I'm home

I made it through the epic journey to the States and I'm now back home and I'm happy to report I am now in my nice comfortable bed. Heating has been off, so I'm freezing, but I'm home - yippee hoary!!!

I'll tell you all about my trip as soon as I can. For now, I must get sleep because I have to go back to reality and my job tomorrow morning. Alarm clocks, yuck!

A lot can change in 2 years..

School photos are something to be dreaded as a child (and for that mater as an adult if you work in a school). Last year I was not in school on photo day, but check out the difference in my picture from when I started to now. I think I look younger ... how can that be?

Happy Thanksgiving?

One of our supply teachers (substitute teacher) is Canadian, and today is Canadian Thanksgiving. I only met Alison a little over a week ago, but she's lovely and very very new to London. She came to London around a month ago and had no plans to cook turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving. This is not acceptable says me, we must find turkey. Turkey dinners aren't readily served this time of year in London, so I offered to cook at my flat. I am so glad Alison accepted the offer. I had a fantastic time getting to know her better, and really enjoyed celebrating Thanksgiving with her.

Alison with her super yummy turkey dinner

Attempt 3 of a self portrait with the turkey dinner, it just wasn't meant to be. Most of our faces are in it and you can kind of see Alison's dinner!
Shortly after Alison and I sat down to eat Clare and Kate got home to enjoy the leftovers.
Kate, Clare & Alison

"Don't take that, I'm warning you"
Alison and Clare

Kate hiding from the camera.
Kate just "moved in" yesterday, she's moving to Amsterdam in 2 weeks and had given up her flat, so I offered my futon bed in the lounge to her in the interim.

After Thanksgiving meal, Clare had the wonderful idea of playing a game. Fun was had, especially by me - I won! (I'm such a sore looser!)

After the game, I walked Alison to the bus stop, Kate and Clare headed to the grocery store, and I....

...I had to clean this disaster up
including the first attempt at carrots, that I burnt. I never burn my food, but this is the 3rd time I've burnt carrots - what's up with that?!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving all!

Oxford Street on a Saturday Afternoon - what a mistake!

My iPhone has been playing up for a few weeks - when I get a text message it doesn't always "dwiddle" (ie make a noise). BEFORE you ask, yes I checked to make sure the volume was on and the settings were set to "dwiddle". As I had a Saturday free from any other plans, I decided to book an appointment with at the "Genius Bar" in the Apple shop. This plan was meant to be (pardon the pun) but genius in itself: Part 1 - I get my phone sorted; Part 2 - I'm in the city and I can meet a friend for lunch; Part 3 - I need to buy a top to wear to an American football game, suitable for reuniting with people from my high school that I haven't seen in 10 years (ie I need to find something to wear to my reunion). My genius plan failed to take into account that Oxford street is swarming with tourists and shoppers on any given day, Saturday afternoon being the worst of the worst! It is actually quite amazing to watch it (it being the masses of people of all different walks of life), but close to what my version of hell would be. I am NOT a fan of crowds! They are SO very frustrating.
I did go to the genius bar, and they sorted out my iPhone, well by sorted I mean they replaced it with a new handset. This meant that for the rest of the day I had no-one's phone number so I couldn't call anyone, sniff sniff! It also meant that as I was walking through the crowds and on the train ride home I had no music to listen to. Hard times! It also meant that I lost a week's worth of text messages and a few other things on my phone. Why you ask? The last time I plugged my iPhone into the computer (which sync's the iPhone and more importantly backs up the iPhone) was on 2 October. There were a few text messages that I am really sad to have lost, but I'll live, and I have learned the importance of regular backups - especially before a visit to the genius bar!!!
IPhone sorted I met up with Hayley and we went for lunch. We found a random "old man's" pub that was a great find! My mother would be very jealous of my lunch - Carrot, parsnip, onion and some other vegetable sausages and mash: a healthier option to the English classic of bangers (sausages) and mash (mash potatoes). Hayley kindly (I mean kindly with utmost sincerity) listened to me babble on about my life's goings on. I truly monopolised the conversation today. (No snide comments needed about this not being surprising, usually I am an equal chatter and listener.... at least I think I am.)

