Queenie of Snowdonia

Have a new nickname, folks. Queenie. One of my more entertaining officemates coined the name for rather obvious reasons. Feel free to use it as you will. In my own Royal news, I'm trying to figure out what I'll be doing for the Royal Wedding. There are supposed to be all kinds picnics and neighborhood parties and such. All I know is that I've heard the word "bunting" more in the last 3 weeks than in all the years of my life combined. But before I get ahead of myself, other schemes are afoot.

Friday we're off to Mt. Snowden in norther Wales, the tallest peak south of Scotland on this tiny island. I'm super excited even though it's only 3,500 feet tall. Last weekend we walked up Pen y Fen in southern Wales and it was gorgeous. We're even expecting fine weather! Which, believe you me, is quite a topic of conversation around here. Basically clear skies, temperatures approaching 70 degrees and 3 holidays in two weeks time. I'm surprised the whole of Great Britain is surviving this trifecta. And I didn't truly understand the extent to which Brits will run head-long into sun without sunblock until I saw a warning against sun in the weather report for Mt. Snowden. They list the various hazards, you see: blizzards, heavy snow, gales, persistent and extensive hill fog, storm force winds, thunderstorms, heavy persistent rain, and strong sunlight. Because among that list of things to watch out for, strong sunlight is on the tops of my list. Just so you know, we're expecting a "Medium" risk of strong sunlight.

Please feel free to leave suggestions on my Royal Wedding doings. I'll feel free to completely disregard them.

Atop Pen y Fan in southern Wales....

Notes from the Cubicle

I find myself working from an office consistently for the first time in over 2 years. Which is ironic, considering part of the reason why it's easier for me to do what I'm doing is because I've worked from home for the past 2 years. Friends and family asked whether the transition back to an office would be a difficult one for me. You know, since I couldn't roll out of bed at 8:00AM and stroll into my "office" at 8:30AM in a robe with a steaming cuppa. I'll admit that I was a bit worried, but I think the novelty will mostly last until I'm out of the office and in Germany. In honor (or honour, such as it is) of my return to the office, I present general impressions:

• I'm doing my best to uphold the lazy American stereotype. An explination: I didn't pack any "office" type clothes because packing for 5 months is interesting enough without trying to please silly people in an office. Also! the Brits in the office just dress up a lot more than our own American offices. No big surprise.
• I know I already said it, but they really do drink that much tea.
• The low low cubicle walls makes me feel like I'm just a breath away from the office stylings of Mad Men.
• It's nice being distracted by people you can actually see. It's a change of pace. I'm sure that might get old at some point.
• I made my first journey with a cozy of tea drinkers today. I prefer coffee still. And I'll have to do some hunting of my own soon for new coffee. Sigh.

In the realm of small updates, we did not make it to southern Wales last weekend. It happens. Though it is still on the agenda and Mt. Snowden is definitely on the agenda, regardless of weather. I'm also plotting the next time I'll make Mexican food. Some things you just have to do yourself.

Happy Thursday, all!

brecon beacon beckons

The weekend is almost here and all my changes, travel, and adjustments finally caught up. With a migraine I am. Or I was, rather. Things are better now since I took my drugs, but when I arrived in the morning for a group breakfast I was completely loopy. Then I was confronted with beans at breakfast. That didn't help. In that moment I likened me trying to figure out what a proper English breakfast looks like to a choose your adventure story. I wasn't prepared and didn't know which thing to pick up or pass on. I was waved off the black pudding by a gentlemanly co-worker.

Things to look forward to: tomorrow we should be off to Brecon Beacons National Park in south Wales for a small walkabout. I think I shall like it. Take a look....



Hope y'all have a fantastic Friday and weekend.

Over and out.
AKN

Collective Nouns

Sitting in my new office digs at the lunch hour I can safely report that the British are huge tea drinkers. Not that everyone didn't know that already. But knowing intellectually and witnessing firsthand are two very different things. Very different things, indeed. To provide a little spacial context, I'm sititng near the door to the elevator that leads to a little coffee stand and the exit. I'm also sitting right next to the communal tea supply: there are 4 boxes, one with 160 bags in it, for approximately 6 people.

All throughout the day groups of people venture back and forth on tea excusions. The only thing I can compare it to, in terms of the frequency, is a smoke break. Top of the hour? Time for a tea break. Just finish lunch? Time for a tea break. Bored? Time for a tea break. It never ends. And it's almost always in packs. Except the word "packs" doesn't really provide the gravitas that I'm after. Think a parliment of owls, a murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, etc. etc. etc..

The order of the day is quite simple: create an appropriate collective noun for a group of british tea drinkers. Right now the best candidate I could come up with is a "staff of tea drinkers." It is with that small offering that I will now say I'm taking any and all suggestions to fill this gaping hole* in the English language. The winner will be sent a jar of marmite.

* ridiculous and telling spelling mistake pointed out by KFR; fixed at 16:16 UTC

It's like Groundhog's Day....

