I know medication better than my Doctor

Or so American TV would have me believe.

Hank is back at work and I'm home alone, staring out the window with Kosmo the Wonderdog.  I have turned to my truest friend: TV.

There is a weird trend in American TV commercials urging me to ask my Doctor to prescribe me certain brands of drugs.  I am evidently expected to lobby my Doc for medication I have seen on TV. Prescription medication, as seen on TV.

Although the advice comes from TV (my truest friend) I remain sceptical about the wisdom of this approach.  I can't help but think that maybe my Doctor knows which drugs to prescribe me, and when?  Wasn't that part of his medical training?   My Doc didn't spend eight years at medical school just to ask patients which drug they would like to receive, right?

Pharmaceutical companies here lobby the Government and Doctors, which I can sort of understand (sort of) but then they lobby the patients too.  I guess this is a corollary of a profit-making healthcare system, and therefore not something we had in Britain.

My question is not linked to the morality of this issue.  My question is simply: does all the advertising work?

Well, would the American pharmaceutical industry spend so much on it if it didn't work?

Can it work even when some of the TV commercials advertise their possible side effects as "a worsening of the original condition" and when depression drugs list side effects including "increased risk of suicide"?  What about heart treatments which "may increase your risk of cancer or a stroke"...?

I wonder if such commercials can really work at all.   But then again, as John Wanamaker famously said, half the money spent on advertising is wasted, you just don't know which half.   Maybe the American public just doesn't fall for the TV commercials afterall.

Is this the face of a racist?

This is Kosmo, the beautiful, adorable and unsurprisingly dumb Cocker Spaniel we have been "dog sitting" for the holidays. I think I am in love.

Kosmo is not a typical dog.  He is not even a typical bird dog, being terrified of both birds and other dogs.  He is super cute and affectionate though, and he likes the Lincoln Memorial (a lot) but not the National Monument because of all the scary, fluttering flags.  He constantly tries to eat out of trash cans and, when at home, he threatens us with crying and peeing himself on the carpet if he doesn't get his own way.  (He learnt that trick from Hank)

But the really interesting thing about Kosmo is that he is clearly racist.  He runs away from other dogs BUT he will drag me across the road to say hello to other Spaniels, or part-Spaniels.  Interestingly he also likes Border Collies and, as Kosmo is quite large for a Cocker, I wonder if he may have some Collie in him. At any rate, he clearly discerns - and discriminates on the basis of - a dog's race.

But that is not the worst of it.

Kosmo also quite clearly dislikes black adult men.  Seriously.

I hear you cry "But Kosmo is black!"  Ah yes, but he doesn't see that.  All he knows is that he is scared of black men especially tall, well-built black men wearing dark-coloured hoodies.  Everyone in DC, of every age and ethnicity, wears hoodies when it gets really cold here; you can imagine that walking Kosmo right now is a challenge.  We can't leave him outside a shop while we pop inside; if a group of black men in hoodies walked by with non-Spaniel dogs, he would choke himself on his leash trying to run away.

Why is Kosmo so jittery?  We reckon much of Kosmo's weirdness comes from inbreeding.  There are very few Cocker Spaniels around DC, so my guess is that Kosmo's mum was probably also his cousin. The result is an adorable, curly-haired pure-bred dog.  But it will take its toll on the family genes, as Eddie Izzard's theory on the Royal family explains:

2011 is here: Happy New Year to you!

Good morning, dear reader.  As the first day of 2011 dawns on Washington DC, I - like many others - reflect on a year of underachievement and overspending.  Collectively we not only failed to stick to last year's New Year's Resolutions, we can't actually even remember what they were.

But this year will be different.  Oh yes.

Resolution number 1:

I will eat a strictly macrobiotic diet of leaves, pulses, beans and cardboard, no alcohol, no wheat, no dairy, no meat.  For one month at least. Before the wedding on Feb 26th.  (After the wedding I am going back to burgers and fries, ok?  Let's try to be a bit realistic.)

Resolution number 2:

C'mon, did you read number one? Surely that was enough!  What do you want, blood?

And finally, if your 2010 was more of an annus horribilis than a vintage year, then click on this sketch from David O Doherty: "My Beefs 2010" and hear how other people really are the problem.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Click here if the embedded video produces no sound

I think an American woman has her eye on my man

And what scary eyes they are.  This is Audrey, the Other Women and the only female in Hank's parental home in Princeton NJ, where she presides over two, larger tomcats.

Audrey is clearly a bit of a man eater.  Formerly "not really a lap cat", the minute Hank got to his parents' home, Audrey jumped straight into his lap and didn't move all Christmas.  At one point I tried to get Hank to stand up and Audrey calmly stretched out her claws, digging them gently into his sweater, without dropping eye contact with me.

I was frightened.

Actually, I am still having flashbacks.  Should I just give my Hank up to Audrey?  Just give in?  She has some kind of hold over him.... I didn't take this picture; Hank did.  He took this one and about FIFTEEN others, all in secret, and stashed them on his phone!  And no photos of his fiancee.

What has she got that I haven't got?

Ok, so she purrs nicely....  I can work on my purr!

