My voice

I lost my voice today, in the literal sense (icky flu/cold) and found it, figuratively, online in debates about politics on facebook. In general, I don't really know what I think until I can articulate it well in a discussion. Which is why I so rarely offer my opinion in real life debates, because until I can express myself clearly and know both the facts and feelings, I tend to remain very much in the middle. I think and mull and ponder and inwardly question, try on different sides of an argument, and then if I do end up on one side, I'm very passionate about what I believe or think. Historically, there's always been a really small percentage of things that end up in that category, although I think as I get older I'm a little more willing to risk speaking out before I get to the 100% sure stage. And of course I'm talking about things that hit close to home. I love sparking up a discussion about whether coincidences are meaningful, or criticizing/praising the musical talent on the X Factor (which, by the way, I think is so much more interesting than American Idol!). But on things that do matter to me, it takes a while for me to get to the point where I will confront someone, or argue a point, and I got there this week (and especially today) with the election. I even surprised myself to find I was actually enjoying the confrontation.

I went to see Quantom Solace today - yay Bond! It was fun to go with my flatmate, and I absolutely love walking to the movies, there's a great theater just around the corner. Did not love paying £9.60 for a ticket...but this has been a weekend of excess. I went with my flatmates to a really nice pub for dinner last night, taking taxi there and back (it's really cold and I'm sick, alright?) and forgetting the reason I can afford to live in my amazing flat is precisely because I do not spend money like that. :)

The place was very much a meat market, or whatever the London equivalent is. I find the raw singles scene so fascinating, we were in a popular spot in Notting Hill, so the girls were polished and well dressed, and the men basically the same. The looks by the women sussing up the competition are followed by the men evaluating the options, it's all so sophisticated and creepy. The adult crowd is much more separate from the university crowd, which makes a huge difference from the icky feeling places I remember in Raleigh. We were only stuck passively ignoring the two oddly tall and skinny men chatting us up for the one drink, then we had our booking at 9:30 and retreated upstairs to enjoy the yummy food.

I found this site on techcrunch called "memiary.com" which lets you say 5 things you did that day and tracks it for you. Which is so cool, because that's a small part of why I journal, to take notice of what I'm doing every day...so this way I can just journal my thoughts, not mindlessly record events. Also, I can look back over events and start taking stock of just how pointless some things are, or repetitive, or destructive, or good...who knows!

um, sleet? snow?

Well, this is what I get for saying to my mom and some friends how London is just chilly and dreary longer than NC, not necessarily REALLY cold, except for the heart of January/February. Wrong! It was snowing in north London in last night, and sleeting when I was walking home from the tube last night after work! It's October, what's going on? My roof terrace was iced over this morning, if that keeps up we'll be able to have slip n' slide across the roof parties in December.

And as a consequence of this frigid temperature drop, and probably also due to the long hours outside in the cold on Sunday, I feel like doodoo today. So I'm home sick from work, although still worked pretty much all morning, was a good time to clear through the backlog of my emails.

It's nice though, I'm getting to listing to last.fm instead of the crappy pop radio we have on at work, and find some new bands. I've started using all the social ways you can listen to friends' stations, partly because it's fun, and partly in my ever-increasing attempt to be a web 2.0 geek to be better at my job :)

I haven't posted much about politics on this blog, and I'll probably keep it that way after this until the election is over. But I will say that it is really freaking me out how crazy people are. When I see video clips of people who honestly believe that Obama is a Muslim, and thus a terrorist, it's scary to think that the battle has only just begun if he wins. People are so passionately divided, and I don't really see either side having any intention of fixing that. Obama's platform at least says he wants to, and I hope that if he wins that wasn't just lip service, but if the Republicans only want to have it their way and don't do anything to help bridge the divide, it won't matter.