A vicar's musings

I've blogged before about the vicar in the village where I used to live and his column in the monthly village mag. It must be so hard to come up with a sermon every week, and an idea for a column. This month the vicar rails against Sunday-morning flea markets (they are called car-boot sales in England) for cutting into his customer base:

"Car boot sales are a way of focusing a large group of people in one place to recycle still useful but unwanted domestic items that previously would have been thrown away. Car boot sales are often held in the grounds of schools and other community buildings, or in grassed fields or car parks. Usually they take place on weekend mornings, usually Sundays.

So “car boots” are most often a Sunday morning gathering. Just like church they have a regular congregation together with some visitors! The parallels are numerous - as we have seen - but then so are the differences. This is not to criticize car boots or those who go to them, but simply to compare these two Sunday morning gatherings. Let me mention 4 points of contrast:

We have discovered real treasure in the Lord Jesus Christ and we want to help one another to know him better. We are not ‘recycling unwanted items’!

We are here to share in the eternal word of God which dwells among us richly. We are not dealing in whatever anyone happens to have to have to hand. We don’t make our own truth like the car boot participant makes their own market.

We are a gathering brought into existence by the Holy Spirit of God. The local church is called God’s Temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. It is not just a human gathering.

We meet to give not to get. We want to tell people the message of the love of God who loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son to rescue us from sin and death.

So there it is - we have a choice. On Sunday mornings we can either ‘recycle unwanted items’ or we can come to know Christ in whom are all the treasures of the knowledge of God. Please note that I am not saying that there is anything
wrong with Car boots - they perform a useful function. Nor am I implying that Christians should not attend them - except when church is on of course! But I am saying that we have something infinitely better on offer. It’s here, every Sunday, at 10.00 am."

Love this cartoon

This is the way I've been feeling during the credit crunch, although I am wa-a-ay too young to have been part of the '60s LSD crowd!

The 16-year-old hamburger

A friend at work told me about a woman who has a 16-year-old hamburger. She bought it and kept it in a plastic box, and it looks the same as the day she bought it. She points out that it's so full of chemicals and additives that the burger will never die.

That's a picture of it above (1996 burger on the left) and a new hamburger. If that doesn't put you off buying McDonald's, I don't know what will. But it's so easy and comforting to eat junk -- I know it's a constant struggle for me to restrain myself.

Here's an excerpt from her post about her hamburger and a link to her site:


This is a hamburger from McDonalds that I purchased in 1996.

That was 12 years ago.

Note that it looks exactly like it did the very day I bought it.

People always ask me - what did you do to preserve it ?

Nothing - it preserved itself.

Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike - this is a chemical food. There is absolutely no nutrition here.

Not one ounce of food value. Or at least value for why we are eating in the first place.

Click here to view her website.

A brush with Jesus

I went to Evensong at the church around the corner from my house to check out the choir. I knew they were good and was thinking about singing with them, even though I'm a total non-believer. I'd had a nice experience at that church after my mother died when my daughter and I went to Evensong and sat in the darkness listening to the singing while I shed a few tears for my mother.

No such luck this visit though. I sat in the darkness and was inmediately invited by the vicar to sit up in the choir. I was nonplussed and meekly followed him. There were only four people attending so they put them up in the choir area. I was internally freaking out though -- I'd wanted a quiet reflective experience but now I was in the brightest part of the church only yards away from the choir itself. They all came in and started singing, and I felt I had to be attentive to them as I was practically in their faces anyway. But I'd wanted anonymity and darkness to let my mind wander.

I was hemmed in by the lay reader who sat next to me so I couldn't escape. The choir was great, the vicar very nice, but then I had to do stuff like turn to face the statue of Jesus at a moment's notice and recite the Apostles' Creed. My childhood kicked in at that moment so I knew every word, but my goodness, what religious pressure.

What amazed me also is that there were 15 people in the choir singing their hearts out, a lay reader, a vicar, an assistant vicar and an organist -- so they outnumbered the actual attendees by 5-to-1.

