Homes, Sweet Homes....

Well, I'm finally back Stateside after 10 days in the UK. Even though the trip back was pretty exhausting (an 18 hour travel day will do that to you), I had a great time.

The trip was essentially two halves for me- the first half was London which was my reward trip from work and the second half was in Essex with my family.

Both halves were fantastic but quite different. London was very lively as cities generally are. Even though the people there are all people who work for our company, they brought their spouses and the whole event did not feel like work at all. It probably helped that the most we had to do for work was one two-hour meeting to discuss ideas for moving the company forward. The rest of the time was spent in more social events as well as free time.

The social events were actually fun. Since we were all essentially there on holiday, it was a very relaxed atmosphere and I had a lot of fun getting to know some of the spouses. I was sort of held up as the resident expert on London and ended up being the translater of all things decidely British (i.e. what's 'rocket'? Answer: Arugula), the converter of currency (i.e. "how much is 52 pounds in American dollars?) and the navigator on the London underground. I didn't mind a bit. I love London and don't mind showing off my knowledge of the city.

The free time we had was fantastic. I got to be a tourist and see things I've never had the time to see such as the Tower of London. I loved it. My rather dark streak gravitates to the more gruesome aspects of British history so seeing the tower where prisoners were kept, the private execution spot, the torture devices and seeing where Henry the Eight's wives were buried was fascinating to me. I also took a trip around the National Gallery, briefly visited Harrods' food Hall and became somewhat of a regular at Fortnum and Mason since it had a fantasic food hall and was only a brief walk from the hotel.

I also got to spend a day with my cousin who I haven't seen in quite a few years. It was lovely to discover that she has also got the same dark streak as me and when she suggested we go to the London Dungeon, I knew that we were definitely related. That place is a lot of fun- it highlights all of the more brutal aspects of British history. I think, by nature, the British do tend to embrace our dark sides a little more and it's not considered quite so twisted to be interested in that stuff when you're there.

Obviously, one of my favourite parts of the whole trip was the food. I abandoned my typical healthy eating/diet and decided to just enjoy myself. Each day, we had access to an amazing breakfast buffet from the hotel which included all the fixings of a traditional full English breakfast as well as kippers, smoked salmon and multiple bread selections. I also got to indulge in lots of my favourite British foods such as sausage rolls, pork pies, fish and chips and, of course, good beer. Fortunately, my terrible eating was counteracted somewhat by the massive amount of walking I did. I seriously think that for the most part, I walked several miles a day which is rather easy to do in London.

All in all, the London part of the trip was wonderful. It was nice being a tourist but not really feeling like one. By the time everyone else left for the airport, I was ready to begin the second half of my trip so after a little drama with Fed Ex- my coworker had left me in charge of a package because she had to catch a plane- I did manage to catch my train two hours late and head to my grandparent's, a mere 35 minutes away.

That part of my trip was far more relaxed. I got to spend the first day and a half with just my granny since my grandad was away in Germany- his native land. It was lovely to just relax in her kitchen- the traditional gathering spot of my grandparents' house since I've been alive. I haven't been back for three years so it was lovely to catch up and feel right at home.

When my grandad came back, he was laden with German goodies such as sausage, bread and chocolate galore. Thus, I got a nice German feast as well as the traditional British food that I normally enjoy.

The only problem with staying with my grandparents is that my granny thinks she needs to feed me. She declared that I was quite thin and could thus stand to eat more. This meant that anytime I sat for more than 10 minutes, I was either offered food or food was placed subtly in front of me. Believe me, I'm not complaining but I do think that now I'm back in the U.S., I'll be calorie counting a lot harder than usual and trying to exercise a little more. I have to make up for all that terrible but wonderful food somehow.

I also got to see more of my cousins as well as my aunts and uncles. I didn't do too much once I hit Essex other than go for walks around the town and once to the neighbourhood where I grew up. It's strange how instantly it seems so familiar and yet seems so distant. Our old house has changed but elements are still the same. I wandered around with that nostalgia that hits when you realize that time moves ever forward. It doesn't seem that long ago when I used to do somersaults on the pole that was a support for the little porch of our house or I used to plant marigolds in a makeshift flowerbed I created in our old front yard. The ghosts of my playmates still hang in the air and walking down the street that was once home made me remember everything so clearly, it actually felt it had all just happened.

It was a good thing to do, that walk. It made me realize that I think no matter how long I stay away, England will always be home. It's in my blood. I wasn't that old when I left but I was old enough to be a person, not just a child and that person was formed by the years spent living in the UK. The U.S. has left it's imprint on me too but at my core, I'm a diehard Brit.

