wandering aimlessly with a purpose.

Studio Saturday (and Sunday)

2012-01-23T05:58:00.001-08:00

Crappy weather meant spending Saturday in the flat having studio time! Ads played with his screen printing kit and I started cutting the weird parallelogram shapes for my quilt. We made a right mess...but...i made good progress! Just need to quilt the top layer to the back and add the binding....

Next project...

2012-01-15T10:40:00.001-08:00

Adam's parents got me a fab craft book for Christmas, which had a really cute quilting pattern. Since the John Lewis fabric department was completely pillaged in the post-holiday sales, I ventured up to Beyond Fabrics on Columbia Road. The shop was tiny but had loads of pre-cut fat quarters to choose from. Still debating whether I got too pattern happy but I have learned with quilting that I do better if I dont overthink my fabrix choices...

As an added bonus, I finally got to see the Columbia Rd flower market since the shop is right in the middle of it AND I had a.nice afternoon tea with my friend Nat. Oh, and the sun was shining. :) At Adam's next weekend so I will be able to start my stack and whack quilt soon!

First banjo class = awesome!

2012-01-10T14:19:00.001-08:00

I finally broke down and admitted I might need a banjo lesson or two. So glad I did! I met some great people, learned I have been wearing my picks backwards (not embarassing at all :s), amd learned how to fret. My banjo now sounds like, well, a banjo! There are four weeks left in the course, can't wait to see what I learn next Tuesday :)

Best donut in the entire world

2011-12-10T08:23:00.001-08:00

Under the railway arches, where I never venture because, well, its kind of damp and creepy, lies st johns bakery. We ventured there this morning and were rewarded with the best, deep fried, sugar coated, vanilla custard filled goodness I have ever tasted. Their main bakery is in ec1 I think but nevertheless, the place was stacked high with fresh bread, pastries, and homemade granola.

You can bet I will be wandering under the bridge a lot more often...

Fashionista

2011-10-24T11:58:00.001-07:00

I have been feeling the urge to sew lately and decided to wander on over to the john lewis haberdashery and see what patterns struck my fancy. I really wanted to make a dress (Actually I really wanted to take a dressmaking workshop since I have not made anything this complicated before, but the workshop sold out! Nevermind.)

I settled on a pattern from vogue - it was from the 'very easy dress' collection :) After a quick check I decided on grey jersey for the fabric, since I liked the colour and it was soft. Two sunday afternoons, one call to Grandma, and fewer ripped out seams than I thought, I had made my first dress! I pimped it out with a new belt and scarf and wore it to work, even though it borders on the short side :)

The last of Indian summer

2011-10-19T00:02:00.001-07:00

Sunday with Mama

2011-10-02T04:18:00.001-07:00

Now that I know I can post from my phone, i'm playing a bit of catchup! My mom was in town for a few hours last sunday, and we had a lovely brunch at lantana, did some shopping, and spent the rest of the afternoon at the lamb and flag where we took this cute photo. :)

Great day and I pretended for a few hours that Mom just lives around the corner and is free to meet me every week :)

Come dine at Jenifer and Fil's

2011-10-02T04:12:00.001-07:00

Jenifer was actually the first hostess in our little Come Dine With Me competition. Adam and I wandered over to Fulham two weeks ago and feasted on: ceviche, pico de gallo, guacamole, rocket salad with chickpeas and cumin, four kinds of tacos (handmade corn tortillas), and little pots of chocolate. So good! My photos from this dinner are pants because we were drinking tequila...

(who won, you ask? We decided it was a tie!)

Come dine with me!

2011-10-02T04:00:00.001-07:00

Our own version of the show with Jenifer and Fil! For Adam's and my turn we made: bruschetta, mussels in white wine sauce, mushroom ravioli, veal saltimbocca, and tiramisu. All from scratch (with no hand mixer to help whip the egg whites into 'stiff peaks' for the tiramisu. augh.)

We also went through: 4 bottles of wine, 1 bottle of champagne, 1 bottle of prosecco, half a bottle of captain Morgan, and 4 shots of espresso flavoured rum.

Posting this from my phone so will be curious to see if the photos actually load!

Monday and Tuesday, Florence and Siena

2011-08-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

So, I'm back to 55+ hours per week and have no time to post. Coupled with the fact that you are probably not as amused by my vacation photos as I am, I have selected a few from each day of the rest of the trip :)

Church in Florence that I forget the name of. We caught the sun coming up behind it at just the right time!

Our little 'jaunt' on Monday morning turned into a cardio workout. Adam bounded to the top like a puppy while the rest of us huffed and puffed our way up the stairs.

I like Florence better from up here :) (Adam not such a fan of heights...)

It was so peaceful up on the hill above Florence. No tourists, just us and the smell of Cyprus (?) trees.

Ha.

Our next stop on the trip was the walled city of Siena, about an hour's drive from Florence (this is not our car). Siena was clean, less crowded, and in some places looked like it hadn't changed since Medieval times...we had finally wandered into the Old World...

Fantastic! We wanted to buy and cook everything we saw.

Amazing gelato with the fam

Hangin' with dad

We kept seeing these masks everywhere and never figured out why

Every street in Siena had character

Adam and I spent about half an hour just looking out at the hills. I fancy a career as an olive picker. I bet I could wear overalls everyday if I wanted.

This dinner at Osteria di Nonna Gina ties for the best meal I have ever had (other best meal was in Paris at Moissonier or whatever it's called). The menus were all handwritten and all in Italian. We were able to decipher most of it! Pam and I had gnocchi with secret sauce (we think it was a walnut pesto of some sort). I scraped my plate clean.

Sunday in Florence

2011-08-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

We woke to a sunny morning in Florence today and were nearly late meeting my parents for breakfast. The 'rents were bleary eyed and sleep deprived while Adam and I felt refreshed and ready to meet the day. There appears to be a difference in noise level based on whether your room is in the front or back of the hotel. Ours is in the back and we slept with a light breeze and the soothing sounds of the iPad Dream machine. Theirs is in the front and they enjoyed late night sounds of not only drunken British stag do's but also of an angry florentine woman who, in attempt to restore peace, threw bottles out her front window at the younguns. Did I mention she did this sans clothing? Our hotel owner attributes this, er, interesting behaviour to the fact that said woman is unmarried. Ha.

Once outside the hotel we explored a small flea Market before heading to a tiny cafe for panini and yogurt. Adam was very hungover and I casually mentioned to my dad that Ads wasn't raised in a family that encouraged alcoholism the way that ours does...he agreed to take it easy on ordering so many litres of wine.We strolled through Florence window shopping and tried to guess the sites. My family was so eager to learn and yet we had no guide or guidebook, so I felt obliged to make things up as we walk. They eventually realised I am full of shit but it didn't stop me pontificating on why I think the church bells all go off at 10:30 am or how we've just stumbled upon Julius caesar's secret meditation bunker.

Could the Scudieri's here be long lost relatives? We have a few cousins with the same name in Cleveland...

Eventually the parents left for a real tour - the academia - and Adam and I were left to fend for ourselves. We were feeling parched in the 90-degree heat so we headed into a local grocery store so that I could do a quick store check and Adam could get some iced tea. It was all just too exhausting, so we headed back to the hotel to nap for an hour before lunch. I felt slightly guilty about this. We are in Florence and we're taking a nap? Shouldn't we be exploring ancient bricks, poking our heads into churches, something? I've been here before but Adam hasn't. He's not much of a tour person and I realise I'm just not interested in standing in large crowds of people, led by some over excited person who's carrying a stick with a ribbon on it, to learn about where DaVinci took a crap. I'm also slightly disturbed to find that Florence is almost as touristy as Barcelona. There are less signs for full English breakfasts here and you can still get a good meal (not the case in Bartha) but I've read that for every florentine in this city, there are fourteen tourists. Fourteen! And that figure is old so I'm sure it's a lot more now. Was it this crazy the first time I was here or was I just a lot more naive?

David's penis was EVERYWHERE. Tourists love David's penis.

Graffiti was also everywhere. Some of it I liked.At any rate, we eventually finished visiting the museum of napping and met Dad and Pam outside the Duomo amidst a crowd of starry eyed, Popsicle toting children and parents. I've noticed that when people eat ice cream, they tend to lose all sense of direction, wandering aimlessly and inadvertently swiping innocent passersby with streaky bits of soft serve. We hightailed it out of there and went back to the grocery store to get fixins for a picnic! We hadn't brought a guidebook with us but our hotel had a list of suggested activities, and Boboli Gardens was one of the places recommended for a visit between 1-4 pm. Perfect for dining al fresco.We loaded up on foccacia, mozzarella, prosciutto, tomatoes, and olive oil and began the twenty minute walk towards the gardens. We stopped to take pictures of the David replica, the Ponte Vecchio bridge (this bridge reminds me more of The Chong in cincinnati than something that should be in a beautiful old city such as Florence), and finally the Palazzo Piti. The map said the gardens should be close by, so we kept walking, and walking, and walking. There was no break in the wall around the gardens, I was getting progressively hungrier, and the prosciutto package was filling up with condensation. Ew. We finally found the entrance to the gardens, which had a huge gate, a bulldog-like security guard, and two sad-faced backpackers walking away from it all. Apparently there is a €9 charge just to enter. Are you kidding? The only green space in this city has an entrance fee?!

Needless to say, we didn't go in, and we ended up having our picnic next to the stone wall by Palazzo Piti. There was a stone ledge for us to use as a 'counter' where we sliced up tomatoes, cheese, and bread for the sandwiches. It seemed a really strange place for a picnic but it was good people watching and we attracted a few other weary walkers to come sit in our shady little patch.

Every good lunch deserves a gelato, so we all grabbed cones before dropping Dad and Pam off at the Uffizi for the next tour. Adam and I made grand plans to drop our backpack off at the room, grab a quick beer, then climb Giotto's Tower. When we got to the room Adam decided to have just a quick sleep before heading back out. This visit to the museum of napping lasted three hours and I finally had to wait the poor guy up to go to dinner! My little Britishman is not used to the heat and/or trips abroad with so many Ives...

We headed back out around 8 to a restaurant right around the corner - Zio Gigi. It was a nice mix of Florentines and tourists, the menu offered choice but still felt decisive (it's never a good sign when the menu is more than 2 pages), and the owner was walking around singing and handing out free shots of something that smelled like uzo. Nice. We had bruschetta and beef carpaccio to start, and plenty of house wine. I decided to break away from the pasta train and ordered entrecôte al gorgonzola for the main, which was a tasty bit of steak topped with a thick piece of gorgonzola cheese and a lovely cream sauce. I was very grateful for the free shot of whatever it was after dinner. It burned but it felt like it was cutting through all the naughty stuff I had just eaten!

We were too full and too tired for dessert, so we crashed around 10:30. Adam fell asleep straight away so I read a Bill Bryson book that I found in the hallway until the mosquitoes grew too annoying and I turned out the light.

Holiday road, Italy

2011-08-27T22:28:00.000-07:00

Our family always jokes about being National Lampoons on vacation and we always have fun, despite our, let's call them adventures. :)

To recap a few of my favourite 'holiday road' moments over the years:

Camping trip to Myrtle beach, 1995
Five of us (four Ives + one brave guest) piled into our Wally Wagon (giant blue station wagon). Wally towed the camper, had three bicycles on a rack affixed to the rear window, a cooler bungee corded to the back of the camper, and our luggage + four lawn chairs - in garbage bags - strapped to the roof. People were slowing down on the expressway to see who was driving this car, which wasn't mortifying AT ALL to my 16 year old self

Train trip to St. Ives, 2010
Five of us (four Ives + Adam) embarked on a 36-hour excursion to Cornwall. (12 of these hours were spent on the train :). My brother, at aged 29, still tends to get fussy after long periods of travel and began to whine about 3 hours into the journey back to London. Pam tried to appease him with whatever she had in her bag:

Pam: 'Timmy, what do you like to read to read?'
Tim: 'Apart from porn? Nothing.'

It was a loud conversation on a quiet train, and Ed Miliband, the leader of our Labour party was sitting two rows in front of us, so I'm sure he enjoyed every minute of family time with the Ives.

Nevermind. :)

So we knew the big Italy trip that we've been planning for months would be yet another Holiday Road for three Ives + Adam (hard to believe he keeps coming back for more). We all flew to Milan together on a plane packed with very excited Italian teenagers, who applauded when the plane landed. (Adam, who hates flying, asked me 'Do they know something we don't? Did we almost crash?')

Upon landing, our first order of business was to rent a car. Dad finally found the Dollar rental counter after we trawled most of the parking garage looking for it, and they were all out of cars! The helpful gentleman offered my dad a nine-passenger van. Perfect for navigating and parking on the narrow streets of small Italian towns! Augh. Luckily we were able to break the contract and negotiate a deal with Avis, who rented us a respectable little four-door for 300 euro cheaper. :)

Driving in Italy is...interesting. I applaud my dad for even being brave enough to attempt this. We had brought Anita with us (we named our GPS device). Anita was confused at first but then realised she wasn't in West Chester, OH. However, listening to her voice was like hearing a first year Italian student (on the first day of class) pronounce things. She just never got the hang of the accent.

Milan was FLAT and we saw field after field of pear trees. Just before dark, the terrain got hillier and hillier (sort of like West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania) and then we just started going through tunnels. Anita's pink line of where we needed to go next looked spaghetti.

I looked in the backseat and Adam and Pam were hanging on for dear life, occasionally suggesting that we might slow down, to which Dad would reply 'I'm just keeping up with traffic!' And he was! People were whizzing past us! Italians are mad drivers.

We finally made it to Hotel Dali in Florence after about four hours, ditched our bags, and made a beeline for wine.

summer so far

2011-08-21T09:46:00.001-07:00

i'm afraid that i've fallen back into not posting very often, which i can only apologise for! i'm working 60 hours per week on average and barely finding time to run/eat/sleep let alone write. but, i have been taking pictures for y'all loyal readers with the hopes that i'll have time to post them someday. :-)

first of all, thank you for your warm wishes in response to my last post. london went through a scary few days but the fact that we are pretty much back to normal shows how resilient and good-hearted most of the people in this city really are. the stories of neighbors coming together to reconstruct (and in some cases, thward off rioters by themselves) are just incredible. hopefully we won't see anymore craziness for a while...and that's all i have to say about that.

in other news, i have found time to do a few things this summer in my odd spare moments:

went and saw 'chinatown' at the somerset house outdoor movie theatre - amazing movie (jack nicholson was so young!) and it was wicked to lay on a picnic blanket under the stars and watch a cool flick on the big screen. as a side note, my friend and i got there so late that they were out of food, so my dinner consisted of: a bottle of merlot, banoffee/toffee-flavoured popcorn (mixed) and a brownie. sugar overload? sure, why not.

been learnin' to play the banjo! i can play an alternating thumb roll in the open G chord, working to try and play any other chords at the moment. it's hard to pick with three fingers and fret with two or three fingers on the other hand at the same time but i really enjoy the challenge (i'm sure my neighbors are enjoying as well)

speaking of my neighbors, here's a new, er, sculptural piece that spent the better part of the week in front of my building. i do enjoy a good bit of modern art!

went for burgers at the king's arms, finally! this is our 'local' and we love the atmosphere in the place - worn sofas, hideous wallpaper, mismatched chairs...and no yucky carpets. we've heard the burgers at king's arms are legendary and i'm pleased to say it's not just a legend. i've had a beef burger and a veggie burger and both were hand-made and awesome!

saw a little bit of home walking to a client meeting on fleet street...

spatchcocked my first chicken! my best friend jenifer is living here for six months and has been inspiring me with stories of her cooking classes. this was way easier than i thought, we'll see how it tastes (in the oven now...)

on the feathered friend note, i had a good laugh at this pub's name (yes, i have the sense of humour of a 12 year old boy)

and that's about it! this week i'm off to france and possibly switzerland for meetings, then my dad and pam arrive friday and we fly to italy on saturday morning for vacation. woo hoo! more pics to come i'm sure. xx

Dear Family and Friends...

2011-08-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

...I know you’re all wondering about the riots. They’re all over London but the fires/looting haven’t come close to me. The city just issued a ‘blackwatch’ list of Tube stations for tonight and luckily the nearest ‘black’ station is across the river from me (tower hill).

I live in a council estate, which is the type of housing most of the rioters live in (from what I’ve seen on the news) – hence I’m hoping they won’t decide to sh!t where they eat, so to speak. I’m in a building with secure entry (and I have four locks on my own front door)! If it gets really bad, my office is nearby and has security guards, so I can always come to work if I have to. It will be allright. Pray for London.

