Plans and Paranoia

Have I mentioned that I'm going to Ireland? I think somehow I never wrote about these plans, but yes -- I'm flying to Dublin tomorrow morning to meet up with my stepsister and her husband, who are visiting from the states. I'll only be there one night. I realize Sunday is St. Patrick's Day and apparently there's also a big rugby game happening this weekend, so it might be madness. We shall see.

I've had a busy week here. I went to the dentist on Wednesday for a checkup, and fortunately I don't need any immediate work, though I do have a filling that the dentist is concerned about and will probably want to replace in the near future. I'm not thrilled about the idea, being of the "leave well enough alone" school of thinking, but I might let her do it in the fall.

The tooth I had the root canal on several years ago still gives me a twinge now and then -- evidently the dentist who did the root canal (not the one I go to now) didn't get all of the root -- but my current dentist said it seems stable and she sees no need to do anything more. I can live with it. Having spent all that money on a gold crown I'd rather not have to redo it all, or worse, remove the tooth entirely.

In other big news, I think I finished our U.S. taxes last night. I finally got all the supporting documentation uploaded and sent the return to a "tax advisor" for review. I had to improvise on a few things. For example, as I understand it, I'm supposed to report interest from our British bank -- but of course that bank doesn't issue a 1099-INT form, as American banks do. I reported the interest as if I had such a form, even though I do not. Hopefully that will suffice.

Dave and I watched a wacky documentary from Channel 4 the other night about ten-year-old allegations that some parents in Hampstead, the community right next to us, were running a Satanic pedophile ring. It was the craziest story. What began as a parental custody battle soon went ballistic and became an Internet phenomenon that attracted vigilante justice-seekers, one of whom flew over from America (of course) to "protect the children." Several things astonished me:

1. The fact that the initial allegations, which seemed outlandish from the beginning, triggered such an intense response from online activists;
2. The fact that Dave and I were completely unaware of any of this at the time, even though it was happening practically in our neighborhood;

3. The fact that someone in America would read something on the Internet and FLY ACROSS THE OCEAN to personally stalk supposed "pedophiles," rather than leaving the matter to the police to sort out. (The police did investigate but found nothing amiss and eventually the kids involved retracted their story.)

It's like that guy who stormed the pizza place in suburban Maryland because he thought Hillary Clinton was harvesting babies in the basement. What is wrong with people?

My personal theory is that there's a lot of pot-smoking going on out there. I'm not a "reefer madness" believer by any means, but smoking pot can make a person a little paranoid. I think these people sit in their basements, puffing away and reading salacious online chat boards, and soon enough they've gone down a rabbit hole of crazy.

On that note, I'm off to work.

(Photos: Graffiti by Alex -- sometimes spelled Alekz -- in Swiss Cottage and West Hampstead.)