those really good days, in all respects.

It didn't start out so good, because when the alarm went off at 6:30 I did the usual "goddamn, it is way too early for normal people to be awake" thing, but I got up, made it to the bus station with plenty of time to spare, and boarded the tour bus. When I got on the bus, I discovered that Andrea was on the same tour! So that was fun, because I had someone to chat with.

We arrived at Windsor Castle around 10 AM, just as they opened, and we walked through the grounds for a few minutes before touring the State Apartments. The same thing I said about Buckingham Palace applies here... it's all very lovely (especially decorated for Christmas!) and the sheer number of historical and valuable objets d'art is staggering, but royal decoration is just Not. My. Style. I tend to like a bit more simplicity in my decoration. But then again, I'm not the Queen of England.

The castle itself has been added to by nearly every monarch over the last thousand years, so you can see stonework from William the Conqueror's construction crew all the way up to the present-day restorations where the fire occurred in 1992. Somehow, it all manages to blend pretty seamlessly.

The Chapel of St. George was especially interesting, because it was built around the same time as King's College Chapel in Cambridge, so I found myself going "Hmm, this looks familiar!" a lot of the time. Even the decoration is the same, Tudor emblems everywhere and fan vaulting galore. Henry VIII's buried there along with his third wife, Jane Seymour, but no mention of the other hapless five. George III's also buried there, so I did my duty as a good American and jumped around a little on his memorial slab (not enough to attract attention or feel guilty for disrespecting dead royalty, though).

After Windsor, we had about an hour's ride or so to Stonehenge, which was, frankly, a bit of a letdown. It's a lot smaller than you imagine it to be, and you can't get close to the stones (although I do understand why they'd keep people away, considering the kind of crazies that like to go to places like that). Still, it was well worth seeing, and I got a lot of good photos.

We had a late lunch in the tiny Somerset village of Norton St. Philip, which achieved notoriety as the centre of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1645. The illegitimate son of Charles II, the Duke of Monmouth, decided he had a better claim to be king than his uncle, James II, and sat down with his buddies in the local inn to plan a rebellion. It failed, and they all got executed, but the inn's still there, and that's where we ate lunch. It's actually a fifteenth-century coaching inn, and it has really excellent food and locally brewed ale. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and gravy, oh my! I left feeling like I wouldn't need to eat again for about two years, but of course I'm eating right now (although lunch was almost eight hours ago, and that's a good stretch for me).

Our final stop of the day was Bath, which we pulled into right around sunset. The Bath Abbey in the centre of town is a beautiful fifteenth-century church, and I'd have loved to go in but it was closed for a service when we got there. I settled for admiring it from the outside, which isn't hard to do. Right next to the Abbey are the Roman Baths and the Pump Room, the Georgian hangout where everyone who was anyone went to drink rotten-egg scented water and socialize. Our group had about an hour to explore the city (which isn't nearly enough, by the way) before meeting back up, and I used the time by wandering around town to take pictures and shop. Bath has a lot of little boutiques selling interesting things, including several chocolate shops. I must credit the George Inn for filling me up enough so that I actually didn't buy any chocolate!

Once we met back up with our group, we got a private after-hours tour of the Roman Baths. In case you don't know, Bath is built of a local warm-toned limestone that gives all its buildings a lovely golden honey colour, and firelight brings it out beautifully. We got to see the baths at night, with torches lit, and I have to say I wouldn't have wanted to see them any other way. It was a really interesting tour, with lots of Roman and Celtic history, and I stuck my hand in the water to see how warm it was. It's a nice hot bath temperature, and after a day in the cold and wind, I was really tempted to jump in! However, the water's untreated and the bath is lined with lead, so it wouldn't have been a good idea for lots of reasons. Too bad.

I took a load of pictures, so I don't know when I'll be able to get them all uploaded (I strongly suspect they won't all be up tonight). Check back tomorrow night, and hopefully they'll all be up.

Oh yes, and when I got back home this evening, I found an e-mail telling me I've been accepted to law school at Cornell! Really, how much nicer could today have been?

I am DONE!

I can't call myself a graduate yet, because that won't be till February, but at least now I can say that I've finished my degree. It hasn't really hit me yet, since I just turned in my final project this afternoon, but knowing I don't have to worry about schoolwork for at least the next six months is really nice!