And I will develop evil eyes.  The next time we visit Princeton the claws will be out, Audrey!

Two turtle doves

No French hens this Christmas, nor any partridges in a pear tree but I spotted two turtle doves pecking at our bird feeder this week.  With their cute ring collars and naive instinct to nest for life, I can't help but hope this may be a good omen for my forthcoming marriage.   Awww (yuck)

Later I managed to snap this chap at work.


A male Cardinal, very common in north America.   We have no birds of such bright colouring in the UK; to me, he looks tropical.  The Cardinal evidently fascinated earlier European settlers as much as it has captivated me, because this is the official bird of SEVEN States.  I have also seen an American robin, red-breasted like his European cousin but clearly an altogether different bird.  I wonder how homesick the early settlers must have been to name the American robin after an only slightly similar indigenous bird of Britain.  Homesick, or drunk.

Naturally, I now feel quite smug about my decision to buy pricier squirrel-repellent bird food.  This food is cajun flavoured - apparently the discerning squirrel has no tolerance of spicy foods.  I have read that cajun food makes squirrels who do eat it more susceptible to hypothermia in cold weather.  Well, whatever! That stuff is EXPENSIVE, so let that be a lesson to them!

So, naturally, "Merry Christmas one and all and goodwill to all mankind".  

Many thanks to my sister for sending this first Xmas ornament which Hank and I hung on our DC tree.

What do you get for the man who has everything?

Antibiotics?

Really?

I am stumped.  If choosing Christmas gifts is a pain, imagine how tough it is when your beloved's birthday also falls over the Christmas period.  I don't want to be the annoying person who gets him a "combined Christmas and birthday" gift, but equally, extra spending really sucks at this expensive time of the year.

I have considered my options.  This pizza cutter shaped like the Starship Enterprise?  Useful, but not gimmicky enough.  How about a shower curtain with a chandelier silhouette?  Hmmm, more of a gift for the house than for the Hank.  Or in honour of his tour of Afghanistan and our forthcoming wedding a Las Vegas-style t-shirt with the text "Welcome to Fabulous Lashkar-gah?"

The USA has some exciting new (to me) shops which I am also eyeing up for our Wedding Registry. (For the Brits, Wedding Registry = Wedding List).  My current favourite is Urban Remains, a super-cool salvage yard in Chicago which buys up ornate decorative metalwork from old banks, clubhouses and warehouses as they are renovated or torn down.  However, iron pipes and zinc balustrades are not exactly fitting wedding gifts so we have had to settle on something more commercially accessible....

Restoration Hardware - I simultaneously adore and distrust it.  There is something so intensely beautiful about the old American classics, lovingly recreated out here of very overpriced cheap wood. There are some visually amazing pieces, but my Spideysenses perceive the hand of MDF behind the chestnut veneers.  I can't prove it, but I know it.  This is not an issue when you are talking about the odd piece here and there, but Hank advises me that people order entire sections of the catalogue, swathing whole tracts of their homes in Restoration Hardware furniture, drapes, even interior paint.  Hank is at the point now where he walks into another 30-something-year-old government employee's home and says "Oh, I see you went with page six"

While I reconcile myself to this new-fangled way of approaching classic furniture,  I have decided what to get Hank for his birthday.  I have offered to get up early and make him fresh coffee before he goes to work every day until his next birthday.  Cost neutral.  And has the added benefit of being something I was going to do during my "funemployment" anyway ....  Shhhhh .... Don't tell Hank.

My sister has spoken

And told me not to make Londoners out to be so intimidating.  She is quite a scary London-type, so I will do what she says.  Instead, I will talk about the local Library in DC.

And I will not compare it to libraries in London.

I opened an account yesterday and it was a very pleasant experience.  First of all, the DC Library didn't ask for four forms of ID to open an account (in another large, unnamed UK city, acceptable forms of ID helpfully included Firearms Certificates.  Jolly Good.  That's when my library became Amazon.com).  Yesterday I produced my UK passport and read out my new address and bam! I had a Library Card AND a mini card on a key fob (more on these magical key fobs to follow.)

Joy enough for one day, surely? No, I then discovered that I can take out FIFTY books at a time.  Fifty.  FIFTY.  Even at my University library, stocked with thousands of unloved texts desperate to be taken home and adored, the $20,000 Postgrad fee entitled me to a measly 30-book maximum.  So you can imagine my irritation yesterday when I realised I would only be able to fit eleven books into my handbag!

As I browsed the shelves, I restrained my inner book-glutton.  Eleven. Stick to eleven. I had to choose carefully, ensuring each of The Eleven would paint me in the correct light when laid casually on the table as Hank came home from work.  Each book would say "Look, darling!  I am intelligent!"  And Hank would be proud of his unemployed fiance and think "she does things while I am out.  She learns stuff."

So I borrowed five Dora the Explorer books and the rest were on "Top places to get drunk in DC".  Just kidding.  I have, however, been flicking through the America the Beautiful series to find pictures of nice spots around town and am duly impressed.   Maybe DC will be ok, you know?  We shall see what my sister says when she comes to visit from London in Feb.