Giving a crap

One of the perks of my new job is that since I am less stressed out I tend to notice more things around me. I also tend to give a crap about more than just my job and getting enough sleep. Last week on one of my lunch time wanders I noticed this sidewalk art. It was nice to see and made me think of childhood and playing with chalk on the sidewalks outside my house. None of my creations were this good but I was also between the ages of five and ten.

How much for your Monarch?

HRH Queen Elizabeth II costs me 66p a year, or so the Yahoo news bulletin says. I don’t know about you but I am happy to pay up my 66p. I can’t even buy a candy bar for that anymore. I would much rather have all the fun that comes with having a queen. My normal grande latte from Starbucks could buy me 2.776 monarchs of similar price. Not sure I would want to pay that much for Prince Charles, he is a little out of touch with reality but I would be more than willing to pay double for Prince William and triple for Prince Harry(what can I say I’m a sucker for carrot tops). All said and done I think the Queen is good value for money. I give the government about £5000 pounds of my money in income taxes a year and I think this is the best 66p of it they spend.

oops

So I made a mistake at work. Not a big one. My manager pointed it out just so it I would know the correct way to handle the situation in the future. Now I am paranoid. I don't think the Big Boss is smiling at me when I walk past(I doubt he even knows I made a mistake since it did not impact him at all). Everyone who was so friendly before is looking at me like that poor idiot girl. I know this is all in my head, I just hate it when I do something wrong.

I am sure the reason the Big Boss is not smiling is that the company just lost 5.2 billion pounds or something of similar ilk. I really should get over myself. Shel Silverstein wrote a poem not sure exactly how it goes but it is something about the niggling little what ifs and questions that run through your head late at night when you can't sleep. This is me today. Okay now I am officially going to stop obsessing over this and get on with my life.

Overheard on the train

On my train home last night there was a young couple with their son who was around four years old I would guess. His mother had handed him a match box size dump truck and he was happily playing with it making the appropriate dump truck sounds. As we pulled into Stratford the sight for the 2012 Olympics and he saw all the construction, trucks, and what not his eyes got really big and he asked if father what it was. “A huge waste of money” came his reply. “Why?” Asked the little boy. “Because we are spending billions of Pounds to build everything needed to host the games and then all of it will sit empty.” “Okay” said the little boy and continued playing with his dump truck. A few stops later a lady in her mid sixties boarded the train and sat down opposite of the young family. “What are you making?” she asked the little boy. “A huge waste of money.”

Classic Emma Moment

I am at a different office than normal and needed to use the toilet so on my way back to the staff kitchen I noticed some. I saw a little man on the first door so I assumed the second door was the ladies and did not look at the plaque. The urinals were the first clue I was in the wrong place. Being in la la land where I spend most of my time I just walked back to the first door and walked through. Now you would think the fact that I had walked into the wrong one the first time around would make me take extra care and maybe look at the plaque, well you would be wrong. The urinals were red flags again and I walked out pretty rosy cheeked from blushing and this time I realized that both doors had little men on the plaques. Turns out the women’s was down the hall.

American vs British English

My husband and I spent about a year deciding how we wanted to redecorate our living room after we moved into our new flat. It took us so long to decide what colour we wanted to use on the walls and what stain of wood flooring that I needed to head back to the US to change my visas. To say that this bothered me in the least would be extremely false. In my eyes I had just won the lottery, not only had my colour been the one we decided to use but I was getting out of all the hard work.

Fast forward six months and I am back from the US and I have a beautiful new living room with freshly painted walls, newly laid hardwood floors, and the original fireplace striped and varnished. I did notice however that my husband had not put up the blinds. When questioned he said that he had thrown the old wooden blinds out because he did not like them and figured we could choose new blinds or drapes now that I was back over in the UK. This like every other joint decision did not run smoothly and it took us about six months to finally decide on what we wanted. This was quite and inconvenience since we live in a first floor flat on a busy street and every one can see into our flat. It had become the running joke in the family about our lack of window treatment. Once we had finally made a descion I called my mother in law with the great news, the conversation went something like this.

ME “Philip and I have finally decided to hang sheers in the living room”

MIL “Why would you hang them there and not in the shed by the drive way”

ME “Well we really need them in the living room and it seems kind of strange to put them in the shed before the living room”

MIL “But why would you need them in the living room?”

ME “So that I can run around naked without the whole street knowing”

At this point there is a silence on the other end of the line and you can hear the light bulb going on.

MIL “Oh you mean you are hanging net curtains”

ME “Is that what you call them over here?”