Love,
Jen

the art of doing nothing

2011-07-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-14T13:46:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-13T13:54:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-10T12:52:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-10T12:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-08T11:35:00.000-07:00

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...

modern woman

2011-06-30T05:18:00.000-07:00

after much chiding during my visit to cincinnati last week, i really am going to try to keep my blog more up to date than posting every three months!

so. i moved into a new apartment on 1 april this year, which was a big step for me as it meant no more hostel-style living situation with four roommates. it was also a big step because it was a pseudo-move-in with adam (pseudo because he still has the place in kent, lovingly dubbed our 'country home'). the apartment is fab, with 10' ceilings, three rooms (including a bedroom), a good sized bath, and a modern kitchen.

the kitchen is probably the best room, hands down. i can't decide what i like more - having my very own large (large for the UK, anyway) fridge, the delightfulness of the gas range, or the perfectly even cooking that the FAN OVEN provides.

what i wasn't so sure about was the dishwasher. to be clear, i grew up with a dishwasher. i've always had one, and when i lived on my own in cincinnati, i filled that thing up and ran it at least 2-3 times per week. heck, even the house share had a dishwasher BUT with four roommates and a limited supply of things like pans, spoons, etc. i got into the habit of washing by hand. it was easier and it made sure all the housemates could have access to what they needed without waiting 2 days for the dishwasher to be run (it always prevented the quandary over whose turn it was to UNLOAD the dishwasher).

adam's country pad doesn't have a dishwasher and he wasn't fussed about using the one in our swanky new kitchen. we've been washing everything with one of those handled brushes that foams soap out the end (these are brilliant). however, when we were in the states last week, we got into the habit of using the dishwasher since my parents gave me funny looks when i tried to wash everything by hand.

we realised how much easier it is to use the dishwasher, especially after you've worked till 9 pm and can't be asked to even MAKE dinner let alone clean it up. why waste your energy scrubbing those pots when a machine will do it for you! i have to say, one reason i didn't use the dishwasher was that i felt guilty running using so much water. But, since i don't have a water meter in the new place and i have to pay 'even billing' based on my whole neighborhood's water usage (it's stupidly high, the way) i may as well use it up!

(sorry, momma earth but i've been guilty of running the dishwasher half empty and probably will continue to do so. hopefully the fact that i walk to work and recycle helps counter balance my horribleness...)

she's crafty (or trying to be)

2011-03-06T03:01:00.000-08:00

one thing i really like to do but almost never have the time (or resources) for is sewing. in the states i made all sorts of things - pillows, chair cushions, skirts. in london, i don't have a sewing machine or the space to make a giant mess with fabric. adam's mom kindly lent me her 1964 singer machine for a bit, and i spent several happy hours hemming jeans. sad, i know.

however, part of my new year's resolutions involved trying to be more creative. this coincided with the arrival of a care package from my mama, which included my copy of amy butler's book "in stitches". i've had this book for several years and have always fantasised about making this:

the pattern is seven (!) pages long and in addition to using a lot of scary quilting-related words, looks wicked hard to make. i really yearned for a cozy quilt to put on my bed (blanket makes a better afghan. and he sheds) but i wasn't sure how wise it would be to spend £100 or more on fabric and materials only to find that i actually suck at quilting/hate sewing lots of quilting lines/etc.

so i went hunting for a class to take in london and came across this at the make lounge: log cabin quilted cushion. i liked the idea of something non-committal, e.g. a cushion. if things failed i would only be out £56 and would at least get a pillow out of the deal.

i showed up to the make lounge after work, which meant i was exhausted, slightly frazzled, and more than a little sniffly with a stubborn cold that just refused to go away. i had registered for the class weeks in advance and i was seriously considering ditching to go home and lie in my bed and watch mindless television. i'm so glad i didn't! i was the last one to arrive, which meant that the fabric selection was kind of picked over. normally this would bug me but instead i was thinking "who cares! it's just for practice!" - so i had fun and pulled a bunch of fabrics that i wasn't entirely sure went together. i did choose a "unifier" swatch though, which represented all the colours of the random fabrics i had chosen in one piece (i think i learned this tip in the interior decorating class my mom and i took about 8 years ago!) my unifier fabric looked like this:

surprise, surprise, the fabric designer of this one is amy butler. i really love amy's style and the fact that she's a fellow ohioan. she somehow manages to make even the most country-style farmhouse stuff seem chic.

anyway, i digress. as i mentioned, the type of quilting we were doing was log cabin style, which means you start with a central square and then attach different rectangles building as you go. normally i find that i'm too impatient for things like measuring, cutting, etc. but it was really therapeutic and there was something very satisfying about building my little cushion!

after all the pieces were stitched together to form a big, patchwork square, we spray glued the patchwork to batting (fluffy cottony material) then spray glued it to a backing piece. then came the hard part - measuring and drawing on the quilting lines. the quilting lines are what hold the piece together and give it a bit of texture. our instructor said we could do 1/2" or 1" space between each line. i opted for 1" because i really didn't want to be there all night sewing straight lines. i'm horrible with math and measurements and so was slightly terrified at the prospect of messing up, but it was really easy with the clear rulers the studio provided us. sewing the lines was even easier than i thought and actually went very quickly! before i knew it, i had finished quilting and was sewing up the easy peasy envelope piece for the back of the cushion.

in a mere three hours, i managed to produce something that looks roughly like a quilt!

and the fabrics that i chose willy nilly? i think they look pretty good together, all things considered. at any rate, the class made me realise i would really enjoy creating a full quilt and gave me the confidence to start hunting for fabrics. if only i had the space... :-)

copenhagen!

2011-02-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

adam and i celebrated our one year dating anniversary this week! to commemorate the event, we decided to go to copenhagen. i have been wanting to venture north for a while and it's really, really cheap to visit denmark right now (probably because it is really, really cold). of all the places i've visited in the last year, copenhagen is one of my favourites. clean city, friendly people, super easy to navigate, and beautiful. i could have easily stayed a few extra days but alas, these weekend trips always go too fast. we stayed in a little three-star hotel called hotel maritime, which was tiny but cheap and clean. the shower was actually a wet room and true to its name, the whole bathroom was wet by the time i finished bathing. was kind of fun though.

a few pics from our adventure

we were struck by the clean modern design of the airport, although it took me a minute to figure out what i've dubbed the "star wars" bathroom. you have have to stand in front of this door here and it eventually opens automatically. it felt very intergalactic.

for grandpa. these were on display in the airport...adam said they were in london at one point.

our first night there, we stopped in a pub whose name i can't pronounce. speaking of which, i tried to order gløgg but wasn't pronouncing it right so i went back and forth with the bartender a few times (glogg? glugg?) before i finally spelled it out and he went "oh! GLOOGG." gløgg is sort of like mulled wine with raisins and nuts in the bottom. my flatmate who is from sweden made some at Christmastime, so i was excited to try it again! very nice when its 10 degrees outside.

front of the pub i can't pronounce

i had a cold during our trip and thought a hot toddy might help (it did). except the bartender made it with rum, which i've never had before? i always thought they were whisky drinks but what do i know!

the danish are crazy for cycling and copenhagen was the most bike-friendly city i have ever seen. it is also a very peaceful, nice city and people seemed to leave their bikes everywhere, some of them unlocked. perhaps i'm being naive but it seemed a lot safer than london.

we made it down to the canals late afternoon on saturday and were amazed that the water was frozen! (my swedish flatmate said "duh! it's winter!" when we told her this :-) the canal looked like a giant slushie. blueberry flavour, if you really must know.

tiny jen next to big frozen canal.

this is about as much skin as i was willing to expose. even with a shirt, sweaterdress, cardigan, coat, gloves, hat, two pairs of socks, and tights i was FREEZING! the wind bit through every layer of clothing, although the sun helped us from turning into blocks of ice.

adam in a postcard.

simply amazing. i could have stood looking at this canal all day, except my eyes were starting to freeze.

i fancy a swim!

is this a toilet? who can tell! funny name though.

i've got my eye on you, bear-hat-guard-man.

hello from the danish palace? we don't really know what this was, we found it on accident.

the original little mermaid. i bet she's cold sitting there on that rock! it took us ages to walk there and adam kept looking at every statue we passed and saying "i'm pretty sure that's it", even if the statue had male genitalia. we really just wanted to hole up somewhere with a hot drink.

for dinner we headed to a small local restaurant/bar to sample the danish fare. the barman next door had recommended it, and so we turned up at 8 pm for dinner. 8 pm seemed late to us but the place was nearly empty when we arrived, save the barmaid and a guitarist. the restaurant had great artwork everywhere, including these sketches.

the man on the right is the guitar player, who came and talked to us before the place filled up. he sang mostly in danish and played all acoustic, but did a few songs in english as well. the restaurant had filled up by then and everyone - lads, older people, etc. - all sang along! it was really fun, really good atmosphere.

we wanted a true danish experience so we asked the barmaid what to order. she suggested pork roast and a danish hamburger for us to share, and said we wouldn't need starters. she was right! the food was amazing. the pork still had scratchings on it, the burger was medium rare (with egg on it) and they both came with boiled potatoes and pickled things. it was like going to grandma's house for sunday dinner (except grandma would be danish). we licked our plates clean.

the restaurant. i can't pronounce this one either.

denmark still have their own currency even though they are part of the EU. we liked that some of the coins had holes in them, and most of them had hearts on them as well. very pretty money.

i would definitely go back!

sunday roast™

2011-02-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

the iPad, the stylus, and me

2011-01-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

living in london means that my family misses me a lot, which means that i get wicked Christmas gifts like expensive Italian leather boots and all the cookies i want to eat (let's be honest though, Christmas around my house has always been pretty good :-). this year was no exception and santa was kind enough to bring me an...iPad!

yes, that's right. this late adopting, pay-as-you-go-Zack-Morris-phone toting gal has one of these new-fangled devices that does everything save flying me to the moon. sweet. however, i've quickly found that you can lead a technologically backward 31-year old to water but she doesn't completely know how to drink.

i'm catching on. slowly. remember people, i don't have an iPhone so i've missed the boat on things like urban spoon, iFart, etc. sadly i spent the first few weeks using iPad for things like:

- playing Paper Toss (amazing waste of time that i can't seem to stop letting consume me)
- playing hangman
- using the iPad as a digital cookbook. the cover i bought has two heights i can choose from to stand iPad up. handy!
- looking for the video functionality (really? how does this thing not have a camera in it!)

however, things like "app of the week" and corporate lunch n' learns are helping me to see the light, so i'm making my way into more interesting apps beyond those that provide mindless amusement. last week's app was penultimate, which was on sale for £.59p and very exciting to me, because it made me think "maybe i could use this bad boy at work for, gasp, productivity!"

visions danced through my head of combining my various to-do lists, client notebooks, etc. into one beautiful application that organised it all AND allowed me to email everything to myself. imagine the trees i'd save, the impressed looks i'd get from clients when i whipped out iPad in meetings. "isn't she savvy!" they'd think as i scribbled effortlessly, digitally, all the fruits of our labour into the wonder that is iPad.

eager to make these visions a reality, i dashed off to curry's last weekend to pick up a stylus. of course you need a special stylus for such magic, and of course apple don't make one. luckily, proporta saw a gap in the market (ok, so the stylus is actually for the iPhone but nevermind) and it only set me back £9.99. such a small amount for such an incredible investment! i couldn't wait to get the four-inch, rubber-tipped stylus out of its clamshell packaging and onto the touch screen.

in all the excitement, it seems i forgot that nothing is ever as easy as it looks and that like anything else, it would take time to perfect my ability to make a piece of rubber and a small computer produce something that looked remotely close to jen writing. i spent the first night desperately hoping to achieve greatness but alas. not so much. what i DID achieve were a lot of scribbles, mess ups, and generally illegible characters. after twenty minutes or so, i managed to produce this (never mind what it says):

twenty four hours, many failed attempts, and one very sore hand later i was able to produce something that actually looked like my handwriting (again, not the work of shakespeare but merely an attempt to write basically ANYTHING):

it's all in the angle, is basically what i discovered. i had the system down to a t when i realised that to achieve such perfection, i had to be curled up on the couch with the iPad resting on a raised knee. maybe not the best for client meetings?

needless to say, i am still practicing how to write on this thing when i am in a respectable position e.g. in a chair at a table. i did, however, discover that it is more fun to draw with the stylus than with my finger:

back to the mindless entertainment again, it seems, but i haven't given up and have been using iPad all week at work. it's for internal meetings only at this point, until i can get my skills to the next level OR until i can remember to turn off the eraser tool when i'm through editing. we'll see which comes first. in the meantime, i'm working on some serious calluses for my thumb and middle finger. ;-)

no boys allowed

2011-01-16T03:01:00.000-08:00

seriously. unless you fancy reading about annual, er, ladies' checkups, then only girls will be interested in this post. (assuming said girls have any interest in seeing how government healthcare compares with private)

for those of you still left reading, i had to go in for my "wellness" exam last monday and instead of making an appointment with an ob-gyn, i had go to my general practitioner (GP). my appointment was set for 9, so i let my boss know i would be out of the office for at least an hour and trolled off to the doctor arriving five minutes early (a small miracle for me). in the states, i would have had to fill out a very long form, give someone some money, and then wait about 20 more minutes before being taken into the back room, getting weighed, handed a gown, and then made to wait about five minutes more before the doctor arrived.

this visit was a little different.

the nurse called me back after only two minutes of waiting, which was actually BEFORE my original appointment time. not so bad. we went into her office, which also had an exam table in it. we chatted for about 60 seconds as she explained the process would be pretty similar to what i went through in america. she then told me to lose the bottom half of my work getup and proceeded to putter around the room looking at the wall.

no gown. no privacy. interesting.

the "exam" was over in about 30 seconds and to the nurse's credit, was about the same as it is in the states minus the stirrups. except. that was it. no poking, no prodding, and no checkup for any of the usual stuff: blood pressure, heart rate, weight, etc.

so i asked some questions about why other parts of my body weren't included in the exam. the response was a short lecture on medical studies stating the ineffectiveness of having doctors do things like breast exams (women are supposed to do these themselves, which i do, but i always liked having a professional checking things out anyway), why pelvic exams aren't necessary, etc. i didn't bother asking about blood pressure because i never know what those readings mean in the first place.

she was very polite and answered all my questions, then said if i didn't have any more questions that someone would call me in two weeks. she also mentioned that i wouldn't need another appointment for three years.

what?!?

a lot can change in three years, right? i asked this and was given another lecture on medical studies and how things don't actually change that much down there and that three years was definitely an appropriate lag time between checkups.

there wasn't a lot i could do, and who i am to argue with an entire team of nhs researchers who apparently have a study to disprove everything i have ever learned about women's health? needless to say, i was back at work about 20 minutes after i left. that night i was still feeling slightly cheated, so i asked my flatmate about it. she is on private healthcare through her company and said that she can go every other year, and that the exam includes all of the standard bits i was expecting. every other year isn't great but it is better than every three! i know my company has private healthcare for us but i'm not sure how it works. i shall have to ask but in the meantime, i'm left scratching my head about who's really right here, how often i really need doctor checkups, and what would happen to me if, heaven forbid, anything ever goes wrong with this little machine i call my body...

press for champagne

2010-12-20T10:00:00.000-08:00

i have a friend who i only see every few months due to both of our hectic schedules, and we decided we should celebrate Christmas by having a really fabulous brunch. my idea of fabulous brunch definitely involves champagne, so my friend suggested this place:

i loved the pink and gold for some reason

maybe a bit over the top but Christmas only comes once a year and i liked the general idea of being a bit frivolous for once. i got to the restaurant a few minutes early and perused the menu while i waited. frivolous indeed! it was £3.25 for a small cup of coffee! gah. it made more sense to get a cocktail, really. i wanted champagne badly, especially since they had one of these at the table:

you have no idea how much i wanted to press that button. but alas, the cheapest glass of champagne was £11.50 so i "settled" for a hot toddy since my throat was acting funny. it was the best beverage i have ever had, absolute heaven. i was lucky to find eggs benedict on the menu for only a little more than the price of champagne and ended up ok budget wise thanks to the fact that i nursed my cocktail and resisted the urge to ask for any more water. :-)

it is worth noting here that living with four roommates is what affords me the opportunity to see how the other half lives, even it is only for hour-long intervals!

p.s. they also had a power outlet at the table where they apparently plug in a TOASTER so that you can have freshly made hot toast, but it seemed boring to take a picture of a plug socket...

white friday

2010-12-18T01:47:00.000-08:00

so, i was scheduled to go to vevey, switzerland yesterday for a holiday lunch, which i was quite looking forward to. however, the day before we were supposed to got, the weather forecast predicted snow for london AND the rest of europe. the alarm went off at 3:55 am on friday morning and london was clear, so our team headed out to heathrow to await our 7 am flight to geneva. there was no sign of delay, but 7 am came and went and the airport staff announced that geneva airport was closed until 9 am (8 am UK time). we called the people we were supposed to meet for lunch, who assured us that while it was indeed snowing in switzerland it wasn't a "disaster" and that we should plan to fly in whenever the airport opened. our team had a spirited debate about whether we should go or not, since we had to fly BACK to london that night, and in the end decided to roll the dice and fly out for lunch as planned.

