You Say It's Your Birthday...nananananana

Never one to miss a chance for shameless self-promotion....

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!

And it's Friday. It's a Friday Birthday. As you all know, this is a rare occurence and can only be topped by the also elusive Saturday Birthday (see you all next year). After that it's just a slow slide to 40 and a decade of early to mid-week birthdays.

Booo.

But not today, and not yet! Today is Friday Birthday. I'm cutting out early and going to get my party on. I leave you all with one of my favourite You Tube clips that will make you happy too.

Cause it's my birthday.

We're All Doing It Wrong.

We only think we live in Seattle. According to the Seattle PI, it's not SEE-AT-TULL at all. It's See-ahlsh (kinda sounds like yacht but more in the throat).

"In 1852, Chief Seattle, the leader of Duwamish and Suquamish tribes, reputedly persuaded David S. "Doc" Maynard to move his general store from Olympia, to which Seattle often canoed for supplies, to the village of Duwumps (now Seattle). Maynard named his store the Seattle Exchange and persuaded settlers to rename their town after the chief when they filed the first plats May 23, 1853."

The city is named after the chief and the right way to say the chief's name is not how we are all saying it so say it right people! I mean, what's a little guttural noise between neighbors in the name of historical accuracy?

Australia

I'm going. Several of you have been. What's on my must see/do list? Here is what you need to know:

• Arriving in Melbourne on 2 January, departing Melbourne on 29 January. I have just over 3.5 weeks.
• I am probably going to stick to the East Coast but MAY fly out to Perth for a day or two to see the fabulous Hendersons.
• Kjersti may join for part but am probably going to be traveling most of it alone - so anything that hooks me up with fellow travellers to hang out with and go to the pub with is good.
• I am reading Trip Advisor like crazy. I have a copy of Lonely Planet. I got that covered.
• I am not opposed to doing group tours. Active tours.
• What are your thoughts on the big rock? I've read good things.

Please Advise.

I am Not a Morning Person

You can ask my mom. Or my dad. Or my brother. You can ask any former roomies, boyfriends, or friends that I have gone on holiday with. You can ask any one that has attempted to make early weekend plans. It was a running joke with the Dobbersteins when we would travel together in Europe - they would get up and go eat the hotel free breakfast and I would keep sleeping. ADobbs always wanted to get going by 7.30. I would happily compromise by refusing to get out of bed until at least 9.00.

Who needs bad coffee and muesli when I could get 30 more minutes of shut eye? Hey, I'm not afraid to say it: Breakfast is over rated.

That is not to say I don't enjoy eggs, toast, pancakes, etc (although I don't really do the breakfast meats) it's just that I prefer brunch.

You want to know the fastest way to ruin my day? Pull a Dad. Walk into my room at 7.30 in the morning, flip on the light switch across the room and say in a loud voice, "IT'S TIME TO GET UP KID." Don't add enthusiasm or any type of gentle waking noises or human decency. Shut door to repeat process on younger brother down the hall. Make sure to leave light on.

ANGRY.

Why am I ranting about this today? Because I am still not moved to my permanent location (yaay Thursday!) and the flat I am living in is noisy, the bed I am sleeping on not comfortable, and the fact that I had a 8 am TELECONFERENCE on a Monday morning after not falling asleep until 1 am is just about the most unacceptable thing I can think of.

The single greatest thing about London? The time zone. Shoot, I could come in at noon and still be 4 hours ahead of anyone in our West Coast offices turning on a computer. Those were the days.

I need a nap...and more coffee.

Talk Like a Pirate Day is Now Over

Sadcakes.

You may now carry on with plain old corporate office speak.

Avast me hearties!

It Be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

You can find your pirate name HERE (I'm Blackheart Ethel) and a quick cheat sheet on how to talk HERE and for those looking for more advanced manuevers...

Top Ten Pickup lines for International Talk Like a Pirate Day
10 . Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?
9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?
8. Come on up and see me urchins.
7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.
6. I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon.
5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if fired me cannon through your porthole?
4. How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?
3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.
2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pickup line for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day is …
1. Prepare to be boarded.