MIL “I thought you were talking about garden shears and that really made not sense”
It just goes to prove that American is definitely a different dialect.

Marriage Counselling

My husband and I only own a laptop. We have a small flat really not a lot of room to store the whole kit and caboodle, plus we use it for the normal stuff. Internet, word processor, store photos, and as of late music for the I Pod. I did warn my husband not to rip every CD he owned onto the computer when he got the I Pod but excitement over took him and one can hardly blame I know how excited I get when I get a new toy.

It began slowly, just the CDs he wanted on his I Pod at the time, then all of his 200+ collection. Then 50 of his brothers, then 50 of his best friends, and all of a sudden we had absolutely no C: drive space. I tried to overlook it, he loves his music and this gave him easy access to it. How could I be a horrible witch and tell him that now it was all on his I Pod he needed to delete it off of the computer?

Friday night this all came to a head when I tried to download a TV show I had missed and it would not let me because I didn’t have enough disk space. I spent an hour and a half cleaning up as much of the C: drive as I could. Enough to watch my program but I knew we were only a few CDs away from breaking the camel’s back. So off we trotted this morning to Curry’s to take a look at external hard drives. For £49.99 we are now the proud owners of a 160GB external hard drive. For about the same price as an hour and a half of marriage counselling I got therapy from watching all of his music files and an insane number of American car photos being transferred. Then I got even more therapy deleting all of the files. To complete my therapy I emptied the recycle bin. I am sure to get the warm fuzzy feeling I have right now I would have need 4-8 sessions with a therapist, so I am voting this purchase into the money well spent category.

My dirty little secret

I know this will come as a surprise but I love reading gossip magazines. Sometimes I just need to take a break from the newspaper or what ever book I am stuck into. It is kind of like picture books for adults. I read the newspaper almost everyday and we are not talk The Sun, Daily Mail, or Daily Mirror. I just get tired of reading pretty much the same thing.

We are fighting the “bad” guys in Iraq


We are fighting the “bad” guys in Afghanistan


Young men and women are dying in Iraq


Young men and women are dying in Afghanistan


Iran does not have a nuclear bomb but if it did it would drop it on us

It’s a good time to be a saver.


A bad time to be a borrower.


Housing prices are going down


Inflation is going up

Food is really expensive


Petrel is really expensive


Everyone in all of Europe is either on strike or planning a strike this is caused by the fact that petrel is really expensive

Everyone is pissed off at China for their human rights violations


The great majority of Africa is starving

Actually a lot of people in the world are starving and dying of diseases.


Global warming is happening faster than expected and we are all going to die, Die, DIE.(if I had know this I would not have perfect the art of taking a shower in 4min to save water).

So anyways sometimes I just need to read something light hearted and ridiculously stupid. So in my weakly Hello and Okay magazines this week I learned.

Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston have swapped boyfriends.

Angelina Jolie is pregnant with sextuplets


You can spending £100,00 on a wedding dress and still have it be ugly as %&*@

Wayne and Coleen spent £5million on their wedding


Not to worry they signed a £2.5million deal with OK magazine for exclusive rights so they only
had to foot half the bill.


Sienna broke it off with Rhys by phone

What Kate Middleton does with all her free time since she does not have a job


That floral and graphic print are bit this summer. So are play suits but lets be honest unless you have the build of a model you are just going to look stupid.

See that was much more fun than reading the newspaper.

London Wall

On another of my sight seeing lunches I was able to enjoy some lovely weather and parts of the London Wall that are still standing. I have actually viewed this part of the London Wall before when I visited the London Museum but it is so peaceful and since I was right across the road from it I decided to take a closer look.

For more information on the London Wall check out the Wikipedia entry for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Wall

Any one who has not checked out the Museum of London it is good fun.
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sorry for the inconvenience. You’ve stumbled upon a temporary problem we’re having with Yahoo! Mail. Usually this problem gets resolved quickly with out you doing a thing.

This message flashed up on my screen the other day when I was trying to send an e-mail. The wording seemed a little funny.



You’ve stumbled upon a temporary problem-like I was out taking a leisurely stole in the great English country side and stumbled upon a Neolithic pagan burial site.



Usually this problem gets resolved quickly with out you doing a thing. Well that is good because if you were waiting for me to fix your problem then you might be waiting a while. All I know is I click on one icon and I get into my mail then I click compose, write my e-mail, and click send. The rest I just leave up to the magic we call the internet. I know how to do what I want and I leave the technical stuff to the men who must have been on tea break when I stumbled across the temporary problem.

