Furry Friday

A little dose of dogs unwrapping presents

Jamie Oliver's Italian

Kinda slow and uninspired lately, the weather is really getting me down. We took a trip out to the dog store, a true American dog store, not just a British pet shop. Ended up about a 30 minute bus ride to get out there and it was so cold my toes went numb. Took the first bus that came by and it dropped us off at the mall so we decided to grab dinner there. I am sure you all know of Jamie Oliver, well he had just opened a new restaurant there so we were seduced by the celebrity of it and decided to go.

Kristen was just indifferent about it, but I absolutely loved it. Maybe not so much because of the food, but the restaurant itself. I guess I have just really missed the creature comforts of being at home. It was big, and new, and roomy and clean, not something you get often around here. And even more exciting......free water, I know, amazing!! Not sure when we will go again, but its pretty high on my list.

Also stopped by the frozen yogurt place in the mall before we came home. We had actually spent like an hour one day walking around trying to find it, so it was a eureka moment. Kristen had been craving for like a month now. Turns out that it was REAL frozen yogurt. Try it at home, kinda different. But you put enough bananas and cookies on top and its all good.

Not quite the same

Well Christmas has come and gone, and to be honest with you I am not quite sure if our first Christmas abroad was a good one or a bad one. I was nice to not have to worry about running around here and there, but would have really liked to see everyone none the less.


Things are a little different here, honestly if you didn't know you would have thought it was just an ordinary weekend or just another day. Yeah stores were closed, but other than that pretty much as usual. I mean the tube workers went on strike for higher pay, people protested, and bums, well they bummed. I guess there were less cars zooming by the house, which meant less barking from Turbo so that was nice.


I think part of the fact Christmas seems subdued here is due to the fact that nobody really owns their own house, and houses are all attached. It would be nearly impossible to hang Christmas lights. We see the occasional tree in a window or something but really not much decorating in the neighborhoods. I would imagine this is what it is like in New York or other big cities.


The stores and shopping areas put on a good show, in fact I thing they just might overdo it a little. But hell with prices like those they have to give people something to smile about. One of the big department stores was even going to have live penguins in one day, but a whole bunch of animal rights activists protested and they cancelled the show. Kristen was crushed!


Anyway, the decorations that do go up are so gaudy, everything shiny and sparkly. Saw a tree yesterday that had so much garland on it you couldn't even see the green. People say Happy Christmas instead of Merry Christmas.


We kept things traditional, or at least as best as we could. Pancakes for breakfast, then presents, then lunch and a nap. I have been wanting to make a full on turkey for awhile now so this was a perfect excuse. I took a shortcut though and just bought everything in a chip. No just kidding, these were pretty gross though, I wouldn't recommend them if they ever show up on shelves in the US. Not sure what we are going to do with 10lbs of turkey, 7.5lbs of potatoes, and loads of other stuff, I am sure we (and when I say we I mean me, Kristen doesn't do leftovers) will be eating leftovers for quite some time.


And oh who could forget Boxing Day. I actually googled it to figure out what the hell it was for, just so I could write this. I guess its kinda like our Labor day, with gifts. Oh well, Holiday on Tuesday so who is complaing. Supposed to be the biggest shopping day of the year, so we will see if we get out and brave the crowds.

Decorations on Oxford Street

My turkey masterpiece

Merry Christmas!

A very Merry Christmas from our family to yours!!

Wishing everyone back home and wherever you are, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! All of our friends and family are in our thoughts and our hearts.

Love, Bob and Kristen, and their reindeer (Turbo and Hamton)

Billy Elliot

To start off Bob's Birthday Weekend, I took him to see Billy Elliot. This may have been more of a present to myself, but I think he enjoyed the show. The kid(s) who play Billy are amazing. They are only 10 years old and the star of the show. They actually have 4 boys that play Billy and each night 2 boys warm up, then they select one to perform. It takes months of training to get them ready for the show, because the boys have to know tap and ballet.  They are always training new Billys for when the current Billys get to old.  If case you don't know Billy Elliot is about a boy from a mining town in North England who wants to be a dancer. I already have a hard time understanding some English accents, but Northern English accents are incomprehensible. In the program they even had a section to translate all the terminology.  Here are a few lines from the show "He's only just a bairn", "Plenty of lads dee ballet ye naah", and "Of course he's arl reet you daft fanny". Luckily there was dancing and singing so could follow along. Lots of cussing for a show with so many children in it. There was little boy that kept calling people "a wanker".  Loved the show, now I want to see the movie.

