All-Lemming Synchronized Swimming Team

Well, it's nearly February, time to look back on all of last months New Year's resolutions and feel like a loser. I don't normally make resolutions, but this year I decided to make an exception and try a new direction. I have made New Month's Resolutions. I figure, if it takes 21 days to make/break a habit, that gives me an extra week to really make it stick. Then I move on. So far, January has been "Let the tidy person trapped inside the lazy person's body out" month. I was tested on this this week. I mistakenly believed that our twice annual house inspection from the property manager would occur on the 29th and had planned to clean accordingly as she is a cleaning Nazi and has even remarked in the past on the grass being a few inches too high (having been cut only a few days earlier). Ariel called late Tuesday to say that I had the date wrong and that they were coming the following day, first thing in the morning. The old JennyB would have run around screaming and frantic at the thought of this woman inspecting the closets and <gasp> seeing the dumping ground that we call the garage (some people have a junk drawer -- we have a junk two-car garage). Fortunately, New JennyB has taken over, and all I did was spend about 15 minutes collecting the recycling and sweeping in the garage. The next morning, after loading the dishwasher, I went to the gym, and left Ariel sick on the couch to entertain the property manager. There was no other special cleaning done in anticipation of this visit. Ariel reported that the PropMan remarked how well-taken-care-of the house was. Score!

There is no actual list of resolutions, just something running around in my head in case I want to practise one early. Going to the gym has been fairly successful so far though getting into a pattern is mind-numbingly difficult but absolutely necessary for my success. February is the gym's month.

Another floating resolution has been "do art with enough frequency to justify the zillions of supplies you own." This has been a terrible failure, so far. Back in September when my mum and bro were here, Ross and I each bought these blank postcards at the Tate Modern, all full of inspiration and promises that we would decorate them with our amazing brilliance and send them to each other. I have now sent one. Of a shrimp. After I inked the little tasty morsel (for he is cooked, as you can see), I scanned him and then reprinted him on 200 gsm watercolour paper. Our printer has issues with normal cardstock (120 grams per square meter), so you can imagine how much coaxing I had to do to get it to take it. When we bought the laser printer, I was so excited since it prints waterproof, so I would be able to mass produce paintable inkwork. This is the first time I have been successful in the operation. Anyhow, I practised the painting a few times before I was ready to commit to the postcard, so I'm left with multiple little painted shrimp here. I liked how Ross's shrimp turned out, but I'm disappointed with the boring background colour. I despise watercolour. Watercolour painting is like coaching the all-lemming syncronized swimming team -- it's easy to get them in the water, it's getting them to swim the way you want and not drown that's the hard part. Exasperating. Here's a little picture I did of my chickies as a gift for my neighbor. Just to tidy up.

Holiday Wrap-up

Ah, the lovely joys of those magical days between Christmas and New Years!

Sunday, we had friends over for dinner to celebrate. Eight years ago, when we moved away from South Carolina, I thought I would never again have reason to say this, but alas: this dinner was to celebrate a friend's new set of teeth. Yep, Karen had most of her teeth pulled (a common solution to many things in English dentistry), and we promised her and her family a steak dinner when her dentures arrived. This dinner was cursed. When we arrived home from church the house was cold and dark as the power was off. We rearranged the menu to things that could be either made/baked on the grill or cooked on the gas stove that's also outside on the grill. The electric company said that we'd have no power until well into the evening, so we dug out all of out candles, made the place festive, and made do with what we had. Of course, 2 minutes before the family pulled into the drive, the power came on, showing the carpet that we hadn't been able to vacuum and all the mess in the kitchen. The fun of eating by candlelight was ruined, but dinner was delicious anyway.

The day before, I had made this lovely yule log/ bûche de Noël which is made entirely of chocolate ganache held together by chocolate cake (actually, as you can see, the ganache is holding the cake together as I broke it when unrolling it). The thing I love about ganache, other than it's the tasty main ingredient in a chocolate truffle, is that ganache (and therefore this cake), though made mostly of cream, doesn't need any refrigeration. It won't go bad. This is because there is so much fat and sugar in ganache, that any bacteria that might eat it develop type 2 diabetes and die immediately.

