There are three women who sit behind me in choir (whom I hope never, ever read this blog.)  They travel in a pack, take offense at every one of the director’s corrections as though he’s personally out to get them and, most annoyingly of all, they never stop talking for the entire rehearsal.  It makes me insane.  It’s the kind of behavior I’d expect from the junior high girls’ choir I used to work with.

Tonight was week two of Carmina Burana rehearsals and people are finally starting to discuss the English translation of the rather bawdy lyrics.  Mostly, it’s about wine, women and song, with a good deal thrown in about virgins.  And would you believe one of those old witches actually said, “Well you know, if you’re an American you can be a virgin again any time!  Just fill out some paper and become one of those born agains!”

I was really tempted to offer to pick them up an application next time I swing past the old stars and bars, but was saved by the nice lady next to me who finds them equally annoying because last week they told her she was in the wrong chair and had better come early next time to get a proper seat.

But really… I know the states has plenty of religious nut jobs, but you guys had Henry VIII!  Pot meet kettle!

Arthur

Martha

This combination of words and their respective American vs. British pronunciations is hilarious to me.

Ahhh - thuhhh

Mahhh - thurrr

Drore-ing.

Why no R where I see one?  Why an R where I don’t?

My third grade nephew is reading Flat Stanley, a story about a little boy who gets squished when the bulletin board falls on him and then discovers he can mail himself places.  He arrived in my mailbox a couple days ago, so today, I scanned him and took him to work with me, haha.  I build virtual worlds for a living, so I got to explain how they work to simulate real life and how you can even build schools there.  Good times.

Tomorrow, Flat Stanley is going to see a real life castle, a market, and perhaps some sausages and beer.

I really love trying new food and will eat almost anything, so for the most part, while I enjoy the novelty of bringing my UK friends a bag of Kool Aid, I don’t really miss many American foods on a regular basis.  (My jar of American Ovaltine is lasting me quite nicely.)

But now that we’ve ticked over into autumn, I’m finding myself really kind of sad at the amount of special foods I associate with this time of year that I can’t get in the UK.  I only just learned that you can’t get candy corn here, for example!  How do children make candy corn fangs for Halloween?  You can’t get Milk Duds, either.  There is no such thing as corn bread and even with many trips to the hippy co-op grocery store with walls of grain bins, I have been unable to even procure some corn meal to make it from scratch.  There’s no such thing as hot apple cider with cinnamon in it.  (Cider here is ALWAYS booze, which is interesting considering that Johnny Appleseed was a booze-slinging American legend.)  And forget about anything with pumpkins in it.   Canned pumpkin just doesn’t exist here at all, and I assume from that that people mostly don’t eat things like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread or maybe even those delicious pumpkin lattes you start finding this time of year.

My birthday is this month so I suppose I have lots of happy memories associated with this time of year of all the pumpkin patches, hay mazes and haunted houses.  I feel like being out on a farm in a thick sweater, trying to decide how you will ever carry home the giant pumpkin you’ve set your heart on having.

So, I was thrilled when a friend (surely sick of hearing me whinge about being homesick today) passed me a link for this site.  They even have bags of Tollhouse Morsels!  Oh my god!  You have no idea how useful that is to me!  Basically anything you see on that site is something I have a hard time finding in the UK and probably used on a semi-regular basis or better when living in the states.

You’re all getting Mountain Dew for Christmas.

It took me three hours today to get myself added to my husband’s account.  I’m amazed how many people (husband included) think it’s weird to do a joint checking account with your husband.  I was similarly amazed by the number of people who were horrified I took his last name when we married.  As it turns out, despite sporting hot pink hair for a while, believing that a degree isn’t as important as practical experience and living in three different countries in the last five years, I’m a lot more traditional than many of my friends.

On the way to the bank, the castle had their front gate open and I could see inside the courtyard for the first time.  It’s a prison at the moment so such glimpses are rare (and not on the tour) so that was fun.  The leaves outside are turning beautifully orange and it appears they’ve trimmed them.  (Probably trying to avoid a repeat of the incident some years back where some prisoners managed to scale the wall and climb down them to escape.  Whoopsie!)

On the way home from the bank, I had dinner in a pub that was built in 1688.  It used to be cellars for a house just up the hill, but got hidden away and everyone forgot about them until there was some demolition work a while back and then it was like, “Oh hey, look at this!  We could build a pub in these!”  And so, they did.  It’s very cute.

I have to tell you, it’s very amusing to watch people sell travel insurance here, particularly to me.  The American health system is their boogie man.  ”You don’t want to get caught in America without travel insurance!  BoogedyBoogedyBoo!  Bad things will happen!”   You think?

And lastly, while I am imparting my wisdom to you, the Tumbling youth:

Excess is the same as deductible when you’re discussing insurance, and a faggot is a kind of meatball.  Really.  Now, time for choir.

—

David Mitchell, on the social awkwardness of tipping (via currantly)

My husband found me this interesting article about tipping and I thought you’d appreciate it.

Choir.  Choir.  The thing with the choir is that I love knowing that no matter what else might be horribly, sickeningly wrong with the world, somewhere, in a small town, and in many small towns actually, there is a group of one hundred people who decided to show up at the same time and same place every week to do something pretty just for the sake of doing something pretty.  I mean, really, that idea alone is pretty uplifting.  That’s a lot of people.  I particularly enjoy the feeling of sisterhood sitting in a section made of women, watching them learn by listening to one another and helping each other out.  When each of us succeeds, all of us succeed.  Really, there is nothing in the world like making music in a big group of people.

The other thing that’s beautiful about all of this is that somehow, singing a really challenging piece seems to be waking up the part of my brain that really GETS music.  I’m making weird musical connections all the time now.  In the middle of some chorus the other night, I suddenly remembered all the words and tune of a song I used to cover a lot that I had completely forgotten about that was COMPLETELY unrelated to what I was doing at the time.  When I listen to songs now, I don’t think, “Hm, I bet I could work that out if I sat at the keyboard for a while.”   Instead, I think, “That’s an e minor seventh.”  I even feel like I hear new little turns of notes in even my favorite songs that I listen to all the time.  It feels something like when you stop smoking and suddenly remember what things smell like again.

So tonight I dug out my minidisc player, of all things.  I have about sixty hours of silly, silly recordings I made in my mom’s back garage about six or seven years ago.  I haven’t listened to any of it in forever and tonight, just on one disc, I found three songs I wrote that I’d totally forgotten about, about people I didn’t remember, along with a bunch of songs I didn’t recall knowing how to play.  I made myself laugh, listening to it.  It’s not especially good, but it’s a gem to me.