"I'm gonna have a beef baby!"

Apologies again for the absence. I have realised that I'm either not doing anything interesting so there is nothing to write about, or I'm doing lots of interesting things so I'm too busy to sit down and write about it! This post will therefore be just one of a couple that I'll write today to share some of the fun things that I've been doing this weekend! (Warning: on reflection, after I've written the full thing, I've also realised I've written more of an essay than a blog post. Go and get a cup of tea before continuing to read.)

It all started with my impending departure from London. Nothing gets you to plan and book things you want to do like a big old deadline of a one-way flight.  My friend Heidi and I had been discussing, over the course of 2011, two events that we wanted to get into our diaries:

1) Go to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour in London (technically just outside of London in Leavesden, but I'll try not to be pedantic)
2) Eat the 7-course Beef Tasting Menu at Hawksmoor Guidhall, a steak restaurant in the City

Like many things we were enthuastic about these ideas but hadn't really committed to them, the former because it required booking quite well in advance, the latter because it meant booking quite well in advance AND £700 per table (with 10 people, it was £70 a head, before wine).

However once 2012 rolled around and the clock started ticking on my time in London, I decided to get my butt in gear and nag Heidi into getting out her calendar and finding a time for these things. We booked the Harry Potter for Saturday 28th of April back in January, and once we rounded out our group of 10 with friends and family who were interested, booked the Hawksmoor in March for Friday 27th of April.

Then everyone at work started nagging me about organising a karaoke session before I left, and somehow Thursday 26th of April was the best date that worked for everyone. So my social calendar for the week ended up looking like this:

Thursday 26th - karaoke (booze up)
Friday 27th - Beef Tasting (wine up)
Saturday 28th - Harry Potter

You're probably thinking oh well that's ok, at least the Harry Potter isn't a booze up! You'd be correct except that after the Harry Potter I then went to Babs' birthday drinks (booze up!)

Back to the Hawksmoor. The reason why it was important to mention karaoke is because English people cannot do karaoke sober. Unlike how it is for Chinese people, karaoke with the English is not an arena for solo power ballads, but for manic screaming of songs accompanied by Spice Girl dance moves. This, for a culture that is mostly fairly reserved but thankfully also fairly alchoholic, requires a fair amount of pre-requisite alcohol. So by the end of Thursday evening, I'd had a pretty big night out (and shush to you all who say, but May, you are Chinese, so doesn't that mean you could have refrained from alcohol and just gone along to the karaoke sober with your full arsenal of Shania Twain songs at the ready? Shush to you. When other people drink, I drink. And I get drunk faster than all of them so I'm the first one drunk). And with the memory of my hangover from a couple of weeks ago, I started Friday fully prepared to fight the battle of the hangover. This meant a bowl of cheerios at home, followed by a cream cheese bagel at work, greasy chips and pasta bake at lunch, and three pints of water throughout the day. Hurrah! I left work at 5:30 that day feeling mostly still fresh as a daisy, if a little bit sleepy on the train ride into the City. But with the amount of food consumed it also meant I wasn't half -starved like I should have been, to prepare for the gluttony that awaited me. Still, I responded to the emails from Heidi (proclaiming "Ladies! It's Cow Day!!!!") and the more poignant response from Jamie (simply "MOOOOOOOOO") during the day with appropriate enthusiasm. 

I fully acknowledge this lack of planning was a massive schoolboy error on my part. But I also know that I can eat like a horse (often eating bigger portions that Keith, who is almost a foot taller than I am), so I still thought I could handle it. So I was still wildly excited when at 7:30pm we sat down in our cushy leather booth and perused the following menu:

• Beef Tea
• Tongue & Tail Salad
• Turbot & Shortrib
• Steak Tartare: Beef vs Veal
• Beef shin macaroni
• Bone-in Prime Rib, Porterhouse, Hawksmoor Sausages, Beef Dripping Chips and Salads
• Suet Sticky Toffee Pudding with Clotted Cream

