Does anyone have any ideas for a new blog-name?? (as my travelling adventures have come to an end for now)

Merry Christmas!

Some tidbits from today:

• I am beyond jet-lagged. I'm completely exhausted which might be compounded by the fact that I've sat on my butt since arriving in London. I was already wiped out this morning when I made it to my dad's house. I was desperate for caffeine and all the Tim Horton's were closed. My dad had herbal tea in the house. I asked my sister to bring some tea from her house and she brought me herbal tea. So Danielle and I found a convenience store that was open and bought some real tea.
  
• I can possibly-probably now afford tuition.
  
• Whenever my mom's family gets together, my Nan complains bitterly about some belonging that my mom and Aunt sold/threw away when they moved her into her retirement home. She is very, very bitter about this move. Today she was upset that my mom and Aunt had no idea where a very expensive bottle of Grand Marnier (I think) was put and that she really wished she had some of her old finger towels.
  
• I bought my brother these really cool lights from the Heinekien brewery in Amsterdam. They're Christmas lights, but with tiny beers (with coasters!) on top. He went to plug them in and realized that it's a European plug. oops.
  

On the way to church last night my mom had me peeing my pants with two stories.

1. My mom has left our church for a new church (part of ruining the few traditions that our family has). She dislikes our pastor. She thinks he's not Normal. An example of this is that he preached a sermon saying that it was sinful to let your children believe in Santa Claus. She thinks that anyone who would think that is not Normal. Didn't my brother and I turn out fine? Wasn't it a Good Thing that in our childhood we believed in Santa?
   
2. My Nan was complaining to my mom about how it was hard for her to write all of the Christmas letters she had to write. My mom suggested that she type up one letter and photocopy it onto Christmas paper that my mom would send her. My Nan did this and got my Aunt to photocopy it for her with the instructions to photocopy it onto the back of the Christmas paper so people could read the letter. My Aunt called my mom to let her know that according to the letter myself and my mom were the only ones to have a good year. My Nan didn't mention my Aunt or her family at all in the letter. She talked about 1) the murder that happened at her retirement home 2) me 3) my mom.
   

From Maeve: Black People Love Us!

Your performance art for the day.

I found leaving Oxford on Sunday much harder than I thought. The last few weeks I had really been looking forward to being at home, going to Tim Horton's, seeing the sun, spending Canadian dollars... but as soon as I got on the bus to the airport I just wanted to be back at 9 Boulter Street making a cup of tea. Now that I am home (after leaving on August 10) the most striking thing is that everything's the same. And that it's very very cold. The last couple of weeks in Oxford I started revelling in the grey and damp. I think the weather became much more bearable because I knew that back home the weather was shitty. Now I know that I could probably happily live in Vancouver or Seattle. Another thing that I can't get over is all the empty space on the street-- Boulter Street had connected houses on both sides with tiny, tiny front "gardens". The street was 3 car lengths thick with cars parked on both sides of the road. This meant that two cars could not pass each other unless one backed up, parked on the side of the street and let the other pass. Here we have massive front yards (which look even more massive because the trees have no leaves), and very wide roads that seem desolate and deserted.

Gareth invited me back to work at Decisionsoft. Noting my reservation that it was hard being away from Matt for such a long time he offered Matt a job ("Your bloke can code can't he?"). I think that I was offered a job once ("Your girlfriend's in computers, right?") in Maine. I told Matt that I would never, ever live in Maine.

Work's done for the term! The Christmas party is tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to recuperate and do some more Christmas shopping. I'll be arriving in Toronto at 11:59pm on Sunday. It seems pretty surreal that I'm going to be in Canada by the end of the weekend. hmmm. I think I'm just as excited to get home as I was to arrive here in Oxford.

John, you should get your plane ticket back NOW (you are so frustrating... ) for New Years!

Conversation of the moment:

Sitting around the kitchen table after a heated discussion about "gay people"

S: So onto another controversial topic... what about the Israel/Palestine conflict?

G (Jamaican accent): I used to be all for Israel.

F: Why's that?

G: Because there was this hot Israeli girl that I was shagging.

F: No man, there are some Palestinian girls that are hot hot hot hot.

...

Mark chastisted me because whenever he views me site "that shitty Van Gogh post is there".

