I am probably doomed to perish in a fire. Gosh I certainly hope not but it definitely could be a possibility. I have no idea how fast a fire moves or how long you can manage before the smoke overcomes you. AND unfortunately, I have been in SOOOO Many dang frikkin fire drills and alarms that I have become inured to their importance.
Maybe 10 years ago or so, twice, (different hotels, different states, different cats, different times), I was in a hotel with my daughter's cat and with my two cats.. Someone pulled the fire alarm when I was with my daughters cat and it was during the day so I was able to quickly grab him and stuff him in a carrier. BUT on my way out the door, I also grabbed my computer and my purse. Went outside and sat on the bench in front of the door until the fire department came and cleared the alarm. The second time with cats, I was on the fourth floor and it was the middle of the night. The cats were sleeping on the bed with me when someone pulled the alarm. The noise is so loud and tumultuous and ear splitting plus a bright red light whirling in the room that the cats immediate dove for cover under the KING SIZED BED. I was not leaving without my cats (although I know that one is supposed to do so but my cats are family!). Took me probably 5 minutes to corral them and get them stuffed into a carrier and that involved throwing the mattress and springs onto the floor so I could reach them under the bed. This alarm truly terrified me at the time because it was the middle of the night. I do remember I called the front desk and they assured me they were looking into the matter but I had best vacate my room. Again, I grabbed my computer and purse and trotted down the flights of stairs and shivered in the cold morning air because I had forgotten to put on a jacket. At least I was sleeping in pajamas at the time.
Of course both of these were alarms and not drills but still, I didn't get out as fast as I could, I took my time to get my cats and my most important possessions. My bad. One other fire alarm was in Singapore. No cats at the time but we lived on the 33rd floor. That is a LONG way down the stairs. Probably took us 15 minutes or more as people were coming out on each floor to join the procession plus some flats had stored their bicycles and grills and such on the stairs. They bad! Plus my hubby wanted to stop on the floors where we had friends and made sure they were not in their apartments but we figured they were ahead of us on the stairs. This is the ONLY time there was actually a reason for the alarm being pulled and it was some of our friends where the wife had caught a skillet on fire and there was a lot of smoke in their apartment but her husband had put out the small stove fire before the alarm was pulled. She ran and pulled the alarm because she was a nutter.
And one time in the Science Museum in London. We're on the top floor when there is a fire alarm. This was mid winter when it was actually quite cold. By the time we reached the ground floor, personnel was stationed at all stairs and they would not let anyone retrieve their coats so I'm outside in 2 degree C weather, with a wind, and no coat. AND they had to wait for the fire brigade to come and clear the alarm before we could go back inside to get our coats. I no longer check my coat when I go somewhere unless it is just a jacket that I could do without for an hour or so.
In a very crowded theatre watching We Will Rock You. In the middle of a song, the performers stopped singing and left the stage. OMG. Then the "Safety Curtain" descends and we had never seen that happen before. No one in the audience knew what was happening so everyone just sat there for maybe 2 or 3 minutes. There was no smoke or heat or alarms. Finally staff opened all the exit doors and started shouting for people to leave the theatre. A disgruntled employee had pulled an alarm backstage but we never heard it at all. So out into the cold (with my coat this time) and wait for the fire brigade again to come and clear the theatre and 45 minutes later, we get back in to see the rest of the show.
There have been a couple of other hotels where the alarms have been pulled and I have exited at my leisure, making sure I have my important stuff. And there have been drills, so many drills. Work place drills, hotel drills, restaurant drills, gym drills, store drills and others. Usually there is a sign or an employee will mention that a drill is being held at such and such a time and please cooperate and exit as quickly as possible. Never any smoke, never any heat, never any problem with calmly getting up and walking out with my stuff. apparently my stuff is quite important to me!
Yesterday I was in an unannounced drill and it was only a partial drill at that! I was at the gym and you might recall that I hate going to the gym. Any excuse not to go. But I was there and walking fast on the treadmill and watching Chuck on my iPod. I think I heard something going off but I wasn't paying any attention as I was focused on Chuck and his cornucopia of problems with being a secret computer nerd spy. Suddenly a lady jumps up on the treadmill next to me and taps me which was quite startling but she shouts "Fire Alarm". I took out my earplugs and yep, it was going off quite loudly. I think I didn't pay any attention to it because the music is usually way too loud so I must turn up my iPod as well. I "emergency stopped" the treadmill, gathered my iPod and walked out. People are leaving the gym and walking down the stairs but I detoured into the ladies locker room and got my purse and my coat and my keys. Yep, stuff is definitely important to me. But no smoke, no fire, no shouting, no running. Some poor ladies are in the shower, some are half dressed, some are totally nude, and they are not really hurrying so I meandered out as well and when I got to the front of the hotel where my gym is located, it appeared that the only people involved in the drill were the people at the gym and the people at Starbucks and the pub. There wasn't a single person out there who I would have counted as a hotel guest or hotel staff. No housekeepers, who have a distinctive uniform or front desk staff who also have a distinctive uniform. Everyone was dressed in gym attire or swimsuits and surely, at the time of day that this happened, one would have expected to get some executives over for lunch in their suits, or at least one or two hotels guests dressed nicer than sweaty T-shirts and trainers. And it was a drill because no fire brigade showed up to check the alarm. Once outside, it was less than 3 minutes before we were allowed back inside. The Starbucks staff appeared to be the only employees outside with the gym attendees. The end run of this drill was that I went back in to get my gym bag and then went home to do my errands. Didn't even want to take a shower there in case they figured we hadn't responded quickly enough and wanted to do it again.
So I have become lackadaisical with fire alarms and fire drills. No experience with the real thing - thank goodness - but then that gives me no frame of reference for how much time I really do have to get out. I am probably doomed.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Still no Endorphins or Core Muscles!
Truly, truly do hate to exercise. Started when I was but a tadpole, the hating to exercise bit, and don't think I have ever changed my mind. There have been brief portions of my life when I could actually say I was sort of in a good shape and did regular things that were exercise related or actual exercise, e.g. volleyball for awhile, fencing for awhile, bicycling, walking, horseback riding, but that's about it. Short periods of intense craziness and then back to a sedentary lifestyle and creaking in the knees and aches and pains doing just about anything.
BUT I know I should exercise and I have plans to do it regularly and I try hard to incorporate it into my life and have dropped doing other things so that my exercise plans are not shunted to the side and buried like they usually are. Oh, and the fact that my age and arthritis were making daily life much harder than it should have been so I have started exercising.
My daughter is a physically fit person and exercises almost every day. I don't know how she became such an athlete other than I did put her in gymnastics as a child and she stayed with it into high school and then went into track and field. Now she does it because it makes her feel better and without doing any exercise, she claims her whole day is crappy. wow. I have never, ever felt like that. Wow again. Never have I felt so much better after exercise that I am just so happy to have done it and so ready to do it again the next day! Usually I felt like crap when I am exercising and am just really, really glad to be done. Then the next day comes and I have to go through a whole new ramp up of cheer-leading myself into doing it again! Where are my endorphins? Why don't I have any? I have jokingly told my daughter that once or twice I've gotten maybe 1/2 or 1 (at the most) endorphins from the exercise but to find some everyday? Where is that "wall" I hear athletes talk about that they push past to get such wondrous feelings from the work out? For me, it's a brick wall and I just run smack into it. There is no pushing past it for a better feeling. There is just "OMG - I ran into a brick wall!"
Every once in awhile I do stupid things because it is expected of everyone - this is the "join the gym and never go". Yep, been there, done that. Especially when my daughter is not around. She is able to let the guilt flow up to me and "guilts" me into going to the gym with her. When she's not here, forget it.
I've done other things to try and get exercise into my life. When we were living in Canada, we had a young man come to the house as our personal trainer. He was quite good in helping us once a week work out and I enjoyed those sessions. We had a great place set up in the basement for exercise in that we had mats, a hanging punching bag, a treadmill, and a chin up stand plus TRX ropes. He didn't have a whole lot of experience but he was enthusiastic and able to get us going. still don't feel like I got many endorphins and finding my core muscles seems rather elusive.
Leaving that location and moving on left me with no place to exercise on a regular basis and no motivation to do it on my own so I sunk back into my lethargy. Then we move to England and I really have to do something physical or sink into being a couch potato blob so my daughter and I join a gym again. As she is not here all the time, I do the guilt workouts when she's here and pretty much skip it when she's gone. I get a trainer but he's pretty much useless and doesn't really know what he is doing as far as adapting a program to a person and their body type and such so most of my time with him is spent in pain and hating every minute of it. No endorphins, no core muscles. So I quit going to the gym again.
Once again, my daughter comes to my rescue and finds me a better trainer, a superb trainer, and an experienced one. Wow, he's good. We start working out together at the gym but then the gym closes so he starts coming to the house. He says that he has all these exercises and things to do just floating around in the ether about him and he pulls them out of the air as needed depending on how I am feeling and working out that particular day. It is amazing that I actually enjoy working out with him and feel, for the first time, that maybe there are some endorphins there - at least some of the time. Still, some days it's just all crap and garbage to do anything but I am persisting and trying and possibly I might have seen a glimpse of some core muscles a couple of weeks ago.
I still hate to go to the gym. Part of it is because we belong to a really crappy gym. We joined a gym where my hubby could swim during his lunch hour. The deal was I would go and swim with him. As he gets very little exercise in his job and spends hours in meetings and in front of the computer, I thought this would be good for all of us. Plus I am not a very good swimmer but I love to scuba dive so thought I could get better at swimming going to the pool with him (a whole different story and kettle of worms there!) But I hate the gym where we go. It is a crappy, crappy gym and caters to families so some days there are young boys in the dressing room at a much more advanced age that I would have ever let my son into a women's dressing room - had I ever had a son. Other days there are just screaming girls in there with mothers paying little, if any, attention to them. But even without the kids, it's still a crappy gym and I hate going and I do come up with all manner of excuses not to go. The only reason we go there is so my hubby can walk over on his lunch hour. Today I was actually there when they had a fire drill! Of course I used this as a reason to quit and go home and do my errands. But my daughter returns to visit us later this week and that means she will guilt me into going most days again. Maybe I'll find an endorphin or two or maybe a core muscle or two. They must be there somewhere.
BUT I know I should exercise and I have plans to do it regularly and I try hard to incorporate it into my life and have dropped doing other things so that my exercise plans are not shunted to the side and buried like they usually are. Oh, and the fact that my age and arthritis were making daily life much harder than it should have been so I have started exercising.
