Jam In It

This weekend we went on a barge trip in Oxfordshire on the river Thames with our friends Martin and Caroline. It was so much fun! Martin, Caroline, and John had all been before for Martin’s 30th a couple of summers ago. I couldn’t make that trip in the end because it was when Abbey had her broken pelvis and someone needed to stay home with her. They had so much fun that time that they wanted to do it again, and I was keen to see what I had missed out on.

We met up at the dock after work on Friday evening. Someone showed us around and got us acquainted with how everything works. It’s a really cool boat, sort of like camping on the water. It had a little kitchenette (sink, stove, oven and grill), toilet, shower, running water, room for four to sleep. The table and booth seat thing turned into a double bed. Then you drive the boat from the back and there is an area in the front where you can sit outside and enjoy the ride.

When we got there we only had time to go a little ways and then bank up for the night. We walked to a pub to have dinner and a few drinks, then came back and played a few card drinking games.

On day two we were on our way! The boys set us off while Caroline and I prepared breakfast. Our plan was to have a huge full English breakfast so we wouldn’t need lunch and we’d go out for dinner. So we spent probably over an hour preparing everything – scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage (nice veggie sausages for me!), baked beans, toasted (made manually with the grill!). It was delicious and very filling. I wasn’t even that hungry by the time dinner came around!

We went through lots of different areas, from countryside to big towns (Oxford for example). There was lots of rowing going on and we got yelled at by one boat cox for taking up too much room and coming out of Oxford we had to moor up because there was a rowing race coming our way.

Driving the boat was fun, and even funnier to watch when thing went slightly wrong! In particular, we were approaching a lock and Caroline was at the helm. Martin jumped off the boat to work the lock, and the boat was slowly moving in the direction of a Danger sign. Caroline got a little overwhelmed between controlling the speed and direction and kind of panicked. John went to the back to help her and I didn’t see what happened but apparently in her panic she lost her balance a bit and nearly pushed John into the water! Makes me laugh just picturing it. She got some stick for that the rest of the weekend!

When we got to Oxford we had made good time so we got out and walked around until we found a pub. It was a beautiful day and it was great to stretch our legs and try to work off some of that breakfast!

We moored up for the night around 6:30 or so in a town where Caroline lived briefly. We had a lovely meal in a pub and went back to the boat to play a board game they’d brought that is sort of like Taboo but there are no restrictions on how you can describe the words. It was very funny when Martin and Caroline were a team and it was their turn. Martin was describing the words and they were on a bit of a roll. I think he had started to get cocky, because towards the end of their round his clue was simply ‘Jam in it’. We all sort of had blank expressions like ‘is he saying “Jammin’ it” and it’s some sort of slang (he’s a teacher so maybe it’s something the kids are saying these days?) or “Jam in it” and if so Jam like the conservative or like a verb or what?’ Then he said ‘you put jam in it’. So he was describing a jar, but he had just gotten carried away like Caroline could read his mind and he didn’t have to give complete clues or something. For some reason we all found this extremely funny (you also have to imagine that Martin is a pretty deliberate and careful person which might have added to the humor of it because you expect his clues to make complete sense), and even now I am fighting a fit of laughter (as I’m at work I’m having to fight laughing out loud), but I don’t know how well it translates when written.

The next morning we got off to an early start. We had at lot of river to cover and had to have the barge back by 4 or 5 or something. It was a pretty miserable day, so we lucked out that our only full day on the boat was so nice. Again Caroline and I made a big breakfast (although we tried our hands at fried eggs this time – not bad, not bad!). We only stopped once, at a beautiful pub that had a few peacocks and a lovely area outside to take in the views of the river and trees.

A little while later we had returned the boats and were on our way home! It was such a lovely weekend; Monday always comes around much too quickly!

CLICK ON THE FIRST PICTURE OF ME AND CAROLINE COOKING BREAKFAST TO SEE ALL THE PICTURES FROM THE TRIP.

Easter weekend

Well it’s the first day back at work after the long Easter weekend. We had a really good four-day weekend. We managed to keep ourselves pretty busy, so it seems like it was a long break, which is just what we needed.

