WHY AM I NOT INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY?

It seems unfair. I really like having no job. Part of me is dreading that business of getting up every day and going to work--mostly because I have yet to find a job in which I didn't end up working way, way more than 8 hours a day, and just in general exhausting myself. It's been so nice to be able to relax.

Of course, the not having any money part is not so much fun. My efforts to obtain cash have been unsuccessful so far, so starting May 1, I'm going to have to stop spending any money at all, really. So far I've been able to go to dinner with friends here and there, but that's going to have to stop. Grrr.

I guess that's the nice part of having a job--being self-sufficient and knowing that you've been personally responsible for that. That when you buy something, you've really earned it. I guess I can see that it might be nice to have someone else buy you things, kind of implying that you're worth spending money on, but I've never really been in that position, and I refuse to feel badly about myself for it.

So anyway, what have I been up to? Well, the usual, wandering around and being silly, and generally making a nuisance of myself. And the other day, I ended up going to not one, but two (!) Elvis Costello gigs.

The first was at the Virgin Megastore. He was doing a record signing, but by the time I got there (an hour early), they had already cut off the line so I couldn't stand in it with my little CD. However, he did a short set (4 or 5 songs) and I got to listen to that--we were quite close to the stage, too, which was nice. Then later in the evening, I got to go to the show that Matthew had purchased tickets for. It was wonderful, although Certain People Who Shall Remain Nameless said that it wasn't as good as some of his shows in the past. Well, I wouldn't know.

Anyway, after that, we went to this club somewhere in SOHO (which I keep wanting to call SOMA), and saw this group of musicians that Matthew's raved about in the past.

I have this sort of problem when it comes to doing some of these things with Matthew. I mean, it's not a serious problem or anything. It's just that I don't know him that well right now, so I'm frequently conscious of being less than comfortable around him. This became evident at this club, because I wasn't sure what to say, so I ended up just being polite and not saying a lot.

So, of course, I'll be obnoxious here because he's not reading this.

Anyway, we got to this club, and the music was going on in the basement. My first reaction to the basement was that it looked like some kind of opium den. There were these low ottoman things on the floor that people were sitting on. The opium den impression was given by these and by the fact that the people sitting around had clearly been there for some time and had been drinking that whole time, so few of them were exactly upright. Most of the women were wearing semi-transparent clothes or something similar. There were a few of them who were "dancing." I am being polite.

The thing that it reminded me of was a company party. You know how people show up at company parties, and there are the salespeople and the little PR bunnies, and they're all a little drunk and the women are wearing somewhat skimpy things and they're just sort of oozing the "I'm usually a corporate b**ch, but tonight I'm letting loose" kind of drunken-yuppie vibe? That's sort of what it was like.

The bar was out of beer. The people I was with were floored by this. We waited around for the musicians to start up again.

They were terrible.

Granted, the bassist was quite good, as was the guitarist. The singer wasn't bad. Everyone else was pretty bad. Matthew looked embarrassed and kept saying that it was usually better. The poor thing felt awful about it--he'd been raving about this place.

You see, in five years' time, I would rag on Matthew mercilessly about this, but as it is I don't know him that well, and let's be honest, it's not like it was any reflection on him. I'm sure the band is generally quite good, and all of that, but this night it was pretty bloody awful.

It's sort of like when Matthew came to San Francisco and saw my band. It was godawful. I'm serious--it was completely demoralizing. He will probably never find out that I am not actually the worst musician in the world, and I still cringe when I think about it.

In five years, it would be the sort of thing that he would laugh and tease me about, but instead he gave me this blinky supportive look.

Gak.

That's pretty much what I did when we went to this club. I was polite.

Oh, well. Eventually we'll feel more comfortable.

It's not like there's really an active discomfort. I mean, the only times I'm really actively uncomfortable are when his most recent ex-girlfriend is around. That sounds like a jealousy thing, and in a way it is, but not in the way you'd think.

It's just that they've known each other and been together for something like ten years. So they're really comfortable with each other, they have their own set of things that they are in the habit of teasing one another about. And, you know, it's like...I'll be standing in his house talking to him, and she'll let herself in the apartment with her keys, and she'll call out, "hi, Babe," and she'll greet the cats, and then walk into the kitchen and start a pot of tea and go get her things out of the cupboard. All of a sudden I'm conscious of the fact that he doesn't think of me this way. And I feel weird asking him for permission to borrow a teacup and then watching this other woman let herself in with her keys and pull her cup out of the cupboard and go back to the bathroom and get her toothbrush out of the cabinet or go to the bedroom and look for a pair of earrings. I feel like I'm watching someone with his wife and it just makes me feel really weird and uncomfortable and a little stupid.

And sometimes it makes me feel weird because I know that if he doesn't want to see me, he'll screen his calls and avoid me, but she can just let herself in with her keys.

So I guess maybe I'm jealous in the sense that part of me wishes that I was comfortable with him. It's not really that big of a deal, because there's something nice about the whole process of getting to that comfortable stage. It's just that I wish I didn't have to be exposed so constantly to his ex-girlfriend. Until maybe the last week, she came over pretty much every time I was there. The worst was on my birthday. I cannot tell you how much it sucked to go over to Matthew's house on my birthday so that he could take me to dinner, and then have to see his ex-girlfriend.

