tidbits -kate

Okay, so... what has been going on for the last couple of weeks?

Sorry- um- I was momentarily distracted, I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Glasgow and the two 12-year-olds sitting next to me just started making out... I mean she's on his lap and everything.  I'd bark at them to get a room- but I don't want to encourage them.

First of all, I should note that Ben has been faithfully blogging, however his firewall has been secretly buttressed and for reasons completely beyond our understanding, his fire-wall won't let him log onto the internet anywhere.  The filter's function is to keep Ben from getting caught in a porn-nado... it makes me wonder what's flying through the air around here if his computer has decided that Ben would be better off just staying offline completely... 

My point is, Ben would have plenty to say if he could get online- instead it's up to me.

We fell into a regular groove at the Glasgow city mission.  We can now, more or less, function there with a minimum of direction.  Daniel (one of the staff members there) has decided that we all need to have Glaswegian accents when we return to the US.  He' s done his best to teach me such colloquialisms such as "Aye cannuh be butherred" ( I can't be bothered) or "Hiedyeun" (How- ya doing)  and I in turn have taught him such American winners as "Dude, where's the keg?"  He's pretty good at it.

Janny's favorite day at the shelter is Wednesdays, because that's when they have the "Over 40-s Men's Club"  and a couple of gents taught us the finer points of playing dominoes- a game we got so good at our first time out they accused us of hustling them.

We had the chance to view a "football" (soccer) game at a local pub.  The Euro 2008 series is going strong.  (In lieu of actually having any knowledge of Euro 2008, I shouted "GO BRONCOS!" whenever anything significant happened) Our local friends were all cheering for the Czech Republic team... since no UK teams made the championships.  When I asked Lindsay (a delightful, spirited kick-in-the-head, kind of a girl) why they chose to support the Czechs- she told me the Czechs had the best beer.  And when the Czech team lost, Lindsay told me that her biggest disappointment stemmed from the fact that she had just bought her Czech-team-t-shirt, and now she couldn't wear it anymore.

We've been back to the Kelvingrove museum a couple of times more.  Barnacles still hold the title.

The other day, Ben came back to the "Sallie Ann" (as we now call the Salvation Army)  with a "scooby snack" for Janny.  The scooby snack is an edible contraption made up of layers of pancakes, sausage, bacon, more sausage, a potato pancake- and I think there's a fried egg in there somewhere- I told Janny her breakfast smelled like death.

On friday afternoons, the shelter has the "under 40's Men's Club"  during which they have a wii set up, so we all hang around and go virtual bowling.  And perhaps one of the things I have noticed the most about the guys who play- the staff and the volunteers all do the bowling gesture the way... well the way people actually bowl.  The "clients", however, whenever they chuck the imaginary bowling-ball down the alley- they look like they're punching somebody in the face with a chin-splitting upper-cut.

One of these young men has informed me that I'm officially in the "cool club" because I was willing to split a potato-chip-and-ham-sandwich with him.  Anything in the name of ministry- besides, we're already dying from the asbestos ceiling, what's a little heart disease?

Another young man and I have discovered we share a love of all things geek... specifically we have both played Fable (X-Box) for hours at a time, and we're both crazed comic-book fans.  We burned through an entire afternoon debating Dark Horse vs Marvel,  He's not too into zombie books, but I will convert him... heh heh heh.

On Fridays, there's also the women's glamour and beauty- during which Lorraine does nails and facials- however, getting the girls out of their hiding places has proven to be somewhat difficult during the days- so far we've maxed out at 2 takers in a day- that's not including myself and Janny- we get our nails done every friday- and then we are walking advertisements for Friday afternoons when we're serving meals in the evenings.

While in Iona, there was an unnatural amount of sunshine- and a very natural amount of wind- consequently we three pale-blondes quickly developed both sun-burns AND wind-burns.  By the last day there, Janny and I had begun wrapping our heads in our scarves to try and preserve our tender cheeks- we looked like terrorists.

Speaking of zombies-  Ben has proven to be quite a cook.  He baked an entire chicken a couple of weeks ago (the Sallie Ann staff said we might as well have it... it had been in their freezer for months)  He did an amazing job- right up until he started dismantling the little decimated corpse post-meal in the hopes of making soup out of the leftovers-  with his greasy fingers buried in the mutilated chicken, I told him he reminded me of a zombie, mid-carnage.  He then posed for a few zombie pictures.  "GRRRRR MORE BRAINS!"

Speaking of Iona, by the time we returned to Glasgow, we were so holiday-ed out, we decided not to go to Loch Lomond the following Saturady- instead we sat in the Sallie Ann for 2 hours and took crazy photos of ourselves with the "photo-booth" program on my Mac- laptop.  

I'm sure there will be more in the following week, but that should suffice for now.