holiday: adventures 3

And the adventures continue...

The longer I stay in England the more I feel I will miss my friends and the country itself so much when I go, but I also know that the longer I stay away from home, the more I will miss my friends and the USA. I'm definitely stuck in one of those ironically nice conundrums.

After playing with Mr. Tubby I came back and made peach raspberry pie for my dessert-needing friends. By the time it was out it was about 10pm. Late night pie.

I went to Cat's flat to watch Badlands. I had been looking forward to seeing it very much and it lived up to the anticipation for me :)

The view from her windows.

On Wednesday I met up with Zoe (my one-day famous theatre director friend), to see her friend Morgan in an all-men cast of Midsummer Night's Dream. She had directed this company in previous summers so was interested in how they would be without her...

Unfortuntately the English summer rose to its reputation and started pissing it down, so after sitting under umbrellas (did I mention it was outdoor theatre?) for awhile and getting ourselves suitably soaked they came on and said the show would have to end :( So while we waited for Morgan and the guys to pack up the whole stage etc we went and got drinks as big as our heads. Literally. You needed both those handles.

Secretly we both enjoyed catching up more rather than watching the theatre, but shh don't tell anyone.

Now that I've been typing I think I actually saw this slug on Monday night after seeing Tree of Life again with Vicky. This picture is almost life size...

It was raining so much last week. We put out buckets.

Thursday night we went to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Very funny. And on the way we passed this cool art installation outside the National Gallery. It's supposed to bring art and nature together. This one was done after Van Gogh's paintings.

Then Friday night I went to see Dom's band (California Gypsies) play near Tottenham Court Rd. They're really good, check them out :)

holiday: adventures 2

This week there were: more adventures with kids, plays, lovely friend time, museums, galleries, tubby baby, tiled pubs, and fancy dress parties.

Starting out Tuesday with a new group, we did things a bit backwards this time, and had time to add some new adventures, like Thomas Struth at the Whitechapel Gallery, and more time to explore the Tate Modern.

some bathroom graffiti at Whitechapel

very cool sculptures at the Tate, these were long rectangles of wood that the artist had cut back by following the natural knotting of the wood to uncover the branch roots again.

Taking photos of Japanese Bauhaus photography, who knew?

knees from the above

A Modigliani that brought tears to my eyes. I like his still sadness.

One of Robert's favorite photographers, John Heartfeld, who was a photomonteur for A/Z before and during the Nazi regime; he used sature to expose the deceptions of politics. This type of photo montage literally required cutting negatives, much more hands-on than today's photoshop world.

the cross becoming a swastika

his images are powerful

lying on the turbine hall floor to get a great group shot

walking down the southbank, this time the end destination for dinner was Covent Garden. The kids went off to get food and, like last time, I was invited to dinner and the theatre afterwards, where we sat up among the clouds and spent most of the time making airplane and heights jokes. It was great.

Mr tubby, aka Phoenix, aka MASSIVE! He's grown so much.... in a week? On Thursday I spent about 45 minutes dancing with him, he is quite particular about how he dances. By the end of the time I felt like I had been in the gym for a couple of hours, talk about a sack of flour! But I'm going to help out again today :)

Very cool tiles near Liverpool St, can you see where the tiles end and the painting starts?

Cat double phoning it!

And last night's fancy dress party at Zoe's, her flatmate is going away traveling with a friend... for a year! so you had to dress like a thing or person he may encounter on the journey. There was border control at the door, so Zoe and I had to make a border control hat of course.

:)

holiday: adventures

Through a big coincidence my best friend happens to be in England right now as well. He's teaching on a program that travels to Oxford, Paris, then Tuscany... jealous yet? Did I mention that they spend a week at a private villa in Tuscany? Yea...

On Friday he came to London with his class of 6 students and I joined as an art historian/someone who knows their way around.

It was a blast.

free piano outside the Museum of London

Diane Arbus at the Tate Modern

challenging the kids to do their own street photography, resulting in hilarious events

And taking the Thames Clipper to Greenwich (one of my favorite things in London).

