Update On My Life...

Other than that, not much to report: Still plugging away at work. Went to volleyball over the weekend, which was a lot of fun. I may end up on a BBC documentary that was filming at an exhibit I went to with some of the guys from the group. Reading Woodward's "State of Denial" and getting more and more depressed. I have some work from my writing group in New York to read and comment on. And this week, I've got a GURPS game coming and and then tickets to go see Equus on Friday.

We Export Boston Drivers?

One of the hardest things about living in another country is the homesickness. It comes at odd moments: a light blue jacket, a glimpse of someone with glasses, or a flash of blonde hair will remind you of someone or a trip to the grocery store will make you miss your favorite junk food. You know it's bad, when you hate cats and you actually look forward to seeing the black outdoor cat on our way home, because it reminds you of someone else's.

Sometimes however, the familiarity makes you feel at home where you are. For me, that happened over the weekend. I was crossing the street and some jackass turned without blinkers (or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, the signal wasn't visible from the front of the car) and almost ran me down. This was followed by the same waving gesture that you see in Boston. It's half-apology, half-shooing you off their road and it's all selfish belief that they own the road, because they're driving on it.

Spam Fritters

Okay, I'll admit that I will try silly food just to see how bad it might be.

At the grocery store this morning, I spotted Spam Fritters in the semi-fresh processed food aisle. They looked awful, but I had to try them. Much in the same way that people try cheese straws and the like, I guess.

I heated up the Spam Fritters (different link) for dinner. I didn't expect much and the pool of grease that had bubbled out of them hadn't helped.

And unfortunately, they tasted pretty much like you expected. The batter was the same sort of fairly tasteless batter used by generic processed fish patties. The spam inside was, well, Spam (tm). I think the only way that Spam has ever tasted good, was when it was fried so that it had the tang of the grill (or the frying pan) on it.

Next, I tried it with a little bit of brown wholegrain mustard. That fritter didn't taste half bad, once it had a tang of mustard to give it a bit of bite and more importantly some sort of flavor.

All in all, I don't think I'll be running out and getting these again, unless I'm having someone over that I don't particularly like.

Hot Fuzz

"Hot Fuzz" is absolutely hilarious. Definitely worth full price in a first-run theater.

Parody films are tough. They're usually done one of two ways: the "Epic Movie" route, where the film is a tenuous connection of gags thrown at the screen in the hope that enough jokes would work; the other route, seen in this film is to understand the genre well enough to keep to the tropes, yet still inventive enough to subvert them. Of the later, I felt that "Scream" did a similar job, though that film for all of it's humor, was primarily a horror film, even as it skewered the genre.

This film was clearly a comedy with just enough of a nod to the action movies to check off the various genres involved: the cop movie, the mismatched buddy film, the fish out of water film, and a bit of a mystery.

A brief plot synopsis for anyone interested: Simon Peeg is Nick Angel, London's Metropolitan Police's top cop. Within the first few minutes, he's reassigned to Sandford, an English country village. Once there, he becomes intrigued by a series of curious events that may prove to be foul play. He's partnered with the Chief's oafish son, Danny Butterworth, played by Nick Frost.

Culinary Chaos

I tried to make something different for dinner tonight. I shredded a potato, an onion, some mushrooms, a big clove of garlic and diced up a handful of plum tomatoes. I sauteed them up, before mixing them all together with a couple of eggs, some shredded cheese, along with salt and pepper. (The plan was to make some of a veggie meat loaf.)

All of this was tossed into a heated oven and baked.

The good news is that it tasted fantastic. (Sort of a potato heavy frittata taste, though that wasn't really a surprise as with all my favorite ingredients mixed together.) The bad news is that it ended up looking like an omelete left on the stove far too long — slightly burnt. The inside of the loaf wasn't the fluffy egg and veg mix I was hoping for; it was more broken down. Savory and tasty, but not quite what I was expecting.

More food experimentation in the future.

What the Hell?!

For the past three days, there have been letter and parcel bombs in an around London. The companies being targeted all seem to be connected to traffic companies: Monday, the office of Capita, the company that managed the congestion charges; Tuesday, the office of the accountants for the Speed Check Services; and now today, Wednesday, the main Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency office in South Wales.

Clearly this is some nut with a grudge, but still...

Here's a link to the BBC's coverage.

Weekends Are Made For Friends

Busy Friday and Saturday. I ran around like a wild man getting ready for having some friends over for an afternoon of boardgames and dinner on Saturday. It was silly stuff mostly, getting a little food processor and a larger mixing bowl for the kitchen, as well as the makings for my friend, Katyia's guacamole. (Who knew that they call cilantro, coriander here.)

Then I had to clean the apartment, run to the library and the post office (not necessarily in that order), before everyone showed up.

We played the Order of the Stick game, showing once again that I tend to try games based on web comics that I like, no matter how they rarely live up to the comic.

(So far, the only successful game based on a web comic is the Girl Genius game, but I keep hoping to add more to that list.)

This is a fun game, the players play characters from the Order of the Stick (OOTS), as they dungeon dive in pursuit of the Big Bad, Xykon. It's fairly standard: find rooms, beat monsters and pick up loot, skills (or schticks) as you go. The players get to play what monsters the other players will have to face, as well as zapping them with 'Screw You' cards that make them less capable.

All in all, it's simple to pick up, playable and fun. The downside is that it is a very long game. We played the short game and that still took almost six hours. Now granted, that was three players playing for the first time. I'm willing to admit that after the first hour or so, game play got much faster. But it did tend to go on a little long.