After meeting with my prof (forty-five minutes late due to stupid tube delays), I headed over to the V&A for a pleasant afternoon's exploring. I have to say that the V&A is my favourite museum ever, because there's just so much to see, and furniture and decorative objects tell you so much about the time period. Plus, the V&A has a huge collection of Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau stuff, which is a particular interest of mine (and the collection's well worth seeing even if you don't know much about it). The museum's currently being revamped, so I plan to go back next time I'm in London to see the galleries that were closed during my visit, most of which were ones I'd really wanted to see (naturally).

Tonight, I'm going to work on a couple more Christmas presents, and then go to bed early, because tomorrow's my rescheduled Bath, Stonehenge, and Windsor tour, and if Monday's tube delays are anything to go by, I'm getting up at 6. I'm not missing this a second time!

Whee! The tour company is being nice and has let me reschedule the Bath trip for Thursday at no extra charge, I'll be officially done with my BA as of tomorrow, and I'm about 95% done with my Christmas shopping. Now I just have to figure out how to get everything home...

Cambridge pics are all up and captioned (I had a hell of a time uploading them last night, but they're all done). Expect Bath/Stonehenge/Windsor pics on Friday.

Today I slept in and went to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, both of which were really cool. I love being able to see in person things that I've previously only seen in books or magazines, because you just don't get the level of detail in a reprint that you do when you can stare at the real thing from inches away. Lots of very famous paintings in both galleries, and the National Portrait Gallery has an extremely interesting exhibition of modern portrait photography going on, so it was an enjoyable afternoon.

After that, I had dinner at Pret and walked up to Covent Garden to do some more Christmas shopping, which was nice and productive, and now I'm home catching up on my e-mail and internet stuff before I finish my project. I meet with the prof tomorrow to hand it in, and then I am DONE. Still no word from law schools, but I expect to hear something any day now (hopefully, anyway).

So I was supposed to go on my tour of Bath, Stonehenge, and Windsor Castle today.

I did everything right, even getting up at 7 AM so I could get to the bus station well before I was supposed to be there (it's a half-hour trip from home. I've timed it before). Unfortunately, rush hour plus the anger of the tube gods (delay after delay on line after line) meant that I arrived at the bus station well after the bus had departed. Or would have arrived, because I was still so far away from the bus station at the time the bus left that I didn't even bother going the rest of the way.

I was a little pissed about the waste of money, but when you travel, you have to be prepared for a change of plans at any moment. It was 9 AM, I had seven hours of daylight left, and a lot of other places I wanted to go, so I grabbed some breakfast in the train station and sat down with a guidebook to figure out where I'd end up.

I toyed with the idea of going up to York, since I've heard it's really cool, but it was such a long train ride away that I'd probably only have a couple of hours of daylight to explore if I went up there. (In the winter in England, these things must be taken into consideration.) I didn't want to go to Bath, either, because I didn't want to pay twice for a place I'd only see once*. So my decision came down to either Oxford or Cambridge, and since Rick Steves and Bill Bryson both prefer Cambridge and I find myself agreeing with them on a lot of other stuff, I picked Cambridge.

I didn't regret it. Cambridge is a really beautiful little city with a lot to explore, and its 31 colleges lend themselves nicely to wandering. It was really cold here today (hovering around freezing, but that's really cold for here), so I got a hot chocolate to go, and broke my rule about not riding on hop-on-hop-off tourist buses. I did the circuit once around to get myself oriented and figure out what I wanted to see, and then walked through the main colleges and parts of Cambridge.

The colleges themselves don't open much to visitors, but King's College was open, which was fantastic since it was the one I most wanted to see. King's College Chapel has perhaps the most famous English boy choir outside Westminster Abbey, in addition to being one of the best-preserved examples of Tudor architecture. It is beautiful. If you were allowed to take photos inside, I'd have come back with about three times as many as I did, because there are so many details worth photographing, but I had to content myself with the outside. It has the world's largest unsupported fan-vaulted ceiling, and little Tudor details everywhere, including the entwined initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn carved on the organ screen. (For someone who's as much of a Tudor history geek as I am, this is cool stuff.)

