Nettles--the scourge of the outdoors

That plant right there is called a nettle.  Or a stinging nettle.  Or "Oh, for f***'s sake!" as I tend to call it every time I encounter it.  Apparently it exists in North America, too, but I'd never seen it or heard of it before moving to the UK.  Here, it's everywhere.  It's not exactly dangerous, but damn it, it's annoying.

You know exactly when you have even lightly touched it, because whatever touched it instantly stings and gets covered in bumps. For a first timer, the experience of leaning back in the grass and feeling your hand burn and swell up with bumps nearly instantly is just a tad disconcerting.  There is no label saying "don't worry, this will go away with no ill effects." For all you know, you may be covered in welts soon, they may have to amputate something, or you may have minutes left to live unless you get immediate medical attention.  Anyway, it stings.

This is because the leaves are covered in tiny hypodermic needles perfectly adapted to inject histamine into whatever unfortunate patch of skin it encounters.  It doesn't wait for you to be allergic so it can create a histamine response, like civilized plants do.  The little devil plant carries its own supply of histamine to make for damn sure you're temporarily allergic.  That's why you swell up immediately.  That's what histamine does.  The burning comes from something else, and I imagine it's the acidic blood from the Alien movies.

And it's just plain green and boring looking.  At least poison ivy looks somewhat distinctive to warn you to steer clear.  Nettles don't warn you.  They derive their little plant joy from luring in unsuspecting people and ruining their lovely day outside.  Evil little f***ers!

A basic UK civics lesson for mama and papa

The UK just had a general election for the leadership of the government of the kingdom (it's a kingdom, it's in the name), and I tried unsuccessfully to explain what was going on to my mother.  When I told my colleagues about that, they weren't surprised.  They even pointed out that the US government was created by a bunch of British folks that were frustrated by the British government, so it only makes sense that they'd try to make something a bit more sensible.

First of all, let's acknowledge that the UK government had no moment of creation like the US government did.  It grew organically over the span of a millennium or more.

So, start at the top with the head of state.  That's the Queen.  She has to sign off on the laws that are passed in Parliament before they are official, just like the President of the USA has to sign the laws before they're official.  Nothing is official without her approval.  Obviously, she's not elected.

The election was for Parliament, but only one half of it.  Parliament is made up of two houses: the House of Lords and the House of Commons.  The Lords are not elected.  They are lords and dukes and earls, that sort of thing.  It's the house of aristocracy and clergy, and it used to hold most of the power.  Now it has very little.  The real power is with the House of Commons.  It is the legislature, writing and passing all the laws.  It is the one that is elected.  Every town elects a member of parliament (MP for short), and the boundaries of the districts are often goofy.

Those MP's are members of parties, just as in the USA, but there are more represented ones than our two.  The two largest are the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.  There are also the Liberal Democrats (LibDems, another left party), the Green Party (environmentalists), the UK Independence Party (UKIP, very conservative anti-EU and anti-immgrants), the Scottish National Party (SNP, that supported the secession referendum), and a few smaller parties.  All of those parties have at least one MP,  The more MP's a party has, the bigger a say it has in creating policy. Every party has a leader.  The party leader guides the party agenda, proposing policies that reflect their priorities.  The Conservative Party leader is David Cameron and the Labour Party leader was Ed Milliband (until Labour did poorly in the election).  The party leader is usually an MP, but not always.  UKIP's leader is Nigel Farage, who is not an MP at all, but he does gather support for the party and its policies.

The point is obviously to get a majority of seats in the House of Commons.  If a party manages to do that, then the leader of that party is now the Prime Minister.  The Prime Minister is not the head of state.  That's the Queen.  The PM is the leader of the majority party in the legislature, so he or she is the head of the government.  In this election, the Conservatives won just over half the seats, so David Cameron is, and remains, the Prime Minister.  Cameron represents his party, but when people went to the polls, they only got to vote on the MP from their district. In 5 years, the process will happen again.

That's about as well as I can explain it.

As active as I've ever been

It has been three months since I blogged publicly, but not because I've stopped thinking.  It's more because my thoughts have been uncertain on a great many things, and I like sorting out my confusion privately.  I blog privately, which is the modern techie way of saying I keep a journal, and when my musings come to any certainty, I like to share them publicly.  The simple fact that I do that helps remind me that the facebook-twitterverse is full of what people want me to see.  That explains all the gym photos I encounter.

I have no gym body to share, nor do I have stories of discovering the joys of steamed vegetables.  The latter would probably worry you, I imagine.  However, this particular week has reminded me that I've successfully become far more active than I ever had been before.  Sunday was softball practice and a run, Monday was beach volleyball and beer, Tuesday was a league softball game and beer, Wednesday was indoor volleyball and beer, Thursday was supposed to be another league softball game but got rained out, and today is tennis.  And probably beer.  My hope when moving to London was to find a more convenient environment in which to live an active life.  Apparently I've been somewhat successful.  A colleague said to me yesterday that women so often seem to be able to get together for no reason other than having company, while men "always seem to have to be doing something."  Well, she's right about me, that's for sure.  For that reason, meetup.com is a godsend.

Volleyball was my first discovery in London.  It's indoor and inherently social, so it seemed a perfect fit.  I found a group that is fun and likes to go out for a post game drink, and that's exactly what I was hoping for.  Volleyball is just about the perfect social game, because everyone rotation gives everyone a chance to do everything, and it's hard for one person to dominate everything.  Even if one person does, it's rude and people will start to avoid him/her.  It's pretty easy to pick up on the game, as evidenced by the fact that I am getting better quickly.  It now occupies my Wednesday nights every week, and used to also occupy my Sunday mornings until I found softball.

Would you believe that they play softball in the UK?  I thought it unlikely, too, so I didn't even search for it.  Then I got a suggestion from meetup.com to check out a new group.  There are slow pitch leagues, fast pitch leagues, and even full baseball leagues. There aren't too many purpose-built fields yet (though some are being built), so they just play in the parks.  I decided to stop by and meet the slow pitch folks, and apparently they are quite intensely into the game.  I'm not even that good, but they were friendly anyway just because I'm American and already knew the rules.  I ended up getting along with them well enough that they invited me to play in a tournament with them.  I didn't have a glove, and it's not easy to find a sports shop that sells any here, but luckily I have a kind brother with nearly identical sized hands that found me a good one and shipped it over.  I successfully caught one fly ball and hit a double during my 4 games at this tournament, so they asked me to join the team.  Two, actually, since there's a London city league and a Windsor League west of town (many of my teammates are British Airways employees that live near Heathrow).  This Tuesday, for the first time in my life, I played an actual softball game that counted for something.  I've played socially before, but never for a team that had jerseys, umpires, and league standings and everything.  I chased down one fly ball, gunned down a guy trying to stretch a single into a double, and got a single myself, so no one is regretting the decision yet to invite me onto the team, which is nice.  We won the game, too.

I've always loved playing sports, I'm just not very good at them.  As a kid, we'd play whatever was in season or whatever could be played with the number of available friends we had that day.  At Cornell High School, however, the teams were rather limited.  Football, basketball, baseball, and golf were the only guys choices, none of which are my strengths.  We did start a tennis team my senior year, and I joined the golf team because they only had 4 people and needed one more to field a team.  It took me about 10 years before I found another team of anything to join, and that was a volleyball team and soccer team that played over an hour's drive away from where I lived.  That was difficult to keep in my schedule.  Now, all of the sudden, options seem to abound.

I don't know what the health effects will be, since all my teams like to grab a beer after games, but I sure am having fun.