thirtysomething...

Well today was a total waste. I thought I was finally adjusting to the time change, but not to be. Heather got up at 6 this morning to head up to London for a meeting. I woke up for a bit, and was planning to wake back up around 8, but again, it was not to be. I didn't wake back up until 1pm, which is 8am EST. So much for that. Got the SKY card for our satellite today. As soon as Heather gets back, with her cell phone, we can activate it and watch more than 3 stations. Yippee! I can only watch so much Snooker or cheesy call-in quiz shows. I can't wait for monday to come around to get the phone problem situated and order broadband. Maybe I can get some work done then. Hopefully Heather got the bank account activated today, so I can go out and get more stuff for the house without getting raped on conversion charges on our US bank account cards. The conversion rates aren't that bad with the cards, but they charge a fee for each one. Greedy bastards.

In addition to the 3 or 4 regular channels we get at the moment, there are TONS of call-in trivia/quiz shows on tv. Find the difference in these pictures, how many triangles are in this shape, what's this picture a drawing of, name 5 specific movies of a certain actor, that kind of thing. They take forever to play and most people who call in are complete morons. It costs £1 per call and you have to wait on hold until a dog barks or some such nonsense tells the host to answer the call. Anyway, the one that is bothering me was listed as this: "166-5+15x4÷2" and they wanted to know what the answer was. I came up with 352, but the answer the show took was 131. Anyone care to explain that? The triangle one was pretty easy. I'll try to photoshop it and let you guys have a go at it.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we head out to Tenterden by bus for a day-trip. It is supposed to be this cool little town. I'm planning on taking the camera, so I should have photos of that.

Oddities of a British home:

• All the power outlets are switched. Meaning they have little on/off switches for each side.
• Multi-plug or surge strips are not switched.
• The telephone outlets on the wall are RJ-45 plugs that reduce down to RJ-11 at the phone.
• My house sounds like a grumbling stomach when the "heat" (read: radiators) come on. It can be quite annoying in the middle of the night. We need some kind of white noise in the bedroom to drown it out.
• The connectors on the back of the TV for the cable or satellite is called a SCART plug (or something close to that.) It's a rectangle about 2 inches by 1/2 inch. Similar to what a DVI computer plug looks like, but not quite.
• Most exterior locking doors have a skeleton key lock at the doorknob and a "Night Latch" for the deadbolt, which is a regular key.
• Most toilets, well all the ones I've seen, have two different flush modes. The first just flushes with just a bit of water. The second is used when you've made a significant deposit and dumps the whole tank of water to flush. I've seen them in the US, but not to the same extent that I've seen here.
• The clothes washer & dryer here at the house is a single unit. It does both. And it takes FOREVER. Which sucks because it's quite small. I'm not sure, but I think it uses hot water to heat the drum to dry the clothes. Throw the clothes in, put the detergent in a separate slide out drawer, turn the machine on, set what kind of material the clothes are, set the water temperature, set the wash cycle's spin dry RPM, set the type of drying (store, mostly, somewhat, warm, etc), then set the drying time. Finally push the Start button and wait for 3 to 4 hours. It's called a Jetdryer or something. Which is misleading. You'd think if a Jet was involved it would be done in 15 minutes. Not so.