Friday 16th December
Waking up again at 09:30 and with the house to myself, I desperately needed to catch up on the blog. But I also had the last skype session with the parents to do at 10am. Of course naturally we all know which would come first. A shower of course!!!
By 10am I was ready to chat but the internet didn’t seem to be working. After 15 minutes of re-configuration I finally got it working again, only to find my parents angrily waiting for me. During the chat I mentioned that I’d be driving out to pick up some gifts for the family. This didn’t bode well with the Mr and Mrs i’m afraid and they pretty much forbade me from driving. The gifts they didn’t mind about [naturally]
So with the lone wolf tamed, I set about catching up on the blog. I’d managed to catch up a full week of reporting before Chrissy returned. I explained the grounding to which she wasn’t impressed either. Chrissy explained how the ‘super-insurance’ she has on the spare car allows anyone to drive it, as long as they hold some form of license.
It was just as good because Liz had offered to take me out to see the local neighbor(u)rhood. Chrissy suggested I take the car and drive over to her house. This was an easy task. Despite living 8 miles away, 7.8 of that was on 1 road. The issue was that the car was an automatic, something I’d never driven before.
It’s actually not that hard to do [for all those who haven’t driven an automatic yet]. It just basically a manual but you forget about the gears. They’re still there, but you don’t need to control which gear you need. That’s done by how hard you press the accelerator. I ventured into the Toyota Corolla. Alone and scared [okay I’m exaggerating, but I was understandably a bit nervous] I started the engine, and released the brake. For all those who know manual, the brake would act as the clutch and depending on how much you released it would marginally change the speed.
Technical speech over, I headed over to Brea, a small, quiet town and pulled up outside Liz’s house. Two points at this stage, 1. The numbers didn’t make sense, one house would say 10533 then the next would be 10549 and next 10555. ARRGH!!!. 2. It was actually Liz’s mother’s home but Liz uses it sometimes. I met Liz and her brother Michael before we set off for the evening. The three of us drove into downtown Brea, Liz’s childhood hangout.
We were joined very soon by one of Liz’s friends, Angela, as we went to a ‘Gourmet Waffle House’ called Bruxie. How often can you say the words ‘Gourmet’ and ‘Waffle’ in the same sentence!!! Nevertheless it was something completely new to me so I pretty much have to give it a go. It’s basically just a burger, but the burger bun is a syrup coated Waffle. I got a Bacon, egg and Cheese version, which was surprisingly nice. Once again I found myself explaining my US experience and my accent for well over an hour, but who am I kidding, I seem to know the speech off by heart now :p
One we had our fattening fill (not phil), we split up and headed back. I picked up the car and procceded back along the 8 mile straight to my ‘hotel’. I found Chrissy and Greg in the arms of one another……on the sofa…… watching Fox news. Once again I found myself immersed in the TV, but with the channel being Fox News I’m surprised I haven’t been corrupted yet (hehe)
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