My daughter is a physically fit person and exercises almost every day. I don't know how she became such an athlete other than I did put her in gymnastics as a child and she stayed with it into high school and then went into track and field. Now she does it because it makes her feel better and without doing any exercise, she claims her whole day is crappy. wow. I have never, ever felt like that. Wow again. Never have I felt so much better after exercise that I am just so happy to have done it and so ready to do it again the next day! Usually I felt like crap when I am exercising and am just really, really glad to be done. Then the next day comes and I have to go through a whole new ramp up of cheer-leading myself into doing it again! Where are my endorphins? Why don't I have any? I have jokingly told my daughter that once or twice I've gotten maybe 1/2 or 1 (at the most) endorphins from the exercise but to find some everyday? Where is that "wall" I hear athletes talk about that they push past to get such wondrous feelings from the work out? For me, it's a brick wall and I just run smack into it. There is no pushing past it for a better feeling. There is just "OMG - I ran into a brick wall!"
Every once in awhile I do stupid things because it is expected of everyone - this is the "join the gym and never go". Yep, been there, done that. Especially when my daughter is not around. She is able to let the guilt flow up to me and "guilts" me into going to the gym with her. When she's not here, forget it.
I've done other things to try and get exercise into my life. When we were living in Canada, we had a young man come to the house as our personal trainer. He was quite good in helping us once a week work out and I enjoyed those sessions. We had a great place set up in the basement for exercise in that we had mats, a hanging punching bag, a treadmill, and a chin up stand plus TRX ropes. He didn't have a whole lot of experience but he was enthusiastic and able to get us going. still don't feel like I got many endorphins and finding my core muscles seems rather elusive.
Leaving that location and moving on left me with no place to exercise on a regular basis and no motivation to do it on my own so I sunk back into my lethargy. Then we move to England and I really have to do something physical or sink into being a couch potato blob so my daughter and I join a gym again. As she is not here all the time, I do the guilt workouts when she's here and pretty much skip it when she's gone. I get a trainer but he's pretty much useless and doesn't really know what he is doing as far as adapting a program to a person and their body type and such so most of my time with him is spent in pain and hating every minute of it. No endorphins, no core muscles. So I quit going to the gym again.
Once again, my daughter comes to my rescue and finds me a better trainer, a superb trainer, and an experienced one. Wow, he's good. We start working out together at the gym but then the gym closes so he starts coming to the house. He says that he has all these exercises and things to do just floating around in the ether about him and he pulls them out of the air as needed depending on how I am feeling and working out that particular day. It is amazing that I actually enjoy working out with him and feel, for the first time, that maybe there are some endorphins there - at least some of the time. Still, some days it's just all crap and garbage to do anything but I am persisting and trying and possibly I might have seen a glimpse of some core muscles a couple of weeks ago.
I still hate to go to the gym. Part of it is because we belong to a really crappy gym. We joined a gym where my hubby could swim during his lunch hour. The deal was I would go and swim with him. As he gets very little exercise in his job and spends hours in meetings and in front of the computer, I thought this would be good for all of us. Plus I am not a very good swimmer but I love to scuba dive so thought I could get better at swimming going to the pool with him (a whole different story and kettle of worms there!) But I hate the gym where we go. It is a crappy, crappy gym and caters to families so some days there are young boys in the dressing room at a much more advanced age that I would have ever let my son into a women's dressing room - had I ever had a son. Other days there are just screaming girls in there with mothers paying little, if any, attention to them. But even without the kids, it's still a crappy gym and I hate going and I do come up with all manner of excuses not to go. The only reason we go there is so my hubby can walk over on his lunch hour. Today I was actually there when they had a fire drill! Of course I used this as a reason to quit and go home and do my errands. But my daughter returns to visit us later this week and that means she will guilt me into going most days again. Maybe I'll find an endorphin or two or maybe a core muscle or two. They must be there somewhere.
Weekends at the DIY
Had to hit a DIY this weekend and for anyone who is really behind on the times, a DIY is Do It Yourself. On occasion, it is so much easier to just repair something on your own rather than call a repair person or the landlord or whomever. This may not be one of those occasions. So we thought we had a quick repair where the upstairs pipe had broken off under the sink in one of the bedrooms. This was not an under the sink plumbing that I have ever seen before but it seems to be fairly typical here as when we went into the DIY store, there were plenty of like parts to get and they seem to come in an "all in one" type replacement part.
What was amazing though is the number of people that were shopping the DIY. OMG. it was like Christmas sale week at the malls. The lot was full, people were waiting for cars to move out of the way so they could park (although, it you went far enough out in the lot, there were some spaces). Once inside, I was so thankful we were not going to the building section or the garden section as it seems like these sections were heaving with people as the Brits have decided that spring is here and they are busy working on their homes and gardens to fix up, spruce up, weather up, and/or maintain. wow. A whole lot of gardening and repairing going on across the nation, I'd say.
Didn't take us too long to get what we needed even though we had a short list. Took longer standing in the line to check out than it did to find everything we wanted. But we managed.
Back home, the repair that looked so easy and uncomplicated for a plumbing repair did not work. Something is wrong with the picture as the easy part would not screw into the part that is left behind. My hubby worked and worked and worked on it until he had stripped the threads in the PVC pipe. Back to the hardware store for another piece of plumbing kit that was exactly what we had previously purchased and lo and behold, hubby could not make it work either! Dang, two 5.99 pound parts, both stripped now and both not going where they should and my sink still not fixed. double dang. How odd. And how funny. My hubby can fix things and do a good job sometimes but on occasion, his engineering and computer brain takes over and he keeps trying for a "re-boot" when a re-boot won't do. such was the case here. So now we have three sets of plumbing parts that don't work, but we probably can't ever throw them away just in case we can use them elsewhere, a sink that still doesn't work, and a lovely Friday in the DIY along with the rest of England.
What was amazing though is the number of people that were shopping the DIY. OMG. it was like Christmas sale week at the malls. The lot was full, people were waiting for cars to move out of the way so they could park (although, it you went far enough out in the lot, there were some spaces). Once inside, I was so thankful we were not going to the building section or the garden section as it seems like these sections were heaving with people as the Brits have decided that spring is here and they are busy working on their homes and gardens to fix up, spruce up, weather up, and/or maintain. wow. A whole lot of gardening and repairing going on across the nation, I'd say.
Didn't take us too long to get what we needed even though we had a short list. Took longer standing in the line to check out than it did to find everything we wanted. But we managed.
Back home, the repair that looked so easy and uncomplicated for a plumbing repair did not work. Something is wrong with the picture as the easy part would not screw into the part that is left behind. My hubby worked and worked and worked on it until he had stripped the threads in the PVC pipe. Back to the hardware store for another piece of plumbing kit that was exactly what we had previously purchased and lo and behold, hubby could not make it work either! Dang, two 5.99 pound parts, both stripped now and both not going where they should and my sink still not fixed. double dang. How odd. And how funny. My hubby can fix things and do a good job sometimes but on occasion, his engineering and computer brain takes over and he keeps trying for a "re-boot" when a re-boot won't do. such was the case here. So now we have three sets of plumbing parts that don't work, but we probably can't ever throw them away just in case we can use them elsewhere, a sink that still doesn't work, and a lovely Friday in the DIY along with the rest of England.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Bumper People and Eerie Stations
Last weekend we had dinner and a play in town and did the pin balling from local map to local map to find where we needed to go. This weekend it was much worse and not quite so easy. We had tickets to see The Full Monty and also to have dinner at the Spaghetti House before the show, one of the pre-theatre dinner packages.
Started out badly. We arrived at the train station and found a parking place without a problem but when we got to the window to purchase our tickets, the train times had been changed from the usual times we were familiar with and counting on. dang. when did that happen. Had I purchased the tickets on line like I usually do, might have discovered that, BUT after last weekend when the trains were delayed and we had to find another way home, we were told to go back to our original station to get our refund - hence we were getting today's tickets at the station so that we could also get our refund. Nope, didn't happen. So now we are without our refund from the prior week and we are also going to be quite late for our 6 p.m. dinner reservation. We called the restaurant and told them we would be there at 6:30.
Our train should have gotten us to Waterloo at 6:20 but it arrived at 6:30. Still we figured we could make the restaurant in about 10 minutes. Just not to be this evening. Not quite sure if it was rugby or football but the Tube was full of fans going to Leicester Square and a good many of them were already well into stages of inebriation plus wildly enthusiastic about their teams and a good deal of shouting and cheering and singing. Exiting at Leicester Square proved to be an experience in bumper people rather than bumper cars. It was so crowded that we were bumping everyone next to us as we struggled towards the exit. It was the kind of crowd that had anyone fallen down, they would have stayed down as people wouldn't have been able to find them underneath the feet.
Finally we burst into the open and there is a drunken crowd of about 50 people clustered around the map. It is now 7:40 p.m. We can't even get close to the map and we can't remember which way to go so we just turn and walk down the street to try and get out of the crowd and find another map. Nope, not to be. Hubby pulls out his phone and speaks in the address and it points off in a direction so we walk along its path. Tonight is the night that the phone GPS plays tricks on us. twice we walked around the block in a circle trying to find the right street. And finally I realize we have to give up totally on the restaurant because it is now 7 p.m. and our play starts at 7:30. I tell hubby to put the theatre into the GPS and it takes us in a total different direction. huh? the restuarant and theatre were supposedly close together. Oh well, we head back towards the tube station and again are bumping our way through the crowds that are still there and surging out of the tube and go a couple of blocks and there is the theatre. Wow, had we just turned the other direction when we came out, we might have made it to the restuarnt in time to eat! Across the street from the theatre is an Eat so we dash in there to get a sandwich and drink and couple of cookies. Into the theatre for our seats and we share a sandwich and our cookies before the play begins and that was our dinner!
Lovely play, enjoyed it immensely and then when it is over, we struggle through the crowds back to Leicester Square Station. There are even more people in the streets now. We've never seen it this crowded. There are police stationed at each exit/entrance to Leicester Square Tube Station and they are blocking the entrances and telling people to go around the corner. We do but the queue to go into the station is so thick that we decide we will just walk until we find another station or a cab, whichever comes first.
Unfortunately, we have to "swim upstream" against a very solid mass of shouting fans and drunken fans and theatre buffs. A policeman at one of the entrances tells us to walk up the street to find Tottenham Court Tube Station and we can get back to Waterloo from there. One would think that as we got a block or two away from this tube station that the crowds might lessen but there were too many like minded people heading for Tottenham Court tube station so we strolled up the street as it was impossible to get around the people and stride out. Finally we get to the Tottenham Court Tube Station and the first entrance is closed. We're thinking it still might be a taxi then but when we walk around the corner, there are people going into the station so we do also but at the bottom of the stairs just around the corner, the crowd grows into a large lump of humanity that is shuffling towards the entrance gates and now we are stuck as there are too many people behind us to turn around and make an escape.
