Kim's Blog

In Sickness and in Health, Indeed

2008-12-10T03:37:00.000-08:00

Henry and I have been sick for 5 days now.

It started on Friday when I was working from home and started feeling a little woozy. When Henry came home he put a hand to my forehead and declared that I was on fire with fever and needed to lay down. A few hours later he was laying in bed next to me with a 38c fever himself. We spent the next two days laying about and complaining about our fevers - Henry was too hot, I couldn't stop freezing, and we were both feeling achy and gross at all times. It's been awful. We've stayed home from work this entire week so far, and by now the sickness has sort of moved into our sinuses and lungs, making for uncomfortable sleep and a terrible lung-shattering cough. Our house now looks like an hospital dispensary, with pills laying about on every surface and dirty kleenex within a 5 foot radius of every trash can in the house. It is not a pretty sight.

Henry approaches all things, including dying of ebola, as a sort of scientific experiment. When we went to Asda today to stock up on chicken noodle soup, cough syrup, and ibuprofen, Henry became entranced by a bottle of Kilkof, the "Oral solution for the relief of coughs, colds, and sore throats." It wasn't until we got home and Henry had his 10ml ready to swallow that we read the ingredient list: Treacle, honey, glucose, sucrose, tolu tincture, caramel, liquorice, chloroform (!), acetic acid, anaesthetic ether, anise oil, and purified water. Active ingredients included, among other things, Ipecacuanha (to make you puke) and Capsicum. It smelled like rubbing alcohol and had the consitency of baby dirahhea, not that this stopped Henry from throwing it back with a laugh. His first response was, "It's like a cross between Listerine and getting kicked in the mouth by a horse." His second response was a more succint, "Fucking hell." I take this to be a kill or cure remedy for sure!

We are continuing to suffer through, but there's no end in sight. I have started brining up the possibility of going to the doctor, which we likely will do if we stay home from work again tomorrow. I feel like this is the beginning to one of those horror films where everyone gets sick and dies and only a few people are left to wander the earth alone! It's pretty bad here. Hopefully we'll get a bit better soon as we've got Henry's university friends coming down on Saturday for our big Christmas party, and we're only 10 days away from a trip to the US!!

Cake!

2008-12-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

This is what I got after 10 weeks at cake class. It's not as pretty as what I could do with more time, but damn, did it taste gooood.

USA! USA!

2008-11-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

Whee! What a week. I would have blogged sooner, but we had a huge event at work on Thursday, which meant I had tons of meetings all day Wednesday and was very hung over on Friday.

I spent most of Tuesday with my stomach in knots. Would Obama pull through? Would this be the end of Sarah Palin? Would my country make the right decision? Were we ready to? It was awful. We're 8 hours ahead of the West Coast, so results didn't start rolling in until 3am my time. I went to sleep at 11pm and woke up at 3 to check the internet. I saw that Obama had 207 electoral votes - not including California, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii, which would all go blue and easily push him over the mark. I went back to sleep with a smile on my face and woke up at 5am to run down and watch his victory speech on the computer. It was awesome to see everyone so excited and so hopeful! I also watched McCain's concession speech and was so shocked at how many people booed the new president. I thought that was a total lack of respect. Still, I am grateful that Obama won and I was sort of high about it all day Wednesday.

One thing that did strike me was how many emails I received from friends of ours over here, and how many people asked me about the election once they identified my accent. I think Europeans were just as excited as I was when Obama was elected! It's been a long eight years for the rest of the world, too.

I'm watching!

2008-11-04T06:20:00.001-08:00

GO OBAMA!!

Just so you know

2008-10-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

This is how parts of the rest of the world view the American election. This is from Mark Steel, a commentator with the UK newspaper, The Independent.

I do not agree that John McCain is idiotic and I don't think he didn't act heroically in Vietnam, but the rest of this article was pretty funny.
_______________________

I'm still cacking myself. I know all the commentators are saying Obama's already won but I find myself scouring the internet for reassuring polls, and there'll be an article from Nevada quoting a truck driver that's supporting McCain, and I'm like a hypochondriac that's discovered a lump, frozen with fear and convinced this means the Republicans will win and reintroduce slavery and make it illegal for any creature to evolve.

Because it ought to be utterly totally wrapped up, as the Republicans have had the worst campaign that could ever be possible. The candidate looked like there couldn't possibly be anyone in the country more idiotic, but he scoured the continent, found someone who was and made her his deputy. Then a disastrous economic crisis began weeks before the election while they're in charge, then their own side started deserting to Obama, they've been caught spending half the economy on dresses, but they're STILL only a few per cent behind.

McCain could announce he'd bomb Argentina for being too near the start of the alphabet, flash at Oprah Winfrey shouting "Hey Joe the plumber, there's ONE waterworks that doesn't need fixing" during the national anthem, reveal he was chairman of a company that's been selling teddy bears that turn out to be stuffed with petrol-soaked semtex, and admit he didn't go to Vietnam at all but spent the whole war in the bath. And the following day we'd hear that a string of gaffes had caused Obama's lead to climb to SIX per cent.

So the next day McCain and Palin could go on Russell Brand's radio show, ring Obama's dying grandmother and yell,"We screwed your grandson" on her answer machine, and the day after the gap would be back to five per cent again.

At his rallies McCain looks demented, and one of his most stirring closing slogans is "As President I will put America first." Then his supporters cheer, as if they're thinking "Thank God he got THAT right." As if there was a chance he might have said, "As President of America I will put New Zealand first. Bollocks to America, that place got me shot down in Vietnam."

Now the Republicans appear to be at war with themselves, blaming each other for the disasters, and there must be a chance they'll give up altogether, with McCain saying, "Oh sod it, I never wanted to be President anyway, as I want to be a lap dancer." Then we'll read he's gone SEVEN per cent behind in the polls.

Even if you had no interest in politics, one glance at the two candidates should make it obvious who was more assured and competent. And if you have a slight interest in politics then you'll notice that one candidate supported a disastrous war and the other one didn't.

It's as if someone on Strictly Come Dancing one week wet themselves mid-samba, then slipped in their own puddle, drop-kicking the judges and shorting out the electrics and then Bruce Forsyth said, "Well, it's still very close who's come last this week so keep those votes rolling in."

One reason why it remains closer than it should be is obvious. Before the election's over, there'll be at least one Republican supporter on Fox News who'll say, "I think that one of the areas in which McCain scores heavily over his opponent is he's proved himself far more adept and capable, over the years, at being white. And for all Senator Obama's flair and charisma this is a skill he clearly lacks."

