A Parish in the west Country called Lent was by fortune set on fire: and by chance a good fellow passing by at the same time, and seeing it, asked the Parishes name: They answered, Lent: Lent (quoth he) I pray ye then in with Fridayes and Saterdayes to, that the fire may consume them altogether.

— Wits Fittes and Fancies
(Anthony Copley, 1595)

Lee's Television Protagonist Truthfulness Principle: Protagonists^* in television shows are, almost without exception, incapable of uttering a falsehood in a convincing manner. When attempting to be untruthful, they will clearly betray their intentions through vocal inflection, altered speech patterns, hesitation, and physical "tells".

Corollary 1: All characters in television shows will be utterly incapable of detecting untruthfulness even when broadcast by vocal inflection, altered speech patterns, hesitation and physical "tells".

* And frequently antagonists, but not to such a universal degree.

Today, among the last-minute shopping for our trip, I decided to try to pick up another battery for my Nokia 770. I figured, with a twelve-hour flight ahead of us, I might as well make use of that time by working on a novel that I've started. Unfortunately, the battery won't last nearly that long (the official limit is four hours, but that's with the wireless in use; I've managed to get nearly eight hours out of it when I was just reading ebooks on it). Then again, using a Bluetooth keyboard for text entry would probably use more juice, so a second battery would be just the ticket.

One review of the 770 said that it used the same battery as a particular Nokia cellphone, so I assumed it would be a fairly easy part to obtain. I was wrong. I tried several cellular stores, as well as Radio Shack, all to no avail. Karen suggested that perhaps Tallahassee had an all-battery store (like Tampa has), so I searched the Net and found one.

It looked like an auto mechanic's shop; indeed, most of it was given over to car batteries. The employees, clustered in the auto bay, looked like extras from Deliverance. In the main shop, where I had entered, there were a few shelves of other batteries: lawnmowers, laptops, cellphones. They had a couple of Nokia batteries, but not the one I needed. I figured, what the heck, it couldn't hurt to ask.

Yellow CAUTION tape separated the shop from the mechanics employees; eventually, one ambled over to wait on me. I asked for the battery by model number: Nokia BP-5L. "Is that for a cellphone?" he asked.

"Well, I'm told it is, but I'll be putting it into a PDA."

He flipped through his catalog. "Nokia don't make no PDA," he informed me.

"I assure you, they do," I said.

He gestured to his catalog. "No, they don't. Nokia don't make no PDAs." He showed me the page — which listed PDA batteries by PDA manufacturer — as though it were the ultimate authority.

I pulled out the 770 and showed it to him, the name NOKIA prominently displayed on the cover.

"Well, this say they don't," he said sullenly. "But it is from 2004, so maybe your PDA's new."

"Yes, it is," I allowed. "But I'm told they also use the same battery in one of their phones."

"Do you know what model it is?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

He shook his head sadly. "Then I can't tell you what battery it uses."

"It's the BP-5L," I said. I had started the conversation with the model number. I opened up the back of the 770, pulled out the battery and showed it to him.

"Naw, we don't have that one," he said. "We're an aftermarket supplier; we don't get the new styles of batteries for a couple years after they come out, 'cause usually nobody needs 'em that quick."

Sigh.

My major goal for this trip was to visit the National Maritime Museum and obtain (1) the plans for the H.M.S. Falcon, and (2) find her log books for the years 1774-1776.

Sadly, the plans department is in another town, so it wasn't possible to obtain the plans, or to even see them. Strike one.

However, I managed to find the call numbers for the Falcon's logs; the book from 1774 to 1776 was ADM/L/F/219 (bound with the logs of the H.M.S. Fubbs, 1715-1723). I scheduled a document retrieval, which occurs every two hours.

When the appointed time came, I signed for a package, wrapped in a khaki waterproof canvas and tied with a white cotton ribbon. Eagerly I untied it, gingerly I opened it. With growing anticipation I leafed through the sections of the Fubbs' logs, and reached... the end of the book.

I scanned through it more carefully. Fubbs. Fubbs. Fubbs. Fubbs. Fubbs. No Falcon. I asked the lady at the desk if the Falcon's logs had been removed. She called someone in the manuscripts section. He came out, opened the book, leafed through it confidently to show me where the Falcon's logs started... and came up empty as well.

He frowned, went to get some catalogs, and checked to see where the Falcon's logs were supposed to be: ADM/L/F/219. He checked the book: ADM/L/F/219. He checked the catalog again (it hadn't changed). "I don't know," he finally admitted. "It may have got misfiled somewhere, or been entered into the catalogue incorrectly. And unfortunately there are thousands of these logbooks, all tied up like this one was, so it's not really possible to go looking for it."