We had this much cake leftover today (Wednesday, when I took the picture) because A) it's a very rich cake, and B) L&L have been terribly digestively ill since Sunday night. You know they're sick if they won't eat my chocolate cake. Taking care of the girls, especially Lena who's been vastly more ill than her sister, has been like a return to the days when they were babies. Yesterday, I spent the day in the daze of a parent who has been up every hour with a crying child. This morning I awoke elated that my baby had finally slept through the night. Then I fixed Lena a bowl of oatmeal which I had to feed to her, and immediately I slipped into the old pattern of scooping the cooler outer edges from the bowl so as not to burn her mouth, and she would promptly open her mouth when she was ready for the next bite. If she hadn't occasionally spoken in complete sentences, it would have been just like she was little. It was dear and I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed it when she later put a load of laundry in the machine and went back to being my 8-year-old.

Hope that all have a warm and healthy New Year.

1 Comment »
melindatsura said,
3 January 2008 at 11:39 pm · Edit

The bdnoel looks much more impressive than the yangy chocolate-anise cake we tried to re-create from Maggiano’s several years ago. remember? we’ve not had good success with recipes found online. If you made that cake at our house, however, it would not have lasted to Wednesday. The platter in your picture would be empty because our kids gobble up all things sweet - especially ganache. When family sent goodies in the mail this holiday season - we had nary a taste - erstwhile our kids mouths and fingers were covered in crumbs, and gooey sweetness.

I’ve also exfoliated the house. LOVE post-holiday cleanup.

Merry merry to you all.

I'm Dreaming of a Canary Christmas

"The sun is shining
The grass is green
The orange and palm trees sway."

I had those first few lines of "White Christmas" in my head every time we walked past a palm tree decorated with Christmas lights. We have just returned from 10 days in paradise, and though it's mild here in England, I'm missing the sun and warm breezes from Tenerife.

Before we left, we opened presents from my side of the family (for that was all that had arrived yet). A tangential story: when Lena turned 3, we secretly bought for her a Radio Flyer tricycle, and had set it up at the park at which she was going to have her birthday party, festooned with balloons. When we arrived at the park, Lena jumped out of the car, ran up to the bike and shouted enthusiastically, "Balloons!" This year, my father had given the girls convertible pants (the kind with zip off legs to become shorts), and when Livia opened her box, she erupted with glee and shouted, "I got a whistle!" Which was attached to the pants. Livia then went on to wear those pants in some form every day that we were in Tenerife. They also scored MP3 players from my mom, My Little Ponies from Dana, and stylish designer bags from me to hold everything (whistles became zipper fobs). Then we tidied the house and headed for Birmingham. An uneventful 4-hour flight over the Atlantic (which we She-Wolfers hadn't seen in years) put us at the tiny airport that evening where we found the weather a balmy 20°C which caused us to giggle all through dinner.

Monday was also sunny and warm, and we staked out some lounge chairs by the pool and just let the girls play. That was why we came. Livia did water aerobics with the old ladies, and Ariel and I marveled about the concept of sunbathing topless. Boobs are nothing special in Europe. We see them on TV all the time. After the 2004 Superbowl halftime show uproar (Nipplegate), the English were baffled what all the fuss about it, saying things like, "That's not football!" Also they couldn't understand why people would be appalled about an almost completely covered nipple. There's a makeover show here called, "How to look good naked," and no, not a single person on the show looks good naked, before or after. But at the commercial breaks they talk to assorted real (and by "real," I mean "real ugly") British women about fashion and self-image, et cetera, and they are all topless and shameless and in dire need of clothing. In Europe, they're just boobs. There are no topless beaches; there are just beaches. Same goes for pools. So we spent the first sunny day getting adjusted to seeing women topless. And not good-looking women. The attractive women wore cute bikinis. There was one poor lady who we first mistook for a man because her breasts had gone so southward that when she reclined, they disappeared completely into her armpits (and she was built in body and face like a trucker). And then there were the men in Speedos. Big men with big man-boob (moobs). The pool area was an androgynous sea of tiny little swimsuit bottoms and big boobs.