Seven courses with some part of cow in all of them! I was in HEAVEN. I thought of course with a seven course menu the portions would be tiny, but they weren't. They were full sized, and they were DELICIOUS. The beef tea, which was best described as either a thick broth or a thin gravy, served from a teapot into blue and white delicate china cups, was interesting. The tongue and tail salad were flavourful. The turbot (a white fish) and shortrib was presented on a dollop of the creamiest mashed potatoes I have ever eaten. By the time I got to the steak tartares, I knew better than to smear it all over the thick slices of yummy sourdough toast that they'd laid out in baskets - carbs were going to take up too much room. But by the time I got to the beef shin macaroni (the one course which had stuck in my head ever since we'd looked at the menu online) I knew I was going to be defeated. Thankfully, or disappointingly, depends how you want to look at it, the beef shin macaroni (which arrived in a VAT, I kid you not) was fairly lacklustre, the macaroni slightly greasy and the beef shin a hunk of tough meat at the bottom of the VAT which took two men to hack to pieces. I didn't finish all of the portion ladled out to me. By the time the prime rib, porterhouse steaks, and hawksmoor sausages made its way to our table, I could only have two bites of porterhouse steak and half a chip and couldn't manage any more. At this point in the meal I think I had my head in my hands and just let everyone else chatter away around me. And although I was first to start wanting to lie down, fairly soon all 10 of us were trying in the most polite manner to sneak in a nap in the middle of dinner. That still didn't stop me from having 3 bites of my sticky tofee pudding at the end - the clotted cream was just too delicious to forgo.

3 hours of gorging ourselves, and we were all rubbing our bellies like we were about to explode. When I looked down it really felt like I was carrying another human (baby cow?) inside me, and I was not the only one who proclaimed that it felt like I was carrying a "beef baby".

It was delicious, it was spectacular, it was something I'd highly recommend doing once and never again, unless you're a big fan of the meat sweats.

Packing away like crazy

I can't believe how tiring taking all the envelopes off your bills, punching holes in them, and putting them in ring binders can be.

It's all I've done in the evening for the past 3 nights and I am so tired I can't think! Good news though - the filing has halved in size. High five!

Next up: birthday cards and letters go into a big box. Oh the exciting times.

Monopoly Pub Crawl

To be lazy or not to be lazy... that is the question for today's activities

We have plans with the in-laws tonight, but before that, I could pop out to the Monopoly Pub Crawl that some people at work have organised. Knowing my limits, I have not even attempted to start at 10:30am like the others, following a itinerary and schedule that can only be described as having military precision. Because of said military precision, even without the miracle of modern mobile phone technology, it is possible to join mid-way and just see some work friends for a drink or two.

For any non-Londoners unfamiliar with the concept, what IS the Monopoly Pub Crawl? Well I don't know what the place names of the American version are based on, but the UK version has all streets and areas that are London-based. It is therefore theoretically possible to visit all of the 26 places on the Monopoly Board. The pub crawl challenge, therefore is to go to 26 pubs on those London streets/train stations/areas and have a drink at all of them, all within one day. 26 drinks in one day! Madness!

Seeing this madness is related to boozing, those of you who know Keith will not be surprised that he and his friends have already attempted, and conquered, the Monopoly Pub Crawl. Keith and his buddies did it in May 2009, as soon as possible after we got engaged, in celebration of our engagement. How he going out with 10 guys (without me) for 12 hours one weekend getting pissed off their faces constitutes a celebration of his engagement TO ME is still a mystery to me, but I digress. It was almost a pre-stag do stag do and my one rule for him was to please not call me at all during the day, as I know how much his shit-talking, nonsense-babbling, slurry drunkeness enrages me (if I'm not equally drunk myself).

The WAGs (wives and girlfriends) still don't know all the stories that happened that day, which if the men are honest, has more to do with them not remembering it at all themselves rather than their bravado of "what happens on the pub crawl, stays on the pub crawl". From what we know, there were instances where they were refused alcohol near the end of the night, some frantic running to the next pubs before closing time, some moving of traffic cones from roadworks sites, etc. But they do have this cool momento from their day, where the got the time and bartender signature at every pub.  If you decipher this carefully, you will note a time vacuum between 3:30-5:30pm. God knows where they were.

So I could participate in something similar today.... or just keep lying on the couch... hmm.

p.s. damnit, there is still also laundry to hang up and vaccuming to do. *shakes fist in air*

Bookworm

Yikes. Someone stop me! I am addicted to online shopping and the latest obsession is buying books for my Kindle! (This post is going to read like a total Amazon advertisement. Be warned.) Yes, I know there are book purists out there, but wait, hear me out. I used to be one of you. I used to say, but I like the feel of a book! I want to turn the pages! I love lining up all the colourful spines on a bookshelf! You don't get a true book experience from a Kindle!

