Teeeeexas Surprise(s)

I spent the last 10 days or so visiting my family and Jeff's family in Texas, but I couldn't put anything online about it because I wanted to surprise a few people while I was there. The main reason I was in Texas was to go to Jeff's sister-in-law's baby shower. I was so happy and excited to see Paulina because I hadn't seen her since she found out she was pregnant and I won't see her again until after baby Alexander is born. I had seen pictures, but now that I've seen her in person I can confirm that Pau is cutest pregnant person ever. (She is also lucky to have a friend who is also a photographer so I would hate to post this pic without including her website).

Anyway, since I was going to be in Texas for the shower I figured it would be a good time to see my youngest sister Kate who goes to Baylor University in Waco. I even convinced Margann and my parents to meet me there. Yeah! Family reunion in Waco! When we showed up at Kate's house, the three of them went inside to say hi while I waited outside for 30 minutes or so for Maximum Surprise Effect. These things become very important after being in transit for 16 hours and changing planes twice and then driving 2 hours. The surprise was achieved with great satisfaction by all parties involved - once Kate realized it was actually me and not a housemate who had gotten shorter and paler and dyed her hair. Funny how for a split second that actually seemed reasonable...

My visit was timed so that we could attend two of Kate's soccer games. I haven't seen her play in ages it seems. And when I say I haven't seen her play recently, that means I haven't seen ANY soccer played recently because, frankly, I'm only really excited about it when she is physically on the field. Even if she is on the bench, I probably spend about 75% of the time watching her ("Oh now's she's sitting. Ok, she's standing now. Her arms are folded. Is she pissed? Her biceps look great. Oh wait, is she looking over here!? She is! Hey! Hey Kate! Over here! Hmm I wonder if she saw me."), 23% of the time wishing she were playing and thinking how much better she would be playing than all those other wusses currently on the field, 1% of the time paying attention to the score, and 1% thinking, inevitably, that I need to work out more.

It was probably a good thing that I wasn't paying attention to the actual "game" since I'm not sure there was so much of that going on.

Margann and I wore the appropriate supportive gear.

Kate's 21st birthday was October 3rd so we had a belated celebration in our hotel room.

To be honest, there is not really that much to do in Waco. Over the years, I have been conditioned to expect that being a tourist = fighting the crowds. Not so in Waco! Determined to do something besides eat and shop at Target, we sniffed out the Historic Waco Foundation, which has preserved several historic homes in the area. We decided to visit "Fort House", where we were very eagerly greeted by a few elderly female volunteers. It was only then that it dawned on me that there probably aren't a lot of visitors to the historic homes in Waco. (To be honest, there are probably not a lot of visitors to Waco, period.) Between one volunteer who seemed to run out of breath after every three words and another who continually talked over (and possibly contradicted) her, it was pretty exciting. At one point, several minutes (and rooms) after telling us about the life and travels of a woman whose portrait hung in one of the main living rooms, the breathless lady said "Oh, I forgot to finish the story of [haha yeah like I remember her name??! Are you crazy??]" We adopted our polite listening faces (you know, when you literally have to force your eyes to focus), ready to stand there for a while since she'd left off her story when the girl was still pretty young, only to hear "She got sick and died 6 months later." Good story.

My parents went back to Portland on Monday, leaving Margann and I to stay with Kate until Thursday. I'm a little pissed that I missed out on decorating Kate's room when she first moved in, but her and Margann did a very nice job. I love her room! And her private bathroom, and her walk-in closet, and her adorable house (which is in a gated community and has a pool... wait HOW CAN THIS BE COLLEGE?).

Super cute, right? Margann took that pic above the bed our Italy/France trip earlier this year. I love it.

While Kate was in class, Margann and I got our deep clean on. I could not help but marvel at her counter and under-sink space since I have exactly zero of either one. Put everything in the cupboards and drawers - et voila! Clean! I'm jealous. Not quite as jealous as Kate's housemates when they saw us cleaning and doing her laundry though.