In one sense it may seem ridiculous to get over-excited about Obama. Far from promising anything radical, he's friendly with the wealthiest section of Wall Street, suggests he'd bomb Pakistan, and has no desire to challenge the greed of corporate America. But society isn't just propelled by the policies of leaders, it's driven by the actions of millions. And Obama has come to represent the voice of those who wish America, and the world, to be more equal, less prone to crazy wars and closer to the values of civil rights. This isn't just because he's black, as this wouldn't have been possible if the candidate was Colin Powell.

If it wasn't for the civil rights campaign and the movement against the Iraq war, Obama's campaign couldn't have taken off. So for Obama to win would be an inspiration to all those who supported those values, and a humiliating defeat for all those who opposed them, even if Obama himself may well betray those ideas.

But if McCain wins, imagine how that will transform electioneering. In general elections around the world each candidate will strive to come over as more incompetent and idiotic than the other, starting party political broadcasts by announcing that they don't believe in gravity, then accidentally setting fire to themselves and choosing Rita Fairclough from Coronation Street as their deputy before saying they didn't realise that she wasn't real.

See, there's a lot at stake and I'm right to be worried.

Flamers

2008-10-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Take it elsewhere. If you feel the need to find a venue for your own political views, get your own blog. I don't need to read and moderate your intolerant and ignorant rants.

And if you disagree with what I say on my blog, STOP READING IT. If you're a friend or family member, you know how I feel and just skip to the next post. You obviously aren't open to a polite discussion, because you're not providing your email address or name, so there's no point in trying to have an intelligent conversation with you. I'm happy for you to make use of your own first amendment rights on your own blog (which I will not hunt down, read, or flame). I just don't have the patience to read your drivel, especially if I've already read it on someone else's website and you've just plagiarized it to post on mine. Please note that at least I cited Dan Savage when I borrowed his work!

So begone from here. You're not welcome, this is a personal blog not a political one (although I feel that I have a right to post my own views occasionally), and if you need a soapbox, get yer own.

Does that make me anti-American?

2008-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know it has been a while since I posted. I've been thinking about stuff I wanted to post about, but mostly I've been working, being sick, and watching the election news, so I didn't have time to get around to it.

This morning, however, I had two emails in my inbox. Both were comments on my post, "Well Said", which was a quote of Dan Savage's column on Sarah Palin. And oh my god, did those two comments get my blood churning.

First of all, let me just say that I have already voted. For Obama. Check's in the mail, people, no one can change my vote now. So these comments from random people won't do anything to make my vote swing towards McCain/Palin.

What is really getting me stirred up about these particular comments is the insinuation that I should have been HAPPY to vote for McCain/Palin in the first place because Sarah Palin is a woman. To quote, "But as usual, liberal feminists only want it their way and don't want "that type of woman" if that woman doesn't dance to their tune." Um, yeah, no shit. I do not want "that type of woman" running my country, because that woman stands against everything I believe is best for my country. Why should I vote for her because she's a lady? And, to be fair, I wasn't going to vote for McCain no matter who he picked, so why would his choice of VP sway my vote? What would that say about me, and my beliefs, if I was so easily turned away from what I believe is the right path for America because the Republicans put a woman on the ticket? Sarah Palin is anti-choice, anti-gun control, and advocates teaching creationism in schools. I wouldn't vote for her if she were my own sister, much less just because we're both the same sex. It's insulting that some people think they could throw a skirt at me and say, "We gave you a woman, what more do you want?" I want a leader who thinks that if gay people want to get married, more power to them and they should have the right to do so. I want a leader who doesn't think it's crazy for people who make more than a quarter million dollars a year should pay a little bit more in taxes. I want a leader who does not want to take away my right to choose if and when I am ready and able to have and support a child. I want a leader who does not think that men walked the planet at the same time as dinosaurs. I didn't vote for Hilary Clinton in the primaries because I wanted a WOMAN for president, I voted for Hilary because I thought she would do a good job and that she had the right attitude for it. I've always liked Obama and felt that we had been given two good choices (for once) and I was happy either way we went, but my vote went to Hilary because I felt she had a better health care plan and she had more experience in Washington. I voted for Obama in the election because we are closer in views on the issues that matter to me than I will ever be to McCain. I don't vote because someone is male or female, I vote because I believe that they will make changes in the direction I think is right for the country. I hope, I really hope, that's why ANYONE votes.

On the topic of experience, I don't think that Palin's experience is any better or worse than Obama's. George Bush graduated from Yale for god's sake, and he still can't read the bloody teleprompter. Obviously being smart and ambitious does not make you a good president. What I like about Obama is his temperament, his ability to seem calm and reasonable, and the fact that he presents a good face to the world. I think he's strong enough to lead us through the economic crisis, and he strikes me as the type of person who will not allow attacks against our country to go unanswered, although I think he'll give more thought to retaliation than George Bush did. I didn't have a real problem with McCain until lately - he just seems to make really rash decisions in his campaign and I see the same sort of fast and loose decision-making of George Bush in McCain's recent tactics.

The other thing that has really gotten me stirred up lately is the whole Republican "real Americans vs. fake Americans." I know for a fact I fit into their "fake American" pile - I don't even live in America anymore, so I must not be a real American! SCREW YOU. I bleed red white and blue for my country, and I come from a very, very long line of patriots. I sing America's praises, even though I'm surrounded by people who think my entire country has gone insane. I just want to scream when Republicans talk about "real America" being people who believe that all foreigners are bad and that New York is the center of the 7th level of Hell. Liberals hate real Americans? You mean, because I think what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom is their own business that I hate Real America? Because I think we should help everyone to lead a better life even if that means giving up a few more of my hard-earned dollars? Because I think no one should be able to get their hands on an automatic machine gun outside of the military? NO. I love my America, and you've had your hands on it for too long. Time for you guys to move along and let the liberals, the other real Americans, take their turn.

That's my $.02. And between now and next Tuesday I will keep listening to the news and reading MSNBC (and Fox, believe it or not) and hoping for an Obama victory because I just can't fathom another 4 years of Republicans in power.

A whole year?

2008-10-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

In many ways, it doesn't seem like a whole year since I moved over here. At the same time, it feels like I've lived over here forever. I'm getting used to how everything works in England, I'm working again, we've settled in to the house together, and most things are going well. I still miss my parents, my brother and his family, and especially my friends. I updated my facebook page that I was having a bad day and one of my girlfriends reached out to me immediately to find out if I'm okay. I miss my friends. I have a good life here, but even after a year I get lonely thinking of all the friendships I left behind.

Well Said

2008-09-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

I am off on vacation, but I had to post this snippet of Dan Savage's latest Savage Love column in The Stranger:

"Speaking of hot teenagers and asshole parents and vows that you may come to regret...