Well, yesterday was one of the worst days of this year.

I woke up and got dressed. As I put on my socks I noticed that my peripheral vision was wonky and that is a clear indication that I was getting a migraine. This was my second migraine in about 6 months (which is good or bad depending on how you look at it). I tried to call work a couple of times to say that I was going to be sick for the day, but finally gave up, went to bed and left the message with Sean and Francis.

At 2 my migraine broke and I was in a state of post-migraine-haziness. I decided to go for a walk to the grocery store to clear my head and get some food because I hadn't eaten anything all day.

A while later I got a phone call from my landlord. She was calling to ask me if I had told my bank to not allow direct debits to come from my account. Of course I hadn't!! Didn't I remember when she told me to do that last week? WHAT!!!??? YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THAT... So after assuring me a week ago that no more money would be debited from my account, a huge sum of money had been debited from my account (going into my interest-charging overdraft) grrrrr.

After an angry angry good-bye, I went to get my phone card and bank card so I could call HSBC. But I couldn't find my wallet.

So now I've lost my wallet with all identification and 50 quid, a quarter of my tuition has been drawn from my account and I'm feeling like absolute shit because of my migraine.

I headed out the door to go back to Tesco's. They did have my wallet with all money intact. I should not really be allowed out of the house while in a migraine-stupor.

This put the rent-debiting in perspective and I watched tv for the rest of the day.

Postscript: The boys decided to spruce up my "migraine" excuse by telling the office that I was taking the day off because I was soooo hungover and that I had been escorted home that morning by a guy they had never met before (none of this is true!). Jenn called me at lunch to ask me who had walked me home that morning, and warned me against sleeping with gay men (she knew that I had had fantastic cocktails with a gay man the night before). Thanks for the advice Jenn! The boys believe that their "British sarcasm" was lost on Jenn.

Van Gogh cat burglers beat hi-tech alarms. We saw those paintings two weeks ago.

Natalie's Christmas WishList

• A set of nice, simple red wine glasses
  
• A professional massage session (somewhere in Waterloo)
  
• A Salon Premium subscription
  
• Ashtanga yoga classes
  
• My Birks resoled (this is more expensive than you think)
  
• I really, really, really want the Schachter-approved Babyliss pro hair straightener (the 2 1/4). According to Jenn this can be bought at the Beauty Supply shop in the Plaza next to school.
  
• Winter '03 tuition ($3,5090.44)
  
• My dream laptop
  
• I seem to get a lot of gift baskets from the Body Shop. I love Body Shop stuff but would especially like:
  
  
  
  • one of those eye masks you put in the fridge
    
  • bubble bath
    
  
  
• And here's my Amazon WishList (especially Buffy Season II and Donna Tartt's 'The Little Friend').
  

Lisa's on her way home to Canada right now, but she spent her last couple of days with Jenn and I in Oxford. On Tuesday night we recreated Italy, only with Indian food. We found a B.Y.O. restaurant (bring your own) and brought two bottles of wine and had a great meal.

Anyway, last night we met Lisa in London to see My Fair Lady. After the show we went to the "Canadian bar" The Maple Leaf. We passed by it our first weekend in town and decided that we didn't "deserve" the taste of home yet.

I buy our one and only round. First, the bar is run by Molson so they don't have Keith's (my personal fave) or Blue etc. but they did have Moosehead (thevonly Canadian beer they had on tap was Molson Canadian). I bought 3 bottles and it cost £10 (= $25). "That makes perfect sense Natalie," you're saying, "After all, it's an import". WRONG. It's brewed in Surrey UK. And it didn't even taste like Moosehead. It tasted like Moosehead if it was actually a cider and not a beer!!

The place was very faux-Canadiana. There was the big stuffed moose head, lacrosse sticks, stubbies, and a lifesize Indian. This wasn't a Native Canadian or a First Nations, this was a caricature -- it was a half-dressed Indian with a tomahawk ready to attack. Someone tell me where it is okay to have such a statue anywhere in Canada??!!

Maeve sent me an email saying that my comments aren't working... They're not. I'll fix them when I have a chance. Probably in 3 weeks (when I'm back in Canada).

Also, CONGRATULATIONS Maeve. She's been cast in The Vagina Monologues at Queens.