It took about 2 hours for the NTL people to hook me up. Apparently, when the landlady said that there was a cable hookup, she meant that there was a hookup to the outside areal. Hooking up my cable involved drilling a hole through the wall and tacking a coax cable along the baseboards. I hope she doesn't throw a wobbly. The good news is that I am now back online.
Back in a bit
Leaving for my place in Cambridge to set up house for good. Won't have internet until monday. Behave, all of youz.
[Recipe] Pizza dough
Activate yeast with one cup warm water and 1 tsp sugar. Mix and let stand for 15 minutes.
In a big mixing bowl, sift together 2 cups flour and 1 tsp salt. Add yeast mixture. Mix well, adding flower as needed to make a firm dough. Let stand in oiled bowl for 25 minutes in a warm area. Knead dough and stretch to form a pizza crust.
Blind bake crust for 10 minutes at 350F. Top as desired. Cook at 350F for 25-30 minutes.
Well hot damn, I'm going to Italy!
I got email from my supervisor this morning saying that the sequence database group, for which I will be working, has an annual retreat and I will be able to attend. This year, it takes place in Italy between 15th September and 18th September. We will be staying at Il Ciocco/Castelvecchio Pascoli, situated in Garfagnana, the northern part of Tuscany approximately 40 km from Lucca.
From the website: Il Ciocco’s idyllic location remains within easy travelling distance for pursuing the delights of Lucca, Pisa and Florence, all accessible for day trips. The sandy beaches of the Tirrenian Sea can be reached in less than an hours drive and Barga, with its 12th century Duomo and summer music festival, is just 5 km’s away.
Oh, and did I mention that it's FREE?!?
In a word, WOOT!
Has the whole continental US gone that stupid?
Two traveling penguins from Seaworld in San Diego went through regular airport screening at Denver International Airport recently. Here, Pat and Penny are removed from their carry-on case so they can walk through the metal detector.
Somewhere, somebody is cackling in glee at this.
bad night, good day, we'll see about the evening.
I didn't sleep well at all last night, and neither did Katy. And no, not for that reason. In my case, it was because I couldn't get comfortable because I was either bumping into the wall or Katy's elbow; in her case it was because I was fidgeting too much. I couldn't fall asleep last night. I hate that feeling, when you toss and turn and toss and turn and think that hours have past, only to look at the clock and notice that only 4 minutes have gone by. I wasn't sleepy at all when I went to bed – Katy and I are on different schedules right now because of her work – and I think that that was the biggest culprit. Katy, on the other hand, was beat. She fell asleep at 9:30. I also had to break out the earplugs for the first time last night, though that only usually happens when she's really tired or has a cold.
I think I didn't help matters this morning when I didn't give her a kiss when she was about to leave for work. In my defense, my brain wasn't working, but still, that's not an excuse.
Day went better though. Katy's dad and I drove up to cambridge to deliver my groceries, suitcases and the last of the kitchen stuff to the apartment. I also went to the EMBL to fill in paperwork for my bank account, which I should have by the middle of next week or so. While I was there, I took the opportunity to talk to my supervisor and the people I'd be working with. They seem like a good bunch. I'm actually really excited to get working there. I'm anxious to get my hands elbow-deep in code and technologies I don't know much about and get back to using my brain instead of letting it rot, dealing with IBM. The campus looks really nice too – it even has a lake on it – but it's in the middle of friggin nowhere.
I'll be there permanently as of saturday. That's going to be an adventure.
Tesco
I now have a Tesco club card.
I did a big grocery to get all the dry stuff for my apartment, stuff that you only buy once in a while like spices and cleaning products and loo roll. I was expecting the worst, as I had a cart (pardon me, a barrow) full of stuff. It ended up costing £66. I was happily surprised. I was also a bit culture shocked, as none of the brands I'm used to seeing were there. I miss Tide, and Hunts and Downy, and… well, you get the picture. The good news though is that British labelling laws are quite draconian so I now have a ton of new things I can safely eat :D Hmmmm, sausage.
Quote from Katy: See? us brits are useful when we're being neurotic.
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Minor updates
Slow day today. Went into town to get some keys re-cut (they'd been botched the first time) and take pictures of an abandoned church along woodgate road. Got rained on, hailed on, thundered on then sunshined on in the span of about 15 minutes. The weather here is just as unpredictable as I was lead to believe it'd be, but the good thing is that those little showers here and there seem to be keeping the pollen out of the air so my allergies aren't giving me grief.
Bought my TV today, it should be getting delivered on sunday, when I'm in Cambridge. It was a bit tricky to find one that would have NTSC playback for all the region 1 DVDs that I brought over cause the salespeople are fairly useless. I ended up getting it online from Comets.
I'm going to Cambs on thursday to go see the HR people at the EMBL to get some paperwork started and hopefully get a bank account sorted out. It's the last big thing I need to do, really. The rest is on its way to getting done.
Things that I've only seen in the UK
– fast food chains that sell only jacket potatoes (i.e. baked potatoes).
– Crisp (i.e. potato chips) flavours like rosemary chicken, oriental rib, peppered rib eye steak, honey-glazes ham or mango chutney.
– swan roadkill.
– a bicycle crossing across a national 4-lane highway where the speed limit is 70 mph. (Katy quote: it's not recommended, but you'd be surprised by how many people do it).
– Traditional foodstuffs like toad in thw hole (sausages in yorkshire pudding – actually really good), spotted dick (suet pudding with currants), mushy peas (green peas, well, mushed).
– really BIG keys.