These Will Make Me Happy This Winter, Maybe

I bought a pair of wellies today. It was raining (shocker) and they made me happy. I am hoping the happiness continues throughout the winter. Something tells me that I will need a lot more than a pair of snappy red wellies to bring me through a cold dark February though. Perhaps a trip to Lanzarote will help. Remind me to schedule that.

In other news, Dave and I are leaving for Alaska tomorrow (then San Francisco, then Chicago for me). I know, ALL the way back to the states....... We are planned the Alaska thing with Dave's parents months ago, before we knew about London. After Alaska, we are going to SF to stay in the city and work, then I am in Chicago for 2 weeks to see the family and my beautiful, newborn niece Lily Maeve. Gaddammit anyway that I have been consistently swimming and just joined the running club. It feels like the last day of vacation - but wait, we get to come back to London. Awesome.

Look out for whale photos.

Oh and hey - if anyone has been skiing in Austria, send me an email or comment about where you went. I have no idea where to go this winter and I didn't exceed the weight baggage limits and carry all my ski crap over here for nothing.

Oysters and Goats

Totally separate events here but...Oysters in the UK are very good, fairly inexpensive and when they are followed by a cod based pate on toast there really isn't anything to complain about. JC is shown here with the full dozen of the little beauties.

Secondarily the local market has goat butter. I know, it's the little things but it's nutty creamy texture is so good on this poppy seed bagette we had tonight with dinner was outstanding. Next time Amie locks herself outside smearing this all over her body would likely save her from the bruise and get her serviced like no she hasn't been serviced before.

Eff My Life

So you are probably wondering why I posted the photo of our front door and the "porch" - OK not really a porch - just a door mat. Well, this is where I was when I accidentally locked myself outside Thursday morning while putting recyclables in the bin under the stairs. I thought I had pushed the lock-latch-thingy back enough so that it would stay open while I was recycling, apparently not. The door slammed behind me, and I was suddenly very-very sad.

Why such a big deal Amie, so you locked yourself out. Call Dave, he works right down the street and can come home and let you in. Right, so I locked myself out with no cell phone.

OK just go upstairs and hang at a cafe or a bar for a few hours, not the end of the world. Or, go to one of the many crapass hotels in the area and ask to use their one of their on-site computers and email Dave to come home and let you in. They will understand, no big deal.

Uhm......yeah so I locked myself out in my bra and underwear. Not kidding people, and don't ask why I was hanging out in my skivvies at 11:00 a.m. OK it's fine, it isn't *too* cold out, pull yourself together and think. Oh yeah - then it started to pour down rain. Not kidding. Eff my life.

In a very MacGuyver-like way, I assessed my options. The windows are all barred, the lock is indestructible. There are no other windows to "the dungeon" (as we affectionately refer to our flat). Eff my life. So I find a large stick on the "porch" and lay on the ground, stick the stick through the cat door, and tried and use the stick to hit the latch on the lock to open it. As you can probably guess - this did not work at all. OK other options....... I am obviously WAY too big to fit through the cat door or to squeeze myself through the bars over the living room window. Eff my life.



This little window is my only hope. The opening is about 8 inches wide and 16 inches tall. I pry it open with the stick (breaking the lock) and slither my now cold, wet, half-naked body sideways through the window. And for anyone who thinks this might be some sort of sexy event, I can assure you - it was not. Then began laughing hysterically when I got into the house. That did not just happen, oh yes it did. Eff my life.



So I made it back into the house and was able to set about doing my normal house-wifery and work stuff. I am left with only faint memories of being cold and wet (and naked) on the porch, a broken window lock, and a fatty bruise on my leg. Typical day for Amie, actually.

Heard about town

Amies post the other day reminded me about how sometimes it's not what you see that you notice but more of what you hear that reminds you are not in the US anymore.

Heard in Ireland at the Hertz rental counter.
"Can you drive an automatic?"

Heard from my co-worker today.
"Pavillion cafe are doing toad in the hole"

One of my employees speaking to me the other day.
"I have a right to a job"

As this fat man (towing his 4 kids down the street in Pimlico) wearing a loud pink overpriced golf shit with his belly hanging out and his finger jammed two knuckles deep into his ear responding to his 7 year old daughters question of, Daddy, who was that?. To which he calmly and matter of factually stated (with finger still twisting deep into his auditory channel), oh, that was daddy's probation officer".

