Sunday, January 20, 2008

How the Swedes Have Laid Claim to My Money

I'll begin this blog, not with anything to do with the title, but with what I did yesterday...and I may even include a picture or two. Wouldn't that be nice?

Yesterday, Liam and I joined Cat and Ashley at the Borough Market. It's a food market. Yes. With many free samples of olives, olive oils, cheese, sausage, cakes, fruit juices, and more. We shared a venison burger on top of that. I wanted an Ostrich burger, but venison won out..this time. To be honest, it tasted like grilled meat. They also sold good American beer. I love getting asked, on top of all the ignorant questions about Americans that I always get asked (why does everyone in America watch Fox News? Why do you all like George Bush? Why do you all hate the earth? Why do you all want to be in Iraq? and so on and so forth), I more often than not get asked why American beer sucks. To this, I often reply, "American beer doesn't suck. You just have to know what KIND of beer to drink." This place sold Flying Dog, Harpoon, and the lesser, but always better than a Bud, Sam Adams. I didn't buy any. I don't really need to, but I pointed it out to Cat and Ashley as actually good American beer, and Liam was there to back me up on this.

We then strolled down to the tower bridge and walked across just as they were raising it for a southern style river boat called the "Dixie Queen" to go under. It was neat to watch it go up.

There was one guy that got so excited about the traffic stopping for the bridge, that he got out of his car and began to take pictures of it...and by it...I mean...his car. His little girl (I'm assuming) was in a child seat in the back, and he was kneeling out in front of the thing, taking pictures...with the raising bridge, not in front of him, but behind him. Granted...the car was very swanky. After the bridge excitement, we got on the Dockland's light rail, which Liam dubbed "the most exciting thing in London." Over-exaggeration is what attracts me to the boy. We went to see No Country For Old Men...a film for which I have been waiting patiently since I left to come here while it was on in the states. It was fantastic. I'll probably need to see it again. If you haven't seen it yet, you ought to.
Today, I decided I needed inspiration. So, I made my way to that store of all stores...created by the Swedish...to take over the world, no doubt...IKEA. It was glorious. After an hour of stumbling through the maze of excellent design ideas, and almost getting run over by moms and their shopping carts, I filled my bright yellow IKEA bag with economic and aesthetically pleasing organization tools...and then I trekked out to the bright Blue and Yellow IKEA shuttle that would take me somewhere where I could get another bus to take me home, with the dulcet tones of a polish girl chattering away in my ear. It sounded a little like this: polish polishpolishpolishpolish Jurassic Park polishpolishpolishpolish Jeff polish Goldblum polishpolishpolishpolishpolish. Wish you were me? Don't deny it. Don't you dare.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are truly one of the funniest people in the world. I know, I'm just your mother. But you're still funny. Mother

diana said...

I have higher hopes for ostrich. they make fabulous handbags. let me know how that turns out.

is the light rail free? I can just see liam's eyes shining like diamonds.

Anonymous said...

ohhh...I had no idea polish sounded like that. It's beautiful.

van

Anonymous said...

Its janna btw.

Anonymous said...

Have you ever sat in a front seat on the DLR? Its little like being at Opryland. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.