Staying with Kate reminded me of how horrendous it can be to live with housemates. Luckily, Kate lives with only three other girls (and each have their own bedroom) but somehow they still manage to make a serious mess of the place. Obviously, everyone is bound to make messes sometimes, but it doesn't matter too much when they clean up after themselves. Well, somebody (they know who they are, and they WILL know that someone else knows who they are when I figure out how to work this voodoo doll thing) decided to do a helluva a lot of baking on Sunday. Baking is messy. God knows I'm the messiest baker in the world and I can see how cleaning up might be a bit tiresome, but ya do it anyway. Two days later, the baking mess is STILL there, only it has gotten a thousand times more disgusting - all hardened frosting and stagnant water. Blech. Of course, no one knows each other well enough to be like "Dude, clean up the kitchen" so everyone is tip toeing around the mess as if it will magically go away. The mother of said mess seemed quite convinced this would happen when I saw her at the scene of the crime making a sandwich whilst blissfully humming to herself, completely impervious to my negative vibes.

The pictures don't really capture the disgustingness (or the smell). You would not believe the evils that granite countertops can hide. One morning, Kate leaned on her forearm while eating cereal and HER SWEATSHIRT STUCK TO THE COUNTER. Dude. That ain't right. Anyway, you know the end of this story... forced to choose between having a nervous breakdown or swallowing my pride and cleaning up the mess of someone who has done nothing but annoy me, I chose the latter. It took like half an hour, by the way.

Between Kate's classes and soccer practice, Margann and I had a lot of time to do nothing - which is exactly what we did... by the pool, in perfect mid-seventy degree not too humid weather.

On Thursday, Margann and I headed to the airport. She flew back to Portland and I hopped on a 35 minute flight to the Houston airport, where I met Sherri and her mom, Dorothy, who had just flown in from Seattle for the baby shower. Michael and Paulina did not know I was coming, so I hoped it would be a good surprise and not a what-the-heck-is-she-doing-here surprise. They are nice though so I would never know if it was anything but a good one. The baby shower was Friday night and since guys and girls were invited it was more like a fun cocktail party. The food was yummy, the desserts were even better, and there was plenty of good wine to go around. We didn't play any of the usual lame baby-related games, but Paulina opened some of her presents. It was so fun to see all of the adorable baby stuff.

On Saturday, Paulina invited us to go to an ultrasound with her. Did you know they do 3D ultrasounds now???!!! It is amazing!! You can seriously see what the baby looks like. Unreal. It is in real time too so we could see the him frowning and yawning and smiling (and generally trying to prevent us from seeing him properly).

Big cheeks! I can't wait to see pics of this little (big) guy outside the womb come December!

I left Houston on Sunday and Jeff picked me up from the Birmingham airport on Monday morning. I'll be back on a plane in 3 weeks though headed for Seattle and Portland for Thanksgiving. I think some bake mac and cheese and broccoli slaw will be on the menu.

Sherri was here

It was a busy week around here with Sherri in town at the tail end of a trip to Spain with Paulina and Michael. If I could have predicted the future I would have told her not to pack any warm clothing for the UK part of her journey because the weather has been practically as warm as Spain! High 70s and even 80 degrees around here. I was eavesdropping on a couple walking by our house last week and they summed it up perfectly -  "it is so strange to be walking through piles of fallen leaves in summer clothes."It is also strange to have all the windows open, but watch the sky get dark at 7pm. I had completely given up on summer (normally a healthy thing to do once October rolls around), but that was a nice surprise.

Sherri is still recuperating from a nasty injury to her toe after dropping a gym weight directly on it not long before she left the US so despite the sunshine we stayed in for a few afternoons to power through all the previous episodes of Downton Abbey. Can you believe I have had that saved on our DVR since last year? I seriously love that show. Jeff has learned to stop asking if he can delete it. We're 3 episodes into the 2nd season and just so you know Sherri - I refuse to spoil it for you!! According to wikipedia, it will premier in the US on January 8th.

After all these ladies, and sirs, and earls, and countesses we were in the mood to visit a historic house so I hit up the National Trust app (woohoo another app! although not sure this one contributes to my coolness so much) and picked Coughton Court, 25 minutes away. Personally, I think the most interesting thing about this house is that a family still lives there. In fact, members of the Throckmorton family have lived there for 600 years. I find that kinda mind boggling.

The weather was fantastic and, as expected, the parking lot was packed. The cool thing I've noticed about the National Trust sites is that even when they are quite full they rarely feel crowded. The grounds of Coughton Court are extensive and beautiful so it was a perfect day to wander around outside.

Mother-son portrait. I think Sherri will agree when I say there are too few of these!

Jeff and I acting casual on a cute bridge.

Apparently, visiting a historic house put Jeff in the mood to represent for the west coast. Nostalgia, you know, as in "mannn I never had to do this shit when I lived in Seattle".