The 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, the GOP's vice-presidential nominee, is pregnant. The news was released by the McCain camp during a busy week—a hurricane, the Republican National Convention, Dick Cheney getting us into a war with Russia—so it didn't receive the coverage it deserved. To recap:

Seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin got her ass knocked up five or so months ago by 18-year-old Levi Johnston. Among the hobbies listed on Levi's since-yanked MySpace page—"fishing, shoot some shit, and just fuckin' chillin'"—was this revealing tidbit: "I don't want kids." But Bristol, says her mom, "made the decision on her own to keep the baby," and is now engaged to Levi "Shootin' Shit" Johnston.

As the adoptive parent of a child born to a pair of unwed teenagers, I'm certainly not in favor of abortion in all circumstances. But I believe that it's a choice teenagers should be able to make for themselves—with input from their families whenever possible—and, so it seems, does the GOP's VP nominee. Sarah Palin is pleased that her daughter made the decision—on her own—to keep the baby.

But Sarah Palin doesn't believe that other girls should be able to make their own decisions. Sarah Palin believes abortion should be illegal in almost every instance—including rape and incest. So Bristol Palin is being celebrated for making a choice that Sarah Palin would like to take away from all other American women. Apparently, today's GOP believes that choice is a special right reserved for the wayward daughters of Republican elected officials.

Oh, and Sarah Palin also believes that birth control shouldn't be made available to teenagers, she opposes medically accurate sex education, and she backs abstinence-until- marriage sex "education."

Sigh.

The GOP has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into abstinence "education" programs during the Bush years. I believe this enormous investment of public funds begs the obvious question: Is our children abstaining? Sarah Palin's aren't. Despite this massive outlay on the part of the American taxpayer and the example set by her Christian parents, Bristol Palin became sexually active while still in high school. Excuse me, but if abstinence education can't keep the daughter of the evangelical governor of Alaska off the cock, what hope is there for the daughters—and some of the sons—of average Americans?

I'm a cad for writing this, of course, because shortly before Bristol and Levi were paraded before cheering throngs at the Republican National Convention, the Palins asked the media to respect their daughter's privacy.

Another special right: When it comes to respecting your family's privacy, Palin and the GOP see no need. They want to micromanage the most intimate aspects of your private life. And if their own kids fail to live up to the standards that Palin and the GOP seek to impose on your family, well, that's a private matter between the Palins, their daughter, their God, and the thousands of screaming imbeciles in elephant hats waving McCain/Palin signs on the floor of the Republican National Convention."

Debt Free and Loving It!

2008-08-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

Wooo!! Or, Whew!, as the case may be. Today I made my final (huge) payment on my debt, and now the only bank I owe is the one that owns my house and the one that owns my car. I honestly owe most of my money to the Bank of Henry, who has helped me pay off all of my debt in the States. From now on all of my bonuses and cash goes straight into my car and our mortgage, which is a much nicer feeling than paying off the excesses of my 20's. I have learned a good lesson on how awful it feels to be in debt - there is so much pressure on you when you're under a massive amount of consumer debt. I am grateful to be out from underneath that and hope to never go back. Thankfully, Henry is pretty good with money and takes great care to make sure we have the cash for a major purchase before we go out and buy it.

I'm just glad it's over, and now all the money I make is actually mine again. Yay!!!

The Great BLT Experiment

2008-08-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

For some reason that escapes me now, I decided earlier this year that I was going to make my own BLT. By this I mean I was going to grow my own lettuce and tomatoes, make my own bread, make my own mayo, and buy farm-fresh organic fresh-off-the-oink bacon from our local farmer's market (as there was no way I was going to keep a pig in the garden).

So I planted six tomato plants, put down lettuce seeds, learned how to protect my precious babies from slugs and snails, and watered everyone dutifully. I also learned how to use my breadmaker well (it counts as making my own if I put all the ingredients in the machine, right?) and downloaded Alton Brown's recipe for mayo.

Well, tonight was the night. I came home to a house smelling of fresh bread (thanks to the timer on the machine). I used wasabi and Coleman's to make the mayo (which I made from an egg yolk and oil) a little extra spicy. I picked the finally ripe tomatoes off the vine and fried up the good bacon, and pulled the home-picked salad leaves out of the fridge. I also made a pot of mushroom soup to go along with my mother of all sandwiches.

It was PERFECT. I've never had such a thing of beauty. The tomatoes were sweet, the lettuce spicy, the bread soft, the mayo creamy....just utter and complete goodness. There is something amazing about growing your own food - I really, really enjoy it. Now I'm looking at ways of ripping out the back garden and turning it into a potager, or kitchen garden (much to Henry's horror!). Next spring I'll start the tomatoes a little earlier and I'll be munching on homemade BLTs in July. Yay!

Continued Adventures

2008-08-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has just been such a great few weeks. We've been busy - Henry's party, a trip to Lisbon with EB, and CJ's graduation from Sandhurst last night. I'll bring you up to date.

I guess I should point out that the photos from my trip to visit my family in California in July are now up on my flickr account (along with quite a few others). The photos of Sarah after she's just been eating dirt are particularly precious (I thought the dirt unibrow was especially so).

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Henry's birthday with a big party and a bunch of sangria. It was great fun, and we spent most of the time in the garden being loud and annoying my neighbors, or in our living room, playing Rock Band. There's nothing like seeing a bunch of drunk people trying to rock out to Weezer.

The next weekend, I went to Lisbon to meet up with EB, who was in Portugal for a science meeting.
We had a really good time hanging out and chatting, mostly, with the occasionally stab at sightseeing thrown in. Here EB is standing on the patio at the castle in Sintra, which was just gorgeous. We had beautiful weather the entire time we were there and it was just so much fun to catch up with her. I think girls' getaways should happen in my life more often!

Last night we went up to Sandhurst for Chris Jones' graduation. I have a terrible soft spot for CJ in my heart as he was one of the first of Henry's friends that I met, and he was so kind as to sit next to me and keep me company at Henry's housewarming party that first weekend I visited. He's also one of Henry's favorite people, and we enjoy seeing him whenever we can. We've been lucky to get a few of his precious leave days since he's been at Sandhurst. I was delighted that we got an invitation to his Commissioning Ball, and we had a fantastic time. Everyone was so much fun and we drank lots and lots and lots of champagne and danced and ate - we even made it to the Survivor's Breakfast at 1:30am and didn't make it back to the hotel until 3am, which is about the latest I can make it nowadays. It was a blast, and the photos prove it.

So life has been good, as usual. Henry and I are spending a lazy (read: hungover) day doing a whole lot of nothing except playing xbox and laying around on the couch. I'm studying hard for my driver's test on Wednesday - 16 years after taking it the first time in the States, I have to do it all over again to be legal to drive over here. It sucks, but I'm looking forward to getting it out of the way - one of the last hurdles before I go for my indefinite leave to remain in about 18 months.