We put the house on the market last week. We didn’t expect that we would have viewings right away, due to the holiday and lots of people being away, so we planned to have a big spring clean on Friday. Turns out we had a viewing right away, on Thursday, so we got the house pretty tidy in a super-fast whirlwind cleaning session after work on Thursday before the viewers came by. Then Friday we had the massive cleaning session. As we were cleaning away (and looking pretty dirty and sweaty from it), we got a knock on the door from a couple who thought they had an appointment to view. We had two viewings scheduled for Saturday but none for Friday. John asked them if they could come back in ½ and hour, as had stuff everywhere (being that we were in the middle of our cleaning session) and were not presentable ourselves. So they agreed and we rushed like mad to get everything straightened up, including ourselves. And we put off lunch and waited and waited… and of course they never came back. I think they must have felt badly that we weren’t expecting them and decided not to bother us again, which is nice in theory but I suppose they didn’t consider how we rushed everything and were waiting around for them for ages. Oh well!

Friday night we went out to dinner with Scott, Gemma, Helen, and Wyn. We had a nice meal and went out for some drinks afterwards. It was so great to catch up with all of them as we hadn’t really seen each other in a while. Helen and Wyn had been in Scotland helping Wyn’s uncle deliver lambs. They had some very sweet stories to tell from that trip! They do it every year and always really enjoy it. And of course it gives the rest of us more mounting arguments against Wyn. He’s Welsh and it’s commonly known in England that the Welsh are sheep shaggers.

Saturday we had two viewings so we made ourselves scarce for the day. We started with lunch at Wagamama (Japanese noodle place). John had been craving it for a while so he was a very happy bunny. Then we went to a historic manor house that’s only a few minutes away from where we live, called The Vyne. It’s a national trust property, so quite nicely kept up. It’s one of those things that is right on your doorstep so you don’t think to go there for some reason. Anyway, we walked around the house and then took a walk around the grounds. It was a nice, relaxing visit.

In the evening we just had some snacks and watched Hitch. I had been craving popcorn for a few days, which is very normal for me, but we had none in the house for a while! The cravings were getting worse and worse as the days went on. I finally had some stocked up by Saturday so made some for the movie. I had been looking forward (and talking about it) all day. John kept trying to steal handfuls once I had made it and I had to make a lot of effort to keep him away from it! I told him I would make him some of his own, but he was only happy if he was stealing it from me. I’m afraid to say that on that particular night I was unable to share my popcorn with my beloved husband, as the cravings were just too great and I was just enjoying it too much to be charitable. I mean it had been quite a few days since the last time I had eaten any! But I made some more on Sunday and we shared it then.

Sunday we went to John’s mom’s for Easter. It was just the three of us as Michelle was with her boyfriend’s family. Madeline made lovely cottage pie for us, and we watched The Terminal. John spent the whole day trying to get her wireless broadband to work, and unfortunately wasn’t successful.

Monday we had tickets to see Arctic Monkeys in Bournemouth. We decided to make a day out of it and went to Corfe Castle around noon. We had a nice cream tea in the area village first, then made our way up to the castle. It’s actually ruins now, but it was really cool to walk around them. Unfortunately I hadn’t dressed warmly enough and it was quite exposed, so I was very cold throughout the visit.

After the castle we went to Swanage, which is a little seaside town. We walked along by the beach, then sat down for a while and watched a few dogs playing in the water. We were tempted to get some seaside fish and chips (apparently seaside is the best place to get fish and chips) but we just weren’t hungry enough because of the cream tea.

From there we went to Bournemouth. We spent ages driving around trying to find our hotel. Eventually we found it and got checked in. We walked into town and had some dinner at Pizza Express. The show was a little while later. It was good. Arctic Monkeys are quite new and only have one album’s worth of material which is quite fast and short anyway, so it wasn’t the longest performance I’ve seen. They had two opening acts. My friend Laura from work was there and she and her friend stood with us during the show, then the four of us went to a bar afterwards.