Whats in your diaper bag?

I noticed the other day while I was people watching on the train that our train actually looked more like a Ryan Air short haul than a commuter train for London. When did we start packing weekend bags for our daily commute to and from work? I am no better and share the shame in this new trend. It seems like our mothers are not longer carrying our diaper bags for us, we are carrying them ourselves.

Instead of bottles of milk we now have our water bottles and soda bottles heaven forbid we dehydrate in the one hour commute

Instead of dry cereal to snack on we have any manner of items nuts, seeds, cereal bars and many others.

Instead of a change of clothes should we get dirty we are wearing our comfy clothes and shoes and have out work clothes and shoes packed.

Instead of hard cardboard books we have the paperback kind.

Instead of colouring books we have Suduko, or crossword books.

Instead of jars of baby food we have our packed lunches.

Instead of hard plastic toys we have Mp3 player, or phones, or Nintendo DS, or any other myriad of hand held games.

Basically we never grew up we just got more expensive diaper bags with more expensive contents.

Friday Dribble

Dude where’s my summer!


Yesterday I was going to write a scathing sermon on why it is wrong to wear Ugg boots in June, and then I realized this morning I was still wearing my flannel pyjamas so I really did not have leg Ugg boot clad or otherwise to stand on. There is something so wrong with the fact that you can wear flannel pyjamas in June. I grew up in the Midwest and depending on the kind of year we were having you could not wear your flannels past April. When I moved to Virginia I found that you might be able to wear them into the middle of May but that was usually stretching it. I am not sure that I like this whole English summer. We had two lovely weeks in May when shorts and tank tops were pulled out and it was agreed that summer had finally begun to make its appearance. This was quickly over and the cold wet weather returned. On Monday and Tuesday of this week we had a “heat wave” with temperatures as high as 80F. From Wednesday however the polar winds moved in and yet again we are plunged into cold weather. It looks like there might be hope next weekend of the flannels being put away as they are predicting a whopping 70F. It is actually not that cold it just get quite cool in the evening and after seeing our heating bill for the winter and that fact that I am morally opposed to having my heating on in June if I am living in the Northern Hemisphere I will just continue to wear the flannels.

While walking into work today I stopped outside an estate agent’s to pull out my scarf as I was cold and decided since I had time to take a look in the window at the different flats and how much they were going for. This is one of my favourite pastimes as I did not really have a base for housing prices in the UK when I first moved over here. You will all be glad to know that for a mere £395,000 I can have a two double bedroom (The rooms over hear are measured in the size of bed you can fit in them. This can be deceiving as you can usually shove a double mattress into a very small room and that is all it takes to be classified as a double bedroom. I have had non walk in closets that are larger than some double bedrooms in the UK) ground floor apartment close to Regents park (this is in Zone 1). Now Regents Park is not the best of areas in Zone 1 but certainly not dangerous so that makes it quite a steal. For those of you wondering how much a month the mortgage payments would be I plug it into a mortgage calculator with a 10% deposit and it spit out £2384.01. Yup I will be speaking to a mortgage adviser as soon as I can to snap that one up.


Pros and Cons of working in Corporate

As the third week of my new job draws to a close I must say that I am still very happy that I have moved on from the hotel industry into the corporate. I was however reflecting on the benefits I have given up.

Staff meals. While they were usually crap at least I did not have to think about it. The cost I am now incurring is actually quite small it is just the nuisance of actually having to think about it. I have gotten into a nice routine though and allow myself to eat out on a Friday. Even though it is a hassle I have found that on a whole I am eating much better and find that having a somewhat regular schedule and the time to have a morning snack has meant I am not as ravenous by lunch.
Laundered uniforms. I do have a uniform but the laundering is left to me. I have found that it really does not cause me anymore loads of laundry a week but it does mean that I have to iron my shirts when I am at a site that requires a button down shirt instead of a cotton blouse. I actually love to iron once I get going; it is just the getting going that is hard.
Planning appointments. Since I work M-F either 8-5 or 10-6 or some variation making doctors appointment (see previous post), hair appointments, going to the post office and such has become harder.
Train Journeys. Since I work common hours now I am guaranteed to enjoy jam packed train journeys. This was fun for about a week and a half since I am a people watcher and enjoyed seeing how people interacted on the train. How they chose their seat, gave it up for those who needed it more, how they sat, if they held their bags on their lap or put them in the overhead compartment. I am now just tired of irksome ring tones, the guy who talks too loud on his mobile, and the lady wearing too much perfume. I am however glad I don’t have to take trains in India it make the trains over here look empty.