Amazingly enough, when we finally go through the turnstiles, it opens up and there is still a crowd but not so bad as some people peel off to go on the Bakerloo line and we go towards the Northern line. We walk down to the platform and it is heaving at the beginning as the fans who are still drunk and cheering are getting to the platform and just standing there waiting for the subway. We push and shove and bumper our way through this knot of people and walk to the far end of the platform where there are only a few people and WHEW at last we are out of the crowds.
The train comes and there are very few people in our car so we have seats. An announcement is made that the train will NOT be stopping at Leicester Square due to the station being closed due to overcrowding. Wow. have never heard of this happening before. Glad we left that station. As we roll through that station though, they have totally cleared it out and not a single person is on the platform at all, not even a tube worker. rather eerie. Charing Cross might have taken up some of the slack but it was surprisingly sparse as well. Embankment is closed for their escalator repair anyway so another eerie station as we pass the empty platform.
Finally Waterloo and as we are riding the escalator up to the train station, we hear an announcement that says "Victoria Line is currently running slow due to a person under the train, No other lines are experiencing delays". Say WHAT??? I turned to my hubby and he heard the same thing so I didn't "mis-hear" it. Wow. Entirely too many people on the tracks these weeks.
Unfortunately, we have about 1/2 hour to wait for our train and it isn't a fast train either, stopping numerous times before reaching our destination. So we stand and watch the board so we can make a dash for the correct platform when it is listed and also we are watching to make sure there aren't any delays like last week that turned into an all night stoppage. We know from experience that the trains leaving from about 11 p.m. to a bit past midnight are almost always full as people are going home from a night in the city. And tonight there are all these football or rugby fans who are roaming the station, now very drunk and either maudlin-ly sad or ridiculously happy but either side is still shouting and cheering and singing.
Finally we get a track number and we rapidly walk to the gates. We skip the first couple of cars and get on where the first class car is located. It is next to the toilet but experience has taught us that usually, USUALLY, these seats are left to the end before they fill, if at all but other cars without the first class section, are usually quite full and people are standing until they get as far out as Farnborough or Fleet. Well, tonight was an exception to that rule as has been most of the travel evening. By the time the train left, our coach was quite full with a queue for the toilet. In the group of people left standing without seats was a group of football fans who were fairly well lit with liquor including one friend who couldn't really stand, being that intoxicated. Luckily his friends got him into the toilet by requesting to jump the queue and everyone agreed because we all thought he was going to hurl on someone otherwise. Then his friends took him off to the end and sat him on the floor. Some nights, my hubby can sleep on the train going home but not tonight. Rowdy and loud but polite in that the fans stayed within their group and didn't bother anyone else on the train, other than falling over on occasion when the train hit a curve.
So an interesting evening where nothing went as planned from the very start, a very entertaining play, a missed dinner engagement, bumper people game up and down the street and through the tube stations, and drunken train companions all the way home. Geez, I just LOVE London!!!!
Started out badly. We arrived at the train station and found a parking place without a problem but when we got to the window to purchase our tickets, the train times had been changed from the usual times we were familiar with and counting on. dang. when did that happen. Had I purchased the tickets on line like I usually do, might have discovered that, BUT after last weekend when the trains were delayed and we had to find another way home, we were told to go back to our original station to get our refund - hence we were getting today's tickets at the station so that we could also get our refund. Nope, didn't happen. So now we are without our refund from the prior week and we are also going to be quite late for our 6 p.m. dinner reservation. We called the restaurant and told them we would be there at 6:30.
Our train should have gotten us to Waterloo at 6:20 but it arrived at 6:30. Still we figured we could make the restaurant in about 10 minutes. Just not to be this evening. Not quite sure if it was rugby or football but the Tube was full of fans going to Leicester Square and a good many of them were already well into stages of inebriation plus wildly enthusiastic about their teams and a good deal of shouting and cheering and singing. Exiting at Leicester Square proved to be an experience in bumper people rather than bumper cars. It was so crowded that we were bumping everyone next to us as we struggled towards the exit. It was the kind of crowd that had anyone fallen down, they would have stayed down as people wouldn't have been able to find them underneath the feet.
Finally we burst into the open and there is a drunken crowd of about 50 people clustered around the map. It is now 7:40 p.m. We can't even get close to the map and we can't remember which way to go so we just turn and walk down the street to try and get out of the crowd and find another map. Nope, not to be. Hubby pulls out his phone and speaks in the address and it points off in a direction so we walk along its path. Tonight is the night that the phone GPS plays tricks on us. twice we walked around the block in a circle trying to find the right street. And finally I realize we have to give up totally on the restaurant because it is now 7 p.m. and our play starts at 7:30. I tell hubby to put the theatre into the GPS and it takes us in a total different direction. huh? the restuarant and theatre were supposedly close together. Oh well, we head back towards the tube station and again are bumping our way through the crowds that are still there and surging out of the tube and go a couple of blocks and there is the theatre. Wow, had we just turned the other direction when we came out, we might have made it to the restuarnt in time to eat! Across the street from the theatre is an Eat so we dash in there to get a sandwich and drink and couple of cookies. Into the theatre for our seats and we share a sandwich and our cookies before the play begins and that was our dinner!
Lovely play, enjoyed it immensely and then when it is over, we struggle through the crowds back to Leicester Square Station. There are even more people in the streets now. We've never seen it this crowded. There are police stationed at each exit/entrance to Leicester Square Tube Station and they are blocking the entrances and telling people to go around the corner. We do but the queue to go into the station is so thick that we decide we will just walk until we find another station or a cab, whichever comes first.
Unfortunately, we have to "swim upstream" against a very solid mass of shouting fans and drunken fans and theatre buffs. A policeman at one of the entrances tells us to walk up the street to find Tottenham Court Tube Station and we can get back to Waterloo from there. One would think that as we got a block or two away from this tube station that the crowds might lessen but there were too many like minded people heading for Tottenham Court tube station so we strolled up the street as it was impossible to get around the people and stride out. Finally we get to the Tottenham Court Tube Station and the first entrance is closed. We're thinking it still might be a taxi then but when we walk around the corner, there are people going into the station so we do also but at the bottom of the stairs just around the corner, the crowd grows into a large lump of humanity that is shuffling towards the entrance gates and now we are stuck as there are too many people behind us to turn around and make an escape.
Amazingly enough, when we finally go through the turnstiles, it opens up and there is still a crowd but not so bad as some people peel off to go on the Bakerloo line and we go towards the Northern line. We walk down to the platform and it is heaving at the beginning as the fans who are still drunk and cheering are getting to the platform and just standing there waiting for the subway. We push and shove and bumper our way through this knot of people and walk to the far end of the platform where there are only a few people and WHEW at last we are out of the crowds.
The train comes and there are very few people in our car so we have seats. An announcement is made that the train will NOT be stopping at Leicester Square due to the station being closed due to overcrowding. Wow. have never heard of this happening before. Glad we left that station. As we roll through that station though, they have totally cleared it out and not a single person is on the platform at all, not even a tube worker. rather eerie. Charing Cross might have taken up some of the slack but it was surprisingly sparse as well. Embankment is closed for their escalator repair anyway so another eerie station as we pass the empty platform.
Finally Waterloo and as we are riding the escalator up to the train station, we hear an announcement that says "Victoria Line is currently running slow due to a person under the train, No other lines are experiencing delays". Say WHAT??? I turned to my hubby and he heard the same thing so I didn't "mis-hear" it. Wow. Entirely too many people on the tracks these weeks.
Unfortunately, we have about 1/2 hour to wait for our train and it isn't a fast train either, stopping numerous times before reaching our destination. So we stand and watch the board so we can make a dash for the correct platform when it is listed and also we are watching to make sure there aren't any delays like last week that turned into an all night stoppage. We know from experience that the trains leaving from about 11 p.m. to a bit past midnight are almost always full as people are going home from a night in the city. And tonight there are all these football or rugby fans who are roaming the station, now very drunk and either maudlin-ly sad or ridiculously happy but either side is still shouting and cheering and singing.
Finally we get a track number and we rapidly walk to the gates. We skip the first couple of cars and get on where the first class car is located. It is next to the toilet but experience has taught us that usually, USUALLY, these seats are left to the end before they fill, if at all but other cars without the first class section, are usually quite full and people are standing until they get as far out as Farnborough or Fleet. Well, tonight was an exception to that rule as has been most of the travel evening. By the time the train left, our coach was quite full with a queue for the toilet. In the group of people left standing without seats was a group of football fans who were fairly well lit with liquor including one friend who couldn't really stand, being that intoxicated. Luckily his friends got him into the toilet by requesting to jump the queue and everyone agreed because we all thought he was going to hurl on someone otherwise. Then his friends took him off to the end and sat him on the floor. Some nights, my hubby can sleep on the train going home but not tonight. Rowdy and loud but polite in that the fans stayed within their group and didn't bother anyone else on the train, other than falling over on occasion when the train hit a curve.
So an interesting evening where nothing went as planned from the very start, a very entertaining play, a missed dinner engagement, bumper people game up and down the street and through the tube stations, and drunken train companions all the way home. Geez, I just LOVE London!!!!
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Pin balling through London
We had a lovely weekend planned which involved us heading into London both Friday and Saturday. On Friday we were going to The Shard for the view and lunch. Boy did we get lucky with the weather as Friday was a beautiful day with hardly a cloud, certainly no rain, and even very little pollution it seemed.
Looking at the maps, it appeared we were only about a mile away from the location so we set my hubby's phone to a GPS mode and started following it out of London Waterloo Station. As we weren't positive where we had to go, every time we saw a sign that offered a map of the surrounding area, we would stop and look to see where we were and how far we had to go. Mostly it was rather in a straight line so no worries and we ambled towards the Shard without a problem. Good navigation. And nice to walk along on top of the streets rather than riding below the streets for once. After our lunch and view though, we hit the tubes to go back to Waterloo and head home.
Saturday
Hubby and I had a nice Sat in London last weekend. We had tickets for him to attend the Craft Beer Rising Festival which is a yearly gathering of different brewers, mostly from the U.K., and their brews and a good many of them started as home brewers or still do beers in the home brewing fashion. As my husband has been a home brewer for the last 40 years, this festival interests him a great deal as he gets to talk to the brewers and exchange ideas and gather tips, yada, yada. Much better than the beer festivals where there is just a wall of kegs and everyone is drinking as fast as they can.