After King's, I basically just wandered up through the centre of town photographing things and ducking into interesting-looking shops (including one purporting to make the world's best fudge, but Souvenir City in Gulf Shores, Alabama, still does it better. This fact did not keep me from bringing home a slab anyway). I also found a bookshop having a liquidation sale and snagged a 2005 UK road atlas for five pounds. It was a great day, even though I still haven't thawed out entirely.

(*: Yes, I realize I still paid for someplace I didn't see and again for something I did. It makes sense in my head. No, really, it does.)

I hadn't realized just how much I needed to get out of the city and into some nature until I did today. I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and despite being the middle of December, there was still plenty to see. Kew is famous for its Victorian greenhouses, among other things, so inside the greenhouses it's still warm, misty, and full of plant life. I had a very enjoyable few hours just wandering around the greenhouses, photographing plants (my favourite photo subject besides architecture and my cats), although there'd have been more pictures if I had remembered to recharge the camera battery last night. Don't worry, it's recharging now in preparation for tomorrow's trip to Bath, Stonehenge, and Windsor Castle.

After I finished at the greenhouses, I wandered around the grounds for a bit. There's less to see here at this time of year, but there are actually quite a few plants that have winter interest, such as bright stems, berries, or even scented flowers (viburnum and wintersweet, to name two). Kew runs a little tram around the gardens all year round, so I rode on that for a circuit and got glimpses of the Thames, Kew Palace, and Syon House (interiors by Adam, landscapes by Capability Brown, for those who are interested in that sort of thing). It's hard to take photographs from a moving tram, no matter how slowly it's moving, so the house pictures are a bit blurry but I tried my best.

I also uploaded some pictures last night of our semester-end pub night last Thursday. Lots of fun and karaoke.

More tomorrow night, when I return from my day trip...

The music paper is finally finished! Now all I have between me and a degree are three small writeups for my Urban Studies class, which I technically don't have to do but I want to boost my grade. Unfortunately, because I needed extra time for the paper, I think one of the things on my to-do list is going to have to go. I intended to go and visit the Tower of London today, and since I still definitely want to do that, something else has to give. I have to take a look at the list and see what I would mind missing the least, but I'm still heading out to Kew Gardens tomorrow. Don't laugh, they have greenhouses and there's plenty to see in the winter, so it's not like I'll be wandering through bare dead fields. Then on Monday, I'm doing my day trip to Bath, Stonehenge, and Windsor Castle! Expect lots of new photos Monday night or Tuesday.

Off to have some dinner...

This is what happens when I have a paper to write and I'm procrastinating.

My cats get webpages.

I regret to inform you that in the early hours of Day Five, the siege ended and the girls bought toilet paper. We failed to hold out in the face of enemy action, but morale remains high. (I know you all were waiting with bated breath.)

I'm sitting here eating chips with curry sauce, tipsy from the beer I drank at tonight's pantomime (loads of fun if you like audience participation in theatre, which I do if I've had enough to drink), and pondering the schedule for the rest of my time in London. I hate having to schedule fun events when I'm traveling, but I have so many places to go that I think I have to set a schedule and stick to it if I want to get everything done. At least I'll have lots of photo fodder, and lately I've been trying to photograph London's Christmas decorations to get myself in the holiday spirit in the absence of snow. Due to the new pictures, I've reorganized the photo page yet again, so now the pictures in the Our Neighbourhood gallery are strictly those from West Hampstead, while other general London photos (including the new Christmas ones) have their own gallery now. I apologize for the blurriness of a lot of them... I'd like to say it's intentionally artistic, but the truth is that I haven't got a tripod. Long exposures for night photography are the worst for camera shake, but I'll make myself a stringpod when I get home.

(For the photographers in the audience, a stringpod is a do-it-yourself tripod. Find a screw that fits into the tripod screw-hole of your camera, preferably a screw with a loop or D-ring already attached. Tie about six feet of strong cord or string onto the D-ring or loop, and when you get ready to take a picture, drop the other end of the string to the ground and pull it taut with your foot. It really minimizes camera shake, and you can take it places you can't take regular tripods.)

I am almost finished with my undergraduate degree... all that stands in my way is one music paper, which I will finish when the guy I'm interviewing via e-mail gets back to me. I love studying and learning, but I am so ready to be done with school for a while.

I feel like I need to report on something a bit more lighthearted, since I've had a rotten couple of days, so I'm going to tell you all about the Toilet Paper Wars.