That's about all from us - I hope you all are having as much fun as we are!

Take a pass

2008-08-06T00:47:00.001-07:00

Vacation planning is coming along, and I am pretty excited for the new thing we've added to the itinerary. Henry and I are renting a car when we're in Italy and driving from Como to Castelrotto via the Stelvio Pass, one of the best driving roads in the world. I'm sad we won't have the Mazda with us, but I'm excited to take the road (as long as Henry lets me drive a little!) and very excited for the rest of the vacation as well!!

I know, I know

2008-07-31T13:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time. But we've been busy! I spent the first week of this month back in the States on a whirlwind tour - Seattle for the 4th of July (I got to see all the old friends and even meet Steve's new baby, Mia), Mom & Dad's ranch for some llama kisses, San Francisco for a business meeting, and a weekend with my favorite kids, Hunter and Sarah. I recovered for a bit and then we got caught up in preparations for Henry's birthday party (well, I got a little overly caught up!) which was a blast. Henry's friends came from all over the country and we had a passle of folks staying with us. We even had two Americans come down for the party - Hugh and Alicia Arnold, friends of mine from college, who are living up in Norwich. There was sangria and Rock Band and unfortunate videos of everyone singing poorly and then there were cigars and finally me suddenly sitting bolt upright at 6am in my own bed, fully clothed, with no idea how I got there. But Henry swears he had a good time and everyone else agrees it was a good party, so I was happy.

Tomorrow I am off to Lisbon to meet up with Elizabeth, who is over for a scientist convention of some sort. We're going to drink and eat and shop and just hang out for three days - it's going to be awesome (but not as awesome as it would be if Lesleigh were going to be there!). And Henry and I just booked our summer holiday - we're flying into Milan and going up to Lake Como for 4 days and then over to Venice for 3 days! I can hardly wait. I never felt like I had enough time in Venice the first time I went, so I'm thrilled to be going back, and Henry and I are both looking forward to going to Lake Como for the first time. I can hardly wait!

Damn, it feels good to be a Romero

2008-06-28T03:41:00.000-07:00

Big doings at the Romero household this weekend! I am sitting on the couch enjoying my favorite Hampshire cheese and a diet Coke, listening to the dulcet sounds of the plumber drilling holes through the kitchen so that we can install our brand new Miele dishwasher, which is coming this afternoon! I am so thrilled about this. This morning I spent a good hour pretending to ski on my brand new Wii (took me that long to beat Henry's score) and then did a little Wii workout (which actually made me sweat, although I am so out of shape that getting up to get some cheese and a diet coke can also do that). And later today, once the dishwasher is installed and we've run the first load, we're heading up to costco to pick up our new 46" television.

I love being a DINK. We need to stop spending money like it's gong out of style, but at the same time we were so good about not spending money for the first 9 months I lived here that we both feel like we have the right to go a little nuts. Plus, work is going really well and I'm going to get my bonus, so it's nice to treat ourselves a bit.

I won't get much of a chance to enjoy all of our new toys, though, as I am off to America in less than a week! I'm so looking forward to spending time with my friends and family, and cannot wait to see everyone and talk as fast as I want (I have to slow it down for the English a bit, rapid fire american doesn't work so well over here). I am most excited about getting to see Hunter and Sarah and to give them lots of kisses and hugs and see how fast they're growing up. I haven't seen Sarah in over a year and I just can't wait to squeeze her!

I'll also have a lot more work to do on the wii when I get home as I am already planning out meals for the time I'm in the US. Mexican, Mexican, Mexican, In-N-Out, Taco Bell, Mexican, Mexican, In-N-Out....it's going to be a good week.

Update

2008-06-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

Yeah, sorry, I've been bad on the blog front. We've been doing our thing and somehow that's meant several weeks without a post on the blog, even though I've been thinking up all sorts of posts and thinking, I really need to sit down with the laptop and get it all out...but it hasn't happened.

Right now I'm cooking dinner and listening to Henry talk to his parents. Being married to someone with two cultures is interesting, but never more so than when I hear him switch between his Spanish side and his English side while talking to his parents. When he's on the phone with his mum, he's a quiet, nice English boy. On the phone with his dad, he's fiery and gestures a lot. I hear the word "Papi!" spoken sharply as he and his dad discuss whatever it is they have on their mind (today it's his parents upcoming trip to London). It's funny to see his whole demeanor change depending on the person to whom he's speaking (and the language in which he speaks). He seems so much more assertive in Spanish.

We did a little traveling over the Memorial Day/Bank Holiday weekend. We went up to York to visit Henry's friend Andrew (one of the best men at our wedding) and his wife, Mari. We spent Saturday night in York and then the four of us went down to Buxton in the Peak District. Despite the windy weather, it was GORGEOUS! When I first moved here, my friend Meghan gave me a movie about a woman from Hampshire (the South, where I live) who moved to Yorkshire (the North) and found it to be "wild" and "untamed". Bollocks, I say. It is BEAUTIFUL and parts of it reminded me so much of the mountains east of Seattle that it almost brought tears to my eyes.

After Buxton, we went to Bakewell. Apparently there's some famous dessert made there, but I had never heard of it (although we had a pudding, and it was quite tasty!). We went to meet Craig and his new girlfriend, Amanda, who was lovely. Also lovely? Chatsworth (see below). That's what I want for Christmas!

Chatsworth has a kitchen garden, where they grow their own veg and herbs and such. I am trying out a smaller version by attempting to grow tomatoes, basil, strawberries, rasberries, and other assorted herbs. It's going okay so far (despite my black thumb), and I'm actually considering a complete redesign of the garden for next summer so that I can grow only things worth eating. The only drawback is all the bloody slugs who live in England and think my garden is very tasty - I've spent quite some time looking for ways to thwart their efforts. Sometimes I think of what the me 5 years ago would've made of the me I've become - not the least when I'm happily tossing snails against the back garden fence!

It's a good life. And what makes it even better is that I'm heading home in July. I get to spend the 4th in Seattle and some time with my parents before heading to San Francisco for 3 days for work. Then I get to go to see Rob and Sarema and the kids for a few days! I am so excited.

My only complaint is that Sex and the City came out this weekend and a) I haven't seen it yet and b) I don't get to see it with any of my girlfriends, especially the Golightly crew, who had a kickass premiere party with SHOES and DRESSES and COSMOS and GIRLS and I really wish I had been there (with Les and EB, too!). I miss my girls.