My thoughts here are simple. I can in fact drive an automatic and what the fuck is "Toad in a Hole"? The last two may explain a little about Nick Goddard. You don't in fact have a right to a job but maybe if you are a fat felon cranking out too many children you don't have a right to the dole either. If only I had a picture of this guy to illustrate my point. Clearly this guy isn't working and with his fashion sense and ability to wear "designer" clothes, breed recklessly and clean his ears with his fingers protesting his sloth to the world tells me he has no intention to either.

Every country and especially in large cities have a wide swath of humanity but London for some reason may be on the leading edge of examples of "wow, really?"

"I'm Gonna Drink My Face Off"

Where Are We
Our weekend in Ireland began with a quick flight over to the Belfast Airport on Friday afternoon. We rented our car and......oh shit, a stick shift in a country where you drive on the wrong side of the car and on the wrong side of the road. Once I figured out where the clutch was and how to shift left-handed, we were on our way. Though we had landed in Ireland, or at least what I thought was Ireland, the British flags were proudly (smugly?) flying at the airport and in the cities surrounding the airport. This made me think about the whole Northern Irish Conflict. You take for granted that all those years of fighting weren't so long ago.

We had some minor navigational difficulties, SHOCKING. Dave mapped the hotel location and got directions online before we left. So here is the address online:

The Downings Bay Hotel
Downings,
Co. Donegal,
Republic of Ireland

To be fair to my non-Irish husband, he didn't know that Donegal was the county (not the city) where the hotel was located. Thus, we merrily drove 2 hours out of our way and made it to the town of Donegal. When we couldn't find any hint of our hotel, we asked for directions at a gas station. Uhm yeah - that is when we got the spectacular news that we needed to be in the town of "Downies" as the Irish call it, not the town of Donegal. Oh mother-effer.

Then (miraculously), we had one of those travel moments you will never forget. An exceptionally nice Irishman from the gas station, had us follow him to the edge of town. He gave us general directions and his really nice map of Ireland so we could find our way to the hotel! Then he called the hotel (twice because they didn't answer the first time) to make sure he told us to go to the right place. All the while, we are double parked on a hill..... and then his car starts rolling backwards and hits our rental car. OMG are you kidding me, that poor guy is just trying to be nice and now we are crashing. In any case, there was no damage to the car and we ended up having a beautiful (if loooooong) car ride to Downies/Downings.

Friends
We managed to get to Downings at about 10:00pm after our diving adventure. We found our friends in no time (at the bar). As LF told me, "Downings is the size of a biscuit tin", and she was right. Since I didn't take an photos at the bar, here we are crashing LF and KF's honeymoon in Buenos Aires. The happy couple was married in Downings and out trip was to join them for something of an anniversary party, it was an honor to crash this event. And as JP says, the Guinness just tastes better in Ireland. Yes indeedy it does.

Us at a lovely dinner in Buenos Aires in 2007 with the happy couple (LF and KF) on their honeymoon.

Atlantic Drive and the Singing Pub
Downings is a small, vacation town. There isn't a whole lot to do, which was really nice after the endless barrage of activities in London. On Saturday (after an Irish breakfast involving no less than 4 kinds of fatty meats), we took trip to McNutts to buy a wooly Irish blankie and then hiked the 8 miles around Atlantic Drive. This road does a circle around the peninsula. You get unbelievable ocean views. Here are a few photos from the hike.

Dave eating the not-quite-ripe blackberries along the road.

Very dramatic, isn't he.

You could only wish it was Hawaii, who wants to swim - not me brrrrrr.

Gaelic anyone?

Stone cottage + yellow door = adorable.

As expected in Ireland, it started pouring about 6 miles into the hike. This was actually OK thoug, perhaps destiny. Just around the corner from there we were, there was this awesome vision of *The Singing Pub*. It is what I would think of as a pretty typical Irish pub, because you know - now that I have been to like three Irish pubs, I am an expert...... There were kids running around, lots of families, other hikers, people there to watch rugby on TV. I would have stayed longer but when the rain stopped we knew we had to get back into town before the next (inevitable) rain shower.

Dave in a mad sprint to the pub, who knew he could run that fast.

One happy dude.

Overall, the hotel was good and the friends were great. I have never had so much tasty, smooth, frosty Guinness in my life. The title of the blog is a tribute to a friend who said he was going to drink has face off that night in Downings, then realized after he said it that his kids were sitting in front of him. Relax, I don't think the kids heard - or if they did, they didn't care. It is Ireland after all, of course you are going to drink your face off.

Off to Ireland

Tomorrow we leave for Ireland, homeland to my mother's side of the family (O'riordan). Though, we fly into Belfast and will be staying in the north at Downings Bay - the fam is from the southwest in County Kerry. I have been preparing my rain-gear, and my liver. It is going to be a long drinking weekend with our friends up there.

