You may or may not have noticed three recent additions to the Weather bar along the left side of your browser window. I recently figured out how to pull international information from weather.com’s XOAP server so I added links to weather in Tel Aviv, Baghdad and London to my list of weather in places that are important to me. Israel because that’s part of my tribe (as diluted and unconnected as I might feel at times to it), Baghdad because it just seems like the very least I could do (particularly given the fact that I’ve had one nephew there already and another likely on the way), and London because, well, we’re GOING TO ENGLAND!

Margaret and I have actually been planning this for some time, in celebration of our tenth wedding anniversary (ten years. My God, ten fucking years. I can’t tell you what this means to me, but this might give you a bit of an idea: in 1989 I had decided that I would give myself five years after graduation from college to see if my life had begun to improve. If it hadn’t, I was planning to commit suicide. Shortly thereafter Margaret and I started dating. I’m still alive. Top that, Hallmark!) She went there with her family as a teen, whereas I’ve never so much as been to Canada, despite the fact that it’s close enough to cast a shadow on my house at the right time in the afternoon.

We’re going to spend time up and down the coast of the Isles, visiting London, Jersey, Bath, Inverness (yes, we’re going to take a tour of the Loch, we’re that big of a couple of weenies), Stonehenge, and every single zoo and botanical garden that gets in our way (and there’s a lot of them. At one point, Margaret was at her ‘puter researching places to visit when I heard her squeal with delight, “The Royal Thyme Garden!” I burst out laughing, and she asked me what my problem was. Affecting my most rapt tone of delight, I squealed, “The Strategic Dandelion Reserve!” I don’t remember nothin’ after that. 😉 ) If we have time, we’re going to take the Chunnel and spend a couple of days in Paris. We want to do the Tower of London Ghost Tour, eat at half a dozen places featured on various Food Network and Travel Channel shows (St. John, Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, and Yialousa Greek Tavern, a place Margaret and her family frequented when last they were in England, among others). All in all, an action-packed month.

All I can say about planning this trip is, thank God Margaret took the reins. If it had been up to me, we would have likely stayed in the hotel closest to Heathrow, touring the surrounding computer stores and eating at fine curry houses within ten minutes’ walk of our lodging. That’s just the kind of guy I am: lame. Margaret is also the one who saved our wedding from being held in our driveway, with pizza from the now-defunct Joe Mama’s next door and a Winchell’s donut wedding cake.

We will, of course, be taking a metric assload of pictures while we’re there, and posting some of the best of them right here for your viewing pleasure. To this end we recently bought an Olympus E-Volt E500, a wonderful digital happy-snap SLR with all the bells and whistles, save a couple. If you’re an amateur photog who wants the splendor of a digital camera with the full range of SLR lenses, but you don’t feel a pathological need view a live preview through the LCD viewfinder or shoot action photos in dimly lit rooms, I’d heartily recommend this bugger.

The main reason I wanted to let my adoring readers know what we were up to was so we could solicit suggestions, tips and other bits of tid from our more worldly compatriots regarding things to do, see and perhaps buy in England. Where to go for good omiyage? Places we simply must go, places we for the love of God should avoid? C’mon people: most of y’all are ten times the world travelers that we are (what’s ten times zero again? Remember, I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts). Help us out here!