That's The Way It Was And We Liked It! We Loved It!

I'm looking at some recent posts and realizing I've come across as rather cranky. (Examples: here, here, and here.) It doesn't really sell a blog to come off as shrill, does it? (Oh, wait, maybe it does.) Others have noticed it, too. Mrs. Werbenmanjensen says, "You hate everything." Friends who have noticed this post here and on Facebook have commented on it. Some have correctly wondered if turning 40 has affected me. (Did I forget to mention that I turned 40 on the blog? What an omission!). I'm willing to consider this as a possible explanation. But anyway ... over the weekend Mrs. W and I went to visit the lovely beach town of Brighton, also known as "London-by-the-Sea," and I pledged to become a new person, more loving and life-affirming in my words and deeds. So I will have to say no to cranky posts in the future as much as possible.

Unless it involves banks.

Now, This

Like George W. Bush and the presidency, I spend more time breaking from blogging than actually blogging. But it's true: I can't blog for a few days. I will update the twitter feed frequently (right sidebar, underneath the links). But before I go, I hear from Annie Mole that Boris is announcing Tube fare increases today. Otherwise, go read a brother blog like Kevboy's realm.

And for your enjoyment, to celebrate the start of football season:

New Blogroll Addition

I've put brother blog Kevboy's Realm on the blogroll. Go visit a brother blogger who's in need of some inspiration to keep it up if you have a chance. Are there any other candidates for blogrolling? I can think of one, but only if the blogger in question wants to be added.

Like Frampton, London Comes Alive

Howdy. London has shaken itself of 18 months of March and become a summertime city. After the near-nonstop rain of last summer (I saw my breath on July 31--no joke) nothing could be more welcome. Mrs. Werbenmanjensen and I decided to take a long walk through the city, to the South Bank, and then take a detour through Wapping on the way back home. Photos from it are immediately downstairs.

Among the places we went was the Wapping steps (pictured below) that led to Execution Dock, where pirates were executed. Their bodies were left to hang at the low-water mark, and then the tide was allowed to wash over their heads three times, a ceremony known as the "Grace of Wapping."

Also, as you can see, I've taken advantage of my new iPhone and a ShoZu account to do some mobile blogging. Expect more of this in the future.

Hi

Apologies for the very very light posting of late. The move and unpacking from it have consumed more of our lives than we care to say. In addition, I've had a couple of medical issues that needed to get sorted out, one of which required minor surgery and the other of which requires continued appointments with medical professionals. So I've spent far too much time in doctors' offices and not nearly enough on the blog. I hope April is a better month.

Happy Anniversary To Me

It was two years ago today that I arrived here in London for semi-permanent residency.

Uh, Hi!

Apologies for not posting this week. We're getting ready for a kind of big event around here, and besides, not much is happening. How many similar pictures of the same sunrise do you really need?

But while we're at it, let us give a big American whoop-de-do cheer for Kikkan Randall, the first American to win a top-level nordic skiing event since, well, the article doesn't say, but probably since Bill Koch invented the skate stride. And thanks to Eurosport, I got to watch it live.

New Additions

I've added the divine blog What do I know? to the blogroll on the right, since author KathyF has been a recent commenter here with some good thoughts. She is living a similar life to us (American in Britain), although her setting appears a little more bucolic and her dietary choices are a little more disciplined, in a good way. Plus her choice in Friday animal blogging involves real animals, not these furry parasites I portray. (I hope she appreciates my lone weak effort at cowblogging.)

Uh, hi!

We did that thing again, that thing we're not supposed to do, which is to say go without posting for a week or more. Reasons? Well, they're all kind of lame, which is to say, rainy day after rainy day, car bomb attempts, I was in a bit of a mishap, etc. We'll try to get back on the blogging wagon today.

Blogroll, Please ...

Two new additions to the blogroll: Looking Around A Bit, by some friends who have quit their jobs (OK, in one case, the job quit the friend) to travel the world, and Unlikely Triathlete, by a family friend who shares an interest that I have.

Uh, hi!

We again have broken the law of blogdom: Do not go weeks without posting.

Bad bloggers! Bad naughty bloggers.

We'll do better in the future.

We'll probably miss our target of 365 posts for this year, too.

In any case, we have plenty built up, so we ought to have no shortage of content.

The Continuing Saga Of The Best Bureaucracy ...

Uh, hi! "Where have Smitty and the delightful Mrs. Werbenmanjensen been?" you may be asking yourself. Well, jetlag hit me hard, and I seemed to have picked up a virus along the way. I spent 36 of the 72 hours of Friday-Saturday-Sunday asleep, not leaving a whole lot of time for anything but the minimum necessary to live.

