Free-Range Haggis

Muppet roadkill?! Ikea is a strange and scary place.

For starters, Fraser and I have reached a new level of relationship status: the all-important Ikea phase. There is an Ikea dangerously close by, and we got some stuff to make life a little easier as we occupy this space on loan to us from a generous and lovely friend. He's putting together a chest of drawers right now, while I mostly laugh at the grumbling and occasional swearing coming from that direction.

Most importantly, to my thinking anyway, is the coffee maker. I dunno where these Europeans get off calling that watered-down espresso an Americano and trying to tell people that it's the same thing as brewed coffee. Take it from a lifelong American coffee drinker - it is so not the same. Oddly enough, we had lunch at a nice pub in the city, where they had great big signs in the window, advertising that they serve real, regular coffee, but I didn't have it then. It was the first thing I did when we got back from this first day of being shown around.

Duke of Wellington statue, with upgrade

We did some window shopping and walking around the City Centre. There was the modern art museum, where we might have momentarily pretended to be statues, unless you were that pair of non-English speaking tourists who happened by at just the right moment and gave us funny looks, in which case, those statues were totally real.

I've also gotten to meet a lot of people this past couple of days - no thanks to the extremely surly customs agent who demanded all these insane details before stamping my passport - given that I've only been here less than 2 days. Every single one of them has remarked upon my height - mostly in complimentary ways, but some, not so much. Fraser's dad was funny about it, taking great delight in standing next to me and seeing how tall he could stand.

He also gave me quite the history lesson on the time-honored tradition of raising one's own flock of haggis, nurturing them and caring for them, until Burns Night, when, just as you pick a lobster out of a tank at a seafood restaurant to have it cooked for you, you select your haggis, then catch and kill it yourself, a cruel process much like boiling crabs (In my head, this was actually a lot more like the scene in Son In Law, when Crawl attempts to slaughter the Thanksgiving turkey he frightened to "death" in the barnyard). I was much chastised for not giving this ancient and sacred practice its due reverence upon its being recounted to me, as I was being delivered of a solemn trust to welcome me into the fold. I have promised to try harder next time.

As far as getting back on the grid goes, this post marks the successful implementation of the wireless network here, and my iPhone has picked up the signal, though it doesn't seem to like any of the free wifi networks we encountered around town. At any rate, I should be able to use Skype on the iPhone from here, and/or at least access email and socnets.