We grew accustomed to the frontal nudity, but we never could quite get over the dinner fashion of many of the women which we called, "Hookers on Holiday." Most of the guests ate dinner at the hotel which was a large dining room with a extensive buffet of hot and cold foods. It wasn't a restaurant for which people from off the street might come and make a reservation. We dressed evening casually. There's nothing like seeing a woman self-serving veggies over by the sneezeguard while wearing a black bustier, micro-mini, and 6-inch heels. Maybe she was grabbing a quick bite to eat before she went off to put that outfit to work. I don't know.

View Larger Map The next day we woke to find it partly cloudy and decided this was perfect weather to explore the island and visit an animal-themed park -- overcast but dry. So we rented a car for three days, and off we went to the other side of the island. Geography lesson: Tenerife is the island on which we stayed that is part of the archipelago of the Canary Islands. It is formed by the eruption of a few volcanoes, namely El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain as the Canaries are still part of Spain (like Hawaii is part of the US). El Teide is still an active volcano though she hasn't erupted in a few years. We stayed in Playa de las Americas on the south side of the island. Back to our story. We had to drive northeast up the coast because earthquakes had wiped out the roads to the west. We should have taken this as a sign. But we continued on, through the dust, rocks, and cacti that are so characteristic of the south of the island. Then we got to Santa Cruz, the capital and far eastern point of our trip and curved onto the north of Tenerife, which I would swear was a different island altogether if we could have seen past the fog and driving rain. (Driving rain sounds like it would be good to drive in.) When we arrived at Loro Parque (Parrot Park), our destination, the rain had diminished a bit, but not enough to get out of the car and pay money to stand in it. So we drove on to Icod de los Vinos, the former capital of Tenerife. "Former" because in the 1700's it was eaten by a bit of lava flow. The town is still there but people just cleaned up and built around the lava, so there was no Pompeii-coolness about Icod and the rain increased. At this point we were 25 miles from our hotel, but we had to turn around and drive the long way around, 75 miles the other way. In the first 10 miles of this return journey, we encountered two rock slides that impeded traffic, one of which we swerved around, the other blocked all traffic until the rock slide maintenance authorities could get in and clean up the mess. When we finally made the turn to the south side of the island, the weather cleared again, and we declared the day a glorious adventure (it was too early in the trip to declare it a bust).

The following day had real and unquestionable rain there at our hotel, so we spent the morning teaching the girls how to play the card game Duck (AKA "Oh, Hell," "Pshaw," and "Screw you.") After lunch, everything cleared to the most magnificent weather and we still had a car, but instead we played 18 holes of mini-golf which I would have won if Math Man hadn't been cheating with the scorecards.

Last day with the car was clear skies, and we drove to El Teide. We went from palm-lined beach to desert to pine forest to lunar landscape to snowy mountain. It was surreal. The final ascent of the peak is by cable car, but when we arrived, it was closed due to ice. Of course. The girls had a snowball fight, and we drove down the other side of the mountain, back to Puerto de la Cruz to try to go to Loro Parque again. The moment that we were officially on the north side of the mountain, we encountered fog and rain, and had to go down that winding road through the cloud-bank. It was then that we saw how verdant the north side of Tenerife is, and when we got to the Park, the rain had subsided. The park was magnificent. Mostly it was a zoo with lots of animal shows. We came to the conclusion that the animals there are paid to pose. Each creature was perfectly situated for photo opportunities. Livia adored the dolphin show (which I thought was the best), Lena loved the orca show as she loves all aquatic predators, and Ariel favoured the sea lion show. The girls finished all of their mad-money on softies and we braced ourselves for the grueling drive back which would have gone a lot better if 5 miles from the hotel, Livia didn't suddenly burst in hysterics that she lad left her bag -- the groovy pink camouflage bag I had made for her which contained nearly every one of her beloved Christmas presents. It nearly ruined an otherwise great day.

