What is NOOOOOOOO?

Don't do this to me, Alex.  Get well soon.

Lookin' fly as ever.

A Father's Day lesson.

My dad and I observed Father’s Day today by changing a tire on the Jeep.  This morning while driving, I had heard a clicking sound on the right side of the car, consistent with the speed of the tire revolutions.  After a small amount of detective work back at home, we found the culprit. 

Rogue bolt.

So my dad showed me how to change a tire.  (He has actually shown me this before several years ago, but I didn’t pay very good attention then.  This time, however, I was a good student and even feel as if I can troubleshoot other related problems that may arise with a flat or damaged tire.)

HOW TO CHANGE A TIRE IN NINE EASY STEPS

Step 1.  Find the jack and the spare tire.  (The jack was in some secret compartment in the trunk and the spare tire was under the car.)

Step 2.  Take the rod thing with the square end, stick it in the square hole (located somewhere in the trunk), and loosen the spare tire that is under the car.  The spare tire is attached to this cable that slowly lowers the tire down to the ground as you spin the rod thing.  Magic.

Step 3.  Take the jack and find where it needs to go under the car.  My dad said usually it’s pretty clear where it should go.  On the Jeep, there was a spot for it on the axel.  Then use the rods plus wrench thing to jack up the car so the offending tire is just a bit off the ground.

Expertly positioned.

Step 4.  Use the wrench to loosen the lug nuts.  I’m kind of remember my dad saying to loosen the lug nuts and then do something else, and then completely remove the lug nuts and the tire…But I can’t remember that in between step…hopefully not too important.  Anyways, take off the bad tire.

Jim removes the bad tire.

 JIM’S IMPORTANT TIP #1: DO NOT LOSE THE LUG NUTS.

Lug nuts.

JIM QUIZ #1:  What do you do if you lose the lug nuts (if, for example, a car zooms right by you after you had removed the lug nuts and sent them scattering all over the place)?

CLAIRE ANSWER, attempt 1: Call AAA.

JIM: Pretend there is no AAA.

CLAIRE ANSWER, attempt 2: Take lug nuts from other tires?

JIM THE PROUD FATHER: Take one lug nut from each other tire.

Step 5.  Do not step on spare tire with bare feet because it is dirty.

Gross.

Step 6.  Take spare tire and line up the holes with the screws on the wheel.

Step 7.  Put on the lug nuts.

JIM’S IMPORTANT TIP #2: TIGHTEN EVERY OTHER LUG NUT SO THE TIRE ALIGNS CORRECTLY WITH THE REST OF THE WHEEL.  Do this multiple times (with the wrench) until they are all tight.

Jim tightens the lug nuts.

 *If you lost all the lug nuts and already retrieved a lug nut from each other tire, put those lug nuts in every other hole in order to balance out the stress.

Step 8.  Go back to the jack and lower the car down to the ground again. 

Step 9.  Use the cable/wrench contraption to raise the offending tire up below the car.  Put the jack and all the other stuff back where you found it.

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE REPLACED A TIRE...on Father's Day no less!

If I were alone, I still probably would have called AAA and had them do it.   But I’m sure it’s good to know how to change a tire myself, in case I were ever trapped in that pretend world with no AAA. 

Thank you, Daddy, for imparting your wisdom, today and everyday.  Happy Father’s Day—you are the best.

CLASSIC JIM QUOTE, said again today during tire change: “It understands force!”

(Usually, he precedes that with “Must be German”, but I think because we were working on a Jeep, he omitted that part.  Maybe next time on the Benz.)

Welcome back to New Jersey.

Today, a creeper driver of a Garden State Waste truck slowed down and honked at me while I was cooling down from a run.  I refrained from flipping him the Garden State Bird.   But it reminded me of that (terrible) joke—“Jersey girls aren’t trash…trash gets picked up.”  Rrrrrrrrrr.

Otherwise, it has been really nice to be back home.  The past two weekends have been marathon graduation celebrations, which means I ate a ton of delicious food and desserts.  Which also means I will be running and going to the Y and only eating vegetables everyday this week.  Hopefully no more run-ins with Garden State Waste.  He won’t be so lucky next time.

HOME TOMORROW.

But somehow it doesn't feel like my last day in London.  Maybe because I'm not packed.  At all.  Currently investigating all methods of procrastination (posting pictures on Facebook, writing in this blog, gonna go make some food, then take a bath, etc etc).  I think it's gonna be a late night.

The near future.

This afternoon: Going out to dinner at Daphne’s (apparently it was Princess Diana’s favorite restaurant).  Looking forward to a very nice meal!  I’m going with a family from Villa that also moved here last summer.  I got in touch with them in January and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them.  So we are going to Daphne’s for a goodbye dinner and to celebrate American Mother’s Day.  (They celebrated Mother’s Day in the UK a while ago…) (Happy Mother’s Day, Mommy!!!)

This week: MY LAST WEEK OF WORK.  WHAT.  WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN.  I’ll be sad to say goodbye to several of my coworkers, but otherwise…I’m ready to start something new.

Saturday: Will arrives!

Sunday: We are off to Spain!

June 1: HOME

June 3:  The beautiful and smarty-pants Trish graduates first in her class.  She has done well to emulate her most distinguished older sister.

