Rehoboth Beach, or Wolverhampton? Hmm...

For your weather update, it is currently "crappy" in the United Kingdom. It's been particularly bad today- doing that constant mist thing. As Colin (one of our contacts over here) put it "at least in the US it just rains and gets it over with. Here you have to deal with this all day." No doubt!

We spent the first two nights in Preston, which was nice because the hotel has an awesome fitness center. I mean, we're talking 10 treadmills, 10 elliptical runners, 5 or 6 bikes- they even had a weight machine room and a free weight room! There were 4 TVs, but since I didn't want to be an ugly American and change the channel I ended up watching an hour of the Pakistan / Sir Lanka ICC Twenty20 Cricket match. I can now tell you how cricket is scored, but not how it ends, because it never seems to. Apparently the big draw of the Twenty20 games are that they are much faster than standard cricket, but when I started watching it in the early afternoon the game was well underway. So I worked out, took a nap, went out for dinner, and when I was heading for bed it was still going strong on the TV in the lobby. Turns out Pakistan won. Of course, checking the scores page only adds to my confusion- seeing as how New Zealand beat England by 5 "runs" the same day Pakistan beat Australia by 6 "wickets."

Anyway, last night I turned on the TV in my room for the first time and I discovered the second best thing about the Preston Marriott. I was flipping channels until I heard "And now back to Transformers!" and I thought "I have found my station." They were showing and old G1 episode from my childhood (though it was not dubbed over with British accents, as Ramya suggested) and it reminded me that some things are best left in memory, because that cartoon is much worse than I remember. The point of my story is that when I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I could still hear the show- there was a speaker in the ceiling that piped in the TV sound! How awesome is that? I think all hotel rooms should have this feature. Scratch that- all bathrooms. Even in my house. For that matter, the showers here have two knobs- one to set the temp, and one for how much water you want. So once you find the right temperature, you never have to mess with it again- just crank up the flow. Why don't we do that?

If I had to pick a third favorite thing it would be that the second floor (where my room was) had a sign at the top of the stairs that said "Leisure Club" (what they call the fitness center) with an arrow pointing down the stairs. When you went down half a flight, there was a landing where you do a 180 then go down the rest. But on the landing there was another Leisure Club sign that now pointed down the other half of the stairs. Why? Who goes down half the stairs, looks around, and upon seeing the two choices of "go back where I came from" or "finish going down the stairs" thinks "Hmm, where to now?" I guess it was nice of them, but personally I've never required re-directing while still on the flight of stairs.

I just realized that I haven't posted for a while, so I need to give an update about the trip to Rehoboth Beach. Maybe I'll hit the high points in a bulleted list:

• The drive there was fun, because Ramya and I both sing along to the radio as though we were performing on stage. We listened to Time Life's Greatest Hits of the 1980's collection (two of the three discs were in the case) and then moved on to a mixer labeled "Ramya's cool disk." We don't know when it was made, but it included Rosa Parks and That Thing You Do.


• The house itself was pretty nice, and I base that on being in a total of one rental houses in my life. It was only a few blocks from the beach, and it had plenty of space (there were 12 people there). It also had an outdoor shower (a real one, not like the cottage) and actual flip flops nailed to the bathroom wall as a decoration. They tied right into the Flamingo theme that ran through the house.


• I swam in the ocean for the second time in my life (the first time being in Hawaii roughly 20 years ago). Having grown up on Lake Michigan, I was worried about getting the saltwater in my eyes. Turns out it wasn't that bad- I think years of sweating into my eyes prepared me for the mild burn. Getting it in my mouth was another story.


• I had my first experience with Thrasher's Fries. Ramya and her friends rave about them- you get them by the bucketload on the boardwalk, and they're just big, thick french fries deep fried in peanut oil and covered in salt and vinegar. They are every bit as delicious and healthy as they sound. Plus, there's a big sign on the stand that says "NO KETCHUP!"


• Ramya's friends Sarah and Sean brought their Wii, so I got my first real play time with it. Turns out I'm not so good, but I think I just need practice. One interesting thing is that when I play Wii bowling, the ball always hooks to the left- just like in real life! Maybe that thing is realistic.


• I introduced a whole new crowd to Catch Phrase. Oh yeah. They're hooked.

But most importantly, I got to meet a whole mess of Ramya's friends, and I think I passed the test. I seemed to fit right in, even though they are all lawyers. Which makes sense, seeing as how they're her "law school" friends. Anyhow, I better wrap up because it's a quarter to ten here, and I have another full day of meetings tomorrow. Good early night!