YEAYAAHHH. You're welcome. If you're lucky, maybe we'll stand closer next time.

Sherri and I chillin' by a huge pot of flowers which Sherri did appreciate despite the fact that it wasn't the Sherri Special.

I'm not going to lie, I find the interiors of these kinds of houses a lot less interesting and beautiful than the outside. So, no pics of the inside except for this one of Sherri and Denny looking like they own the place.

 We were able to climb to the top of the tower to take in the views.

It never ceases to amaze me how flat the horizon is so much of the time. I look at these pictures and wonder "where the heck are all the mountains???"

Last night was Sherri's last night here so I (ok, I know some peeps around here are going to want credit too - Sherri chopped an onion very meticulously and Jeff operated the oven) cooked up some bean and cheese enchiladas and Mexican rice. Is Mexican food not the easiest, most delicious food to make ever??!? I love it. I tried a new recipe for the rice btw and it was delish. I'm really glad there are leftovers available for dinner tonight because just thinking about it is making me hungry.

Apps

If the number of iphone apps you have has anything to do with coolness, I am extremely uncool. The only game I have and play regularly is Solitaire. Other than that, I have a metric converter, the Chase bank app, the eBay app, a level app, Kindle, and the NPR/KPLU radio app. I also have the Wurdle app, but it doesn't count because I DESPISE it.

Anyway, I added to my very limited selection of apps yesterday with the 8mm app. Let's ignore the fact that it is basically a video version of Hipstamatic. At least it doesn't have a silly hipster name, right?? RIGHT.

You can toggle between different video effects on the right (where it says 60s), but I love the way vintage sixties video looks. I also like the option to record without sound. Too often my videos are ruined by the seriously annoying sound of my voice or Jeff saying things like "oh MAN, I have to go pee so bad!"






Case in point: I'm pretty sure during that entire video Jeff was saying "Stop videotaping, stop videotaping, stop videotaping, stop videotaping, stop videotaping." and I was saying "haa haaa I'm not recording sound so your efforts to ruin my video are futile sucka". Without sound, however, it is all very sweet and nostalgic, no?

"The Plan" or what I have been doing

Some people have been wondering what the hell I've been doing if not blogging. Happily (for me), I have been busy! Busy is good. Our condo neighbors in Seattle (you know... back when we lived there... sniff sniff) experienced a very similar move to ours, but in reverse - from London to Seattle. One of them had a job (the reason for their move) and one did not. The one who did not have a job eventually felt so unhappy and isolated (I'm sure a fruitless job search did not help) that they decided it would be best for him to move back to London and continue their relationship long distance. When they found out about our move, Otto and Saul urged me to have "a plan" for how I was going to occupy my time after the move. Being EXTREMELY stressed out at the time, I sorta shrugged it off. However, the more I thought about it I realized they were right. The fact that they took to asking me "Do you have a plan yet??!" every time I saw them in the hallway probably helped. I never wrote it down or anything so official, but the plan in my head looked something like this:

1. Awesome Boyfriend. Phew. This didn't require much planning. I am insanely lucky to have a boyfriend who actually enjoys spending every waking second (when not at work) with me and who very happily gmail chats with me ALL DAY LONG. Willingly in constant contact after 5 years? I call that success. Not to mention his uncanny ability to satisfy need for "girl talk"at appropriate intervals. He will also suffer through impromptu dance parties during movie credits if the music is particularly catchy (at home, mind you).

2. The Dogs. Well, they were never NOT part of the plan, but life without Plato and Sascha would be very, very sad. They force me to get outside everyday, explore the neighborhood, and actually interact with people at the park. Without the dogs, I feel slightly adrift. It is nice to elicit that much excitement when you come home, even if you've only gone out to get the mail.

3. The House. I knew shopping for furniture and making some improvements on the house would be a fool-proof way of staving off post-move blues. Man, I love that stuff. I have designed and re-designed our kitchen about a million times - just for fun. We're not even planning on redoing the kitchen. Along the way I've met a lot of local people, particularly Rob the bathroom guy, who is near and dear to my heart after two straight weeks of meticulous tiling.

