Wave at the Silly People, Dear.

While in London (my favourite new hangout), we happened upon...
yes, you guessed it-- The Telectroscope!!
Oh, you didn't guess it? nevermind.

I was just attracted to the Zoltar-looking thing and wanted to feed it pound coins so that I could take pictures of it, but it actually gave us a ticket to look through the telectroscope. How cool (read: silly) is that?!

As we were approaching it, scientific nerd dude Sexy Guy was almost beside himself explaining how this bloke wanted to come up with a telescope you could see all the way to NYC with and something about something under the water... blah blah (this is how we communicate, we catch the first and last few words of what the other is saying and smile and nod a lot-- kind of how you read my posts).
THIS is what he was trying to tell me:

"LONDON, England (CNN) (click to see the whole article)-- As the first splinters of sunlight spread their warmth on the south bank of the River Thames on Thursday, it became clear that after more than a century, the vision of Victorian engineer Alexander Stanhope St. George had finally been realized.

The Telectroscope lets Londoners and New Yorkers see each other in real time.

In all its optical brilliance and brass and wood, there stood the Telectroscope: an 11.2-meter-(37 feet) long by 3.3-meter-(11 feet) tall dream of a device allowing people on one side of the Atlantic to look into its person-size lens and, in real time, see those on the other side via a recently completed tunnel running under the ocean. (Think 19th-century Webcam. Or maybe Victorian-age video phone.)" -- cnn.com/europe


Since I had tuned out of most of what he said, I approached it a little confused. I actually thought he said it was a video RECORDING, not a live video feed, so I was getting a big kick out of the people waving and making silly faces into the wrong end of a giant telescope.











I finally caught on when the man in NYC was mimicking what we were doing on our side.





You know what really gets me?
We paid £1 each to stand in front of a big Telescope lens and make fools of ourselves,
but in America, they were just walking right up to it.
That's just wrong.
Spoiled Americans.
Oh wait, I am one.

Somebody left this stuff just laying around, so we straightened London up a bit before we left.






Remember the news story about the person who bought the Starbucks coffee for the car behind them and how it went on throughout the day?

We thought it'd be fun to start an ice cream "Pay it Forward", buying the a cone with some syrup and flake for the next customer. This guy didn't know what to think. He said something like, "I am meeting the most interesting people here today!" and was a little flustered by our gesture.
We told him to just tell the person that some Americans had already paid for the ice cream-- he said, "They'll want to know your name, do you have a blog?"

do I have a blog? Hah! I whipped out my camera and said, "Yes! Can I take your photo for it?!"
Hah! It is a sickness, this camerahand....