By the time I left on Saturday morning to begin my long journey home, I had managed to do all the things I wanted to do, see all the people I wanted to see and eat all the food I wanted to eat. I left with a sadness that always occurs when you leave a place you love but it was also nice to get home.

It also helps that I had two little furry dachshunds to launch themselves upon me as soon as I walked into my parents house and who've barely left my side since.

In a way, I feel like my trip to the UK took me home. Yet I also came home when I saw my parents at the airport and was assaulted with affection from Sookie and Rory when we were reunited. I think I'll always feel like I have a foot on each continent as long as I'm alive but it's only now when I realize that that's definitely a wonderful thing. I plan on going back a little more often than I have been going.

But...not for a while. I need to do a little dieting first.

Happy Monday and thanks for reading!

Walking and Tripping...

This will probably be my last blog before I leave for London. Even though I don't leave until Wednesday afternoon, I know myself well enough to know that I will be busy with packing and organizing and trying to prepare for missing eight days of work and won't be able to work in a blog.

Even though the focus of my weekend has been to get ready for my trip, I also managed to participate in the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure walk on Saturday. Our company president wanted our office to sign up to participate and so we did. Thanks to my generous friends and family, I managed to raise a nice little sum to contribute.

The walk actually ended up being a lot of fun. Even though I had to get up earlier than I do on a workday and even though we ended up getting quite wet in the rain, I enjoyed both the exercise and walking with my teammates.

It wasn't supposed to rain. In fact one of my coworkers and I were waiting for the rest of our group to arrive and we spotted Mr. Weatherman- Frank Marzullo from Fox 19 news. My coworker called out to him and he said hi and assured us we'd have nice weather for the walk.

Less than ten minutes later, it started raining. I'm not kidding. By this time, Frank Marzullo was up on stage, doing some grandstanding and he didn't say a word about the rain. It didn't help that I had stupidly listened to him the day before when he promised it'd be dry for the walk. Thus, I came wearing a t-shirt with a thin hoodie over it. Had I known it was going to rain, I would have brought the umbrella I keep in my car or I would have brought a windbreaker. Silly Captain Monkeypants!

Still, in spite of the fact that we were dripping by the time the walk started, the rain stopped and we managed to dry out as we progressed. As the walk started, it became pretty clear that there were going to be two paces set by our team- the slow walkers and the fast walkers. I'm a fast walker by nature so I broke ahead with the fast walker pack from our office. We ended up finished about 25-30 minutes before the rest of the team.

It didn't take as long as I thought to finish the 5K walk and afterwards, I simply headed home to figure out what I still needed to shop for to take on my trip.

The rest of the weekend has been spent making a packing list and organizing my clothes. This seemed like an excellent time to switch over to my fall/winter wardrobe and pack the summer stuff away, sad as I was to do it. I also decided to be ruthless and donate a lot of my clothes from all seasons. It's probably the influence of "Hoarders" but I decided that if I had some clothing I hadn't worn over a year or if I hadn't worn it all during the last season, I would donate it. In the end, I had two large IKEA bags full of donations. Most of it is good stuff that either doesn't quite fit me any more or just isn't my style. Having moved from California back to the Midwest, my style has changed a lot since I moved.

It felt good to purge and organize. I now have a well organized closet and lots of leftover hangers. I also have my packing list made for my trip with only a few toiletries left to get.

The hard part is that even though I'm staying in a hotel for the first half of my trip, I'm going to be moving on to my grandparent's for the second half so I have to be prepared for both legs of the trip. Even though I can do some shopping in the UK if I need to, I'd still like to try and minimize it if I can.

Aside from physically packing, I'm pretty much ready to go, I think. I'm not ready to be apart from the pups for 10 days but I'm not thinking about that. I know, logically, they'll be safe with my parents but it still doesn't mean I won't worry about them. I'm an overprotective mother, I know it and knowing is half the battle. I have their bag half-packed- I stocked up on their favourite "chompers" which is our name for the long lasting treats they get whenever I have to leave them for a while. They're partial to Busy Chewnola's which keep them busy. It also stops them from chewing things they're not supposed to chew.

So, in three days, I'll be London-bound and my pups will be spoiled rotten by their grandparents. I won't be blogging while I'm gone because even if I took my laptop, I wouldn't necessarily have an internet connection and, frankly, lumping a computer to the UK is a lot of work. I've done it before and I'd rather not do it again. I'm sure, however, I will have plenty of stories to tell when I return. Thus, for now, I'll bid you all adieu until I return. Or, as the Brits say, "Cheerio!"

Thanks for reading! Happy Monday and on!

Thinking of Seattle...

