The Special People Club

1. Business Law. It could be VERY boring, but instead it is actually quite fun. The lecturer makes lots of pun jokes, and when he realised that one of my colleagues is French he took a moment to commiserate with her about the tragic loss of Marcel Marceau. 2. I was the MD of a theoretical company that constructed a self parking car out of legos . We made sure it was extra cool by having it play Smoke on the Water while it backed up. It worked really well, though it needed to have multi-park functions and look a little cooler in order to be a big seller. We came in third. We could have done better if we'd made better sales projections. But it was really fun. 3. Finished and turned in my MMA paper. 4. Did a culture immersion experience, wherein half of us went to one room and were given one culture, and the others were taken into another and given a completely different one. We would then go in and try to figure out the rules of interaction. To fit in in our culture, you had to:...

Snarkmeister D has commented that I seem to be watching too much TV. Sadly, there are two things in my life for the next few weeks....okay, maybe three. 1) Research and paper writing for Globalization, Mergers and Acquisitions, Leadership and Business Law 2) TV breaks I take to stop my eye-twitch 3) Attending lectures. You can have your choice. Which would you like to hear about? Personally, I've erred on the side of television but it's your call. Besides. That way I get to gloat about all of the cool things you don't get on BBC Canada and BBC America.

I've spent the day at school finishing up work on my MMA project and am taking a little break before diving back in to GLB . Took an hour-long nap to revitalize and calm down the eye-twitch that has started this week from all the stress, and now I'm watching TV and plan to do the NYT Crossword before diving back into Russian politics. There's a great Sunday afternoon show called Come Dine with Me on More 4. I think the original actually airs on Channel 4 through the week, but I only see it here on Sunday afternoons plus you get all five hosts at once. The premise is that 5 strangers who like to cook and entertain are grouped together, and over five nights they each host the others for dinner...each night they then rate the other's hosting abilities on a scale of 1 - 10 and the one who has the highest score at the end of the week wins £1000. All sorts of people volunteer for this. Actors and drama types. Housewives . Society dames. Gay men. Cash-in-hand men who aspi...

I am taking a break between completing my MMA writing and starting my GLB to spin around online and watch Michale Palin's New Europe on BBC 2. I have a complete and total crush on Michael Palin . I've always thought he was handsome, but he has aged exceptionally well and he's wickedly funny and clever. Hubba hubba . His series of travelogues are some of my favourite shows, a bit of history, a bit of culture, a bit of pithy observation...and a wealth of stories and experiences that feed my wanderlust when I am forced to stay put by the challenges of day to day life. Handsome. Articulate. Adventuresome. Funny. Land HO!

Bella Rossa shared this in the comments. (By the way, thanks, Bella. And welcome to Melinda June!) I'd known Charles II of Spain was a suspected inbred, but had never really looked at the chart. Oh my. Circles are very very bad. From Wikipedia : Charles II is known in Spanish history as El Hechizado ("The Bewitched") from the popular belief — to which Charles himself subscribed — that his physical and mental disabilities were caused by "sorcery" rather than the much more likely cause: centuries of inbreeding within the Habsburg dynasty (in which first cousin and uncle/niece matches were commonly used to preserve a prosperous family's hold on its multifarious territories)...His great-great-great grandmother, Joanna I , (Joanna the Mad), mother of the Spanish King Charles I who was also Holy Roman Emperor Charles V — became completely insane early in life; the fear of a taint of insanity ran through the Habsburgs . Charles descended from Joanna a total...

The BBC's show Who Do You Think You Are? is one of my favourites. Each season it takes eight or nine celebrities and follows them with cameras as they help them trace their ancestry around the world. It's great. Last season I saw Julia Sawalha (Saffron from AbFab ) learn about her Jordanian bedouin ancestors, Nigella Lawson pursue her Jewish teahouse -owning relatives into Victorian London, and David Dickenson learn he was an adopted Armenian, the illegitimate child of a wealthy heiress to a rug and textile importing fortune. Tonight, actor John Hurt has learned that he's not only not related to Irish nobility , but rather is descended from a man with a talent for "spin and self promotion," whose father was on the take while working at the Customs Office and who ended up in debtor's prison. Oh. And he also found out his great grandparents were first cousins. Bummer.

