Captain's Blog:

Been a while, sorry I haven't posted!

It's been a wild past few days. Friday was rough, I had to deal with the bank telling me it could take six weeks to cash my student loan checks, DHL for trying to charge 200 pounds in VAT on my laptop, and the landlord for thinking we'd all magically know what his plans were with the phone line. Not a good time. I'm getting through it, hopefully it'll all be resolved soon, but it was not fun. I needed to relax. I needed beer. Good thing the beer festival started that night!

Admission is buying your own pint glass, then you buy cheap pints or half pints with a selection of about 130 ales, ciders, and perries (like cider only with pears). I did not get wasted drunk, but I did get a very nice buzz out of it all. This was also a big opportunity to mingle - most of the people there were over 40, but enough were in my age range to talk to.

Saturday I was all over the place. There was an oyster festival in the town event square, so I had to try my first oyster. Not my new favorite food, but not as bad as I feared either. If a plate of these were put in front of me, I'd eat 'em. I also bought a couple pints of strawberries (much lighter in flavor to good ol' American berries, but they work), a block of strong cheddar, a bag of coffee, and a much-needed trash bin for our house. I came home and wrote a piece for class that was supposed to be first-person distinctive voice; I chose to write in the voice of the immigration officer who kept me for four hours. Turns out the dude has some issues. Oddly enough, I was pretty tired after all that. I was all ready to turn in a bit early, but no, the beer festival called yet again. This time I hung out almost exclusively with a few people from my course, one of which was from last year so we pumped her for gossip. We tried our hand at tabletop shuffleboard, turns out we suck at it. We also chatted it up with some of the bar staff for a while - Joe got a great idea for an article, I was this close to getting a 4-pint beer jug gratis, and we ended up getting locked in after closing time. That was just plain awesome, we got to drink some of what was left on the house. A few other people there at the time were just gone, seriously wasted, they were drinking from the dreg bucket. They made me drink from the dreg bucket. I drank from the dreg bucket. Thank God I'm still alive.

Today's been very quiet, no complaints there. Did laundry, edited my pieces for this week, played some games, good times. It's cold and rainy here. That's Cornwall for ya.