Zerbey's Journal: October 20th, 2004

Got back from England on October 13th. Was so nice to be back in my home country for 2 weeks. It's very surprising what you miss (mainly food, in my case...). I didn't miss the cold weather or the prices though.... I forgot how much of a rip off England is!! The equivalent of $1.60 for a bottle of Coke, with 90ml less coke in it, that doesn't taste as good. Horrors!

Still, I pigged out on curry, proper chips and Batemans. Even better, I found out I have a cousin who works for Batemans who is going to see about getting me some cases shipped over. Joy! Also rediscovered Mr Kipling cakes, Lincolnshire sausages and cold tea loaf. Needless to say, I acquired the recipes for the latter two. The former, you can buy in the States thankfully.

My home town of Boston really hasn't changed much. This comes as no surprise to me, it hardly changed at all in the 18 years I lived there. A few new buildings (they call it a shopping center... it's not, it's 6 new buildings and they turned a street into a pedestrian area) and that's it. The traffic has certainly increased, we've been asking for a bypass for 50 years and they're still discussing it. Much quicker to walk! Everything seemed smaller, even my parents house. I'm told this is a fairly normal experience. But it's still weird.

The biggest thing for me though was to see my family again, all my little cousins are now not so little and I suddenly feel really old... :)

Strange emotions... I found myself happy to be back in my home and where I supposedly "belong", I'd missed England so much over the last 4 years but I was really surprised how homesick for America I was whilst I was there. When I first arrived, I didn't feel like an Englishman returning home, I felt like an outsider visiting a foreign land. It took about a week before I started to feel like I was truly "back". My frame of mind after returning is this... America has become my home and it's were I intend to live for the foreseeable future, but 4 years is far too long to be away from my homeland and it has made me appreciate it all the more. I intend to visit it much more often in the future!

It has been determined that Thomas loves flying, I was expecting 9 hours of hell but he remained on best behaviour for the whole trip and behaved so cutely that he made the 9 hours fly by in no time. What a great kid he is... :) I must tip my hat to British Airways, I flew on them in 2000 and was very impressed and I flew on them again for this trip and was equally impressed. The service was excellent, the plane was excellent (a Boeing 777) and the food was excellent too. What more can I ask for? Oh yes, what did you do with the dance music radio station you used to have??? Bring it back! Immediately!!

Meanwhilst, back in Florida and we got hit by ANOTHER tropical storm whilst I was gone. His name was Matthew and he didn't do any significant damage (and he didn't hit anywhere near were I live anyway). Can this be the last one? Please? We have a new Air Conditioner so the house feels wonderful - this is something we've been needing for a long time but we didn't have enough portraits of dead presidents until now.

Went back to work the day after I arrived home and haven't had a day off since. I'm really tired but am slowly getting over my jetlag. Thomas was completely messed up on his arrival to England, he was sleeping all day and staying up all night. He adjusted back to EDT fairly well though, thankfully.

To the Yankees. Start pitching the ball properly, and when a ball is pitched to you - hit it out of the ball park. We are not losing the World Series again! And to Boston, you're putting up a fine challenge but we'll still beat you tonight *thrrp!*. Hopefully.