Spring Cleaning

2008-05-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts - we've been busy bees. We spent last weekend in London with friends and went and saw Avenue Q (me for the 4th time!) and then I was back up in London Mon-Weds for work. I'm loving the new job and having a great time, but the commute is really long (an hour each way) and by the time I get home I just want to sit on the couch with my husband or give the new Xbox 360 a workout.

This weekend we took the convertible out yesterday for a nice long drive and went up to the Cotswolds for a picnic. We ate at Broadway Tower, pictured above. IT was just a lovely day and we had a great time eating cheese and ham and drinking The Rulebreaker, Henry's new favorite white wine.

Today has been a long day of cleaning up the house. We haven't properly given it a good scrub since the wedding, so it's been a long day. Tonight I am making fresh pasta with the pasta maker that Lesleigh gave us for the wedding, and I can hardly wait. Fresh pasta - nummy!

So everything is good here, no complaints, just lots of work and finishing getting everything settled. Thankfully tomorrow is a bank holiday in England, so I am promising myself a few hours of doing absolutely nothing and then cooking a nice Mexican meal (I've been hoarding ingredients) for Cinco de Mayo. Whee!

Some things never change

2008-04-13T02:32:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help myself.

Yesterday Henry and I picked up our new (to us) 2006 Mazda MX-5 in Sunlight Silver. It is a beautiful car, and puts my old '99 Miata to shame. It's racy and quite powerful and zips through the English countryside like nobody's business. I think we put over 200 miles on it yesterday just taking it through its paces.

Theoretically, the car is mine. I loved driving my convertible when I had one before I left for New York, but I couldn't afford to buy a new one until now. I think Henry didn't quite realize the draw until last night, when he hit 120 mph coming down the motorway with the top down and the sun shining, and then, 20 minutes later, made the traction control kick in about 6 times trying to take wet corners at 60. He laughed manically as I sat in the passenger seat, gripping the door handle and trying to make my peace with God. I think he likes the new car.

For me, it's just the icing on the cake. My new theory on life is that sometime around September '06 I was involved in a terrible accident of some sort, and I died and went to heaven - because sitting next to my wonderful husband in my new convertible with the top down driving in Hampshire last night was as close as I think this human could get to heaven on Earth. I didn't know someone could be this happy, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to experience it first hand. It really is a good life, and I love living every day of it.

Fire and Rain

2008-04-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

When you lose someone that you love, I think some days are harder than others when you deal with it.

Bill was one of my closest friends in high school. Now, when I look back, I realize that we were friends for almost less than a quarter of the time that he's been dead...so much of how I felt about him and our friendship has been with me so long that sometimes I forget that our friendship was only four years old before he died.

If you read my blog, you know I'm living in England with my husband, 5000 miles away from the place that Bill died; yet I still feel him here. Driving down the road on the left hand side hearing "Landslide" come on the radio and having to change it. Sitting at my own wedding and seeing a photo of Bill that I've never seen before and breaking into tears. Looking at my own journal and wondering how much of Bill we'll never know because his dad burned all of his journals after he died.

I was 20 when Bill died. And now I'm 32. I wonder who he would have been if he had lived. I lost track of Bjorn, his best friend, about five years ago. Would I have stayed friends with Bill? Would he have come to my wedding? Would he have still cared? If he wasn't dead, would I?

We had our friends Simon and Claire over for drinks tonight, and Simon has recently discovered James Taylor. He requested that we play the song 'Fire and Rain' several times - a song about losing someone you thought would always be part of your life. Since the wedding, when Julie gave me that photo of Bill and I felt like, in spirit, he was there with us, Bill has been on my mind. I hope he would tell me that he's happy for us. I wish he could have shared our day. I miss him.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Back To Work I Go

2008-04-01T05:08:00.001-07:00

I started my new job yesterday in Reading. I think I'm really going to like it there. The people in the office are friendly, it's a good and useful product, there's enough infrastructure in the company to support the sales and account management effort, so it's a good place for me to be. The commute is a little rough right now, but I think that will get better when I have a car and I'm able to drive to a closer station rather than changing trains in Southampton. So car shopping is definitely on the list of things to do this weekend.

Last week was busy with the cat going missing and trying to get settled back in from the honeymoon, so I'm looking forward to some time to just chill out in the evenings with Henry and get working on the thank you notes for the wedding.

He may be an idiot, but he's MY idiot

2008-03-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

I am talking about my little black cat, Garfunkel. We got home from our wonderful honeymoon on Monday night, and I was thrilled to find everything in one piece and the cats happy and healthy. I spent a lot of time petting the cats on Tuesday because I had missed them so much, and when Henry got home, he pulled out the cat toys and played with both Simon and Garfunkel, who seemed thrilled with the attention.

Unfortunately, around 10pm on Tuesday night, just after I'd crawled into bed in my nightgown, Henry walked into the bedroom and said, "Have you seen Garfunkel anywhere?" I realized that I hadn't, and we did a full search of the house. Our house is not giant, but the cats have found lots of places to hide, so we checked everywhere. In the wardrobe. Under all of the beds. Under the couch. In windowsills behind curtains. In the pantry, in the airing cupboard, under my dresser....and he was nowhere to be found. We knew that he could have gotten outside because we'd both been out to the garage and the trash cans, cleaning up from our trip. Working under the theory that he couldn't possibly be in the house, we searched outside until 1am, and still didn't find him. I was in tears - he is the scardiest cat ever, and if I knew that if he got out, he could get lost, or killed, or just be too stupid to find his way home. I went back out looking for him at 3am, at 5am, at 6am...and still no Garf. The worst part was when I went outside and found his collar under our hedge - and no cat. He must have gotten caught on a branch and pulled until his safety collar released. I realized that meant that even if he was found, no one would know how to get him back to us! I ran into the house with his collar clutched in my hand screaming like a madwoman, "We're never going to find him now!" I felt like I wanted to rip my own heart out of my chest, it hurt so badly to think of him out there with no visible ID to get him back to me (he is microchipped, but someone would have to catch him first and get him scanned, which seemed like a long-shot).

We had to go to London to get my visa settled (it was approved) so we had to give up the search at 8am and go, but I felt awful. It poured rain on our way home from London and I know that poor Garf was out there and probably terrified. Henry and I spent 2-3 hours wandering around the neighborhood when we got home, hanging signs, calling his name, looking under every bush, talking to every neighbor we saw, leaving food out on the back porch and front step, and still no success. I decided to sit in one place and set up a spot for myself in the front hallway with the front door open and a book in my lap. I called his name every 2-3 minutes and finally I heard a pathetic little cry from outside. I looked out the door and there was Garf, crying and shivering in the cold. I went to grab him....and he ran away down the alley behind our house, and we lost him again.