As the service ended and the choir left, the organist kept playing and the lay reader didn't move so I couldn't even leave. The vicar took off his surplice (Mel tells me this is the right word for his vicar outfit), came into the church to pack up his sermon stuff and his little speaking platform, but still we had to sit there while the organist went on. I couldn't exactly knock an elderly lady down after all those prayers for peace and understanding and end to the world's violence, now could I?

(Oh yeah, the assistant vicar asked that St. Michael and his angels protect us from harm, etc., and there I'd been making fun of angels in my blog earlier in the week.)

Anyway, I finally got the hell out of there but I was waylaid by the very nice vicar who wanted me to come back soon, etc. I had to break it to him that someone had hacked the church's website and there was a picture of a blonde and a beach now where there used to be the church. (I'd been checking it earlier to see what time Evensong was.)

"Oh dear," he said in a vicarly way.

OMG, I'm finally home and enjoying a delicious bowl of my homemade chicken and veg soup. The cat Minnie poo'ed in her litter right in the middle of my soup eating but I got my husband to clean it up.

My chicken soup recipe is:

-real chicken stock that I made myself with a 'fryer' as we call them in the South
-a little can of cream of chicken soup
-vegs that I sweated out with butter earlier
-Lowry's seasoned salt that I brought back from US
-oregano and basil from my garden

My son refuses to eat the stuff I make unless it's something fun like the pan-fried fish and cornbread I made for lunch. Anything healthy he won't touch.

Isn't this the way you feel lately?

I am sorry to hear Paul Newman is dead. Here's the summation scene from the Verdict that is very apt for the times we find ourselves in:


(I stole this idea from another website, just so you know.)

Reading traffic worse than being held hostage

From our local Reading paper:

"Terry Waite spent almost five years of his life as a hostage in Beirut and narrowly escaped death on numerous occasions in Uganda but yesterday he came face to face with his fiercest adversary -- the town's traffic."

Waite, who was an envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury when he was kidnapped, said, "The traffic here is worse than being taken hostage!"

It made me laugh to read this, especially that Waite could have such a sense of humor about something so horrible. But really the traffic in Reading is a total nightmare -- you can't get from A to B without major jams. You can't decide you need to run out for a plant for the garden or bananas without a major time investment and aggravation.

I've had friends just give up on the south of England because of all the traffic and move up North. I want to get out here when the kids are finished with school. I can't stand the gridlock.

Your bedroom gives your political views away

Elizabeth from Detroit sent me this interesting article:

"Your office or bedroom holds telltale signs of whether you are a conservative or a liberal, finds a new study. While political conservatives tend to keep a tidy, organized office, political liberals favor colorful, more stylish but cluttered spaces.

A person may hide their political ideology from others, including from pollsters, but the researchers were delighted to learn that a peek into subjects' living quarters or even workspaces could give that away.

Conservatives and liberals leave behind distinct "behavioral residue" that can be picked up by savvy scientists and possibly other observers, according to the study by New York University psychologist John Jost and his colleagues. The results are set for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Political Psychology."

My cubicle at work is cluttered; so is my side of the bedroom. I like having all my junk around me to admire -- photos, old opera tickets, programs from things I've been to, etc.

Elizabeth's office is full of interesting stuff, yet very organized, bright and clean. So the jury is still out on her!

Loud perfumes are disgusting

I didn't know this (below); did you?

"...loud perfumes are disgusting, yet they are fashionable in America because we like to flaunt the brands we wear. [Perfumer Christopher Brosius] explains that major cosmetic companies are aware of this, and it has long been standard practice to vary a perfume's formula to appeal to taste in the markets it's destined for: the American version will be quite bold, but the Japanese version may be even softer than the French one. "Nobody will confirm that for you," Christopher says, "but it's true"."

Read more here.

One piece of good news this week

Even if our brains are shrinking for various reasons (see previous post), we can still help our bodies in one delicious way:

"A small square of dark chocolate daily protects the heart from inflammation and ubsequent heart disease, a new study of Italians suggests. Milk chocolate might not do the job.

However, this guilty pleasure has a limit.

Specifically, only 6.7 grams of chocolate per day (or 0.23 ounces) represents the ideal amount, according to results from the Moli-sani Project, one of the largest health studies ever conducted in Europe. For comparison, a standard-sized Hershey's kiss is about 4.5 grams (though they are not made of dark chocolate) and one Hershey's dark chocolate bar is about 41 grams (so a recommendation might be one of those weekly)."

