On this day, the first of...

Well there was a tornado here in Manchester this week. We don't have a basement and all the rooms downstairs have windows so we were very unprepared for this new bit of British weather. The British people must be use to these random tornados though because people were still out on their bicycles. We know this because one lady went past our front window riding her bike. She even waved at us before she was blown down the street. Afterwards we went outside to find our house miraculously undamaged and the world seemed full of bright colors after the storm.

An understandable side effect of the tornado is that it wrecked havoc on the postal service. I had a package to send but I had to go to three different post offices in Manchester to find one willing to take the package. First one was closed. I found another post office. That one couldn't get the machine to read the address on the envelope so they told me to try somewhere else. It was getting kinda late in the day by that time so after I had found a new envelope and carefully rewritten the address I raced to yet another post office. This one was working but it also had quite a line. I paid for the Owl-fast service and breathed a sigh of relief.

When I got home my roommates had cleaned up the yard and a whole bunch of brave spring flowers that had been braving the freakishly cold Manchester spring had ended up in our yard after the tornado. We separated out the flowers from the trash and decided to do some decorating. Our house is...kinda boring so being artistic types we decided to make some temporary wall art. We hot-glued some branches into a frame, hung it on the wall then basically just tried to fill up the frame with flowers, using the hot-glue as needed. Don't worry, the branches were really light so we didn't have to use nails on the walls, just some of that blue tacky stuff. I think it turned out really nice.

Hmmm, the other thing of interest I found out about is the Easter phoenix. Most people know about the Easter bunny of course, but I found out that he has a lesser known cousin (distant cousin) the Easter phoenix who symbolizes rebirth. I thought this sounded really cool and wondered why I hadn't heard about him before, but when I thought about it...it makes sense. The Easter bunny is a cute round fuzz ball with awkwardly large teeth. A cuddly vegetarian that brings you candy and is followed by a plethora of baby animals. Compare this to the Easter Phoenix who spend the week before Easter moping and molting, not a picture that makes you say "Awww". Then on Easter he bursts into flames, screaming in agony another not so kid-friendly image. Afterwards he is reborn in the ashes as an egg. The egg bit the Easter bunny adopts so his cousin doesn't feel too left out. Really nice of him. This is the Easter egg I had found when someone was kind enough to tell me this story...

Remember, the Easter phoenix. He's not as cuddly but don't give all your love to the Easter bunny!

That's about all I have to say for this week's happenings. Happy April Fools everyone!