On Monday I spent the morning shopping at Tesco to round up all of the items requested back home. Included on that list are:
- ibuprofen gel - I bought all 14 tubes that were on the shelf.
- ginger nuts - a yummy cookie that Rachel (and others) really like
- fun size crunchie - my favorite cadbury candy bar
- turkish delight thins - who knew that this would be something I like?
- blackcurrant squash - concentrated fruit juice for Rach
- fruit pastilles - a chewy, sucky, sugary candy that Natalie told me was good
- some envelopes in a standard size (so cheap) in the UK - rather expensive in the US
- marzipan ritter sport - Kathy requested these as the ones at the local Safeway or Cost Plus at home are less than fresh
- maltesers - whoppers, but so much better
All of the sweets will be going into a locked cupboard when I get home. I have just 4 weeks to get into shape for Kathy's wedding. There will be much gym time and far less eating. :) Lots of work to do.
After the shopping trip, April and I headed over to Intel. I ran in and hunted down old friends and co-workers. It was actually really nice to see everyone. I left with so little ado last year - many people were on holiday - so it was nice to get some positive closure and memories about the office. April and I took Laurie to lunch in Old Town (actually she took us! she completely beat me with her card...I owe her!!). It was so nice to catch up! I really do have some great friends here.
Tuesday was special because the Slades took me to see a matinee of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The show is traveling around England right now. We saw Craig from Any Dream Will Do (a reality show to find the next Joseph that was on the BBC 2 years ago when I arrived in Swindon - I just saw that BBC America ran a marathon of it last month). It was a really fun show. Probably my favorite bit was the prop sheep that would get pushed onto the stage and then inflated! So funny - especially when they didn't quite inflate all the way. The music was really fun and the kids loved it (as did I). It is a favorite of their family - and one of the reasons that Joseph Slade is named Joseph. Speaking of Joseph - taking him to the show was quite the experiment. It was his first experience like that. April said - either it will be good, or it won't. He handled it beautifully. He was entranced for the first half. Totally into the show and dancing in his booster seat. After the brief intermission his attention waned a little, but he was still quiet and fairly contained. Experiment was a success. After the show April took a "desperate" Megan (at least that is what Megan claimed to be) to stand at the stage door to wait for Joseph to come out. She got a photo and beamed for the rest of the day.
That night we (the adults) had a curry from Tesco for dinner and watched XMen (on a VHS tape that Greg dug out). I was so shot - I kept falling asleep in a mixture of food coma and jet lag.
Joseph didn't sleep much on Tuesday night - so it was really good that I had plans for Wednesday morning so April could get a little more sleep. I walked across the neighborhood to visit with Bethan - who trained me when I arrived (2 years ago, practically to the day). Bethan left Intel about 6 months into my stay - and she just had a baby 6 weeks ago called Toby. We had a fantastic catch up and then headed for lunch at the Pizza Hut buffet with Toby in tow. It was a nice relaxing morning - and Toby was so tiny and such a good baby. Bethan is lucky.
I can't really remember Wednesday afternoon. Dang. I should have taken more pictures. Oh - I kind of remember. That was the night that April and I watched a couple of Castle episodes online, and I totally broke my work computer. So after a few wasted hours of fiddling with it - I gave up - and that was the end of working during my holiday. :) I'll just have to deal with it next Tuesday. :(
Thursday was pretty low key - with a couple of fantastic highlights. We went to meet up with Gresha (and her daughter Anita Fe) for lunch. She is one of my favorite people here. Lunch was nice, but the conversation was much better - plus, we solidified plans for a kind of girls' night with a few other friends later that evening.