I spent four more hours in the hallway, reading my book and calling to him. It was so sad! The temperature dropped and by the end I was wearing two pairs of socks, my ski pants, long underwear, leather gloves, and my biggest, fluffiest coat, and I was cuddled underneath the wool blanket that Julie and Shawn gave us for a wedding gift. I sat there calling his name and shivering until I started to fall asleep, and then closed up the house and went to bed. I woke up a few times and poked my head out both the front and back door, but there was no peep from the cat.

This morning, I woke up with Henry and pulled on all of my clothes to go back out looking for the cat. I knew he was alive and unhurt because I had seen him the night before, but I wanted to get him in the house before that changed. My heart nearly broke when I saw that there was frost on the car - he most have been freezing! I wandered around our little development calling him, but I never heard a peep. Finally I saw him down the alley behind our house, but he ran away through the cat hole in my neighbor's fence. At least now I knew where he was! Unfortunately, the neighbor wasn't home and their gate was locked - but I broke in anyway by pulling our garden chair over and climbing over the fence to unlock the gate. I found Garfunkel hunkered under their covered patio furniture. He didn't start crying until I started looking under the furniture cover, and then I managed to pull him out and hug him tightly to me. The little bastard was only 3 feet away from our back fence the entire time! Still, I was so thrilled to have him home that I let him eat the entire can of tuna I had opened to entice him back.

So now Garf is sleeping peacefully at the end of our bed, and I am about to join him for a little nap myself. Having pets is tough work! But it was worth every second of the search just to know he's home safe.

Anyway, that's why no wedding posts yet, but they're coming. In the meantime, check out our photo gallery.

On the beach!

2008-03-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry for no posts lately - we're honeymooning! Playa del Carmen is gorgeous, though a bit windy, and we've been reading, laying by the pool, and basically just relaxing and winding down from the big wedding week.

It was so much fun to have all of our friends and family join us last week, so if you were there, thank you so much for making our day the best possible. It really was a wonderful, wonderful wedding, if I do say so myself.

As you can see by the photo, Henry and I continue to be madly in love. Married life is even better than I thought it could be, and I'm very happy to be the new Mrs. Romero.

I'll post more on my return!

In the Air

2008-03-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

Right now, both of my bridesmaids and my parents are either at or on their way to the airport, and my friends Julie and Shawn are already in the air and on their way here! Tomorrow my brother, his wife, and our family friends are catching a flight, and Henry's parents are coming over from Spain. The whole thing is very exciting - I can't wait to see everyone - and I am really looking forward to Saturday!

Here Comes The Bride

2008-03-03T00:28:00.000-08:00

5 days to go, and I think I finally feel like I have everything under control. My dress is tailored, the new photographer is contracted, we have flowers, we have food, we have a bottle of wine PER PERSON for the reception (I hope no one drives!), the cat sitter is hired, the GPS is programmed for my family's travels, the guest room is clean, the linens are washed for the quick turnaround, and I am finishing up the last details today while I sip tea and watch "Pride & Prejudice" (the BBC version, of course).

Now, the only thing to worry about is getting our family and friends to England safe and happy!

Whew!

2008-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

We found a new photographer that we really, really like; and we were able to cancel the ticket for the other guy and get half of our money back, so I think we may have saved our bacon on the photographer front.

I've spent the day cleaning house - we have four houseguests coming on Wednesday! - and we have a quick shopping trip to make tomorrow and then I can focus on the bits and pieces. I think we're on track for getting everything done on time!

I am starting to really look forward to the next week. It's exciting that I get to see all of my friends and family soon! But it's even better to know that I get to marry Henry, and that a week from today I will be Mrs. Kim Romero!

The agony and the ecstasy

2008-02-29T00:05:00.000-08:00

This week has been an emotional roller coaster. I have never had so much happening at once (a product of my own doing, to be sure) - the wedding is a week from tomorrow and I still have a lot of details to iron out at the last minute and homemade favors to be prepared.

In the meantime, I thought it was a good idea to start really looking for a new job so that I would have one when we returned from our honeymoon. This was not, as it turned out, a good idea, as it was terribly stressful - but it worked out for the best in the end because I accepted an offer yesterday! I am really excited; my new role is exactly what I'm looking for, at a good company, which has its headquarters in San Francisco, so I will be heading back to the States occasionally and hopefully be able to get down and see my brother and his family when I'm there!

That's the good news. The bad news is that our photographer has completely flaked out for the wedding next week and I am scrambling to find a new one. I am spitting mad about it, but there's not much that I can do besides try to find a new photographer to come out next weekend. Thankfully, we have a lead on a good one and I'm hoping that we can just get it taken care of and move on. Also, many of our friends have fabulous cameras and my brother even bought a new SLR for the occasion, so we should be covered for photos for most of the day. I feel like it's my own fault - we'd hired a friend of a friend to fly over from the States - I should have just gone with a professional in the beginning rather than trying to save a little bit of cash. I've learned my lesson the hard way, but I have faith that it will all work out in the end.

The Princess Bride

2008-02-15T16:37:00.001-08:00

Still the best movie ever.

I can remember sitting in the living room at the LaBelle's when I was 12 and watching with movie and thinking it was the best thing in the world.

And suddenly, tonight, all I wanted to do was revert - and watch my favorite movie.

How can you argue with a movie watched at a good time, especially before your own wedding, that reminds you, "This is true love. Do you think this happens every day?" It does not. And I am happy to have found it - and happy to watch it.

(ed. note - and Christopher Guest rules. Good on Jamie Lee Curtis.)

Sunshine and Roses

2008-02-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days - I've been a busy bee!

The weather here has been lovely as of late (in the 60s, at least!) and we took full advantage of that this weekend (thanks, global warming!). We spent Saturday cleaning out the garden and took a trunk full of yard waste to the dump. It was nice to clean it all up and make room for our brand new black Weber BBQ (thanks, CJ!). We're looking forward to a little BBQ action this weekend since, even though it feels like April, it still gets dark early like it's mid-February, so no mid-week grilling. What is WITH that? Isn't it the end of daylight savings soon?!?

On Sunday we headed out to Bournemouth for Wagamama, but this time we parked the car about 4 miles away and hiked in. It was good exercise, but I wore idiotic shoes (that are comfy about 99% of the time, the other 1% being when I hike 8 miles) and I paid for poor decision making with huge blisters on both little toes and one big toe. I have been bandaged up with band-aids ever since.

Monday was the usual clean-up-after-the-weekend day - it's amazing what damage two people in a tiny house can do. And Tuesday was a meeting with our registrar to discuss the wedding ceremony and another job interview - I am busy looking to get work before we leave on our honeymoon (though that looks like less of a possibility, and frankly, I may enjoy the honeymoon more without the thought of a new job hanging over me).

