Zorac's LiveJournal

Examples of recent t00bularity:

1. Remember to check public transport availability before booking flights
   So, I booked my flights to the south of France to spend Christmas with the parentals around a month ago. Last night I got around to checking train times, and discovered that there are no trains from Birmingham to Oxford after my flight gets in. Arg! I am left with two options: train to London, coach to Oxford - this is doable and in fact gets me home at a not too indecent hour (provided everything runs on time) - or a taxi from the airport all the way home (I feel my wallet melting at the prospect of that).

2. The lid stays firmly on the cocktail shaker, but the cap doesn't
   A couple of days ago, I was experimenting with home-grown cocktails again. I know my shaker holds together well (indeed, it's sometimes difficult to get the bottom and top apart afterwards), but one does need to hold the cap that goes over the strainer in place while shaking. Can you guess what happens next, boys and girls?
   Corrollary: Experimenting with making your cocktails pretty colours does not necessarily result in tasty flavours. Curaco + grenadine does make a fine purple colour, but not a flavour I'm in a hurry to repeat.

3. When planning to make chilli, it helps to buy chilli powder
   Er... yes.
   Corrollary: The stuff in that strange bag in the back of the cupboard labelled "Chilli" is probably much hotter than the mild chilli powder you normally get.

It's been so long since I last did a big whopper of an RL update that I've almost forgotten how. Or perhaps not. Here follows a tale of two weekends and many movies.

( Collapse )
( Collapse )
( Collapse )
( Collapse )
( Collapse )
( Collapse )

I spent last weekend in Chicago, my last visit to the old chez hermorrine, hopefully I'll be visiting the new chez hermorrine sometime next month, time off and flights permitting. ( Collapse ) On the way out, I had a nice selection of ground-based delays: the bus into Oxford got stuck in traffic forcing me to catch a later coach to Heathrow which had to skip the M25 and head through London's suburbia. This just left me enough time to check in and take a much delayed (and extended) lunch break before I was due at the gate. We then proceeded to get stuck in traffic on the taxiways for the best part of half an hour before take off. On the plus side, I was through immigration and customs and out front of the airport in less than ten minutes from arriving at the gate at O'Hare.

The weekend itself was mostly full of movies ( Collapse ), strange (but good) American food and generally Quality Time - see hermorrine's entry for more details. We also got to talk some things through on person rather than on the 'phone or via Y!M. The trip back was rather more straightforward, despite being laden down with several tons of Mountain Dew and Reese's. Spent the rest of Monday jet-lagged and resisting temptation to go to bed too early.

Back to work yesterday (albeit from home in the morning as there were builders doing work who needed access to my flat), but clearly the jet lag is still at large - yesterday I went to run my bath to discover I'd forgotten to turn the immersion back on again after being away - and then failed to do so properly. Today I went to cook my dinner only to remember that I hadn't been able to get ingredients at Sainsbury's yesterday (they only had large packs of beef, pork and turkey mince, and using lamb mince in bolognese has unpleasant side effects). Fortunately, I actually had something other than ice-cream in my freezer for once.

So, I find myself back on British soil after a hectic 10 days in the States. I typed up the makings of a bunch of posts on the flight back, so hopefully I can get those polished and online in the next day or two - I'm certainly far too tired/jetlagged/whatever to do anything more today. An early night, methinks...

Today, it was time to head for home. There was time to get an all-American breakfast for lunch before returning to O'Hare to catch my flight, Of course, there was no way that things were going to run to plan - my flight to Pittsburgh was delayed by an hour and some - nicely nixing any chance of catching my connecting flight. Thankfully, alternate routing was available, and I'm typing this on my flight from Charlotte, NC (hey, that makes four states for this trip) to London.

By happenstance, this is a much more impressive aircraft than on the way out - in addition to being better-looking, it has a top class on-demand video system (watch what you want, when you want) even here in cattle class - I am most impressed, in true geek style.

Monday sees us finally checking out of the Swan, hermorrine's friend kindly furnishing with transport to the airport - via a Mexican lunch with her and the girls. The flight was for once smooth and uneventful - except for a malfunctioning Jetway leaving us stuck on the plane for half an hour before we could actually disembark.

In the evening, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie, this time) - which was great fun, but finishing late enough to scupper any chance of a sit-down dinner and reducing us to take-out. This we ate chez hermorrine while watching Better Off Dead - a t00by movie if ever there was one - before heading to bed.