Ariel called the park the following day on the off-chance that they had found it, though we promised Livia that we wouldn't drive all the way back to get it, and even if they had it, there was no guarantee that it would still have her stuff in it. Turns out that it was sitting in lost-and-found and that the park personnel were due to come to our very hotel to drop off promotional material, was Monday too late? Not at all. Monday morning when it was supposed to be there, it wasn't and my heart fell, but Livia kept the faith. After dinner, it was waiting for her at reception with everything still inside (including the whistle).

Friday I awoke with a head-cold, and after the Loro Parque adventure, we needed an off-day by the pool and at Magic Park. We picked this hotel specifically for the Magic Park. From 11:00 to 4:00, we could go and drop off the girls at an inside playland where entertainers made balloon animals for them or let them watch movies or draw or just lounge in the ball crawl. Every night was a mini-disco for the kids (but we had to stay for that, and only did it one night). The next day was the one I was most excited about.

My children have never been to a waterpark before, and Ariel and I love waterparks. I'm not a strong swimmer, but waterparks aren't about swimming. I bought a decongestant from the farmacia, but the real medicine was the park itself. In the Canaries, pools (and waterparks) don't use chlorinated water. Water is at a premium on an island, so instead they just use sea water, filter and treat it, but not desalinate it. So the swimming water is clear and clean, but just as salty as the Atlantic from which is was born. After a few good face-plants at the end of the waterslides, my sinuses were completely irrigated. Livia and I each were mildly sunburnt -- the only casualties of the whole trip. The next day we lounged again and taught the girls how to play Spades. Lena showed a need to work on her bidding as she would enthusiastically declared she would take 6 or more tricks, even if she had no Spades or face cards. Despite this, the girls both show a lot of promise with cards, and Ariel and I are tickled to finally have people with which to play.

Christmas eve, we played another course of miniputt, and I let Ariel win this time. Right. Livia lost her shark tooth, the baby tooth that never came out because the adult tooth grew in right behind it just like a shark's teeth do. She wrote a note to Santa asking if he would pass it along to the tooth fairy. That night, Santa came and left presents (and a Euro for Livia) and because I had obviously been naughty and hadn't been punished enough by having a skull-crushing head cold, Santa left for me the stomach plague. Ariel took the girls out to explore while I watched "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" in Spanish and stayed close to the bathroom. While they were out, Ariel had a fun experience. A few days earlier, we had warned the girls not to get in the habit of running ahead out on the sidewalk because we're soon moving to Mexico City which has a reputation of kidnappings. Well, on Christmas day, while out on a busy street, Livia skipped ahead and Lena called out to her, "Livia, don't run ahead; there might be Mexicans!"

On the way home, Ariel stopped by the farmacia to buy me the best Christmas present ever -- anti-nausea medication. At least that's what the pharmacist said it was for based on however Ariel described it in Spanish. I went ahead and took one immediately, and then I let Ariel translate the indications (which were in Spanish) for me. Whatever nausea the tablet might have cured was negated by the feeling of dread as he read me the potential side effects, "Discontinue use if you show signs of anaphylatic shock, sepsis, or eruption." I don't even want to know what "eruption" means. But it didn't kill me, so I let my family take me down to the pool where I sat in the sun for some Vitamin-D therapy and I even made it to dinner where despite the huge Christmas spread, I could only stomach a piece of veal, some carrots, and a few Jordan almonds. Lena and Livia were told that they could eat as many desserts as they wanted, and I think that in addition to ice cream and little pies, they each had two slices of Yule Log. They were thoroughly stuffed with sweeties.

Our day of departure, we had a evening flight, so we went to the Jungle Park. This park had an emphasis on raptors, and during the raptor show, Lena was chosen to wear the gauntlet and a big black bird landed on her arm. It was a hoot. After the show, the trainers had the task of gathering the birds back into their cages or their perches. We spied one fellow trying to coax a large owl out of a tree, and the bird would call down to him (in owl-speak), "Yeah, right." When we left a few hours later, there were still falcons and eagles seen flying overhead with their tethers dangling down (that sounds dirty). The animal enclosures were rather low-tech with a height of seven feet of glass between us and the animals, and then fencing above that which was open enough for you to stick a hand through. At the jaguar enclosure, the first four feet of the seven foot wall of glass was artificial rocks, so technically, you could climb on the rocks and reach into the enclosure. They had signs up recommending that people not hold their children up to the fence where the cats could reach them. But the real deterrent was the jaguars themselves. One was really antsy and as you stood there, he would run at you and attack the glass. Even knowing the glass is there, it's still pretty scary to see an angry jaguar charge you and get within a few inches. He did this a few times, but always seemed to know when I was taking video of him and would only pace, and though it was scary and funny, you'll just have to imagine it yourself.

This was a red-letter trip -- we didn't visit anything even remotely historic and I didn't take anyone on a forced march. We are now safe and home. Happy to have gone and happy to be home.
Feliz Navidad

Bob Dylan is a Cylon

Tomorrow we leave cold, damp England for warm, volcanic Tenerife. As a result, all of the bloggy bits that I have rolling around in my head need to be expunged before we go.

In chronological order, Lena had a doctor's visit at the US Embassy, so we left early on the bus and had a lovely date at the British museum at Lena's request. She was studying the ancient Greeks and wanted to see some Greek stuff. Oh, how the British Museum obliged her!

Next was Bonfire Night. The girls and I went to see the fireworks at their school. It was such a lovely get-together as the kids ran around in the mild night air, while the grownup stood on the hill drinking hot mulled wine and soup (I had brought cocoa) watching the show. I marveled how we really don't have anything quite like Guy Fawkes Night in the States with all of the kids working so hard to prepare for it (each Year made a Guy for the Bonfire), but then the fireworks ended and we all walked to the base of the hill to see the youngest Form 1 student light the fire (which was Lena last year), and it suddenly became clear that we would NEVER have anything like this in America. Piled atop a significant collection of branches and lumber, soaked in gasoline were 9 Guys, dressed like dads (as they were built from pillaged clothing). Then they set fire to the bodies, and all the children cheered. It was really disturbing. But on the other hand, on the way home, there was one hill we crested where we could see the night landscape dotted with village bonfires, including our own in Crowfield. The girls watched our neighbors shoot fireworks from the house before bed and Livia's birthday.

Ariel was in Frankfurt for Livia's actual birthday, and so Livia requested that her celebrations be delayed until his return. Finally, we upgraded Livia from a tricycle to a two-wheeler, all in secret. I was all excited about the look on her face when she saw her new enormous bike, but she just looked at it and shrugged her shoulders (her favourite expression of nonchalance). Oh, well. She had also requested her typical birthday fare of chocolate cake with cherries (which I suppose is a Black Forest cake, but we don't call it that). Dana and I have been perfecting a chocolate cake recipe and I added Dana's Divine Chocolate Buttercream Icing and chopped maraschino cherries. It was divine.

Ariel and I finished watching Battlestar Galactica, and if you saw the end of the 3rd season, the title of this post would make perfect sense to you. With it's end (until the last season starts in February), Ariel and I are left with nothing much to do except travel to equatorial islands to spend Christmas. We'll be back December 27th, and I'll post lots of pictures of us sitting warm on the beach.

Dios se ríe de nosotros desde el cielo*

Funny story: our family is moving back to the US in 8 months. That isn't the funny part. We really enjoy it here in England and are already growing sad at our impending departure. Still not funny. To comfort ourselves, we talk about all the restaurants that only exist in the US that we can't wait to partake of. But the thing that we miss the most is Mexican food. There is no Mexican food in England. Our desire for Mexican food is so great, that if we were staying for an additional year, we have threatened to open a Mexican restaurant. We muse nostalgically for burritos grandes. Cue the funny part. We have just been assigned to a two-year tour in Mexico City. And in another bit of coincidence, last week, while we waited for the decision to be made of our future overseas, Ariel got word from good friends of ours that they were moving to Mexico City. When Ariel told me this, he declared, "Wouldn't it be neat if we got Mexico City?" "Yes, honey, but if we were in the business of picking jobs based on their proximity to good friends, we'd probably stay in Virginia." He agreed while I wondered if MC was even on our list of the 16 options. Turns out, it was.