It makes me think about heritage and all. I feel like I look so different from the women here, I am not what you would call an "English Rose" with the blonde hair and practically transparent skin. There are a lot of those walking around London.

I guess I never realized how many muts there are in the U.S. When you ask someone where their family is from in the U.S., generally you'll get a mishmash of German/Irish/Polish/Indian/Japanese/Armenian - whatever. Over here, you get a weird look because they are all from where ever their accent happens to be from (England, Ireland, Germany). I find it quite interesting.

I know my fathers side of the family is mostly norther German, hence the hard to say/spell "Glaser" (so you'd think with the Irish and German - I could drink like a fish, but no). Dave is Welsh/English/Norwegian/French - super mut. We will have to make some pilgrimages to those areas too, in the summer of course......

In other news, I just booked a trip on the chunnel to Paris in October. Hells yeah! I know, we have been there before - but come on, it's Paris.

Butter

Is it bad to have an entire post dedicated to butter? I think not. So the cheese store around the corner also sells the cutest, tastiest little individual butter balls. (I mentioned the unpasteurized buffalo mozzarella right, so you are familiar with my obsession.) Well the butter is unreal, salty, fatty goodness. It is safely kept in the Buddha butter dish, as though a holy relic of some sort. We bought three little balls of it to go head to head with the soft goat and hard cows milk cheese we also got.

As Buddha looked on happily, Dave put the butter and some cheese together on a single piece of baguette at dinner tonight. It was a thing of beauty. Luckily, to avoid potential heart attacks in our sleep, we had tomato soup along with it. It's all about balance with the butter.

Not Sure What to Think

There are riots in London, in case you haven't heard. They are pretty localized, but the press is loving it all. I have been listening to the BBC and the debate is so compassionate as compared to what you would probably hear in the U.S. if there was a riot in S.F. There is a lot of talk about how the majority of rioters are kids (12 to 15) and they need help - big time. People used Twitter and Facebook to start the riots and now people are using those sites to organize neighborhood clean ups. Ironic. The sad thing is that insurance doesn't generally cover rioting damage here. That sucks for those small family businesses.

In more terribly selfish and superficial news, we got the junk (old curtains, broken garden furniture, our gross-ass couch, etc.) moved out of the flat. The junk disposal company was late arriving this morning - so I called them. The guy on the phone told me that the riots were making a few employees late, so I needed to be patient. Oh well eff-me, I felt like a total illiterate American asshole.

Well one guy finally showed up, a Brazilian from Sao Paulo. We chatted about being from the other side of the world. My limited Portuguese was unimpressive (unless I was asking him for a beer or the bathroom). The two of us hoisted all the bags of crap and trash out of the house, such teamwork! I think I scared him a little because your normal female Londoner probably wouldn't help lift a couch out of a basement apartment...... The living room is quite empty, as you can see in the photo there on the right.

Now we need to get serious about a rug, a couch, and cleaning up the "garden", as they call it here. The space is quite nice and right off the bedroom. It looks as though no one has been out there for years. I would be intimidated by the overgrowth, but the space is so small. I think Dave and I can attack it in a weekend. It is too late for any veggies but some herbs, greenery, flowers, and functioning chairs would make the space quite nice. It will have to wait till next weekend though. This weekend we are heading to Downings Bay, Ireland with the KF, LF, and other friends.

In other much more interesting news, I had a lovely run through Hyde Park while listening to some newly downloaded Beatles. I felt so British, which I am definitely not - still too tan.

And your daily dose of WTF:

Uhm, OK now I really want to walk over this bridge during rush hour. At least they are honest.

Bits and Bobs

Moving
We are all moved into the dungeon. It is a small, simple basement flat - with the most disgusting furniture/curtains/rugs you have ever seen. I will post some before and after photos when we are done fixing up the apartment. We are slowly but surely getting rid of the old, ugly stuff and replacing it with halfway nice stuff. There is also a nice little overgrown yard space in the back off the bedroom that we are going to try and attack in the next 2 weeks. Stay posted.......we'll get there with the flat if we can stay away from the pubs for a while (yeah right).

I will say that I now understand what people mean by "The Damp" and why all those poor souls died of consumption/tuberculosis/whatever horrible disease you died of in London in the past. Our apartment is......well, damp. We'll have to get a dehumidifier to keep the place from molding and the paint from peeling in the winter. Not to mention the fact that houses here don't really have dryers. They have washer/dryer combos that wash your clothes then bake them until the point where you have to take them out and hang them to compete the drying process. I am not kidding. I think this is the main reason why the birth rate is lower here. Can you imagine doing this if you had more than 1 kid, I couldn't.

