The Final List...Stream of Consciousness Style

Here it is...the last installment of the 30 Things in 30 Days. Today, there is no particular theme to the 30 things, other than the fact that there are 30 things.

Here are some things I did yesterday:

1. I walked into Redhill.
2. I got my hair cut.
3. I bought some groceries.
4. Last night, Mich and I watched The Ballad of Jack and Rose, a film starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
5. Daniel Day-Lewis is Michelle's favorite actor.

The fact that it stars Daniel Day-Lewis probably tells you all you need to know about the type of movie it was. After the film was over, I commented to Michelle, "Well, like all Daniel Day-Lewis films, that was strangely uplifting and made me feel happy inside." Please note the use of irony here, which is something that I am known for. I then made the following observation, which brings us to item 6.

6. Bill Murray is funnier than Daniel Day-Lewis.

I'll try not to ramble this much between each item, but Dalton and Maggie have the following things that they want to say:

7. Dalton likes Ben Ten.
8. Maggie likes dressing up.

Anyway, today is a beautiful, sunny day and it is also the day of the London-Brighton Bike Ride, and all the bikers are riding out in front of our house. They've been coming by since at least 7:30 this morning, and I've taken a few photos and a video, which will take up the next few items on the list.

9.

10.

11.

In case you can't tell, the kids are squirting the bikers with water guns, which is what is making the bikers yell. This was actually recommended to us by our neighbor, and to be fair, a good number of the bikers actually do like it, as it is cooling them off during their long ride to Brighton.

I tried desperately to get Dalton and Maggie to contribute more to these lists, but neither one of them seemed particularly interested. I guess this isn't terribly surprising, but I will now give an example of some of our conversations during our travels for number 12.

12. Me: "So, did you like that, Dalton?"
Dalton: "Yeah, I guess."
Me: "So what has been your favorite thing about Italy so far?"
Dalton: "Well, I liked feeding the pigeons."
13. Michelle has just informed Dalton that we will take a walk around the lake this afternoon - to which Dalton responded, "Can I get a stick and whack things?" If you were wondering about Dalton's personality, then you probably have a pretty good indicator right there.
14. Dalton clarifies that he "chops plants heads off".
15. We've been allowed to borrow a neighbor's Playstation until we return home. This is quite an interesting development, and right now I'm enjoying the fact that I have a natural capability for video games, which means that I beat Dalton every time we race, much to his chagrin. I figure I better enjoy it while I can.
16. Originally, I came up with several different ideas for these lists, some of which didn't make it because it's actually awfully hard to come up with thirty things in any one particular category. One of the lists that didn't make it was 30 of my favorite books. Among other lists that didn't make it:
17. 30 Differences in the Grocery Stores - such as things you can find here that you can't find in the States (scones, clotted cream, double cream) and things that you can't normally find here (among other things, Jell-O, Oreos, and pancake mix).
18. 30 Headlines from the English Tabloids - this one was nixed after I decided that the headlines don't make any sense without the article to go with it. Not that the headlines really make sense anyway.
19. 30 websites - I guess I actually made a variation of this one, which was my last post, but to be fair, some of those I found for the first time when making that list.
20. Michelle suggests, "30 Places Dalton has placed his bony elbows on my body." I think this is mainly aimed at the fact that Dalton has bony elbows and he likes to lean/lay all over us.
21. Here's a couple of lines from some of my favorite poems:
"Oh, freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee." - Vogon poetry, as quoted by Douglas Adams
22. "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul" - Invictus, William Ernest Henley
23. "I stand before you, to sit behind you, to tell you of something I know nothing about." - I don't know who this is by, but I remember it from a childhood poetry book. I think there should be a law that before any public debate between politicians they should have to recite these lines.
24. Another list that didn't make it was 30 Useless Things I Know - which was to contain such delights as: "There's no word that rhymes with orange", and "In the English language, the letter combination 'ough' can be pronounced at least seven different ways - as in bought, cough, dough, slough, enough, plough, and my favorite hiccoughed. Why does everyone think English is so hard?
25. The falsehoods in my first "30 Things" post were #3 (I don't like rutabaga), #5 (I never forgot the rations on a Scouting trip), #9 (I haven't driven a car over 120 miles an hour), #11 (I have never been cow-tipping), #17 (I have been locked out of the hotel room, but never in a towel), #22 (I haven't actually read every Shakespeare play, just most of them), and #26 (I can't dance). The rest are true, except that Roger Rabbit is not rated 'R'. And, perhaps, just maybe, my new sister-in-law trusts me to play the "Catch me when I fall" game?
26. Our washing machine broke this past week. In a general vote by members of our household, this was considered not to be a good thing. This cuts our total functioning appliance count by 33%.
27. Speaking of appliances, we actually still don't know what all the little symbols on the stove mean. Not that it matters, because we (well, I) only use one setting. Quite frankly, I only use 1 temperature setting as well.
28. One of the things that I first found out after coming here which I thought was rather odd was that our cold water is stored in the house. It's actually in a huge styrofoam box up in the attic. This is really strange to me, but it is literally a box about the size of a small jacuzzi full of cold water in the attic. I still don't know why because we certainly didn't have any such thing in our attic in the States.
29. I had to mow the grass yesterday. This is an interesting thing to me, if only for the fact that I have to use an electric mower. Our back garden is approximately 10' x 12', which would take about, oh, five minutes to mow with a gas mower, including the time to take the mower out of storage and put it back. However, electric mowers seem to be predicated on the idea that they don't actually want to harm the grass, and so the mower just makes a loud noise, thus scaring the grass back into the ground, where it belongs. This means that mowing our back garden takes about half an hour. Part of me is convinced that electric mowers were created just to make people feel that mowing their grass is a chore.
And the last thing on the last list is...
30. This one.