All in all the pros outweigh any of these cons so I will continue to pack my lunch, not go to the doctor, and give the guy reading his newspaper while doing the chicken dance with his elbows the evil eye.


Friday Funnies


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1oPVbw5g4t4I-hdWlfnsH8D2mVJLS9WnXAVJYWa8NSH-4565loiWmBCTruCE6lYHJ-Kuq4k63OuebH9RHx98FAYZ9QzhUcSEmIe89jO3EcBj4GGz0qx-r4o1dMioFl7AjJmjt77GRVNg/s1600-h/Slide9-794367.jpg


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsQsyjzRrRntAlqIm9fQjIrjdQhT8WPfMzyAXTxvk7WJDwQNH5ncx7N9_m55iLlyNkXvXvWWLMdmc3TgkaBdy01cuMwQv3kYiUwtq-TJ3A_rnvbFeOAnJowUMxfhPmAqZWWTE7MoSFvrc/s1600-h/Slide21-791563.jpg


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn7UIjWxVUqBjEMlxFeC3KQOvMOS3JVEeo3O_KXPbNKCzsHMkATX2QOM00Dr5rmmn8k4l-9MJJJvFHt-NTWAesoieDudRcq17gd0Qi2oSgYVn2LxKzftaAb9CepTao03EHbQg46kVLHrA/s1600-h/Slide26-795137.jpg



https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIsKDXaCHLYB3ZybYEMSKEtFkPozQ9CsP2wUDjVwY-1RE02qaU-jUU7HjrJiIR3etStwG0r096wtm4ej_ZYwOWhxMnYKpHt3rlie3xWT36-oqcaQhhRY_sqDAOYM4RgsqBH1nsFyR0Nj8/s1600-h/Slide17-792387.jpg



I hope you all have a great weekend!

Trying to find a 12 step program

Hi my name is Emma and I’m addicted to Pathword. There that’s the first step isn’t it? I have admitted it.

For those of you who do not know what Pathword is I will explain. It is one of the millions of games on facebook. You try to connect letters in a board to make words and as you do they all shift and new letters appear. You get 10 points for three letter words and then it goes up from there. You have two minutes to find as many words as possible. I have 490 points. I am the highest rated of my friends who play it, but since I only have one other friend who plays it and she is in the middle of planning her wedding which is tomorrow I don’t know that I can really say that I am that good at it.

I have been stuck at 490 points for two days and no matter how hard I try I can’t hit the five hundred mark. This irritates me to no end.

I blame my brother for my addiction. He sent me an invitation to play Mind Jolt. I went to check it out and had no interest to play it but there was an advertisement for Pathword so I checked it out. Now I’m hooked.

I do find it interesting though that the cousin I have not seen for the past five years and I challenge each other to games. We were never that close growing up. She lived more than a days drive from where I lived so we only saw each other every 2-3 years as children and less as we got older and life responsibilities took hold. However now thanks to Pathword we play together and chat online. Who have thought that a stupid word game on facebook would have brought us together after all these years? Well I guess my addiction can’t be that bad if it has brought me closer to my family. 500 points here I come.

Note to Reader: Just after posting this I played a game of Pathword(well I am addicted you know) and scored 670 points. Finally my two day dry spell is over.

Kant on a bus

So for those of you who don’t live or work in London or England for that fact, it might come as a surprise to you that drinking has been banned on all forms of public transport. To include but not limited to, tube, buses, Docklands Light Rail, and trams. I have yet to find a tram in London but it is always listed so I hold out hope that one day I may stumble across one. For me this is no big deal as I can never think of a time that I have carried an alcoholic beverage onto public transport. For some people it was a very big deal and to mark the end of an era they decided to have a great big party on one of the Circle Line trains. While it has always been a dream of mine to get drunk with a bunch of strangers on a train the is going around and around Zone 1 unfortunately I was otherwise engaged that evening with a DVD and a kitty. Needless to say this caused mayhem. For those of you who care to find out about this lovely night of debauchery here is a link.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1317732,00.html

So today over a full week after this ban has taken place I am on the 9:08 #23 bus going towards Covent Garden when at Ludgate Circus one of those lovely characters we all love seeing gets on. Smells of stale booze and body odour, looks like he has not changed his clothes for 6 months, and is carrying a conversation with himself and any other poor sod he can draw into it. Due to lack of seating or my incredible weirdo magnet he chooses to sit right in front of me. I think nothing of it and try to ignore the horrible stench when a few stops later he pulls out a dirty beer glass and begins to clean it with a soiled handkerchief. This does not look good and my suspicions are confirmed when he pulls out a can of Strongbow (hard cider for those who may not know) empties the can into the glass and carelessly throws the can over his shoulder in my direction. Until this moment it really did not bother me one way or the other whether you could drink on public transport as I had the luck of never really to be bothered by it with the exception of the raucous football fans on the way too or home from a match and really they are just loud not particularly dangerous. At 9:23 on the #23 this morning that all changed.