I won’t whine about the rain anymore. Granted, it’s raining again but I’ve convinced myself that this is what it’s like to live in Seattle and to celebrate, I drank a lot of coffee.

I’ve actually always quite fancied going to Seattle. It just seems like an interesting place. I think it might be because it’s supposed to be a lot like England but, also, it just seems to be pretty nifty. Plus, my good friend Saz was there on a business trip last week and she said they have an awesome market called Pikes’ Place Market where you can pretty much buy every ingredient known to man.

Also, I like coffee. Seattle has coffee. I think that means I should go there someday.

I used to travel a lot more when I was a bit younger. This is partly because I had a job as an International Market Research Analyst so I got to travel. I didn’t do too much international travel there. This was because when we had to do an international market research study, we’d figure out what country we needed to do our study in and then hire another market research company to do all the work. Then we’d slap our logo and label on the report and give it to our client. I did get to go to twice though. Since I was the token British person, my boss would send me. I liked that. I was supposed to go to Paris once because I’d sort of exaggerated the fact that I spoke French when I’d applied for that job. Fortunately, it fell through and I went to London instead. I was relived. I had been studying French by using tapes but I hadn’t progressed much past the “Where are the toilets?” and “Where is the wine?” stage of my education.

I also travelled a bit with my family. When I was in college, my dad went through a road warrior phase and bought an RV. My younger siblings and I would go with him and mum on trips down south. My older brother never went because he didn’t want to and my parents thought he was responsible enough to stay home alone. Since he was over 18 at this point, it made sense.

Still, I got to go. Mostly, it was quite fun at first. There was the time when we got stuck in an RV park in Alabama during a minor hurricane. That was a wee bit alarming because an RV isn’t exactly the most sturdy and weatherproof place to be. However, by the time we got to Alabama, we were told that it was too late to miss the hurricane so the best thing to do would be batten down the hatches and wait it out.

We did. It was very windy and rainy and loud. Fortunately, we didn’t blow away. I’m glad it was just a minor hurricane.

Then there was the time we went to Texas and didn’t get to the RV until after dark. When we woke up the next day and went outside, there were these sand dunes all over the place and lots of scorpions and scary spiders.

Then there was the time when I was interning in Maine during my college years and my family went camping in the RV to Florida without me. They went to Disneyworld. Naturally, I wasn’t there for that trip even though I had been wanting to go there for years. It’s ok mum, I’ve mostly forgiven you all for that. I mean just because when I went in the RV with you and the rest of the family, we went to Florida but didn’t go to Disney World, it’s ok.

Just kidding. I’m over it. Besides, I moved to L.A. and got to go to Disneyland a lot. It wasn’t quite the same but it did make up for it.

Then, of course, there was the time I actually did move to L.A. and my parents and I drove out there and then, when I came home, my friend and I drove back to Indiana. This means I saw a lot of the U.S. I had never seen before. Combined with my internships in Maine, one to which I drove rather than flew, I’ve pretty much seen most of the country.

Except Seattle. Which is the whole point of this blog today. Actually, I’ve never seen the Pacific Northwest at all. When I was actually working for the market research company, my friend Saz had to do a report on the Salmon of the Pacific Northwest for a legislative-y type of job she had and it inspired me to write a story about the Salmon of the Pacific Northwest but, well, that’s pretty much the closest I’ve come.

Although I’ve eaten plenty of salmon since then. I’m a big fan of salmon.

I also watch “Grey’s Anatomy” which is set in Seattle. However, watching “Grey’s” doesn’t exactly inspire you to live there because if you believed that show, it would be the single most important place for rare medical events ever. Just to name a few: trees growing in lungs, babies that grow in intestines without any fluid, men who eat doll heads, people who get little fishes that swim up their penises and live inside the human body, people who literally turn into fossilized trees and people who a) get impaled by a tree, b) fall out of trees or c) get knocked out of trees because they’re staging a protest. In the world of “Grey’s Anatomy,” trees are evil.

So, I’ll ignore the “Grey’s” take on Seattle and just keep it on my list of places to go to someday. After all, I’m experienced with rain and I drink coffee. I drink a lot of coffee.

Which, actually, you can probably tell from reading this blog. Note to Captain Monkeypants: Do not drink so much coffee when blogging, it inspires randomness.

However, at least I’m not complaining about the rain.

Still...maybe I do need more coffee.

Happy Wednesday!

The Nuisance of Airlines

It’s never easy to book a flight. I think airlines do it on purpose. On one hand, it’s nice that these days anyone can book a flight themselves with a credit card and access to the internet. Of course, it’s not good for the travel agents who have gone out of business because of this newfangled technology but for the rest of us, it’s nice.