Hayley and I left the pub in search of a coffee shop for a relaxing cuppa, but the area of London we were in was absolutely heaving with people which makes everything stressful. So we opted not to stand in a queue of 20 minutes just for a coffee. Instead Hayley once again pulled out the trademarks of a truly great friend and agreed to help me search for something to wear to the football game. A fruitless adventure in the end, but it was good to have Hayley's helpful advise and fashion sense.

I guess even fruitless shopping is fun with a friend by your side (oh dear - how cheesy did that sound!)

I don't know that Hayley will approve of me posting this picture, but this is just such a genuine smile and I love it!

The sun was out, the weather was lovely, and even with the stresses that I let the crowds give me today, it was a good day. I had a smile plastered to my face for the majority of it. We like days like this!

Fishies

Sunday I was meant to meet a friend in the country and have a day out of the stress and pressure and high pollution of London. The weather however did not co-operate, so we met in London and went t o the aquarium instead.

This was probably my favourite tank. The colours of these fish were amazing!!

I could hear my mother saying "these are the type of fish we had as a child living in Guam" piranhas, chomp chomp!
a camouflaged sideways fish
There were a open topped pool of sting rays that would swim right up to us (which I was actually quite started by - who knew I was a big fraidy cat of sting rays!)

(can you hear the jaws theme music playing)

some fishies that reminded me of my childhood -
catfish

A barn dance ... in London?!

Yes, that's right. My good friend, Clare (who also invited me to the street party), invited me to a barn dance her church was having Saturday night. Oh what fun it was!

Clare and I

This is Sophie, myself and Clare ... all dressed up "cowboy style", complete with pigtails - any excuse to dress up a bit

dancing the night away

A sweet seester!

My sister sent me a care package of jewelry she no longer wore (my goodness! it must be about a year ago now, can't believe it's been that long!), click here if you want to remind yourself. Whenever I wear a piece of her jewelry I always think of her and what a sweet seester I have to send me goodies all the way across the Atlantic.
In this wonderful care package there were a few "interesting" pieces of jewelry that made me question my sister's fashion sense. In particular there is this red and orange, like red red and shocking orange, necklace that I was extremely unsure about. Against the odds, I decided to wear it on Valentines day (I was looking for a subtle red to wear) and actually changed my mind about the necklace. I've only worn it once since, but today the necklace is once again adorning my fair neck and I'm enjoying it. Good purchase sister, I should have never doubted your impeccable taste!

I love this photo ... there looks to be a lot of mischief behind that smile!

The shed disaster!

It's not good!!! I guess while the first shed "fix" was deteriorating, water was seeping in. And it was getting in (what I thought) would be water proof boxes - turns out they weren't! My wonderful Thanksgiving decorations - ruined. Destroyed. So sad. They used to be so nice. Sniff sniff.

Remember how good they looked last year ...

This is how I found them on Saturday...

Water also got into my "tub" of extra linen - a sleeping bag, wardrobe cover and a couple blankets. Wardrobe cover got thrown away. I've washed the other stuff on a pretty heavy duty wash once and it's currently washing for a second time - sheesh that stuff s.t.u.n.k!

a few of the unrecoverable linens

Some of the non-salvageable decorations

My mother brought over all of my Thanksgiving decorations when she (and my family) visited me in 2003. Some of them she bought for me, some of them were hand-me-downs, all of them were special to me because my mom brought them over for me :-(

I'm not sure if you can make these out or not. The Thanksgiving Mom came over she handwrote several place settings with bible verses and quotes on being thankful. maybe cost 50 cents, but to me (to be cliche) they were priceless. **Sigh**

more decorations ruined check out the sexy fuzz growing

Well, I've always had a hard time getting rid of stuff, I'm a hoarder like me maa - this was a good way to decide what needed to go! Still it could have been worse, the whole shed wasn't flooded, just the front right side (where the biggest part of the crack was).

Coming to America...