As I sat there fuming about flying cans I realized all the papers and news stories were correct, really how was public transport staff going to impose this ban. The driver did not have clear view of this, and I use the term loosely, gentleman so I just figured it was another useless law. To my surprise however a few stops later a ticket inspector got on the bus and my heart raced with the anticipation of the can throwing drunkard being brought to justice (or at least asked to empty his drink at the next stop). I was surprised as the ticket instructor approached the gentleman in front of me he made no attempt to hide his unlawful activity. When he got up to us and asked for tickets I being completely sober and aware of what was going in on had pulled mine out already but my inebriated companion was not as aware and had to rifle through his pockets to find his ticket. While this was happening, the ticket inspector ask him what he had in his glass. Medicine he replied. Yes! I could feel it now justice would be served. Then in a moment of anticlimax the ticket inspector replied don’t spill it. Don’t spill it! That’s all! That’s it! Don’t spill it!

As I sat in my seat like a sour old lady I realized that I was not really upset that the man had been drinking or that he had haphazardly thrown his can in my direction. I was angry that faced with the situation the ticket inspector did not caution, ask him to pour it out at the next stop, or tell him that in the future he would not be able to consume beverages of an alcoholic nature on any form of public transport. I realized that it was my Kantian views of life kicking in. I try my utmost to follow the law as much as possible and do not knowingly break them even when they seem stupid or irritating and here was someone knowingly breaking them and nothing had happened. I know that drinking alcohol on public transport is nothing compared to murder or child abuse but it is against the law none the less. So if you reading this and you drink on public transport can you please be kind enough to not throw your empty cans over your shoulder in the direction of the young lady sitting behind you.

Its Friday

Well we are twenty minutes from the end of the work week(well if you are GMT) and I thought now might be a good time to reflect on my first two weeks on the job. Here it is in a nutshell.


I LOVE MY JOB

There really are no if and or buts about it. My stress level has gone down 100%. My job now is basically to smile, answer the phone and be polite. All this for £10,000 more a year than when my stress levels where through the roof, I worked shifts to include night shifts, I had to cash out, I had tons of banking to do, and my personal favorite, guest who felt that they not only a right but a personal responsibility to yell at me for multitudes of things that I had no control over. These items would range from the weather, to the fact that we where the only non branded Hilton, to the fact that the show they wanted to see was sold out. Now I deal with people who are coming in to do business with my bosses so they would never dream of yelling at that cute little receptionist.

I am also lucky enough to work with a company that has some of they best benefits for their employees and has won awards for employee benefits.

On other new Hemi spent his first day with full roam of the kitchen and the bathroom and I am glad to report that he destroyed nothing and in fact there was less insanity on a whole so for this small pleasure we are thankful.

I hope you all enjoy the weekend I know I will be.

London Bridge is Falling Down Falling Down

A great view from London bridge at Cannon Street rail station, you can see the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

A view from the south bank looking at London Bridge. The one above it is Tower Bridge. A lot of people get them confused.

Now that I have a real lunch break I have decided to use it see different parts of London and Friday I was in a great location to go to Borough Market which is the oldest fruit and veg market in London. It is on the South side of London bridge and along with fruit and veg it offers amazing pastries, cheese, and meats. In season it is great place to buy wild mushrooms. When I went late in the summer last year I saw some amazing morels, trumpets, and oyster mushrooms. I settles for a lamb kofta and a range of baklava for lunch.

Southwark Cathedral is just in front of the market. I read somewhere it was the oldest cathedral in London.

Useful links for the retarded like me who want as much information as possible

Borough Market

http://boroughmarket.org/

Southwark Cathedral

http://www.southwark.anglican.org/cathedral/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwark_Cathedral

London Bridge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge

London Bridge Nursery Rhyme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_bridge_is_falling_down

Doctors and post offices

To sign on with a GP here in the UK you have to have a physical so a few months after I had moved here I decided to go and get this process over since I did not want to have to go through any procedures should I actually be sick and just want to get better.