 

Furry Friday

Because Bob and I are a little obsessed with our dogs, I decided to include some pics of them on Fridays. I took these pictures of Hampton a few weeks ago. She was outside and I was inside. She looked so cute staring at me so I just had to take a picture.

Therapy

Started off vacation the best way I knew how.....some two wheeled therapy and it hit the spot. Even though it was only 36, and not forecast to get any warmer I bundled up and headed out to Richmond Park. Didn't feel too cold, although the mid 20s wind chill made things brisk to say the least. It was just cold enough to give you a constant brain freeze type of feeling but not cold enough to make anything numb. Anyway I was really surprised how much snow was still on the ground. In the city it is all gone now, and you wouldn't even have known there was a storm this week. As soon as I got to open ground there was snow everywhere. I could definitely see why the country is more or less shut down. In fact there was a guy in a BMW Z4 who had gotten stuck on the little incline out of one of the parking lots. I laughed and rode straight past. Seemed the deer didn't mind the cold but there was probably only about a dozen other runners/riders out when my other trips they would have been out in the literally hundreds.

These guys were trying some kite skiing contraption. Seemed like alot of work without the payoff, but then again I was riding a bike around in circles, so who am I to talk.

Deer didn't have a care in the world, this guy was literally not more than 20 feet from me, and barely gave me a look. His big horned friend just out of the picture did however seem to care, so I moved on.

I saw this sweet van parked off on its own. Looks pretty mean!! Hopefully something that will be coming to the States soon, I wanna get one when we get back.

Vacation!!

Vacation is here!! No work till the 5th. I am going to celebrate the only way I know how. Get drunk and watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. So put on your personalized Blackhawks jersey or your favorite dickey. Empty your chemical toilet into my sewer, and get yourself something........real nice. We're gonna have the hap hap happiest christmas since Bing Crosby tapdanced with Danny fucking Kaye. Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?

I invite you all to join in on the tradition.



Stay tuned for the many Christmas adventures to come.....

Museums

At dinner a few weeks ago our waiter suggested we visit the three museums in South Kensington. Since it has been a little chilly lately, we decided to check them out. Turns out that they are less than 2 miles from our flat, and if you want to walk you can get there by making exactly one turn from our front door. The first one we went to was the Natural History Museum. There was a line waiting to get in so we got some shots of the outside of the museum, which is just as fun to look at as the inside. Bob was distracted by pigeons eating a rice crispy treat.

Bob's new friend

 Natural History Museum

the view on the way home over the ice-rink



First thing you see when you walk in



I gotta think that the main attraction of the whole museum was the dinosaurs. You walk through the exhibit via an overhead walkway to get an up close an personal view of all of them. My favorite part, I guess it appealed to the science nerd in me, was the cocoon. This is where all of the real scientists and archaeologists do their work. Also holds something like 700,000 different specimens of plants and animals. They even let you go on a virtual research trip. I caught flies somewhere in Whales

T-Rex from the walkway



The Cocoon

The best part was "The Vault". This is where they keep the diamonds. It is part of a large exhibit about rocks and stuff, but I just ignored that part.

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Aurora Pyramid of Hope

The second one we went to was the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was open late on Friday night and we were running low of ideas and inspiration so we just decided to pop in. Turns out that the majority of the exhibits were closed but still got to see some neat stuff. In general the museum has a little of everything, and there isn't much of a theme, just old and cool.

da Vinci's notebook (pocket sized)

Chancel chapel (Cappella Maggiore) including frieze and tabernacle from Church of Santa Maria, Florence. Completely disassembled from Italy and reassembled in the museum. This is the only Italian Renaissance chapel that can be seen outside of Italy.

Finally, someone who Bob is more tan than!

Bob tripped and fell down some stairs later on so they might not want us to come back. I think he has a equilibrium problem.

We still need to go to the Science Museum to finish up the trio. Hopefully we will make it there soon.



Snow

So the rummored artic blast finally hit town this morning. Made breakfast at 9 and there was nothing on the ground. A couple hours later and it looked like we were in the alps or something. Looked like 3 inches or so in about 2 hours. These pics were taken about noon.

And the girls are big fans of playing in the snow. Hampton is a tail biter! (Kristen wasn't such a big fan though)

This was my view this afternoon while riding the trainer for almost 2 hours. Kinda peaceful, and seemed to make the time go by just a bit faster than ususual. Almost pleasurable, almost.......

Oh Tex Mex, where are you?