we landed in geneva to a white-out situation and found ourselves wondering if we were crazy for flying out of a perfectly snow-free city into a winter wonderland. but, the trains were still running fine so on we went to vevey! once we started to get around lake geneva, the weather cleared a little and it was a really pretty ride. vevey was very snowy and it made it look like a little postcard town:

however, as we ate lunch, it started snowing again. hard. by the time we came out of the restaurant, it was hard to see the lake that was only a few feet away:

yikies. we piled BACK onto the train to geneva and i got a text with this picture of london from adam:

london absolutely cannot deal with snow, so this was more alarming than the snow in geneva. luckily we were flying to heathrow and not city, which closes at the first sign of heavy rain. however, our flight was slightly delayed anyway because heathrow had a backlog from having to clear its runways! but, i think we were lucky to get out of geneva at all because a lot of flights were either really severely delayed or cancelled. we were only an hour late, which is pretty good given the weather on both sides.

fifteen hours after my 3:55 am wakeup call, two planes, two trains, and two cab rides later, i was back in my warm and cozy room snuggled up next to my little christmas tree. adam brought curry takeaway over, which i ate...in bed. :-) not a bad day overall albeit exhausting!

merry Christmas from london!

naked in the office

2010-12-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

no, i wasn't drinking! we have this thing in our office called naked lunch where, several times each year, three people get chosen to give a 20-minute presentation about themselves and essentially "bare all". if there's anything scarier than standing in front of your co-workers preparing to tell your life story, i don't know what it is (except maybe teaching English to very excited adolescents OR paragliding, but i digress :-).

i was one of the lucky few this year who got picked to go naked, and i've spent the last few weeks plotting, scheming, and stressing about what to say. who am i, really? how did i get here? it turned out that some of my story was quite easy to tell and some of it was actually unbeknownst to me until i started putting this thing together:

(Current and/or ex-members of the good ship Klamath will recognise the format!)

essentially this 9-up = brand Jennifer and even though it is not the prettiest thing, it felt like an accurate representation of ME. what is all this stuff? from left to right, starting with the top row:

top left
the big fish in a small bowl stands for who i thought i was in cincinnati, loving my job and my life but knowing i wasn't being challenged enough. the little fish was who i aspired to be, even though she is smaller, she has a bigger bowl to swim around in.

top middle
the fab deca logo. andy rodgers got me into this and it was the one extracurricular that taught me how to write a speech, give presentations to thousands of people, and got me on the right path. i know you were all thinking it was my part time job with the Colonel that got me where i am today, but i really think it was deca that acted as the springboard.

top right
the track stands for how much i love running, even though i am STILL burned out from the flying pig marathon and not sure if i ever want to do 26.2 again. running is something i enjoy with my dad, something that gives me a sense of place no matter where i am, and something that keeps my crazies in tact. the smell of that track in the late afternoon sunshine takes me right back to 7th grade and the milford eagles racing crew...

middle left
my passport = a girl's guide to freedom. i have to thank my parents on this one for letting me go to spain when i was 17. that travel bug bit me right in the ass at a young age and has never let go!

middle middle
i love reading, writing, and everything in between. i adore bill bryson and secretly (or not) long to be a travel writer.

middle right
this wall in cusco is red, just like the little piece of my heart that will always remain in the amazing sacred valley of peru. the trip that changed my way of looking at the world...

bottom left
if i was going to be a muppet, it would totally be beaker. i love to make stuff, which is always an experiment and makes me feel like a mad scientist sometimes (especially in the kitchen). coupled with the fact that i get really high-pitched sometimes, well, can't you just see the correlation? meep, meep!

bottom middle
my eternal mental age. i had the wisdom of my twenties (parents stop laughing at me) but the ENERGY of a twenty-something. it's orange because i have synesthesia...

bottom right
EC1...the postcode...stands for being that little fish in the big bowl now, traveling to random places for £24.99 on easyJet, drinking random beers just because i can, and most importantly, where i met my Ads.

so there you have it. if you ever needed written explanation of my nuttiness, look no further.

birthday celebrations

2010-12-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

the lovely adam celebrated his 32nd birthday on thanksgiving day last week!

wednesday night we had dinner with friends at our favourite italian place, ciao bella

the group got a bit rowdy after too many bottles of value-priced house wine

friday afternoon it was off to a seaside town called brighton, about an hour away on the train. we stayed in a wonderful little b&b called the cavalaire, which was in a restored victorian mansion. breakfast in the mornings was amazing, everything from a Full English to salmon and scrambled eggs! i didn't want to leave.

our first stop in brighton was the fish bowl pub, where we feasted on giant fish finger sandwiches and seasonal ales.

since it was really, really cold in brighton, our second stop was at a cosy pub called the bath arms, where we sat by the fire and enjoyed more seasonal ales and a lovely woodford reserve.

saturday morning we braved the cold for a walk on the beach and down to the famous pier. the ocean was beautiful...too bad we were wearing ski hats!

that blurry thing in the corner is my MITTEN, which i wore to the BEACH

heh, heh. the brits call cotton candy "candy floss" which makes absolutely no sense to me

cheeky illustrations on the side of the women's bathing house

i tried my hand at some skee ball in the arcade, although the game was actually (appropriately) called "ice ball"

after a very cold morning on the pier we walked back down the beach to a place called mdtea, which i didn't take a picture of because the staff wasn't very friendly and they scared me. that aside, i had the BEST cup of tea there ever. it was a peppermint and chili infusion, absolutely amazing.

adam's friends mike and amelia drove in from kent to have dinner with us saturday night! we went to a great seafood restaurant called english's, where we dined on oysters, scallops, and fresh lemon sole. the meal took 3.5 hours, so we really got to enjoy every course and not feel too rushed.

i would smile here but my face is actually frozen

snowed in

2010-12-01T11:38:00.001-08:00

in case you haven't caught the london weather lately, it's bloody freezing here and snowing to boot. it snowed all day yesterday but it didn't stick much within central london. however, in kent where adam lives, they have over a foot! needless to say the trains aren't running and he is stuck in greenhithe for the foreseeable future...

Adam's monster truck, covered in a mountain of snow

thanksgiving in london, year two

2010-12-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

for the second year in a row, my american friend beth hosted a lovely thanksgiving meal for us turkey fans who are far from home. beth's friend michael also joined us, along with adam, who was also celebrating his birthday!

a wonderful spread to be thankful for

good company to share the meal with

eating my veggies...mama would be proud!

birthday candles for my sweet boy (guess who made the pie!)

happy thanksgiving everyone!

london weekend

2010-12-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

two weekends ago, i decided to spend some time getting to know my little city a bit better. i started by having dinner at a chic-chic pan asian fusion restaurant called cocoon in piccadilly circus. normally i wouldn't go near piccadilly unless i have guests in town OR if i needed to visit the anthropologie store, but it's Christmas and there are nice lights up, so i braved the crowds for a friday evening out with the girls:

saturday night adam came over and we embarked on a mini ec1 pub crawl. we realised that there are about 50 pubs in my postcode (or more. no joke.) and that we only go to three of them, even though there are a bunch we have always wanted to try. we found that a few of them were closed (ec1 is next to the city, which is primarily a mon-fri community) but we did enjoy delicious beer at some new local haunts:

the rising sun, a samuel smith pub with a fireplace - score!

the castle - not bad, but smelled like a club and was playing bad music

betsey trotwood - they let me try the beers on draught before making me commit

the wilmington arms - oh my. this one smelled like bleach, which makes you wonder WHAT they had to clean up that required the involvement of chemicals. we didn't linger in this one.

the reigning champion of the evening, the rising sun

enjoying the sights along the mini pub crawl

on sunday we headed up to chapel market where we hit our favourite butcher shop, the fresh meat market, for a leg of lamb and some pork chops. we also braved the horror that is sunday afternoon at the islington waitrose, so that i could get cans of pumpkin for thanksgiving! finally a local store is stocking canned pumpkin and i don't have to go all the way to stoke newington!

with the groceries purchased, we embarked on what i hope will be the first of many "monthly cultural outings". this month we went to the museum of london, which is a 10-minute walk from my flat and is also FREE. we only had an hour to spend but got too see some really cool displays on what london was like millions of years ago.

exploring the museum

all in all it was a fun weekend and a great reminder of the variety of things london has to offer! if i ever get bored here, it is my own fault...

Meece

2010-11-21T11:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my monthly turn at the cleaning rota, and I usually tend to do OCD things like wipe under the microwave, move the 57 bottles of olive oil so I can wipe under them, attempt to clean the George Foreman grill that no one uses yet is inexplicably dirty, etc. I sometimes find interesting things like rubber bands, crumbs, and one time, an olive. However, yesterday, I got an unwanted surprise when I discovered...mouse droppings. A lot of them. We have had mice in the garden and the garage since Summer but I had never seen any evidence of them in the main house. Ew, ew, ew. I grabbed the bleach and went to town, then planned to send an email out to my housemates regarding our new pets.

After 2.5 hours of cleaning (most of it in the kitchen), I went to take a nap and was awoken by a loud crash. No one was crying or yelling, so I figured I would let it be and went back to sleep. Adam came over a little while later and we went to the kitchen for a quick snack before heading out for the evening. We encountered one of my housemates making her own snack, and she mentioned that she and another housemate saw two mice earlier (meece :-), which was what resulted in the crash. Gah. She also said she had found a hole in the wall in the hallway where she thought the mice had come in. She had put a lot of duct tape over the hole, so we hoped the problem would be solved for the time being.

Everyone was chatting merrily over our food when out the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny grey thing scurrying down the hall towards the bathroom. My initial instinct was to scream, loud, which prompted Adam into action and he scuttled after it with one of Ly's shoes. I had just mopped and I REALLY wasn't in the mood for a massacre, so I screamed some more while he played whack-a-mouse to no avail. It was looking for the hole we had taped over and when it couldn't get through, it came BACK down the hall towards the kitchen. And towards me. I hollered again and hopped up onto a kitchen chair as Adam and the mouse chased each other down the hall. My housemate, who had been cooking, was quiet but also up on a chair, watching with interest to see how the situation would unfold.

By this point, our other three housemates had come down to see why I was screaming (no need to send that email any more). We discussed possible ways to get rid of the critters:

- Open the door and let them run outside (quickly dismissed, as Adam mentioned these are not like pet cats and probably more would come in while the door was open)

- Feed them poison bait (still under consideration, although we don't want dead ones in the garage or the walls)

- Get glue traps (dismissed as inhumane, since this doesn't kill them quickly)

- Get snappy traps (still under consideration, but no one wants to clean up the carcasses especially since their heads tend to snap off in these things)

We decided to contact the landlord and everyone went their separate ways for the night.

Fast forward twenty four hours and I'm in the kitchen again with Adam and a different flatmate and I went to use the downstairs bathroom before we started roasting our leg of lamb (£6.99 y'all). I was facing the sink when suddenly, a tiny grey creature rushed at me. Talk about an invasion of privacy, hello mouse! Not in the loo! I screamed bloody murder and we danced around the tiny bathroom, then the dumb thing finally ran behind the toilet. I came out of the bathroom to a chorus of "shut the door!". Adam then went in with one of Ly's finance magazines and shut the door behind him to avoid further infestation.

There was a lot of scuffling and Ads emerged five minutes later, only to announce that there are holes where the woodwork is unfinished:

- Behind the sink (big one)

- By the radiator (two small ones)

- Behind the toilet (medium size one)

He then rummaged around the garage, found...something, and used it to plug one of the holes.

I'm not a fan of these encounters with nature. I know we live in the city but come on. I've given five people near heart attacks with my screaming and Adam said his ears are still ringing. My own heart is pounding and I find myself looking suspiciously at the refrigerator and the bathroom now. I bet no one goes in there for a while!

Anyway, hopefully the landlord will sort this out quickly, especially since I've decided to stay here for the time being and not go spend 75% of my income to live in a shoebox. :-)

genius

2010-11-17T13:53:00.000-08:00

In case you're ever bored in London... :-)

Close, but no cigar

2010-11-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

I ALMOST had a flat. Almost. It was huge (practically a one-bedroom), in the location I wanted, AND wonder of wonders, it had a washer. I REALLY wanted it and am still sulking over the loss while quietly cursing my agent.

The story goes something like this. Agent sends me pics of a flat to look at, which is decidedly out of my price range (and if I'm honest, it was kind of not that nice looking in the pictures). However, agent said he could get the landlord to negotiate the price closer to what I could pay so I agreed to have a look.

The paint was peeling on the outside of the building, the street was really noisy, and I had to walk up about five flights of stairs, but then we opened the door and the heavens smiled upon us. There was a HALLWAY and A SEPARATE KITCHEN. The studio room was beyond huge and the bed was nowhere near the stove. And it was QUIET. No more listening to cement trucks barrel over speed bumps, or my personal favourite, listening to the recycling man throw bags of wine bottles into the back of his truck at 6 am on a Saturday.

I tried to play it cool but we agreed I would make an offer via email when I got home. We spent all afternoon farting around over price, and I finally capitulated and agreed to pay the top end of my price range WITHOUT BILLS. Mind you, the price I originally offered was WITH bills but nevermind. I was willing to sell my soul for this one. Eating is overrated anyway (kidding, it wasn't that bad).

Sadly, after four hours of back and forth via texting, blackberry email, and phone calls, the agent wrote me and said the landlord wasn't so willing to negotiate on price like he thought. (Remember, this apartment was WAY out of my price range and I only even looked at it because the agent said it was negotiable).

Dumbass. He's on commission and would've gotten a fat check from me, so I know he tried. But still. He's a dumbass. Maybe so am I, because I think I was punching above my weight on this one. That place was totally out of my league and worth what the landlord was asking...

However, I have made a massive breakthrough in that I've come to the realisation that I can no longer live by the "I'm not spending more than 1/3 of my income on housing" rule. Apparently this doesn't actually work when you live in a big city and your salary is so low that people do a double take when they hear what you earn.

If I'm really broke and/or really miserable after 12 months of studio life, I reckon I'll re-evaluate when the lease is up. But in the meantime, when else am I going to be able to selfishly spend money like it's water? Maybe never again. I've saved a lot of money walking to work this past year, not to mention living with four other people is relatively cheap as well. So here goes nothing. I'm upping my search criteria and not even going to CONSIDER living in a basement apartment where the oven also doubles as a headboard.

Stay tuned... :-)

Indonesian treats!

2010-11-03T13:15:00.001-07:00

One of my flatmates is from Indonesia and was kind enough to bring all of us pressies back from her last visit home. She hand-picked gifts for everyone, so we all got a mix of stuff depending on our tastes. My packet of goodies included:

The cutest wooden spoon/fork set - the handles are fish!

Tim Tam chocolate cookies

Sesame seed cookies

Plus the coolest ramen noodles I have ever eaten

Seriously. I eagerly busted into the package that I couldn't read, boiled the kettle, dumped the water and the noodles into a bowl, and realized...I don't remember how to actually make ramen. I know it's not hard but I think I missed out on a critical step, like boiling them on the stove or something.

Any way, it didn't matter because the noodles eventually cooked and I was able to mix in the FOUR packets it came with:

Peanuts
Chili powder
Some sort of sauce
And some other sort of sauce

It tasted really good and put Instant Ramen right to shame. Even if the flavour hadn't been so good (which it was), I actually had quite a fun time just assembling the ingredients. I reckon I might be easily entertained...

oh, the joy

2010-11-01T15:18:00.000-07:00

while jen's motel has certainly been a comfortable home for me over the last 12 months, there comes a time in every girl's life when she just wants to be able to take a shower. no seriously. i have been showering at night for the past month in order to avoid the grumblings and the queues that take place in the third floor hallway each morning. it's a bit ridiculous.

when i was looking for a flatshare last year, i used sites like moveflat.com and gumtree.com where you can find loads of people looking for a housemate. it was relatively safe because you could tell right away whether something was the real deal when you showed up at the front door (either there were people living there looking for a housemate or there weren't).

however, looking for a studio is different. there are lots of scams aka people just posting pictures of pretty apartments online and claiming they have a flat to let. there are elaborate schemes to take your deposit before you even view the flat, and then voila, there isn't actually a flat and you're out £700. i had heard about these scams but had never witnessed them myself until last week when i got the SAME strange email from two SEPARATE potential landlords:

---
Thanks for your reply.I would love to meet you, get to know you and show you round the flat so that you can see what you are renting but I have had problems with time wasters who could not keep to there end of deal despite the fact that i have made the rent so low considering the economic climate.Its really time wasting because i am a very busy person and do not really have much time to waste. Please understand that i am NOT asking you to pay for what you have not seen.People have told me that they will pay upon us meeting if they are satisfied but mostly they don't have the cash at hand to pay me,everyone of them is looking for a free or cheaper flat to rent despite the fact that i have made the rent Cheap.
Can you please answer the following questions?

-Are you really serious about the renting the Flat?

