Notes from England

Not much new to report. Still in Worcester at the moment. Rehearsals are going well, we even have tonight off.

I'll be heading to Worcester Cathedral for Evensong tonight. The boy's choir from All Saints Church in Worcester, MA is currently over here on tour and will be singing this evening.

One thing I've noticed in the UK is that all the cars are small. Small hatchbacks make up about 80-90% of the cars that I've seen with the remainder being mostly mid-size sedans with a few full size ones and small vans that look like they are built on car frames.

Also of note is that everything is walkable. Pretty much every day I walk at least 4 miles as my guest house is about a mile from the city center, and I usually take a walk into the city in the early day as well as later for dinner.

Well that's all for now. Signing off.

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Your other left!

So one thing I still cannot get used to is the driving on the left thing, and I'm not even doing any driving. The main thing is that I keep having to do is pretty much relearn how to cross the street. After years of getting drilled into my head as a child to "look left, look right" it's a bit difficult to retrain myself to do the opposite order at this point.

If this is how hard it is to cross the road as a pedestrian, I can't imagine how difficult it is to adapt as a driver!

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Cheerio!

Well, today is the first day in England that hasn't' been part of traveling. I took off on Friday night and arrived Saturday morning.

The flight was fairly uneventful, but we did end up leaving 1.5 hours late due to inclement weather. Thankfully we made up most of that time in the air and only arrived about 35 minutes later than planned.

I flew standby and was hoping to end up in first class, but alas, coach it was. I was able to sleep a fair amount of the trip so it wasn't that bad.

After going through customs I grabbed the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station and from there picked up the First Great Western train on the British railway to Worcester. It was a lovely view of the countryside and took about 2 hours until I got to my destination.

Now the lovely thing is that I remembered to call my credit cards and notify them that I'd be in England, but forgot that Bank of America credit and Bank of America checking are two totally different entities and so I never notified them that I'd be using the ATMs in England. Consequently cash machines refused to give me any money. Add to that, that I didn't want to take a cash advance off my credit cards and I had forgotten to order British Pounds prior to my trip, and that left me with only credit cards, no cash and a mile and a half distance to the guest house I am staying at. I asked and was told that Taxi's required cash, so I ended up walking the distance with my bags. Oh, did I mention it was raining? Did I also mention that I discovered as I was walking that my nice black shoes that I was wearing apparently have cracks in the rubber soles? Yeah, that was fun.

I finally got to the guest house and checked in just about 1 pm BST (that's British Summer Time or GMT +1 - it's still only 5 hrs different because the US is on DST). I was able to get online (yay free wi-fi in my room) and send off emails saying I had arrived safe and sound and then I crashed and took a mid-day nap. After a few hours I woke up and was able to make plans with Delorey to meet up and head out for dinner. While at his hotel I was finally able to get in touch with Bank of America, clear the block, and authorize ATM access while I'm in England. Within 15 minutes of that phone call I had money, with no ATM fee as an added bonus since I found BoA's British "partner" bank.

John and I had a nice Italian dinner (and by Italian I mean Italian, all of the wait staff spoke Italian greetings to customers and spoke in full Italian to each other) and then we each headed home.

Today I woke up to have breakfast which was a full English breakfast. Bacon, eggs, sausage, toast, and tea. My excitement at this pretty much ended when I saw the "bacon". English bacon is apparently fried fatty ham. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't bacon.

So now I'm just killing time until rehearsal at 2. I'll post more later in the week.

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So now what?

Well my primary reason for getting a PS3 in the next year is now officially gone. Final Fantasy 13 is going to be released on both the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

I guess at this point I really need to look at the options and see which one I really want and which ones has other titles I may want.

I really figured I'd finally buy the PS3 for FF13, just as I did for the PS2 and FFX.

Choices, choices...

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Shady things are happening in my loft

Well, that's not quite right. They aren't shades, they are blinds. Today I finally had blinds installed on my windows (the double cell honeycomb fabric style) and I don't know how I lived without them. Already my place feels cooler and there's much less glare. Life is good.

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Inconceivable

So opening night of the Princess Bride was a success. My swordfight with Inego has never been better, and to top it all of we had a huge showing tonight for audience.