I had actually booked today as holiday, since we stayed in Bournemouth last night. But John hadn’t booked it off in the end, and he needed to be at work today for a workshop. So we left early so he could get to work for 9. I was going to go in then as well, but I felt hungover and tired so I only made it for a ½ day in the afternoon. I spent a couple of hours in the morning resting and watched an episode of 6 Feet Under. John couldn’t come and get me at lunch so I had to take a taxi into work! Being down to one car hasn’t been too big of a problem, but it’s not ideal to have to pay £7 to get to work! I guess I need to learn the bus schedule or something, although I don’t think there is a direct one to work from where I live.

Science

It’s Easter time! The best thing about Easter in the UK is we get Good Friday and Easter Monday off. So two four-day weeks in a row! It’s the first public holiday since New Year’s, so I’m quite ready for the break.

I got two chocolate Easter eggs at work today, one from the woman who sits next to me and one from our Admin Assistant. She sits next to my team and I think she favors us a bit since she’s closer to us than the other teams. So sweet of both of them!

I’m really bored at work right now. I think it’s slow for our whole department right now as we all seem to be biding our time by having long chin wags. Last week we had daily science lessons. We started with how the seasons happen. Did you know that the earth rotates on an axis, and as it rotates around the sun it approaches either the Tropic of Cancer, the Tropic of Capricorn, or the Equator. That’s a general summary. We used the sum of what four peoples could remember from science classes in middle school, plus a little help from the internet. Other ‘lessons’ from the week were if water really rotates in different directions depending on the hemisphere (I’ve seen it with my own eyes in Kenya, but my colleague was getting info on the internet that said it was a myth. He finally found a different article that convinced him it was true) and how magnetic fields work in relation to the poles.

Emily's bachelorette party

Friday evening after work I flew to Chicago for Emily’s bachelorette party. As usual, the flight from Indy to Chicago was late. I was lucky to get a flight up to Chicago at all, though, as the flights there before and after mine were cancelled! When the announced the cancellation of the second flight, they said there were no hotels or rental cars in the city and no available flights to Chicago for three days! It was final four weekend which was hosted in Indy, and everything was all booked up. I felt so sorry for the people on that flight. What are you meant to do if your flight is cancelled and you can rent a car or get a hotel room and you don’t know anyone in the city?!

We had several things preventing us from taking off on time: big thunderstorms with lots of lightning in Indy, strong winds in Chicago that were causing the control tower to delay flights, and our plan had a broken part. But despite all that we did eventually take off and only 2 ½ hours late or so.

I was supposed to take the train to Reena’s when I got in, but as it was late she surprised me by meeting me at the airport because she thought it was too late to take the train safely. We met Emily and three of the girls who were out for the bachelorette festivities out at a tapas restaurant, followed by a few drinks at a bar called Zella’s. Reena and Emily pulled out some funky moves when the songs were right, quite entertaining!

I stayed at Reena’s the whole weekend, and Saturday around noon we finally mosey-ed out to brunch. I had forgotten how nice American breakfasts are! We shared a scrambled egg sandwich on a bagel with hash browns and banana and walnut pancakes. Yum!

I was in the market for a pair of jeans, so Emily met us and we walked around Reena’s neighbourhood looking at various jeans. The sizes were in inches and I never know my size in that case so we all had a good laugh when a lot of them ended up being so tight that once I could hardly zip them up and once I did I was bursting out of them! I didn’t find the right pair in the end, which was probably better as the ones I was looking at were expensive.

The bachelorette activities started at three at Emily’s cousin’s house for the lingerie shower. It was April fool’s day and Reena and I tried to play a joke on her by giving her one pair of underwear between the both of us, but no one really got it because it was a nice pair of underwear. There wasn’t anywhere in Reena’s neighbourhood to buy a really ugly pair as there are mainly boutiques in her area. It would have been great to go somewhere where we could have bought a three-pack shrink-wrapped pair of cotton grannies, but it wasn’t to be.

The shower was good fun, and afterwards in the evening we went to a place called Create where you can make your own jewellery. There are loads of strands of different beads throughout the store, as well as stones and other things. We made necklaces for the wedding. It was really fun! Plus we were able to bring in drinks so we could carry on with the fun.

