Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Christmas horrors
That Christmas feeling is still sort of eluding me but there are plenty of things helping to get me there. A can of fake snow appeared in our flat last night and I immediately did this. After that I could almost feel the Christmas spirit standing behind me with a large knife.
So here is the scary thing about the nun-clown on the window. Every time I open my curtains, her massive form is looming over me and it still shocks me every time. But do you know what would be much more shocking? IF SHE WASN'T THERE. And it would be even scarier if we could see her on the window of the flat across the way and everyone who lived there was dead.
Thoughts such as these warm my heart during this festive time of year. We all decorated the sitting room the other day, which really means we threw pieces of tinsel all over EVERYTHING, especially the Mexican hat inexplicably hanging on the wall behind the couch. Why a Mexican hat? Rosie isn't Mexican. None of us are Mexican. Whose Mexican hat is it? Questions such as these warm my heart during this festive time of year.
I wish we had gotten a Christmas tree, but it would have been much more trouble than it's worth since this is a pretty busy time of year for students and I'm leaving town in a few days anyway. This month has been flying by, so much so that it was already 14th when I remembered to pay my rent. It's been flying by even though Luke is coming to visit at the end of the month and I would have expected that to make every minute feel like an hour. As it is, every minute without him still kind of sucks, but I can't believe I'm going to see him again in just 12 days.
By the way, I haaaaate the rail system here, and not just because it won't let me come home on Boxing Day anymore, although that's still so annoying it's not even funny. What about people who don't believe in boxes? Or whatever? What is Boxing Day? Is everyone supposed to fight each other? A quick internet search could probably help me out right now, but instead I'm going to count on Morris to leave a nice comment explaining the meaning of Boxing Day. It will mean more coming from a British person.
Anyway, I hate the rail system. I had bought my train ticket from Nottingham to Aberdeen, which was a good thing even though it involved two transfers (haaaaate), and they were going to mail me my ticket a few days before the 27th. Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to enter my Aberdeen address as the delivery address instead of Laura's house in Wetton. So I called up customer service and asked if I could change the delivery address. I didn't think this was such an unreasonable thing to ask considering the ticket didn't even exist yet and wouldn't be posted for another couple of weeks. However, I was told this was "impossible." To change the delivery address, I had to cancel my current ticket, pay a £10 cancellation fee, and buy a new ticket with the different delivery address.
Have you noticed that since I've been here a lot of things seem to go wrong for really stupid reasons?
The real problem here was that my money for the first ticket (minus £10, haaaaate) won't appear back in my bank account for several weeks. And without that money, I couldn't afford to buy a new ticket. So all of a sudden I had no money, no train ticket, and seats were going fast. THANK YOU BRITISH RAIL. I had to ask Rosie's older brother, who I've only met a few times and just happened to be in the flat to drop something off, to put my ticket on his credit card and promise to pay him back when I got back from England. Talk about your awkwardness. It was not fun. If Rob ever reads this, THANK YOU. (For real, though -- not like when I thanked British rail back there.)
So here is the scary thing about the nun-clown on the window. Every time I open my curtains, her massive form is looming over me and it still shocks me every time. But do you know what would be much more shocking? IF SHE WASN'T THERE. And it would be even scarier if we could see her on the window of the flat across the way and everyone who lived there was dead.
Thoughts such as these warm my heart during this festive time of year. We all decorated the sitting room the other day, which really means we threw pieces of tinsel all over EVERYTHING, especially the Mexican hat inexplicably hanging on the wall behind the couch. Why a Mexican hat? Rosie isn't Mexican. None of us are Mexican. Whose Mexican hat is it? Questions such as these warm my heart during this festive time of year.
I wish we had gotten a Christmas tree, but it would have been much more trouble than it's worth since this is a pretty busy time of year for students and I'm leaving town in a few days anyway. This month has been flying by, so much so that it was already 14th when I remembered to pay my rent. It's been flying by even though Luke is coming to visit at the end of the month and I would have expected that to make every minute feel like an hour. As it is, every minute without him still kind of sucks, but I can't believe I'm going to see him again in just 12 days.
By the way, I haaaaate the rail system here, and not just because it won't let me come home on Boxing Day anymore, although that's still so annoying it's not even funny. What about people who don't believe in boxes? Or whatever? What is Boxing Day? Is everyone supposed to fight each other? A quick internet search could probably help me out right now, but instead I'm going to count on Morris to leave a nice comment explaining the meaning of Boxing Day. It will mean more coming from a British person.
Anyway, I hate the rail system. I had bought my train ticket from Nottingham to Aberdeen, which was a good thing even though it involved two transfers (haaaaate), and they were going to mail me my ticket a few days before the 27th. Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to enter my Aberdeen address as the delivery address instead of Laura's house in Wetton. So I called up customer service and asked if I could change the delivery address. I didn't think this was such an unreasonable thing to ask considering the ticket didn't even exist yet and wouldn't be posted for another couple of weeks. However, I was told this was "impossible." To change the delivery address, I had to cancel my current ticket, pay a £10 cancellation fee, and buy a new ticket with the different delivery address.
Have you noticed that since I've been here a lot of things seem to go wrong for really stupid reasons?
The real problem here was that my money for the first ticket (minus £10, haaaaate) won't appear back in my bank account for several weeks. And without that money, I couldn't afford to buy a new ticket. So all of a sudden I had no money, no train ticket, and seats were going fast. THANK YOU BRITISH RAIL. I had to ask Rosie's older brother, who I've only met a few times and just happened to be in the flat to drop something off, to put my ticket on his credit card and promise to pay him back when I got back from England. Talk about your awkwardness. It was not fun. If Rob ever reads this, THANK YOU. (For real, though -- not like when I thanked British rail back there.)