As most of you know, I have lived with my boyfriend for the last two years, and before that with two good friends. I lived alone briefly the summer after second year, and as nice as my other housemate situations have been, I adored living alone. I'd heard horror stories from some people about their housemates, but I'd never experienced that myself... I just liked living alone because I like being alone, generally. I've never minded my own company in the least, and I got all the social interaction I needed at work and after with my friends.

So when I moved into the West Hampstead flat in September, I thought to myself, "I like all these people, and I think this is going to work out just fine. If not, it's only three and a half months."

And things did work out just fine, for the majority of the time. Sure, the boys apparently never learned how to wash dishes or change the toilet paper roll, let alone pick up after themselves, but I ain't no Martha Stewart and it's not like my standards are high. This, to me (with the occasional exception of the dishes when they became a health hazard), was just part of normal college-aged boy behaviour.

Now it's the end of the semester, we're all stressed, and minor things we let go before are now causing tensions to reach the boiling point. We've screamed at the boys about leaving their giant shoes on the stairs in the dark, not taking out the stinking garbage, not washing their dishes, you name it, until their ears shut down and they deliberately avoid doing what we asked them nicely to do about a zillion times before the screaming started. Still, things were generally livable in our flat, and we were able to laugh it off.

Until we ran out of toilet paper three days ago.

I was the last one to buy toilet paper, but with ten flatmates all (mostly) using the same bathroom, TP runs out pretty quickly. So we asked one of our housemates, whose name will be omitted to protect his privacy (but it starts with "G" and ends with "eoff") to please go buy some, as it was his turn. This is not difficult. There is a small grocery about two stores down from us that sells TP for 79p a two-pack. Housemate cheerfully agrees.

Day Two. There is no toilet paper. Housemate says, "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to buy it! I'll go today." We wipe our bums with Kleenex and say no more. We could go ourselves, but since we've bought all but one pack of TP since September 6, it is now a matter of principle.

Day Three. There is no toilet paper. We say, "Housemate, we've asked you very nicely several times. There is still no toilet paper. Now get your ass down to the store and buy some goddamn toilet paper!" Housemate does not. At this point, it is apparently a matter of principle on the boys' part as well, because Housemate and the rest of the boys have become openly defiant. They say, "We only use it once every couple of days! Why should we buy something we don't use?" The girls point out that even with this being undisputably the case, sheer mathematics state that since September, the boys have not been buying their proportional share of toilet paper. This argument fails to move them. Everybody gets mad.

Ian knows that our bathroom is decorated with magazine cutouts, one side by the girls with sexy half-naked men, and one side by the boys with sexy half-naked ladies (and, inexplicably, one chimpanzee).

I have had enough. I have had a rotten day and want something to cheer me up. So I go into the bathroom (in which there is still no toilet paper) and carefully take down all the naked ladies. In their place, I put up a sign saying "The naked ladies (and monkey) have been taken hostage until toilet paper is purchased. -The Girls."

Day Four. I wake up to find my sign taped to my bedroom door, smeared with a brown substance that I devoutly hope is peanut butter (after careful inspection, this proves to be the case), and scrawled on it is "Use paper instead!"

There is still no toilet paper. At this point, I think there will be no toilet paper, since the boys are moving out on Friday morning and they are the stubborn sort.

This means war.

"Gentlemen of the jury:

The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most.

A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its clouds upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.

Gentlemen of the jury, a man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side.

He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death."

~By Sen. George Graham Vest of Missouri. - around 1869.

Rest in peace, Shannon. November 11, 1991-December 5, 2004.

I am laughing evilly right now, although not out loud, because my mom has just informed me that our neighbours have not moved, or otherwise failed to erect the giantest, tackiest, brightest Christmas display known to man. It's up, and I have a good digital camera with a fireworks/Christmas setting, so believe me, there will be pictures. Nobody ever believes me when I tell them just how absolutely godawful this house is, and now you can all see it for yourselves!

I'm irrationally excited about this. Maybe this means I don't have enough to do?

Okay, I just googled and Madame Tussaud's costs twenty freaking pounds to go and look at wax celebrities. I think not. For that price I can go and get completely tanked at Vinopolis.

