Ex-Pat Independence

I woke up at 3:40 this morning with "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" running around in my head for absolutely no reason at all. 

Vive la Revolution

National holidays are always a little bit funny when you don't live in the nation that celebrates them. For the most part, you can cobble together something similar, but it's not really the same. Like having work and/or classes on Thanksgiving or fireworks deprivation on the 4th of July (no, we don't go around calling it Independence Day; you're lucky if you even get the 'of July' bit).

I have to say, though, that this year was a bit better than last - all of the citizens of former colonies (US, Ireland, Venezuela, Scotland) waiting on the English guests in ridiculously hot weather (for NE UK); the irony was overwhelming. Though, to be fair, once the English people left, we had a great time sitting outside being distinctly unproper with food, music and general silliness.

We didn't get to do any sort of official thing because of the move - yet another thing that got postponed while we waited for other people to make decisions about our lives - but we went out to lunch to mark the occasion and returned to set about packing up the belongings we intend to take over to the new place ourselves tomorrow (official people come in to do the rest later).

Flags were thrown out the window (to be immediately rained on, thank you, England) and we declared the village conquered.

The New Toy

I also acquired a Pentax K1000 from my step-dad, which I am all kinds of excited about. Apparently he got it for his 21st birthday, so I was informed to sell a kidney before I sold it. I promised I would. The original price tag is still on the bottom and there's film in it. The film is in pretty bad shape, but I'm still going to see if anything can be salvaged from it. Then I need to go about getting the camera itself cleaned up and in working order. The whole thing damn near took me away from packing entirely, but I settled for wandering happily around the house fiddling with it for about twenty minutes before forcing myself to leave it with my Olympus Trip while I finished wrapping up my assortment of odds and ends (which included soot-stained wings, a wooden Buddha, half a plaster skull and a silver flask among numerous other items) and stuffing them into boxes.

I am also no longer sick. Or at least, no longer immobile-y sick. I can deal with not being able to taste anything and coughing fits every ten minutes; I am a smoker, after all.

At some point later there will be another bit of flashing in the form of a supernatural support group. I think. At least I stick with consistent themes. I started writing it on my phone at 4 AM and haven't looked at how coherent what I wrote is yet, so there may be some re-evaluating of my early morning genius before anything actually gets accomplished.