I may be a little less blog-enthusiastic over the next few weeks anyway. I have a few interviews, my friend Nancy Jane is coming to visit next week, I have an entire house to scrub down before my parents come to visit, and this is on top of finishing up wedding planning, finishing the favors, picking wedding music, getting fitted for my dress, doing my make-up and hair trial, going tanning, etc., etc., etc.

One thing I have noticed is that my dreams have become VERY vivid, and not very pleasant as of late. I think it's the wedding and job-hunting stress because it's a lot of "showing up for a test without having studied" and "going to work naked" dreams - standard stuff. I would not impress Freud. Still, I'll be happier when I can nap on the beach and dream of my fabulous wedding and how great it was to see all of my friends and family in England - and then get on a plane and head towards the sunshine in Mexico!

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

2008-02-06T06:51:00.000-08:00

Most of you have never met my friend Brook from NYC (although that will change at the wedding!) Brook has been a dear, dear friend of mine since my time in the Big Apple, and I'm glad to say that he's finally starting to blog. He's a smart cookie with a wicked sense of humor and a love of watching (and participating in) politics - he was the friend who got me up at 5am one morning 4 years ago to go stump for Kerry in PA. His blog is a good take on all things election. It's new, so don't expect a lot of old posts, but since he put up something like a dozen posts last night, I'm looking forward to seeing what he has to say moving forward.

Brook is a good cat. Go read his blog here. Those of you who agree with my politics will enjoy it. Those who don't can have an interesting conversation with him at the wedding!

Cookie Recipes?

2008-02-04T02:40:00.000-08:00

I am collecting cookie recipes. Do you have a favorite? Maybe something your grandmother made for you? Your mom's signature recipe (that she wouldn't kill you for sharing)? Please send it this way if you would - I would really, really appreciate it!

Movie Reviews

2008-02-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

Henry and I watched a few movies this weekend in between walks and wedding stuff.

1. The Counterfeiters - Interesting story about how the Nazis tried to counterfeit the British Pound and the US Dollar in an attempt to drop the UK and US economies to their knees. They were quite successful with the £, and Henry says he'd heard they were finding fake Nazi poundnotes for years after the war. Pretty depressing flick most of the time (it's set in a concentration camp), but it was interesting to watch and I would recommend it.
2. The Golden Compass - Save yourself the time and skip this one. Meghan LaBelle gave me these books for Christmas a few years ago and I got to about 50 pages before the end of the third book and put it down, never to pick it up again. I felt the same way about this movie - I just couldn't bring myself to sit still long enough to finish it. The book was much better than the movie, and just further proof that no amount of CGI will ever be as good as your imagination.
3. The King of Kong - I'd heard of this movie before my friend David Turner recommended it to a bunch of his friends. I really enjoyed it. It's a documentary on a man from Redmond, Washington who is trying to prove that he hit the highest score on Donkey Kong, and the guy who owned the original high score who refused to acknowledge the new score. It was very interesting to watch how seriously the men involved in validating and recording high scores for video games take their business. The movie managed to make the guy from Redmond look like David and the old record-holder look like the biggest prat of a Goliath ever, so Henry thought it was a little over-the-top, but I enjoyed it. I recommend it to my brother, who would probably like it as much as I did given the three months we lived in Fort Ord with nothing to do but drop quarters in the Donkey Kong machine in the laundromat. That was a long summer.

Nanook of the North

2008-02-03T01:45:00.000-08:00

BRRRR!!! It is cold here in England right now. But it is especially cold here in my house, where my fiance' refuses to turn up the heat. I have taken to wearing turtlenecks and socks around the house, or tossing on a sweatshirt over my nightgown as soon as I wake up - it is COLD here. He says that he was rasied to believe that the cold is good for you and heating is bad. However, he was brought up in Southern Spain (ed. note, my future father-in-law reminds me that Toledo is in fact the geographical center of Spain, while my future husband reminds me that their flat was on top of offices that were kept at room temp and made their flat a balmy 70F year round), where it hardly dropped below 10C/50f, so I'm sure his mom never meant for him to make me wander around in a house that hasn't gone above 3c/40f since Thursday.

Forgive me, I have to go now and put on a sweatshirt. BRRRR!!!

Please VOTE!

2008-02-01T15:53:00.000-08:00

I posted earlier about how happy I was to be part of the Washington State Primary.

It's coming up. I was lucky enough to vote early. I've watched the debates. I've read the personal statements.

I am thrilled to be a supporter of Hilary Clinton. She makes the most sense to me.

Disagree? Vote. Please. Take the time to submit your ballot for the candidate that makes the most sense to YOU.

If the only reason you vote is to cancel out mine, I understand. The majority of the reason behind my ballot is almost always to cancel out the one cast by my brother.

That's mostly a joke. I mean,unless you really know me and my brother.

Seriously, I vote because I believe in America. I've campaigned, door to door, on foot, because I believe in the Democrats. I posted my ballot from 5000 miles away because I believe in the system. If I can do it from here, you can do it from there.

Vote.

London Calling

2008-01-29T03:06:00.000-08:00

In top news, I voted today in the Washington State Primaries. Yay! I am very excited about this.

In other top news, I am busy working on Holiday Golightly stuff. I love Holiday Golightly. If you haven't been over there to read the Golightly Girl's blog, I highly suggest it.

And in even more news, I am turning 32 tomorrow! Whee! 32 seems easier than 31 did, which was much easier than 30. I like 32. It's a good age. It is, of course, the age at which I will get married. That alone makes it a good year.

Tomorrow, to celebrate this momentous occasion, I am taking the train into London. Henry has to work, so I will go off and enjoy one of my favorite places by myself and come home for dinner with the man later that evening (and opening of the pile of pressies that is forming on my coffee table!). I am looking forward to a nice day of museum hopping and sushi eating to celebrate my big birfday.

Going Natural

2008-01-28T01:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Henry and I headed off to the Hampshire Farmer's Market. It was so much fun to walk around and see what everyone was offering - there were so many stalls with organic produce, free range eggs, pork, and beef, homemade artisan breads and cheeses....we even sampled quite a few local brews and ciders.

I don't know why I've found myself so suddenly passionate about the food I'm feeding myself and my fiance. A few weeks ago I started thinking that we were eating too much meat and that it was time to start introducing some vegetarian dinners into our diet. I found a great website, 101 Cookbooks, that deals with recipies for natural cooking and I bought a new Vegetarian Suppers cookbook by Deborah Madison. Both have been very helpful in getting to know some new recipes and ideas, especially the Madison cookbook - her recipes are to die for! We've tried the stuffed peppers recipe on the cover, and it was gorgeous and tasty. I've also tried a few of the egg recipes and tonight we're doing eggs on croutons (made from my own homemade bread) with sauteed mushrooms. Nummy! I'm also looking forward to making a crispy bean recipe from Heidi Swanson's cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. I tried a roasted brussel sprout (with sprouts purchased from the farmer's market) recipe from that cookbook last night, and it made me do a little dance in the kitchen, they were that good.