When you go to France, you'll notice the French eat a small square of dark chocolate after their meals. So French of them not to cram a full bar of chocolate into their bodies, but just enough to satisfy their choc craving.

As the article above notes, milk chocolate is no good. If you are still eating milk chocolate, switch to dark -- you'll never want the milky stuff again.

Brain shrinkage

We had brain draining last week from sharing a bed with your partner, and now we learn about brain shrinkage from not having enough Vitamin B12 in your diet:

"MELBOURNE: Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.

Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin.

The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87.

When the volunteers were retested five years later the medics found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 were also the most likely to have brain shrinkage. It confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12.

Brain scans of more than 1,800 people found that people who downed 14 drinks or more a week had 1.6% more brain shrinkage than teetotallers. Women in their seventies were the most at risk.

Beer does less damage than wine according to a study in Alcohol and Alcoholism.

Researchers found that the hippocampus-the part of the brain that stores memories - was 10% smaller in beer drinkers than those who stuck to wine.

And being overweight or obese is linked to brain loss, Swedish researchers discovered. Scans of around 300 women found that those with brain shrink had an average body mass index of 27 And for every one point increase in their BMI the loss rose by 13 to 16%."

Biting off more than I can chew

I get so enthusiastic about things in my life, and I volunteer for this and that, join groups and so on. Then when it comes to actually doing it, I find I don't have the time or energy. How come I don't think of this upfront? I have been on this planet for years so why haven't I learned to modify my behavior yet?

I joined Red Cross with my daughter a few years ago because she needed the experience to get into medical school. I took the First Aid course, then was ready to do duties, but then I discovered that duties take about 10 hours -- so you lose a whole day out of the weekend or have to stay up very late when covering a concert or play. But I still have to be at work by 8:00 each morning and my commute is 1.5 hours each day.

I ended up barely doing any duties and feeling guilty.

Then I auditioned for a big chorus in London, and found out that the rehearsals are twice a week in London (I thought they were only once a week because I read it on their website). I just love singing with this group but getting up to London after a full day at the office is killing me. I have to drive home from Farnborough to Reading, leave my car at the house, jump on a bus and then a train and then the underground to get to rehearsals. When rehearsals end, I have to run back to Paddington station so I can get the 9:45 fast train home. Then I have to be out of the house by 7:30 the next morning to get to work.

Last night I tried to get to rehearsal but I just couldn't make it. So now I see that I've over-extended myself yet again and will probably have to drop out. Will I ever learn?

Vladimir and the Young Pioneers

I love little badges from the political movements of the past. I have Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter campaign pins from my youth. Elizabeth from Detroit gave me a real Lenin badge when we were in college, and I used to wear it on the lapel of my coat. When I was at New York University, I found an authentic Chairman Mao pin that the Communist party workers had to wear.

Now I've just ordered a Young Pioneers pin from Ebay that all the young Russians had to wear at school from the 1920s through to 1991. My Russian friend at work, Vladimir, was telling me all about it. Here's a pic and info:

The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, also Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization (Russian: Всесою́зная пионе́рская организа́ция и́мени В. И. Ле́нина), was a mass youth organization of the USSR for children of age 10-15, that existed in the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1991.

Vlad had to sing songs like this one. And check out the uniform that all the school children had to wear. Vlad said that necktie/scarf thing had to be ironed straight everyday!


The lyrics are sweet, but Vlad said he always thought they were too saccharine when he was growing up in St. Petersburg and had to sing this song:

Bright blue the sky.
Sun up on high—
That was the little boy's picture
He drew for you
Wrote for you, too
Just to make clear what he drew.

Chorus:
May there always be sunshine,
May there always be blue skies,
May there always be mummy,
May there always be me!

Happy Birthday Mom

My mother would have been 80 today. I was planning earlier in the year to go to her nursing home in Tennessee for such an important birthday, but she died last spring.

I thought about how long it took me to get over my father's death in 1994, and I didn't even like him so I figured it would take me years to get over my mother leaving me.

