helen-louise's journal

a letter from America? (Sorry for the Proclaimers earworm there.)

Who wants a postcard from the US? Priority given to people that I won't actually be seeing at alt.polycon, as that would just be silly ;) Priority also given to people who answer this poll within the next 24 hours, as then I can print out your addresses onto labels to take with me, which greatly speeds up the whole postcard-writing process.
[Poll #1128263]
I've set the "who can view" to "none", so feel free to enter your address in the poll itself.

I have slowly been acquiring more organisation for my trip to alt.polycon 16. On Tuesday I went first into Kingston to have some passport photos taken, then to the Passport Office in central London to hand in my form for the Fasttrack service. Although my passport doesn't expire until March, the US is paranoid and likes you to have at least six months left. So I needed to renew the passport. Apparently, it normally takes "about 2 weeks" to renew an adult passport (at a cost of £72, iirc). The Fasttrack service is guaranteed to take no more than 10 days (at a cost of £97). There's also a Premium service which takes a mere 4 hours, but costs £114. In theory, with the trip being on 29th January, I could have just sent it the normal way, but I decided I'd pay a bit more to have it sped up.

Because I am stupid and pressed the wrong button on the passport photo machine, I have two sets of crap passport photos as well as the decent ones. I'm not sure what to do with them. Some of them will be ok for if I need another British Rail photocard or anything like that, but I'm not sure what to do with the mega-hairy ones (where there is BIG HAIR blocking out parts of my face). Perhaps someone would be able to commit art with them? That'd be nice.

I'm in the stage where the trip doesn't feel very real yet. Too many more weeks of work before it... I'm excited, but it seems like it's ages away.

But yay! I'm going to be meeting kshandra!

You know when you have a crazy impulsive idea, and it's either the most brilliant or the most stupid thing you've ever thought of?

Yeah, that.

OK, explain this to me: I was going to eat for dinner leftovers of two curries, aloo gobi and chana masala. Both are curries I eat and enjoy. So why did it disturb me to open the lid marked "aloo gobi" and find it was chana masala? If it had been chicken dhansak, I could understand it being disturbing, as I don't eat chicken. But I was planning to eat the chana masala anyway! Just I was expecting it to be in a box labelled "chana masala", not one labelled "aloo gobi"!

* baratron boggles at self quietly

Also I am getting ridiculously excited about the food possibilities in Minneapolis. I followed links from the alt.polycon website and found a cafe where everything can be vegan and a multitude of vegan pizzas. Eeee! I'm getting excited and hungry just looking at the menus!

Some parts of the US are terrible for finding food I can eat - I survived Colorado Springs only because I could still eat cheese at that time (with vast quantities of lactase enzyme). But other parts, like Seattle and New York, are heaven. Some of these cities are so good I end up coming home and feeling disappointed with the mere 5 vegan restaurants in my city. Richard says I'm a food tourist - I go to places to eat new food. Well, yeah! What other reason for travelling could there be? :P OK, I travel to see friends that I don't get to see otherwise, and to see places - but mostly, I travel for food. I don't know why anyone, knowing me, could find that surprising.