-If you love the flat when you see it and interested in renting, will you make the payment to hold it against your move in or would you like to move in the same day?
Kindly get back to me about an idea on what we can do so that we can arrange a meeting for viewing.
---

seems normal enough (except the "move in the same day" part), if i was willing to overlook the fact that, like i said, i got this EXACT email from another dude the morning afterwards. i replied back that i was serious, etc., etc. (to both dudes actually) to see what would happen and i got THIS back from BOTH of them:

---
I was discussing with my colleague about the idea on how i will be so sure that i will not be disappointed and to avoid time wasters.She advised that we can work out something via Western Union.
All i want to know is how sure are you to pay me the money if you intend to rent the Flat and just an evidence that you have the money because i need a surety that my tenant will pay me at least the first month rent and deposit.

She adviced that you can visit any Western Union outlet by sending the rent and deposit in your friend or partner's name to your name as the receiver in London Via Western Union which you would cash after viewing. The relevance of this transfer is to show that you have the agreed rent or deposit at your disposal to cash after viewing.
The transfer charges would be refunded to you when we meet at the point of viewing whether you decide to take the property or not.
After viewing, if satisfied with what you see, then we would both go to the nearest WU outlet, you will collect the money out and pay me in cash in exchange for the keys to the property and all other documents signed.

NOTE- No monies would be sent to me, it would be made between you and any of your friend.I just need the transfer as a proof that you have the money available.

I was made to understand that you can send me the WU transaction proof for confirmation on WU website so as for me to be rest assured that you have the money to pay me available at WU.
https://wumt.westernunion.com/asp/orderStatus.asp?country=global

PS:I am sorry for the lengthy mail.I only want to explain myself better.
---

everything from the "i was discussing with my colleague" to the "PS" was identical!!! sigh. needless to say, i didn't write back.

i then came to the conclusion that i must go with an agent to find a property and quickly learned that:

1) most properties on agency web sites have already been let

2) i am not of much value to anyone given the tiny amount my rent would be AND the fact that there are 1,000's like me looking for the exact same thing

i think i've contacted about 10 agents over the last few days, some have been helpful, some not so much. i spoke to a really lovely guy today and told him i wasn't keen to rent a studio where the bed is like, in the kitchen. he promised to email me a property later that day, which he did...and sure enough, the bed was in the kitchen.

so, we'll see what happens but i have to say i'm not too optimistic about the search. at least i'm not on a deadline like i was last year...

Summer post, a few months late

2010-11-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know my visit to Cincinnati was five months ago (!) but I found some cute pics that I thought y'all might enjoy:

Happy Halloween

2010-11-01T13:48:00.001-07:00

No dressing up this year, but Adam and I did celebrate Halloween by carving the world's smallest pumpkin! Our little friend lasted about 20 minutes before we roasted his seeds and made a pumpkin risotto out of the rest of him. Mmmm...

the ives in st. ives

2010-09-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

september has been an action-packed month so far! my dad, pam, and tim came to visit last week and got the whirlwind tour of london plus a trip to st. ives (get it?) thrown in to boot. i had never been to cornwall before and wow. it was like a whole other country. rather than boring you with the usual picture + explanation, i'm trying my hand at something new...exporting my iPhoto pics into QuickTime movies. yes, i know it is very small but that is all i can get to upload for now. it has an exciting soundtrack, if that makes it any better?

also, for your romantics out there, the pub shown in the last 20 secs or so of pictures is where adam and i had our first date seven months ago. :-)

36-hour reunion in barthelona

2010-09-12T03:18:00.000-07:00

my friends jenifer and jule, who i have known since i was five, crossed the pond to spend a few days in spain and france. the spain part of their trip fell during the august bank holiday, so i flew to barcelona for a whirlwind, fabulous reunion. we were so busy catching up that i don't think i saw one famous landmark. unless you count the naked guy standing on the corner by the beach a landmark?

i arrived saturday night around 9 pm, took the bus into the city, and met my girls at their hotel. none of us had eaten dinner yet, so we put on our finest and went in search of the perfect paella. i was planning for it to be an early-ish night.

however, every time i hang out with these chicas, we always accidentally end up staying up way later than planned. dinner ended around 11, followed by a cab ride to the beach (i was able to have a conversation in Spanish with the driver the whole 10 minutes!), drinks by the beach, then dancing at a random club with some Frenchmen the girls had met the night before.

after a few hours of mind-numbing techno music and G&Ts, i ended up in the mediterranean for a quick dip (in my clothes) before we headed back to the hotel. the paella we ate wasn't really holding us over, and we were all starving! but nothing was open at 5:30 am for us to munch on, so we pled with the hotel manager to feed us.

kind soul that he was, we got a nice (albeit random) plate of chorizo, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and ciabatta bread. i woke up at 9 am at the foot of the bed, covered in egg shells. this is what the "snack" plate looked like the next morning.

we finally got out of bed at 1 pm, at which point i poked my head outside to see what the rest of the world was doing.

despite not seeing any famous landmarks, i did get to see the side streets and back alleys of barcelona on a our long, lost walk to lunch, which were pretty cool in their own right.

we finally ended up in a tasty cafe around 4 pm, where we gnawed on crepes and sarnies (that's English for sandwich).

we spent the rest of my first/last day in barcelona relaxing at the beach. i had to hold the camera up really high to take this shot, because everyone on the beach except for us was naked.

Bodrum trip post...a little late!

2010-09-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since we got back from Turkey, but busy schedules have prevented me from having time to do...anything! However, I'm housebound this weekend due to a pulled muscle (oops) so I figured I would update my neglected little blog...

Adam's friend owns a condo in Bodrum, Turkey and was generous enough to let us stay there. We arrived at night, and the condo complex looked like a village in itself, sprawled across a massive hillside.

Turkey in August is...hot. It was around 100 degrees each day, and we began each morning with a vertical climb to the market for bread, fruit, veg, and whatever random meat we could find in the freezer case.

After our trek to the market, we could barely muster the energy to head to the pool. The heat and sun were relentless, so we only lasted about an hour outside before running to find shade.

Lunch was usually a potluck eaten on the balcony of the condo. We hid under the umbrella and feasted contentedly on watermelon, olive oil, pasta and bread.

Most nights we cooked at home, but one brave evening we ventured out to the restaurant at the top of the hill to try the local fare. We ordered testi kebabs (yes, you read that correctly), which were presented to us flambe and with great fanfare. Adam and I both had to dance with the waiters before we were allowed to eat. 100 other diners looked on with awkward interest to see which idiots had ordered what everyone else had already identified as the "party in a clay pot" dish.

The end result of the dancing, clapping, and hullaballoo was similar to goulash. Really tasty!

The sea in Turkey is crystal clear and about 80 degrees (perfect!)...but the landscape is very rocky and not good for sunbathing. To rectify this, the resorts cut away the hillside and brought in builder's sand to accommodate beach chairs, umbrellas, and snack bars. The end result is a little rough on the toes but worth it for a dip in the Aegean sea, where the water is so salty you can float without effort.

I bought these shoes from the L.L. Bean catalog when I was in the 7th grade! They are Tevas, sawtooth pattern if you really must know.

The pool by the beach was an infinity pool, which was really neat. I was swimming with a t-shirt over my bathing suit to avoid getting too much sun, and I got kicked out of the pool by the resort manager! Guess American girls in baggy shirts aren't the image they wanted to project. ;-)

To conserve electricity, Turkey have rolling blackouts that last about an hour. Most of the meat we purchased was frozen, because it is the only way to keep it from spoiling when the freezer stops working in 100 degree heat! One night we de-frosted our mystery pack to find chicken wings and tiny chicken legs. Another night we thought we were buying regular sized chicken thighs and legs. However, upon defrosting we noticed the colour of the meat was much darker than chicken. After some taste tests, a mental review of all game meats we have ever eaten, and a quick look at the local wildlife, we came to the conclusion we were eating duck. Whatever it really was, it was delish. :-)

A map of the Bodrum peninsula, if you are curious.

Turkish currency is still Lira and one Lira equals about 43 pence. I like the design of the fiver best.

One thing that was frustrating about Turkey was that I always felt like I was being taken advantage of. I was really interested in learning about the culture and eating local dishes, but no one we met wanted to share any of that - they all wanted to make a fast profit. Even the taxi drivers, who I can always rely on to tell me where to get the best food whether I'm in Peru or Portugal, had ready-made sales pitches to push us here or there. The final straw was at the airport when I brought two bottled waters up to the cash register. The sales clerk looked at the water, looked at the 10 Lira in my hand, and said "Yes, 10 Lira please." Are you kidding me??? Next time I'm keeping my money in my pockets...

To celebrate the end of our holiday, we went to dinner at a posh beachside restaurant. It was Friday the 13th and we were seated at table 13. :-)

The end.

travel jitters

2010-08-07T01:21:00.001-07:00

adam has a friend who has an apartment in bodrum, turkey (where we can stay for free) and we have been excitedly plotting a week-long holiday on the beach. we finally get to leave today (yay!) but i'm nervous about flying.

no, i'm not worried about the flight itself, but traveling around europe, while it is mostly short distances, is a HUGE hassle especially since i'm not from the EU. for someone who is well used to flying, i find myself getting jittery over a few things here:

- there are always surprises. always. whatever can go wrong actually DOES go wrong, and it can be anything from not realising you have to fill out a fake visa (malta trip) to finding out you have to go through customs BEFORE you get on the plane/train. (and my friend beth wasn't allowed on a train because she forgot to pick up a free train ticket FOR HER BIKE) no matter how many times i read the fine print, there is usually something i miss.

- no one that works here actually cares if you miss your plane/train and they sometimes seem like they WANT you to miss it, because then you have to pay more money.

don't get me wrong, i love living over here and i love the opportunities that living here affords me. i just miss the days of being able to look forward to holiday without a care. there's something to be said about the ease of driving to florida or hilton head.

gah. wish me luck! x

happy customer

2010-08-07T00:56:00.000-07:00

i've been working on a switzerland-based account since march or so, and we recently picked up business with the uk market, which means i have regular face-to-face client meetings (yay!). while i enjoy this interaction, the client is very corporate and i don't have much dress up stuff here in london. i just haven't needed it! hence, i've had to do bits of shopping to save my co-workers and clients from having to see the same black and white dress from target appear in EVERY meeting.

shopping here is a nightmare since most clothes are targeted toward either pencil thin girls or the under 25 variety. however, there is always one safehouse i can find...anthropologie. i love anthropologie. i do think a lot of their stuff is overpriced but it is classic and fits well. i couldn't be bothered with the bus trip to regent street last weekend, so i rolled the dice and tried online shopping. online shopping never, ever works out in my favour but i carefully selected my (sale) items and then spent an hour (or three) reading online reviews from other american customers to see if things ran big or small, if they were good for people with large hips, etc. :-) after much deliberation, i decided on two purchases (not necessarily to be worn together although they could be, if were ever warm enough here)

i ordered everything on saturday and it was being shipped through the royal mail, so you can imagine my delight when the package arrived on wednesday! i was even more delighted to open the box and find this:

normally when you order online, it comes in a crap box and everything is in plastic bags and looks like it came from a nasty warehouse somewhere and not an actual retail store. but this came with my packing slip in a reusable sachet and my two items lovingly wrapped in tissue paper. awesome!

granted, there were still plastic bags once i dug a little deeper but the clothes had actual tags on them so i didn't care. it was the best experience i could have hoped for AND everything fit! hurrah! i would definitely do this again.

as a side note, i did do a little shopping in person in angel last weekend and stumbled upon what looked like the cutest boutique but is actually a giant global chain - all saints. (adam and my hairdresser had a good laugh over this story) well, whatever, we don't have that store in cincinnati and since when have i been on the cutting edge of fashion anyway??? :-) i bought a dress that looks like a combination between this:

and this:

it's black and really light jersey material, no eyelets but it does have the buttons and the sash. and it was a good bargain, too. :-)

sunny but raining sideways

2010-08-04T04:33:00.000-07:00

Only in London...

new haircut, y'all

2010-08-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

i guess while i'm thanking people i should also thank my hairstylist from jarrold's for providing me with four consistent haircuts/highlights in a row. in my experience this is hard to find!

an ode to my local favorites

2010-08-02T12:47:00.001-07:00

i'd like to take a minute to thank the local establishments who have kept me fed and watered these past few days. in no particular order, thank you:

café saffron
you always deliver my monday night saag paneer consistently and deliciously. though we seem to have a different idea of what "make it a little spicy means", i do appreciate the little treats you throw in the bag each time, from poppadom to those wonderful fried veggie things. i also appreciate that you never become aggravated when i bring my drunk friends in on a friday night, even though we are loud and once (accidentally) dropped a beer bottle into an irretrievable place.

sekforde arms
your £9.99 jugs of pimms keep me refreshed on a hot sunday afternoon, you are willing to serve up a nice pint of kronenburg even at 5 minutes till 11, and frankly, i am well pleased with your recent remodel of the ladies' toilet. also, your staff is quite friendly. i consider you my "local" even though i don't live across from you anymore and have to pass at least two other pubs to be received into your welcoming arms.

la porchetta
you are typically one of the first meals i feed to out-of-town guests who are weary from traveling and who always very much enjoy your fine, thin-crust authentic Italian pizzas. your lovely waitress never fails to recognize me, whether she is working in the clerkenwell or holburn branch. perhaps this is because i went through a month-long spell where i dined with you at least once a week if not more. thank you for making affordable delicious food that is close enough to my house to be convenient but just far enough away that the walk might count as exercise.

though i haven't been there in a while, i'd also like to thank:

the three kings, for their chili bakes and random jukebox full of B side songs from the 70's. also, their bartenders never let anyone queue jump unlike some other establishments on clerkenwell green...

the curved angel, for its small but filling salad bar and the free re-usable takeaway box, all for £3. you make lunch possible when i have loads of change and only five minutes to spare.

bless you all for making my world a happier place.

paris!

2010-07-26T13:21:00.001-07:00

adam and i decided to take a weekend holiday in paris! thanks to expedia, we landed ourselves two eurostar tickets and a three-star hotel in the latin quarter for a reasonable price...

i was surprised to find that the eurostar had carpeted floors. i was also surprised to find that you have to check in and go through customs BEFORE you can get on the train...close call on timing! we spent half of the journey listening to French lessons on my iPod, and the other half of the journey eating lunch. by the time we purchased lunch, all that was left in the snack car was:

two bags of crisps
coffee
brownies
bickies aka biscuits aka cookies

a nice, balanced start to a weekend of healthy eating

hangin' out in the sun on the seine. we spent most of the weekend contently wandering up and down the river, occasionally stopping to look at stuff or sit on a wall.

adam hoping for a glimpse of quasimodo

i heart parisian cafes. this one was called la palette and was in the heart of saint germain in the middle of dozens of art galleries. good reco from lonely planet! i carried my lonely planet guide around faithfully, despite my co-workers teasing me that this is a guide book for students looking for a cheap holiday. just because i am 31 doesn't mean i can't be thrifty.

another lonely planet reco, we tried to go to this wine bar for lunch but the grumpy owner wasn't in the mood to serve food at such an odd hour (3 pm). so we came back for dinner. :-)

despite grumpy man's warning of rain, we sat at a table outside (we didn't get THAT wet and anyway, every other table was booked) and enjoyed a rather expensive bottle of wine.

we also enjoyed a cheese plate and a STUPID AMOUNT OF MEAT. we ordered l'entrecote for two people, which was enough delicious steak (and frites) to easily feed a family of four. none of it went to waste.

saturday we found ourselves walking along the seine again, this time on a mission to see a few sights. on the bridge to the louvre, we noticed that there were loads of padlocks stuck to the fence. perhaps they were part of an art exhibit? or a political statement? you can't chain that many bikes to the same part of the fence.

i bought a sweater (yes, Dad and Pam it is a grey sweater!!!!) because it was a bit chilly. shopping in paris was more fun than shopping in london. (i actually find shopping in london traumatic, between the size differences and the fact that most clothes are made for 13 year old girls)

the louvre looked kind of like a greenhouse.

the big triangle had baby triangles.

since dinner in paris isn't exactly cheap, we decided to buy groceries at carrefour and have ourselves a picnic. some baguettes, salami, gouda, fruit, and plastic knives are all you need for a good lunch! the free map from the hotel made a nice placemat. however, by the time we ate the whole block of cheese, i didn't desire dairy for the rest of the weekend.

walking to the eiffel tower from the louvre is a bit misleading. you think "oh, look it's over there, pretty close by", then you think "hmm, not much farther", then "right, just a few more blocks probably", and finally "f'ing hell, where is this bloody thing?".

after a bit of debate, i finally decided this one is definitely bigger than the one at Kings Island.

tour de france rolled into town while we were there...

trying a new beer at a new cafe :-)

another lonely planet dinner reco that became our favorite spot in paris

adam really wanted to try snails and other delicacies, which is one of reasons we chose Moissonier for dinner. it was a little gem with about 15 tables and a husband/wife team running everything. about a minute after we ordered our escargots, you could hear the butter start to sizzle in the kitchen. after we finished the entree, we soaked up the leftover sauce with free, fresh-baked bread...

in the true spirit of adventure, i ordered quenelle, which is some sort of pike (fish) based souffle. i really didn't know what to expect, but this was light, fluffy, perfectly seasoned, and just plain decadent. :-)

adam was even braver than me and ordered calf kidneys. so good! they tasted like blood sausage and came with potatoes au gratin, mmmmm.

i have no idea what i ordered for dessert, but it was marshmellowy with caramel drizzled over top and a lovely vanilla sauce. heaven.

after two days of such culinary treats, we spent sunday recovering over croque madames and crepes before taking one last walk along the river and then a nice jog through the train station. must learn to leave earlier when traveling internationally...

some things i've learned...