I can’t believe my time here is almost over.  Mixed feelings, but mostly just ready.  I plan on writing a recap/general-things-I-have-noticed-about-London-and/or-architecture.  Also, I will have to decide on the fate of this blog.  To blab or not to blab…

Best Mom in the world.

The return of British Will.

(Not that he went anywhere.  I just haven't talked about him in a while.)

Today at work, British Will popped over to my desk and we discussed some drawing that I was working on.  On my desk, I had a bag of Nuts Royal (mixed nuts—walnuts, cashews, etc--from a grocery store called Lidl).  He took the liberty of stealing a handful, which he then ate, and quickly made a terrible “these are disgusting, I am going to die” face and sound.

“Ugh, where on earth did you get these?  The dumpster?”

Umm, excuse me, British Will?  I was about to respond when he laughed and said,

“Get it?  ‘Dumpster’?  Very American of me, right?”

He had himself really cracked up over this, but I was just sitting there trying to figure it out.  If my mind hadn’t already been occupied with “What the hell, British Will, the Nuts Royal are completely fine”, I think I still would have missed his comedic use of the word “dumpster.”  I expressed this to him, and he assured me that dumpster is, in fact, a very American word and it was, indeed, very funny that he used it.  Yes, British Will, you are a riot.  (Ha ha, get it?  Riot?  Very London of me, right?)

Fantastic news and an update.

A while back, (September 15, 2011, to be precise), I wrote a blog post called “We like wine.”  In it, I described the wine goblets that Ashley and I purchased at a thrift store.  While we certainly drank lots of wine from these goblets, we were not sure if a goblet could hold an entire bottle of wine.  I said I would report back when we found out.  Well, seven and a half months later, we finally conducted the experiment.  I am pleased to announce the wonderful results—our goblets do indeed hold an entire bottle each and with room to spare.  Cheers to that.

My goblet and empty bottle

Ashley's goblet and empty bottle.

Cheers.

Somehow, the time here is quickly winding down.  I have just eleven days of work left!  I know I have left many fun stories and experiences unrecorded here (like the story about the time I was running along the canal and saw this mom dragging along two small children and a baby in a stroller and one of the kids was screaming and bawling and as I ran by I realized the mom was smoking pot…her way to deal with it I guess.  Or the time at the grocery store with Kelsey, when I must have forgotten where I was and picked up a bag of pre-cooked spaghetti noodles and said/yelled, “BRITISH PEOPLE ARE SO LAZY” and then got a few dirty looks.  Or the time I was taking a surprise trip to Houston, but got bumped off my British Airways flight.  This is actually a good one.  When British Airways is bumping you off a flight, they try reallllllllly hard to keep you very uninformed.  And when you ask nicely for a little bit of information, they give you a voucher for 3 pounds and say, “Why don’t you go get a coffee?”  And then they get all surprised and offended when you say, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here instead?”  And then when you and the “customer service” agent get into a bit of a heated discussion about why no one knows why you don’t have a seat on this plane when you booked your ticket months ago, she hands you off to another “customer service” agent who doesn’t appreciate your angry snark.  When that discussion progresses and you are provoked into saying things you don’t normally say and the “customer service” agent condescendingly tells you to “please calm down, miss”, you get a sudden flashback to a time when your dad was a basketball coach for your sister’s middle school team and he was loudly letting the referee know what’s up and the ref said to him, “you need to calm down, sir” and your dad replied, "I AM CALM!"  Fortunately, you are not escorted out of Heathrow Airport by the bobbies, but British Airways does bump both you and a sobbing 14-year-old girl who is traveling alone.  At least they reimburse you and upgrade you to “World Traveler Plus” on the next flight.  (That was beginning to feel a little bit like a terrible British Airways version of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".  Sorry.)  (In spite of my travel woes and with a little more cash in my pockets than I expected, I had the best Beer Bike trip ever.))

Ashley and I are feeling pressure to do all the London things we haven’t gotten around to yet.  We made a “London Bucket List” google doc that we spend a lot of time updating while we’re at work.  We made some good progress on it this past weekend, going to the British Library and the Brains exhibit at the Wellcome Collection.  (I found out that I really don’t have the stomach for brains.)  On the way back from the Wellcome Collection (which is a neat little museum I had never heard of before), we ducked into a pub to get out of the rain.  There happened to be a very important soccer game on (Sheffield versus some other team also from Sheffield...so we gathered).  We were so glad we stumbled upon this.  The guys watching the game at that pub were like little boys on Christmas morning.  It was a hilarious thing to witness.  I have never seen anything like it.  Watch this video.  Be sure to watch the guy who first appears at :18.  I particularly enjoy when he falls to his knees at :25. 

Then later that night we went to a place called Dalston Superstore (which is a nightclub, not a superstore).  I’m sure this will come as a shock, but clubbing is not exactly my thing.  But somehow, Ashley and I were both in the mood to go out.  So we did.  And it was hilarious.

Claire: (shouting over the music) YOU KNOW HOW YOU SAID THIS USED TO BE A GAY CLUB?

Ashley: (shouting over the music) YEAH.

Claire: (shouting over the music) I THINK IT STILL IS.

It was.

Luckily, we have a three-day weekend this weekend, so we’ll have time to cross more things off our list.  (Thank you, Early May Bank Holiday!)  That’s all for now, I think.  I’ll end with a really good, but pretty inconvenient way to crack yourself up: give British people pumpkin bread.  They just do not know what to do with it.  At all.