Not only did they pay for my tickets to exhibits, the program also invited me to dinner and paid for me to join them at a great show at the Soho Theatre. All in all, lots of fun was had. And it was great to spend some time with someone who lives the equivalent driving time away from me in the USA as a plane ride to London.

Hoping to have an encore this coming Tuesday. I may re-jig their schedule if I'm allowed, take out some of the things that weren't so great, and add in some other photo exhibitions that look promising :)

holiday: happy 4th

Luckily, since we now live in the city of independence I got to see real fireworks before heading back over the pond for 3 weeks. You see, in Philly we get fireworks in the build-up to the 4th as well. But even with that being said, it was still very exciting last night when Vicky remembered she had a whole bunch of unused sparklers from bonfire night!

unfortunately I only had an iPhone for photos, so no pretty long exposures with writing here, like on rockstar diaries, but still some pretty exposures :)

the most complete circle we achieved

yay sparklers!

fathers

Happy Father's Day

valentines

our Valentine's Day was spent mainly in the dark- literally, not figuratively.

We lost power Saturday night around 6pm and didn't receive full power back until 11:40pm Sunday night. We dubbed this our 'adventure' and layered up to stay warm without heat or hot water. Luckily, our stove is gas powered so we could still cook food by candlelight :)

Valentine's Crumpet

We spent most of the day on the phone trying to get edf to get our electricity fixed, but we did still go to the farmer's market and do some nice cooking.

We had a bunch of candles that followed us wherever we went from room to room.

Thankfully, when the power finally got fixed it's stayed fix (touch wood)...

palindrome day

I know this day has already happened in the US, but as I am in England and they write dates in a silly backwards way and insist that this is the correct format, Happy Palindrome Day!

01/02/2010

(to Americans this was on January 2nd, but Brits read this as February 1st, oh well!)

I thought this confused tiger bunny was suitable for this confusing palindrome day.

ginger-bread

one of my favorite parts of this Christmas-

constructing the incredibly colorful, incredibly crowded, incredibly unstable gingerbread farmyard :)

advent

I really love December, even with the cold chill in the London air that penetrates any item of clothing you put on, and the mad rushes of people to get that 'perfect gift', it's still a magical month where you get to count down to holidays and get-togethers. It's especially special when you live on another continent from these people you get together with.

I've been counting down the days till SJ and I fly back to the States, and when I saw this advent calendar at Liberty I just had to get it. Unfortunately, as we are leaving in 10 days, I think I will have to smuggle it on the plane so I can continue to open all the little flaps!

belated thanksgiving

Here's some pictures I took from Thanksgiving.

Better late than never (I had some problems getting the images off the camera I borrowed from work...)

Table Pre-meal

There was lots of prep for dinner. We started cooking around 3pm after a final trip to the Co-op and didn't stop until dinner around 8pm. Here you can see the Pumpkin Pie (first to be made so it could cool), Biscuits, Stuffing waiting to be put in the oven, and homemade veggie sausages ready to fry!

And here's the motley crew of guests digging into their dinner!
I think they got used to the let's-eat-mountains-of-food attitude quite quickly.

A shot of the teeny-tiny space we managed to cram everyone into! I got to sit on the new ottoman :)

Oatmeal raisins cookies for dessert too :)

And two slices of pumpkin pie leftover for us the next day, perfect :) :)

And lastly a turkey everyone made by tracing their hands and feet

happy thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

I love Thanksgiving dinner, I think it's because it involves so many of my favorite foods. You have the stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, yams, pumpkin pie... who could ask for more? This year I have finally gotten a good attendance for Thanksgiving, though we'll be celebrating tomorrow evening (I didn't think Brits would fully understand the whole holiday on a Thursday thing, though I am looking forward to explaining why Americans love Thanksgiving so much...)

But to everyone celebrating Thanksgiving today- have a good one! :)

early christmas

Got a very nice, very early Christmas surprise from CJ today :)

Ain't it purdy?

pumpkin face

we carved our pumpkin this weekend :)

and made pumpkin cupcakes :)

what a happy pumpkin :)