In preparation for the girls' night I made brownies - with a mix I brought from home. I cooked them in a 10x8 pan, so I was expecting to be able to use the 9x9 pan timing on the box. The ovens here are SO different! How quickly I forget. While here I have made chocolate chip cookies (had to completely readjust the oven temperature and cook time after the first batch), banana bread muffins (those worked out pretty well, it was April's UK recipe), and then these brownies. I cooked them for the prescribed 36-42 minutes and the inserted toothpick was no where near clean. Then I went 4 more 5 minute intervals - 20 whole minutes - and thought they were done...the top had begun to crack. I made just the perfect amount of chocolate frosting (once April found the stash of Hersheys cocoa from America) and put the pan away until after dinner. The weather was quite nice (as opposed to the wind and rain that prevailed throughout the early part of the week) so we ate dinner (Tacos - yum!) in the back garden. Then April went to get the brownies for dessert. "They are quite gooey," she says. Only the edges were done and the proper fudgey consistency. The middle was not cooked through. I was equally embarrassed and frustrated. I'd need another 3 weeks to remember the nuance of UK ovens. Part of the problem is that that they are gas and/or convection and in Celsius - I should be able to figure that part out, in fact, it should make the food better (apart from the Celsius difference which is just a conversion headache with no bearing on the food apart from poor math skills). The part that I can't figure out is the climate and ingredient differences. Butter is different! Brown sugar is different! I wouldn't be surprised if flour and eggs are different.
So I was kind of dreading sharing the brownies with the ladies that arrived at 8. They still love me even though I undercooked the brownies. We played a domino game called Chicken Foot. I loved it! We had such a fun time! Greg was away with a couple of the ladies husbands at a stake leadership training. All the men arrived mid-game. They wanted brownies - to my horror. Gresha's husband tucked into one and said "They're gooey!" and I groaned. He liked them that way though and ended up having more of the extra gooey center of the pan. Fun game, fun people, "interesting" food. Now the birthday scene in Bridget Jones' Diary just means that much more to me. I didn't make Congealed Green Gunge - but my brownies left a lot to be desired. I empathize with Bridget. Next I'll be making blue soup. :)
Friday was another low key day - taking the kids to school for their last day before Half Term break (kind of a spring break equivalent). It was a day they didn't have to wear uniforms. It was fun to see the classroom look more normal to me - full of noisy children in a variety of their favorite outfits. Megan is in reception (what the English call kindergarten) and you can imagine some of their quirky outfits. I've had a great week doing Megan's hair for school. :)
Last night I finally talked April into going to the cinema. We went and saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. It was better that I feared. Entertaining and a pretty good message. I do like Jennifer Garner. She is so smiley. :)
This morning we left Greg with the kids and drove into London. We parked in Hammersmith and planned to tube up to Ladbroke Grove - at the top of Portabello Road Market. Unfortunately that tube line was closed for the weekend! We took a bus - which I actually did very little of when I lived here. I was so pleased when I recognized the area at the stop we wanted to get off at.
We wandered through the market. It was a beautiful day - blue sky in London and quite warm. It was fantastic! We shared an almond croissant and then April found the Hummingbird Bakery. A cupcake confectionery in the vain of NY's Magnolia bakery. A red velvet cupcake with a swirl of cream cheese frosting and a cheesecake brownie topped with raspberry cream were boxed up for later. The market is fun - but nothing tempted me enough.
We walked past Notting Hill's house with the blue door (now painted black) and through the market. Then from Notting Hill to Bayswater. I was so excited to see Taza - my favorite kebab place. We got chicken kebabs and baklava and a giant bottle of water and headed for Kensington Garden. The park was packed! Benches were all full, so we plopped onto the grass and enjoyed our picnic. So yummy! So nice just to lie there and chat. Ginger Frost joined up with us. I had a few goodies from America (Trader Joe's cranberry oatmeal dunkers and 2 cans of red enchilada sauce) for her. Once we had our fill of sitting we headed back down the road (Queensway) to my favorite pashmina shop. Then it was time to head back to the car on the tube. Ginger came with us and we ended up making a pit stop at TK Max (TJ Max in the US). We found a nice platter for a girl in the Swindon Ward that just got married. :)
What a successful and fun trip! I have taken some picture this week - I'll upload them once I get home.
Tonight - now that the kids are in bed - we're going to pull April's Sunday School lesson together - then turn on some more episodes of Castle while we play Scrabble and Set.
I'm looking forward to church tomorrow. I hope that it will be as unexpectedly nice as work was on Monday. There are a lot of people to see.
I leave VERY early on Monday morning. I think we have to leave the house at like 3:30am. I'm on one of the first flights out of Heathrow over to Amsterdam. I'll buy Rachel some Milka chocolate in the airport. Maybe I'll find some nice liquorice as well (just not salty or menthol-y).
I miss Pippin. It has been a really good - and cathartic - trip.