But I was converted. I was excited when my friends Taryn and Allison bought me one for my birthday, don't get me wrong. I recognised that it had its great conveniences - no more balancing a book in one hand on the train while holding an umbrella in the other, no more bulky heavy book taking up room in my Mary Poppins handbag, no more squeezing 2,3 books into a tiny carry-on for flights - and I am a very practical person after all. I just didn't realize that I would get this hooked. And the biggest reason for that is because Kindle edition books (at least in the UK) are SO CHEAP! The Kindle Daily Deal offers at least one book a day for 24 hours that gets discounted to 99p. 99p! You can barely get a chocolate bar at that price. The only thing of equal value for money in my mind is malted milk biscuits (another great love of mine).

And now, Kindle has found yet another way to compensate for what I used to love about physical book experiences - browsing in a bookstore, finding random great finds on a bookshelf or stacked on a table. Despite often being warned not do so (and I do realize the saying isn't meant to be applied to books themselves), I love judging a book by its cover. If the Waterstones that I have to walk by to get home from the station is open when I come home from work, I often can't help but pop in and have a browse. There, I will often pick up books only if the cover takes my fancy. I just love book covers! And today, I noticed that there was a link in the Kindle online store for 200 books for under £2.99 - more bargains! So check this out, I'm able to judge books by their covers side by side just like I do in the bookstore! Blew £5 in half an hour on 3 new books. You can guess which one was my favourite cover on here:

Added bonus of buying on amazon - readin gohter people's reviews before deciding to buy!

I justify all of this with the fact that I need to have lots of books stored up for:
1) flight back to Canada
2) spa trip and visiting my friend Vivian in California at the end of May
3) unemployment

Draw Something

Like the rest of the universe, I have been gripped by the phenomena that is Draw Something. However, it makes sense to me since I have always loved Pictionary. So why is it then, that I had to scour the shelves of shops 3 christmases ago to look for the board game, still coming up empty handed and resorting to buying it on amazon.com and having it delivered to New York so I could pick it up from Karen when we went to visit? Who knew there were this many pictionary fans out there?

Regardless, I am grateful that there are a few of you out there entertaining me 30 seconds or so at a time with your delightful drawings. I actually decided that some of these needed to captured for posterity. Especially this one below, which did not send to DoT36 because the app crashed. Thankfully, I captured it as a screenshot on Keith's iphone*. Can any of you guess what it is?

*Yes, I am playing Draw Something despite not owning an iphone myself, and desperately borrowing Keith's each evening to catch up on my Draw Somethings.

Super Cranky

Super cranky today and I think I've figured out why - Keith and I got up at 6am to watch the replay of the Canucks game (it ended at 5:30am London time I think, but we have subscribed to nhl.com's one year subscription such that we can replay all the games at any time). We wanted to watch it before we went to work and saw everyone's facebook updates.

I'm not too disappointed with the Canucks... it's a lot to ask to be #1 in the League two years running and get to the finals two years running as well. I wish they had been playing better, because their performance in game 3 was so much better than games 1 and 2, and just didn't manage to pull out a win.

Anyways it has left me super tired!

I am going to have to write a more interesting post tomorrow!

Bossy bad tempered beeyatch

Again a sign that it is time to move on before I wear out my welcome.

I think I may have a reputation as a bossy bitch at work given one of the financial analysts made this sign for me to hold up rather than having to speak at all:

The reverse side of the speech bubble is the one you don't want to see:

I think it's safe to say though that if I hold up this side of the sign to you, I got a lot more to say than just the one sentence. Like my fellow Controller Serena has said, 'you haven't worked in Group Finance until you've been shouted at by May'

Yep... time to leave.

p.s. that is actually me at the office.

Getting Old

I didn't go drinking much until I moved to London, but adapting to the culture has meant drinking a lot more than I used to. Which I obviously couldn't handle and have never built a real big tolerance to. But always, I was boastful about the fact that I never got hangovers. However poorly I felt the night of a big outing, I would always get it out of my system in the same night (a euphemism, see blog name), or else just be able to sleep it off. The next day, I would wake up a little dehydrated, sometimes even a little bit tired from not sleeping quite so well, but be able to go about my day unscathed, and perform at my normal level at work. I would laugh and laugh at those who were unable to do so.