After telling me that he was going to sell my house, and then that he'd decided not to, my landlord changed his mind and told me yesterday that he IS going to sell my house. And the sale will be final in the end of October and the new owner wants £250 more a month for it and he wants me to vacate so he can gut the place and fix it up. This is incredibly bad timing. I don't have extra money lying around, I am in the middle of an excruciatingly difficult time at both work and school, and I don't know where I'm going to be working post MBA, which means I am not in a position to sign a lease. The timing is hard to be worse, actually. Luckily, my friend Nadine, who will be known as my personal savior from this point forward, has offered that I can move in with her so I don't have to start looking for a place until January. I will therefore vacate this place at the end of October and be a housemate until further notice. This means no visitors for awhile, but it also mean...

I came home from work around 8. It was rainy and cold and already dark. Feels like winter. I went upstairs, took off my makeup, put toothpaste on a zit growing on my chin to try to stop it in its tracks, which means I have a dried spot of green paste on my chin now. I changed into: - a Walt Disney World t-shirt in dull sage green that is so worn there are holes around the stretched out collar, the stitching looks white at the seams, the letters are cracked and peeling and there's red paint in spots from when I helped my friend Kimmy paint her bathroom; - a pair of flannel pjs that are way too big and way too short and have toasters and coffee pots and other silly things on them; - a pair of thick green wool socks that I got at REI in Seattle when they opened the new store there along I5; - my glasses. I look ridiculous, but I'm curled up under a blanket on the couch so the neighbors can't see me if they look in the window.

I was in the middle of many things today, so I'm now working on my research into the current political situation in Russia and listening to the Stephen Merchant show on BBC 6 Music online. If you're a music person (and I know many of you are,) you really owe it to yourself to spend two hours a week listening to this show. It's available on demand here . The premise is that Stephen Merchant (who viewers of Extras and the British version of The Office will know as Darren Lamb (Andy's agent) and Oggy respectively,) sits in the studio with Harry, Sammy, Rufus and Dan and they bullshit and offer up songs that you are likely not to have heard or hear often. The music is great and the conversation is funny. Today, for instance, they are discussing Harry's rather anti-climactic proposal to his fiance this week and why chopsticks have endured when the Chinese are obviously aware of the fork. (Good question, frankly.) And I am regularly getting ideas for new and new to ...

Facebook is an evil time-waster, sent to distract me from what I need to be doing.

FYI, when I published the post below, the message of success showed up with the key phrases in German.

We had visitors from an Austria business school today. They'd been traveling to schools in Boston and now in the UK, sitting in on lectures and interacting with the students to get a feel for the programmes in these places. This morning we had Leadership Skills, which was covering individual beliefs and values today, and the impact your personal belief system can have on you as a leader. Leadership lectures are always extremely interactive and they're very casual, so they fell into the groove easily. We did an exercise where we responded to specific statements such as, "I believe in equal pay for equal work for women and men, regardless of the circumstances," by moving to sections of the room marked strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Not only was it interesting to see the opinions of the people you knew, it was fascinating to see how cultural differences came out, as Indians, Austrians, women and men showed national and gender opinions, as well...

Tomorrow begins the home stretch of my MBA. As mentioned earlier, I face this with a mix of anticipation and trepidation. There is SO much to do in the next two and a half months, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think about it because I have no idea how I'm going to get it done. But when it IS done, I have my MBA, I get to go to a fabulous ball to celebrate on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, and I am ready to start a new phase of my life. I am itchy tonight with a racing mind, thinking of the pressures and the possibilities. So I did what all diligent students due the night before they go back to classes. I had a cocktail, packed my lunch and laid my clothes out so I'm ready in the morning. OK. So maybe the kiddies should have a Shirley Temple or apple juice instead of the bourbon. Though the bourbon would calm them down and keep them quiet. Anyway, you get the idea. Now for that good night's sleep.

