Happy England to meeee

Yesterday morning was the one year anniversary of my looking down from a plane window and seeing a little island of incredibly convoluted green patchwork, which is when I realized just how long people had been bickering over tiny patches of land to make those marvelously fractal boundaries, so different from the giant checkerboards of Eastern Washington.

I probably would have let this anniversary pass unobserved, except that my subconscious noticed, and nudged me into finally picking up the copy of Notes From A Small Island, by Bill Bryson, that was loaned to me by spaced before we went on the trip. It's very funny, by the way, and reminds me of all the little details I enjoyed, like bacon sandwiches and being called luv by street vendors. I'm wearing my London Underground logo "Not Afraid" tee-shirt today in tardy commemoration. Happy England to mee, happy England to meee...

I'm breathtakingly glad I went. Still, some more, and always.

In other news

My job is going so spectacularly well that I don't even feel inclined to take time away to post the really wonderful bits here, but some highlights for my personal benefit (enjoy what you can of them):

Guerrila librarianship (imposing my political views on the controlled vocabulary, mwahahahahah!).
Thinking of 15 distinct uses for the word "queen" or "queens"... then figuring out how, by caption searches, to distinguish between them reliably.
Giggling at the hilarity when we find something that's been automatically categorized All Wrong (the Watergate affair under Infidelity, Flushing NY under Toilet).
Finding pictures of Ascot hats, Chinese ballet, actors I like, first ladies of tiny nations who have really frightening hair, Terry Gilliam sticking his head into one of his new hollow statues, the national Air Guitar champion, London's giant mechanical elephant, Eurovision's new winner who's made up to look like an orc, and Pricasso.
Outwitting the fashionista (who put 15 keywords on one image to signify that an actress is wearing shoes).

And now I really must get back to it.

oh. right. um.

aaaand, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, lunar__angel!!! Since I, um, remembered and everything.

I am the worst sister EVER. What do you want, anyway? I can just throw money at you if you like...