Yo Joe Indeed!

I thought I had lot of toys for a grown man, but this guy puts me to shame. He basically has wallpapered his house with unopened toys, both vintage old-school and new. It's an impressive collection, but I'm going to guess he's not married.

The benefit of this is that when Kate complains about me buying toys, I can show her this so she knows what a gem she has in me. I mean, come on, what child of the 80's could resist Masterpiece Optimus Prime? And to think, people were teasing me about contributing to YoJoe. At least my old toys are up in the attic. Well, most of them.

Back in the USA

Late Saturday night we arrived back in Southern Maryland. But, with all the massive jetlag and lawn mowing I had to contend with, I'm just now getting around to making a follow-up post.

During the meetings on Thursday, I was informed if the name of a city ends in -chester, then it was at one time occupied by the Romans. See? You learn something new everyday. It's probably just a U.K. thing though, because I'm guessing the Romans never made it to Winchester, Indiana. Or the other 28 US Winchesters. Moving along!

I have to say, this was my most pleasant trip to England yet. Every other time I've been there it was nothing but cold, gray skies and rain every day. This week was fantastic! It was warm and sunny everyday, until Friday, which happened to be the day we decided to do some touristy stuff.

The meetings in Preston ended early on Friday, so we decided to go to York, which is an old walled city in Northeastern England. It's an interesting contrast- they've left much of the old city intact, while still managing to function as a modern city (albeit with nowhere to park). It's kind of like "We don't want to alter the 800 year-old buildings, so you'll just have to fit the Burger King in this little nook." I didn't bring a camera, on account of the fact that I brought a camera on previous trips and never found anything worthy of photographing, so I've stolen some picture from other websites. Nothing much has changed in the last few hundred years, so they should do. The first picture is basically what every street in York looks like, and you can see the Minster (what Brits call cathedrals) in the background.

The only tourist attraction that we actually were able to see was Cliffords Tower, which you see in the second picture. It functioned as the lookout for York, sitting up on a big hill next to the castle. There's not much to it- it's mostly a lookout deck with terrifyingly small spiral staircases in which each step is worn to a perfectly slick downward slope by a thousand years or foot traffic. The rain was really appreciated there. But, I am a nut for old stuff like that, and that's why I love Europe. In the US the oldest buildings you ever see were built maybe 200 years ago.

So why was it the only thing we got to see? Because everything in York closes at 5:00. I guess that's another U.K. tip- stuff closes earlier than you'd think. Plus, traveling that day was a complete disaster. The stories are too long to list here, but they include getting completely separated, almost running out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and circling downtown Manchester for over an hour.

Friday night we stayed in the aforementioned downtown Manchester so we were closer to the airport. Saturday morning Joey and I wanted to hit the heath club for a run before our noon flight, but get this: The local gym is only open from 9:00 am. to 4:00 pm. That's right, 7 whole hours of availability. So not only does stuff close early, they open late. Since we couldn't run, we decided to walk a few blocks to the mall and look for souvenirs (Joey was supposed to buy some soccer stuff for a friend). We went in several sporting goods stores, and those people love their soccer, followed by rugby and not much else.

Here's the interesting thing- in all these sports stores, I saw 3 different American NFL jerseys. The most common was Tom Brady. The other two were Charles Woodson of the Oakland Raiders, and Tiki Barber of the NY Giants. What makes those three special enough to have British appeal? I've asked the Sports Guy, and I'm really hoping he uses the question, because there are so many ways he could go with it.

In conclusion, I'm back home in the daily grind, and this post seems a little long.

UK Tips

This week I'm blogging from the United Kingdom- Staffordshire, England to be precise. Last week I was in New York, and the week before that was Dallas, so I guess I kind of travel a lot. That's my job though, attending meeting and looking in on government contractors. New York and Dallas are different than home, but the UK is really a different world. Oh sure, they speak English, but I don't recognize half of the items on a restaurant menu. That's actually why I decided to write this. I keep running into situations that I wish I would've been prepared for, then remembering that I've been here before and should've known. Like tip #1:

1. Bring a bar of soap, and maybe even your own shampoo.
In the hotels they have 2 complimentary toiletries: a pump full of "Hand Soap" by the sink and a pump of "Hair & Body Wash" in the shower. Ironically, I just cleaned all the stolen toiletries from New York and Dallas out of my suitcase before I left.

2. They call food weird things, and even if you recognize it, it might be gross.
Last time I was here (Oct. 2003) I ordered a dinner of Ham & Rocket (Rocket=Lettuce). Believe it or not, that was the safest choice on the menu. When if came, it was a big plate of lettuce, with strips of raw ham and smothered in brown sauce. What is brown sauce? I don't know, but it makes up the big three condiments (along with ketchup and mustard) in England, and it tastes like Death. The only flavor I could isolate was vinegar.
So I guess there's two lessons there: Ask for brown sauce on the side and if you order meat, make sure it's cooked.

I guess I should elaborate on where "here" is. We work with a company called Goodrich which is in Wolverhampton (there's another tip- 90% of the cities in England end in -ton, -shire, or -ham). Wolverhampton is the UK equivalent of say, Gary Indiana. It's gray, industrial and slightly depressing, and when people learn you're American, they can't figure out why you're here. We're stay at a little inn called the Moat House, which is truly a "Unique and Special Place." As the website says, it's in the "Heart of the UK," which like the "Heart of America," means "The Middle of Nowhere."
Actually, Staffordshire is pretty nice little village. There's a canal running through the country side, and people rent these camper boats and cruise around for days, docking at night, and mooring the boat where they find something interesting. There's a nice little path along the canal (which I understand is where the mules walked while pulling barges hundreds of years ago) where people jog and ride bikes. My co-worker buddy Joey and I went for a nice jog on it tonight after work, and it was great. Although like the regular roads, it was perilously narrow. There were even a couple of old stone bridges we had to duck under.
Speaking of which, it's now 9:30 here and I still need to shower. I may accumulate some more tips before I leave, but all in all coming here's alright. Don't get me wrong, it's no London, and I would probably rather be home with Kate playing Nintendo, but it's kind of fun to see the totally non-commercial side of England. Tomorrow we have more meetings, then it's off to Preston, where BAE is. What's there you ask? No idea.

Giving Back to the Community

While I was adding links to this blog, I happened to check YoJoe (one of my personal favorite websites), and lo and behold, they added the pictures I submitted several months ago. That's right, you can now view the Sky Raven or Night Ray, direct from the collection of Marc Burgess. This could quite possibly be my proudest internet moment, narrowly beating out the campus paper article about my senior design project, mostly because I'm making a ridiculous face.

Now if the Sports Guy would ever answer one of my questions I'd really be in business. Or if I was DJ Marc Burgess, which I'm not. Nor am I an expert on terrorism at the Center for Defense Information that contributes to the Hindustan Times. Wow, Google-ing your name is fun.

I never intended to have a blog. I figure we're already pretty far into the life-cycle of blogging, so there's really no point in having one now. Sort of like those yellow LiveStrong bracelets. I really liked the idea when it started, but by the time I got around to ordering one everybody had them on, and then it would have looked like I was just following the crowd. Maybe it's nothing like that.

So anyway, my girlfriend (PurdueKate) started a blog about running which you can see here. She said I should register too, so I could make comments on it. The conversation went a little like this:

Marc: "Why would I need a blog? Who would read that?"
Kate: "It's free."
Marc: "Well, okay."

As of yet my only theory on what to post here is just periodic life updates, and maybe my family and friends can check here instead of me trying to remember to email everyone individually. In short, maybe this technology can enable me to be even lazier, and that's always good. We'll see what happens.