2010-07-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

...living in a small space with four other people...

- having four roommates is a great way to ensure you eat all of the food you buy, as you don't have room to keep buying more new stuff when the old stuff is occupying "your" half shelf of the camping-sized refrigerator.

- "cleaning as you go" in the kitchen is imperative to ensure that you have enough counter space to make, say, anything involving more than three ingredients, especially when four people are in the kitchen simultaneously.

- washing dishes by hand is critical for items you only have one of, e.g. the measuring cup or the semi-sharp butcher knife. although, this does take the fun out of watching someone dig through the mountains of mess in the dishwasher for something and then spend another twenty minutes trying to cleaning two-week old food off said object. (who can be bothered to run that darn machine? we need a house mom, really.)

- it isn't worth getting upset over small things, like someone ALWAYS taking your produce out of what looks like a community bowl and setting it on the counter. (but seriously why, WHY won't you leave my poor Tesco tomatoes alone people!?)

- it IS worth it to wash someone else's random dishes just so that you don't have to look at them another day (although i am NOT touching the cup of oil that has been sitting next to the stove for the better part of July. must have some standards, you know)

- nobody wins if you are too lazy to change the empty toilet paper roll. what goes around, comes around...

- washing the shower curtain and seeing it emerge (two hours later) from the machine in a completely different shade of white produces an unimaginable sense of pride and joy. (seriously, i thought that thing was CREAM coloured.)

- that said, you should always check the washer before you throw things in, just in case someone has decided to dye something purple and leave it in the machine overnight.

- it is nice always having someone available to tell you what shoes go best with your dress.

- sometimes you have to scrap your dreams of making Sunday brunch and go out, because your roommate is blasting foreign rock music whilst using every available countertop, stovetop, microwave, and oven to make...something...

- it is possible to eat rice and prawns that were left out of the refrigerator for 24 hours and not die (or even get sick) (wasn't me).

- wine tastes better when you share it with your roommates.

harry potter nerd's slow tour of london

2010-07-15T13:49:00.001-07:00

while i refuse to go on a paid "harry potter tour of london", i do find small joys in stopping by famous sites from the movies. one blustery saturday in june (seriously, was about 50 degrees), i decided to put aside my belief that zoos are evil, sad places and go visit the animals living in the london zoo. they had some pretty interesting species there, as well as the usual suspects - giraffes, monkeys, zebras and the like.

however, i digress. back to harry. perhaps you remember the film "harry potter and the sorcerer's stone"? well, it is in this movie that, at the reptile house in the london zoo, harry learns he can speak parseltongue. an important moment in every young man's life, really.

and here's me at the reptile house. i did not make any life changing discoveries on this particular day, although i did enjoy a strawberry cupcake later that afternoon.

4th of July picnic, British style

2010-07-15T13:41:00.001-07:00

mmm, duck sandwich and banana milk consumed while sitting on a plastic bag in the park. if that doesn't say "happy birthday, america", i just don't know what else would.

(if you really must know, banana milk, which is banana-flavoured milk and not "milk of bananas" tastes a lot like liquid laffy taffy. amazing stuff.)

i like pie

2010-07-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

i really, really like to cook and have been experimenting with proper british meals on sunday afternoons. jamie oliver had a fantastic lamb pie recipe in one of his cookbooks; however, it called for some part of the lamb that i had never heard of, as well as puff pastry, which takes six hours to make and i can't ever find ready-made.

more often than not, i have to find "compromises" when i cook and this was no exception. there was some lovely lamb shoulder on sale at asda (wal-mart), and a bag of puff pastry mix in a random aisle. done and done. i even talked adam into buying me a rolling pin!

i had never cooked lamb before but it was surprisingly easy. just put it in a dutch oven to brown it, throw in some veggies and red wine sauce to simmer, then cover with pastry and bake for a few minutes. the puff pastry mix didn't make quite enough to cover the pie, so we improvised and used the end bits to plug a few holes. however, the baking dish wasn't deep enough so my beautiful crust, which i had so lovingly applied an egg wash to, sunk. turns out that soggy pie crust still tastes pretty damn good... :-)

the masterpiece!

after a few bites...

i miss you, midnight sun

2010-07-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

ok, so we don't actually have midnight sun here, but we are far enough north that for a few interesting months, the sun came up at 4 and it was light till almost 23:00. this was sometimes annoying because i would forget to go to bed, but it was also cool because, as my friend Kelly pointed out, you wake up at 4 and realise you still have a LONG time before you have to get up. :-)

this amazing phenomenon only lasted a few weeks though, and when i returned from cincinnati a few weeks ago, our extended hours of daylight were already growing ever shorter. boo...in fact, double boo, because this just means we are slowly heading back to the time of year when we get about seven hours of daylight...

all of london is sneezing

2010-06-21T10:56:00.001-07:00

seriously. i know this is not a nice city for people with allergies (just ask my mom), but the majority of people on the train this morning sounded like they were in the final stages of Captain Tripps. most of my co-workers we sniffling and sneezing as well. apparently the pollen count is quite high today, and i hope this is the cause of all the mucous, because i really don't want to have a cold for my visit home! hrmmph.

fun with photo booth

2010-06-21T10:55:00.001-07:00

friday night out in london

2010-06-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

in an effort to take more advantage of the cool city i live in, as well as to nurture my addiction to curry in a different place (the dudes at cafe saffron know me by name), friday night i headed to brick lane. brick lane is the mecca for curry, and also known as curry vegas. i normally avoid curry vegas because the neon lights are scary and so are the guys standing outside the 100 or so curry restaurants, trying to bribe you inside with discounts and offers of free wine. i've been seduced by the free wine before and well, it was about as good as you'd expect free wine to be, which is not good at all. :-)

however, my roommate Ly recently introduced me to the magic that is toptable.com, and i found a discount at a curry place on brick lane called sheba. i like discounts and i was in the mood for an outing to shoreditch, so off i went into the rain and wind. my summer attire here consists of tights and trench coats...

i knew sheba would be a decent place to eat because the guys out front didn't bother me and they didn't offer me anything free. they did politely thank me for choosing their restaurant. awww. everything was reasonably priced (smaller portions but that's probably for the best) and the saag i had (i get saag at every curry place in order to have a consistent bench mark for ratings) was different that any that i've had in london so far (no two are ever the same). it was well spiced (flavourful, not spicy), not too creamy and not too greasy. perfect. AND i didn't feel overly stuffed when i finished. Adam had the chicken tikka masala, which was decent but i haven't had enough of this in london to benchmark it.

final verdict? i would go back - definitely a safe haven amidst the madness of curry vegas.

since i wasn't stuffed, a pint of beer sounded nice and we decided to finally try the white lion, which is two doors down from me and technically my "local". i have always avoided this place because they have a lot of tvs, hideous curtains, and frosted windows. it looked small and menacing. however, inside is actually more spacious than i thought and it was a really wide mix of people. Adam actually said that the white lion is more of a typical English pub than say, the Kings, or other establishments that i always thought were super authentic! guess i still have lots to learn...

inside the mythical white lion

at long last

2010-06-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

i started knitting this afghan in, oh, i don't know, 2008? october? it was right before my first marathon and i specifically selected the pattern from "fast knits, fat needles" because, well, we all know i lose interest in things pretty quickly.

so here it is, june 2010, and i've finally finished the bugger. granted, i have about 15 loose ends to tie in but never mind that, it's 99% of the way finished. i was so very pleased with myself that i felt the need to pose blanket (that's his name) in two ways for his inaugural photos:

he doesn't completely match my furnishings; however, let's bear in mind that i selected the yarn colour another lifetime ago, ya? regardless, i actually love that it took me so long to knit because there are a lot of memories in blanket already and he's only just brand new! colds, break-ups, sleepless nights stressing about work, hungover saturday mornings, and happy, mindless hours spent sitting in my old favorite chair knitting and staring out at the ohio river. all of these things went into blanket's creation over the past two years. i shall treasure him.

world cup fever

2010-06-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

so, news just in, but football (soccer) is really big over here in England. the Brits love their local teams as much if not more than they love their mothers, and will watch every match faithfully. i know people who have actually scheduled important meetings around match times. with it being the World Cup this year, you can imagine the excitement that has ensued.

i haven't jumped on the football train yet (parents: yes, i did manage to find a boy that doesn't watch sports on tv!), but i do have a tottenham hotspurs toothbrush holder and i enjoy a good match now and then. i've been eyeing this whole World Cup thing with mild interest, mainly because there was a US v. England match this past saturday. if i was going to watch any of the 1,000 games, it seemed the US match would make the most sense. what made it even more special was that Beth's friends Anne and Tommy were visiting from...Cincinnati! i would say that 90% of my other friends, London and Cincinnati combined, know Anne and Tommy. while i had never personally met them, i knew enough about them to feel as though we'd been friends for years. so it was really cool to actually meet them in person (as we were parting, Anne actually said "it was good to catch up with you!" :-)

the match itself was good (1-1 tie) and the crowd at the pub was civilised, which was a pleasant surprise because Adam was fairly certain i was going to get my @ss kicked by rioting locals. moi? i think he was more worried about the fact that football tends to bring out the hooligan in the nicest of gents AND there is a lot of anti-US sentiment when it comes to football. but, we were watching the match at a pub in Angel, off the beaten path and tucked safely away in a corner. we had a really nice mix of Brits and Americans, so there was plenty of spirited banter. fun times!

many hours after the match ended, we wandered across Angel to a restaurant called the diner, which specialises in greasy American food. oddly enough, i've been meaning to go there for ages. i had a spicy, drippy, beany chicken burrito, cheese fries, and the better part of Adam's milkshake. mmmmmmm.

i'm unsure as to what time we left, but i do know that we were well on our way to stoke newington before i finally realised we were walking the wrong way up essex road. oops. :-)

trooping the colour

2010-06-12T03:10:00.000-07:00

today is a big deal in london, as it is the celebration of the queen's 2nd birthday. no, the queen is not 2, she literally has two birthdays and this one is commemorated with a parade, aka the trooping of the colour. i would have quite liked to watch this and if i were my friend emily, i would have learned of this event months ago and then made plans to watch. this post would then be full of interesting pictures and a more accurate tale of the celebration.

except.

i just found out about the event yesterday, since i live under a rock (a happy place to be) and never watch the news, read the paper, etc. i don't even really turn on my tv ever, so i'm clueless as to the happenings around london and the rest of the world.

so. i'm watching the event on tv, sporting rats nest hair and a giant bathrobe. i can't tell if the parade has actually started yet, but there are many guards lined up impressively wearing the bear hats. i thought they were called bear hats because they LOOK like little bears, but it turns out the hats really ARE made of bear. who knew?

the queen is wearing a violet suit with matching hat (its a nice colour) and riding in a carriage that was made for queen victoria in 1874. what's funny is that today is my stepdad's birthday, and now that i look back, he's been pointing out for years that he shares a birthday with the queen. i wonder if he knows she has two birthdays? her real one is in april, so perhaps she actually shares MY birthday.

at any rate, today's parade/ceremony remind me of the changing of the guard in washington d.c. it's cool to watch, even on tv.

i did make a rather unsettling finding though. the band kept playing a familiar tune, and memories of middle school choral concerts flooded my head, the lyrics halfway still burned into my brain "sweet land of liberty...", "from every mountainside, let freedom ring".

i always thought this was an american song, so i asked why the band was playing it. i was promptly laughed at and told "this song is called God Save the Queen". wha???

first of all, i thought God Save the Queen was a sex pistols song and secondly, it doesn't sit well with me that we stole the melody and then re-wrote the words. kind of disrespectful to the english people and anyway i feel a bit cheated. this is not unlike the horrible day when i discovered that city chicken isn't actually chicken. (it's pork) hrrrmph.

exploring the wide world of nhs

2010-06-09T01:44:00.000-07:00

So in this great new land that I live in, we have "free" healthcare (free meaning we are taxed out the wazoo). Luckily I have had good experiences to date (you don't have to pay for certain medications, like contraception, hurrah!) The one caveat to all of this is that you must register with a GP, unless you fancy spending your life hanging out at walk-in centres.

I had of course not bothered to register with a GP because I was getting by just fine at the walk-ins. However, there comes a special time in one's life when you get a little gift called a urinary tract infection and suddenly sitting around in a strange waiting room for three hours is less appealing. Hence, I looked online to find a GP in my postcode, printed and filled out the necessary forms, and pulled together the only "proof of residency" I could find: a bedraggled deed of assignment from my flat and a notice from my credit card company with my office address on it.

I took said documentation to the GP's office nearest work and encountered a disgruntled receptionist who appeared to really, really enjoy working in public service (not actually). I had filled out one of the forms wrong (apparently an NI number is not the same as an NHS number) and she was not a fan of my bootleg proof of address. It was all I had!

We went back and forth a few times:

Me: can you tell me what would be acceptable?
Her: utility bills or council tax statements
Me: I don't have either of those, what can I do to get medical care?
Her: (shrug) walk-in centre? Go find one online.

Thanks.

I felt relatively defeated so I did the only thing I could think of: went in the bathroom and cried :)

Some days I feel really at home here and other days I feel completely lost. Being unwell and having gotten no sleep the night before didn't help! I wrapped up the pity party after a few minutes, re-applied my makeup so I could walk out of there with SOME dignity, and promptly treated myself to a curry.

I then went home to find any further scraps of evidence to prove that I live here and then hunted online to find a more humane GP in my area. Done and done (found a change of address form from my bank - would this do????).

The next morning I phoned up the GP to see if they would indeed let me register and they were SO nice. Thank God. Registration took 2 minutes and they had me in the system 3 hours later.

But.

They had no available appointments until next week. :) they did, however, have a walk-in service the next morning, ha! After all that. Oh well, at least I have a GP now...

P.S. Don't worry parents, I am FINE

i saw the evian mountain

2010-05-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

you know, the one that is on the front of the bottle?

sadly i didn't have my camera (business trip to switzerland but should have been more prepared nonetheless!) but i found this nice picture online. it was a really lovely sight as i was dashing for the train station in my high-heeled boots! (yes, i managed to catch the train...)

first concert

2010-04-12T16:19:00.001-07:00

amazing band

amazing venue

under the sea

2010-04-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

well, next to it, as it were. i had a lovely birthday weekend, spending saturday in leigh-on-sea, somewhere on the british coast...(and the weather cooperated!)

someone actually lives in that little building on the sandbar

tide goes out but the boats stay. utterly fascinating.

out and about

2010-04-04T13:16:00.001-07:00

Strange advertising campaign all over the underground. This is one of the tamer posters.

Frites in butter sauce at Café Rouge with Maren, Chris, and Beth...dinner of champions

Spring has sprung at St. Paul's! (and elsewhere in London)

St. Paul's churchyard

From South America to Europe, Mar = good travel buddy

My first official guests!

Chris, Maren, Jen in the middle of the street by St. Paul's

Jen and Maren, enjoying some Sam Smith at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

Mom! First night in London at Pizza Express

Mama at St. Paul's

Queen's Theatre, where Mom and I saw Les Mis

More Queen's, right before they told everyone to stop taking pictures

Jen + daffodils at Victoria Embankment park

Jen, Mom, and Union Jack in the background

Victoria Embankment

Easter brunch bloody Mary's after church

After five months, I finally made it to Buckingham Palace!

Mom posing in front of the Palace

Cool tree in Hyde Park on the Princess Diana Memorial Walk

A British Easter basket :-)

Jen's Motel

2010-04-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Come and stay in Jen's Motel, where the treasures of England await...

It could be YOU on this velour-covered air mattress!!

Amuse yourself with our wide collection of takeaway menus! Sample the Gin & Tonic in a can!

Loads of photo opportunities for you at Jen's Motel!