I’m not a happy person in the mornings. I don’t like having to get myself out of bed. My bed is comfortable and warm and I get to be asleep and relaxed in it, so when I have to force myself into the cold air and make my body function, I’m not happy until I eventually wake up (usually by the time I get to work I’m my normal happy Karen). This morning as I was running around getting ready, running late as per my norm, the door buzzer rang. It was the postman with a package …how nice it would be if that was my passport. As it takes two – three weeks to get my passport, I knew it wouldn’t be, but I could still live in hope for the brief 20 seconds it took me to get to the main door.
Guess what the postman had brought me ….. it WAS my passport! Yippee hurrah! What a brilliant start to my day!

On the way to work I tried to sing “Coming to America” by Neil Diamond. Watch out America, you gave me my passport and I’m on my way!


Get Your Own Free Hypster.com Playlist.

Another fun-filled weekend

Friday night I was due to meet a friend in Crystal Palace (the part of London where I live) at 7 ... after leaving work late, and still trying to fit in my exercise and a bath, no surprises that I was running extremely late to meet my friend. I ended up making it to the pub about 20 minutes late, but my friend had a drink waiting for me - what a brilliant friend!!! We then went for a Thai (after being turned away from 2 places because they were fully booked - who knew Crystal Palace was so busy on a Friday?!) and then finished the night at this new cocktail bar - very swanky and plush, we like!

Didn't get home till around 1:30am and had to get up and drive to the Midlands Saturday at 8am! Oh how much I hate to get up early on a Saturday - oh how much more I hate to be woken up by an alarm on a Saturday! I did manage to drag myself out of bed and made it to Ilkeston to visit with the Bullocks (my adoptive English family) to visit and meet Josiah - the newest addition (not so new anymore, but still the newest!) to the Bullock family.

Jenny & Josiah (Mother & son) Ashley & Aaron got hold of my phone / camera while I was there and had a bit of fun. Boys will be boys!

Saturday night I meet up with a couple of friends and we ended up going out for a Chinese and then Back to Nick - stuffed and tired. S stole my phone and was playing with it, so I stole Nick's phone ... here, I'm actually trying to figure out how to get a picture of me to pop up on the phone when ever Nick looks at it. I was in a devious mood! Nick is entertaining himself with some sort of reading material here.

There was more phone fun ... Nick taking a picture of me taking a picture of him. It was a silly night, what more can I say?

Sunday morning was church, then back to the Bullocks for a yummy Sunday roast dinner. After the dishes were done, I met a friend for a quick drink before heading back to London. I did stop by Castle Donnington on my way through and had a lovely visit with a family I used to babysit for. It'd only been a year and a half since I'd last seen them, but boy how Jess had grown!!! It was a really good visit before having to sit in traffic for the next 4 hours with everyone else trying to get back into London.

The Shed Fiasco, Part Deux

Anyone remember the handy work I did on my shed back in February? Click here if you'd like to remind yourself of the fun. Well, you might NOT be surprised to hear that a bit of craft glue, brown packing tape and cling film didn't last the test of time.

On to ROUND 2:

I noticed a few weeks ago that water was going into the shed. So last Sunday after church I stopped by a DIY shop to get some duck tape - "that's better than brown tape" I think to myself - "It'll do the trick". In I go to DIY shop and can't find the tape, so ask a shop assistant who kindly showed me where it was. While I had his attention I explained my shed dilemma and asked him if there was a glue type stuff that would fix it, he suggested No More Nails, gave me the bottle and I happily skipped to the til to pay (ok, maybe I didn't skip but I was feeling successful in my DIY store outing). While I was waiting to pay I noticed the bottle wasn't a squeezey bottle, but need a gun-type-thingy-ma-doodle. You know, one of these:

So out of the queue to find the shop assistant man and this was the conversation.
Me: This bottle doesn't squeeze
Shop Assistant Man: Don't you have a gun?
Me: I'm a girl. Why would I have a gun?!
Shop Assistant Man: [chuckles] I'll show you where the guns are. [chuckles again] "I'm a girl" That's made my day." [more chuckling]

I did say it to be humorous, but let's be honest here - I AM a girl, why would I have a gun-type-thingy-ma-doodle at home?!!