But recently I decided that I don't need to get over her. She still seems to be alive in my heart and thoughts so that'll do for me. I talk to her photograph in my bedroom sometimes when I'm getting ready for work -- why do I have to get over that?

This sums up what I'm thinking:

When everything is dark, when we are surrounded by despairing voices, when we do not see any exits, then we can find salvation in a remembered love, a love which is not simply a recollection of a bygone past but of a living force which sustains us in the present. Through memory, love transcends the limits of time and offers hope at any moment of our lives. Henri Nouwen

Ode to Minnie

We started fostering a cat last week, and I'm already in love with her. She (Minnie, pictured above) doesn't give me the time of day, as regular commenters Ellen and Brenda predicted, but I don't mind. Sometimes she lets me scratch her stomach, and that's reward enough. :)

Last night I was telling her that she was so great that I could write a poem about her. So I started composing -- "I love Minnie the cat." Uh, I got stuck after that --I thought about 'she's not fat' or 'she's not phat.' I guess I won't be getting the poet laureate's job anytime soon. My husband Mel came home shortly after, and he thought of a much better ode to Minnie.

Oh Minnie, fluffy and tortoise-shell,
Before you came, our lives were hell
But when I look in those eyes
It comes to me as no surprise
That you have made our lives complete
We love you, Minnie, you're so neat.

Minnie is lucky that we think so much of her that we want to write odes to her because yesterday she got mixed up about where her cat litter was and poo'ed in the sink. I couldn't find the source of the smell anywhere -- after 30 minutes of frantic searching, I gave up and started to cook dinner. That's when I found the gigantic turd.

Famous poet William Carlos Williams wrote the cat poem below in 1934. What do you think?

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot

PS
Brenda just e-mailed this:

I have decided that your Ode to Minnie is a haiku...

I love Minnie Cat
I get no farther than that,
She's sweet and not fat.

Haiku isn't supposed to rhyme but who cares...I think the syllables are right.

Financial Meltdown explained

Here's a good explanation for what has happened in the financial markets recently. These guys are famous British comedians.

I have some bad assets for Paulson to buy too

I can't believe the Treasury secretary in the US wants us taxpayers to hand over a blank check for $700 billion to him to bail out Wall Street's bad assets. Some clever person has come up with the idea for us ordinary folk to sell Henry Paulson our bad assets too. Click on the link below to go to the website to add sell Paulson some of your crap at inflated prices.

I have some costume jewellery that I don't wear anymore. I could tell them that the pieces have real gems in them and probably get a couple of hundred per necklace. My car's all worn out too -- I could unload that for a hefty profit. Hmmm, what else could I add to the pile? Tell us what you want to add, and how much you are charging them.

"With our economy in crisis, the US Government is scrambling to rescue our banks by purchasing their "distressed assets", i.e., assets that no one else wants to buy from them. We figured that instead of protesting this plan, we'd give regular Americans the same opportunity to sell their bad assets to the government. We need your help and you need the Government's help!

Use the website below to submit bad assets you'd like the government to take off your hands. And remember, when estimating the value of your 1997 limited edition Hanson single CD "MMMbop", it's not what you can sell these items for that matters, it's what you think they are worth. The fact that you think they are worth more than anyone will buy them for is what makes them bad assets."

Buy My Shitpile, Henry

I'm voting in the US election today

I will be one of the early voters in the US Presidential election. The state of Florida just e-mailed my ballot to me, I've printed it out, voted and will send it off tomorrow. I am very happy to be able to vote as an expat -- it's become much easier in recent years to register and vote from overseas.

I didn't have a problem deciding who to vote for in the presidential race, but I did become stumped by the time I reached the Soil and Water Conservation District Seat 4 election.

My son Mikey solved it for me. He insisted we vote for Frank 'Peanut' Farquharson because of his silly name. I will be following the results of this race closely....

Good luck Peanut!

PS
If you are an expat and haven't registered to vote yet, read the info below.

Time is running out! For quick and easy ballot applications, go directly to www.VoteFromAbroad.org. Check fast approaching state deadlines now! Many states allow you to verify your application status online. Use this easy link through our Voter Action Center.

