Scary Foreign Monsters

Well, the honeymoon with the USA is definitely over. Today we found this in the house...

Nobody told me they had things like this here! This isn't Australia!

It seems this is a house centipede. A 28 legged insectivore with big spiky pincers and a love of dark damp places. Don't know what he was doing in our house - it may have dodgy electrics and the refrigerator has seen better days (to be frank it has seen better decades), but we have no damp.

There's some nice information on them on Wikipedia, especially this little titbit:

Because they eat household pests, house centipedes are considered among the most beneficial creatures that inhabit human dwellings, but because of their alarming appearance, frightening speed, and painful bite, few homeowners are willing to share a home with them.

Anyway, I took him away and found him a new home far away from the house.

I'll get a dehumidifier, just to reinforce the point.

Viewed food feud pooh-poohed

I thought this story was quite interesting:

Welcome to the brave new world of Manhattan dining, where cameras keep tabs on diners in restaurants as diverse as the hip Boqueria and the haute Daniel.

New York Post...

I especially liked this bit:

Amy, a nonprofit Web producer who asked that her last name not be used, cops to taking trifles like "those nice stone things that they rest chopsticks on at sushi restaurants. I usually only steal in vengeance for bad service or a feeling that I've been wrongfully overcharged."

She may be a non-profit web producer, but she's clearly not a non-profit diner.

Ka-Pow!

I was in a deli yesterday lunchtime looking for shredded coconut (dessicated) when the glass door disintegrated.

The whole thing turned to a thousand pieces and collapsed to the floor. No one was near it, nothing hit it - it just self-destructed.

And they didn't even have any coconut.

House of Horror

We seem to have moved into Amityville. Only instead of rooms filled with flies, taps that drip blood and a voice in the basement yelling, "Get Out!" we have a couple of dripping pipes, a boiler that stopped working, a fridge that stopped working and lights that, erm, stopped working. Perhaps less the Amityville Horror, more the Amityville Disappointment.

As of yesterday we'd lost the boiler and two lights. Plus the dishwasher was broken, but we noticed that when we opened it on final walk through and the door fell off.

OK not Amityville, perhaps Mrs Potarto made a better comparison when she said, "I feel like Shelly Long in The Money Pit."

Walter: I'm not trying to tell you your business but you haven't even looked at my pipes.
Plumber: I looked at them three years ago. You figure they've improved with age?

Yesterday another light went and then I noticed water dripping from the ice-maker in the fridge-freezer. During the day, my better half got all the food next door into the neighbour's freezers - nice neighbours - and we spent the evening on the internet trying to find a place that would deliver in less than a week. Every other time we've bought something - a carpet, a bed, a dishwasher - they've been almost too eager to deliver, "I assume you would like that tomorrow, please pick a two-hour slot." When it comes to something we really do need immediately the shops have gone all old-world on us. Delivery in a week from Sears was the best I found, with some sites suggesting a three weeks' wait.

This morning another two lights died which motivated me to do a little circuit testing. The fusebox trip switches were all normal, but the first light fitting I looked at did not respond to new bulbs. I thought I'd try plugging the fridge into a different socket, so I got an extension lead and plugged it into a nearby socket. The extension lead has an led so you can see if it is receiving current. The led stayed off. I tried it in another socket - led came on. Back to the nearby socket - led still off. The socket has a little red button which is some sort of trip switch. I pushed it and the led came on. As did the fridge that is plugged into a completely separate socket!

$1,200 saved and I was awarded a hug, which was very nice.

We are the goon squad and we're coming to town

I just shared a lift with a woman in turquoise velour trousers and black furry moonboots with pom-poms on strings. It made my worrying about my grey trousers and brown boots seem small potartoes.

Things they don't have in the UK #2

TV adverts where men sing songs about Viagra.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz

It was the first weekend of Spring and having just got back from a trip to the UK, suddenly I could hear bird song in the garden. There were robins which I've not seen before. Robins in America need some explanation. In the UK we are used to our robin, a small round bird with a bright red breast that stays all year round. In America they have a bird they call a robin but it's a different animal. It is the size and shape of a blackbird, with a black head and an orange breast. They migrate up and down North America and do not winter in New York.

If you've ever watched Mary Poppins you may remember the moment when a bird perches on her finger and sings to her. That is an American robin. What it was doing in London is never explained in the film - you probably have to read the book.

In the evening we had five deer walk through our front garden. I keep trying to get a decent photo, but a picture taken in poor light through glass with no tripod is either dark or blurry.