A Lemon Wedge?

Okay, this is the craziest thing I've seen in quite a while, and I thought I'd share.

I was eating lunch yesterday in the cafeteria and a man and woman sat at the table next to me. They were ordinary enough, so I continued to eat my lunch without really noticing them.

Then, I looked over because the woman seemed to be struggling with her meal. She had a fillet of fish (which was apparently grilled salmon). Next to her fish was a more or less ordinary lemon wedge. The problem she was having was that her butter knife wasn't sharp enough to cut off a piece of the lemon wedge.

Let me explain this with a little more detail. She was trying to cut about 1/4 of her lemon wedge off with a knife and fork. Not just the juicy part, but through the peel.

My first thought was that I'd discovered the most proper dinner guest in the world. The I'm-about-to-cut-up-my-Snickers-bar kind of proper that they make fun of in popular TV shows. It seemed like she was actually about to squeeze out a portion of her lemon onto her fish without actually touching it with her hands. Crazy!

But wait, there's more...

She finally gave up with the knife and fork, realizing that the lemon's rind was apparently impenetrable. She then swooped in to pick up the wedge like any normal person. Phew. I was relieved that I was sitting next to an actual human and not some dining robot.

And then... she took a bite.

Now, I realize that some people like sour foods. I'm totally comfortable with that. If you want to eat a lemon as you might an orange, go right ahead. But that's not what she did. She took a bite out of it like it was a hotdog (minus the bun). Obviously her knife had failed to slice through the lemon's pithy peel, but her teeth were doing a fine job.

I have no explanation for why anyone would decide to eat a chunk of a lemon wedge, rind and all, but I realized that I might be staring at some sort of pure evil in human form, so I picked up my tray and ran out of there.

Now, I'm not trying to judge her based completely on a 30 second encounter with a lemon wedge. Maybe she's from a lemon-eating part of the globe, I don't know. Does anybody know where in the world people eat whole lemons?

I'm at a complete loss for what happened, so I just thought I'd share it with you. Also, I'll be in the US in 2 days.

Coming To America

I'm leaving on Saturday (13 Oct) to head back to the US for a week and a half. My reasons for coming back are primarily work related (especially since they're footing the bill for the plane ticket and all), but I might be able to squeeze a few hours for social visits... at the bar... every night...

My plan thus far is to be in DC for about a week, then I'm heading back home for a long weekend, then back up to DC for a day or two and on Wednesday I'll head back to the UK.

Unless I pick up a new sim card this week, I probably won't have a mobile phone that works, so, let's all just plan on meeting at Carpool around 7 pm. And yes, I didn't specify a day for a reason.

More info to follow.

Seriously, People Are Weird

Okay, so I have been quite absent lately. My apologies. I had a great week with Dad visiting the city and was a little preoccupied (with drinking). Oh yeah, and that whole job thing, that also tends to keep me busy.

Anyway, I'd like to use this opportunity to comment on how strange people are through a couple of anecdotes.

I was getting into the elevator at the office a while ago after just purchasing a soda from the downstairs coffee bar. I had opened the can of Diet Coke (gotta watch that waistline) as a lady was getting onto the lift. She opened up conversation with this little gem, "You don't drink soda from the can do you?" I gave her a puzzled look as I brought the can to my lips and took a sip. She continued her enlightening conversation with, "Do you know how much rat poop is on that lid?" I think I tried to comeback with "delicious" or something like that, but she had reached her floor and got off.

Seriously though, is it necessary to strike up a conversation that at any point references "rat poop"? I'm not sure what Dear Abby would say, but I think it's a little ridonkulous. Let me drink my rat poop in peace lady, c'mon.

Another little tidbit of the human species that I really don't understand is the need for men to remove belts, unbutton, or otherwise take off their pants while standing at a urinal. That's why they invented the zipper thousands of years ago, so the cavemen could pee standing up and not moon the saber-tooth tigers, duh. Even with a button-fly it's easy enough not to become undressed while visiting the loo. I really just don't understand what's going on there. And more to the point, I'd rather not understand it, I just wish it would go away.

In light of my vocabulary changing to be more British the longer I'm here (notice 'lift' and 'loo' above), I've decided to add some English-to-English Translations to the blog. You should read up on these so you can fit in more when you come to visit me. Here's your first installment:

Diary = Calendar/Planner
"I'm not sure if I can meet then, I'll have to check my diary"
(and no, people who say this are not also 12 year old girls)

Half seven = 7:30 (or any other o'clock)
"I'll meet you at the pub at half 6"
(and make sure to say 'half' more like 'hof', you'll sound more pretentious that way)

Do = Gathering (or something, I haven't really figured this one out)
"We're having a leaving do for Tom's retirement next week"
"Can you make it for my birthday do this evening?"
(seriously, I don't get this at all)

Could Do = Yes
"Hey Jim, can you finish that report by 5?" "I could do"
(as opposed the the actual meaning of 'i might, let me consider it for a moment', crazy Brits)

Alright, that's enough for now. More to follow soon enough.

I have a visitor!

Hooray! Dad is in London for the week.

We snagged some dinner and a few pints last night with work people.

I expect that there will be many, many more pints in the near future as well.

Seriously, Stop Posting about Biking... Nobody Cares

Yes, I have become a little monotonous in my post topics. So I'll try to cut back on the cycling specific content in the future. But this one couldn't be helped.

The Tour of Britain started today with a short 2.5 km prologue around Crystal Palace Park, just south of London. I hopped on a train and managed to catch some of the amateur racing before the pro teams got on the course.

The amateur race was the London Grand Prix competition to win the Bob Chicken Trophy (I'm seriously not making that up). It was an hour long criterium race for the very fast, but non-pro riders.

The main event started at 3pm and consisted of a single lap of the course for each rider. They were sent off on one minute increments, and all finished somewhere under 3 minutes (aka, really fast). The winner was Mark Cavendish, a British native, and also the first British rider to claim the yellow jersey.

And now... for the pictures.

I took 553 pictures. Yes, that sounds like a whole crap load of pictures, and it is. But when you have a sport mode that can take 3 pictures per second, it's pretty easy to rack up quite a few shots.

Here are (nearly) all of the pictures. FYI, Picasa limits the size of an album to 500, so I had to trim back a few... I'm sure you won't mind.

If you don't feel like wasting lots and lots of time going through those, I've picked out some of my favorites.

I did have a lot of fun playing around with some new picture taking techniques. I tried a few dozen times to get that focused-rider-blurry-background shot, and managed to get a few good ones (one, two, three, four). It's tough to nail that shot though, they're going way too fast.

Also, I think that with 500+ pictures of cyclists, probably the best picture was of a lady bug. Oh well.

Pictures!

After plenty of procrastination, I've put up pictures from Pevensey Castle on Picasa.

http://picasaweb.google.com/harwig/PevenseyCastle

Laura's Coming To London

Hooray! Laura's coming to London (at some point).


There's still a lot of paperwork issues that we need to figure out before she can come out here permanently, not to mention how we are both going to survive in that tiny flat. But still, I'm super excited and you should be too.