the art of doing nothing

after an insane week at both our jobs, adam and i decided the weekend would best be spent practicing the art of doing nothing. however, we didn't want to just spend the day on the couch watching the idiot box, as my grandmother used to call it, so we piled into the truck and drove 20 minutes through kent to a little village called chipstead.

chipstead was like walking into a holiday brochure for something very quaint and very english. little semi-detached houses lined the streets, with sweet front gardens packed with flowers, and ceramic tiles to mark the house number/name. nestled in the middle of this adorable village was a neighborhood pub called the bricklayer's arms.



the pub was small but offered two leather sofas for us to lounge on (i know, we traded sitting on adam's sofa to go sit on this one) and even better was the fact that bricklayer's is a harvey's pub. i have never had any harvey's beers so i was eager to try something new. everything on draft appeared to be bitter, which i'm not a fan of, but i found a nice light-tasting-but-dark-coloured armada ale. adam ordered a shandy since he was driving and we both settled onto one of the comfy little couches, where we curled up with the saturday telegraph.

yes friends. i actually left the ipad at home and spent the afternoon reading...a printed newspaper. what a delightful experience this is. the smell of the paper, the impossibility of folding any of the pages up the right way again, never finding the section you were originally looking for but discovering something new instead, black fingers. reading the paper is something i rarely have time for, unless i manage to snag a copy of the financial times on a BA flight (BA gives you a nice selection of free newspapers). perhaps this an indulgence i should consider more frequently given that it is such a cheap thrill...

anything is art

last month when i was home in the states, i went to pittsburgh to visit with my grandparents. i've been taking trips to pittsburgh since i was born, but with the exception of a few drunken outings on carson street, had never actually spent much time getting to know the city.

since i had adam with me on this trip, i tried to find fun and interesting things for him to do besides sit around with more of my relatives (he met about 60 of them). one thing i had always wanted to do was go to the warhol museum, and my mom was kind enough to shuttle us downtown since i don't drive anymore (no insurance = no go).

wow. what an amazing place. i kind of knew this but warhol did WAY more than the pop art that he seems to be most famous for. we spent seven floors wandering, gawking, and being inspired by the idea that anything can be art. i loved every minute but one of my favourites was the silver cloud room, which featured big, silver, cloud-shaped balloons that floated continuously thanks to a carefully crafted flow of air. i felt like a big kid playing in there. i also liked how he filmed EVERYTHING. people sleeping, people getting haircuts, people putting on makeup. more interesting than you would think and a good reminder of how human we all are.

adam and i vowed to start doing more creative things when we got home, which of course has fallen by the wayside because this thing called life keeps getting in the way of our fun, but i thought about it again tonight when i was running along the thames. two things i'm aspiring to do right now:

1) start a blog of "shit that happens at my apartment building". like the potato that has rotted and solidified to the garbage shoot. or the three mattresses that found themselves piled up in front of our outside bin room. maybe even the notice from southwark council announcing that said bin rooms are a massive hazard because people like to set fire to them. if this isn't art, i don't know what is.

2) get my scavenging license (or whatever it's called) so that i can go pick through the stuff that floats up from the thames. yes, you do have to have a license to do this, but there are some wicked treasures along the banks of this mighty river. old tiles, parts of ships, and loads of things from years gone by. good things for me to make a collage out of!

in the meantime, i'll be here, thinking of more ways to try and find thrills in things that "would ordinarily bore you"...(and hoping my bins don't get set on fire)

skyline time

i returned tonight from a very long, basically 24-hour trip to switzerland, and was too tired to remember what day it was. i found myself in a very barren kitchen (with a broken dishwasher to boot) and was losing the will to live, when suddenly i remembered i have a can of skyline squirreled away somewhere for such emergencies. a bit of digging, ah, yes! there it is under the five cans of tinned tomatoes. have i got any spaghetti? hmm, a handful, enough for a 3-way, so i just need...cheese! drat, only have english cheddar (real cheese). this will have to do!

