Sim City

On my Sunday night flight back from Dublin to London, the plane flew directly over London. You could see everything so clearly...the London Eye, the Houses of Parliment, Oxford Street...I could even see my block of flats. Everything was so clear and minitarized; it was like a scene straight out of Sim City!

I suddenly had a strong urge to play that game again. What an awesome game. You had to build your city from scratch, with roads, powerlines, police stations, etc., and all to budget, all while dealing with the chaos of the occasional natural disaster. And those citizens of Sim City were picky bastards, too; no residential zones next to industrial zones for them! and Where were their parks! I think I usually got bad press in the papers and went bankrupt within a couple 'years', but our neighbor gave us the secret cheat code for 200,000,000 extra dollars; with all that extra money, I was the best mayor ever!

Ofcourse, you'd ineviteably get bored of being so awesome, and just start commanding all sorts of disasters...fires, earthquakes, floods, even large monsters, to watch your city being destroyed. It was a great game, that Sim City.

dum dum

talking with my american flatmate last night, we both realised last night while flicking through the reality or property tv shows that show endlessly on british tv, how much we miss law and order. especially law and order marathons. wow, what a thing of beauty.

we also got to talking about the real world marathons, and sadly enough, i found out that frankie from the real world san diego died last week. in an effort to find out how she died, i ended up on the wikipedia page where i started reading about rape allegations that went on with visitors to the house. looks like they failed to air any of that footage! then again, i don't really remember too much from that season, just randy...ahh. big ran, i think they used to call him.

anyway, as for new and exciting news with me, here's a list.

1.) monica's coming to visit me next week! i am very excited to see her again. so far on our list of things to do while she visits me in london is....go to amsterdam! well i figured a full week of london might get boring, might as well spice it up with amsterdam, so i've taken two day off work and we're heading over there next week. sweet. we've had several invaluable pieces of advice from our friends on 'juice the squeeze'. the golden ones: check out the sex shows and the tulip fields.

2.) beatboxing was amazing last weekend. i can't believe such noises come from humans. the winner was a guy named 'beardyman'...you should look him up on you tube, its pretty crazy stuff. unfortunately fergus wasn't able to make it in due to a ticket mishap and his early flight to cork, but i still enjoyed myself with the rest of the frisbee crew, one of whom got beaten up in the boys bathroom!

3.) we have a new flatmate..our french hotel doorman guy had to leave because his mother was sick, but instead we got this tall blondy british guy, who totally reminds me of my cousin..they even have the same job. weird. anyway, the other weird thing is that this guy sleeps with his door open in the flat. his room is directly across from the kitchen, the loudest place in the flat, and yet, he still leaves his door open all the time! i've never seen it closed. its kind of weird i think....

4.) i'm heading over to dublin this weekend for yet another weekend training with the irish girls. i am getting more excited for europeans every day : only 7 weeks left! unfortunately they decided on short shorts (well short for me who likes to wear b-ball shorts) for our uniform, so i will have to devise a way to make my shorts longer....

5.) this is actually old news, but i'm in love with knut, the polar bear. i know he's probably gotten older since his early days as a cub when he was all over the news (his mother rejected him, and so berlin zookeepers have decided to raise him, causing all kinds of activisits to stir) but, just look, he's to cute to kill!

beat-boxing! ya!

i am super excited for this weekend.

first of all, it will mark the end of one of the longest weeks i've had at work, and was even off work sick on the monday.

secondly, we're going to the national uk beat-boxing championships tonight! how cool! one of the girls on the frisbee team organised it, and i'm thinking, its gonna be awesome. updates later.

and thirdly, except for one practice, i don't really have anything to do. its amazing how all your summer weekends just seem to fill up with trips and frisbee tourneys here and there. its just really nice not to have any obiligations for one weekend.

oh man, there's cakes in the kitchen. someone's birthday. i'm such a sucker for cakes.

the cicadas!

i can't believe i'm missing the 17-year cycle cicada season!

i remember these little buzzing creatures so well from when i was little, which must have been about 6 from doing the maths. i used to try to catch them as pets and keep them in a plastic orange pumpkin bucket that we used for trick-r-treatin. i thought i was creating such a great home for my new pets, putting leaves and grass in the buckets to recreate their natural environment. although, i'm not sure what i fed them, perhaps i thought they liked snickers bars too?

anyway, after they all died, i remember really looking forward to their next appareance...but 17 years felt like such a long time to wait back then...and now its here. i was actually shocked when my mom told me that the cicadas were back this year, because my memories of them are vivid and seem fresher than 17 years ago. oh man, i'm getting old, a definite 17 years has just passed since this memory.

and now i'm missing their return! so because i won't make it back to chicago before they all die, i've recruited several cicada scouts to keep records for me. gen has her cicada watch 1.0+, which i'm avidly looking forward to watching/viewing, and even my whole family has been trapping and photographing these creatures that have taken over our backyard.

here's some of the material i've recieved so far: