A much needed walk:
And plenty of rest and relaxation in awkward positions and on top of heaters:
Friday, December 26, 2008
What happens after the day after Christmas
Lots of coffee:
A much needed walk:
And plenty of rest and relaxation in awkward positions and on top of heaters:
A much needed walk:
And plenty of rest and relaxation in awkward positions and on top of heaters:
Christmas in London
This year was very different than our usual Christmas experience because it was the first year that we have been away from our families. And, our first year to be in London for Christmas. Despite that, we managed to have a really nice Christmas week and day and are looking forward to being back to normal next year!
To kick off our Christmas spirit, we went to see the Nutcracker. Due to the limited number of seats that were available by the time I bought the tickets (more than 2 months before the performance!), we had no choice but to sit really close to the stage, which was great! The Royal ballet does a really beautiful and different version of the Nutcracker than what I'm used to and we both really enjoyed it.
Then, of course, Jim had to make his famous cheeseballs and snickerdoodles, which were a great hit with me and amongst our friends.
Meg and Dan are back for a couple of weeks, having a rest between fabulous travels, so we've had a really nice time catching up with them. On Christmas eve we all hung out and had a low-key dinner before attempting to watch Its a Wonderful Life (not a success, as we only made it through half of the show):
Jack is so happy to see Meg and Dan! And they look great--tan and rested after just returning from South Africa.
We all got some rest and regrouped on Christmas morning. Meg made delicious scones!
We got all kinds of fun stuff in our stockings. Jim gives me the evil eye after I made some comment which I now can't remember. But you can see that he has a 'flyer kit', which was given to him by Dan. We have lots of not so great flying paper airplanes all over our house now, which Jack has enjoyed chasing around.
Only a couple of more weeks until our baby is due. I'm looking pretty robust in these pictures. Serious overeating has not helped me to feel less waddlesque.
Group picture!
We tried to get the cats to pose in a friendly manner, but they weren't cooperating. We had to accept this 'aloof' and 'cool' picture. Lucky for them, we forgot to put them in their Santa suits. Next year!
New socks!
New Jacket!
New Art!
New Underwear!
Jim as Kenyan warrior. Thanks to Meg and Dan, we now have some really beautiful art and blankets from Kenya and South Africa.
Cheers! Mimosas.
Between eating our faces off, we took a walk on Hampstead Heath. There were lots of happy people out enjoying the gray day.
After a few hours of questionable food preparation (like, were my rolls going to rise? Miraculously, YES! But he of little faith went out and bought some more bread, just in case. HUMPH!) we had a delicious Christmas dinner. Meg made really delicious beef tenderloin and brussel sprouts and Jim made creamy scalloped potatoes, I mixed together the Yorkshire pudding and Jim and Meg put it in the pan and we also had homemade rolls. There was food in abundance!
Jim cuts the beautiful Yorkshire pud!
We had a little rest before we got to dessert.
THEN: lemon meringue pie and chocolate pie. Jim's lemon meringue pie was BEAUTIFUL when it came out of the oven. He put it on the counter to cool and left the room. Fifteen minutes later he came back in to find Finchley with his greedy face buried in the meringue. BAD PIGGY CAT!!!
Here is the culprit, post-pie consumption. We removed the part that he was chowing on, which left a slightly less perfect looking pie (still delicious!):
Thanks to modern technology, we were able to talk to and see our families on Skype! Not as good as seeing them in person, but it helped to make them seem not so far away. It was almost a perfect Christmas, full of family, friends, lots of food and happy times. Merry Christmas!
To kick off our Christmas spirit, we went to see the Nutcracker. Due to the limited number of seats that were available by the time I bought the tickets (more than 2 months before the performance!), we had no choice but to sit really close to the stage, which was great! The Royal ballet does a really beautiful and different version of the Nutcracker than what I'm used to and we both really enjoyed it.
Then, of course, Jim had to make his famous cheeseballs and snickerdoodles, which were a great hit with me and amongst our friends.
Meg and Dan are back for a couple of weeks, having a rest between fabulous travels, so we've had a really nice time catching up with them. On Christmas eve we all hung out and had a low-key dinner before attempting to watch Its a Wonderful Life (not a success, as we only made it through half of the show):
Jack is so happy to see Meg and Dan! And they look great--tan and rested after just returning from South Africa.
We all got some rest and regrouped on Christmas morning. Meg made delicious scones!
We got all kinds of fun stuff in our stockings. Jim gives me the evil eye after I made some comment which I now can't remember. But you can see that he has a 'flyer kit', which was given to him by Dan. We have lots of not so great flying paper airplanes all over our house now, which Jack has enjoyed chasing around.
Only a couple of more weeks until our baby is due. I'm looking pretty robust in these pictures. Serious overeating has not helped me to feel less waddlesque.
Group picture!
We tried to get the cats to pose in a friendly manner, but they weren't cooperating. We had to accept this 'aloof' and 'cool' picture. Lucky for them, we forgot to put them in their Santa suits. Next year!
New socks!
New Jacket!
New Art!
New Underwear!
Jim as Kenyan warrior. Thanks to Meg and Dan, we now have some really beautiful art and blankets from Kenya and South Africa.
Cheers! Mimosas.
Between eating our faces off, we took a walk on Hampstead Heath. There were lots of happy people out enjoying the gray day.
After a few hours of questionable food preparation (like, were my rolls going to rise? Miraculously, YES! But he of little faith went out and bought some more bread, just in case. HUMPH!) we had a delicious Christmas dinner. Meg made really delicious beef tenderloin and brussel sprouts and Jim made creamy scalloped potatoes, I mixed together the Yorkshire pudding and Jim and Meg put it in the pan and we also had homemade rolls. There was food in abundance!
Jim cuts the beautiful Yorkshire pud!
We had a little rest before we got to dessert.
THEN: lemon meringue pie and chocolate pie. Jim's lemon meringue pie was BEAUTIFUL when it came out of the oven. He put it on the counter to cool and left the room. Fifteen minutes later he came back in to find Finchley with his greedy face buried in the meringue. BAD PIGGY CAT!!!
Here is the culprit, post-pie consumption. We removed the part that he was chowing on, which left a slightly less perfect looking pie (still delicious!):
Thanks to modern technology, we were able to talk to and see our families on Skype! Not as good as seeing them in person, but it helped to make them seem not so far away. It was almost a perfect Christmas, full of family, friends, lots of food and happy times. Merry Christmas!
Saturday, December 20, 2008
On the Heath and Jack with a frog
A couple of pictures from our walk this morning.
And Jack's reaction to our new frog puppet.
And Jack's reaction to our new frog puppet.
Billy Bob Christmas
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Library Weirdos
Lately I've been going to our local library a lot, which is a comforting and frustrating experience. It's comforting because it's in Keats' house and near the Heath and just a warm and cozy place to be. But it's small, so they hardly ever have the books that I want. I do request books through their book requesting service (sometimes they have them at other libraries), but it costs 40p a book--cheaper than buying books, of course, but still....
Anyway, another thing that is always interesting (if not comforting) about the library are all the weirdo library people who hang out there. Today I innocently sat down at a computer to see what books were in house and the guy next to me acted like it was a personal affront and that by my sitting there I was attempting to snoop into his personal computer business. I made a point of totally ignoring him, but he kept sighing and shifting around and giving me furtive and suspicious looks from his computer. He must have been working on something TOP SECRET!
Anyway, another thing that is always interesting (if not comforting) about the library are all the weirdo library people who hang out there. Today I innocently sat down at a computer to see what books were in house and the guy next to me acted like it was a personal affront and that by my sitting there I was attempting to snoop into his personal computer business. I made a point of totally ignoring him, but he kept sighing and shifting around and giving me furtive and suspicious looks from his computer. He must have been working on something TOP SECRET!
James...the band (and the man, better known as Jim)
Last night we went to the James concert. This was a great accomplishment as we have attempted to see them several times in the past but our efforts were thwarted by sold out tickets and then accidentally scheduling a trip to Spain at the same time as the concert in April (not that I'm complaining about that). The last time Jim saw them was fifteen years ago, in 1993, when he somehow got involved in catering and served them all vegetarian food before the concert. I took TWO naps in preparation for the evening because I didn't want to let Jim down by being a pregnant lame ass.
I am not a big writer of concert details and we didn't take our camera, so we don't have any shaky, motion sickness inducing footage for you to watch (the concert was really good, they played all the songs we love, Jim was in heaven, etc.) BUT the highlight of the evening for ME was definitely the fact that we got to sit in the disabled area because of my being pregnant. So we had an awesome view of the stage AND I got to have a chair and burly escorts to and from the bathroom. To top it off, all the people we met who worked at Brixton Academy (where the concert was)were just really, really nice, which is not something that you expect or take for granted in London.
It was a good evening and Jim would say that the best part was that they played TWO encores and that Tim Booth danced a lot and that they played some obscure James songs from the early 80's. (I feel obligated to say these things in honor of Jim and his reverence for this band. They are one of my favorite bands, too, but I lack Jim's passion for music and live shows so I won't claim to be able to really portray HOW good of a concert this was.)
This is the last concert for a while for me. So, I'm glad that I ended on a good one!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Spitafield etc
There is this wonderful thing called Santacon (www.santacon.com), which we found out about the day after it happened in London. What a bummer as basically it's a bunch of people running around the city (whatever city it happens to be in) in Santa costumes (or Christmas themed costumes). We would have loved to have taken part in that! But, alas...we were uninformed at that point.