8 minutes on the stove and i had myself a 3-way. two hours later and i have...indigestion. never mind. the blissful time spent eating was like a hug for my insides. i shall try to remember this special time as i hunt for the tums.



(er, no, i am NOT wearing a bathrobe in this picture. why on earth do you ask?)

city wedding

yesterday was the second of two july weddings we were invited to attend this year, and very much a contrast to last weekend's event! both weddings were absolutely lovely and amazing, it's just that one was an hour's drive from london and the other a stone's throw from big ben. :-)

for wedding number two, it was adam's turn to have a cold (sorry for the unwanted present, ads...) but the couple are very good friends of ours so we were uber excited. i met the bride through the nike running group when i first moved here and we had so much in common and hit it off so well that we've stayed friends long after we stopped running with the group! she's canadian and her new husband is english, so they're a great couple for adam and i to spend time with because they can relate to our adventures in merging two cultures. (as a side note for my aunty, i heard someone say 'rubbers' today and thought of you! xx)

our journey to the wedding took us to westminster, which is only about 20 minutes from my flat. we carefully avoided the tourists swarming big ben, parliament, and westminster abbey and made our way to one great george street, an immensely impressive building even from the outside.



inside was even more spectacular and it was truly one of the most well-choreographed events i've ever been to. we were dying of thirst from riding the stuffy subway and the bride and groom had pre-ceremony beverages for people as soon as we arrived! we got there around 2:30 and were very well hydrated by the time the ceremony started about 45 minutes later, which was good because i was to give a reading and felt a bit nervous.



the ceremony was beautiful, and the reading they had me do was from 'when harry met sally':

"I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."



immediately following the wedding, the couple had a tea ceremony. the bride's family is chinese and to show the merging of two cultures, they served both chinese and english teas - was really cool. we then drank champagne and ate yummy things like duck pancakes, sushi, and beef wellington for the next two hours.

after champagne, we moved upstairs to dine in a room filled with fresh flowers and candle-lit tables. it was still light outside but the blinds had been drawn and the lights turned low to make the whole setting really cosy and romantic.





dinner was served by a staff who were clearly trained by swiss-train operators, with every dish arriving at the table at exactly the same time and placed in front of each of us with such a precision you were afraid to get in the waiter/waitresses' way. it was like watching synchronised swimmers! we had smoked salmon as the starter followed by beef tournedos and a raspberry pavlova for dessert. food heaven.



to wake us all up after the gluttony, there was a live rock band for dancing and a photo booth to let our hair down in.



after a few hours of dancing (and open bar), the couple had mini bacon sarnies and coffee, as well as take-home boxes for the beautiful cupcakes that replaced the traditional wedding cake.



as the evening drew to a close i ALMOST caught the bouquet and we loaded up our goodies from the day before running to catch the tube. (the bride and groom had arranged for carriages at midnight but we were absolutely beat by 11, and adam pointed out that 'carriages' is brit-speak for taxis, so i felt ok leaving).



another wonderful wedding and we're so excited for all of our newlywed friends!

country wedding

july seems to be the month of weddings around here. we have two weekends back to back! the first wedding was a co-worker of adam's who i had only met once, but i was easily convinced to go since i haven't ever been to an english wedding. i was also intrigued by the fact that it was in the country (near where adam lives) at a really old church. i love getting out and about away from london on the weekends!

i wasn't feeling great last saturday thanks to my having caught the office cold, but i figured i could do a 4-5 hour afternoon wedding no problem, especially since it started at 2 pm. what i didn't know is that english wedding events are TWICE AS LONG as american ones and i was actually in for a full day/night of festivities. ha ha.

i loaded up on cough drops and decongestants and we drove through winding country lanes (some of them one-way roads, more scary than regular english car travel) to the top of a hill, where we happened upon a beautiful old church.