So this was the state of the shed lid when I started.

Had to scrape all the nasty rotten-ness off it, then started gluing. Notice I have no protective gear on, so glue that permanently sticks you together ended up all over my hands.
Step 3: Duck tape over the glue while it dries
The finished product - vwa'la!

Remember the comment about having glue on my hands - well this stuff doesn't want to come off - AT ALL! Luckily it takes 24 hours to set, so I did glue my hands together. I washed my hands and washed them again and again, but glue didn't budge - I even used soap!!! Had thought that I could use white spirit ( I've used this in past to remove something - who knows what...after all, I am a girl :-) and knew I had some with my paint. Well, I thought I had some, turned out it was turpentine, flatmate assured me it was the same stuff so off I go to clean my hands with turpentine. Worked a treat - but left my hands reeking!!! So I wash my hands with soap - three times. They still stunk! What to do?! In my head pops my aunt Gail. When I was younger she got sprayed by a skunk and she smooshed a few dozen tomatoes on herself, saying it helped with the smell (if memory servers she still stunk, but maybe not as much).

I didn't have any fresh tomatoes, but I did have a tin of tomatoes to play with - it was actually pretty fun to smoosh tomatoes on my hands - kinds of gooey and yucky, but cool all the same. I love the kid side of me :-)

And what do you know - tomatoes got rid of the smell!! Thanks Aunt Gail! See I was paying attention and learning when I was a kid!

One week and 4 days later - it's still water proof!

Jet setter Karen makes a flying come back

Did you like what I did there? Good title, eh?! Well it amused me anyway :-) Simple things, simple minds and all that.

The plans are in motion and the plane ticket is bought for me to go to the States for a visit mid-October. All I need now is my passport - very key to traveling abroad, a passport is. I failed to plan ahead and time got away from me. My passport ran out in August, and I never sent it off to be renewed - plenty of time I told myself. Well time passed more quickly than I had planned and before I new it, I only had three weeks before I was due to fly out. I went to the American Consulate last week to renew my passport and they assure me that I should have it back in plenty of time to travel. (I'm unsure how they define "plenty" as it takes 10-15 business days - that's all I had: 15 business days!) Fingers crossed that all goes according to plan and I pray that I get my passport back the week before I travel. Even laid back, last minute, flexible me will start to panic a bit it I don't get my passport back a few days before I'm due to travel. I've spent quite a bit of money on my tickets, I'd hate to have that money wasted!

Keep your fingers crossed and your prayers coming and I'll see you in a few weeks!

I'm tentatively planning on being in Paris from 17 Oct to 20/21st Oct, then driving up to Arkansas to visit with my sister and her family til that weekend and then up to Kansas City. I'm due to head back to London on 30th. SO ... if you're in (or around) any of these places and fancy meeting up - it'd be great to see you, get in touch!!!

Monday madness

This scene look familiar? It's TOO familiar for me!!!! In June I was approaching a level crossing while the barriers were up and I decided it was safe to go through. It wasn't. As I started going through the crossing the barriers started coming down - I could have wet myself I was that scared!!! I mashed my foot as far down as the accelerator would go and made it through the barriers - sigh of relief I was alive. As I then turned the corner, I was greeted by a bank of police officers who where raining in all the level crossing violators. The police officer who was at the level crossing came high-tailing it to where I was stopped and got in my face. "I'm PC blah blah blah, Do you know why you were stopped? Do you know how stupid that stunt was you pulled? Would you like me to arrest you and take you down to the station? Do you know I can do you for dangerous driving and take your license off you?" I had started to answer one of his questions, but got the distinct impression that the questions were rhetorical, so I just listened (as respectfully as possible). Off goes the angry policeman and my details are taken by some trainee policemen. Nothing like a training operation to be stopped by. Before I left I asked what would happen and was told I'd get a court summons with the offense. I should expect 6 points on my drivers license* and a hefty fine.
Roll forward to two weeks ago, I finally get something through the post summoning me to court in two weeks (today). I spoke to a solicitor and the legal advise team at the court house. I'm not able to afford the legal fees of a solicitor , and I was told that I shouldn't need one - 95% of traffic cases won't have solicitors and the ones that do generally are facing a suspension of their license. I also spoke to a friend who's just completed her law degree and she had some good thoughts on my situation. Until Sunday night, I was not really phased by going to court. Sunday night the anxiety started which grew into fear which grew into knots in my stomach. I knew that my trepidation / fear / anxiety was not justified - the WORST that could have happened was that my license got taken off me. I CAN live without a license. I know this. It WOULD be irritating, but I'd manage. I woke up feeling sick. I can't remember EVER feeling this way. I was OVERLY emotional. Finally 10 minutes before I was due to go into court I broke - proper inconsolable crying. I was so irritated. I went into the loo and tried to pull myself together. Red nosed, puffy eyed, I went into court. I managed to get half way through the proceedings when I started to cry. I KNOW this couldn't have helped (how many people do they have come into court and sob for sympathy - crocodile tears!). I ended up with a hefty fine of £350 (approx $675) and 3 points on my license. Not bad considering what I feared. But still really hurts!!! Boy have I learned my lesson!
Silver lining: at least my "stunt" didn't have any fatal accidents and no-one got hurt. Lesson learned.