Tasty local canned beverages make nice decorations!

putting on my tourist hat :-)

2010-04-02T01:25:00.000-07:00

for the second week in a row, jen's motel has visitors and this time, my mama is the star guest! she's a sneaky little devil and crawled in to sleep on the air mattress while i was brushing my teeth, so i guiltily slept in my bed. (however we both agree that the air mattress is strangely comfortable.)

our friday agenda was action packed:

bus tour of london
dinner in the theatre district
theatre

i took Mom for her first ride on the underground and she did pretty well. it was clear that this apple (read: me) hasn't fallen far from the tree, as i caught her beaming and smiling at the other passengers on the northern line. :-) how are the brits going to handle the two of us for the next four days?!?

london wasn't being the most cooperative with its weather and was alternating between bouts of sunshine and sideways downpours. and it was about 7 degrees. bleh. :-) nevertheless we piled onto a double decker tour bus to have a looksee at all the interesting stuff around the city. what's funny is that we were never more than a 50 minute walk from my flat most of the time we were on the bus!

we managed to hit most of the highlights, stopping at café rouge by st. paul's for soup and bloody mary's (Mom had coffee) then eventually getting off the bus because i kept having to wee...and we had to get ready to go to the theatre!

we LOVE going to musicals and used to see at least one per year when i lived in cincy. i have been wanting to see les miserables forever, and it just so happens to be constantly running in london. and we scored wicked seats! at the last minute, mind you.

i don't spend much time in the piccadilly circus area and was at a loss for where we could get a decent dinner. luckily there is timeout, a web site where you can search by neighborhood. we were hungry for italian and after reading 5-6 really bad reviews of other restaurants, finally settled on one that had good reviews for its pasta: il cucciolo on denman street. it was tiny and the waitstaff was actually italian. :-) even better, the food was delicious! i'm addicted to gnocchi with gorgonzola so i tried it and was very impressed. (i really wanted spaghetti carbonara but it was good friday...)

the queen's theatre was only a few steps away down shaftesbury avenue, so we got there in plenty of time to collect our tickets from will call and find our very, very excellent seats. the musical was incredible. theatre in london is a bit different, i think - more dramatic? or maybe it was because it was a night show and i usually see matinees? not sure but i would highly recommend this one if you ever come to london!

it was LONG though, so by the time we let out it was getting close to 11 and we foolishly decided to take the underground. what a zoo. there were massive cues just to get through the card scanners, then people were standing all over the escalator. augh. claustrophobia! we finally got on a train and settled into seats across from each other, while 80 other people crammed into the aisle between us. they were just closing the doors when a voice came over the loudspeaker and said:

"this train is being held by the british transport police"

oh dear.

this has NEVER happened to me and i have spent the last 1.5 days making a case as to why it's fine for me to run around london alone at night. train fights are not helping my cause. we sat there for a bit and as i peeked across the aisle, i could see my mother chatting merrily with the teen next to her. :-) the bobbies eventually broke up the fight and we made it back to old street, just as it started to piss it down sideways. as we walked back to my place, we played a fun game called "who had a more disgusting experience on the tube?"

mine: the guy next to me had a takeaway box full of what looked and smelled like vomit

hers: someone had forgotten to pull their pants up all the way and was showing 6 inches of crack

ha ha. not sure who wins this one.

lisbon!

2010-03-21T01:53:00.000-07:00

takin' one for the team

2010-03-02T13:33:00.000-08:00

one thing that seems to be a global characteristic of my company is the love of ping pong doubles tournaments. cincinnati ripped the idea off of san francisco, and london has now ripped it off of both of them. or maybe london was first. who knows.

at any rate, i signed up to play not because i'm good but because ping pong is loads of fun. and anyway, Stiner and i held our own in the cincinnati tournament last year!

the tourney officially began last week and my partner Ross and i have been half heartedly practicing for the last few days. this little event is a BFD in our office, hence, when it came time for our match today, we had an audience waiting to watch. our opponents were known to be pretty talented, and everyone was expecting my team to lose hands down.

suckers.

first game was indeed a loss. however, Ross and i started getting it together in the second game and were making a small comeback. and then...i heard a noise.

my go-to, had-it-since-i-was-22 denim skirt just could not handle all the lunging and the modest slit in the front gave out. i looked down just in time to see another two inches of leg appear. of course our audience and the opposing team noticed. what to do but laugh and keep playing!

except every time i went for the ball, the slit got a bit longer. in my defence, i was wearing black leggings so there really was nothing to see. however, we were all cracking up and it became an unwritten rule that i couldn't bend over anymore. God only knew what would happen to the poor skirt.

three games and about six inches later, Ross and i beat those trash talking boys! no one could believe it, least of all our opponents, but they hugged us anyway. i tried to do damage control (luckily the match was at 5 pm):

binder clips, as seen on the runway in london fashion week

however, when i moved, the clips popped off. my boss suggested that maybe i put on my running clothes in advance of leaving for niketown. good call. no way am i throwing this bad boy out though. no. i'm saving this and framing it. maybe i'll wear it every match for good luck!

kidding. i think. ;-)

surprise me

2010-02-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

one of my favorite things that i've found in the UK are kinder surprise eggs. i know they have these in other countries but i never saw them in the states, so to ME the ability to have as many eggs as i want is another novelty of living in england. (as an aside, my pal Adam finds it hilarious that americans refer to this country as england)

anywho. when Beth and I were leaving Malta she wanted something sweet in the airport and so i bought a family pack of surprise eggs (duty free = big ass packages). it was a looney tunes themed pack, which meant i got a tasmanian devil in my first egg. i saved the rest and forgot about the last egg until the other day.

the possibilities always seem endless just before you unwrap one of these bad boys...

the tasmanian devil in the other egg was cute but useless, so imagine my utter surprise (ha) and delight when i unwrapped this little guy:

it's a squirt gun! a tiny, adorable, unexpected squirt gun. entertaining AND functional. it really doesn't take much to make me happy.

day 3, st. paul's bay

2010-02-15T12:25:00.000-08:00

so, we had big plans to go to gozo on monday. however, we realized during our romantic valentine's dinner that our "relaxing" vacation had mostly been spent running all over the island. we decided to lay low and try to stop spending money, which meant we'd be spending the day in st. paul's bay, partly because we wanted to see where st. paul had shipwrecked but mostly because we could get the bus there for only 54 cents (vs. a cab to st. julian's for 20 euros).

the bus to st. paul's was a little complicated.

the one we thought we could catch right outside our hotel only runs every few hours apparently. our friend the concierge (who knew us well by this point) gave Beth directions through attard to get to another bus stop where we could get a direct route to st. paul's and avoid the nightmare that was the bus terminal in valletta.

thanks goodness for Beth. dude had given her a blurry, illegible map, a few scribblings that barely made sense, and a pat on the head. if i were leading the way we would have spent SIX HOURS trying to find the bus. luckily Beth has a better sense of direction. we found the bus, figured out which side of the street was headed north, and away we went. except i ended up sitting right next to the big open space where the door should have been and had to hang on for dear life. :-)

we had pretty amazing weather as we set out...sunny, not too windy, perfect. having no map, we disembarked from the dusty bus in st. paul's and basically tooled around until we found the ocean. wandering aimlessly with a purpose at its best!

highlights from our little excursion:

i don't care how dirty your horse is, you must find somewhere else to wash him.

grab your girl and your briefcase and RUN.

cool.

all the homes had religious icons outside their front doors.

pretty.

cocktail hour(s) by the sea.

life. is. good.

day 2 karnival, malta style

2010-02-14T13:55:00.000-08:00

We woke up this morning to rain, boo! I had been planning to run, so rain wasn't ideal, but it was actually warm enough that things worked out ok. I loaded up my pockets with my room key, a 20 for cab fare (just in case) and 50 cents for bus fare (just in case). I was able to get about 40 hilly minutes in, and best of all, the locals all said "good morning" without me even prompting them! I love this place.

After our workouts, Beth and I returned to Melita (there really was nowhere else to eat lunch) where we noticed for the second day that many children were running around in costume. Our waiter explained that it was Karnival weekend and part of the custom is to dress up. He also said that there were lots of activities going on in Valletta, the capital, to celebrate. We had been planning to go to Mdina but figured we should check out the festival, so we hopped on the bus in search of an authentic Maltese experience.

The bus ride was interesting.

People of all ages were getting on in all sorts of crazy costumes. One guy had on an outfit that reminded me of Transformers and the thing was so wide he barely fit on the bus. I wanted to take his picture but I wasn't sure how polite that would be. However, there were plenty of photo ops once we got to Valletta!

All of the floats had dancers and loud pop music playing. We weren't quite sure what the theme was?

Cute little guy in costume

Statue of Liberty - symbol of freedom AND corndogs

The view from Valletta. Amazing.

The Apostle Paul was shipwrecked here in 60 AD. This is one of the many churches named in his honor, decked out for Karnival.

Seaside restaurant in Valletta

The parade

Nothing to do with Karnival, just funny :0

While Karnival was super interesting, it was also exhausting (and noisy). We headed back to the hotel around 4 pm because we had spa appointments! I'm not normally a spa kind of girl, but we decided to get facials since they were really cheap (compared to London prices). I wasn't sure what to expect...turned out to be pretty relaxing. I actually fell asleep during part of it, ha.

Afterwards, we went to our room to clean up and get dressed for dinner in St. Julian's Bay. We had to make a booking, because as at least 6 people reminded us, it was Valentine's Day. Valentine's doesn't really interest me (the idea of forced romance makes me want to hyperventilate into a paper bag), but we played along and got really dressed up, drank the silly pink cocktails (hey, they were free), and enjoyed a fixed three-course menu consisting of:

- antipasti

- some sort of pasta that i swear tasted exactly like pasta fazool with different noodles. i HATED this dish as a child (i actually cringed when i saw the navy beans soaking on the counter the morning before my dad fixed this), but i don't mind it now! odd.

- meat. there was a pork thing with tomato sauce, which was great, some kind of meatloaf with a lemon flavor, also really good, and what i think was beef? i don't know, it was a lot of meat. :-)

- cheesecake with pomegranates. this was so good that i accidentally ate the pomegranate stem in my quest to get in every last bit of cake. oops.

We had to take a cab back to our hotel since there was no direct bus, and our cab driver was excellent! He was excited to learn we were American and chatted for the entire 20-minute ride. Such a sweetie. The people here are amazing...

day 1 exploring! lunch, the bus, and dingli cliffs

2010-02-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

After a long day/night of traveling adventures, Beth and I were pretty hungry, thus, finding food was our first order of business in Malta. The hotel we were staying in was kind of fancy and didn't appear to offer anything of the lunchtime variety. The neighborhood we were staying in was fairly residential...

A bike rack shaped like a bike :-)

fabulous wayfinding - triq means "street" from what i could tell

...but there was a cute restaurant called the Melita around the corner. Score! One thing we noticed straight away was that there are stray cats EVERYWHERE in Malta. This one climbed into the tree above our heads, stalking some poor bird or something:

We ignored the cat(s) and focused on more important things, such as lunch. A favorite Maltese snack is called pastizzi, which involves layers of buttery phylo dough and your choice of either ricotta or mushy pea filling. Guess what I chose!

Even though I went with cheese, the whole mushy pea factor points to an interesting factoid (according to me) about Malta, which is that it is really a fusion of many different cultures:

- British (used to be a colony I think?) - the plugs are British, they drive on the other side of the road, they have mushy peas, put corn on odd things (like salad), and the red phone booths are all over the place.

- Italian/Mediterranean - lots of olive oil and Italian-type food dominated most menus (fine by me!). Italian was also prevalent in the language, for instance, "thank you" in Maltese is "grazzi"...just a different spelling of gratzi!

- Moroccan - this was less noticeable, but there was definitely Moroccan flair in some of the buildings we saw and maybe in the Maltese words I couldn't pronounce.

One other thing Malta shares in common with Britain are the zany buses. Except Malta buses are way zanier than London ones. The drivers pimp them out like they are taxi cabs, and despite the fact that some of them are pimped out kinda dirty, they all have religious memorabilia hanging somewhere or other:

Check out the Holy Family above the driver. Cool.

Thanks to my almost four months in the UK, I am no longer afraid of buses, so Beth and I looked at our map, figured out which bus went to Dingli Cliffs (#81 if you really must know), dug .47 euros out of our wallets, and were on our way!

Dingli Cliffs was something that my friend Cush, who is Maltese, recommended we check out. The whole island is really rocky and the cliffs promised some good hiking. They didn't disappoint.

Hiking around all afternoon is thirsty work, so we headed back to the hotel. We were a bit chilly (Malta is only about 55 degrees this time of year and WINDY), so we ordered some Irish hot chocolate to warm ourselves. As we sipped, we noticed that we were in a proper cocktail lounge and decided to make it our mission to find a "signature drink". (don't judge! i was on vacation!)

my first manhattan. not bad, but probably not my signature...

Eventually we decided dinner might be in order, so we went back to the Melita for some grub. In our defense, there really were no restaurants around besides this one and we were exhausted, having been up since 4 am. However, we had the best food! Salad with fresh octopus, pizza with Italian salami and rocket, and a Maltese cake for dessert. Heaven. We finished our meal, grabbed another drink in the hotel bar, and called it a night around 11. I'm gettin' old. :-)

Runner's World makes a nice coaster for my Johnnie Walker

the ins and outs of low-cost holiday airlines

2010-02-12T12:58:00.000-08:00

Beth and I decided last week that we needed a mini break. I had 1.5 in lieu days to take (basically free vacation due to the amount of overtime I've worked), and I found myself hunting around lastminute.com with an absurd but persistent urge to book a nice beach trip. Portugal? No, headed there in March. Spain? No, been there. Malta? Hmmm! Sadly I wasn't even sure what or where that was. I just knew I wanted to go there.

Long story short, we booked a crazy cheap three nights in a five-star spa resort and an equally crazy cheap flight on Ryanair out of Luton. The days leading up to the trip were stupidly busy at work and I didn't get home before 10 pm most nights, which meant I was really, really disorganized in getting myself packed and to the airport.

Nevertheless we made it to Luton after an hour train ride from Farringdon, breezed through security, and stood in the endless cattle call line for the flight. About 30 minutes before we were scheduled to depart, the ticket agent came around checking everyone's passports and boarding passes. She looked at Beth's first, then mine, then shook her head and said "you can't get on this flight. you don't have the right visa clearance."

Huh?

Sure enough, at the top of the ticket (which had enough text on it to be considered a novella), there were four lines about non-EU passport holders needing to get their visas checked before they could board the flight. Except you don't need a visa to go to Malta, only a passport.

We did have 30 minutes to spare but the woman insisted we would never make it through customs (why would you have to go through customs if you didn't leave the airport?), back through security, and out to the gate. Our only option was to wait until our flight left, at which point we would be escorted out of the airport to figure out how to get another flight. Keep in mind that this isn't any kind of Maltese regulation or even an air transportation regulation. Just a little something nice Ryanair does to try and squeeze a bit of extra money out of people.

That said, being escorted by security is kind of amusing.

She didn't have weapons (as far as I could tell) but she did make a great fanfare about lifting up all the security line ropes as we cut through customs. Ha.

The next Ryanair flight wasn't until the following afternoon and would cost a hefty surcharge to rebook. However, the easyJet desk was just two doors down and their flight to Malta left at 7:15 the next morning. Boom. We still had to pay extra but at least we would have almost a full day Saturday on the island.

The only catch was that the flight was out of Gatwick. And we were in Luton. These airports are on opposite sides of London (think of the distance between DAY and CVG). Luckily, we were able to catch the train door to door and I was able to catch a catnap en route. Since Gatwick is so far from where Beth and I live, our flight was so early, and we would need to be at Gatwick at 5 am (gross), we decided to stay at a hotel near the airport. A Hilton is attached to the south terminal, but it was full, so the concierge booked us a romantic night for two at the quaint Cambridge hotel about 15 minutes away. Free shuttle service.

I have to say, I enjoyed a pretty solid night's sleep (maybe because there weren't drunks staggering around in front of my window at all hours) and we got to the airport in plenty of time for our flight. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of flying a low-cost holiday airline, our morning looked a lot like this:

- 1 hour wait in a line of sleepy, cranky children and their crazy parents. One dad had a shoulder bag with buttons on it that said: "I love your mum.", "I love beer." and my two personal favorites "I love tits." and "I love ass." This father of the year had two pre-adolescent boys with him. Their poor mother...

- 40 minute walk to the gate, which I swear wasn't even in the same airport.

- A giant, massive queue that spanned all directions and funneled into one, tiny hallway where people pushed and shoved to try and get on the plane first.

- A relatively new airplane with seats that didn't recline (luxury!), and that charged for everything from bottled water to peanuts.