So to the Craft Beer Rising, had a lovely time, talked to some great brewers who are quite proud of their stuff, only tasted a few that were less than stellar, and then out and on for the rest of our evening.
We had tickets to see Agatha Christie's Mousetrap and a nice dinner before hand with one of the special Pre-theatre dinner restaurants that offer you a two course meal for a reduced rate in the hopes that you will also buy a bunch of drinks and maybe desserts, etc. As we didn't want to retrace our steps to the metro tube station where we had arrived for the Craft Beer shindig, we set up my hubby's phone to a GPS mode to follow it to our restaurant. It had been quite easy on Friday to follow it to get to The Shard. Of course, it helps being able to see your building over all the other buildings too.
We wandered around the neighborhood first as there were several markets in action but nothing really worth buying that day. And then we followed the GPS to the tube station. Oddly enough, his phone told us to exit at Embankment which was at least a mile from where we wanted to be. It would have made much more sense to exit at Leicester Square which is smack in the middle of the theatre district but for some reason, the GPS/phone was playing tricks on us.
Fairly easy to get to the Strand from Embankment but then we were sure exactly which way it was telling us to go, so we navigated by the combination of GPS-phone instructions and stopping at every map on the street again to ascertain where we were and where was the restaurant and where we wanted to turn. Felt like we were pin balling from sign to sign. Hit one and spin off in another direction until you hit the next one and then spin off some more. What's wonderful about London and a good many large UK towns and even European cities is that these maps are up and about the town and make it quite easy to find places.
So bouncing around and we found our restaurant quite early actually. There was a comic book store right next to it and I don't think we've been in a comic book store since my teens but we went in to see as we had the time. My gosh! Exactly like The Big Bang Theory. I looked around for Howard and Leonard and Raj and Sheldon. They could have been there.
And then to dinner and then the show, both which were quite enjoyable. Heading back to Waterloo, we managed to snag a cab but the trains were delayed. First time we've been caught out and had to detour to Staines and get a cab home from there. geez. not a cheap night.
Looking at the maps, it appeared we were only about a mile away from the location so we set my hubby's phone to a GPS mode and started following it out of London Waterloo Station. As we weren't positive where we had to go, every time we saw a sign that offered a map of the surrounding area, we would stop and look to see where we were and how far we had to go. Mostly it was rather in a straight line so no worries and we ambled towards the Shard without a problem. Good navigation. And nice to walk along on top of the streets rather than riding below the streets for once. After our lunch and view though, we hit the tubes to go back to Waterloo and head home.
Saturday
Hubby and I had a nice Sat in London last weekend. We had tickets for him to attend the Craft Beer Rising Festival which is a yearly gathering of different brewers, mostly from the U.K., and their brews and a good many of them started as home brewers or still do beers in the home brewing fashion. As my husband has been a home brewer for the last 40 years, this festival interests him a great deal as he gets to talk to the brewers and exchange ideas and gather tips, yada, yada. Much better than the beer festivals where there is just a wall of kegs and everyone is drinking as fast as they can.
So to the Craft Beer Rising, had a lovely time, talked to some great brewers who are quite proud of their stuff, only tasted a few that were less than stellar, and then out and on for the rest of our evening.
We had tickets to see Agatha Christie's Mousetrap and a nice dinner before hand with one of the special Pre-theatre dinner restaurants that offer you a two course meal for a reduced rate in the hopes that you will also buy a bunch of drinks and maybe desserts, etc. As we didn't want to retrace our steps to the metro tube station where we had arrived for the Craft Beer shindig, we set up my hubby's phone to a GPS mode to follow it to our restaurant. It had been quite easy on Friday to follow it to get to The Shard. Of course, it helps being able to see your building over all the other buildings too.
We wandered around the neighborhood first as there were several markets in action but nothing really worth buying that day. And then we followed the GPS to the tube station. Oddly enough, his phone told us to exit at Embankment which was at least a mile from where we wanted to be. It would have made much more sense to exit at Leicester Square which is smack in the middle of the theatre district but for some reason, the GPS/phone was playing tricks on us.
Fairly easy to get to the Strand from Embankment but then we were sure exactly which way it was telling us to go, so we navigated by the combination of GPS-phone instructions and stopping at every map on the street again to ascertain where we were and where was the restaurant and where we wanted to turn. Felt like we were pin balling from sign to sign. Hit one and spin off in another direction until you hit the next one and then spin off some more. What's wonderful about London and a good many large UK towns and even European cities is that these maps are up and about the town and make it quite easy to find places.
So bouncing around and we found our restaurant quite early actually. There was a comic book store right next to it and I don't think we've been in a comic book store since my teens but we went in to see as we had the time. My gosh! Exactly like The Big Bang Theory. I looked around for Howard and Leonard and Raj and Sheldon. They could have been there.
And then to dinner and then the show, both which were quite enjoyable. Heading back to Waterloo, we managed to snag a cab but the trains were delayed. First time we've been caught out and had to detour to Staines and get a cab home from there. geez. not a cheap night.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Many, Many Tits
Stop right there and discontinue reading if your mind is in the gutter and thinking - WOW - she's going to write about female anatomy 'cuz it ain't gonna happen! I'm talking about the lovely little English birds - tits - Greater Tits, Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Lesser Tits (not sure they have these but there must be lesser if there are greater) and Crested Tits. So there.
They are delightful little birds and quite colorful mostly, except for the Coal Tits which are pretty much black and white but still delightful. We have many in our garden and they come to the bird feeders frequently. We have them all except the Crested Tits and I haven't even seen one of those but did see in a book that they exist. The tits are our most frequent visitors although we have a large contingent of Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, Wood Pigeons, Robins, Starlings, some Wrens,and Magpies that show up regularly and maybe a few others that are not quite so frequent. But I think I like the tits the best.
I have to admit that both my husband and I dissolve into laughter any time either of us go "Hey, there's a couple of TITS in the garden!" We go all Bevis and Butthead at that saying and then we look to see what kind they are and enjoy the heck out of watching them. Everybody can enjoy a little sophomoric and idiotic fun.
Think I read somewhere that the English Starling and even the Wood Pigeon might be in danger but I think if that's the case, the bird society could come to our garden and I'd happily let them have a bunch of mine to take elsewhere and repopulate.
Last year, my gardener told me I shouldn't feed the birds so much when there were babies in nests as they needed to learn to hunt and catch the bugs and worms and slugs and such. Good advice and it makes sense but my Tits and other small birds just went elsewhere and I didn't have a whole lot of birds around or any birdsong during that period when I wasn't feeding them so this year I expect I'll just keep feeding them except on the days when my gardener comes. Is that bad? probably. Because who knows if the next person to rent/own this house will be as happy taking care of the wild and feral creatures that meander through here.
Last year I put out a bunch of houses in the hopes that I'd get something to nest in them. Didn't happen but the houses are still out there and maybe some little new mom and dad bird will need a new house and find one. Also put out a bunch of hangers that have wool and stuff in them that supposedly the birds will take to make their nests. Can't do much else unless I go build the nest for them and stuff them inside.
As I've stated before, the birdsong starts around 6 and is quite lovely. Don't know who sings what as usually I can't see which bird has its mouth open when I can hear songs. It won't be quite so lovely come June when the birds start singing around 4:30 but right now I enjoy it. Anyway, having Tits in the garden is great (Ha ha, ha ha) Love it and those cute little birds.
They are delightful little birds and quite colorful mostly, except for the Coal Tits which are pretty much black and white but still delightful. We have many in our garden and they come to the bird feeders frequently. We have them all except the Crested Tits and I haven't even seen one of those but did see in a book that they exist. The tits are our most frequent visitors although we have a large contingent of Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, Wood Pigeons, Robins, Starlings, some Wrens,and Magpies that show up regularly and maybe a few others that are not quite so frequent. But I think I like the tits the best.
I have to admit that both my husband and I dissolve into laughter any time either of us go "Hey, there's a couple of TITS in the garden!" We go all Bevis and Butthead at that saying and then we look to see what kind they are and enjoy the heck out of watching them. Everybody can enjoy a little sophomoric and idiotic fun.
Think I read somewhere that the English Starling and even the Wood Pigeon might be in danger but I think if that's the case, the bird society could come to our garden and I'd happily let them have a bunch of mine to take elsewhere and repopulate.
Last year, my gardener told me I shouldn't feed the birds so much when there were babies in nests as they needed to learn to hunt and catch the bugs and worms and slugs and such. Good advice and it makes sense but my Tits and other small birds just went elsewhere and I didn't have a whole lot of birds around or any birdsong during that period when I wasn't feeding them so this year I expect I'll just keep feeding them except on the days when my gardener comes. Is that bad? probably. Because who knows if the next person to rent/own this house will be as happy taking care of the wild and feral creatures that meander through here.
Last year I put out a bunch of houses in the hopes that I'd get something to nest in them. Didn't happen but the houses are still out there and maybe some little new mom and dad bird will need a new house and find one. Also put out a bunch of hangers that have wool and stuff in them that supposedly the birds will take to make their nests. Can't do much else unless I go build the nest for them and stuff them inside.
As I've stated before, the birdsong starts around 6 and is quite lovely. Don't know who sings what as usually I can't see which bird has its mouth open when I can hear songs. It won't be quite so lovely come June when the birds start singing around 4:30 but right now I enjoy it. Anyway, having Tits in the garden is great (Ha ha, ha ha) Love it and those cute little birds.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Loving the Deliveries
Ever since the prairie days in the U.S.A. and the Wells Fargo stagecoach came rolling across the plains once a month or so, it has been exciting and a big joy to get packages delivered to your door. Well of course, I'm not that old that I actually experienced the Wells Fargo wagon but I did love the song in "The Music Man" and the image that it provoked. Now it is just as much fun to get packages delivered even if it is the Royal Mail, Fed Ex, UPS, DPD, or someone in a station wagon or car. And even when you know what it is, it is still just a bit exciting and fun to open a package and see your new possession nestled snug in it's miles of wadded up brown paper or rolls of puffed up air wrap.
I have taken to getting things delivered like duck to water. You can get almost anything delivered to your door and don't always have to be home either to get it. Most stores will provide a delivery of some sort and their on line shopping is almost as good and sometimes maybe even a little better than wandering the aisles and trying to find your items. Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, Graze, Hello Fresh, laundry service, B&Q, Longacres, John Lewis, Just Eat, gourmet food delivery, diet craze, fish mongers, dairy products, American Food Stores, newspapers (natch) and the list goes on and on with the different business that will come to your door and bring your heart's desire. I have embraced it so wholeheartedly that there could be weeks pass before I need to step foot into a mall.
However, I try not to let that happen because I do still enjoy a good mall and a good stroll around the High Street. The problem with the home delivery is that it's really too easy to sit at your computer and check off things to have brought to the house. I can easily hit over 100 pounds with Tesco in just a few minutes. So I try to limit my on line shopping to stuff that's harder for me to carry by myself, like stocking up on water (did this when all the flooding started here just in case) or cat litter, or diet drinks. That kind of thing.
But it is hard to resist. Amazon has their "subscribe and save" service where you can sign up to get certain things delivered every month or other month, etc. I have done this with several items we use on a regular basis. I can get our cat food and diet sodas there at a cheaper price than buying them at the store. But yesterday I might have gone over the tilt meter just a tad. My deliveries arrived almost at once. They had to be passing each other in the driveway. Amazon came with all my drinks and cat food (once a month), then some things I had ordered for Valentine's day, then some wonderful must have items from ebay and then etsy, and finally my Hello Fresh box (provides 3 meals, recipes, and ingredients to cook. rather clever and fun to try new things). And Wednesday is my fish monger day as well. My front door should have been on automatic open yesterday. I can see me getting older and older and never stepping a foot outside the door as the world is brought to me. The potential is there. I just love the deliveries.
I have taken to getting things delivered like duck to water. You can get almost anything delivered to your door and don't always have to be home either to get it. Most stores will provide a delivery of some sort and their on line shopping is almost as good and sometimes maybe even a little better than wandering the aisles and trying to find your items. Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, Graze, Hello Fresh, laundry service, B&Q, Longacres, John Lewis, Just Eat, gourmet food delivery, diet craze, fish mongers, dairy products, American Food Stores, newspapers (natch) and the list goes on and on with the different business that will come to your door and bring your heart's desire. I have embraced it so wholeheartedly that there could be weeks pass before I need to step foot into a mall.
However, I try not to let that happen because I do still enjoy a good mall and a good stroll around the High Street. The problem with the home delivery is that it's really too easy to sit at your computer and check off things to have brought to the house. I can easily hit over 100 pounds with Tesco in just a few minutes. So I try to limit my on line shopping to stuff that's harder for me to carry by myself, like stocking up on water (did this when all the flooding started here just in case) or cat litter, or diet drinks. That kind of thing.
But it is hard to resist. Amazon has their "subscribe and save" service where you can sign up to get certain things delivered every month or other month, etc. I have done this with several items we use on a regular basis. I can get our cat food and diet sodas there at a cheaper price than buying them at the store. But yesterday I might have gone over the tilt meter just a tad. My deliveries arrived almost at once. They had to be passing each other in the driveway. Amazon came with all my drinks and cat food (once a month), then some things I had ordered for Valentine's day, then some wonderful must have items from ebay and then etsy, and finally my Hello Fresh box (provides 3 meals, recipes, and ingredients to cook. rather clever and fun to try new things). And Wednesday is my fish monger day as well. My front door should have been on automatic open yesterday. I can see me getting older and older and never stepping a foot outside the door as the world is brought to me. The potential is there. I just love the deliveries.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Mushy Garden
We have been quite fortunate this winter not to be in one of the flooded areas in the south of England. We almost were as we had looked at several properties in areas that have had problems with flooding but - knock on wood - so far, our rental house has been fine through all the rain. Not that we haven't had some problems as the conservatory has been pumped up as it was breaking away from the house. But so far, we're good. No flooding.
That said, our back garden is mush. Walking across it yesterday to retrieve some of the fallen branches and debris from the wind, it was like walking through a plate of mushy peas - I imagine. Squish, squash, mush, splat, splash. Our back garden has always been a lot more moss than grass but it is green so who really cares. But now, it is pretty much turned into a swamp. If the weather were warmer, I'd be looking for mangrove stumps or cypress knees or lotus blossoms in the middle of the yard. I am still feeding the birds and squirrels and neighborhood feral cats and foxes and badgers so do need to squish across the garden periodically to fill the freeloaders bowls. The mush pulls at my shoes and spits water up at me as I gingerly traipse to the feeders. Rather unique feeling.
We have a lovely back garden that overlooks the golf course where we can see that the sand traps have turned into small lakes. Yet still the golfers come almost every day. And our garden was built up to equal the level of the house and to hold a deck rather than slope down to the golf course. Underneath the deck, we can see the whole garden buildup straining against the brick wall that has already been braced against the pressure. My hubby thinks that the broken gap between the dirt and the bricks has grown and the pressure has increased. We are rather intimidated by it and a bit afraid to measure the gap in case we are right and it is increasing. While I think we are OK and won't flood, I think it is now a race. We need enough dry days for the garden to dry and quit being mush. If that doesn't happen and we get more rain, I fear the brick wall might finally succumb to the pressure and the whole garden might slide down the slope to the golf course. Gone will be the deck, gone will be my workshop under the deck. Mush, mush, mush. Still, not as bad as the Somerset Levels (had to ask my gardener what they were) but never had such a mushy yard.
That said, our back garden is mush. Walking across it yesterday to retrieve some of the fallen branches and debris from the wind, it was like walking through a plate of mushy peas - I imagine. Squish, squash, mush, splat, splash. Our back garden has always been a lot more moss than grass but it is green so who really cares. But now, it is pretty much turned into a swamp. If the weather were warmer, I'd be looking for mangrove stumps or cypress knees or lotus blossoms in the middle of the yard. I am still feeding the birds and squirrels and neighborhood feral cats and foxes and badgers so do need to squish across the garden periodically to fill the freeloaders bowls. The mush pulls at my shoes and spits water up at me as I gingerly traipse to the feeders. Rather unique feeling.
We have a lovely back garden that overlooks the golf course where we can see that the sand traps have turned into small lakes. Yet still the golfers come almost every day. And our garden was built up to equal the level of the house and to hold a deck rather than slope down to the golf course. Underneath the deck, we can see the whole garden buildup straining against the brick wall that has already been braced against the pressure. My hubby thinks that the broken gap between the dirt and the bricks has grown and the pressure has increased. We are rather intimidated by it and a bit afraid to measure the gap in case we are right and it is increasing. While I think we are OK and won't flood, I think it is now a race. We need enough dry days for the garden to dry and quit being mush. If that doesn't happen and we get more rain, I fear the brick wall might finally succumb to the pressure and the whole garden might slide down the slope to the golf course. Gone will be the deck, gone will be my workshop under the deck. Mush, mush, mush. Still, not as bad as the Somerset Levels (had to ask my gardener what they were) but never had such a mushy yard.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Beer Book #2
Last year we started taking the labels off the different beers my husband drinks and putting them into a book. Very sorry that I didn't think to date it at the start but we probably began somewhere around March or April or maybe later. There are so many different beers here (England) that I'm really sorry we didn't think to start when we first moved here or we'd be into book 3 by now or maybe even book 4.
Anyway, we have started book #2 now. There are 198 labels in book #1 and would have been 200 labels except when I started I put a couple of "front and back" labels for the same beer on separate pages, hence 198, not 200.
Each beer is one that my husband has drank. It doesn't count if he doesn't drink it and so friends cannot send us labels. We have some from our holidays too in a couple of different countries but they are so much harder to get as I can't always haul the bottle away from the restaurant to soak off the label. Still I managed it in the Faroe Islands and in Santorini. What fun. I am probably enjoying it more than my husband but at least he is the one who gets to drink all the beer. And sometimes they have been less than stellar examples of the fine art of brewing. But he downs them all with grace and humor and a wonderful husband's need to keep his wife happy with her little enterprise. LOL.
So on with Beer Book #2. We will keep it up wherever we go now. Wow, can you imagine how many labels and books we would have now had we started saving them 40 years ago???? We'd have all kinds of home brews and micro brews and probably a bunch of defunct beers as well in our books. Everyone must have a hobby and this is one of ours. He drinks the beer, I soak off the labels and past them in the book. Partnership in a marriage is a wonderful thing.
Anyway, we have started book #2 now. There are 198 labels in book #1 and would have been 200 labels except when I started I put a couple of "front and back" labels for the same beer on separate pages, hence 198, not 200.
Each beer is one that my husband has drank. It doesn't count if he doesn't drink it and so friends cannot send us labels. We have some from our holidays too in a couple of different countries but they are so much harder to get as I can't always haul the bottle away from the restaurant to soak off the label. Still I managed it in the Faroe Islands and in Santorini. What fun. I am probably enjoying it more than my husband but at least he is the one who gets to drink all the beer. And sometimes they have been less than stellar examples of the fine art of brewing. But he downs them all with grace and humor and a wonderful husband's need to keep his wife happy with her little enterprise. LOL.
So on with Beer Book #2. We will keep it up wherever we go now. Wow, can you imagine how many labels and books we would have now had we started saving them 40 years ago???? We'd have all kinds of home brews and micro brews and probably a bunch of defunct beers as well in our books. Everyone must have a hobby and this is one of ours. He drinks the beer, I soak off the labels and past them in the book. Partnership in a marriage is a wonderful thing.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Fine Dining at Costco and Tesco
It's been a great boon to have Costco open in Farnborough. So much easier to go buy things in bulk that we have no place to store in our little English kitchen but still it is so much fun to go and wander around and image that some day again we might have a freezer big enough to actually buy some meat and put it all in the freezer to use before it gets freezer burned. But not the topic of the day.
We tend to hit Costco a lot more often when my daughter is in town because you can buy certain vegetables in bags that are ready to cook. No messing around with the cleaning and tossing of the leaves and such that is not edible. We like to time it so that we hit Costco when most of the samples are out on view and ready for tasting. Yum. For awhile, we were missing it each time, just getting a single bite of something, IF we were lucky. But our last three visits, we have hit the gold mine, so to speak. There have been tables set up all over the place with something to eat at each one. Usually, we manage to hit the dessert/pudding samples first. That established a pattern in that if we liked it, we probably bought it. Usually we don't buy anything else because they come in containers too big for us. But we have managed to buy: sticky toffee pudding cake, chocolate croissants, and we almost bought last week's yummy: bakewell cherry tarts (where we both got 1/4 of a tart each to taste!). Then we go on to the other taste treats and have had things such as: noddles, lasagna, sushi, soups, fish sticks, cheese, sausage (we bought that), crisps, chips, bread, spreads and dips, salami, and several different kinds of sauces, some of which we bought.
On occasion, we have had a mouthful of something nasty. We try to be polite and head for the next trash bin before we spit it out or throw it away. Once, it was too nasty to do that and the poor lady had to see us take this thing out of our mouth (into the napkin at least) and toss it in her bin. Wow, her bin was full too. Maybe they don't get to choose what they are displaying because not many people liked her taste sample. That day, we also had to immediately head back to the dessert table and get another sample of the sticky toffee pudding cake to get the yucky taste out of our mouths.
Our last three visits, the taste treats have been my lunch. By the time we get to the checkout, I am full and have no need to go home and fix lunch. What a bargain! And a couple of times, we moved on to Tesco! More dining out.
Tesco, Meadows, store has a taste kitchen. We were first approached several months ago to stop and do a taste comparison for them. They take you to the kitchen, you park your shopping trolley outside the door (it's in the back of the store), go in and sit at a computer and they give you two samples to try. You judge them on appearance, texture, smell, and taste. Since our first time, we have been approached about 5 times to do the taste comparison. Each time we have agreed. In fact, I think you can walk up to the taste kitchen and tell them you'd like to do a taste comparison and if they are working that day, I think they will let you - although we haven't tried that yet.
Anyway, we have tried: rice and beans, cake, biscuits, creamed corn, and I forget the last one. Usually one is pretty tasty and the other is pretty yuck. Hopefully you will get the yuck first so you can eat the entire second sample and have a nice taste to leave the store. Once we got the yuck last and it was hard to get that taste out of our mouths. We opened something as soon as we got to the car to gobble it down and erase the yuck.
Anyway, it is fun to dine out at such posh establishments as Costco and Tesco. Hoping to continue our eating experiences at both places.
We tend to hit Costco a lot more often when my daughter is in town because you can buy certain vegetables in bags that are ready to cook. No messing around with the cleaning and tossing of the leaves and such that is not edible. We like to time it so that we hit Costco when most of the samples are out on view and ready for tasting. Yum. For awhile, we were missing it each time, just getting a single bite of something, IF we were lucky. But our last three visits, we have hit the gold mine, so to speak. There have been tables set up all over the place with something to eat at each one. Usually, we manage to hit the dessert/pudding samples first. That established a pattern in that if we liked it, we probably bought it. Usually we don't buy anything else because they come in containers too big for us. But we have managed to buy: sticky toffee pudding cake, chocolate croissants, and we almost bought last week's yummy: bakewell cherry tarts (where we both got 1/4 of a tart each to taste!). Then we go on to the other taste treats and have had things such as: noddles, lasagna, sushi, soups, fish sticks, cheese, sausage (we bought that), crisps, chips, bread, spreads and dips, salami, and several different kinds of sauces, some of which we bought.
On occasion, we have had a mouthful of something nasty. We try to be polite and head for the next trash bin before we spit it out or throw it away. Once, it was too nasty to do that and the poor lady had to see us take this thing out of our mouth (into the napkin at least) and toss it in her bin. Wow, her bin was full too. Maybe they don't get to choose what they are displaying because not many people liked her taste sample. That day, we also had to immediately head back to the dessert table and get another sample of the sticky toffee pudding cake to get the yucky taste out of our mouths.
Our last three visits, the taste treats have been my lunch. By the time we get to the checkout, I am full and have no need to go home and fix lunch. What a bargain! And a couple of times, we moved on to Tesco! More dining out.
Tesco, Meadows, store has a taste kitchen. We were first approached several months ago to stop and do a taste comparison for them. They take you to the kitchen, you park your shopping trolley outside the door (it's in the back of the store), go in and sit at a computer and they give you two samples to try. You judge them on appearance, texture, smell, and taste. Since our first time, we have been approached about 5 times to do the taste comparison. Each time we have agreed. In fact, I think you can walk up to the taste kitchen and tell them you'd like to do a taste comparison and if they are working that day, I think they will let you - although we haven't tried that yet.
Anyway, we have tried: rice and beans, cake, biscuits, creamed corn, and I forget the last one. Usually one is pretty tasty and the other is pretty yuck. Hopefully you will get the yuck first so you can eat the entire second sample and have a nice taste to leave the store. Once we got the yuck last and it was hard to get that taste out of our mouths. We opened something as soon as we got to the car to gobble it down and erase the yuck.
Anyway, it is fun to dine out at such posh establishments as Costco and Tesco. Hoping to continue our eating experiences at both places.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Changing Light Bulbs and Moving Furniture
Our rental house has a "big room" which is the garage that was made into a living room. It's a wonderful room and where we spend a good deal of time. It has a very high ceiling and around the room are lights at what would be a "roof" level were it still a garage. These lights are controlled by 3 separate switches, 3 on a switch. We rarely have them all on at once because I think we could suntan if they were all running. Changing the light bulbs in any of them is a chore, adventure, hard task, difficult, etc. and you get the picture. So unless more than one is out in a set of three, we just ignore it. Very chagrined last week that all three lights in our favorite set had burned out. Dang. That really meant that we were going to have to change some light bulbs.
We got our ladder and standing on the top rung, we can just about reach the light to take off the cover and then reach in and take off the glass cover over the bulb and then pull out the bulb. This is all by feel. As this particular light series has a switch on either side of the room, we couldn't tell if it was on or off. We thought off. Blast but we were wrong after I got a second small shock. So hubby fixed that problem by just flipping the breaker.
We fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and there was just no way we could get the blasted new bulb into this light socket. Totally by feel and stretched to the limit wasn't working. It is way too complicated, albeit a lovely fixture and quite stunning a decor, but way too complicated to continue to try and fit in the light bulb by feel only plus we had to do three of them. So the ladder is out. If we stand on the buffet which was a bit taller than the fourth ladder rung, it might be enough to see and reach. So we dragged the buffet over to under the first light and I climbed up on top of the buffet. It put me a bit closer but not enough to see over the edge and into the light socket.
Next step of course is putting a footstool on top of the buffet and climbing onto the footstool. YEA! Tall enough now and I can see into the light socket. Fiddle and fiddle and a few more fiddles and I get the light bulb into the socket and we check it by flipping the breaker again and turning on the switch. Yes, it works. Two more to go.
Now we have to move the sofa and the two end tables so we can move the buffet to the next light. Back up onto the sofa, step onto the buffet, step onto the foot stool and yes, I can reach this one too and it doesn't take very long to change the light bulb on this one. For the last one, we have to move the recliner and some baskets, move the buffet over a bit further, step back up onto the sofa, onto the buffet and onto the foot stool and viola! Light bulb changing is a snap once you can reach it and see it.
Took us 45 minutes of messing around with the ladder and trying to reach and do it all by feel and didn't change a single bulb. Took us 20 minutes of moving furniture to change all three of them. Did not rearrange the furniture but then put it all back the way it was as it was in the best arrangement for our lighting situation. We did find several missing cat toys under the various furniture pieces. Ahh, always a good weekend when hard to do chores are finished and completed.
We got our ladder and standing on the top rung, we can just about reach the light to take off the cover and then reach in and take off the glass cover over the bulb and then pull out the bulb. This is all by feel. As this particular light series has a switch on either side of the room, we couldn't tell if it was on or off. We thought off. Blast but we were wrong after I got a second small shock. So hubby fixed that problem by just flipping the breaker.
We fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and there was just no way we could get the blasted new bulb into this light socket. Totally by feel and stretched to the limit wasn't working. It is way too complicated, albeit a lovely fixture and quite stunning a decor, but way too complicated to continue to try and fit in the light bulb by feel only plus we had to do three of them. So the ladder is out. If we stand on the buffet which was a bit taller than the fourth ladder rung, it might be enough to see and reach. So we dragged the buffet over to under the first light and I climbed up on top of the buffet. It put me a bit closer but not enough to see over the edge and into the light socket.
Next step of course is putting a footstool on top of the buffet and climbing onto the footstool. YEA! Tall enough now and I can see into the light socket. Fiddle and fiddle and a few more fiddles and I get the light bulb into the socket and we check it by flipping the breaker again and turning on the switch. Yes, it works. Two more to go.
Now we have to move the sofa and the two end tables so we can move the buffet to the next light. Back up onto the sofa, step onto the buffet, step onto the foot stool and yes, I can reach this one too and it doesn't take very long to change the light bulb on this one. For the last one, we have to move the recliner and some baskets, move the buffet over a bit further, step back up onto the sofa, onto the buffet and onto the foot stool and viola! Light bulb changing is a snap once you can reach it and see it.
Took us 45 minutes of messing around with the ladder and trying to reach and do it all by feel and didn't change a single bulb. Took us 20 minutes of moving furniture to change all three of them. Did not rearrange the furniture but then put it all back the way it was as it was in the best arrangement for our lighting situation. We did find several missing cat toys under the various furniture pieces. Ahh, always a good weekend when hard to do chores are finished and completed.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Possession of the Bench
We actually belong to a gym and even use it several times a week. And for anyone who know us, who would have ever thought that would happen? That aside, we pack up our gear in a gym bag and haul off to the gym in Farnborough. The point was to find somewhere close to where my husband works so that he could come over at lunch time and workout. It has been working beautifully for us. And even though he is gone this week on a business trip, my daughter and I have gone to the gym (her more than me) and performed our homage to the various machines.
I always finish before her so I trudged down the stairs to the ladies locker room. Some days it is quite hard to find a locker because this particular establishment rewards their employees with free locker space so only about 1/2 of the lockers are available for the general paying members - ever. And on a day when there are classes, it is really a grind to find an open locker. OK, off my soapbox about the lack of locker space and onto my soapbox about the ladies who locker!
As I round the corner, there is a women who has a locker about 5 over from me and she is in the process of taking everything out of her locker and putting it on the bench. In the locker room sections (two sections), there are three benches in front of the rows of lockers. obviously if a lot of people are there, the benches are not enough for everyone but she and I were the only two people in the room at the time. She took out her coat, her backpack, her purse, her towel, her bathroom bag of goodies and another backpack and proceeded to strew them across the entire bench except for a small space at my end of about 5" in width, not quite wide enough to put my gym bag on it without it hanging over the edge. She had just come into the locker room after doing a spinning class because she was shouting to another lady in the other section of the locker room about it. She still has to take a shower so why is her coat and backpack already out of her locker and taking up space on the bench?????
I took out my gym bag to change and get my towel and shower bag of goodies. Obviously she can see me, obviously she can see that I have very little room at the end of the bench but she moves nothing. All her stuff stays spread across the bench. I quickly get ready for a shower and move to that area, putting my gym back and such back in my locker because I'm not going to leave it out when I can't see it. I figure when I come back from my shower, I'll have a bit more room because I'll get back before she is done with her shower.
