today

well i slept in probably cuz i didn't really want to get up. i still cough. then i took a bath for a while and then i ate an orange and some toast. toast has become the staple food. no wait...i didn't have toast this morning...just an orange. then i introduced steve to the magic that is a walkman car adaptor thing...so he can listen to cds in his little green "backwards" car, which is he is thrilled about.

dvds are really expensive in england. like...40 bux

but what so we went to town in the car and parked in a lot where we had to give a neon-vested lady a ticket or get one from her or something. i wasn't really paying attn. no we got one from her cuz it was a sticker that we put on the windshield

anyhow...actually there was a cool thing about the adaptor...it's cuz we bought it at this crazy store...it's like this big room and they have thick laminated catelogues on counters in the middle and only like a couple (well it seemed like a couple cuz the room was so big and still airy) things on display so that was step one...you look in the catelogue and then punch your number into a little machine that tells whether the thing is in stock or not (somewhere...i dunno where they kept all of it) then you go order it and pay for it in a line.

one thing i keep noticing consistently is that they have either people or robot voices that direct you to open registers...even at the post office...but at the grocery store there was actually a lady whose job it was to usher us to available check-outs

anyhow so you pay for it in that line...step two...and then you go to this other counter and kinda stand around while they fetch your thing...i dunno where they go...it was weird...i dunno if we have stores like that in the states or not o_O i wonder where they keep all the stuff...they have like everything...one lady walked out with a shelving unit packaged in cardboard and you could get tvs and coolers and all sorts of things...they must have like...16 floors underground or something ?_? i dunno

lunch was hot chocolate and a sausage roll...

sausage here is not like milwaukee sausage

at least not any i've had

and certainly not like a brat lol

i may end up missing brats, even considering how seldom i really ate them

anyhow it was really really good tho

we looked at some stores and stuff and there's this clothing store called Circus that looked pretty hip and some guys were taking down stickers in the window. i don't think i've ever seen anyone doing that...i actually put some up once when i worked at blockbuster but i never took any down...or saw anyone

there was a homeless-looking guy with a dog in a duffle bag...

and apparently homeless people sell magazines? this wasn't really fully explained...

we play LOTS of burnout and i generally win...altho yesterday he beat me quite a bit and today we were pretty even

maybe i'm losing my touch

ohhhh and ok so after we did all that stuff (and probably some other stuff that didn't seem important or i forgot or something...or maybe forgot beCAUSE it wasn't important...) we came back for some cds and then went out again equipped with the adaptor to find steve's knew job in rushden

they have round-abouts in england too

which

for anyone who doesn't know

are big circles that you drive around until you find the road you want to get off on...

the road signs here are interesting

which...i think we started that discussion yesterday

but they are also interesting cuz there are lots of Ms for Motorway likkkkke M1...

AND

so with round-abouts you also get little circle diagrams with little spikes or extroverted spokes or whatever with place names and you're always going around and around

then what...oh tony blair was on today...they were arguing about something or other...on tv

i don't really know much about it >_<

but we sure don't like that poll tax *grumble grumble*

(that was before we left tho i think...)

so part of this burnout game is when you have to crash your car and wreak so many hundreds of thousands of dollars of havoc...

and we also watched donnie darko which was a pretty sweet movie

(i finally saw it :D)

uhm oh but i didn't know drew barrymore was in it o_O

OH I KNOW WHAT ELSE HAPPENED TODAY

we ruled out roller-blading...

and apparently we can't play basketball either ;_;

but i met some of the people steve used to work with before he got his new job which he starts on monday...they seemed nice

i think in some ways paris will be easier tho than england

because here you can't say, "sorry, i speak english" because we ALL speak english...

altho they might try to tell you that we speak some crazy english ne

but so i had a bit of difficulty involving mountains and hats

oh and the guy there made fun of my postvocalic R

steve has initiated a sub-paragraph for "northamptonshire slang"

noggie (altho...no one has ever really spelled it before to the best of our knowledge so this is our guess) - n - the crust on the end of the bread...so like...the piece...that is all crust...

altho it's not going to be a paragraph...i think he's going for a serial column...

o_O

so yeah mountains and hats...

but yeah...it's just hard when you can't understand people speaking english...cuz really english is nothing like your stage british

you know for doing not all that much today i'm writing an awful lot...

dinner was an egg sandwich and for dessert maltesers which are like whoppers only better (and i don't mean the burger king ones...........x_x)

anyhow...did i already say tomorrow is lincoln? i was going to...if i didn't...then tomorrow is lincoln where there is a nice castle...we may go to some other surprise destinations to be revealed dramatically here in the blog upon our return

until then