It's really hard to motivate yourself to do your Christmas shopping when it doesn't feel like December. It's 50 degrees here and I haven't seen snow since last April... it's very easy to catch yourself thinking "Oh, it's not even November yet. I have loads of time."

I don't have loads of time. I have 19 days left here in London, and while it'll be really nice to go home and see my family, friends, and pets again, there's still so much here that I haven't done. There's so much that I have done, of course, and I think I've actually managed to squeeze quite a lot of experiences in between the academic necessities (none of which I've neglected, don't worry). Part of the problem is that London feels like home now, and when was the last time you went and did something touristy in your hometown? It's all too easy to neglect what's in front of you for what else is out there.

That being said, I have a list of all the things I want to do in the next 19 days. I have to finish researching and writing my last paper, which is due on Wednesday, and I have to take the easiest exam I've ever done for my humanities class on Thursday. Our class is attending a traditional pantomime on Wednesday evening, and we're having an end-of-semester celebration/karaoke night at our friendly local pub on Thursday. I also have to do my Christmas shopping. But other than that, my time up until I leave for the airport on December 23 is my own.

My list is as follows:

Tate Britain
National Gallery/National Portrait Gallery
Tower of London
Museum of London/St. Paul's/City
Victoria and Albert Museum
Madame Tussaud's (although I hear it's bloody expensive, and so will probably be the first thing struck from the list)
Tate Modern/Vinopolis
Guildford (Laura's hometown)
Day trip to Bath, Stonehenge, and Windsor Castle (this is all in one day... god bless a small island)
Hampton Court (may be combined with Guildford trip)
Greenwich
Kew Gardens
Inns of Court/Sir John Soane's Museum
London Eye (I plan to do this as the last thing I do in London)

Do you think I'll manage it all? Me neither. But it should be fun to try.

I just finished reading this piece by Ian, which dovetails really nicely with something I wanted to write about anyway, so go read it.

One of the things I miss most about being here is not being able to drive my car. Not that I would want to drive my car over here, you understand... it's kind of like teaching someone to drive. I have full confidence in my ability to do it, but I suspect it would reduce me to a gibbering nervous wreck. What I miss is driving like I did in high school.

Going to a private school tends to mean that your friends don't live in the same neighbourhood you do, and I had a few friends who were about a 45-minute drive away. I didn't drive on the highway back then, so I'd take little country-ish back roads where there was nobody else around if you were out there after dark.

I've always thought that part of the reason to drive a soft-top Jeep is so you can impose your musical taste on the rest of the world. So I'd be out there driving after dark, with all the windows out and rolled down and the music loud, as it has to be if you want to hear it over the wind noise.

I remember one time when I was driving back from my friend's house after dark with the music blaring, and I came to a stop at a red light with one other car next to me. There was nobody else on the road for miles, and I was playing my current favourite driving CD (I no longer have it, sadly, thanks to the jackass who broke into my car a couple of years ago), Space Bunnies Must Die. As people often do when they're alone in the car, I was singing along, and the song that happened to be playing was called "Mr. Psycho." I was in a good mood, so when it got to the part that goes "Mr. Psycho, he'll blow you away!", I looked over at the person in the next car and still singing, smiled.

He floored it through the red light so fast that I only had a glimpse of horrified eyes. I'm still not sure whether it was a comment on my taste in music, my singing voice, or just that he was a big giant wussbag.

First of all, good news! The computer is fixed. I took it to the Apple Store this morning, and despite arriving twenty minutes after the store opened, I had to wait about an hour to be seen. Still, not bad for free service! The guy did something arcane and mysterious to it and now it works, so I can finish my semester's assignments with no trouble.

I went to our local chipper the other night for dinner, and as I was waiting for my falafel, I found myself thinking that if kebab and chip shops had been around in the late nineteenth century, a kebab shop owner would undoubtedly have been the first suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. Anyone who has ever been in a kebab shop knows what I mean... there's the gleeful sharpening of the two-foot-long knife, and the swift precise carving of thin strips off a lump of meat that bears resemblance to nothing so much as a human thigh. It's all a little scary.

Since today is December 1, I now have exactly 23 days left in which to hit all the touristy sites I haven't gotten around to visiting yet. My list is about 15-16 places long at this point, so I should be able to do everything with a few days to spare for homework (don't worry, I only have one paper left to do). Hopefully most of them are free, though!