So, zero for two. I'll order the plans, but it would have been really nice to be able to read those logs.

Well, the vacation started off with a bang, as we got rear-ended on the way to the airport. We were sitting in stopped traffic, when suddenly the SUV behind us lurched forward and slammed into us. Fortunately, a State Law Enforcement Officer was in the next lane and saw the whole thing. Unfortunately, he couldn't write up an accident report; he had to call in a Florida Highway Patrolman for that. By the time he'd arrived, taken statements and written the report, there was no way we could make our flight.

We got to the check-in counter five minutes after our flight left. We explained what had happened, and asked if there was any way we could get another flight to JFK in time to make our connecting flight to England. "Do you have a copy of the police report?" the gal at the ticket counter asked. Fortunately, Karen had stuck it in her purse, so she was able to get us a new flight without any extra charge.

The only problem was, there were no flights to JFK in time for us to make our connection. However, she had one going to La Guardia. We said we'd take it. She started to process us, asked for our IDs, and then frowned. She picked up the phone and made a call... and then started reading out my name and other information. It turns out there's someone on the terrorist watch list with my name.

Fortunately, my birthday is different from this other person's which was apparently enough to determine that I was not, in fact, the potential terrorist or critic of the Administration. Hooray. So we caught our new flight, made it to La Guardia, and caught a bus to JFK with plenty of time to spare... where we had to go through the watch-list rigamarole a second time.

Busy day today! First we walked around Paternoster Square, and got a good look at The Monument and Temple Bar, then went inside St. Paul's Cathedral. Unfortunately, no pictures could be taken inside (a new policy since the last time I was there). We went down into the Crypt, which I hadn't done before. The few lonely effigies which had survived the London Fire were on display.

Then we walked over the Thames, across the Millennium Bridge, to go see the Globe Theatre. We looked for the brick bought by Severin and Lisa, but didn't see it. I did, however, see the brick bought by Dora and Jack Black.

The tour was interesting; we visited the Gentlemen's box on the second level, and then up to the third level where the "Winchester Geese" plied their trade. I noticed that while the banister supports on the second level were lathed, the ones on the third level were square-cut, with the fronts and backs flat, and the sides cut into the silhouette of the others. I asked about that, and the embarrassed guide admitted that because the lathed ones took so much time to create, they'd had to make the square-cut ones so the Globe could open on schedule.

Then we walked over to the Golden Hinde, a full-sized replica of Sir Francis Drake's tiny little ship (upon which he packed sixty to eighty men). Naval technology clearly didn't change much until the nineteenth century; apart from the scale, it was little different from the replica of the Bounty in Tampa Bay (though presumably nobody's filmed a cheesy porn movie on the Golden Hinde).

Sadly, the second memstick for the camera had fallen out of my bag when we got the camera out to take pictures of our car after the accident, so we had to stop back at the hotel to move the pictures off onto the hard drive. I had been looking for a shop which sold memsticks, but hadn't found any.

Thence out to Trafalgar Square, and the National Gallery. It was amazing to see so many of the pictures we've seen in books, only up close so we could see all the details that don't reproduce (like black-on-black ornamentation on clothing). Also, despite what I said earlier about details being rough up close, there were some large-scale pictures with exceptionally fine details. But not Rembrandt's paintings, which looked very rough in person.

Finally we both got art overload, and found ourselves just wandering around aimlessly, so we decided it was time to go. (All those portraits of Hapsburgs tended to look alike anyway.) As we tried to find our way out, we came upon an a capella quintet giving a performance. It was absolutely beautiful -- Italian from the early 1500s, it sounded like -- but by that time my knees and ankles were throbbing so badly I found it difficult to stand still (naturally all of the seating was taken).

On our way to look for a restaurant, we walked by St. Stephen's bell tower, all lit up in the dark. Not finding any restaurants in that area with reasonable prices, we came back and ate at a Thai restaurant between the Tube station and our hotel, then called it a night as everything was closing down.

First, an animated GIF showing how Lost could have been wrapped up in its first hour.

Second, with the FBI keeping tabs on antiwar groups (such as the Quaker Friends), I wonder if they're paying attention to all the people driving around with actual symbols of sedition on their vehicles?

And third, it's apparently St. Patrick's Day, which means I get to experience it twice this year (since it happened last weekend in England). So here's a snapshot I took while trying to fight through the crowd of green-and-white-Seussian-hat-wearing drinkers to a soap store Karen wanted to visit:

(Wasn't "Thóin" one of Tolkien's Dwarfs?)

I put up the following regular expression on my whiteboard, just to see how long it takes before someone here at work identifies its purpose:

I know \d\d is shorter than \d{2}, but I think the latter is more elegant.