Iron Maiden
OK people, I went to Iron Maiden with Dave and it was actually better than I ever thought it would be. I even got a scary alien t-shirt (see photo). We sat next to some drunk Colombians and a dad and his 13 year old son. There were actually quite a few families there. My impression was that it was like musical theater for headbanging dudes. There were lots of set changes and props. There plentiful special effects and drama on behalf of the lead singer, Bruce Dickinson. Dave thought there were a lot of 80's dance/guitar moves. Even better - with the very high male to female ratio, there was no line for the women's bathroom. How many concerts does that happen at, really? Overall, not too bad for a Saturday night.

Triathlon
Awwwww yeah, it was quite a triathloning weekend. The ITU World Championship Series was this weekend in Hyde Park. The race was on the 2012 Olympic course, so it was really cool to watch. Saturday was the women's race and Sunday was the men's race. The Brits won both races. We watched both days but it DOWNPOURED today (Sunday) during the men's race and there were some nasty crashes, made worse by the fact that ITU races like this are draft-legal. It was really inspiring, maybe I will consider a tri next year. If I only had a bike here...... A fellow U.S. expat and friend DL did the race and kicked some age group ass. Nice job Dave! The men's and women's winners are below (Alistair Brownlee and Helen Jenkins). The photos are shamelessly stolen from DL because I have a crap camera and my photos were sht-.
























Other
So you all know - you can get unpasteurized, real buffalo mozzarella here at the farmers market. It is shipped in from Campania. Uhm yes, Caprese salad to die for. Even the expensive shi- at Whole Foods does not come close. As far as I am concerned, that is a good enough reason to stay here for 2 years as anything. We had a lovely Caprese salad tonight - though the tomatoes are still a bit lacking, still too early. Maybe next week or the following they will be better. Hate you JV for taunting me with your luscious garden tomatoes, and your melons:) I will leave you all with a photo.

Check Mate

You know you want one sucker!

Amie and I found Argos. This is one of those mixed blessing moments. Argos is like Amazon except they really perfected the "instant gratification" concept. Basically you walk into a small store front where they have 1000 page catalogs with everything you could ever want. This morning for example Amie needed an ironing board and iron. Great!. You write the item number down out of the catalog. Then you head to the little console, enter it, pay and proceed to the pick up area.

Within minutes your item pops out on the conveyor belt and you take it home. For the necessities this is unbelievably convenient, it's two blocks from our house and like I said, you can get just abo

ut anything! The down side is like the ready access to pubs I'm going to become a drunken shopping alcoholic. Leave work, have a few pints, stop by Argos and pick up a plasma tv, fuzzy slippers, toe nail clippers, a tent and a power sander. Self restraint however is not needed. The new flat is so small I would fill the whole thing up in two days. I guess it's nice to have if you need it and we'll see what kind of random shit ends up in the house. Too bad they didn't have a buddah butter dish!

First Real Friends

We had a lovely Saturday night with our first official British friends John and Marissa (well Marissa is originally from Boston but we'll overlook that since she is developing a proper accent after 5 years of living here in London). They invited us out to dinner at a steak house.......and three bottles of wine later, we were all besties. After dinner, we ended up in the SOHO area for bar hopping at The Tree Greyhounds (picture next door there), Waxys, etc.

Sunday involved recovering and housewares shopping, gasp and swoon. Though we made a stop at Wright Brothers SOHO Oyster House to aid in our recovery and break up the fun day of looking at rugs and bathroom trash cans. That is some good stuff, the oysters I mean.

Tomorrow we start the move into our permanent flat. It is tiny and dark, much like our college apartment. I am hoping to get some nice color in there to brighten up the place, Dave wanted to get a beige rug - barf. We'll see how it goes. Since we will only be there for 2 years, I am hoping to be a bit unconventional with color and furnishings. Though, this will trouble Dave - after all the guy that has been wearing the exact same thing for the last 15 years, much like a Smurf.

I joined the Serpentine Running Club and I am hoping to do my first trail run with the group on Saturday on the South Downs Way trail - and make some new friends. I am a little nervous but that is how I felt when I joined SVTC all those years ago - when I met RC, WG, and TL at my first meeting. And now look -- I have the best, most beautiful, interesting, active, lifelong friends. I miss you all terribly, by the way.