Criticizing American bankers' wives

I've noticed a little divide creeping up between American and British/European bankers in newspapers recently. Europeans are starting to mock the Wall Street dilemma in America. The article below from the London paper The Evening Standard compares British and American bankers wives and decides American bankers' wives are much greedier.

I read the bit about the anonymous Goldman Sachs' wife (below) with interest. Lisa, one of our faithful readers is a Goldman's wife. Could this be about her?

"Over the weekend Lehman Brothers was desperately trying to recruit 50 counsellors. On a scale of difficult things to take in, going from being a high-flying banker to a nobody in the space of a day is right up there on top of the stress chart, and it's no easier for their spouses.

One minute, bankers' wives were ordering curtains from Nina Campbell and the next they were wondering whether they could keep their home. Bankers don't tend to get anyone's sympathy but the higher the perch you fall from, the more the landing hurts.

The experience of loss, confusion and panic that bankers and their wives are feeling now will be different depending on whether they are American or British. The latter I think will fare better. The truth is that American banks set the bar but the British and Europeans never really wanted to jump.

It's not because they aren't smart or hard-working enough. It's because they are too well brought up to buy into the brutal Wall Street culture that says manners and morals don't count. Americans think life is work: the rest of the world knows better.
...
Susie Rogers of Beauty Works West told me one client, a Goldman Sachs wife, said this week that she wouldn't buy a new handbag or great new dress this season but she'll be damned if she has to go without her weekly manicure and pedicure.

“British women seem to be able to take it or leave it but it's different for Americans.”

Nannies at £35,000 a year, gardeners at £50 an hour, monthly highlights and haircut at £200 a go and hundreds of pounds spent on eating out were the staple expenses of the banker's household. Along with the mortgage, these usually eat up all the income.

Still, there is consolation in Marcel Proust's words: “We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire but gradually our desires change.”"

Have you had an experience with a guardian angel?

Living in godless Europe like I do, I find the article (below) from Time magazine incredible. I remember when guardian angels were all the rage in America about 10 years ago, and some of my relatives used to read hardback books about angels and their complete history/lineage, but I thought that was just a fad.

"More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion. In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, "I was protected from harm by a guardian angel." The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education — though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year."

"The guardian angel encounter figures were "the big shocker" in the report, says Christopher Bader, director of the Baylor survey that covered a range of religious issues, parts of which are being released Thursday in a book titled What Americans Really Believe. In the case of angels, however, the question is a little stronger than just belief. Says Bader, "If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, 'sure.' But this is different. It's experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences.""

My next concert

My next concert with the Philharmonia Chorus is at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra singing Te Deum by Berlioz on the 24th of October. This weekend I have to get on with learning the music as am so rusty with sight-reading.

I love the flyers they have printed up for the concert with the picture of stained glass above.

Here's the blurb from the publicity:

An evening of two contrasting choral masterpieces. Fauré’s sublime Requiem which includes the beautiful Pie Jesu and Berlioz’s monumental Te Deum featuring mass instrumental and vocal forces.

Here's a sample of the music. It's beautiful:

Parrots

This guy at work, Mike Allum, dresses up like Long John Silver every year and comes to work looking like that to raise money for a Parrot Charity.

Can you imagine how hard it must be for him to look that silly all day?

Or maybe not....

Rod Stewart's marriage philosophy

Click on the pic to see it better:

Sometimes superstition is good

This is interesting about superstition (below). I was telling my friend Melissa about this, and she said that in her jewellery business, she is selling more and more religious icons to put on necklaces. "St. Christopher is selling like hotcakes," she said. "The worse the economy gets, the more people want this religious stuff."

Here's the article:

"The tendency to falsely link cause to effect — a superstition — is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. For example, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but "if a group of lions is coming there's a huge benefit to not being around."

Foster worked with mathematical language and a simple definition for superstition to determine exactly when such potentially false connections pay off and found as long as the cost of believing a superstition is less than the cost of missing a real association, superstitious beliefs will be favored. In modern times, superstitions turn up as a belief in alternative and homeopathic remedies.

"The chances are that most of them don't do anything, but some of them do," Foster says. Wolfgang Forstmeier argues that by linking cause and effect — often falsely — science is simply a dogmatic form of superstition. "You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant," Forstmeier says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, "quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often."