Boy was I wrong. I come back from the shower and her stuff is still all over the bench. Coat, purse, two backpacks, and other loose items. She just went to the shower and left it all on the bench, even her purse. OMG. Why? I don't get it. One, I'd never leave my purse out in the open no matter where I am because what if some nice looking granny type lady is actually a thief? OR what if I was a thief?? I could have easily gotten into her purse and taken anything by the time she came back from the shower. And two, it's just so rude to take up almost the whole bench when it's obvious that other people are there and need space also.
As I walked back to the bench, there was another women pulling things out of her locker and very carefully putting them on the end of the bench so now I have no room. OK, I pulled out my gym bag and just put it on the floor. I am adaptable. The second woman was kind enough to move her things to the middle bench which was close to her but inconvenient for me to have moved. I thanked her and by now the first lady was back and getting into her stuff and ignoring both of us as if we are invisible. She must have been deaf too in spite of her talking over the lockers earlier. She totally missed my thank you to the second woman for moving her stuff.
I quickly moved my makeup bag onto the shelf in front of the mirror. If she is going to be a bench hog, then I am going to grab the closest makeup mirror and stand in front of it. She had to go to a different mirror and I am honestly surprised that she didn't say something to me about it because I got a very, very, ugly look from her.
I had finished getting dressed, makeup on face, damp towels and dirty clothes packed away in my gym bag and heading for the door. My daughter came into the locker room. She informed me that she was almost dressed and ready to come out as well before that lady finished up and packed up her stuff and relinquished the bench. AND the entire time, she was also putting stuff in and out of her locker Wow.
So how does someone bring so much stuff to a gym that they need a locker and a bench to handle it all? Does no one think about how you can put your purse and coat into the locker first and they will be out of the way so you don't need to move them until you are ready to leave? Do the people at this gym feel that they pay more than anyone else so the locker and the benches are there for their own personal use? Are these Brits so rude that they just never learned to share anything in a public place? I am hoping it is not the last because I have met many Brits who will give up their seats to me or help me carry things up and down stairs or to the car, who give me directions when I am lost and so forth and so on. Is it just this particular club that has women who won't share benches? I am not sure of the answer but she is not the only one there that does this. Maybe they got something written into their contract that says they don't have to share benches and can hog the locker space and the mirror space and the benches. I'll never know but should you run into me at a club, I will share the space with you. You won't have to ask me at all, I'll make room for you. That's the kind of person I am, I share and I help others.
I always finish before her so I trudged down the stairs to the ladies locker room. Some days it is quite hard to find a locker because this particular establishment rewards their employees with free locker space so only about 1/2 of the lockers are available for the general paying members - ever. And on a day when there are classes, it is really a grind to find an open locker. OK, off my soapbox about the lack of locker space and onto my soapbox about the ladies who locker!
As I round the corner, there is a women who has a locker about 5 over from me and she is in the process of taking everything out of her locker and putting it on the bench. In the locker room sections (two sections), there are three benches in front of the rows of lockers. obviously if a lot of people are there, the benches are not enough for everyone but she and I were the only two people in the room at the time. She took out her coat, her backpack, her purse, her towel, her bathroom bag of goodies and another backpack and proceeded to strew them across the entire bench except for a small space at my end of about 5" in width, not quite wide enough to put my gym bag on it without it hanging over the edge. She had just come into the locker room after doing a spinning class because she was shouting to another lady in the other section of the locker room about it. She still has to take a shower so why is her coat and backpack already out of her locker and taking up space on the bench?????
I took out my gym bag to change and get my towel and shower bag of goodies. Obviously she can see me, obviously she can see that I have very little room at the end of the bench but she moves nothing. All her stuff stays spread across the bench. I quickly get ready for a shower and move to that area, putting my gym back and such back in my locker because I'm not going to leave it out when I can't see it. I figure when I come back from my shower, I'll have a bit more room because I'll get back before she is done with her shower.
Boy was I wrong. I come back from the shower and her stuff is still all over the bench. Coat, purse, two backpacks, and other loose items. She just went to the shower and left it all on the bench, even her purse. OMG. Why? I don't get it. One, I'd never leave my purse out in the open no matter where I am because what if some nice looking granny type lady is actually a thief? OR what if I was a thief?? I could have easily gotten into her purse and taken anything by the time she came back from the shower. And two, it's just so rude to take up almost the whole bench when it's obvious that other people are there and need space also.
As I walked back to the bench, there was another women pulling things out of her locker and very carefully putting them on the end of the bench so now I have no room. OK, I pulled out my gym bag and just put it on the floor. I am adaptable. The second woman was kind enough to move her things to the middle bench which was close to her but inconvenient for me to have moved. I thanked her and by now the first lady was back and getting into her stuff and ignoring both of us as if we are invisible. She must have been deaf too in spite of her talking over the lockers earlier. She totally missed my thank you to the second woman for moving her stuff.
I quickly moved my makeup bag onto the shelf in front of the mirror. If she is going to be a bench hog, then I am going to grab the closest makeup mirror and stand in front of it. She had to go to a different mirror and I am honestly surprised that she didn't say something to me about it because I got a very, very, ugly look from her.
I had finished getting dressed, makeup on face, damp towels and dirty clothes packed away in my gym bag and heading for the door. My daughter came into the locker room. She informed me that she was almost dressed and ready to come out as well before that lady finished up and packed up her stuff and relinquished the bench. AND the entire time, she was also putting stuff in and out of her locker Wow.
So how does someone bring so much stuff to a gym that they need a locker and a bench to handle it all? Does no one think about how you can put your purse and coat into the locker first and they will be out of the way so you don't need to move them until you are ready to leave? Do the people at this gym feel that they pay more than anyone else so the locker and the benches are there for their own personal use? Are these Brits so rude that they just never learned to share anything in a public place? I am hoping it is not the last because I have met many Brits who will give up their seats to me or help me carry things up and down stairs or to the car, who give me directions when I am lost and so forth and so on. Is it just this particular club that has women who won't share benches? I am not sure of the answer but she is not the only one there that does this. Maybe they got something written into their contract that says they don't have to share benches and can hog the locker space and the mirror space and the benches. I'll never know but should you run into me at a club, I will share the space with you. You won't have to ask me at all, I'll make room for you. That's the kind of person I am, I share and I help others.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
One of the "I" Countries & Maintaining Reputations
Am quite ashamed to admit that I forgot where my husband was this week! That has never happened before. In my defense, he's been taking more than the usual amount of business trips and so far, never at a time when I could tag along - worse luck for me. Most of his trips have been to Italy and while I have been there many times, I love going there so I've been quite peeved that he happened to "mention" going on this next trip after I already had committed to various things. Ah well, next time.
So last week he was in Italy. My husband is quite the pizza connoisseur. Thus, we have pizza in every single country we have ever visited. Sometimes this has been to our delight and sometimes this has been to our dismay. But we must maintain his reputation for trying pizzas everywhere, no matter how far from Italy or how far from any kind of mainstream food sources. And he always calls me on his business trips when I am not along for the ride so he called me on Tuesday night and one of the first things he said was "I'm maintaining my reputation". I knew right away that he was referring to the pizza reputation but I responded with "You've already had pizza in Italy so you didn't have to do it again!". OMG. He's not in Italy this week. He's in India!! I knew this, I really, really did but we've been so busy trying to have our belated Christmas and then getting him back from Italy last Thursday and ready to go to India on Monday that it just slipped out of my mouth. Boy, was he amused.
We have been in India before and tried the pizza there so he actually didn't need to have pizza again but we do love it and that's one reason we always try it. So he didn't mind trying it again.
Anyway, his pizza reputation is intact, my geography reputation - if I ever had one - is shattered. And I must remember to keep my "I" countries in order and which week goes with which "I" country.
So last week he was in Italy. My husband is quite the pizza connoisseur. Thus, we have pizza in every single country we have ever visited. Sometimes this has been to our delight and sometimes this has been to our dismay. But we must maintain his reputation for trying pizzas everywhere, no matter how far from Italy or how far from any kind of mainstream food sources. And he always calls me on his business trips when I am not along for the ride so he called me on Tuesday night and one of the first things he said was "I'm maintaining my reputation". I knew right away that he was referring to the pizza reputation but I responded with "You've already had pizza in Italy so you didn't have to do it again!". OMG. He's not in Italy this week. He's in India!! I knew this, I really, really did but we've been so busy trying to have our belated Christmas and then getting him back from Italy last Thursday and ready to go to India on Monday that it just slipped out of my mouth. Boy, was he amused.
We have been in India before and tried the pizza there so he actually didn't need to have pizza again but we do love it and that's one reason we always try it. So he didn't mind trying it again.
Anyway, his pizza reputation is intact, my geography reputation - if I ever had one - is shattered. And I must remember to keep my "I" countries in order and which week goes with which "I" country.
3 Day Anti-Climatic Christmas
We held off on having our Christmas holiday and gift giving this year as we waited for our daughter to be able to come and join us. As she works in Africa on a rotational basis, she was due to come to see us on Jan 15 so our plans were to have Christmas the weekend of the 18Th and 19Th, not quite a month after the real deal. Presents were all bought and ready, but we were going to wait to decorate until that weekend.
Part of this reasoning was due to her cat. Yes, how silly to plan things around a cat but her cat and our two cats are all family members too and it is fun to watch their reactions to different things. Her cat has never had a Christmas tree. As he is incredibly smart and curious and oddly clumsy, we figured he'd just go nuts over the Christmas tree and fully expected him to climb into it and bat things off of it and just generally do mayhem, which we planned to control by keeping doors closed if necessary and watching carefully - with the camera of course.
So our daughter arrives on time. As luck would have it, my husband was out of town on a business trip and got back late on Thursday night so we had planned to put up the tree on Thursday but couldn't. Friday night, everyone was just too tired by the time the usual shopping had been done and hubby home for work and all. Finally Saturday, we managed to pull everything out of the attic/loft and get the tree put up in the living room.
All the cats were milling around it didn't take long for our two cats to go "oh yea, we remember this - not much going on that is for us" and they promptly went somewhere warm and went to sleep. My daughter's cat was interested in the proceedings. He wandered underneath the tree a couple of times, stretched up into it once and then sat down beside it to watch and see what was happening. As we expected a great deal of interest, we took care to only pull out the ornaments that were not breakable and the few breakable ones we got out, we put closer to the top of the tree to protect them.
The entire time we are decorating, her cat is just sitting and watching. With so little reaction, we even finally put a few breakable glass ornaments on the bottom and nada, nothing. Then we pulled out the tinsel garland. Surely he will take interest in this because he loves tinsel and loves to eat it! But as we are winding it around the tree, he is not even watching now, preferring to look out in the garden as there are squirrels out there.