It was a straight forward process filled out paperwork met with the nurse practitioner who did the normal things and when she asked if I had any question I mentioned a bump I'd had for years but never remembered to ask about when I was in the doctors. She had look at it and informed me it was a cyst and to keep an eye on it but unless it changed shape it was quite harmless. She said to make an appointment with any of the nurses if I did notice that it had changed shape but not to worry. Off I trotted home happy in the knowledge that I had dealt with one small bit of the bureaucracy that is the NHS.



So our story seemed to come to a happy end until about a week ago in the shower. Whether I was imagining it or not it seemed to me that this cyst had changed shape. As I stood in the shower trying to decide if it had changed shape or it just seemed so because I had not been paying attention I finally decided just to ring the GP surgery and set up an appointment with one of the nurses to put my mind at ease.


A little information for those of you who may no understand how socialized medicine works in the UK. Each person pays a percentage of their wages similar to the percentage for Social Security to National Insurance the majority of this goes to fund the NHS although some of it is used for other programs similar to the welfare programs in the US. This then allows the general public to use the health care system. Are there problems? Yes. More problems or horror stories than anyone who has dealt with HMO or Managed health care? No. On the salary I am on I pay about £100 a month to NI and in return I get completely free health care although I do have to pay a whopping £6 for any prescription I fill. The £6 is waived for those under 16, over 60, or earning less than a certain amount. I happily hand over my £6 with the knowledge that I have never payed so little for a perception in my life.




Back to my nurses appointment. I called the number for my GP which is actually a number that transfers you to a number which makes you listen to 27 different options and choose one, once you have chosen an option it transfers you to a real human being who is actually less helpful than the voice that list all 27 options. So when I finally made it through to my non helpful human I very naively asked if any of the nurses had Saturday hours as I work Mon thru Friday 8:30-5:30. I was informed in a voice that meant to infer I must of slipped and banged my head as to be stupid enough to ask for a Saturday appointment that the GP surgery was closed on Saturdays. Okay no problem I said and asked if any of the nurses or doctors had late hours once a week or something. I was then informed that surgery hours were 9-5:30 Monday through Friday. I was so gob smacked that there was not at least one late night a week that without really thinking I said thank you like a young Dickinsonian child who has been told that since it was Christmas I would only have to work 16 hours today instead of 18 and hung up.




I was a little peeved but decided that my cyst probably was not that important and that I would just some how find time to make it to the doctor or maybe use one of the walk in clinics in London to ease my hypochondria.



As I walked into our flat later that evening I picked up the mail and noticed that there was a card from the postman saying there was a letter that we needed to sign for and that we could collect that letter from the post office over the next two weeks. As I made my way up the stars I thought to myself great now I have to run to the town center on Saturday to pick up this stupid letter because I am sure they keep 9-5 hours M-F. To my great delight when I flip the card over and read the opening times I found out that my local post office where the letter was being held was open from 6:30 am to 6:30pm M-F in addition to 8-4 on Saturday.



This got me thinking. I can pick up letters out of business hours, do banking out of business hours, get my hair cut, a manicure, grocery shop, heck at Liverpool Street Station in London I can get a Big Mac 24/7 but I can not get my cyst checked out unless I can do it M-F 9-5:30. I am not asking that I am able to go to the doctor until till 10pm 7 days a week but I would appreciate one late evening of appointments a week or maybe 2-4 hours on a Saturday morning. I can go to the bank until 3pm on a Saturday is it so much to have appointment from 9-12 at the GP's on a Saturday? Really I think not.

Hemi, Hemi Monster, Swamp Rat, Little @£%!, but never Hemingway

Not sure why we named him Hemingway we never call him that but what the heck.

Dat dat duh

Okay so here it is my first entry. It should be special, it should be momentous, it should change the lives of everyone who reads it.

Heck who am I kidding I will be lucky if my own parents take the time now and again to read it to keep up with what their daughter is up too.

I am not really sure what my goals for this blog are yet. I would say the main one would be to keep my family up to date so that my mother no longer has to field the "Hows Emma doing?" question. I also want to be able to share my photos with everyone easily so I have a feeling that this blog will be photo heavy so sorry if you hate photos this blog is not for you. I think the third thing this blog will allow me to do is recount stories of the common sense challenged and funny stories and incidents that may occur in my life. So if you use the escalators on the underground and stand on the left watch out I will name and shame you.

Well that is three idea on where this blog will go. I will sleep on it and see if any more come into my head. Thanks for reading, watch this space