Opening remarks

It's really a miracle that I have started this blog because it required me to make a few decisions right off the bat. Things like a name and a font. To most people I understand this would be a relatively easy task, but not for me. I can stand in the grocery store feeling up the fruit for an hour and have been known to become paralysed over choosing a new shampoo. But as you can see I have managed to make some quick choices (which I will probably change later) and so here I go.

My friend Susan has inspired me to do this. I love reading her blog so much that I thought it would be fun to write one of my own. First, a little about me. I moved to the middle of England about a year ago after living in NYC for almost 20 years. Why would I leave the greatest city in the world to come to the "assasination capital of the UK"? Well, I fell hard and fast in love with a British guy, "G", and married him under the Brooklyn Bridge. Now that I've settled in to a whole new life I have to say that I really like it here. We are moving into a beautiful old house in a few weeks. I've never owned an honest-to-goodness house before (and I'm 43) so this is NOT SMALL. I have a weird but interesting job working for a charity that helps victim of crime. I get to see behind the scenes of the British criminal justice system where men wear wigs and the police don't have guns (mostly). I am meeting lots of new people who find my American accent quite exotic, which gives me a strange kind of verbal power that I have never known before. But I do have my difficulties. For instance, I throw every bartender into a complete panic when I order a martini. I can always spot the trouble coming. First, they fuss about looking at the "drink menu" trying to find the ingredients. Then they go find the manager and call for help. Last night, the guy took about 20 minutes to make my martini with a whole production of stirring and not shaking, but when I asked for olives, he had to search high and low, back of the fridge, only to come up empty-handed. He was ready to just hand me the plain unadorned vodka, but I told him I couldn''t just drink a glass of cold vodka and couldn't he please pretty it up with something. So he managed a lovely lemon twist and all was right with the world.

I am still searching for a good dirty martini. Actually, that's not true, I have given up because I don't believe the olive juice is the same here. it's really oily and not briny enough. Just tastes like vodka sludge. So I carried home a jar of big fat green olives in my suitcase after our last trip to the states, but as of yet have been too timid to "BMOO" up to the bar. One of these days...

Oh dear I can see how you can just ramble on forever here. The sun is coming out, which makes me happy. I am going out to play.