New beginnings!

It's been a while.

Maybe too long, maybe not long enough.

A lot has changed, a lot hasn't, but after being told by trusted family members that London is making me bitter and angry, it seemed like a good idea to resurrect and rebrand this blog so that I might let some of that bitterness out...rather than letting it simmer just behind my eyes until I turn into one of those people on the tube like the pregnant lady who shoved me out of the way the other morning.

Plus I'm trying to finagle my way into being a journalism trainer at work, so I figured a good place to start would be to generate some blog hype for myself. Fingers crossed...

So watch this space for anything and everything that confuses me to the point of frustration, positive and negative. Like dreading calling any company that bases its customer service call centre (can you tell I've been here too long?) anywhere further north than the midlands. Be it a heavy Yorkshire or Glaswegian accent, to my American ears it turns English into something incomprehensible. My new favorite customer service tool is the webchat...typing knows no regional dialect (and anyway I have tons of practice reading those - about the only useful thing romance novels have taught me).

On a final note...through an unfortunate set of circumstances, I found myself locked out of my house this evening. So I trundled down to the local McDonald's (would've preferred KFC but the bastards don't offer mashed potatoes as a possible side), only to find that the fries aren't the same and the chicken burger was no good. Ma Rogers loves McDonald's apple pies here because apparently they deep fry them like they used to, but otherwise nothing tastes as it should. Don't even get me started on their grainy, tasteless monstrosity that has no business calling itself McDonald's soft serve ice cream.

But my diet coke was perfect. In a land of fountain sodas that either don't have enough ice or have messed up the syrup/carbonation mix, it's good to know that if I'm really truly jonesing for one, I can walk into a McDonald's and get one in a bladder-busting cup to go.