Today I went to lunch with Jenn, one of my nano friends who happens to work for the IRS in London, which means she works at the embassy. Ostensibly the purpose of my visit was to get more passport pages. I had about 10 spaces left so theoretically should have been good through march, but it's never a good idea to push it. You're supposed to apply by mail but I get nervous having my passport in the post and from now until... the end of the foreseeable future there isn't a period of time where I would be comfortable without my passport for a few weeks. Add to that it's my only legal id and I need to to do things like pick up my bank card and, well, I decided to call in my new connections and Jenn took me up to get it done. It took all of 5 minutes and now I have lots of lovely, lovely blank pages that I am sure immigration officials will stamp all over once they get a chance. After that we had very American grilled cheeses in the canteen and I came out. Really, too, I wanted to see the embassy, and guess what? It's HIDEOUS. Inside and out. It's in mayfair so I've walked by it a million times on oxford street but I never had seen it before today and I was shocked, shocked, by how ugly it is. Someone explain to me why what is arguably THE most important US embassy and it's one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen? (I have seen plenty of ugly buildings. I've been to Eastern Europe.) Add to that there are constructing some sort of wall around so there is all this construction fencing and jack hammering going on... I didn't have to wait in any lines, thank goodness, because she put me on the official visitors list, but wowo what lines, thank goodness I do not have to apply for a US visa!! The UK consulate in LA was comparatively luxurious. There were a bunch of people walking around with machine guns and I held my passport to my chest, almost as it THAT would stop a bullet as much as saying "Don't shoot me... I'm an American citizen." I also forgot that I was bringing Jenn one of my phones (She gave me a much nicer one that she got free from orange somehow so I gave her my guest phone to use when her friend is over for Christmas) so I had it and the charger in a plastic bag with a book she'd lent me. And forgot about it. "There's a phone and charger in your bag, you have to take it out," they said at security. "There's not!" I cried, over and over, until I was starting to wonder if there was a charger secretly hidden in the lining of my bag like that makeup brush that somehow made it into the lining of my coat years and years ago, and then I remembered it. And felt like an idiot.
After that experience I ran home to do some pre packing then walked to King's Cross to return the umbrella (ella ella... argh) of another nanoer who had left it Friday. She works at a publishing company and gave me the second book in a series I discovered via an ARC I got at Russo's. It turns out the whole thing was her idea! It all felt very surreal. Then work. Blah, but at least it wasn't horribly slow and boring, and they let me off early which means I have been sitting here eating couscous when otherwise I might not even have gotten home till an hour from now. My flight is at 8:30 tomorrow which means I have to wake up at 5 at the very latest. In the end it doesn't really take any longer to get to Stanstead than it does to Heathrow, it just costs about 4 times as much (that will probably be the most expensive part of my trip). My goal was to spend £100 total but since we are still on the bloody pound, that might be a little bit too optimistic. I've been really pinching pennies to make up for it though... I can't wait to be in the US and back on dollars! Then again if I start converting dollars back into pounds I might go a little crazy and start buying everything in sight. 
Wed Dec 05 2007 22:39 How to save a life:
well, wow. It seems I am making up for my incredibly lazy weekend with a life of hecticosity. On Monday I did all the things... well most... that I had been putting off for the duration of nanowrimo. Yesterday I got very little sleep, did some work, had a meeting with my supervisor which went really well, went to a seminar, came home and collapsed.