If I'm not going to offer a profile featuring 29 levels of compatibility , there's a lot of other crap out there to fill the void. Wonderturtle linked to this quiz....and it looks like I'm a hottie ! Whoo HOOO ! (Note: not being a stupid hottie , I did not expose my breasts whilst whooping.) You Are Definitely a Hot Chick While your little black book isn't as thick as Paris Hilton's... You get the most dates of any girl you know It's your whole five star package that attracts men - Your looks, your charm, and your ability tie a cherry with your tongue. Are You A Hot Chick? And that led to this: You're a Part Time Maneater While you're not a black widow, you've definitely left a few guys feeling used and abused. You're only out for fun, but sometimes you get a little carried away with your flirting. Cute guys tend to make you lose control. You really can't help it! You're a good girl at heart... you just can't help but let your bad ...

Now that I'm well rested and tired of supposed perfect matches clogging my inbox, I have cancelled my eHarmony account. You've all scared me with your "Focus on the Family" information. And it isn't fair to the earnest people looking for a kind, generous soul mate to have my black sense of humour and unruliness cluttering up their match system. Plus I'm too cheap to pay the fee. Give me six months and if I'm still single I'll try match.com. I'll need blog fodder once I graduate.

While I was home, I had several people suggest that I consider online dating. Why, I don't know. Could be that I'm a retard where dating is concerned and don't have a lot of success getting past date one. Could be that they think I'm really fabulous and should have someone who worships me. Could be that they're worried I'll steal their husbands. (Which is me making a joke, FYI.) I gave a big phooey to this idea. I am confident that I will find someone in my own time in my own way, and until then I enjoy my own company just fine. But last night under the fog of jet lag I checked out eHarmony and they let me register for free and the next thing you know Lee in Chicago wants to meet me. As do seven others. And this is in one day. I have not paid the rather sizable fee so I can't see too many details in their profile, but thus far they seem like family-loving, physically fit, earnest types who like to take long romantic walks and want to pamper me. None o...

It is September 11th. And this is what I'm thinking. (If you want to know why I'm angry, there's also this .)

There is not enough Kath and Kim in the world. Just saying. For that matter, we could do with a bit more Campus Ladies , as well.

My brother has a theory that there is no more good watermelon in the world. Those seedless hybrid people have also taken all the flavour and deliciousness with them. And, sadly, this seems to have spread to the rest of the melon world... cantaloupes and musk melons and other melony goodness has all been fleeting this summer. We even tried a lobed melon from the farmer's market and got bupkiss . But tonight I bought a "perfectly ripened mini watermelon" at Waitrose . It is delicious. AND it is seedless. Flavourful, sweet, juicy and melt-in-the mouth perfect. Come to England, Bob. The watermelon is fine. Though it's probably from Spain.

After almost three weeks in the US, I am now back to reality and sitting on my sofa in the UK. I had a delightful time at home. My mom and I headed back to Iowa on Labor Day and we spent the remainder of the week hanging low and eating out. It was quite relaxing, and much needed. Mom took me back up to Minneapolis on Friday (or more specifically Hampton where my friend Tim met us and drove me the rest of the way.) Went to Red's Savoy Inn for pizza and a few Grain Belt Premiums, and then headed to the bar at Mancini's Char House where there was a bitchin ' live band with 50 year old guys in Hawaiian shirts and a buxom red-headed singer. They were AWESOME. They could not have been more predictable if they tried...we took a few guesses as to what they'd play and they hit every single one...Proud Mary with a bit of shimmy, Respect, a little Rolling Stones, Born In The USA, Old Time Rock n' Roll and Brown Eyed Girl. Randy people in their fifties and sixties doing a wic...