incidents and accidents

Did I mention that our vacation was beyond fantastic?

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One week ago tonight (plus 5 hours), John and I were in the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon watching a Shakespeare play performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.  (That should probably be Royal Shakespeare Theatre…)  It was a last-minute decision.  Mom and Dad spent the day in the cottage and around the village.  John and I took the car to see the ruins of Hailes Abbey (beautiful), and when we realized it was a little too late (nearing 5pm) to see anything else, we decided to head to Stratford-upon-Avon.  We knew we’d get there too late to get into any of the touristy stuff, but we could still go see stuff.  And have tea.  I love having afternoon tea.  We got there right at 5pm (when the attractions were closing), so aside from a quick glance into a gift shop, we only got to see the outside of the birthplace of Shakespeare and that stuff.  We had our tea (a light cream tea – we planned to find dinner somewhere before we headed back to Chipping Campden and Mom and Dad), and we took a walk down Henley Street (with all its closed shops) and eventually found the Avon.  We dawdled there for a while and then noticed the Royal Shakespeare Theatre as we walked by.  The doors were open, we saw books on shelves, and all of a sudden we found ourselves in the gift shop.  Amazing how that works.  We browsed for 20 minutes or so and were on our way out when I suggested we check the box office.  What’s on tonight?  Who cares?  If there are seats available and they’re somewhat reasonably priced, we should stay, right?  Of course right.  So we asked.  Hey, it’s King John.  How much are the tickets?  Only £16 each?  Hey, it starts at 7:30.  What time is it now?  Oh, 7:06?  And we have to move the car?  We can get the car moved in time if we run.  So we ran.  Well, we walked really fast.  Turns out we didn’t have to move the car (just put more money in), so we rushed back, bought our tickets, and sat down just in time for the play to start.

It was really good.  Really good.  And interestingly staged, if that’s the word.  Shakespearean language, contemporary costumes and setting.  And music.  The wedding scene made my whole week.  (“I Say A Little Prayer For You” segued into “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” with the choreography from the end of Dirty Dancing.  SO.  MUCH.  FUN.)

One of many pictures of Hailes Abbey. Also, proof of the beautiful weather we had most of the week.

Hamlet says hello. Or, you know, "Alas, poor Yorick."

I didn't have the foresight to get a picture of the whole building...

...but I did get a shot of the books that lured us in.

A brilliant (and probably not original) idea and some good news

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While coming home from my disappointing pedicure yesterday, I found myself behind a car at a stoplight.  The light changed, but the guy didn’t go.  I waited a couple of seconds, he still didn’t go, so I lightly tapped my horn.  It didn’t come out so light.  I wasn’t irritated, I wasn’t in a hurry, it was no big deal, but to the guy in front of me, I must have sounded like “Hey!  Jerk in the car in front of me!  What are you, asleep?”  Not what I meant.  But I have a solution!  Every car should be installed with two horns.  One little one so you can politely nudge someone when it’s clear they just need a little help, and then the normal obnoxious one, still with the big button in the middle of the steering wheel, so you can find it easily in an emergency and pound on it when loud blaring blasts of your horn are called for (which is practically never, unless you live in New York, but that’s a whole different thing).  Problem solved.

Also this weekend, my most recent phone problem got fixed!  Yes, it still reboots when it overheats and I can’t always find the GPS satellite (so yes, I’ll still be shopping for a new phone soon), but last week, the button that lets me turn my screen on and off quit working.  WAY more annoying.  The only way I could do anything with my phone was to plug it in (or unplug it).  Then the screen would light up and I could make a call or check email or whatever.  Otherwise, nothing.  I took it to the Sprint store in the mall where the friendly technician took the whole phone apart and cleaned the button.  For free!  (Because I don’t have the protection plan and he can’t charge me for it and technically shouldn’t have been working on it at all.)  Yay!  And because I am a happy and grateful customer, I bought him a frappuchino.  And a cookie.  He also told me that I’m eligible for my upgrade in June, not August, and that technically, I’m eligible as of May 17th.  Double yay!

This would make my commute so much easier to handle.

Inter-charity rivalry

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Every so often we get a flyer in the mail from Purple Heart that lets us know when they’ll be in our neighborhood picking up donations.  We try to always have something, but not as hard as we used to.  They used to call ahead to see if we had anything to donate, and if we did, they’d come to the neighborhood.  I always said yes and then made sure I had something ready that morning.  I certainly don’t want to have them come all the way to our house only to find we forgot.  That would suck.  Now that they’re mailing us a flyer that says they’re coming no  matter what, we’re not as diligent.   But still, we do try.  Anyway, AmVets still calls ahead, and they called us the day before we got a Purple Heart flyer, so I figured that this month, our donation would go to AmVets instead (and we didn’t have enough to get rid of this time to give to both).  Both places have the same process: put your stuff in a bag or a box or whatever and LABEL it very CLEARLY with LARGE letters.  It has to say AMVETS (or PURPLE HEART) or they won’t pick it up.  You can leave it on the curb or on the front porch – anywhere that’s clearly visible from the street.  I always leave mine on the edge of the front porch with LABEL facing the STREET.  (Got a little carried away there.)  Which is what I did the other morning.  I was working from home that day, and I made sure that my big bag of clothes was out on the front porch by 8am with AMVETS written across it on two sides in really big letters.  Around lunchtime, the dogs started barking, and when I looked out the front window, I saw a guy walking back to his big truck (like a small moving van, white sides) with the bag.  Pickup completed.  EXCEPT.  A couple of hours later, the dogs started to go nuts again.  I went to the door this time and saw a guy walking back to HIS big white truck.  There was a “sorry we missed you” AmVets receipt in the door, and I realized what had happened.  I ran back outside to catch the guy and apologize.  He was really nice about it, but STILL.  Purple Heart stole my donation!  And he came all the way out here, and I didn’t have anything else ready to give away.  I’m sorry, AmVets.  I’ll have twice as much next time.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone at Purple Heart noticed the AmVets label on the bag and donated it to them anyway?  I wonder if they do that.

Close encounters of the fender-bending kind

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This week was a bad week for driving.  I didn’t have any trouble myself, but I was WAY too close to one actual accident and one almost-accident in the space of 15 minutes.  (Why is it called a near miss?  It was a miss.  It’d be more accurate to call it a near hit.)  I was on my way to DC for a middle of the day meeting on Wednesday, and traffic was terrible.  Lanes were closed for construction and everyone was inching along the access road where three lanes were merging into one.  While we still had two lanes, I watched a guy rear end another car.  They weren’t going fast, but the one guy hit the other hard enough to buckle his hood.  Not pretty.  Not 15 minutes later, I was on a three-lane highway and I watched a car in the left lane and a car in the right lane both try to merge into the middle lane ON TOP OF a car in between them who was already in the middle lane.  There was much honking and swerving.  I was about four car-lengths behind the guy in the middle lane, and I kept my eyes peeled the whole rest of the trip.  No more incidents.  Today, though, there were a bunch of idiots in a huge hurry on the way home from Baltimore.  I was going about 80 most of the time, in the rain, and these guys were flying by me.  In the rain.  Why do people drive like morons?  Why was I going 80 (speaking of morons…)?