It's funny what packing up your crap and putting it into storage can do. People pick up and move for every kind of reason and they say goodbye to their people and their places. Or not. Cross-town moves, cross-state, cross-country, move for work, move by choice, move to escape, move for more opportunity, move to stave off boredom. Move to keep moving. Whatever the reasons, moves always involve goodbyes. With smiles, tears, and sometimes a well placed "suck it." I've known I'd be moving for a while. I've visited all the places I've wanted to, made plans to visit with friends when I should have been packing, even had an amazing mustache themed farewell party. I've said goodbye so many times I think it's starting to get old for some people.

Today is the day I'm supposed to pack up Trixie and head north to visit with the fam before I fly to England on Saturday. I even had one final goodbye this morning that involved silent tears... you know the kind. Except now I might have to stay longer. My work PC is jacked up. Thank you IT and your automatic "updates." So I find myself tied to my work computer and phone in a way that I haven't in a long time. Waiting for them to try and fix the thing remotely. Waiting for them to tell me I need to bring it in to some office. Waiting for them to tell me it will be a week before they could fix it. Whatever. I'm tied to the damn thing and I'm stuck in a place where I've said goodbye to all my friends 5 times over. It's like Groundhog's Day. But not in a funny way.

This is all a very long-winded way of saying I'm excited and ready to leave except I can't. And there is a very real plane waiting for me on Saturday that I will catch, stupid-work-computer fix in place or not. Gooo. It's not the end of the world, just a rather large annoyance. But plans change and good things come out of those changes if you look for them.

of meetings and boxes

I sit in my office drinking coffee. I used the last of the half-n-half just a few minutes ago, so tomorrow won't be quite so lovely on the coffee front. I am also surrounded by packed boxes and the detritus of crap not yet crammed into to some appropriately sized and shaped box. Finally, I sit in my office only moderately paying attention to a giant, catch-all meeting. You can see my priorities here: coffee (elixir of life), packing (big big doings), and then giant meeting*. Honestly, the giant meeting is much lower but nothing else is doing.

Let me explain the boxes: they are labeled with great detail. You see, I'm putting my riff-raff into storage for the next 6 months or so because I'm going to Europe for 5 months. Maybe a bit longer, at least for the storage of boxes. The movers come on Friday to load everything up. I will now take this opportunity to say that anyone who enjoys packing is completely insane. I've met them. I know they're out there. Except they don't look like the kind of people you wished you'd avoided by crossing the street after you spotted them.

Bottom line, this Nerd is going on a big trip. I'll have two bases of operation over the next 5 months (one in England, the other in Germany) and hope to have trips to Scotland, Ireland, France, Croatia, and Greece. There will be other things. My Easter weekend will be spent traveling through Middle Earth to Snowdonia to conquer the inimitable Mt. Snowdon. All 3,560 feet of it. It will probably rain or snow the entire way up, so I really shouldn't make fun.

Consider yourself warned, all 5 readers who gave up on this blog. The Nerd is back for the foreseeable future to apprise you of the status of the English countryside, the prevalence of tweeds, and the state of German beer. There will at least be 3 other blog posts thrown in between those topics as well. Don't want to give it all away.


* words like "synergies," "mega," "pipeline," and "drive awareness" are thrown about; you can understand why these aren't a favorite work-a-day experience of mine.

flying turkeys

Things must truly be off in the blogging world when I allow an entire OCTOBER to roll by without some Ode to October. Nothing was wrong, I just traveled for work and other things quite a bit. But have no fear! November allowed me a reprieve yesterday. Well, insofar as being stuck inside all day at work while the fall sun beckoned me can be a reprieve. Anyway, after practically losing my sanity yesterday afternoon with 2 missed appointments (one real, one not my mistake) and 2 late afternoon meetings, I managed to escape to enjoy the final bits of sun. A friend threatened bodily harm if I didn't take my camera, so I dusted that off as well.

Into the sun I went, disguised as a park, to greet the other smiling fools. I believe everyone can recognize the New Sun Smile after a week of bone chilling rain. Anyway, the day was lovely. A senior in high school had the good luck to have her senior pictures appointment scheduled, packs of respectable looking high school students grazed on the sun, and would-be photographers roamed the trails. My own internal battle raged.... sun-staring fool or poor high-school photography class impostor. It's not entirely clear to me whether there could actually be a winner in that battle. No matter!

As I left the park I stopped at one last spot because the leaves (and I mean the actual individual leaves) were so deliciously fun: green, yellow, AND red. Standing there, soaking in the smell of decomposing leaves and dirt, I heard a noise that can only be described as a helicopter in slow motion.... something streaked across the path to my left. I saw enough to know that something large was flying. Something that didn't appear as if it should be able to fly. I don't know why I always flash to pterodactyls when considering critters that fly but seam like they have no business flying. The thing was big. And made lots of noise. While my brain tried to order the sound and the trajectory of the streak, another critter made the same noise and took the same path. What the H? Was that a TURKEY? Just as I assigned "turkey" to the bits of information swirling in my head, a third bird took off from just to my right and landed up in a tree some distance away, the branch bowing under the great weight. I unknowingly flushed a flock of wild turkeys.

Welcome to November, people.