what's up, party people? i've heard back from about three of my friends who are reading this. them and my professor make four. i've also turned my mom onto my website, which i was hesistant to do before because of that whole lesbian personal essay on here, but she handled it like a champ. thanks, mom, you're the best! and yes, i'll try to keep my use of the f-word to a minimum, sorry. so with her that makes five. and i think some of my classmates here in london have looked me up, so maybe i can get up to 10 people reading this thing regularly. whoo-hoo! that's enough of a fan club for me.

shout out to my good friend and fellow blogger, jeremy, who showed me how to hyperlink. please check out his blog, which, if i did it right, should link directly from his name. thanks, germ. please let me know if you want me to pick you up any euro comics. i'm trying to find a gift for you.

otherwise, this weekend hasn't been too shabby. friday night saw a friend of a friend very kindly coming out to meet me. i thought it was lovely, though i needed to cut the night short for some shut-eye. i still can't shake this jet lag. i'm always pooped by mid-afternoon. so i slept in until noon on saturday and went to the very famous portabello road when i woke up. i did a bit of shopping over there and headed to covent garden afterward where i finally found my very favorite beer on tap in a pub: caffreys. yum. it's a great irish ale i used to have in this one bar in SF. i was so thrilled to find it that i drank two pints. i'm surprised it took me so long. i thought i'd surely find it in nearly every pub, but no cigar (or irish ale). and i haven't been able to find it since. rats!

saturday night was supposed to be a big clubbing night, but i passed out by eleven after watching the incredibly cheesy eurovision -- a yearly show where each country sends its best pop music act to compete against the others, resulting in one bad song after another for three hours. winner gets bragging rights, i suppose. it's very american idol-esque, where the winner is determined by european voters, who are forbidden from voting for their own country through phone blocks or something. turkey took the prize, with belgium and russia right behind, respectively. what's tragic is that the UK entry scored zero points, though the british band was far from the worst act on display. every other country got some points. must be the post-iraq backlash, or so said the very funny BBC announcer. in any case, it put me to sleep damn quick and i never made it out to the clubs with my flatmates, who stumbled in at 4 am.

this was probably a good thing because sunday was spent at the ultra-cool area known as camden town, a street similar to the haight district in SF, packed full of head shops, funky clothes, cheap stores and good ethnic foods. so that's where all the london punks a la sex pistols hang out. i bought a bunch more stuff there and found things i had seen at portabello road the day before for about half the price. i went with a classmate (melissa) who is fast becoming a good friend. she got her nose pierced there and we split a crepe. as ice cube would say, today was a good day.

tomorrow holds work, though it shouldn't as it's a bank holiday in england, which means that most people have the day off and all the stores will be closed. we should also have the day off, but bossman wanted us to come in and work work work. i'm enjoying my work so far, but it'd be better if it were only four days a week. there's too much in the city i'd rather be doing. even after the first week, it already feels like any other office job, with coffee, computers, ringing phones, etc. nothing about it feels distinctly british. half of the staff is even american.

one of my fans (juanito de la plancha) says this blog is too sanitized and he wants to hear about the mega drama going on between my flatmates and the overabundance of girls here on the program. but again, my mom and professor are reading this, so it wouldn't be right for me to bring up the strange finnish boy who found his way to my flat's couch on friday night or the little spat between myself and some of the girls on saturday, so we'll leave those stories to one's imagination (or to the personal e-mails). but really, surprisingly, things have been calm in my household. with five girls, you'd think it'd be dramarama, but it's been nothing but fun in the sun. really. let's hope it stays that way. any major blowouts will be recorded here, but so far it's only been stuff like, "can you hurry up in the bathroom?" "please turn off that light," and "that guy was sooo NOT cute." i'll do a rundown of each of my flatmates and how they contribute to the great dynamic in a future entry, but for the time being, we all love each other. really.

signing off for now. but before i go i'd like to send a big hello to my boyfriend, who i'm really starting to miss. hi sugarbear!! the downside of living with so many girls is that much of the time is occupied with talking about boys and the more i talk about my latin stallion at home, the more my heart starts to hurt and the more i miss him. so hello pablo. i hope you remember to read this and hurry up and visit already, damnit! hugs and kisses to everyone else.