At any rate, it's not all that important. I'm not very freaked out at the moment.

So tonight I'm going over to make some friends dinner, and then tomorrow morning I'm going to meet one of Peter's friends in the morning, and then I'm probably going to spend the afternoon with a couple of Matthew's friends, going to an exhibit called Body Works, which is basically cadavers-as-art. Sort of a cross between an Anatomy and Physiology class and Madame Tussaud's. It's going to be fantastic. And then on Sunday, Peter's band is playing at our local pub, and I'm planning on going to that.

Oh, and guess what! Matthew has copies of The Osbournes on tape, and he's arranging a party to watch them! I'm so excited. I saw the first episode, and it was *fantastic*. He has the first four. It's going to be fabby!

I'm not quite sure what to do, because the weird thing is that if friends were invited over for videos in the US, I'd offer to make snackies, but here I think people just drink beer. Although I'm not sure.

This culture thing is weird.

Well, anyway, I've been doing a little bit of essay writing on the side as well, and eventually I might post some excerpts here. In the meantime, I'm off to accomplish great things.

No, really.

THERE IS NO VANILLA IN LONDON

It's odd.

Have you ever gone grocery shopping with someone else, noticed what kinds of things they put in the shopping cart, and thought that it was just a little weird? That's what the grocery stores are like here.

There are just things that I'm used to being able to find. Things that are considered "staples" back home. And they're next to impossible to find here.

For example, I got it into my head to make chocolate chip cookies the other day. There are no chocolate chips here, but fortunately I knew that before I left the US, so I brought some with me. But then I had to find the rest of the ingredients.

Baking sections are almost nonexistent. The Safeway I went to had about 5 types of flour, but only about 3 bags of each, and of those, 4 were self-rising. I found one little tiny bag of plain flour, and bought it.

There was no vanilla. I'm serious. I looked all over the store, and finally found a little place high on a shelf where vanilla "essence" was supposed to be, and they were out. I'm used to having my choice of about 8 different types of vanilla, some real, some artificial, some in pure bean form...and this is just in a normal grocery store, not in some kind of specialty shop. And the baking section takes up an entire aisle, not just one tiny shelf section.

But in this same store, there were at least 8 distinct types of curried chicken in a can. They all looked equally revolting. And Pork 'N' Beans here are called Baked Beans (which is a different food item in the US), and they have everything from Beanie Weenie to beans with onions and four different types of meat and mushrooms. They eat this stuff for breakfast, on toast. By all accounts, the stuff with the gazillion meats and mushrooms is revolting.

It's just strange that Pork & Beans is something people eat all the time. It's one of those things that people just...have.

Kwyrde.

So I'm not weirded out about things any longer, and am more amused than anything else when days go by and I am completely thwarted in all of my attempts to do anything.

For example, the other day I woke up in a really foul mood. It was one of those things where everything sucks--for example, if I had lost 80 pounds, I'd have woken up thinking, "I've lost 80 pounds and I am STILL UGLY." (All right, so I have lost a few pounds, although not 80, and this is astonishingly similar to a thought process that I did actually have.) I stopped myself and made myself go through all of the reasons that I should be happy, and eventually put on makeup, dressed nicely, and decided that this sort of thing would definitely improve my mood.

By the end of the day, I was feeling a little less cranky, but still not jumping for joy.

I had noticed that Peter actually has a bathroom scale, and I knew that some of my clothes felt a bit looser than they did when I arrived, so I thought that maybe if I weighed myself and saw that I'd lost weight, I'd feel like something had been successful, and this would improve my mood.

So I looked at the scale, and noticed that it was a) digital, and b) sans battery. So on the way home, I picked up a battery to put in the scale.

This was a big moment. I had thought that it would be nice to just keep on not knowing how much I weighed, because this seemed like a mentally healthy kind of a thing. But I had decided that I was in *such* a foul mood, that drastic measures were necessary.

So after buying the battery, I rushed home gleefully to find out how much I've lost.

(Incidentally, usually when you tell people in England that you've lost 10 pounds, it's a tragedy. Heh heh. All right, that wasn't funny.)

I put in the battery, and noticed that there is a switch on the bottom of the scale, giving me the options of "KG" or "ST". I can never remember the pound-to-kilogram conversion factor--I usually end up doing the centimeters-to-inches one and multiply everything by 2.4 and then just get confused. But everything was all right, because "ST" probably means something like "Standard" and so everything should work out fine.

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, it turns out that I have the option of weighing myself in kilograms or stone.

Yes, yes, I know, I can divide by 14 to convert stones to pounds. I don't have a calculator. But I did the long division and according to the scale in question (also known as Most Vile Tool of the Devil) I have gained weight since I got here.

A full stone, as a matter of fact.

Stimpson, one of Matthew's cats, has decided that I am okay after all. The entire time I've been typing this, he's been walking back and forth rubbing himself against my legs. Evidently this whole reserved thing doesn't apply to British male cats.