4. The Gym. Admittedly, this one did not turn out exactly as I had planned. My gym in Seattle was very small and very social. I made tons of friends there and even if we never saw each other with make-up on or in regular clothes, it made everything a lot more fun. My gym here is awesome but it is HUGE (there were over 60 people in my BodyCombat class today) and NO ONE talks to each other. It is literally a running joke amongst the class instructors that people refuse to interact with them. "Hey, everybody ready for class today?!!" Silence. So strange. Still, a place to go during the week and jump around/generally look silly amongst other people? Definitely an integral part of "the plan".

5. Horses. Don't even ask me how this became part of the plan. Having escaped the horse-craziness of my youth, I would have thought that I'd now be immune, but not so my friends. It is back with a vengeance, although slightly tempered by the fact that being an adult beginner often makes you look/feel incredibly stupid a lot of the time. My instructor Corinne has the honor of being my first official friend in the UK (as evidenced by my willingness to spend 4 hours on Tuesday in the pouring rain setting up electric fencing, at which point the slave driver became the slave when I insisted that we have THE STRAIGHTEST line of fencing in all the West Midlands and possibly the world) and I even work with horses (for Louise, she of the pink eyeshadow and waist length bleach blond braid - nuff said). I know there hasn't been much, if any, blog-time devoted to the horses so far, but now that I've finally admitted to starting a completely new hobby at the age of 25, you can expect some updates in that area.

Generally, that is the plan. Of course, there are a lot of random things that fit in there too.

1. Watching Friends (not anymore though THANKS FOR NOTHING E4)
2. Cooking more. I have actually run out of some spices and had to buy more - that makes me proud.
3. Baking more. Good way to spend a couple free hours on a rainy weekday afternoon.
4. Reading. I've always been the kind of person who can easily spend a solid few hours reading each day, so you can imagine I've read quite a few books in the last year or so. Thank god for the free classics on the iPad. To be honest, I have very rarely met a book I didn't enjoy reading so I'm not much of a critic, but I think it would be interesting to make a list of what I've read since moving.
5. Blogs. I have a very very long list of blogs I check regularly. Jeff is always amazed at the amount of time I am able to occupy myself on the internets. A couple nights ago, he was gaming while I watched a movie. I paused it to look something up on my phone and a while later Jeff took off his headphones and was like "Dude, you have been on the internet ON YOUR PHONE for over an hour... what are you doing?" Ummm, I don't even know.
6. Cleaning. Ha ha, I know. Some of you might laugh, but I have a cleaning routine and it makes me happy to stick to it. I loathe waking up to dirty dishes in the sink and I can't enjoy my Norah Jones/good book/cup of tea when the house is a mess. You should see how good the white carpet looks in my parents' house after 20 years of kids/cats/dogs. Clean is in my genes.
7. Weeding. As Jeff says "One day of planting... 364 days of weeding."
8. Making trips to Ikea
9. Buying milk. I can't wait to move home and have a gigantic fridge and buy multiple gallons of milk at one time.

Okayyy that's enough of that.... time for a cute picture of the dogs (oh and add that to the list: 10. Taking pictures of the dogs.)

Hugest hotel room everrr

Jeff and I went to Amsterdam (and embarked on some day trips from there) this past weekend and I just have to show you the ridiculous room we stayed in at our usual place in Amsterdam, the Lloyd Hotel. The hotel was originally built by the Royal Dutch Lloyd, a steam navigation company. Their passengers (emigrants from the Netherlands and Eastern Europe) stayed at the hotel after medical checks in the building next door, before leaving on ships for South America and other far away places. Nowadays, the hotel has rooms ranging from 1 to 5 star... the 5 star rooms (obviously, the most expensive) aren't necessarily that much more luxurious than the 1 star rooms, just more interesting. We originally booked a 3 star room, but got upgraded to a 5 star room when we checked in. Turns out, the room we stayed in was once the office of the guy who owned the Royal Dutch Lloyd. The thing that is cool about the Lloyd Hotel in general is that it is a little rough around the edges and tons of original details have been preserved through its use as a prison during the Nazi occupation, as a regular prison, and as artist studios, before it became a hotel again in 2004.

I can't tell if these pictures really show how huge the room was, but I think the furniture might give you some idea. Also, I have a major crush on those bedside lamps. They're so cool!! The entire thing is made out of traditional lampshade material so when the lights are on the whole lamp glows.

As far as the rest of the trip, I have to admit I DIDN'T TAKE A SINGLE PICTURE. I know. It was more of a eat good food and spend quality time together sort of trip. Ew. Dogs Abroad just got corny.