So today we decided to get out of the house a little and seek out Christmas themed stuff to do in London. We ended up back in Spitafield's Market where there was an Eco-market going on. It wasn't particularly Christmasy, but we still had fun.
With wrestling masks (they were not, we later found out, part of the Eco-market):
Arty people outside of a coffee shop on Brick Lane:
People selling stuff (anything from very used looking shoes to really tacky vases that look like something Granny would have stored in her garage):
A wall off of Brick Lane:
For lunch we got really cheap and really yummy Ethiopian food. It was also super spicy.
There was also Mexican food, but we didn't have any:
One of the highlights of the day was when we ran across this interactive Christmas card thing. There was a camera that captured your face and superimposed it onto various Christmas characters. I, it turns out, was transformed into a rotund Christmas pudding, which made everyone around us laugh (you can see their reflections laughing in the bottom of the picture).
Jim and I almost always disagree about Normal Foster's architecture. The building that is sprouting out of his head in this picture is called the Gherkin and it is one of the top 100 buildings in the world (according to someone...not me!)
He also did Wembley Stadium (which is ok), the Pompidou in Paris (ugly, says me. Cool, says JIm.) the building formerly known as the Millennium Dome in London (which to me looks like a giant spaceship with cranes sticking out of the top of it. Jim is kind of neutral on that one.) and another industrial looking insurance building in London which we both agree is hideous. And there are more....
We had a great plan to walk home from Spitafield's, but I ran out of steam and we ended up taking the tube back. Before I pooped out, though, we experience the Barbican Centre, which is a gigantic feat in 1970's architecture (and also an arts center).
And this has nothing to do with today, but finally, after two years of sub-par brooms, we finally got one that really works. Hooray for traditional witch brooms!
So today we decided to get out of the house a little and seek out Christmas themed stuff to do in London. We ended up back in Spitafield's Market where there was an Eco-market going on. It wasn't particularly Christmasy, but we still had fun.
With wrestling masks (they were not, we later found out, part of the Eco-market):
Arty people outside of a coffee shop on Brick Lane:
People selling stuff (anything from very used looking shoes to really tacky vases that look like something Granny would have stored in her garage):
A wall off of Brick Lane:
For lunch we got really cheap and really yummy Ethiopian food. It was also super spicy.
There was also Mexican food, but we didn't have any:
One of the highlights of the day was when we ran across this interactive Christmas card thing. There was a camera that captured your face and superimposed it onto various Christmas characters. I, it turns out, was transformed into a rotund Christmas pudding, which made everyone around us laugh (you can see their reflections laughing in the bottom of the picture).
Jim and I almost always disagree about Normal Foster's architecture. The building that is sprouting out of his head in this picture is called the Gherkin and it is one of the top 100 buildings in the world (according to someone...not me!)
He also did Wembley Stadium (which is ok), the Pompidou in Paris (ugly, says me. Cool, says JIm.) the building formerly known as the Millennium Dome in London (which to me looks like a giant spaceship with cranes sticking out of the top of it. Jim is kind of neutral on that one.) and another industrial looking insurance building in London which we both agree is hideous. And there are more....
We had a great plan to walk home from Spitafield's, but I ran out of steam and we ended up taking the tube back. Before I pooped out, though, we experience the Barbican Centre, which is a gigantic feat in 1970's architecture (and also an arts center).
And this has nothing to do with today, but finally, after two years of sub-par brooms, we finally got one that really works. Hooray for traditional witch brooms!
Icy Heath
Warning...this blog is not exciting or very interesting at all. Soon there will be some interesting things to blog about, as Christmas gets closer and friends come in town! But for now, you'll have to settle for mundane blogs about our walks in the Heath and cats and other such exciting things.
Last weekend it was pretty icy when we went for our usual Hampstead Heath walk. Despite coffee and the frigid air , I wasn't really feeling super energetic (hence the haggard look I've been sporting lately):
It was beautiful, though, and Jim did a great job of capturing the ice and the sunlight (something that we haven't seen much of since then....).
We went a new way in the park and found a gnarled tree, in which Jim perched:
Shadowy...
This picture pretty much sums up how I was feeling that morning. Jim is a brave and patient man...and I clean up well.
We'll end on a pretty one. Logs in the woods!
Last weekend it was pretty icy when we went for our usual Hampstead Heath walk. Despite coffee and the frigid air , I wasn't really feeling super energetic (hence the haggard look I've been sporting lately):
It was beautiful, though, and Jim did a great job of capturing the ice and the sunlight (something that we haven't seen much of since then....).
We went a new way in the park and found a gnarled tree, in which Jim perched:
Shadowy...
This picture pretty much sums up how I was feeling that morning. Jim is a brave and patient man...and I clean up well.
We'll end on a pretty one. Logs in the woods!
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