Ways to Entertain Yourself in Seattle

• Work (check)
• Catch up on last year's TV before this year's TV starts next week: Heroes, 30 Rock, etc. (check)
• Think about buying a bike...but don't...yet. (check)
• Decide the flat you have already signed a year lease on is too small and ultimately unlivable and spend the weekend getting a new one (check)
• Be assigned a cube at work and then get a new one (check)
• Tailgate at Husky games. Actual game attendance optional. (check)
• Plan trips out of Seattle: Chicago, Alaska, Walla Walla (wine), Australia, Netherlands, Hawaii (check)
• Try yummy new restaurants (well, new to me): Purple (shiny, corporate, decent), Tavolata (poorly lit, good food, very Belltown vibe), Bricco (great wine, good snacks and CHEESE), Betty (summed up by saying Crow's little sister), Ototo (yum - sushi), Nishino (slightly overpriced but yummiest sushi in Seattle). (check)
• Consider starting a restaurant review blog. (check)
• Live vicariously through other's dating adventures (check)
• Make blogging friends take inane quizzes (check)
• Spend too much time on the Internet blogging, Facebooking and Twittering (check)

Rumor Has It

That people are taking the quiz and not posting their results. There is no judgement here at ReckenRoll. We are all a big family united in our brutal love. So what if you are the town bicycle? I say, you should have a blog to tell us all about it!!

It's all love people. It's all love.

Now share your damn results!

It's Quiz Time People!

Found a fun one. Aapparently, there are 16 relationship personas and we all are one of them. Take the quiz here to find out. Share results in the comments section. Oh, and skip all that stuff at the end where it asks you to fill in information about yourself to join their website. They don't require you fill it in...unless you want to fill it in. Who am I to stop you from finding love online?

Although, if you do join and find the love of your life online at least let me know. I'd like to get some credit for playing cupid.

So anyway, I am The Wild Rose (see below). Random Brutal Love Dreamer. The first time I took it I was The Sonnet. Deliberate Gentle Love Dreamer. I got a Love Dreamer thing going on but apparently can't decide if I am deliberate/random or brutal/gentle.

Typical female.

When it came up as Sonnet it said I would, "absolutely refuse to date someone dumber than me." This is true but it made me laugh to read it.

The Wild Rose - Random Brutal Love Dreamer (RBLD)
Colorful, but unpicked.

Prone to bouts of cynicism, sarcasm, and thorns, you excite a certain kind of man. Hoping to gather you up, he flirts and winks and asks you out, ultimately professing his love. Then you make him bleed. (Ed Note: Really? I make them BLEED? Wow. I thought I just left them scarred for life at the idea of not having me. Oh, I guess that is kinda brutal.) Why? Because you're the rare, independent, self-sufficient kind of woman who does want love, but not from a weakling. (WWF members apply only please.)

You don't seem to take yourself too seriously, and that's refreshing. You aren't uptight; you don't over-plan. Romance-wise, sex isn't a top priority--a true relationship would be preferable. For your age, you haven't had a lot of bonafide LOVE experience, though, and this kind of gets to core of the issue. You're very selective.

The problem is them, not you, right? You have lofty standards that few measure up to. You're out there all right, but not to be picked up by just anyone.

Your exact female opposite: The Dirty Little Secret (Deliberate Gentle Sex Master)
Always avoid: The Bachelor (DGSM)
Consider: The Vapor Trail (RBLM)*

*this Vapor Trail guy doesn't actually sound that great. "Here today. Gone today?" What? And check out the drawing of what he's supposed to look like. Apparently I should consider a man with a porn star mustache and a bad suit? Then again, I'm very selective...so I guess my opposition to the 'stache makes sense.

**I am not convinced this Vapor Trail is as smart as me.

Biking from London to Paris

Not me of course, but my friend Jeffe and his girlfriend Penny. You can follow their progress on his mobile blog. Kinda cool stuff.

http://moblog.co.uk/blogs.php?show=16264

If you'd like to make a donation to support them you can do so here: https://www.bmycharity.com/V2/PWCTeam. They are raising money to support a charity for kids with leukemia.