However, in the last handful of times where I've had a big night, my age has started to show and Mr. Hangover has become a mild acquaintance. He is no longer a stranger whose face I do not recognise, and when I am alerted to his presence by the accompanying headache and queasiness that inexplicably starts, not as soon as you wake up but creeps up on you at 3pm in the afternoon, I acknowledge that I am not ill in the slightest but being reprimanded for the reckless imbibing of the previous evening.

It is another sign I think that the time is right to move back to Canada where I will be having less benders and being politely asked to leave the pub at 12:20am because it closed 20 minutes ago.

Just Like Canada!

Our Wales trip deserves a couple more posts, and this one is about the beautiful scenery, which Ynyr kept insisting was "just like Canada!". I always responded with "Yea! except for the stone walls in the fields. and except for the sheep. and except for the trees not being old enough. and except for the vegetation not being as thick. and except for..."

So although I may question whether Wales is "just like" Canada, I do not deny that it is very beautiful indeed. Well, definitely on the day we arrived, which gave us a rare glimpse into what Wales looks like on a sunny day.

Ynyr's family hails from Harlech, on the north-west coast of Wales. I was mighty impressed when he told me that the Edwardses had been there for 6 generations. I can't even point out to you the flat in Hong Kong that my family lived in when I was born. What I consider to be my childhood home in Vancouver was demolished decades ago, not long after we left it. Old stuff just does not last in my world - we've been in our rented flat in Clapham for 3 years and I feel like a pioneer of Northcote Road (kidding).

Anyways, Ynyr's farmland is situated at the top of a hill. Across the street from his property's gates, a mound provides an excellent viewing platform. I put on my 4-years-old-yet-brand-spanking-new hiking boots, and we set off for what was, for Ynyr, Sarah, and Keith, barely a walk. In fact I think Sarah walks further than that to take out the rubbish. This is what such a walk is like for people who know what they are doing:

 Here is what it was like for me:

Pant pant pant! Never mind! I was treated to these views:

Sea to the left! Mountains to the right! Dog to the front!

This is Seren who is so sweet, we love her! Look at her enjoying her home turf:

And the only people after the climb who looked respectable enough for a photo:

Sheep, and Sheep Poo

Sorry for the mini-break! Blogging on an ipod touch while trying not to be the world's worst antisocial house/caravan guest is very difficult.

Hence, I have waited until I am back in the comfort of the ol' slanket, on the ol' sweet spot of our landlord's ol' couch, before recapping a most lovely weekend in Wales.

Thanks first of all to our great hosts Ynyr and Sarah, who drove us around, fed, us, and gave us bed to sleep on. Thanks to Seren, who has convinced Keith that we need a dog in our lives. Thanks to all the Welsh people that I encountered, who put up with me butchering the pronounciation of all the place names.

We began our Easter adventure last Friday by driving from London to Rhayader, which is a tiny little town halfway up the country in Wales. We stayed at a charming little country guesthouse, although the water pressure left a lot to be desired. It is an indication that there is a problem when one sticks a shower on a corner bathtub but installs no shower curtain or shower door - so weak is the pressure that no matter what effort you made it is almost impossible to splash outside of the tub when there is just a weak trickle barely getting you wet enough to sud up. Alright, TMI.

On Saturday morning we drove up to the Northwest coast of Wales to Harlech, where Ynyr and Sarah live. We also drove around Snowdonia national park on Sunday and throughout these two days, I never tired of looking out the car window at the sheep - mainly because it is lambing season and for every sheep we saw there was often a little lamb scampering around behind it. Behold, the first pictures to go up in the blog!

Isn't that little guy cute? These sheep actually belong to Ynyr and his family. I chased them across half the field trying to get a picture of them, so give me an A for effort and excuse my poor photography skills.

The other thing that always amuses me is how the poor sheep always get spray-painted, and then stand around all over the countryside looking like they got vandalized. Apparently this is the farmers' way of tagging them and knowing which ones have been vaccinated, but I always imagine the sheep standing there munching away but always thinking 'Why have you gone all Banksy on my ass (literally!)?'

