So I’m feeling a bit lonely today. Not only am I lucid enough to have a realistic idea of how slowly time is passing but Sameer has gone off to campus to sort out his student card and his first assignment. His classes start tomorrow. So far today, I’ve made a trip to the market downstairs to get Strawberry Yoghurt Frosted Cheerios and a Downy Ball, bought a Subway sandwich, and saved a lady’s hat from traffic.
Cheerios are similar to Honey Nut O’s back home (they have that flavor too) but the O’s are really tiny in comparison. They’re tasty but obviously junk food cereal. As you know, I usually like to have both healthy cereal (low GI and fiberful) and junk food cereal (high in sugar, salt, and fat, and low in fibre) in the cupboard. My instant oats and fresh blueberries served me well but I felt I needed a change and some crunch. So Cheerios it was. They’re pretty good. Crunchy, tasty and with the cheerfully deceptive tang of strawberry. Of course, I was starving an hour after breakfast but, contrary to what the All Bran Flakes people say, you can’t get it all from one cereal. So I had some of those disgusting Oke-Dokes we got — artifically flavored buttered popcorn in a bag the size of toddler. Costs $3 and Sameer managed to polish most of it off in one sitting. I had to forcefully remove them from him. I much prefer my Garrett’s Caramel Crisp popcorn, which cost $2.50 for about one tenth the serving but lasts three times as long.
Uhm, what? Oh yes. The Downy Ball. Downy is a fabric softener that they have here. We bought some but couldn’t use it because you have to put it into a little plastic ball and pop it in with the wash. I bought it in anticipation of laundry day, which will probably be tomorrow. (I also anticipate that Ferzana will Skype Call us just as we head off to do the washing.)
Funny thing about the US – all their washing powder is, well, liquid. We went wandering up and down aisles at Target when we first got here, looking for a box of washing powder and we just couldn’t find it. It didn’t help that it was so hard to find a label that said “detergent” anywhere on the bottles. We had to really look hard to find them. Eventually we settled on Tide, because it sounded familiar. I just found it so strange because in SA and also in the UK, they have powder detergent and liquid fabric softener, or those dissolving cubes that the O’ Donaghues had. But liquid and liquid? It was just a bit strange. Anyway, now we have our Downy ball so we can add fabric softener to the wash.
Anyway, after breakfast I surfed the Net, a lot. Not in the sense of flicking from site to site looking at arb stuff but more in the looking for interesting articles to read. That meant trips to Salon, Slate, and the New York Times. And of course my compulsory stop at YouTube. And then it was lunch time, what do you know?
So, I had $5.90 to my name and didn’t think that I should use all of it. I considered going back down to the market for soup but I got there and all the soup smelled so disgusting I gave up. (Note to self: cook your own soup!) Considered going to Panda Express – my new favourite take-out place – for Chinese but decided to try to save some money and instead went to Subway. It’s the advertising I tell you. They have this advert that comes on no less than 15 times a day (not even exaggerating) and it’s people in different situation making hand signals and the soundtrack goes “Five! Five Dollar! Five Dollar Footlong! At Subway!” and after about the third time I saw it I started singing along every time it comes on and it drives Sameer absolutely crazy. 
On the way back, I saw a woman in a Cubs hat crossing the street, pulling a huge cart piled high with boxes and bags. The wind swept her hat off her head and into the traffic. She looked at the hat kind of regretfully as it blew further and further away from her, and then just walked off. I waited for the lights to go red, then made my way between the cars to retrieve her hat, which had stopped rolling around. Then I ran after her and gave it back. She seemed surprised and I felt like I’d done a good deed. Then I felt really fatigued and tired. I guess the flu may be over but I’m still recovering.
Anyway, many jalapenos later, I’m back at the PC. There was a brief interlude with the parents who, I think were just trying to show the family how Skype video chats work, coz they got me to dig out the webcam and hook it up and point around the room with it and asked me what I’ve been up to and I gave them the same answer I’ve given them the last three days – nothing much. Sad, boring but true.
Right now I’m watching the Battlestar Galactica season 1 episode “Hand of God” and I’ve finally found out which episode of the series the song Wander my Friends is from. 
Whenever I listen to that I try to remember what the context was, because it’s so Irish and seemingly out of place in the BSG world, and now I remember, so yay! I thought it was pretty well used in the episode – not too overbearing or too emotional.
They’re having a BSG marathon on the Sci-Fi channel – nothing but BSG from 8am to 6pm this evening. 
It’s a great way to catch up with everything before season 4. I think they’ll probably run through all three preceding seasons before Friday. It’s cool because you forget about all the tiny things that happen to the characters, little mysteries that get glossed over or forgotten, places characters have come from and things that motivate them. I am so psyched for season four! At least I don’t have long to wait – season four premiers this Friday “10/9 central”. I have cleared my nonexistant calendar.
I’ve also noticed that the intro here in the States is different from the one they show in the UK and in SA. It’s got some arb mood music instead of the awesome mantra that we get with our intro. (Sorry Bear but you know Raya’s intro is way cooler!) For those of you who’ve never seen Battlestar, here’s a taster, along with Bear McCreary and Raya Yarbrough’s awesome Hindi inspired intro.