The tree is decorated and the lights are on and the cats are totally ignoring the entire thing. How anti-climatic! We had expected a much bigger response, a much bigger interest, a lot more laughs and yelling and shouting and such but he was just not interested. Presents go under the tree and the most he does is walk around them and take a sniff here and there. Wow, did we ever call this one wrong.
Too late for actual opening of presents so we waited until around noon the next day to open our presents. All cats were present and the best thing, they thought, were a few empty boxes. Again, no interest in the tree or the ornaments or the tinsel. But it was a very nice Christmas for us, present wise and companion wise and we had a good time.
Next day, Monday, my husband is off on another business trip so I take all the ornaments off the tree and pack away everything for next year. no cats even bother to come watch this dismantling of our 3 day Christmas. No batting of the ornaments, no climbing the tree, no fighting the tinsel, no eating the papers, nothing. My daughter's cat is very smart and clever though. Could he be waiting for next year because the others told him it usually lasts much longer and he can do a lot more damage then? who knows.
Part of this reasoning was due to her cat. Yes, how silly to plan things around a cat but her cat and our two cats are all family members too and it is fun to watch their reactions to different things. Her cat has never had a Christmas tree. As he is incredibly smart and curious and oddly clumsy, we figured he'd just go nuts over the Christmas tree and fully expected him to climb into it and bat things off of it and just generally do mayhem, which we planned to control by keeping doors closed if necessary and watching carefully - with the camera of course.
So our daughter arrives on time. As luck would have it, my husband was out of town on a business trip and got back late on Thursday night so we had planned to put up the tree on Thursday but couldn't. Friday night, everyone was just too tired by the time the usual shopping had been done and hubby home for work and all. Finally Saturday, we managed to pull everything out of the attic/loft and get the tree put up in the living room.
All the cats were milling around it didn't take long for our two cats to go "oh yea, we remember this - not much going on that is for us" and they promptly went somewhere warm and went to sleep. My daughter's cat was interested in the proceedings. He wandered underneath the tree a couple of times, stretched up into it once and then sat down beside it to watch and see what was happening. As we expected a great deal of interest, we took care to only pull out the ornaments that were not breakable and the few breakable ones we got out, we put closer to the top of the tree to protect them.
The entire time we are decorating, her cat is just sitting and watching. With so little reaction, we even finally put a few breakable glass ornaments on the bottom and nada, nothing. Then we pulled out the tinsel garland. Surely he will take interest in this because he loves tinsel and loves to eat it! But as we are winding it around the tree, he is not even watching now, preferring to look out in the garden as there are squirrels out there.
The tree is decorated and the lights are on and the cats are totally ignoring the entire thing. How anti-climatic! We had expected a much bigger response, a much bigger interest, a lot more laughs and yelling and shouting and such but he was just not interested. Presents go under the tree and the most he does is walk around them and take a sniff here and there. Wow, did we ever call this one wrong.
Too late for actual opening of presents so we waited until around noon the next day to open our presents. All cats were present and the best thing, they thought, were a few empty boxes. Again, no interest in the tree or the ornaments or the tinsel. But it was a very nice Christmas for us, present wise and companion wise and we had a good time.
Next day, Monday, my husband is off on another business trip so I take all the ornaments off the tree and pack away everything for next year. no cats even bother to come watch this dismantling of our 3 day Christmas. No batting of the ornaments, no climbing the tree, no fighting the tinsel, no eating the papers, nothing. My daughter's cat is very smart and clever though. Could he be waiting for next year because the others told him it usually lasts much longer and he can do a lot more damage then? who knows.
Monday, January 20, 2014
The Agony of Being Mangosteen-less
We lived in Singapore way back in the mid-90's. At that time, we were bold and adventurous (and I believe we still are in MOST categories) so we tried most every type of food that came our way. My hubby and I both learned to love a lot of the "exotic" fruits of Southeast Asia which includes but is not limited to: lychees, rambutans, star fruit, dragon fruit, mangosteens, passion fruit and others. And in the true spirit of adventure and culture immersion, we tried everything, including jackfruit and durian. Didn't really like jackfruit much but durian - OMG. For those in the know, durian smells like the back end of a weeks old dead dog thrown into a never-cleaned overflowing outhouse. It is so bad that it is banned from subways and buses in Singapore. Walk into any market and you can tell if they stock durian or not. Yep, that bad and yet we still gave it a go because oddly enough, it is loved by many in Southeast Asia and they swear by it's sweet taste. We tried the durian ice cream and the durian creme puffs (on different days as it took awhile to work up our courage again). Held our noses, held our breath and nope, nothing worked to kill the stench that flows into the back of the mouth and made us gag so durian is definitely a thing we will never eat again, probably.
However, we did like and love a good many of the other fruits. My absolute favorite is the mangosteen which is a small ball of hard purple (and it is also banned in some hotels because it will stain their towels). You push on it until it breaks open and inside is some lovely, tasty white flesh - sometimes with some seeds and sometimes not. I learned that I can easily eat a dozen of these things at a single setting. Love, love, love mangosteens. So it was with great disappointment that I learned it is incredibly hard to find mangosteens in most countries outside of Asia. I guess that it does not travel well.
Fast forward past several years without mangosteens then our first year here, my first visit to Borough Market and I discovered one fruit and vegetable stall that had mangosteens in stock. OMG again! Hallelujah! Yippee! I cleaned them out of their entire stock that first day. Oops, OMG a third time. Yikes. the price is somewhat way, way, way, way higher than anywhere when you can buy them closer to the source. OUCH. I think I paid 3 or 4 pounds each! But I love them so much that I didn't care. And very sad to say, I didn't share either. By the time my husband got home that day, the mangosteens were just a happy tummy memory.
Luckily I don't live in London and don't get to go to Borough Market that often or our grocery budget would be way out of hand, but every time I do, I have found the mangosteens again and bought all I could carry or all I had money to get. Then one day I discovered that you could also get mangosteens at some of the markets in Chinatown, close to Leicester Square. Much cheaper but also much less in quality. Sometimes a mangosteen is sold past it's prime and the white flesh inside is brown and yucky and almost every mangosteen I bought in Chinatown was either in this condition or very close to it. So no longer do I consider Chinatown to be a place to find good mangosteens - back to Borough Market whenever I can.
Last Thursday, my daughter and I headed to London as she still had a few Christmas presents to buy (yes, we just had Christmas as she didn't get here until this week) and I headed to Borough Market to my fruit and veggie stall to get my fix of mangosteens. I walked through, walked through again, went through a bit faster looking desperately all around me and then went very slowly through checking bin by bin and no mangosteens!!! Surely I've just missed them and they have moved them somewhere else. There was the dragon fruit, the star fruit, the lychees, and other good exotic fruit but I was not seeing my purple passion! I went up to the clerk and asked and he informed me that they had sold out of mangosteens the day before. Oh No. I had based my entire trip and my day on getting to Borough and getting those little purple balls of glory. Someone else has decided to hoard mangosteens. Some evil person got there before me and stole my wonderful fruit. Some nasty, evil, devious, evil and triply evil person took them all. I was bereft, crestfallen, depressed, glum, and sad. Yes, mangosteens are that good.
No plans to go into London for probably the next month or so. drat it all. I will go again though and if they are out again, I may have to try Chinatown again and if they are bad again, I may have to fly to Singapore, just for mangosteens. Some say that the durian is the king of fruit but I think it is the lowly, lovely mangosteen. And please stay away from Borough Market if you plan to try them. get some in Chinatown again, or better yet, don't get any. Leave them for me, a true enthusiast and affection-ado of the mangosteen.
However, we did like and love a good many of the other fruits. My absolute favorite is the mangosteen which is a small ball of hard purple (and it is also banned in some hotels because it will stain their towels). You push on it until it breaks open and inside is some lovely, tasty white flesh - sometimes with some seeds and sometimes not. I learned that I can easily eat a dozen of these things at a single setting. Love, love, love mangosteens. So it was with great disappointment that I learned it is incredibly hard to find mangosteens in most countries outside of Asia. I guess that it does not travel well.
Fast forward past several years without mangosteens then our first year here, my first visit to Borough Market and I discovered one fruit and vegetable stall that had mangosteens in stock. OMG again! Hallelujah! Yippee! I cleaned them out of their entire stock that first day. Oops, OMG a third time. Yikes. the price is somewhat way, way, way, way higher than anywhere when you can buy them closer to the source. OUCH. I think I paid 3 or 4 pounds each! But I love them so much that I didn't care. And very sad to say, I didn't share either. By the time my husband got home that day, the mangosteens were just a happy tummy memory.
Luckily I don't live in London and don't get to go to Borough Market that often or our grocery budget would be way out of hand, but every time I do, I have found the mangosteens again and bought all I could carry or all I had money to get. Then one day I discovered that you could also get mangosteens at some of the markets in Chinatown, close to Leicester Square. Much cheaper but also much less in quality. Sometimes a mangosteen is sold past it's prime and the white flesh inside is brown and yucky and almost every mangosteen I bought in Chinatown was either in this condition or very close to it. So no longer do I consider Chinatown to be a place to find good mangosteens - back to Borough Market whenever I can.
Last Thursday, my daughter and I headed to London as she still had a few Christmas presents to buy (yes, we just had Christmas as she didn't get here until this week) and I headed to Borough Market to my fruit and veggie stall to get my fix of mangosteens. I walked through, walked through again, went through a bit faster looking desperately all around me and then went very slowly through checking bin by bin and no mangosteens!!! Surely I've just missed them and they have moved them somewhere else. There was the dragon fruit, the star fruit, the lychees, and other good exotic fruit but I was not seeing my purple passion! I went up to the clerk and asked and he informed me that they had sold out of mangosteens the day before. Oh No. I had based my entire trip and my day on getting to Borough and getting those little purple balls of glory. Someone else has decided to hoard mangosteens. Some evil person got there before me and stole my wonderful fruit. Some nasty, evil, devious, evil and triply evil person took them all. I was bereft, crestfallen, depressed, glum, and sad. Yes, mangosteens are that good.
No plans to go into London for probably the next month or so. drat it all. I will go again though and if they are out again, I may have to try Chinatown again and if they are bad again, I may have to fly to Singapore, just for mangosteens. Some say that the durian is the king of fruit but I think it is the lowly, lovely mangosteen. And please stay away from Borough Market if you plan to try them. get some in Chinatown again, or better yet, don't get any. Leave them for me, a true enthusiast and affection-ado of the mangosteen.
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