sundries

[rm]

Patty and I will be in the UK (mostly London, with a day trip to Cardiff one day) April 9 - 18. During the weekdays she'll be at a conference and I'll be working remotely for my job, but I find myself making a list of things I want to do -- not just the obvious tourist things, or the sorts of things I do as a traveler, but things that are sort of my personal melancholy nerd tour of London.

I've never been in the UK before, so it is to me, largely, the scene of far too many books and movies. Also, I get excited by ordinary things -- I LOVE going to supermarkets when I travel, for example, and so am very excited for Tesco (although a lot of that is the reported availability of gluten-free naan). I want to go have lunch hour at Canary Wharf and sit about thinking of Daleks and Cybermen. I'm so geeky, you all.

Patty also heads to Ohio today for spring break, which means we're on Buffy hiatus until she's back on the 20th.

The old Yankee Stadium has been destroyed. You get used to these things in New York, I suppose. We're supposed to anyway. But it's hard for me.

As a toddler, my parents dressed me in a Pete Rose jersey and so everyone thought I was a boy. In my twenties, I went to my first baseball game with Michael and he always said it was just because I liked new-to-me things so much, but there is nothing in the whole world like the first time you wanted through that tunnel into that stadium no matter how bad your seats were. There aren't a lot of things we did together that I can think of as always happy. The few baseball games though always were -- even the time it was lately October and I was shivering cold or the time I got seasick on the ferry up there.

I know most of the rest of the world hates the Yankees and I know sports and I know sports mythology just makes the truth about sports that much uglier and I know Derek Jeter is a homophobic closet case, but Michael used to tell me stories about men and scotch and steaks and baseball and everybody's got to believe in something they know they shouldn't. So I'm a bit sad.

Speaking of things now gone. On our excursion to Tu-Lu's the other day, we walked down 9th Street, which I so love for it's festive lights and feel of some sort of hidden city. And I discovered that Enchantments, witchcraft store of my childhood (okay, teens and twenties and I guess even some of my thirties) is gone (oh, I just googled it, apparently they've only moved, which is still sad but not awful). There's a bar there now. I'm still sort of stricken about it. I suppose part of that nostalgia comes from watching Buffy. Willow is always what we wished it would be like when we were fourteen, you know? Who admits that? Well, I do.

Am deeply annoyed about the coverage of "JihadJane" that seems to think white people can't be Muslims or that Americans can't be extremists.

I know that picking on Syfy is a bit like shooting old-school Daleks stuck at the bottom of a flight of stairs, but... check out the racist, sexist failtasm.

Also, seriously, have they watched Merlin? No one EVER goes on about Gwen being plain or not desirable or a poor match for Arthur for any reason other than her social position. No one thinks she's plain or ugly and no one mentions her teeth, glasses I can't even recall (are they sure about that) or her sinful curly hair. Big screaming What The Fuck here. It has to be pretty faily for me to think to something that's somehow actually more offensive than the show itself. Really, I get why people like it, the chemistry is fantastic and it seems cute and harmless. I may even watch the third season. But it's pretty terrible.

delchi alerted me to prom canceled due to lesbians.

copperbadge tells us of the horror of doing grocery store self-checkout with his best friend, noting that part of the problem is that this guy "wants to cuddle his bonus-value-sale chicken wings for as long as possible."

In case you missed it, GDL reading a short story on BBC4. Both the story and the performance are quite excellent. (Really, one of the saddest non-narrative things about Ianto biting it on CoE is no GDL doing potential future Torchwood audio books/plays. He was absolutely the best of the lot at them).

OMG Claudette/Cricket was just up on a bookcase, having OPENED THE PANEL TO THE FUSE BOX and BEING ABOUT TO CUT OFF OUR ELECTRICITY.

Comments

[austengirl.livejournal.com]

Excited to hear you'll be in London next month. Two places that have always been on my to-visit list, but I haven't done yet are The Wallace Collection and Sir John Soane's Museum. I'm not sure of your personal tastes in art, but I think you might find them intriguing on some levels.

I don't know how widely available GF products are in city centre Tesco Metros (usually they're not very big branches), but I hope London ones have a more diverse product range than what I've seen in other cities. There's a pretty good-sized Waitrose supermarket on Marylebone High Street which may be worth a visit. I like walking around that area, it is a bit on the posh side though. ;)

[m-nivalis.livejournal.com]

Well, window shopping cost nothing, and Rococo (http://rococochocolates.com/stores-and-stockists) has tasty chocolate bars. I find the bookshop on Marylebone High Street quite interesting - not so much the stock (which is a fairly normal selection) but the building itself.

And I second the Wallace collection and John Soane's. Still need to get around to go to the latter.