I am no longer a licensed driver.
My California Driver’s License expired yesterday. I can’t get a UK one with the current state of my diabetes.
In some ways it is oddly freeing.
I am sure it will feel less freeing when I am in California later this year, after the baby is born, and I can’t drive!
We don’t have a car, we have no plans to get a car. So why should I worry about a license? I shouldn’t! 🙂
However, I am not watching it on Sky News. Their commentator needs a valium. A very large one.
So I am watching on CNN.
And let me see if I’ve got this right…Cheney was moving a box and hurt his back? So the day before you are no longer VP of the US you become the moving man? Why do I, and many others, find this story hard to believe?
I do like Obama’s new ride. Very sweet. And safe! And, apparently, the flags are lit up at night! Neato!
I wonder where his girls are today. I didn’t see them get into a limo with Mum or Dad.
Steven Spielberg is at the inagauration? When did movie people become politicians!
I do like Mrs Obama’s dress/suit. Gold suits her. Mrs Bush always looks to me like she’s been hit in the back of the head and she’s shocked about it.
Obama just winked at someone! Cheeky!
Switched to BBC. Just called Bush the most unpopular president in recent history. Heh.
Mr Obama is not wearing an overcoat. He must be freezing!
Here come the former VPs. Man does Gore look horrible.
Heh, CNN is going to get a satellite image of the Mall. That’s kinda cool! So we know how the aliens view it!
Mondale looks good though.
OMG if the CNN woman says one more time ‘there was a time when a Black Man was 3/5th of a white man, per the constitution.’ Yeah we get it. We all know this is major. You don’t have to keep saying so.
Here come the former presidents…
Bush Sr looks a bit fragile. Apparently had dinner with his son last night at the White House. Barbara looks okay, though. How cute, they are wearing matching purple scarfs!
Carter looks pretty darn good! So does his wife.
Clinton looks tired. Hillary looks good.
And now I am going to stop doing this and watch. I’ll finish after its over…
Well, its over. 44th President of the United States has been sworn in. Thank God.
Good speech. I hope he lives up to his potential.
Good luck, Mr President. You’re going to need it.
I was hoping I could go a few more weeks without replacing my underthings, but this week and bras cutting into me have proven me wrong. Simon is grinning at this. 🙂 Boys!
To answer Astá’s question: US requires that my name on the baby’s social security application match with my marriage license/passport. And it doesn’t! So hence, changing my name on my social security number.
I really should have done it ages ago, but it means sending stuff to London and I’m lazy!
Ready for this: –
Then we can apply for a social security number, birth certificate and passport for the US for the baby.
So first step is get my ducks in a row to get my name changed on my Social because I have never actually done that. Oops.
The Joys of Being An Expat. 🙂
who is Irish but lived in San Diego for a long time. He’s just come back last year.
So yesterday he says to me ‘are you doing anything to celebrate on Friday?’
To which I replied ‘What’s so special about Friday?’
Him: ‘Its the 4th of July!’
Me: ‘Oh, I forgot! Nope!’
So we started discussing what things we could do, here in the UK, to celebrate the US throwing off UK rule. I think my best idea was to reenact the dumping of tea in Boston Harbor by ripping open tea bags and throwing the contents into the Thompson Dock.
I crack myself up.
So, my US friends, what are you doing for 4th of July?
With the help of pills, but I feel *great*!! Well, great is an overstatement. I am still nauseaus and have a headache (although that went away yesterday for a bit, the headache at least), but awake wise? I.Feel.Great!!
After what happened at my office a few weeks ago, the thing that made me lose some respect for my SMT, which I have decided to *not* blog about in detail, I have been thinking a lot about living in this country but not growing up here. You see, the thing that happened very much had to do with the religious aspects of this country. And how things can be taken by people with strong religious beliefs.
And I thought that maybe I was overreacting to the thing that happened at work since I didn’t grow up here, but I took a short poll around my office, and no, the SMT *were* being idiots. It had nothing to do with growing up during the troubles.
There are *so* many things about living in Northern Ireland that are different from living in the US (and even the rest of the UK). I have T-shirts from when I lived in the US that I would never wear here. I would also never wear my Star of David. And I would love to own and wear this t-shirt but I never would. Heck, I used to get weird looks when I wore a T-shirt I used to have that had a picture of Margaret from Dennis the Menace on it saying “Someday a woman will be president!”
So, in some ways I feel oppressed here in Northern Ireland. Which is not a good feeling. At all.
a decent nights sleep makes. I slept from about 10 to 6. I still feel headachy and am naseaus, but I still feel about 10000000000x better than I did yesterday. Rest some more today and hopefully be right as rain for work on Monday.
I don’t talk about politics on this blog much, if at all. I am not really all that interested in politics. I vote (well, when I remember to send in my absentee ballots) but that’s about all I do.