See, look at these guys! They make the field look like a bingo hall full of cute little grandmas with blue rinse in their snowy white hair:

And, last but not least, check out these three having a staring contest with us. Don't the two that are standing directly facing us just look like two round puffs of wool with two little legs? Too cute.

I close this sheep-themed post with a few facts that I learned about sheep poo, read off of the back of a card in a gift shop:

- a sheep only digests 50% of the cellulose fibre it eats. you can therefore collect the poo and use the leftover fibre to make recycled paper products!!! actually check it out: www.sheeppoopaper.com
- a sheep poos 1 kg of poo every day
- the sheep poo paper company makes 75 bookmarks out of 1 kg of sheep poo
- a sheep sleeps 8 minutes per day, and does not poo in its sleep

In Wales

After 5 hours of driving from sunshine in London to overcast Rhayader, we are in Wales!

So far only one person has had a welsh accent. What up wif dat? We also passed by some fields with some patches of snow even though last week in London the temp reached 20 degrees!

Tomorrow: Snowdonia national park!

Typing on an iPod touch on wavering wifi in hotel does not inspire long posts.

Easter Eggs Stories and Inappropriate Words for the Workplace

Two anecdotes on Easter eggs:

The company hid eggs all around the canteen today and we found two of them, which inspired many a childhood story on Easter Egg Hunts. Marc's story in particular sounded a lot of fun and I would love to try it with any kiddies I may or may not have one day (and in the meantime test run on my niece and nephew?). Marc's Mom used to hide eggs all over the house, all carefully wrapped, but along with all the nice chocolate eggs she would also hide real uncooked eggs and hard-boiled eggs, just to psych them out. In their haste to unwrap the eggs, disaster would ensue if they indeed had a raw dud and accidentally smash it in their hands. How funny! And how appropriate! Why should kids automatically be rewarded with chocolate? They should indeed learn that, mixed up in life's pleasantries are also less pleasant realities like.. the risk of salmonella. What a life lesson.

In other egg-related news, today our Director of Finance came around and gave everyone a big Easter egg - one of those big ones (~6 inches tall, I have just made Keith measure it so you can rest assured that the measurements provided in this post are accurate) that are a hollow shell and have two solid eggs inside them. I was excited as I think that's only about the second time in my life that someone has given me a big easter egg (total value £1). But then I made the fatal mistake of leaving my shiny prize right next to my laptop beside the hot fan, leaving it partially melted!!! It was still wrapped tight in the foil but was soft and lumpy. I squealed my disappointment and my team laughed so hard at me that the director could hear us in her office. Thankfully she had extra eggs so I claimed a new one and stuck the sad melty one in the fridge (which will provide us more fun when we unwrap it next week to see what shape it has warped into).

On my way back from the fridge clutching my egg I giddly proclaimed "Crisis averted guys, I've got a new egg! Not that any of you bastards cared!" which prompted a few "oooh"s and "ouch"s. Which leads me to my next topic - what words are inappropriate for work? There are very obvious ones of course, even potty mouth me would never dare use the c word or, say, racial slurs at work, but there are certainly plenty that are bandied about in our open office with no shame. This is especially a conundrum to me as I have learned so many English rude phrases while being here, and without growing up with them, don't understand exactly how rude they are, without the right context. It does not help that my biggest English influences (Keith's friends - hello to those of you still reading) are the most inappropriate, immature 29 year olds I know. Here's the list of them - will someone tell me if they are ok to say???

- bastard. i used it today. is it that bad? maybe since i actually called the people i was talking to bastards?
- bollocks. definition: balls; used commonly in place of "shit"
- sod off. definition: get lost; sod short for sodomy though which is not a safe-for-work topic
- take the piss. definition: mocking/joking with/making fun of someone
- muppet.
- bloody hell. also used commonly in place of "shit"

ah forget it who cares. i'm always using proper swear words at work anyway when i get super angry, i'm all f this and f that. it's too late to rehab my image.

Cross Racial Impairment

I lied yesterday. I can't rant about recruiters today because I actually dealt with a fairly decent one this evening - a recruiter in Vancouver who just wanted to have a chat about what I was looking for over the phone. Of course, it's early days yet, but if he turns out to be nice, I'm going to tell Keith that's because Canadians are just nicer, even when they work in a vile industry.