We stayed there for a couple of hours, then went to another of Emily’s cousin’s house to continue the evening. We played drinking games until the stripper came! Emily didn’t know they’d hired a stripper so it was a fun surprise.

The guy was dressed in Top Gun gear and was called ‘Iceman’. It was hilarious! I don’t think I’ve seen a male stripper before and it was really funny watching him dance around and try to ‘seduce’ Emily with his moves. I guess I think of the whole stripper-dancing-around-thing as a thing women do.

Anyway, he focused a lot on Emily but then wanted to involve us all so we each had to take a sucker (lolly) from his thong. Oh yeah, he had stripped down to a black thong that had FRINGE hanging off of it! We could give him a dollar and pick someone else who had to get their sucker, and in order to get it he would do different things to us involving flipping us around the place. Reena ended up on his shoulders and then was flipped upside down! Emily had to do this swan thing where she was suspended from his waist and it looked like she was flying. It makes me laugh just thinking of it! Somehow my flip resulted in me being on the ground (I think that was the plan, but there had been a lot of drinks by that point so I can’t say for sure!). One of the girls is newly pregnant so she didn’t want to be flipped, but instead of ‘leaving her out’ (I’m sure she would have been SO disappointed!) he made her get two suckers (eating for 2), but he didn’t flip her.

Then we had to take shots of something (vodka?) off his stomach, which at the time was really funny (especially when we thought only Emily was going to have to do it) and Reena rightly mentioned later is actually pretty gross in hindsight. Emily’s cousin Christy and I went together (in my practical mind it meant we’d each have less shot to take by going at the same time – boy do I know how to party!).

When he was finished with his performance he hung around for ages. He lived in the neighbourhood and was talking about his dog and things like that. Anne (the hostess) was saying how embarrassing it’s going to be when she inevitably runs into him at the neighbourhood grocery store!

Next we had some curiously shaped cake and Emily, Reena, Christy and I went to a bar to dance. The time went to daylight savings that night so it was 3 before we even left the house. Emily wore a tiara that her cousins had given her that said ‘Bachelorette’ on it, so the DJ could see it was a special evening for her and invited her up to the booth and let her pick some songs. She tried to get some Michael Jackson on in honor of our good ol’ days (she, Reena and I used to love to dance to Starting Something in Broadripple), but he didn’t have any.

Reena and I got home around 5:30 am. I had completely lost my voice. By the time we got ready for bed and Reena had made and eaten some mozzarella sticks it was coming up to 6. We’re such rock stars! I can’t remember the last time I was out so late. What am I saying? This is my blog and I’ll paint whatever picture I want! I got to bed that late all the time because I PARTY!

CLICK THE PICTURE OF ICEMAN FOR A LINK TO ALL THE PICTURES FROM THAT WEEKEND. HOWEVER, BE WARNED THAT THEY ARE PICTURES OF GIRLS HAVING FUN AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY AND NOT APPROPRIATE FOR THE MORE SENSITIVE VIEWER. ;-)

Indy

I’ve just gotten back from Indy and Chicago this morning. My flight arrived before 6 am. I have come straight into work for a full day to save on holiday and to keep me up so I can try to get the jet lag sorted straight away. However, now it’s 10:30 am and I am really struggling. I’m really, really tired.

John has gone to Madrid this week. He drove to Heathrow this morning for his flight, and I was able to see him for about 2 minutes as he got out of the car to catch his flight and I got in the car to drive home. I was glad at least that I got to see him at all. Originally we had agreed he would leave the car on a certain floor and I would pick it up from there as we probably wouldn’t have enough time to meet. It’s only because he was running late that I ended up seeing him at all.

My trip was really good. I got there about 10 days ago, on a Friday. I didn’t have the time or energy to do anything by the time I got in, so I pretty much went straight to bed. Saturday my brother’s family came over to my mom’s (where I was staying). I got to meet my newest nephew Robby for the first time. He was really adorable. Jesse is 2 ½ now. He says and does some pretty funny stuff. My aunt and uncle came over later with one of my cousin’s kids as well as one of my other cousins and his kids. It was great to see everyone. I couldn’t believe how much the kids had grown! I know it’s to be expected, but it also took me by surprise a little.