However, being an Ex-Pat I have been watching the US presidential election process much more closely than I used to. Part of the reason is people keep asking me about it, like I’m some analyst on CNN or something, or like ‘you’re an American, you *must* know what’s going to happen!’ Yeah, not so much.
But I have been following it. I didn’t vote in the California primaries, because I’m a registered Independent. Even if I wasn’t, I am not sure I would have voted in the Democratic Primary. And it would have been the Democratic one, not the Republican one, as I am more a Dem then a Republican.
Why wouldn’t I have voted? Because I don’t think either Clinton or Obama can win the Presidential Election. I think, as usual, the Politicians have been thinking what looks best as opposed to what is best for the country overall.
I think there are still 100000 of people in parts of the US who are saying “I am not voting for a bitch or a n**ger.” I think the Democratic party shot themselves in the foot with the two options to run against McCain.
I hope Obama can win, I really do. But I honestly don’t think he can. I think the US is going to have another four years of Republican Rule.
And that’s a big reason why I have no plans to move back to the US any time soon. Its much too scary there these days.
Please, America, prove me wrong. I would love it.
It seems odd to me that the British are considered, historically, more formal than the US, but the language isn’t necessarily so. Elevator seems more formal to me than lift. Escalator more so than Moving Staircase.
In the US you would probably not hear someone ask, in a shop or a restaurant, where the toilet is. In the UK its the most common term.
I think UK slang is just more interesting than US. Quid versus Buck. Wanker versus Idiot.
There is slang that still gets me in trouble. Blow someone off has a totally different meaning here. I’ll you figure out what it is.
Fanny is not your bottom in the UK. It is a woman’s front bit. 😉 Want to get a bunch of UK natives chuckling? Tell them you own a fanny pack.
Interestingly, a penny is a penny all over the UK and US. In fact, I found an American penny at work one day and our accounts manager refused to believe it was also called a penny. I had to prove it to her online.
I still call potato chips chips. And I still call french fries french fries. Except when I don’t!!
And in other news, the lift in our block of flats announced the third floor again as we went by. Silly Lift.
So I am currently reading The Boomerang Clue (aka Why Didn’t They Ask Evens?) by Agatha Christie. It was written in 1933.
In the book, the main character gets offered a job in South America. For £1,000 a year. And he is stoked about it.
£1,000 a year was a good salary in 1930s Britain, obviously. So the part I don’t get is how, in 72 years, basically one generation, we can go from £1,000 a year being a good salary to £1,000 a month being not quite enough.
Simon says part of it is decmilization. And, of course, inflation. But I still don’t get it.
Its like I also don’t get exchange rates. Theoretically, if something costs about £20 in Belfast, shouldn’t that same something, based on the approximate current exchange rate, cost $40 in the US? But it doesn’t. For example, a book I just found on both Amzon.com and Amazon.co.uk. .com is $7.99. .co.uk? £6.99.
So maybe I am not as smart as I think I am…cuz I just.don’t.get.it.
So tonight is the first night of Passover. What does that mean to me, a Jew in a Christian country?
Not a hell of a lot, actually. I haven’t been to a Seder in, gosh, about 5 years. The last one I was at was with my mother in Florida at a friend’s house.
I am not an observant Jew. I do not keep kosher. I do not observe the Sabbath. I do not go to Temple.
There is a small Jewish community here in Belfast. I know one other Jew, a woman I used to work with. Other than that? My being Jewish doesn’t affect anything.
Okay, so that’s not entirely true. When I got married, I insisted that my veil cover my hair as completely as possible during the ceremony. That was important to me on that day.
Oh and I skew the stats for our Fair Employment Paperwork, since I am the only one in my office who does not check off either Catholic or Protestant, but Other, on the form. (yes, in NI, those are the 3 choices. They don’t care what colour your skin is, but your religion is paramount).
Most of my memories of events like Seders have nothing to do with the Seder itself. I mostly remember the warmth of my mother’s kitchen the year we had a Seder for about 20 people as the women scurried about getting the meal on the table (and it was the women. Something about it being a Seder makes the traditional roles come through) and then cleaning up afterwards. I remember looking down the long table that year, with basically my entire family there, and feeling a part of something bigger than myself. Knowing that all over the world Jewish families were doing the exact same thing at more or less (with the variances of time zones) the exact same time.
Even my most recent Seder, at my mother’s friends house, I don’t really remember the Seder. I remember after the Seder, helping to clean up in the kitchen. The hosts had hired a caterer and serving staff to help them, as there were about 25 people there, and they wanted to enjoy the Seder and not be stuck in the kitchen. Even so, after dinner, the women were all in the kitchen, helping to put away the food and the dried dishes and such. The men? They were watching a sporting event on TV. 🙂
So being Jewish in a Christian country isn’t really that big of a deal to me. But sometimes I think maybe it should be.