The years are full of awesome
Happy 2008 everyone!
I'm excited about the new year. I know a lot of people who are ready to burn 2007 in effigy, but I can proudly state I'm not one of them. Yes, yes, 2007 saw massive unhappiness for me - heartache, frustration, sadness... there was a point in March or April when I was actually unable to smile. I'm usually damn good at putting on a good face so that was remarkable.
And yet, the year ended with me finding my footing, much happier, with a nice home, wonderful friends, a job I generally find rewarding and that pays the bills, and an ex with whom I'm better friends with now than I have been in a very, very long while. No bridges have been burned. I'm even still on great terms with my ex's family, which is awesome.
I could shake my fist at the sky, and say, "Fuck you 2007! You didn't defeat me!" but... meh. I'd rather focus on all of the awesomeness that has transpired. I'm happy to leave the negative behind me in 2007, but there's honestly not that much of it.
So here's to 2008. May it be as net positive as 2007 was.
Cheers!
Menus
One of these has sat on my desk for months. The other is from New Year's. Since I have them on-hand, though, here are the menus of my two most recent fine-dining experiences.
The first deserves a little explanation. It's from Fat Duck. Fat Duck is a restaurant outside of London. It has three Michelin stars. It has been voted the World's Best Restaurant. When James and I decided to move to the United States from London, I immediately piped up. "I want to go to Fat Duck before we go," I said. James wasn't so keen. The restaurant's chef, Heston Blumenthal, has been described as a culinary alchemist. James is very much a steak and potatoes man. He wasn't interested.
He suggested I bring Gareth.
Gareth is my gay best friend in London... who actually isn't gay. At all. But he cooks and he's a total foodie and he and I spent all sorts of time around London going to Borough Market and Ikea and stuff like that. But, yeah, not gay.
So I called Gareth and he said OF COURSE he would come as James's body double. And together we had probably the most innovative meal I've had in my life.
The second menu is from Tru, at which I spent New Year's Eve with my good friends Erin and Wil and some mutual friends, Rob and Jen, and Kristen. This time, James couldn't make it because he was ill. He was there in spirit, though. We had the kitchen table. It was awesome.
The menus are going to be in the extended entry so as not to spam you. The Fat Duck menu, at least, is interesting enough that you might want to check it out. It was a wild experience.
Continue reading Menus.
Goodbye 2006, you bitch!
2006 was a bitch of a year. Let's leave it at that and kiss it goodbye. We learned a lot from you, but I never want to see another one like you again. Ever.
2007? It will be better. Oh yes it will be. It already is. I want to see every year in with seven courses of fine dining and wine pairing. Is there a more delicious way to start a year? It's unlikely.
I'm so primed for that January diet that about 50% of the people I know are partaking of. Come on, weigh in if you're on the wagon just like me... and everyone else.
So HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! May 2007 be the one that smashes them all to bits.
Merry Belated!
First off, Merry Christmas everyone. :) I'm late with that, I know, but I was far too busy having fun and opening pressies and enjoying family to blog on the day.
We had a fantastic time with my parents in Chicago. It involved lots and lots of giggling and Christmas cookies and we even got to watch the South Park Woodland Critter Christmas special. Which was just... surreal, really. A very family-oriented ordeal. Err...
Today it's back to work and back to attempting to eat healthily in the face of the leftover stocking chocolate. And back to trying to procure a Wii for Jamie (he got an IOU for Christmas - lucky him).
I'm also trying to clear out my inbox (which, of course, is many months overdue). Hopefully I can do that before the new year. Hopefully. :)
Up too early
Messing with code at 5:30AM is never the answer. I'm just saying.
With that said, I woke up at like 4:30 unable to sleep, feeling very yucky. I can't really be more descriptive there. It was a general yuckiness. It seems to have passed, which is good, because I don't have my laptop to work from home today.
I've sort of been fooling around with my new site design all morning. You're quite welcome to peek (if you're so inclined) here.
Tonight there will be a company Christmas do and I'm so not up for it. Not after waking up so early this morning. I don't want to be a party pooper - I think some folks are karaokeing afterwards - but I so doubt I'll be out past 10:00. Famous last words, huh?
Christmas-wise, I really only have to go to Toys R Us I guess. Which isn't so bad, in the grand scheme of things. I would have liked to have found a special present for my special husband, but I've had a cold and have been too tired to do the requisite preparation to acquire that gift. Alas.
I can't believe Christmas is a week away. I must send my Christmas cards out... now. EUGH.
Warm
It was 55° today. Tomorrow, it will be 60°.
It has not yet occurred to me to put Christmas decorations up. That it's Christmas next week is inconceivable.
It's just too DAMN warm!
Chinese Soup
So one of my presents from Gareth was this random Chinese soup. It was basically a packet of dried stuff that had some Chinese writing on it. Separately, came a packet of dried tentacle looking things. He was told they made the soup even better.
Well, it was all in Chinese so we didn't really know what to do with it. But, y'know, you do what you can, right? Give it a try, see how it turns out...
The final result?
Mmmm mmmmmm good.