In the evening I had plans to go to dinner with my friend Tom and his girlfriend Tracy. I had never met her before so was looking forward to that. Right before I had left England I found out Reena was going to be in town from Chicago, so I knew I would see her at some point in the night. Saturday morning before my family arrived I was making plans with Reena and I found out Emily was in town from San Francisco! So we were able to have an impromptu reunion.

Tom had picked a really fancy restaurant called Elements downtown. Tracy knew the chef and he sat us and came out to talk to us again at the end of dinner. The food was amazing, and because she was friends with the chef he sent out two free starters for each of us!

Reena wasn’t able to come to dinner, so afterwards Tom, Tracy, Emily and I met Reena and her cousin Sunil in Broadripple for some drinks. We started at this fun bar called Bruges which serves Belgian beer (funny that!). Afterwards we went to the bar at Ambrosia for old time’s sake and had cosmos. We had a great night reminiscing and catching up. After a while Emily started to feel not so well and wanted to go back to Tom’s (where we were staying), and we did let her… but not until after a stop at Pizza Express for some breadsticks!

Tom and Tracy’s house was really cool. Tracy has owned it for a few years and has completely remodelled it. They have the sweetest golden retriever/lab mix as well as a beautiful long-haired black cat. John’s favourite dog breeds are retrievers and labs. I know they are good dogs but everyone seems to have those sorts of breeds so I’ve never been that into them. But their dog really won me over! I told her she had to stop being so cute and sweet because we couldn’t have John being right! :-)

I worked all week in the Indy office, so that kept my days busy. I got loads done as I always do when I’m in that office. I don’t know why it makes such a difference being over there, but I always get a lot done when I work over there temporarily.

Monday evening mom and I met Dusty and family at Chuck E Cheese. It was fun seeing Jesse play with all the different games. I spent a lot of time holding and kissing Robby. Jesse isn’t used to me as you can imagine and he was pretty shy around me, so I tried to give him some space so I didn’t overwhelm him. Dusty and I had a few competitions while we were there – ski ball, a basketball game, and air hockey. I may or may not have won these challenges, but if I didn’t win then you should keep in mind the fact that Dusty’s a cheater. As we were leaving I explained to Jesse that his daddy is my brother, the way Robby is his brother. He seemed pretty interested in this and seemed to warm up to me then, but unfortunately I didn’t think to have this conversation until 2 minutes before we left. So next time I see him I will be starting with this info!

Tuesday night I took mom and Jim out to Bonefish Grill as a thank you for their hospitality.

Wednesday I went to my dad and Gretchen’s. Her parents also came over. It was great to see all of them. They’ve been redecorating their house and it looks so different. It’s really beautiful. Everything has changed from the carpet to the ceilings, the fireplace to the furniture. Also I got to meet their puppy Sammy. She’s a 7 month old Britney spaniel that they’ve had for a few months. She’s very cute and completely nuts. Their other dog Willie is an adult dog now (she was a pup last I saw her) and she is a big sweetheart. Anyway, we had a lovely evening of catching up.

Thursday mom and I drove around the area where I grew up. It was so interesting to see how much the place had changed. My old high school now has a humongous football stadium. It’s really nice and completely unexpected.

Friday evening was my flight out to Chicago. Two flights to Chicago – the one earlier and the one later – were cancelled due to weather or something. We were lucky our flight even made it out, even though I was supposed to leave at 6:30 and didn’t take off until after 9:00 due to a broken part in the plane, a big thunderstorm in Indy, and windy conditions in Chicago.

Indy was completely crazy at the time because the college basketball championships were being held. When the flight after ours was cancelled the person who had to break the news said he was really sorry but the flight was cancelled, there are no hotels available, no rental cars, and no other flights out for three days. What those poor people did I have no idea.

CLICK THE PICTURE OF ME AND ROBBY ABOVE TO LINK TO ALL THE PICTURES FROM INDY.