And now the real bloggage begins.

I meant to post on this last year, but plain forgot. One of my favorite little absurdities of British life is the TV License. I don't actually mind paying the fee, as it's a tax to finance the BBC, and having a major broadcaster accountable to the public is, in my opinion, more desirable than a broadcaster accountable to corporations and their shareholders, who are in it for the money alone. Given that there's a strong mix of both public and private broadcasters in Britain, I'd say the marketplace of ideas is well-rounded.

So paying the license is not the absurd part. The absurd part is the following fine print on the back: "If you are registered blind, you can claim a 50 percent concession on your license fee."

Please: If you're blind, it's just a radio, and you don't license radios.

Wisdom(?) Of Crowds

I'm not enough of a blogger to write philosophically about blogging, but at this professional conference I've been attending for the last three days, I've heard the phrase "wisdom of crowds" used twice to describe the online, interactive world (once by Steve Case, particularly when referring to sites (like this one) that provide readers with the opportunity to comment.

This is not aimed at the commenters on this particular blog, who are all so very wise, but rather to crowds in general. I don't think crowd-think always leads to wise conclusions. In fact, when I think of crowd behavior, I think of events similar to this:



I hope the internet world drops this buzz-phrase soon.

We'll Be Right Back After This Short Break

Greetings. The Werbenmanjensens have to take a short break, but we'll be back posting in a couple of days. Why? We can't tell you just yet. But since we can't answer a question, maybe They Might Be Giants can answer a different one: Namely, Why Does The Sun Shine?



(Listen for a short party political announcement toward the end.)

A Visitor Pops By

The blogger formerly known as Aussie Sarah, now just Sarah, of Traveling Texans, stopped into London for a few days. Mrs. W and I met up with her at a cafe in Soho, where much tea was consumed. You can read about her trip to the Beatrix Potter museum here and here.

Hats off to her for the long haul up to the Lake District. I would have taken a train. Life's too short to spend nine hours driving on the left.

This might also be a good time to note that I've finally gotten around to adding Traveling Texans to my blogroll. Also note Miles David Moore's blog has been added to our blogroll. If you don't know Miles, he is America's greatest living poet, and I don't say that just because he's my friend. He also has interesting views about the arts in general, film and theater in particular.

We Were This Close

A year ago today, Mrs. Werbenmanjensen and I started this blog. This is post no. 361, so we didn't quite meet our goal of one post a day. We'll try to do better in the future.

YouTube Blues

In case anybody's wondering what the big white space is downstairs under the "Reunited ..." post, it appears that YouTube is doing some updating and the video that occupied the space is now pending. Given that the YouTube video in question contained copyrighted material from George Lucas, I have some fears that it will disappear forever.

(Shakes fist in general direction of Skywalker Ranch.)

UPDATED: Monday Jan. 15. Looks like it's back. Foiled you again, George Lucas!

New Blogger: Maybe We Should Consider Classic Blogger?

Downstairs, I noted that that New Blogger was a hit. Then, one of the top 20 blogs in the blogosphere was swallowed during the migration process, causing those of us who gather there to do silly things like this and this. Then Mrs. Werbenmanjensen had her odyssey. It may be time for the marketing folks at Blogger/Google to try the Classic Coke escape hatch.

New Blogger: It's A Hit!

I've just moved Americans Amuck over to the "new" blogger, which looks to the reader, and, frankly, the user, a lot like the "old" blogger. Google has been beta-testing this new platform for awhile, but I've resisted until this point. Now it appears that they're trying to push us all onto this new platform, which is fine, so I'll go along with it. There are more capabilities to the "new" blogger that will allow you to make your blog look like the more sophisticated ones on TypePad or WordPress (please do not mention MySpace in MyPresence--too many unicorns and ducklings and kittens and puppies and script fonts over in that hellhole). This is a keep it simple blog, so the main difference you will notice is that I've begun applying labels beneath each post. If you click on a label, it will allow you to read all the posts in a given category, assuming I have the patience to go back through and put labels on all 330-some posts we've written in the last year. I would like to do it, given that I hope this blog can be useful for anybody who is traveling or moving here. Whether I have the time or the patience is another matter entirely.

What Is This?

An American couple--he an Illinois boy, she a Jersey girl--take an assignment in London, UK. She takes a transfer, he quits his job and goes freelance. Simple, eh?

(Let me just add that I will be fiddling with the template so I don't have the embarassing Blogger-newbie "edit me" links on the side. I know how to do this, I just don't have the time just yet to do it right.)