So, we've accepted the post, and we will move across the border (MC is no where near the US/Mexico border) in the summer of `09. We will never long for Mexican food again. In 2010 when we're applying for our next post, I plan on emphatically voicing my love of dim sum and Hong Kong barbecue. Another bit of coincidence, just as England has no Mexican restaurants (worth eating at), MC has everything but Indian and Thai. This is funny because the quintessential English food is Indian. (My favourite fun fact: there are more Indian restaurants in London (city, population: 8 million) than there are in all of India (country, population: 1 billion)). So Ariel and I have made it our mission to stock up on Indian and Thai food. Our local Thai restaurant has started a really lovely Wednesday all-you-can-eat buffet, and we're going to try to hit that every week if we can.

I'm excited to go to Mexico, and frankly, I'm a little bit terrified. MC is the second largest city in the world. The Diplomatic Mission (embassy plus consulates) is the largest in the world. Ariel is a little daunted by the amount of work/responsibility he'll have, but we think it's a good trade from all of the travel he won't have. Currently I only see my husband on weekends. The girls will continue to attend private international school, and we'll all learn Spanish. The Spanish doesn't scare me. It's the Nahuatl (Aztec) that leaves me worried. I see those crazy words, and my brain shuts down. I have a similar reaction to Welsh.

So that's our big news. Of course, we don't leave for at least another 18 months, so just tuck this info in your head for a while. I promise not to bore you with details about Mexico until at least June 2009.

Ciao and adios.

*Translation: God laughs at us from heaven.

Blinded Me with Science

Anyone who knows me (hopefully those of you reading this post), knows that I like technology. I'm not obsessively in love with it, stalking it, sitting outside it's house at night with my high-powered binoculars. I have aging pop stars for that. No, I like to have a careful balance between the glittering eye-candy of novelty and my neurotic fear of change. I do not want an iPhone. In fact, my cell phone (this will blow your mind) only makes phone calls. Supposedly it will also visit specially-formatted Virgin Mobile websites for about £152 per minute. Anyway, this is not about my cell phone. This is about my computer.

I have noted to Ariel that as we begin to think about our next overseas tour, I will devotedly go wherever he goes, his people will be my people, his childen will be my children (from here on out) -- anywhere. There can be cannibals or poisonous marsupials or clowns, yet I will go. Our home could be a hut with no plumbing or air conditioner or hired help, and yet I would live there. However, there has to be <dramatic pause> Internet. So we recently switched ISPs (insidious sales people) to one that actually allowed us to access <dramatic pause> Internet. The company we had initially gone with started out fantastic. Cheap and fast. (The same way I like my women -- no, wait...) Then we started to have little problems. Certain US websites started timing out, and we blamed the websites, thinking they were Anglophobes who didn't realize that we are secretly Americans who have infilitrated this country to crush it under our heel for its insolence. (At least, that's what I told these sites on the phone with their customer service reps in the hopes of currying their favour). Then finally, we could no longer access iTunes, and when I went to iTunes' forum to see who else had complained about iTunes' new anti-Britain stance, I realized that, indeed, everyone who couldn't access the store was in fact in Britain! But coincidentally, we were also all using the same ISP (insipid snotty poddle). It turns out that the ISP (inspiring senior prom) is so very popular because it provides unlimited bandwidth to its customers, and it acheives this by restricting the sites its customers can visit to those that require virtually no bandwidth. This is similar to a restaurant offering a really reasonable price for an all-you-can eat buffet, but when you get inside you realize that the buffet consists of only unlimited beer nuts and popcorn. When you ask for a refund, the waitress shrugs unhelpfully and asks if you'd like a warm tap water to drink. Free refills!