Apparnetly it had something to do with the fact that a side column note about the show was in the Telegram and Gazette on the front page of the Living section above the fold.

Here's the article:
http://www.telegram.com/article/20080612/EWORCESTER/316450495/-1/eworcester

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!

Ok time for bed!

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Running and running

So today I ran my first 6k race. I finished in 39 minutes. All-in-all given the 90+ degree heat and almost total lack of any shade I think I did well.

I'm pretty proud of myself. I've been working up to this for a few months now and got a bit side-tracked this past month due to allergies hitting me hard for the first time ever. I was able to pull through and get through the race.

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The Princess Bride

I'm in a production of "The Princess Bride" at WPI. We are doing an outdoor production at WPI Higgins Gardens. For those familiar with the story I will be playing Count Rugen, The six fingered man.

The performances are June 12, 13, 14 at 7pm.
House opens at 6:30
The show is free.

Here's a synopsys from the for those who don't know the show. Also, please note that the script we are using is an adaptation of both the book and the screenplay so some things may be a bit different for those die-hard fans who can quote every line.

Based on William Goldman's novel of the same name, The Princess Bride is staged as a book read by grandfather to his ill grandson. The grandfather assures a romance-weary grandson that the book has much more to deliver than a simpering love story, including but not limited to fencing, fighting, torture, death, true love, giants, and pirates. Indeed, The Princess Bride offers a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale depicting stable boy-turned-pirate Westley's journey to rescue Buttercup, his true love, away from the evil prince, whom she had agreed to marry five years after learning of what she had believed to be news of Westley's death. With help from Prince Humperdinck's disgruntled former employee Miracle Max, swordsman Inigo Montoya, and a very large man named Fezzik, the star-crossed lovers are reunited.

Directions: http://www.wpi.edu/About/Visitors/directions.html
Campus Map: http://www.wpi.edu/Images/CMS/WPI/walkingmap.pdf

We are at building 17 on the map and you can park in the lot marked "Staff Lot" that is off of Salisbury Street and the entrance road to Higgins House.

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What's going on...

Well it's been a while since I've made a proper post. So much has gone on lately. After the flurry of activity while I was in CA I guess I just got a bit burnt out. :)

Let's see....

Things are progressing along quite nicely for the Three Penny Opera. We had our initial rehearsal and I think its going to be a fantastic show. For those that don't know the show is about Macheath a.k.a. Mack the Knife (yes, like the song). It will be September 19, and 20. More details to follow later.

For those keeping score at home, in February I became the Chairman of the Board for Fremont Lofts. That's going well. It seems like we are finally getting things under control.

In April I was in a play called "The Punisher" about a literary super hero that does his best to rid the world of bad puns. I played exposition. I had had 4 monologues and each monologue had a separate costume. I think I win for line to costume ration of 1:1. The costumes were Toga, Professor, Bard and finally a one piece, grey and orange spandex superhero costume with cape. The show went well and New Voices 26 as a whole went fantastically.

At the end of April I took off to Florida for a work conference with a colleague. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. It was also fun to be able to go swimming in the large in-ground pool and relax in the jacuzzi every night.

The second weekend of May I went to NYC from Friday to Monday for Judd's graduation celebration. I'll post more about that later since it deserves its own post. I'll just drop a few key words to give you an idea of what it entailed: drinks, karaoke, ninjas, rent, Nintendo.

Most recently, I've been cast as "Count Rugen" in an outdoor garden production of "The Princess Bride". We will be performing June 12, 13 and 14 at Higgins Gardens. The start time will be announced later as it will be based on sunset.

Well that's all for now. More later.

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California Supreme Court overturns Gay Marriage Ban

So I've been meaning to update my blog lately and I have a lot to post but this had to go first. California has just overturned the state's ban on gay marriage.

Boston Globe
CNN
Advocate
Bay Windows

Statement from the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenneger :

"I respect the Court’s decision and as Governor, I will uphold its ruling,"
the governor said in a statement just released by his office. "Also, as I have
said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution that would
overturn this state Supreme Court ruling."

Looks like lots of good things going forward. Maybe soon California will be the second state in the nation to allow gay marriage and we'll have gays getting married from sea to shining sea.

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