Do the right thing.

Attack of the Monster Spider

For those that have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I don't do well with spiders.
And by "don't do well" I mean "tend to freak out"

I don't know why it happens. My rational brain knows there are very few dangerous spiders in the PNW and most are harmless to humans. My rational brain knows that I am 1000x bigger than a spider and can easily smoosh one. I can't recall any particularly bad experience with a spider nor have I even ever had that many spider bites. I actually like to look at spiderwebs when they are OUTSIDE - I think they are fascinating.

But a spider in my house...or actually touching me?
All bets are off.

So rewind to last night. Picture it. There I am, sitting on the floor, settling in for a night of Netflix, and enjoying my dinner when BIG F*CKING SPIDER (BFS) comes crawling at a rapid speed down my leg out of NOWHERE. No, I am not exaggerating when I name said spider BFS. He was 2 inches in leg span. I took a photo, see below. Jamey calls him a wolf spider. I call him WHALE spider.

Naturally, given his size and my surprise at his appearance, I did exactly what you would expect.

I completely freaked out and flipped my food and the spider off my lap.

Unlike this weekend's incident (see post below), this time I was actually consciously thinking, "flip spider to somewhere known so you can kill it." However, after doing my icky icky ew dance in the next room for the required 2 minutes, I returned to the scene of the crime to find BFS was MIA. I searched everywhere.

And by "searched everywhere" I mean I "tentatively picked up each item on the floor and shook it out at full arms length away from me while prepared to leap into the other room at any second should BFS actually appear."

After searching for BFS for a good 5 minutes (including lots of breaks to icky icky ew dance and to psych myself up to keep looking) and coming up empty, I ran back to the other room and did exactly what you would expect I would:

I proceeded to have a complete nervous breakdown.

Seriously, it was the biggest spider I have seen in a very long time and it crawled right on me and all I could do was think about how it was hiding somewhere in my flat and if I didn't find it, it was going to crawl on me when I was sleeping and it was so fast and creepy and crawly and ACK!

In a fit of desperation, I ran through a list of people that I could make come over to help me. Unfortunately, I was sane enough to realize how crazy that sounded and double unfortunately, the few people who wouldn't think I was that crazy for calling don't really live that close to me. So instead, I had to go with option #2. I called my mom. COMPLETELY CRYING.

Word to the wise, do not call your mom completely crying unless it is an actual emergency...which this absolutely was...because it makes them very worried. However, being the amazing mother that she is, we tackled the problem together. After a few minutes of crisis hotline intervention and calming me down, I had mom in my ear and was ready to search for BFS again. This time I spotted him hiding between the bed and the wall in the back of the bedroom.

Mom stayed on the line while I attacked and chased with a flip flop. She told me later she could hear this in the background, "DIE YOU LITTLE BASTARD! DIE!" (apparently, that is my war cry).

After a few minutes of good chase and furniture movement (seriously, he was big and FAST) the final score was:

ReckenRoll: 1
BFS: 0

I include a photo of my victory below.

Following the photo taking, I realized that maybe I had just stunned BFS and not actually killed him. So I put a newspaper on top of him and smashed hard with my flip flop to make sure he was really really really dead.

I'd like to thank my mom for being the rock that she is in my time of crisis. Mom, I couldn't have done it without you.

What I Learned This Weekend

• My bank doesn't open until 10 am on the weekends.
• Some chicks in Seattle don't realize those popular cute shirt/dresses require leggings...
• Mark thinks first base is going all the way.
• Hicks might be a little bit gay. Seriously, Clay Aiken?
• When a spider drops down from the ceiling on to my bed I should calmly attempt to knock it to the floor to kill it. Not flip it off the duvet in a fit of freak out and then lose it in my flat, never to find it, and keep waking up in the middle of the night worried about where it is all weekend.*
• Britney Spears is out of shape, lazy and can't even lip synch the words to her own song correctly.
• Chris Brown is an amazing dancer.