When I searched Internet for a contact number for these dreadful people, Google directed me to al Qaeda. Okay, maybe it wasn't exactly al Qaeda's website, but a site for UK-living Muslims, and we Americans are taught from an early aged that when you see Arabic, there are terrorists involved. However, my assessment wasn't too far off, as there were a number of people on this sites calling for a jihad against the Great Satan -- Tiscali (our ISP (icy silent planet)). I wished them the best.

So we switched. At almost the exact same time, Ariel and I each bought new computers, so we only had good Internet for a few weeks until we began using Vista at which point all hell broke loose. I mean this literally as Vista is proof that Bill Gates is Satan, and someone has let him loose again. Vista is one of those glittering eye-candy things I wrote of earlier. It is beautiful, great and spacious, and is basically just like Windows XP except that nothing works. Some of you (especially you Mac-using liberals) are commenting to yourselves that Windows XP never worked. This is true. I refer you back to the Bill Gates statement.

My new computer is a tablet just like my old one (except that it works), and part of its magic is that I can write, click, draw on the screen with a stylus. The joy of Vista is that it is in a blood feud with the Wacom tablet drivers (which are tiny fairies that drive around inside the computer (Tron-style) making it work). Every so often Vista manages to kills one of the Wacom cousins, and the stylus fails. This leaves me with a stylus that works only as a prop, and I'm reduced to navigating with the touchpad which smells faintly of sulfer and brimstone. (I'm certain that Gates is involved in its invention).

My point? I don't have one. Enjoy!

Author's Note: As I wrote this, I decided that anyone who didn't know what an ISP is (Internet service provider) wouldn't enjoy the post at all, even (especially?) if I explained it. I also still get a particular thrill out of dropping the article before "Internet" in this post.

Guests of the World

The #1 rule of blogging (so I've read) is: keep it short. Of course, my philosophy is that if it's short, it's probably not worth mentioning all by itself. I don't like to write unless I have something to say. Unless I don't. You understand. So I build up a lot of things until it's time to write. Except that I don't like to write about things out of order. So I've been putting off writing.

Until today!

We are guest-free until probably April or May after 6 weeks of guests in September and October (three different sets). As I've already written about the other two, it leaves me to mention the final set, Ariel's Aunt Anita and Uncle Jim. We were only a stopover in the midst of their whirlwind adventure across Europe and the Atlantic. They began on the mainland visiting four countries, then us for four days, then London, then they posted themselves to the colonies on the RMS Queen Mary II. (RMS stands for "Royal Mail Ship," and it actually carries mail back and forth between our two countries.) Their trip wasn't over then as after they arrived in NYC, they continued to play tourist in the Big Apple before finally getting back to Chicago.

You might remember that this summer I posted a tribute to my Aunt Missy. You might also recall that I referred to her as "The Best Aunt Ever." In the four days that J&A were here, Anita dropped this into the conversation no less than 3 times which left me to wonder if she coveted this title for herself. Let me take this opportunity to say that, yes, Anita, you are the Best Aunt Ever (Ariel never doubted it). This has led me to think that competition is a good thing, especially as Ariel and I have 9 aunts between us. So, yes, the title can be bought.

In a brilliant bit of planning, we took J&A to see the sights only on days when the weather was miserable. We stayed home on the beautiful days and played cards while complaining that the sun was too bright streaming through the windows. The first miserable day, we stormed Warwick castle. The weatherman claimed that the rain would clear by mid-morning. By noon it was clear -- clear that it was never going to stop raining. The day I took them to Oxford, the fog was so bad that I feared we would get to the top of St. Mary's and not be able to see any of the dreaming spires. Fortunately, the fog did clear significantly, and it made the climb worth it. Looking back on my pictures from the various visitors we've had, I noticed that we seemed to take everyone to the top of St. Mary's.



Hopefully I'll write more stuff soon. Enjoy!


Comments
EvilGM said,
16 November 2007
Chairman Mao was a pain in the butt to get up those stairs. I think he kept referring to the symbol of Western Dogma, but I’m a little rusty on my Mandarin.