adam was looking dapper in his new suit and i had SQUEEZED into my old go-to dress for these types of events. (i think this is the last summer for said dress. i must have bought the darn thing during my peak running days when i was much leaner. luckily it still fit, but adam had to zip it while i sucked in!) the ceremony was very lovely (and just long enough to feel official without being too extravagantly long), but we had some behaviour issues whist sitting in church. one of the readings was from 'the owl and the pussycat', which i vaguely remembered from my childhood.

the last time i heard this poem i either wasn't paying attention or was much more mature than i am now, because at the wedding, every time the reader said the P word, i had to fight the urge to giggle! i was really struggling to keep myself under control and the guy just KEPT SAYING IT. i stared straight ahead, trying to remain stone faced and saw that the woman in front of me (who was twice my age) was shaking with laughter. no help there. to my left, adam's eyes were squeezed shut and his face pinched in a failing attempt at self control. the woman to my right (also older) had tears of suppression streaming down her cheeks. i know it is a beautiful reading and i feel bad for laughing but it really was funny. especially when the reader had a posh dick van dyke accent and absolutely no sense of humour. oh, the humanity of it all!

we made it out of the church without making terrible fools of ourselves and then to get to the reception, the bride and groom led us down a wooded path and through a meadow to get to the bride's parent's home.







such a gorgeous place but i do wish i hadn't worn 3-inch silver strappy shoes for such a hike! the reception was in the backyard and we enjoyed refreshing pimm's, tasty canapés, and a good dose of afternoon sun before finally settling in for a fancy barbeque-style feast.







as favours, the bride and groom gave away little pots of homemade jam with custom labels. such a cute idea! swing dancing followed the meal (the newlyweds had choreographed their own first dance!) and we finally left around 9 pm. a great experience for my first english wedding, two enthusiastic thumbs up!

reunited + time warp

my oldest friend in the world, jenifer, has moved to london! temporarily, but for the next six months i get to share a city with someone i thought would perpetually be hundreds or thousands of miles away. hurrah!

jenifer and i met in kindergarten at the boyd e. smith elementary school ballet class. my mom has a photo of us somewhere sporting pink tutus and cheeky 5-year old grins. from this early meeting right up through the first few years of college, jenifer could always be counted upon to be a partner in crime. our parents and society in general used to fear the products of our combined brain power, which resulted in genius schemes such as our hitchhiking field trip to Norwood (pre-driver's license, obviously), or the fabulous night we changed the local perkins sign to read 'come in for a hemp feast'. we lost touch during the end of college and reunited in our mid-twenties, only to find that we were working in the same field for competing companies!

anywho. my girl has been in new york for the last few years but thanks to a lovely american boy who has moved to london for his job, jenifer's here too. we were finally able to meet up tonight at my favourite local beer garden - the wool pack.



the weather in london was 60 degrees and sunny, just right for a few drinks after work. whenever the two of hang out, the world seems to go into a time warp where hours pass like seconds and before you know it, oops! the sun's coming up! it happens every time. the problem is that when one of you lives in bermondsey and the other lives in fulham, and the tube shuts around midnight, you kind of have to be conscious of the hour.

we accidentally drank until 10:30 (pub shuts at 11, so we were technically early) and we really wanted a curry, which was a 15 minute walk from the wool pack and also the wrong direction of the tube station. but, lovage has the best curry this side of tower bridge (in my opinion. they put a lot of care and artistry into their food!) so we decided to roll the dice. dinner resulted in another time warp and before we knew it, it was after midnight. we frantically asked for the bill as i whipped out the blackberry to check tfl to see if the trains were still running, which they were, but it was impossible to tell when the last train would be.

we hightailed it back towards london bridge and were side tracked by several of my co-workers who were still hanging outside the local pub. doh! we finally made it to the station and she got the LAST westbound jubilee train before it shut for the night. whew! must learn to pay more attention to what time it is, or start drinking much earlier to help counteract time warp effect...