But. At least we got there, which we finally did three hours later. It was 11 am when we arrived in Malta and considering that we probably would have slept late anyway, we really didn't lose any time! Best of all, the Corinthian hotel didn't charge us for the night we missed. Awesome.

a night with the kings

2010-02-07T06:40:00.000-08:00

i've been waiting since like, last may, for the premiere of lost and i was really excited because it was supposed to run on friday nights here beginning last week. i had big plans to stay in friday night and watch it. wrong! two things curtailed my tv viewing extravaganza:

1) my tv was not working (window dudes messed everything up in my room).
2) lost apparently runs on "fancy" cable here (similar to HBO), which of course i don't have.

boo. luckily Ly is almost as obsessed as i am with the show and steals it free from someone in his office who hacks it from the states. however, he wasn't sure he could get it for me until saturday. what to do...

i actually ended up working until almost 8 pm and was contemplating just going home. but, a few of my co-workers were at the kings as sort of a send-off party for themselves. yes, the boys in my office were leaving for amsterdam the next day and decided to get proper pissed before heading out. ha.

even so, i only planned to stay for a drink. but people just kept buying beer! and then shots of jaeger appeared and so on and so forth. :-) these guys are always fun to hang out with but it was especially amusing to guess which one of them was going to wind up in a dutch prison over the weekend. (almost certainly one of them would) we laughed so hard that one dude spit a mouthful of beer all over the rest of us AND an innocent bystander. so gross but it was hilarious and quite the visual, all the liquid spraying out in slow motion. i have only ever seen that happen on tv. :-)

speaking of tv, i woke up a bit delicate the next morning and all i wanted to do was watch crap on BBC4. but alas it still wasn't working. the dude finally came to fix it at 4 pm and i was still in my jammies. doh. even better, it turned out that the tv wasn't actually broken, all the plugs were just loose. thought i had checked everything, but we all know that jen and electronics just don't mix. i'm sure he thought i was a dumb blonde and i really can't say i blame him! he was very nice though and by the time he left, my 1980's tv was back in business...and so was i.

off the wagon

2010-02-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

after the geneva festivities (and the weekend that preceded them), i was really making an effort to not drink. it lasted two days. in my defense, last week was a bit of a toughie at work and by tuesday (which would have been day three), i needed an ear to bend (Beth's), and where to do this but at the pub over half pints of kwak. gah. but i didn't overindulge, i only had one or two. i think.

wednesday i was not so well behaved. i went to a new pub in southeast london called the rake, which has an outstanding selection of beers. it would take you weeks to try them all really, and i only got through three. the first one was called:

very nice, although in actuality it tasted a lot like guinness. this isn't a bad thing. sadly i don't recall what the next two were, but i do know that one of them was a wheaty beer. i love wheaty beers. needless to say i accidentally got kind of drunk.

thursday night was a bit better and i managed to contain my consumption to a glass of wine at dinner with Beth in shoreditch. (i think my co-workers think Beth and i are dating). i always forget how close i live to shoreditch! it's only a 15-20 minute walk from my place yet i never think about going there. maybe because going there makes me feel like a super unhip geezer. :-) all the cool kids hang out in shoreditch, it's like london's version of brooklyn. the place we went to was called:

the food was really, really good and i was very excited because they had free matchbooks for the taking. one of our gas stove burners at home is broken and must be lit by hand, which i HATE doing with a lighter because i have to stick my hand too close to the flame. so anytime i spot a place with matchbooks, you can bet i'll be taking two of them. all in all a good night!

i think my landlord is trying to kill me

2010-02-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

so i got new windows today and apparently they used ultra toxic glue that probably wouldn't even be allowed in the states except maybe for super industrial use. but they used it in my room and then left the windows AND the door shut, and i've developed a nauseating headache. also, i think i see pink elephants. poor planty looks worse than he did this morning.

luckily my brother, who is a fireman, suggested i stuff wet TP up my nose as a filter. this works somewhat...

decidedly no bueno

swiss miss

2010-01-30T06:39:00.001-08:00

what a week! i spent four days in geneva for work, which were action-packed and decidedly sleepless. :0

the original purpose of the trip was a client workshop on wednesday, but then store checks were added as well as a few other meetings later in the week, so it became clear that i needed to set up camp in the manotel royal. not the worst place in the world to be stuck and anyway, they have free fruit in the lobby. highlights of the trip include:

- wandering through a French supermarket with bacon crisps and a 5-liter box of wine (the wine was a packaging example for work, i swear it)

- squishing into the backseat of my client director's car with a bunch of slap-happy designers and driving circles around the parking lot of said French supermarket (we thought we were supposed to follow the client, client thought they were supposed to follow us, so we literally drove in circles three times)

- tuesday dinner at l'entrecote where we had steak, frites, and butter sauce. oh, and wine. :-)

- catchup dinner/drinks with a friend who transferred from cincinnati to geneva last year.

overall it was a productive trip but i am exhausted. being in switzerland really makes me appreciate london though. it's not home, yet, but i at least know what to expect here for the most part. usually. sometimes. ok, hardly ever but at least the surprises i deal with here are in english. :-)

saturday part three: shakin' it with the house girls

2010-01-24T14:44:00.001-08:00

the last time i had dinner with my house mates, Alex, Rita and i decided we should go to a dance club together sometime. after all, we live close to some of the most happening club scenes in london: old street, shoreditch, hoxton, etc. the three of us had aligned to going out to a club called east village on saturday night (we also aligned to a toilet roll purchasing schedule, if you really must know). Rita, Alex and a few of their friends were already at the club by the time i got there and after a quick wait in the queue, i was in the bar and at the bar. :-)

i was proper hammered from all of the cocktails at dinner, and so were the girls. we hit the dancefloor immediately and shook our groove thangs for the next few hours. Alex and i left sometime after 2:30 and went to the best kebab shop (that's its name. not entirely true.) on old street for some chips with mayo and garlic sauce. mmmmm.

we ate our chips in our kitchen, which wasn't apparently enough for me, so Alex gave me one of her chocolate muffins. which explains why my bed, computer, and the floor were covered with chocolate muffin crumbs this morning.

speaking of this morning, oh. dear. i tried to walk downstairs around 10:30, realized i was going to get sick, and spent the next hour and a half curled in the fetal position at the foot of my bed. (i hate sleeping in the bed when i'm not feeling well but we don't have a couch here) i finally felt better today around 1:30, so Alex and i braved leaving the flat and went to cafe central for a yummy, greasy breakfast.

i am the vision of health, really, if you look at my diet over the last day. needless to say, i missed church AND my Sunday run this week. there was just no way it was going to happen and there's nothing worse than sitting in church thinking you might hurl on the pew in front of you. sigh.

barfiness aside, this is one of the best weekends i've had here. :-)

saturday part two: muy rica

2010-01-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

muy rica means "very tasty" in Spanish, and is exactly how i would describe the restaurant i went to for saturday's dinner.

i've been missing mexican food a lot lately (hard to find here) and my friends Pam and Andy knew of a great place in westbourne park called crazy homies. :-) westbourne park is on the other side of town, which should be readily accessible on the hammersmith and city (shitty) line. however, true to its name, the h&c wasn't running trains between king's cross and edgeware road. basically, right in the middle of where i would need to go.

after a lengthy time studying the transport for london options, i decided to get a bus from old street station to edgeware road and pick up the h&c there. should have been a 45-minute or so journey except:

- the first 205 bus i saw blew past the stop despite the fact that the stop is supposed to be a scheduled one (some stops have to be requested by a waiting passenger) AND someone actually did wave for the bus to stop. in fact, the bus came very close to hitting her as it zoomed by. bollocks. twelve minutes later...

- i got a bit lost between getting off the bus and finding the tube.

- the h&c train was just sitting at the station and took another 10 minutes to get going. i know i should be thankful that we even HAVE public transport, but sometimes it is really shit.

an hour later i finally got to westbourne park where i received a warm greeting from Pam. we collected Andy from the pub (they'd been waiting a bit) and set off to get our food.

crazy homies is in an obscure location (hidden near some council housing), is pretty tiny and doesn't take bookings, which is why we had to get there before 7. we got a table really quickly and ordered margaritas straight away. :-)

wow.

i hadn't had a margarita in ages but these were spectacular! we caught up over delicious tequila and chips, salsa, guac, adobo sauce, and something else green. our table was in the basement and the decor/atmosphere went like this:

- candles and Christmas lights - no overhead lighting.

- paper doily garland hanging on the walls.

- music in the background - everything from the swell season to simian to depeche mode. awesome!

- pictures of playing cards as the table top (under glass) - some of the cards had mexican wrestlers on them. i didn't know this before but mexican wrestling is called lucha libre and the guys wear full facial masks. suddenly nacho libre makes a lot more sense.

it was a fantastic setting to say the least and dinner was most certainly fantastic as well. for the main, i got a pork burro (wet) and it came with shredded pork, black beans, salsa, sour cream, and a little salad. heaven!

we got the bill and Pam and i had spent £45 on 'ritas alone, ha ha. we high-fived each other on a job well done and headed to a cocktail bar around the corner called the oak. margaritas weren't on the menu at the oak, so we switched to mojitos. :-) i was supposed to be heading back east for a night at the club, but we were having so much fun that i had trouble saying goodbye! i finally left around 11 and then i couldn't find the 205 bus stop. sigh. i was pretty wasted and wandering the streets looking for any bus at all, when i noticed i was in the same neighborhood as the serpies' leisure center. this meant i could pick up the central line, change at bank station, and get the northern line to old street. score!

it was midnight by the time i got to old street, and the start of saturday part three...

saturday part one: serpies

2010-01-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

i took it easy friday night and enjoyed a casual dinner with Beth, frozen yogurt, and an early bedtime so that i could run with a new group on saturday morning! i need to start training more seriously for the lisbon half in march, and running with a group always makes me push myself more. since the work running club hasn't really panned out (we would up in the pub thursday night eating bangers and mash instead of running), i'm going to start running with the serpentines aka the serpies.

the serpies run around hyde park, etc. on saturday morning and you can drop your bag at a nearby leisure center.

the leisure center was a few blocks from the tube and i didn't really know how to get there, BUT i spotted a guy on the tube wearing running kit and carrying a backpack. I figured it might be a safe bet to follow him.

it was. :)

this is my third group in my career as a runner, and it was interesting to see some of the differences with this club, which is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) in london. for instance:

- we jogged about a mile to warm up.

- we did warmup exercises on speakers' corner once we were finished jogging. the exercises ranged from skipping, to running sideways, to other silly things that made us look like kindergartners at recess time. people on tour busses, who had come to see hyde park, were taking photos. :-) that said, the exercises were quite effective (legs are still sore today)

i opted to do the two parks route (hyde park and kensington gardens) because it was 4.25 miles. i considered the 7.25 miler but rejected it in the end since my mileage base is only about 5.5 right now and with the warmup jog, i would have been running 8.25 miles. i could have done it, but i don't like to increase my mileage that much week over week.

in the first mile, i met a nice girl who is training for the reading half (big pre-london marathon race). we stuck together for the rest of the run! afterwards, everyone went back to the leisure center for tea and i chatted with an american who i met on the warmup run (the guy i followed out of the tube, actually). we ended up going out for brunch and chatting until 2 pm, oops. expats have a lot to talk about i guess. :-O

i finally made it home around 3 pm and was exhausted. not much time for a nap though, because i was meeting my friends Pam and Andy for mexican food, which leads us into saturday part two!

you win, universe. but so do i.

2010-01-19T12:03:00.000-08:00

things started off pretty well today. i woke up with my 6:50 alarm and didn't hit the snooze button. instead, i went for a run! i was supposed to have dinner with some co-workers tonight so i wanted to get a bit of exercise done in the morning. post run as i was getting out of the shower, i got a message that dinner was canceled. boo. however, since it's tuesday it meant i could go to the niketown run.

i know, i already ran once. but i only ran for 30 minutes, the niketown run is only a mile longer, and i like the social aspect. :-) so i re-packed my running gear and scooted off to work. about an hour into my day i realized i was STARVING. i thought back to what i had for breakfast and realized that i left my bowl of ready brek in the microwave. oopsies. i ate two slices of whole-wheat peanut butter toast to rescue my blood sugar and went about my business.

work itself wasn't bad despite the fact that we are really getting busy and i spent all day writing cost estimates. (math = ick) i scooted out at 5:55 to catch the bus to my run. the busses are supposed to run every 6-9 minutes during rush hour.

6:00. no bus.

6:05. no bus.

6:10. no bus.

6:15. no. bus.

6:20. bus finally came. the optimist in me was hoping there was some chance i'd make it to WC1 by 6:30.

the journey took 25 minutes. i didn't even try to chase the group (which i have done before, also due to a very late bus), i just wandered into the underground and got on the tube. (you know, to mix things up so i wouldn't be riding the EXACT SAME ROUTE back to EC :-)

i really didn't feel like sitting around tonight, but apparently this is what the universe wanted. also, it gave me the opportunity to spend the better part of an hour wandering around london in shorts. and i totally haven't shaved my legs in at least a week. and it is about 40 degrees here.

so, clearly the nike run just wasn't meant to be today. you win there, universe.

but i got a few good miles in this AM AND 10 people responded to my greetings as i ran by them. yea! so i win too. morning has broken and apparently, so have the icy brits.

sundays are my saving grace :-)

2010-01-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

most people hate sundays because they mean the end of the weekend and the start of (gulp) another work week. however, i love them...here's why:

- i'm guaranteed to get a run in, preferably along the thames. you just can't beat running alongside the river with all of london's treasures in plain sight. it's like i have a date with the city.

- st. peter and paul church on amwell street. i started going because it was close enough to be convenient but offered enough of a walk to make me feel productive, and i've kept going because it's an awesome parish! it's small, it's cold (we wear our coats during mass), and we even sing some of the american catholic songs i grew up with.

- weight training aka carrying bags of groceries home from tesco. i like shopping at tesco because it's uncrowded (thanks waitrose next door!) and unpretentious. also, they have my favorite two-bean burgers...

- family time. usually at least one of my parents will call or skype me on Sundays, so i get a little love to start the week with. :-)

sunday = Jen day basically. i can do all the things i like and still have time to lay around if i want. today was no exception, although it was more of the active variety. i woke up early because the sun was shining in my windows brighter than i think i've ever seen here. i was forced out of bed and onto the street for a run. well worth it though, the embankment path was packed with runners and tourists. i can safely say that i inadvertently starred in at least three home movies of big ben before 10:30 this morning.

mass was next, followed by a pizza lunch (leftovers from self-date night at la porchetta last evening), then i met Beth to catch the 38 bus to hyde park corner. except we got a bit lost getting off the bus. luckily we found our way and 20 minutes later, we met her friends Chelsea and Michael for a walk around the lake.

the sun was still shining, there were ducks and gulls and pigeons on the lake path, and the daffodils are starting to peek their shy heads out of the ground. beautiful day. and Beth's friends were a blast to talk to. we walked for at least an hour then headed to the pub for my first proper sunday roast! i chose the roast beef, because it came with horsey sauce. :-) to drink, i had a brothers pear cider, which was really nice and also 7.5% alcohol.

we decided to take the tube home, central line, which got more and more crowded with each stop. at one point, so many people tried to cram into the subway car that i actually started laughing. i think they thought i was crazy but whatever! our faces were practically mushing against the windows! that's funny. and anyway, it's sunday and i was in a good mood. :-)

the real world: islington

2010-01-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

when five strangers live in a house together, chances are good that there will be disagreements from time to time. it's been pretty cold here lately, which means that we've had to crank up the heat. we have a boiler and radiators, and while they can be put on a timer, there is no ability to control the temperature. the heat is either on or off.

there have been some differing opinions as to when the timer should be set for. in fact, a small war broke out last week (i heard through the grapevine, anyway) and the dispute is going to be settled by Ly, who is apparently in charge of such things. almost like a judge, he is. i wonder if he has a gavel?

i have to say, i got about five minutes of sleep last night, partly because it was beyond hot in my room (ya, the heating was on ALL NIGHT) and partly because i had to open the window, which led to an experience i can only describe as urban camping. instead of listening to wild animals, i was listening to the drunks stagger home from the pubs. (no this is not karma paying me back - i come home alone every night, which means i am QUIET)

also, we are going through loo roll like MAD in the downstairs toilet and for the second time in four days, i realized today too late that the roll was empty. c'mon peeps. change. the. roll. it's like i have four husbands or something.

i'm not mad really, just shaking my head and making a mental note to hide my travel charmin downstairs for emergency use.

are you kidding me?

2010-01-14T05:28:00.001-08:00

i got a little love note from credit card company this morning, basically stating that my bill was overdue and that my count was in arrears. i don't know what arrears are but i don't like the sound of them. it was quite frustrating as i checked last week to make sure online bill pay was set up. it was. so today i went online to pay the bill manually. denied. tried again. denied. i called citibank who said my account was locked and that they would unlock it straight away. fine.

tried calling the credit card company to pay over the phone and they said my bank account didn't have enough funds in it, which is ludicrous because i was LOOKING at my online bank statement and i actually do have money, despite all my jokes about being broke.

just as i tried to click around the citibank site, my account froze and booted me out. so i called citi. again. they froze my account because my bank statements, which have been going to my non-existent US address for whatever reason, came back. no one called to tell me this. they just closed things down.

the guy on the phone told me he would transfer me, i would have to go through the numerical security system again, at which point i'd be put on hold, AGAIN, and then could talk to someone about changing my address. then, he said, they could unlock the account. we changed my address and my phone beeped at me. as i was logging into the citi site to ensure things were kosher (and making the guy stay on the phone with me until i was in) my fucking pay-as-you-go phone ran out of money, so i was promptly disconnected.

and i still can't get into the site.

i guess i'll call them back from work this afternoon, because i can't top up my phone due to my bank account being frozen and i can't charge the top up to my credit card, because my account is now "in arrears" until i can unlock the bloody bank account and pay the credit card bill.

i know, in the grand scheme of life this isn't a big deal. but i'm not a happy camper right now...perhaps one day this will all seem amusing...

good intentions

2010-01-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

i walked into niketown last night and realized two things:

- i had forgotten to register for the run. oops.