We went out tonight and roamed around Covent Garden trying to find dinner. There are way too many places to eat to stay close to home, or eat at the same old place, but at the same time there are way too many weird foods to try something too new. We ended up running into Los Locos, and couldn't pass the opportunity to get a little taste of home. Well, long story short we are now 0-4 on finding a good Tex-Mex restaurant. Is it too much to ask to get some free chips and salsa, and a cheese enchilada? Hell, the place didn't even have chicken. They must have missed a memo or something, there were Turkey quesadillas and Turkey fajitas, but nothing chicken. I know where I am going first thing, when we get home.

Over the Hill!!!

Well, the big 30 has has come and went. Well I guess maybe its just here, not sure how you go about counting the year that you are 30, but either way. I have to say Kristen really outdid herself this weekend. Hopefully she will be ok with planning her own birthday weekend, because I won't be able to top this.

Super tired this morning, staying up to post Saturday's adventures was a bad idea. But Kristen made her now famous pancakes for breakfast, and poured a big glass of DPZ, soon enough us was ready to go. But where?? Kristen told me that she was going to take me to see something that was older than me to make me feel not so bad about being 30. Not the most enlightening little nugget of information. At this point I had no idea what was going on, and even as we rode the tube and walked to our destination I was confused. Finally she stopped and said, 'we are here'. Now I was really confused, as we were standing outside of a grocery store. Well more percisely we were standing outside of the tour company, but at the time I didn't know that. She graciously took pity on my ignorance and filled me in on the plans for the day. STONEHENGE, Salisbury, and Bath. Would have never guessed/figured it out, not in a million years. Jumped on the coach and we were off. It was an interesting group on the tour, very multicultural. Japanese, Greek (These two ladies sucked), Spanish, Italian, and a handful of English speakers. Our bus driver was named Bob, and wore a riduculus straw cowboy had that looked like he stole from some little kid on the tour the day before. I guess Stonehenge was about an hour and a half outside of London, but didn't feel like more than 30 minutes or so.

Its amazing just how, in the middle of nowhere the Henge is. You are driving down a narrow rode in the English Countryside, and then bam, you are there. Small gift shop and a big parking lot. If you nodded off you could easily miss it altogether. There were cars pulled off the side of the roads that didn't want to pay for admittance, and a half dozen or so tour buses full of tourists like us. I am going to skip the history lesson because pretty sure everyone knows their Stonehenge facts, and really how much new information can there be about a 4000 year old monument. Really a amazing place, just kinda stood there and stared at the stones with my mouth hanging open for 30 minutes or so. Could have been there all day and not have gotten bored with it. But we only had 50 minutes, and had to get back on the bus.

Next we were off to Salisbury. At this point I still had no idea what was there except for steaks. (Sorry bad joke) Anyway, our guide William gave us the lowdown on the quick ride into town, and I have to say I was pretty excited. A quick stop at The Cloisters, a little pub that has been around in one form or another for 250 years, for lunch and then off to the cathederal. Its amazing to see so many amazing churchs in just about every town. The Salisbury Cathederal gets to claim a number of bests and biggests making it a popular attraction. Unfortunately they were having a choir concert to we didn't get to take a full tour, but got to see the highlights. The Church is still has the tallest spire in Britain, and is the tallest in the world built prior to 1400. Britian's oldest clock, built in 1386 sits in the naive, and while it looks more like parts to a tracter or something, they say it keeps pretty good time. Seems like I say this alot, but sorry no pictures of the highlight of the church. The best preserved of only four surviving original Magna Carta (written 1215), is housed in the chapter house next door to the church. It was written in latin so you couldn't really tell what it said, but of course if you really wanted to get all details the gift shop would sell a copy for £15.

From there we headed down the road again to Bath, There was lots of nice English countryside to see during the trip, and driving down the valley into town looked like something out of a movie. The name of the town, and purpose for our visit was the Roman temple to the Goddess Sulis Minerva, (Roman Baths). Originally, built around the year 65 it was amazing to see their ingenuity. Lead pipes, to move hot water between rooms, and radiant heating in the floors, hell our house barely stays warm and we have 2000 years of technology. They say that the Roman baths were flooded and buried under silt around 600.

A quick stop on the way to the bus at the Bath Abbey was witness to another impressive ancient church. We apparently snuck in the back door and were politely asked to leave only to walk outside and come straight back in through the front door.

It was a long trip back home, and we got stuck in traffic to make the trip even longer, which was sort of a drag. End of the day though it was a one in a million birthday. I gotta say that I hope she plans her own birthday becasue there is no way I will be able to top this one.