Busy Girl
I was sort of wondering when the questions would start to come in as to where I've been, and sure enough, they have. I assure you, I'm here, and I'm fine - I'm just a little swamped right now.
We've had houseguests and social commitments and travelling and all sorts of other stuff like that. At the end of the day, I usually consider blogging before bed, but honestly it's all I can do to brush my teeth before bed. I've been just that tired.
I know I haven't properly blogged since before Thanksgiving. I haven't done a lot of things, actually. Like send out Christmas cards, or even buy any Christmas presents. The dry cleaning needs to be picked up, too. And I need to deposit some checks. Oh, and go grocery shopping.
Thanksgiving was fabulous. (God, a week to Christmas and I'm blogging about Thanksgiving.) I had a great time at Jess & Tim's and then a great time at my own celebration. We had seven people over, two of whom were vegetarian and one who was allergic to a bunch of stuff, but we managed it just fine and it was all quite delicious. Special props to Gareth, who made the best damn gravy I've ever had.
The time between then and now has been very social. The London social group from flickr is always great, and we've been doing pub quizzes and whatever, at least once a week. We actually won a quiz at one point, in the Southwark Tavern, and then another at my local. Good stuff.
I've also had a friend from high school visit for a few days. She was interviewing for a transfer to London, and it fell upon me to show her around this fine city. We had a really good time, what with two pub quizzes (one the quiz at my local that we won - they had a round consisting entirely of identifying 'The X State', e.g. 'The Show Me State' is... Missouri, and so on), middle of the night galavanting around the Thames & taking pictures from the Millennium Bridge and multiple kebabs.
Today was a particularly festive day. We'd discussed ice skating at the last pub quiz and today we all met up for a 4:00PM skating time at Hampstead Heath. We skated for an hour (effectively James's first time), drank much mulled wine, had some mince pies and chocolate and froze. Then James went home to get changed, while the rest of us (two of whom were Finnish) headed over to the Swedish church (apparently the Finnish church is being worked on) in Marylebone for a Finnish Christmas carol programme. Very fun, even if it did involve singing by ear in a language you don't understand. At least it was phonetic, more or less.
After that, Diggle and I split off and met James for Lebanese then the three of us ran off to Islington for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We really enjoyed it. Tilda Swinton, as always, is fabulous, though I wasn't thrilled with her costumes. Dawn French does a voice (very cool), as do Rupert Everett and Michael Madsen. The Beaver was very East London (EAST SIDE!) so we appreciated that. Best moment in the film: when they're in the Beaver dam and Susan goes: We're not heroes; we're from Finchley! The entire audience cracked up at that one. It was amusing.
So, yeah. I haven't been very talkative lately. Sorry about that. But it could be worse, right? I mean, you got to look at my divine cheesecake for a couple weeks. If only you'd tasted it.
Capitalism Saved the Pilgrims
James forwarded to me a really cool article about the first Americans and their struggle for survival in their first three winters. They basically started out as a communist society where no one was incentivised and the fruits of everyone's labours were pooled and divided equally among all. When each family was allotted his own piece of land for him to feast or famine by his own hand, miraculous things happened and suddenly the harvest was bountiful. Gotta love capitalism.
It's amusing. You should read it here.
You should also read yesterday's The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark, which is also amusing and discusses the origin's of Thanksgiving.
We're doing our own Thanksgiving on Saturday, complete with seven (at last count) guests. Where will we put them all? I have no idea. Will our turkey be big enough? Probably not. Should I quick order a bigger one? Probably. Do I have turkey-size anxiety? YES!!!
Seven people will be eating turkey. Two will not. Our turkey is in the 4kg (8.8lbs) range and we've ordered two extra drumsticks. Will this be enough? Your comments are appreciated. And soon. Because if I'm going to change it, I have to change it now.
Tomorrow, I go spend Thanksgiving proper with Jess and Tim. I'm really looking forward to that. We had a super awesome time with them this weekend at a convention and then going out to eat and eating CHEESECAKE. I have to make a separate post about my cheesecake (Saturday's ordeal) because it kicked ass. Like, really. Really really really.
Turkey! Whee!!
Post-Christmas foo
I haven't been chatty recently because Christmas took a lot out of me, and I'm recovering. Also, I've been busy. Now that Dell has finally fixed my computer (the details I will spare you - it was long, and angsty), I'm working again. And we're actually getting this place unpacked and clean! Amazingly.
For your viewing enjoyment there are
I do not yet have pics of Christmas with my family as I forgot my digital camera at home. Doh.
Because I am boring, and I just went through my passport (there are 60 stamps!), here's a list of all the places I travelled to last year:
- Early February: Scotland
- 21 Feb - 14 Mar: Chicago
- 05 May - 09 May: Venice
- 13 May - 16 May: Berlin
- 19 May - 21 May: Paris
- 04 Jun - 06 Jun: Bamberg
- 13 Jul - 18 Jul: Ireland
- 11 Oct - 21 Oct: Seychelles
- 26 Nov - 29 Nov: Berlin
- 09 Dec - 27 Dec: Chicago
Wow.