- in the space where there is normally a massive line for gear check, there were black lights and a fake wall.

panic slowly crept in. had i lost my mind? did i imagine the whole running group? was it actually NOT tuesday? no, no, and no.

it turns out that nike had cancelled the run due to weather. wha??? not only was it completely clear and dry outside, i had just wasted £1.20 to ride the damn bus to oxford street. i stood in the lobby pondering this, when i looked down at my phone and saw that i had a text from my running buddies. they were at the pub. naturally. what choice did i have but to join them?!

we normally only drink two pints after a run, but since we weren't doing anything else, i drank three pints of budvar and gobbled a chicken burger. bad, bad jen.

as punishment, i took the tube home - the northern line if you really must know, because it's a longer walk from the station to my flat. as i was exiting the tube, i decided i should try to get a bit of a run in as well, so i took off down old street in what probably wasn't a straight line, winter coat flapping behind me. just as i got home, i heard Ly and his girlfriend coming in. i was a bit tipsy and since Ly ALWAYS catches me coming in from the pub, i hid in the downstairs toilet until they were gone. i don't want to come across as a lush, you know?

supper club

2010-01-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

i was really looking forward to saturday night, because my friend Mindy had invited me to join a few of her friends for...more french food! yay! i was also excited because the restaurant, la bouchee, was in south kensington and i had never been there before.

the map of south ken looked confusing online but i found the street i needed right away and even managed to give directions to a lost tourist. :-)

the food was decent, although not as good as the orrery. Mindy's friends were really nice though - always fun to meet new people! dinner wrapped around 10 and Mindy was headed to a place called supper club for someone's birthday party. she invited me to come to notting hill with her, another new neighborhood for me.

when i think of supper clubs, images of potlucks and/or themed meals come to mind. as seems to always be the case in london, my preconceived notion was WRONG! we trolled down a darkish alley to a set of large black doors, where a giant bouncer man asked if our names were on "the list". ha. luckily they were.

our first stop was the bar, where the cocktails were £9 each! good grief. i would have felt like a freakshow taking pictures but i found this one online of another supper club (it's a small chain worldwide):

pretty similar to the london one, although there was a big space in the middle of the floor for dancing. see the big white things along the walls? those are BEDS. and people were laying in them, eating and drinking. some people were even under the covers. there was a giant movie screen on the wall with video of a buck naked woman (who was painted gold) doing dance and yoga poses. the staff were wearing a mix of everything from pajamas to rocky horror picture show inspired outfits.

it was very interesting.

however, i wasn't drunk enough nor do i like hanging out in public places without shoes (can't wear shoes in the white sheets!). Mindy agreed and we decided to do a cocktail and then bounce. but then the alcohol kicked in (£9 at least buys you a double), people started dancing, and we decided to brave another round of drinks. then the waitress came around with free shots. then there were birthday shots for Mindy's friend. pretty soon, dancing seemed like a great idea! the music was actually really good - house - and it wasn't as much of a meat market as some other clubs in london.

by the time we left, the underground had long since closed and i had no idea how to get a night bus from west london back to east central. so i had to take a cab, boo. naturally i had the guy drop me on old street so i could get a kebab. i don't even want to look at my bank statement right now... :-)

a night out in E1/EC3

2010-01-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

friday night i was planning to stay in. i was going to go to bed early and then run with the serpentine running club on saturday morning in hyde park. this was all fine and good, except for the sheet of ice still covering most of london on friday morning, which caused serpentine to cancel its saturday run. which meant i would be staying in on friday for no reason. :-)

luckily, my friend elijah, who i met flat hunting and only talk to sporadically, texted me on friday afternoon and was looking for something to do. i really wanted pizza, so we decided to meet at the liverpool street tube and go to pizza express. but we ended up wandering around a bit and landed at a place called giraffe. giraffe had everything in the world to eat except for pizza. ha.

the food was mediocre, although i should have been able to predict this based on the menu. my rule of thumb is that if a place serves more than one ethnic cuisine (in this case they had Greek, Chinese, and Mexican), pretty much anything you order will suck. and it did. :-) BUT we were really cold and hungry so it didn't matter that much.

afterwards, i needed to walk off my falafel burger and chips so we headed out on foot to St. Katherine Dock for drinks - roughly 15 minutes away. thank goodness i brought my proper winter coat back from cincinnati - it is long, wool, and warm, and the collar flips up so that i can hide like a turtle when its windy.

St. Katherine Dock is right next to Tower Bridge, which i had never seen before. Tower Bridge is the one with the castle thingies that everyone always thinks is the London Bridge. we walked about halfway across and decided pints were more important than going all the way to south bank. the bar we went to was called prohibition and specialized in old school cocktails, sort of a tribute to the real prohibition of the 20's. apparently, modern-day cocktails were born out of the need to mask the taste of bathtub gin and other rough things that people were brewing in their basements. who knew!

i stuck with beer and after two pints of peroni, i was ready to call it a night. but there was a brassiere around the corner and eli insisted that i had to try fischer beer:

it is a french beer that makes a champagne cork noise when opened and tastes like a hybrid of cider, beer, and port wine, in my opinion. it was good and by the time i finished it, i was a bit drunky and laughing so hard that the staff were looking annoyed. they were closing anyway, so we left. i just barely made the last train before the underground shut down for the night. needless to say, i slept pretty well. :-)

viva la french food

2010-01-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

we've been trying to set up a house dinner for the last few weeks and had finally settled on thursday night. however, Nisha has some kind of accounting licensing exams coming up and so we decided to have two dinners: one on thursday minus our studious girl and one for all of us in a few weeks when exams are over.

since Rita works in a swank French restaurant that offers a 50% discount to employees during the month of january, we decided to head there. the restaurant was called the orrery, and i would have taken pictures except it wasn't that kind of place. :-) i have never never had a proper French meal before (croque madames and frites don't count!), so i didn't know what to expect. but it was awesome! Rita, Ly, Alex, and I were treated to:

- free champagne.

- free bread - all kinds - olive bread, sea salt bread, foccacia (our waiter was Italian :-), etc.

- free soup - really good, no idea what it was but i think it had truffle oil and a lot of cream sauce. mmmm.

- first course - i had scallops, which came with truffle stuff and squash stuff to dip them in. again, really good.

- sauvignon blanc

- free prawn (prawns with heads) risotto - i wanted to lick the bowl.

- some sort of red wine

- second course - i had duck l' orange, complimented with roots vegetables (tasty) and beet root puree. i normally hate beets but i actually liked this! probably had butter or something in it. :0

- free cheese plate - the only cheese i had heard of was goat. but they were all tasty.

- free port wine

- souffle with cognac ice cream

- free petit fours

they must really love Rita there. :-)

this was the most time i've spent with my housemates and i have to say, we had a blast! we were all making fun of each other for stuff you only find out when you live with people - one of us is a slow eater, one of us frequently comes in drunk and then drags ass in the morning (guess who that one is), etc.

i laughed so hard (with a mouth full of souffle, mind you) that my chest hurt. i laughed for so long that Ly started laughing, then Alex started. we made quite a scene actually, in the middle of a quiet, posh restaurant. as i told my housemates, you can dress me up, but you can't take me out...

getting creative

2010-01-06T11:55:00.000-08:00

i realized over the Christmas break that apart from running, i don't really have any hobbies here that don't involve drinking. and i usually wind up going for drinks after i run so that doesn't even count. i used to be a well-rounded person, i swear it! so, i'm digging deep into my memory to try and remember things i might be able to do that don't involve imperial pints of hard cider.

this is what i've come up with so far:

- yoga - i found a potentially free class in Soho on Mondays (well, £2.40 with bus fare). this will help me be more flexible as a runner and also make me a calmer person. Jim and I played with the blood pressure monitor at Wal-Mart last week and my stats were a bit alarming...

- volunteering - i was training with Ronald McDonald House when I left the States and I just discovered that they have one in London! i've contacted them and am currently playing phone tag with the house manager to try and set something up.

- green gym - technically volunteering as well, but they have a group here called the Carbon Army who run around planting trees and things. i was actually supposed to do it this saturday but it is too snowy to be planting stuff right now.

- knitting - i'm working on a blanket for my new niece and there is a knitting group off the waterloo line that meets on wednesdays. however, waterloo line costs extra and also, they drink while they knit, so i'm undecided on this one.

additionally, i've sort of talked a few co-workers into running on Thursday nights. tomorrow was supposed to be the first night but with all the snow, i think i may be going solo.

that's ok though because I'm going to a French restaurant with my housemates for dinner tomorrow night! one of the girls works there and so we can get 50% off our meal. score! i've actually spent most evenings this week hanging out with my housemates in the kitchen over dinner. it's just too cold to do anything else and also, i'm lazy. :-)

back.

2010-01-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

after a lovely holiday in the states, i found myself back in london town around 12 o' clock this morning. flying over england at night is cool...the lights on the ground are snaking and scattered, total opposite of the grids patterns you see flying over the states. that said, a few tips for all y'all thinking about traveling to london:

- don't fly two separate airlines on the same journey, unless you fancy going through security in the states twice

- to that end, don't buy more liquids than you can fit into your plastic baggie until you get through security the SECOND time

- for those of you considering a connecting flight on American Airlines through ORD (Chicago), you fly out of terminal 3...even if every sign on the train indicates differently AND your flight isn't listed on any board in the terminal 3 ticketing area

- the tube closes at 12 am. you have two options if this happens: 1) suck it up and get in a licensed cab. expect to pay mega £££. 2) if you're a total cheapskate and aren't afraid of the night bus, the N9 and N76 will get you back to east central london for about £5...in just under two hours!

seriously, thank God for the TFL web site. the nice lady at the central bus station in heathrow punched in my post code and printed out the buses and stops i needed to take to get back to EC1. the central bus station itself was dodgy and smelled like a skating rink + garlic. nevertheless, i got to see trafalgar square and picadilly circus on my unexpected journey. no matter that it was at 2 am.

i woke up sad today, but the sun was shining so i dragged myself to 12:15 mass, did my turn at cleaning rota, and went on a beautiful 40-minute run. i forced myself to go somewhere new, which was cool because i saw:

- st. paul's cathedral
- the london eye
- the gherkin
- the thames, complete with duckies
- big ben
- parliament

beats running around friggin' clerkenwell AND i did a negative split on accident. time to go get some food at tesco!

we three kings

2009-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

last night, our office had a leaving do (brit speak for going away party) for two of my co-workers. one of the great things about working in clerkenwell is the copious amount of pubs. i could throw a rock out the front window and hit three different places, one of which is the three kings.

three kings is small, always packed, sweltering hot inside, and they don't take cards. oh, and the staff know many of my co-workers by name. i tend to drink beer or cheap white wine when i go out in london, mainly because it's what i can afford. however, we had a company tab running so i helped myself to a double G&T. :-) seven hours, seven G&Ts, and a shot of vodka later we had closed down the pub (note: the company tab stopped in like, hour two). pubs here close early, around 11:30, but due to our rapport with the bartenders, they let us stay longer...they just shot off the lights. my memory of the evening is fuzzy, but a few interesting bits and bobs:

one of my co-workers was wearing a She-Ra costume.

i sang a few bette midler tunes for no reason (that i can remember) - three kings is NOT a karaoke bar.

i didn't get out of bed until noon today, couldn't find my shoes OR my keys, and i have about £2 (in change) left to my name. :-)

mad as a box of frogs...

2009-12-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

...is my new favorite phrase. what a visual, eh?!? our executive creative director used it today in a meeting and i feel determined to use it at least once in a sentence very soon.

actually, i'll use it now in reference to london town when it snows. good. lord. we're getting some flurries here right now, the wind nearly blew me down oxford street, and it's like, 0 degrees Celsius or lower. however, the flurries seem to be the root of the madness around here. i didn't think it was possible for a city to freak out more regarding snow than cincinnati, but i'm telling you friends, london wins. hands down.

apparently public transport SHUTS DOWN when we get an inch or two, and if tonight is any evidence of that, i'm scared. i waited 30 minutes for the 55 bus before giving up and getting on the tube at tottenham court road. tcr is nowhere near where i needed to go but i was just done with standing outside. i would up crammed into a central line car, with my face mashed against some dude's chest and two dirty hipsters eating mcdonald's pressing into my rear end.

i almost yakked. i really hate the smell of mcdonald's ketchup.

however, lots of good things happened today too! i had a nice coffee break with my boss this morning, i finally dropped off my dry cleaning, and i had dinner with new friends! we went to ping pong, a dim sum restaurant on great marlborough street and i had all sorts of new dumpling bits and bobs. we continued the party around the corner at an italian place, where i had lovely chamomile tea and something sweet. AND my friend Tu Anh gave me a box of chocolates from liberty department store. unexpected pressies = awesome.

lastly, i did meet a very nice englishman while waiting for the damn bus. we snickered, we discussed his family's trip to disney world, we made fun of the transport system, we wagered bets on which bus would go by next (2-243's, 2-390's, FOUR-25's, 3-10's, and a handful of 7's, if you're curious). in the end, we gave up on the bus (see above) and i had to waddle to the tube because my feet were frozen. sigh. :-)

dim sum!

wait, it snows here?

mmmmm

strange times

2009-12-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

2 pm. back of a black cab. traffic light on clerkenwell road. i looked out the window at the crosswalk and there was a PIGEON walking across the street with the humans. when he got to the other side, he simply hopped up on the curb and went about his pigeon business. the whole scene caused me to squeal with delight; however, my creative director and the cab driver thought i was mad. seems to be the general consensus 'round these parts...

curry vegas

2009-12-09T06:02:00.000-08:00

my friend carrie, who lives in portland, was brave enough to introduce me to yet another of her london friends - neil. neil and i must lead insanely busy lives, because it took us a week to find a night we were both available! :-) the plan was to check out old street and shoreditch, which are technically where i live...i've just never gone out and explored!

we met up at old street tube exit 7 (there are 8 exits and i've recently learned that #7 is the closest exit to my pad) and then we walked to hoxton square, where we went to a trendy-looking bar called bluu. trying to heed my own rule, i ordered the only beer on draft i had never heard of:

not bad, kinda thick, i could only drink one, so i switched to peroni after that. :-)

two pints, 8 pm, and we were craving curry. we decided to head to brick lane, which i was told had dozens of curry places. in fact, the street we were on ONLY had curry places complete with aggressive doormen who would try to get you to come inside. also, every place had some sort of claim "best chef 2008", etc. and bunches of neon lights.

neon lights. exactly how i'd picture india, really. hence we dubbed brick lane "curry vegas".

we selected our restaurant based on the offer for free drinks with dinner. i don't usually drink with curry but if it's free...

food was decent, free wine was crap although what do you expect??? we ended the evening at a brick lane bar, even trendier than the hoxton square one, where we decided we were definitely the oldest, least hip people there. :-)

everybody look at me, cause i'm sailin on a boat

2009-12-07T00:39:00.000-08:00

worst song ever but strangely appropriate. i spent most of monday in training and in the words of lonely island, yeah, never thought i'd be on a boat...for dinner that is.

events surrounding this particular client end with things like mandatory dinners. usually you can eat in peace then sneak away quietly after the meal, if you so desire. but they got CLEVER this time and sent us sailing up and down the thames. in the rain. in 40 degree weather. ha ha ha, no escape.

i have to say, the view was spectacular. i got to see things i've only looked at from the cab window previously, such as big ben, parliament(!), the london eye, etc. we had a really cool motivational speaker (another MO for this client), who actually sailed around the world in some sort of yacht race. the goal, of course, was that we would be inspired about team building. i suppose i was, although i do hope i don't have to deal with things like severed fingers or compound fractures in any of my all-agency meetings.

at any rate, ahoy!

brave girl

2009-12-06T11:13:00.001-08:00

my hair had become unruly. it was long. the roots were unsightly. it was time for a haircut, but i kept putting it off because let's face it...highlights and haircuts can EASILY go awry. however, i realized i couldn't wait anymore and set an appointment for last thursday, which i promptly had to cancel because i ended up working till 11. luckily, jarrold's on old street was able to squeeze me in today.

the salon was three minutes from my flat, well lit, and gave me loads of free earl grey (black, which truly frightens londoners) while i sat in the chair. all good things. about an hour and three fashion magazines later, i was washed up, towel removed, and the new color unveiled. i was nervous. i couldn't remember what my hair was supposed to look like, especially since i've been staring at two inches worth of roots for the past couple of weeks. oh boy. the stylist trimmed, crafted, blew it dry, and trimmed some more, and finally...i recognized my cut and color. thank gawd.

relief is not the right word. everyone here looks perfect, all the time, even when it's raining. i usually look like i've just crawled out of bed and bad highlights weren't going to help that. luckily i can at least have decent hair color, even if i'm not polished and proper looking. sigh.