And in Husky news:

• Even though I only know a handful of actual Huskies, EVERYONE I know goes to Husky games.
• I should not ever ever ever ever ever ever attempt to drive near Husky Stadium on game day. Not EVER.
• Even though Madison Park APPEARS to be near Husky Stadium there is no public transportation that gets you there directly
• Husky football + sunny Saturday = Good Time

* Spider location still unknown and last night I woke up with a shot and sat straight up in bed out of a dead sleep because I dreamed a bigger hairier spider had just done the same thing

Friday's Top Five:

Well, if we're really getting back into the groove of things, it's best to do a top 5 list. Today I'm going to make it really easy on everyone. Top 5 words/phrases that I am just not going to let go of...no matter how much the 'Mericans tease me.

1. Flat - Meaning Apartment
2. Loo - Meaning Bathroom
3. Dodgy - Meaning Dodgy
4. Refurbishment - Meaning Remodeling.
5. Lift - Meaning Elevator

Deal with it peeps. The vocab is sticking!
Happy Friday!

American Sushi Dilemma

In the UK, you only tip for table service. Hence, when you go to a sushi train place you don't need to tip. You are doing all the work yourself and even if they bring you a hot sake or something it's not like they did anything special. So no tip.

In the US, if you don't tip 15-20% they chase you down in the parking lot and ask what was wrong with your meal. So at the sushi train restaurant what do you tip? Say you eat $20 worth of sushi (easily done) does the waitress who brought you a hot sake really deserve $3 on top of that when the sake itself is only $4.50? You did all the work getting the food yourself.

Discuss.

Do You Miss It?

That's seems to be the #1 question on everyone's mind these days.

The answer is yes and no.

Yes: The Shaun and The Rob and Isabel were all in London this last week and I got happy emails in my inbox about everyone going down to the pub and all I had planned that night was a trip to the grocery store. That kind of sucked. I am really sick of living out of my suitcases until the rest of my stuff arrives. I miss Suz and all my peeps...you know who you are.

No: When I got in the taxi that was ultimately driving me to Heathrow to fly back to Seattle I had this warm settled feeling come over me. I caught myself thinking, "That was great, now I'm going home." It surprised me but didn't completely shock me.

London was always going to be a temporary thing. As much as I loved it and entertained ideas of staying forever, in the back of my mind I always knew I ultimately wanted to end up in the Pacific Northwest near my family. Because of that, part of my life was always on hold. Granted, it was the big scary decisions part (buying a house, etc) but in that taxi I caught myself exhaling at the idea of going home and getting on with it.

On the flip side, I can also honestly say that I got everything out of that experience that I wanted to and left nothing sitting on the table. I travelled, I saw shows, I met interesting people - I lived my life exactly how I wanted to and while there was some definite sacrifices made up front - in the end I wouldn't change anything. Being selfish for 3 years has it's benefits. If you ask me right at this moment, I can honestly tell you I don't have anything on that ever popular list of, "You know, I really wish I would have XYZ." Not a lot of people can say that.

So now it's time to find the next big adventure. The way things are going it's likely going to be adventures in real estate. Wish me luck...

Hey Hi Where Ya Been?

Who ya been with and what ya been doing?

Well, I have been living in the USA for almost 20 days now.

I saw my brother get married and have been invited to 2 more weddings in the next year. A friend's baby joined the world and I learned that 5 more babies are on the way from other married friends. I've got a car, a phone, a flat. I've visited my cat and seen the ReckenRoll family dog. I helped tear down a deck and briefly considered throwing it all away to become a carpenter. I've planned a wine tasting weekend in WallaWalla, my birthday weekend in Seattle, and bought my ticket home to Alaska for Thanksgiving. I cajoled MKinMotion into coming to visit, complained to CherryRide about Chicago hotels for my pending visit, and commiserated with Goonder about the price of her ticket to Australia with me. I hung out with my oldest and dearest friends and made some new friends at the bar on Saturday night after Bumbershoot. I've been hit on at least twice. Which is nice. Considering in London I never got hit on at all.

So yeah, it's been a busy 3 weeks.

Do I miss London? A little bit...but I am feeling pretty good about Seattle right now. Just don't tell me that there is no return ticket. My denial is pretty deep seated.