Martini your troubles away

My friend Di and I met for a martini after work last night. I told this to my cyber pal, Brenda in Mississippi, explaining that I wouldn't be able to play the Scrabulous game she just started because I was going out for a "quick martini" after work.

"There is no such thing as a quick martini," she retorted. She's right, too, because when you have one of them, you immediately want another.

The delicious Cosmopolitan martini I was served took my mind off the economy. When I left work, the Dow was down 250 points, and by the time I got home, it was down 450.

Just in case you need a martini later to take your mind off of financial woes, here's the recipe:


Cosmopolitan martini recipe:

1/2 oz Cointreau orange liqueur
1 oz vodka
juice of 1/2 limes
1 splash cranberry juice

Pour all ingredients in mixing glass half filled with ice, shake and strain into chilled martini glass.

Second-rate singer?

I blogged about watching a wonderful production of Eugene Onegin on TV the other week. What I didn't say was that the singer who sang Lensky didn't exactly set the production on fire. I thought maybe it was just the transmission that made me miss the perfection of his singing.

When I was getting a YouTube video of an aria from Eugene Onegin to put up on my blog so you could hear how wonderful it was, I noticed a commenter saying how crap the guy who sang the Lensky role was.

The other night at Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House in London, I kept looking at the singer who the secondary male role -- Don Ottavio. What was it about him that looked familiar?

At the intermission, I told my family what I thought. "I think that's the same guy who sang Lensky," I announced. "The one who some people thought wasn't very good."
My daughter was impressed at my celebrity spotting. (It's one of my big talents -- I can spot well-known actors in their first or last role -- it doesn't matter how age has touched them -- I can spot some quirk or facial feature about them and ID them correctly almost every time. I watch people that way.)

Then I mentioned his name -- Ramon Vargas.

"That's him," my daughter said, amazed. "I saw his name in the programme. It's the same guy."

As we watched Don Giovanni, we noticed that Vargas didn't exactly set this production on fire either (although there were plenty of flames onstage when Don Giovanni was pulled into hell at the end of the opera).

Today I was reading a review of the opera in the Times, and the reviewer had these harsh words:

"As for Vargas, he has no place in a stylish Mozart ensemble. To go all the way to Mexico for such a second-rate artist is inexplicable."

Ouch! I sort of feel sorry for him now. What must it be like to read things like this about yourself?

Snap up these Lehman treasures while you can

A Lehman Brothers operating principles cube:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lehman-Brothers_W0QQitemZ330271839443QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item330! 271839443&_trkparms=72%3A12|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14


Includes such gems as "Demonstrating smart risk management"


Somebody's Id card:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lehman-Brothers-Badge_W0QQitemZ190252740690QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item190252740690&_trkparms=72%3A12|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14


A genuine emergency evacuation kit:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lehman-Brothers-Emergency-Evacuation-Kit-Genuine-BN_W0QQitemZ330271622442QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item330271622442&_trkparms=72%3A12|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

... and for only 1p, Lehman Brothers dining card with three pounds left on it!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lehman-Brothers-Visitors-Dining-Card-Genuine_W0QQitemZ230292044193QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item230292044193&_trkparms=72%3A12|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Let the VP candidate name you

We Americans are in the middle of a thrilling presidential race. The VP candidate for the Republicans has named her kids unusual things. Click on the link below to see what she would have named you if she'd been your mother.

"Sarah Palin has picked out an All-American set of names for her children. There's Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper.

Ever wonder, What would your name would be if Sarah Palin was your mother? Well now you can find out!"


What would Sarah Palin have named you if she'd been your mother? Click here to find out.

Getting the cold shoulder makes you want a hot drink

From the International Herald Tribune:

"For every congenial character who can warm a room, there's another who can bring a draft from the north, a whiff of dead winter. And even if the thermometer doesn't register the difference, people do: social iciness feels so cold to those on the receiving end that they will crave a hot drink, a new study has found.

The paper, appearing in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science, is the latest finding from the field of embodied cognition, in which researchers have shown that the language of metaphor can activate physical sensations, and vice versa.

Just as spreading a bad rumor can make people feel literally dirty, so did research subjects who felt socially excluded perceive a significantly lower room temperature than those who felt included.

