Category: woo hoo!

Meanwhile….

After spending a mind boggling sixteen days in another country working her arse off and also having a little fun, our Superhero returns to home base, Casa de Enchilada, for rest, relaxation and to plan her next move.

Lacking a blog post for the last week, it’s time to take action. However, jet lag, life lag and a lack of ideas has caused our superhero to be stumped.

“To the Random Word Generator!” she cried out. And thus it was so.

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In one of those cosmic kinda “whoooah, I’m not drunk enough to understand the meaning of this” moments, I sauntered over to my favorite Random Word Generator this morning while looking for inspiration.

A kick start and kick in the butt for the Muse.

Upon click, this is what the generator replied:

“Your random word is: Changeover”

Well shut my mouth. That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

The changeover. From GMT to PST. From rainy ol’ England to sunny ol’ Northern California.

From maudlin faces over England’s poor showing in Euro2012 and Andy Murray‘s loss at Wimbledon to holy hell YES the Giants put on a clinic at the 2012 All Star Game and then swept the Astros.

From the barking mad Mayor Boris Johnson to the stoic and reserved Mayor Ed Lee.

From London Bridge to Golden Gate Bridge.

From cold sandwiches alone in a hotel room to vibrant dinners with The Good Man with The Feline trying to sit on my lap.

From a little lost American in London to a New Mexican in California.

Ah yes. The changeover is really a changeback. Back to where I belong.

Reunited and it feels so good.







Photo from SFGate.



Wanna Be There Now

Today I ate lunch in a small cafe and sat at a table looking out the window into an open air mall. As I slurped soup, the rain began again, in earnest. The large drops plopped and the people outside scattered.

It’s been doing this for the last ten days, almost non-stop.

Opening the weather app on my iPhone, it became clear that this rain, rain isn’t going away anytime soon.

Here’s the weather where I am, now:






Drippy, drippy, drippy.

Two ladies chatted loudly behind me. One was complaining about how her daughter is misbehaving and that her acting up is disrupting the whole home.

She said “To be honest, this bad weather has got us all in a bad place.”

With a deep sigh, I took another slurp of broccoli soup.

After sixteen days in jolly yet rainy ol’ England, I get to go home tomorrow.

I am so ready.

So I flipped the pages in my weather app.

Here’s how it is where, if all goes well, I will be tomorrow:






Those little yellow disks, all in a row. That looks really nice.

Plus there is The Good Man at home. And a cranky Feline. And an elderly fish. And my life.

I’ve loved living here for just over two weeks but now it’s time to get back to the business of living my beautiful, wonderful, magical, messed up but all mine life.



Calling on London

Just a few snaps from this past weekend. On Sunday I got up all my courage and and went into London all by my little lonesome to have a look around. I just did the touristy thing but it was TOTALLY worth it.

Here’s a few shots from the day. All taken with my iPhone4s and the Camera+ app.

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From Paddington Station comes a statue of Paddington Bear. It’s an adorable little statue, so very endearing.

I had to do a bit of a close crop on this shot because The Most Oblivious Woman In The World was sitting on the base of the statue shoving sushi in her maw. There were plenty of empty seats around and a group of us wanting to take photos of the little bear, but she refused to move.

Ah well.

He is a rather handsome little bear, isn’t he?



Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth


After riding the train into Paddington station and befriending the bear, I caught the tube from Paddington to Westminster. As I came up from the underground, I saw a really pretty sunny London day. Then I saw a whole lot of people facing me snapping away at cameras. I vogued a little bit until I realized the lenses were all pointing skyward.

So I turned around.

And saw this.

Whoa! It’s the Elizabeth Tower which contains the bell called Big Ben. Let me say this, ol’ Ben sure has a pretty sound. At the top of the hour and at every quarter hour the bell rings out.

So delightful.



Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth


From there I wandered around and walked among the buildings, admiring history.

Behind Parliament there is a little park that borders the Thames. While strolling there, a local (a security guard, actually) pointed out this little feature to me.

It’s a carving into the stone at the perimeter of Parliament.

It’s a high water mark showing the highest the Thames has ever been. The date is January 1881. Let me tell you this…the mark is pretty damn high. Scary to think what the flooding must have been like back then.

I was pretty intrigued by the carving both from a historical perspective and with a morbid point of view.

Yes, the photo is crooked. That’s because to get the shot I had to put the phone on the ground and the ground is quite uneven.

I think the tilt gives it character.



Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth


And finally….here is a naughty little gargoyle hanging off of Westminster Abbey. There are thousands of these little guys, all different. I liked the rude faces most of all. I understand that the imps with tongues out are actually downspouts for water. I think they are hilarious.

Obviously, this one has been run through an Instagram filter. This was shared on Twitter and Facebook too, earlier today.



Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth



All photos Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the right column of this page. Taken with an iPhone4s and the Camera+ app.



How Very Civilized

It’s back. Oh no, really? Yes. It’s here again.

I’m speaking of the entity known as jet lag.

It’s percolating on a “medium” setting at this moment, but give it another day or two and I’ll be at full on speaking gibberish and wandering around catatonic.

I’m quite certain zombie mode will come on full strength right about the time I have to give my very important presentation to a VERY large crowd.

This post has only just begun and I’m already digressing.

This is your brain. This is your brain on jetlag.

Anyhoo, there was a topic I wanted to talk about. What was it? Oh yes, I got it.

As I made reservations for my trip to the UK on my work travel system, it asked me nicely if I wanted to rent a car, to which I replied “oh hell no.”

Driving on the other side of the road in another country and through one of the largest cities in the world just after coming off a ten hour airplane flight does not sound like my idea of a good time.

At all.

It was recommended that I take a train from London to my destination about an hour and twenty minutes away. “It’s easy,” they said.

“They” being people who live here and are used to it. It’s a different perspective if it’s what you know.

Me, I was a bit nervous. I’ve always heard that the rail system in Europe is amazing beyond belief, but you never know until you are up to your eyeballs in it. It requires a bit of jumping into the deep end to see if you can figure out how to swim.

I was advised to take something called the Heathrow Express to London’s Paddington station. For fans of children’s books, that’s the same train station where the famous Paddington Bear was found by the Brown family.

The Good Man wanted to pin a note to my shirt saying “Please look after this Karen. Thank you.”

Then from Paddington I was guided to take a train to Newbury. Sounds easy, but I was a little tentative. I can easily get spun around in a busy place.

Turns out, it really was easy. I mean, quite incredible how well organized and very easy to navigate this transit system is.

I think the only hitch in my travel was that my suitcase was a little too large to easily pass through turnstiles and narrow passages.

The train conductor on the First Great Western was a little bothered by where to put my large suitcase (they have only small overhead storage for luggage). But even that wasn’t too challenging.

As I rode for a little more than an hour on the very clean, smooth and efficient rail, I was just so happy. And a little pleased with myself, too.

Until today, I’d considered the T in Boston, the Metro in New York and Atlanta’s Marta to be the high water mark when it came to easy transit in densely populated areas.

Move aside US transit. Ya’ll got nothing on this.



First Great Western trains in Paddington Station.



Image from the Guardian.