Sean has lived in Canada for over 20 years but before that his family was from Iran and he has dual nationality.

We took the tube to Vauxhall and walked toward the bridge. Stuart pointed at a modern, would be innocuous if not for the 50 million security cameras all over it building.

“That’s MI5.”

“Really?” Sean said.

“Yep.” Stuart said.

Sean pointed his SLR camera at MI5. “Can I take a picture of it?”

“Sure.” Stuart said.

“You sure?” Sean said.

“Yep.” Stuart said.

Sean took a picture and we continued on our way toward the Thames path.

A police car with lights on passed us, stopped and backed up several feet. It parked, lights still blinking.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if they were stopping us for taking a picture?” Sean said.

“Yeah, it would be.” I said.

Two policemen exited the car and walked briskly toward us. Cop the First was tall and blonde and had a non-descript English accent. Cop the Second was short and brunette and sounded like an extra on East Enders.

Each had handguns holstered to the top of their thigh.

“Do you know what that building is?” Cop the First asked.

We looked at each other like it was a trick question.

“MI5.” Stuart said.

“Why’ya tayken’ a-picture ov it’thn?” Cop the Second asked.

We looked at each other again like it was a trick question.

“Because it’s MI5.” Stuart said.

Cop the First and the Second reviewed the pictures on Sean’s camera and were satisfied that we were not intending to blow it up in the future even though Sean was carrying a rucksack and had a dark complexion.

“Are we not allowed to take a picture of it?” I asked.

“Oh, you’re allowed,” Cop the First said, “but we don’t encourage it.”

While we were allowed to take a picture of MI5 and we weren’t doing anything wrong, they did fill out a little citation detailing our tête-à-tête (for our records) although they kept saying over and over that this was as far as this would go and that our information would not be entered anywhere and we had nothing to worry about.

Nicole rolls her eyes inside her head, but smiles and nods at the Policeman.

When asked for his address, Sean gave them his Canadian details. He said later he considered giving his Iranian passport to see what they would do.

I must admit, both officers were very polite and friendly. If you are going to get randomly stopped for taking photos of buildings, they were the men for the job.

So if you get out the tube at Vauxhall and walk toward the river, on the right is an unmarked building.

You are allowed to take a photograph of it.

It is however, not encouraged.

Man, this smacks of 1950’s rhetoric.

Thank you Jon Stewart.

Ditto from me. Fuck all y’all.

LARRY, RACHEL, SALLY and TOM sit around a conference table.

LARRY: Sorry for the Power Point Sing-a-long, but in order to get granular beyond the view from 10,000 feet and also in addition to ensure an oven-ready, just add water, holistic cradle to grave approach, I thought it would give you some contextual conversational navigation. Anything to add to the sauce Sally?

SALLY: Just that I appreciate these idea showers and it will help us sprinkle the magic.

TOM: It’s a great plan to sell the sizzle not the sausage.

LARRY: I’m happy to hear that you hear the same jungle drums. We’d better not let the grass grow too long on this one if we want to harvest that low hanging fruit.

RACHEL: I still have some concerns around feature creep and who will be doing the heavy lifting. But you’re right. We have to step up to the plate and face the music.

We did laundry and more hours later than I care to admit, came home from the pub.

Stuart and my stepfather were negotiating over the laundry. . .

Through a quirk a fate that disturbs me, they wear the exact same underpants.

Yesterday was a big day for seeing creatures.

Charlotte loves the garden because she bounces around like a thing possessed and barks and digs at anything that moves. A few months ago she was bitten by a copperhead and had to go to the vet. It hasn’t really slowed her down which was proven when she started barking at a little tiny snake yesterday. We think it was just a garter snake but we stayed away from it.

They also have moles. I’ve never seen a mole until yesterday when Charlotte ran into the garden threw something up into the air that I thought was one of her stuffed animal toys until I realized with horror that she was playing with a dead creature.

