Greetings from Cambridge

Sorry for the radio silence on all fronts. We have a badly behaving router so we often lose the connection.

A few observations:

• The pound is dropping daily...a great excuse to use credit cards so you can take advantage of the better exchange rate.


• Brown and black are interchangeable. You can wear an entire black outfit with brown shoes and apparently this is acceptable. I don't pretend to understand.


• All women, old and young alike, wear fun socks and tights. I am not a freak. I simply live in the wrong country.


• Chicks here wear the BEST boots but the boots in the shops are all ugly. Quite mysterious.


• Nobody uses cell phones on the train...even though the ride is well over an hour. Now, I'm not saying that people are more polite. I've been slammed into and cut off more on this trip than in my entire life but people are incredibly polite with cell phones on trains.
  
• Bikes and buses share the same lane. Therefore, you will often see a cyclist dressed in business attire, on a fairly old bike (also common here) with a basket on the front being followed by a double-decker bus.

Alright back to my maid of honor duties...

Updates and random stuff

Really this should be titled guilt about not blogging but whatever...

On the craft front: I'm in the middle of a few projects (crochet, knit & counted cross-stitch), I need to block a finished project (knit) and hand-finish another finished project (felted knit) so I haven't had anything pretty to show you lately.

On the food front: I had lunch at Craft today and that was nice, not mind-altering, but nice. The maple bacon ice cream was good but tasted mostly vanilla, in case you were curious. In other food news I'm on a mission to eat at BLD and Nickel Diner. If anyone wants to help with this issue, I'll be available Halloween weekend.

Oh, the SCV and the SFV are on fire and I'm a smidge scared that my breathing will shut down like it always does. So this can be my official l.a.-is-on-fire-again post that I seem to do every year. Because of the winds and their unexplainable fear of the winds, my dogs are passive aggressive to each other because they both want to sleep in my bathroom and neither of them want to make room for the other. (Yes, I used two clauses starting with 'because' in one sentence. You'll be ok.) Why the bathroom is so much safer than their dog beds 10 feet away is beyond me. But, they obviously know something I don't. So there's that.

On the internets front: I just entered 2006 and joined Facebook. I'm so hip its unsettling. Though, I will say that the facebook is interesting in the personas that develop on that site. Obviously we all show different sides in different situations, like work, social, interwebs, etc... but facebook is fascinating in how the application gets people to share much more than they would, lets say, on a blog or MySpace. Speaking of facinating, did you see the CNN.com write up of The Oxford Project. If you're looking to kill a few hours, pull up a chair and start reading.

So, that's what's going on right now.

This I had to share

http://www.google.com/search2001.html

Enjoy!

Hello Interwebs!

Usually I'm happy to be a wealth of knowledge (not that you wanted it) for the four people who read my blog. But, today I am asking for your guidance.

You see, Todd & I are going to England. And, well, I've been to England. Several times. Its like this thing I used to do every year. And then there was that summer between 10th & 11th grade where I spend the summer at Oxford. And then there was that time I went with my Dad for Christmas. So yeah. I've seen some stuff. I've done Stratford-upon-Avon and Canterbury and Bath and Stonehenge and Hadrian's Wall and all sorts of castles and manor houses. But he hasn't. Hence my issue:

I have to go on a tour. I know, its vaguely offensive. Here I am going to an English speaking country and I'm going to go on a tour. But, I have a really good reason...Its like the only way to get to Stonehenge and Bath and Salisbury without renting a car. 'cause I'm not renting a car in the UK. That's just crazy. And, its not like getting to the tour is super easy. We'll have to get from Cambridge to London to get to the tour. Which is fine. But, if we're going to that trouble to spend money on a tour, I want to ensure that we go with a good company. I don't want to be that tourist in the back of a van with the roof cut off with some random guy yelling about made up celebrity homes, er, old British sights. I mean, living in L.A. you see all sorts of tour companies so you get a little suspicious and dare I say careful about your bookings.

So, interwebs, what tour company can I trust? I found Gray Line and Viator.

Help. I don't want to be in the van with the top removed with some random dude making up stuff.

13 is indeed a lucky number

Have a nice evening sir. It might be 13 years overdue, but, to the day, here we are.

Holy Crap its October

I know, Queen of the Obvious today, eh?

A few things to announce:

1. Its October. Holy crap. Although I've laid the groundwork for Christmas gifts and crafting I'm freaking out just a little thinking about how behind I think I am. This doesn't mean I am actually behind, it just feels that way.

2. Its hot people. For the non-L.A. people, holy crap. Yesterday was the first day gramma turned on her AC all year. Now, that's hot. And not in a good way. Because the baddogs are by definition seniors and they both hate the fan blowing on them, I had to send them into grammas room last night for fear that they might melt in mine.

3. Just 17 days from now I leave for the UK. This marks a few things.

a. I haven't been outside of the US in 4 years. Considering I had been going to the UK annually from 1997 - 2004 , that's pretty huge. As someone who prides herself on traveling as much as she can, to think I've stayed in the US for the last 4 years is a wee weird. I mean, I've been to Oregon, Hawaii, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, New York, Nevada and Arizona in those four years. And that's pretty outstanding. But that's all the U.S. That's home. It'll be good to get out of here, to have to look the opposite way to ensure I don't get hit by a taxi, to take trains and be on the lookout for cheap food, not to think about the exchange rate when I need to buy something, to have people think that I have the funny accent.

b. My best friend is getting married. And this means that although she's been living in the UK since 1997, this marks her actually really not ever moving home.

c. I have a total of 24 hours on an airplane (and we're not even discussing self-imposed layovers in Minneapolis) and that means I need to figure out projects to bring. (See Christmas gifts above.) This might sound easy to non-knitters. You bring a few magazines and a few books. But, when you're going to be away from home for 10 days and you're faced with a huge amount of time in airports and airplanes, its pretty stressful.

d. Its a thousand degrees out (see above) and I have to wrap my head around packing for dreary London weather. And a wedding. And a rehearsal dinner. And I still don't love my bridesmaid's dress so I'd like to find something else that's in a jewel tone tone in a fairly sleek silhouette. But the dress I have fits and its free and I should get over it. And really, I haven't see anything I've liked any better than what I had in the closet.

Holy Crap. Its October.