Instead I'll share a story on cross-racial impairment. I first learned about it in Psychology 100 - it refers to a tendency for members of one race to perform better at distinguishing between faces of their own race than faces of other races. I hope no one finds this offensive but I actually find this to be true. So I don't really get offended when people do it to me.  That's why I was not mad when the following happened to me yesterday.

I went up to the canteen at 1:30pm, having had a very long meeting which overran. This rarely happens (my team and I leave for lunch at 12:07 on the dot, to avoid the queues forming in the canteen), due to careful management of my diary to avoid having meetings between 12 and 1. The canteen was fairly deserted by then, and therefore there was plenty of time for the guy making my pasta to make idle chit chat with me because there was no one behind me in the queue for him to serve. So there I am, patiently waiting for my pasta, when Pasta Cook changes the topic to how hard working he is (per him) to say to me: "You know, I thought someone else that came in earlier was you. She looked JUST like you. And I was very confused, because she did not order the mushroom ravioli. You always have the ravioli (this is true) and she did not. And you always come up here at 1:30 (this is not true at all) and she came earlier! How funny! You look just like her!" I respond with polite laughter and try to get out of there as soon as I can.

Conclusion: I need to change my food choices up a bit so that Pasta Cook guy doesn't think of me as Chinese Ravioli Girl.

First Real Post: Rant #1

My first real post is a RANT. Surprise!!

When I turned to Keith tonight and said "I'm going to start a blog", he laughed at me. Then he asked me what my blog was going to be about. I responded that I didn't think it had to be about only one theme or thing in particular, and that it was for my friends (again, please God don't let this whole venture reveal that I don't have any) to read.

Let me make it clear, I do not have any intellectual interests (or even interests) strong enough to warrant an entire blog with the same theme, unless you want me to write reviews of every single episode of the 7 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation that we are currently plowing through (Status: currently on season 6 of 7, am enjoying it, but not as much as Stargate SG:1). No one wants that. So, this blog will not be about politics, or religion, or current events, because I know nothing of any of those topics. If there is any theme at all, it will be that I will often RANT about something.

Rant #1: The incompetence of [real estate agent name withheld - code name ABC]

The following is a true story:

12 March - email landlord to let him know we are giving our two months notice on our flat, to vacate on 15 May. He responds to acknowledge and lets us know that he'll get in touch with ABC so they can line up some new tenants

13-14 March- calls 4 times a day from James and Liam, real estate agents from ABC bugging us about keys, taking pictures, letting people in to look at the flat.

20 March- receive letter from Claire at ABC asking us if we would like to renew our tenancy since it is due to expire on 15 June

21 March  - receive email from Claire at ABC asking us if we got her letter

21 March 1 hour later - yours sincerely sends snippy email to Claire telling her we gave notice 10 days earlier and have had at least 3 couples traipse through our flat, let in by her colleagues, so no we will not be renewing. And who should I contact about getting our deposit back when we exit the property?

26 March - receive legal documents from Zoe at ABC saying Claire has let her know we are exiting our tenancy early, and that we are to sign the attached documents acknowledging that we are responsible for the rent until they are able to find new tenants.

WHAT? NO. That is not what is in our contract. Our contract says we give two months notice and we don't have to give a sh*t how long it takes you to find new tenants after we vacate

26 March 3 minutes later - yours sincerely is writing long winded email directly to landlord worriedly asking for an explanation as to why ABC think we have to pay rent for as long as he can't find tenants. Thankfully, before sending...

26 March 3.5 minutes later - receive another email from Zoe at ABC, quote "Dear May, many apologies, I have just realised that your property is not managed by ABC! Your landlord will manage your property exit and will let us know when to return your deposit"

In conclusion, every single person at ABC is SH*T at their jobs. How can the entire ABC organisation still be functioning? Worse, I have been to their office, which is right on our street. There are literally 4 desks in that entire office. Which means that these 4 a-holes that I have dealt with throughout this entire saga... sit right next to each other.

Next up... recruiters.

I've always wanted to have a blog...

but I feel quite shy about starting one. What if no one reads it? What if no one cares? What if I'm a loser with no friends? What if all the people that have to listen to me ramble on everyday in person, when given the choice, would definitely not spend any more time reading my random thoughts?

Is a blog just an internet-generation forum for ostracization and rejection?

Well I guess there's that one benefit to being married... you can make your husband read your blog even when no one else is interested. Wait... he's too busy playing Draw Something.