*at 12 points your license is suspended for a year. A normal speeding fine is £60 and 3 points on your license. Points stay on your license for around 3 or4 years.

Weekend Shenanigans

Tonight I'm going for a few drinks (don't worry, I'm driving, so will be sober...just for the record, so you know I don't "have a problem") after work as a colleague is leaving to go back home to Australia tomorrow (actually it's the same guy that I'm in a photo with on my blog last Saturday). Then meeting a friend for a couple drinks later tonight. Tomorrow I'm having brunch with another friend in the City and then we're headed around London for something called "Open House" where buildings not generally open to the public are open to the public to tour around. Saturday night I've been invited by Ed (friend /colleague) do go out for a few drinks. Sometime this weekend I'm hoping to go see Lindsay's (old flatmate) new flat and drop stuff she left at my house at hers. I've also got a friend, staying with me for a few days. I've also got to get a load of work done before Monday. And Monday I'm at court because of a traffic violation; I'm quite anxious about this and fear that I should have gotten a solicitor. Say a little prayer for me Sunday night as you go to bed.
That's me and my weekend. Busy busy. And you thought you had a lot going on :-)

Creative Karen

Yesterday was a friend's birthday. A friend that is a guy. So I agonised (ok, agonised is a bit strong of a word) over what to get him. About a month ago we somehow had a half hour conversation about hoovering (vacuuming for those American readers) and how rubbish his hoover was. He really wanted a Dyson. As his birthday was coming up, I suggested he should ask for money towards a Dyson from his friends and family. He poo-pooed the idea, saying his family didn't really "do" birthdays.
I'm obviously not going to go out and spend £160 ($300) on a birthday present for a friend - if I had that money I would, but I don't have that kind of spare cash. So what's a gal to do. Perfect fun present - get his a miniature Dyson (kid's toy kind of thing), couldn't find one. So back to the drawing board of what to get said friend for a birthday present. Monday we were having a conversation by text message and made an off handed sarcastic remark about paper mache'-ing (we were trying to decided what to do on his birthday). Light bulb moment for Karen - tie the 2 random conversations together (wanting a Dyson and paper mache'-ing) and vwa-la - the perfect fun present ... a paper mache'd Dyson.
I forgot to get pictures of the boxes that I taped together before painting, so you'll have to use your imagination. This is made up of a toothpaste box, a toilet paper cylinder thing, and a couple other random toiletry boxes. Then paper mache'd with glue and an old magazine (very rushed process as it was after midnight on Monday night).

Paint drying on Tuesday after work (I had to paint the bits that were going to be yellow, white first as the paper showed through the yellow but not the white - go figure.)

A handle and yellow paint added Tuesday evening

Paint job completed late Tuesday night

Details added Wednesday morning. The finished product:

Completed with electrical cord!

I showed my impressive work of art to one of the art teachers here. She said it was good enough to pass for a year 8 student (9th grade) :-)