For me, when I’m planning a trip for pleasure, part of the fun is the research. Once you make up your mind to go somewhere, checking out flights and prices becomes part of your daily routine. When you get the right deal, you book. It’s that easy.

Except…it’s never that easy, is it? In my case, my friend Saz and I have decided to go to New York this year. Before I moved to Los Angeles, Saz and I used to take trips to New York together in the spring and sometimes to L.A. in the Fall. Then I moved and life and finances got in the way. Now, we’ve decided it’s time to go back and celebrate our friendship in style.

So, I’ve been looking for plane tickets. There are some good deals available at the moment. The problem is, they’re not exactly what I’m looking for. Ideally, I’d like to fly from the airport near my parents’ house- Fort Wayne, Indiana. This means I could drop off the pups, stay overnight and then head out in the morning. Then when I fly home, I can pick up the pups and then head home with them. However, because they live near a smaller airport, not a major metropolitan one, this means flights are a lot more expensive.

This is not a surprise. It’s a common fact that major airport hubs have more options and therefore ticket prices to and from them are less expensive.

What is a surprise is that if I do fly Fort Wayne, I connect through Cincinnati.
Not so odd? Well, I live in Cincinnati.

So, naturally, my thinking is, “well, if it’s X dollars to fly from Fort Wayne through Cincy, it will be less to fly direct from Cincy…right? Because, clearly, there is a direct flight from Cincy.”

Silly, silly Captain Monkeypants! What am I thinking. It costs MORE to fly from Cincinnati than if I connect through this airport on my way to New York. Also, I can’t get on this flight because according to Orbitz, Travelocity and Delta’s website, there is NO direct flight at this time.
Hmm….colour me confused. I suppose it’s to do with hubs and traffic and airport taxes and all that. I don’t know. If you ask me, since I’d be using more airline fuel to hop from Fort Wayne to Cincy to New York, I’d assume I should have to pay less than if I just fly from Cincinnati to New York.

Also, I’d be utilizing less manpower if I just took one plane.

Also, it just seems silly to drive to my parents only to fly home and then catch another plane when I could save myself the bother and just drive to the Cincinnati airport.

Still, this doesn’t help with the issue of the puppies. I’m trying to now plan a trip so I can drop the pups off, drive back home the same day, fly out the next morning and fly home with enough time to head up to my parents to pick up my fluffy canine bundles of joy. This is working out a lot less expensive. However, time-wise, airlines aren’t making it easy.

I know that airline ticket prices aren’t arbitrary. There’s a ‘prime time’ to travel and an ‘off-prime time’ to travel. What I don’t understand is that on the ticket prices I’m seeing, I can leave earlier in the day and get home at a reasonable time for a decent price. Or, I can pay a lot more, take the same flight but sit at a connecting airport for a couple of hours and then get home late at night.

It doesn’t make sense. Perhaps if I worked in the travel industry, it would make sense but…I don’t and it doesn’t. Why would I want to pay more to hang out at an airport only to get home later? I’m grateful that the option I’d prefer- nonstop- is cheaper at the moment but I’m still scratching my head as to the logic behind the ticket pricing.

It’s the same thing as baggage. I heard a story on the news that said some airlines would start charging for carry-on bags as well as checked luggage. I don’t understand that. I know airlines need money but, well, we all need money. We also need clothes and underwear when we travel. It’s almost like we’re being blackmailed to be allowed to have the basic necessities on a trip. “Hey, you- give us twenty bucks or you’re going to have to either wear the same underwear for your entire trip. Or you could buy a whole new wardrobe. Except then you’d have to leave it behind because we’re going to charge you to bring that home!” (insert evil villain laugh here).

I know that airlines need every penny that they can get. This is why they now charge for snacks. Also, this is why they squeeze in those extra rows of seats in Coach so that you feel like your elbows and your knees are one, why you feel like you can’t move for fear of accidentally elbowing your seatmate and why when you bring down your tray table, you have a moment where you are greatful that you aren’t any bigger than you are because otherwise, it would be resting on you and that would make your drink a little unstable.

They do have us hostage because there’s really no other convenient way to travel. In some countries, there are trains. In the U.S. there are trains in some places but not everywhere. It’s sporadic. Driving takes a while. Also, you can’t take a train or a car to most of the other continents so, pretty much, flying is our only option.

Still, I always look for the best deals. It’s just a delicate balance of the right deal from the right airport at the right time. It’s like a puzzle where, at any time, the pieces can shift and the prices can change. And they do. Constantly.

Have I mentioned that I think airlines like to make things difficult? Ah well, what fun would there be if everything was easy?

Happy Wednesday!