"We know that being excluded is psychologically painful," said the lead author, Dr. Chen-Bo Zhong, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, "and here we found that it feels just like it's described in metaphors," like icy stare and frosty reception.

John Bargh, a psychologist at Yale who was not involved in the research, said the finding made "perfect sense." In an e-mail message, he noted that a brain region called the insula tracks both body temperature and general psychological states, and it may be here where social perceptions and sensations of warmth or coldness are fused."

My plan for winter

The American women's expat group that I belong to on the Internet had a question recently about how will we all cope with the British winter to come? You really need a plan or else the dark days can leave you depressed and forlorn.

I immediately answered that I was ordering a SAD light -- one of those powerful lights that mimics the sun's rays and hopefully fools your body into thinking it was been in the sunlight. Apparently the light needs to have a strength of 10,000 lux to work.

They are so expensive though -- hundreds of pounds -- so I never got one. But this year, there is a cheaper model available -- only £59. I just got it, and have it next to my laptop at home. Here's a pic:

No day of rest for bankers

Yesterday was Sunday and supposedly a day of rest, but not for bankers! My husband was on the phone and in conference calls most of the day yesterday. I asked why, and he said there were rumors about Lehman Brothers going bust so banks were deciding what to do about their exposure BEFORE this actually happened.

That was pretty exciting, and I checked the Internet to see what it said there about Lehman but the financial websites I checked said everything was OK.

I thought that was odd, when what was doing on with my husband seemed to point that things were not OK. All day long this went on, my husband in conferences but the news said Lehman was going to make it.

Then in the evening, he came out with the news that Lehman was going to go bust at midnight. I couldn't believe such a thing could happen.

I guess this web page (below) will be taken down from the Internet soon?

Work At Lehman - Careers - Lehman Brothers

Around the world, the Lehman Brothers team is growing. Explore these pages to learn how you can build a career with us, and experience Lehman Brothers for ... www.lehman.com/careers/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages

Moving Katie into her new house

We moved Katie, our 19-year-old daughter, into her new room in London. She starts her second year of medical school this month. Her house is off Old Kent Road, which gives us a whole new area of London to explore. We saw lots of Latin American restaurants and food shops so I'll need to look more closely at those.

Here's Katie in front of her new house:

We drove a couple of miles away to find someplace to eat for dinner and to celebrate Mikey's birthday. We parked near Borough Market, and that place looks cool too. I'm definitely going to have to check that out during a weekday.

While walking around to find a restaurant, we came to Clink Street. I had no idea that's where the word 'clink' came from, meaning prison. Apparently there was a medieval prison there and people would say they were going to Clink Street to prison or to visit someone and it gradually got shortened to 'going to the clink' to mean going to prison.

Here's a pic:


We ate at a fab Greek restaurant on the South Bank called the Real Greek -- it was wonderful to be eating hoummous and pita while looking at the Thames and St. Paul's cathedral across the way.

Here's info for you readers around London. You should try this place:

The Real Greek was founded in 1999 by celebrity chef, Theodore Kyriakou, and his team. They opened Hoxton to critical acclaim winning ‘Best New London Restaurant’. The concept was expanded in 2003 with the opening of Clerkenwell, bringing this new take on delicious Greek ‘street food’ to more Londoners. The openings continued across London with Bankside (2004), Marylebone (2005), Putney (2005) and Covent Garden (2006).

Theodore continues to consult with us and inspires our team of chefs on new dishes and menu evolution. He is also the author of the series of The Real Greek Cookbooks.

Another birthday

My son and my friend Karen Firbank share the same birthday. Karen invited a bunch of her friends out for an Indian meal on Friday night. There she is above, lighting candles for atmosphere, wearing the Birthday Princess crown I bought her. She always brings me wacky things to wear on my birthday so I thought I'd do the same for her.

Did we have fun that night. We started the evening out toasting her birthday with a bottle of Perrier Jouet and made her open her presents first so we could see the look on her face....

Then it was on to the restaurant where bottles of Moet Chandon awaited us.

Here are some of the guests pictured with Karen. Aren't they all cute? :)

Hope you had a good birthday, Karen, and will have a fabulous year!