It was a little thing, four to six inches long with a down turned nose, you couldn’t see any eyes and little rat like paws.

I suspect if it was my garden, I wouldn’t feel so bad about it.

Late in the afternoon, I was sitting finishing reading the 2nd book that I brought, watching a cardinal hop around in the trees when Charlotte started going nuts barking at something at the rear fence. My mom went to investigate and discovered a little turtle about the size of my hand. We let it out in the wild area behind the back gate far from the dog.

We’re going to the beach today so if we see and or are eaten by sharks, I would not be completely surprised.

I still remember the first class. He took us to Sunrise Hospital to look at the newborns and then we went to a funeral home and through one of those twists of fate that if it were written in a film or novel would be contrived, there was a baby funeral that day. The coffin was white and tiny. The Hispanic family that were following it looked like they had been put through the wringer.

I say this, because I just had an intense visceral moment that made me very happy that I am not living in America at the moment.

I need to say something first.

I really, really, really with the intensity of 1,000 suns HATE Kathy Lee Gifford. I hate her. Hate is too weak a word. I hate George Walker Bush. I hate Bob O’Reilly. I hate Ann Coulter.

Kathie Lee Gifford née Epstein is a class all to herself. She’s smug. She’s pretentious, obnoxious and every other ous. She’s the antithesis of clever. She’s a terrible singer. She spells her name with an ‘ie’. If I need proof that there isn’t a God, I point to the fact that she is still walking the planet because if there were a God she would have knocked her teeth out years ago. And I’m not even getting into the sweatshop stuff and the Christmas specials.

When Frank Gifford got caught having an affair, my first thought was I’m not surprised that he had one. I would have been surprised if he hadn’t.

I’m not a fan.

I hope that her children are happy and well because it is not their fault their mother is a cow, but I hope that they decide to live their lives in such a way that it will cause her head to explode. Like they come out as gay or decide they’re Jewish.

Is that wrong?

What brought this up?

Up until this evening, I was blissfully unaware that she was on the Today show as I have been safe over here. Then I read the New York Times. Because I like to torture myself, I watched a few clips of her on You Tube and I felt my blood pressure (along with a case of the giggles) rise.

I stopped.

I took note of my feelings of intense, visceral dislike and wrote this.

I feel much better now.

Vitriolic rant over.

The best part is, in my wanderings, I found this classic bit from Jon Stewart that reaffirmed my faith in humanity.

Because I did not feel sufficiently suicidal after events I will not blog about, I decided to do a bit of clothes shopping.

I am, in the best of euphemistic times. . . curvy. Currently I am positively zaftig.

Shopping with a UK size 14/16 ass is challenging normally but during The Sales, it just sucks. Sales by definition means most of the good stuff is gone and anything that is decent is not in your size.

It doesn’t help that I also hate most of the High Street fashion that is out there. Even on a slim woman I think the silhouette is hideous. It looks like the worse of the 80’s had a bastard child with the worse of the 60’s. Xanadu meets Twiggy with a Flashdance aesthetic.

Even Jigsaw, which I usually like, had a huge case of the uglies. Is it just me? Am I being grumpy? It’s possible I may be transferring my anger that I look like an East German Olympian onto the clothes.

Here are a few off the offerings from the TopShop website that are not even on sale.

Yeah. I’m not wrong. They’re just ugly.

The fact I can’t fit in them just makes it worse.

It’s been really warm here in London, which has been fantastic to get at least a few weeks of summer. It’s been like Los Angeles in June. Really warm, but not too painful. At night, it’s stuffy, but if you open a window you’re probably going to be comfortable enough. A fan would be best, but our fan is being used in the office.

As part of his plan for Global World Domination, Stuart bought a Drobo.

“Honey why do you have a fan running in the office at night when it’s 30 degrees? Can we use it in the bedroom?”

“Drobo needs it. It gets warm.”

“How silly of me.”

iamaklutz

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