Being at the market reminded me of my vist, years ago, with Julie and Shawn in Montana. Julie was growing fresh arugula (rocket) in the garden and brought some in for a salad. I had never had fresh lettuce, much less arugula, and it was all I could do not to eat it all before it made it into the bowl. It tasted so peppery, so fresh, and so unlike the arugula I'd bought in the stores...it made me wonder if I was missing out on the taste of so many other food products that I was buying processed and packaged from my local supermarket. Thankfully I lived next door to the Ballard Market in Seattle, and I was able to buy more organic food and produce from their shelves.

Here, it takes a little more effort than walking across the street to the Market, but not much. There seems to be a lot of effort to support local producers, and the more I look, the more local shops I find that stock local organic foods. Personally, it makes me feel good to know that our money is going towards supporting local Hampshire farms and farmers rather than the big box chain markets. I'm not saying I'll never shop at Tesco again - in fact, I have to head down there today - I'm just saying that I think it's worth it to make the effort to cook with local ingredients and to try to eat less meat, especially if it doesn't come from my local area.

Also, I am thinking of growing my own rocket and herbs in the back garden this spring. I may even try tomatoes this year!! My mom used to grow huge tomatoes in the backyard and I remember having the most amazing BLTs. Now I am thinking to myself, if I could get free range streaky bacon, homemade bread, homegrown tomatoes, and homemade mayo together with my homegrown rocket...I may just make the best BLTs on the planet this summer!

Hanging Tough

2008-01-27T13:35:00.001-08:00

If only I could have back the allowance money I spent on NKOTB merchandising, I could probably afford tickets to this.

I was so in love with Joey McIntyre, I could hardly breathe when I saw them at my first rock concert in San Diego. And the opening band? DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

If they can get that kind of star wattage to open for them now, I would so go to see NKOTB! I'd love to see that audience, anyway. Who else could fill a stadium with 30-something soccer moms besides Barney?

Sexy Pants

2008-01-23T02:01:00.000-08:00

PARENT, IN-LAW AND BROTHER ALERT - The following post may contain information that you would be better off not knowing about me and/or the state of my underwear drawer. Mental pictures you would prefer not to have may occur. Proceed at your own risk.

One of the benefits of having a bridal shower is receiving sexy panties that you may not otherwise buy for yourself. My girlfriend Trina gave me three pairs of Hanky Pankies, seen here. I've heard that these are the most comfortable sexy pants, and they aren't lying. Love them!

Erica Speed also gave me a generous gift certificate to Victoria's Secret. As you all know, I am not a tiny little wispy thing, so usually Vicki doesn't have much for me. However, I went and bought about half a dozen little lace pants from their "Sexy Little Thing" collection and prayed that they wouldn't constrict the blood flow from my waist down.

I washed everything yesterday (according to Martha Stewart, my washing machine is perfect for delicates!) and hung it all up to dry. Today I thought, "Why not?" and gave myself a little fashion show. Wowza. Good job, ladies! The Hanky Pankys are hot yet comfy, and the little black diamond-studded sexything that I bought from VS looks good and does not make my butt or my hips look sausage-like. I pranced around in front of our mirror a little bit and then thought, "I should clean up my underwear drawer!"

I am not one of those people who has these types of thoughts on a regular basis. My pants drawer is a mess. Like my oven, I only open the door to throw something in or yank something out - I do not spend time perusing my pants or wanting to arrange them into neat little triangles. I occasionally buy sexy things from H&M, but I have an inappropriate relationship with them in that I do not wear them only for sexy occasions or wash them with the correct delicacy, so they tend to give up the ghost rather quickly. My old stand-bys, my Old Navy bikinis, are not sexy but they take the wear and tear of being on my ass, in the washing machine with jeans, and stuffed into various suitcase pockets.

Still, when I went to put my new lacy pants away, I couldn't stand the sight of my old Old Navys. The elastic on the white ones had turned blue from too many trips to the pool with my jeans. The black ones were more grayish. And the gray ones looked sad, and tired. I had an epiphany. I do not have to wear ratty panties! I can wear cute panties if I damn well please! I decided to toss anything that came into my possession before or during my time in New York City (2003-2004). Suddenly I was a woman on a mission. I kept a few beloved pieces (Superman panties, I'm talking to you) but got rid of all my tired old gross worn-out pants.

Now my drawer looks like Rainbow Bright married a lace doily and I adopted their children. I find myself opening my pants drawer to look, to peruse, and yes, even to unfold and re-fold into little triangles. I also find myself surreptitiously dropping trou and shaking my ass whenever I pass the full-length mirror upstairs (thanks, Trina!). I love my new pants. In fact, I may have to go to Starbucks now and walk past everyone thinking, "Yes, I am wearing Sexy Pants! Why aren't you??"

Awesome Gift

2008-01-21T22:59:00.001-08:00

Light fixture
Originally uploaded by Kim1998

My friends gave me a lot of great gifts for my bridal shower. Henry and I are now the proud owners of lots of new kitchen gadgets and towels, and a few little naughty things on the side. But I have to say the gift that made me laugh the loudest was this fugly light fixture.

Two years ago when I visited Julie and Shawn in Montana, long before I even knew that Henry existed, I saw this light fixture in their new house and said, "That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen." Jules promptly said, "Really? I'm giving it to you when you get married."

And she did. I almost died when I opened her box of gifts and it was right on top! I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time.

I'm so proud of it I think I may actually have to hang it in our house.

American Dream

2008-01-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has really stood out for me this trip is the amount of homeless people/beggars that I see all over the place in the States. I have seen someone standing at almost every off-ramp I've been on in the last week, even up in Vancouver. I'm surprised at how many people there are begging around here, because it really isn't something you see in England. There was a kid begging when I was out with Bill in Southampton in early December, but he didn't look dirty and unkempt - he didn't even have a sign. The people here beg with signs and outstretched hands, looking imploringly into your car as you drive by. It's really unnerving, and I wonder what we, as Americans, can do to help this issue when it doesn't seem to be one in England.

Showered with love

2008-01-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

I came home last week for my bridal shower. Unfortunately, I was knocked practically dead by a case of the stomach flu on Thursday, and I was unable to eat and hold down solid food until Saturday morning. I was afraid this was going to put a huge dent in a day to which I had been looking forward, but I managed to get a shower and head up to Seattle with my Mom.

Ida, Erica, and Mary Beth put on a wonderful party for me, and most of my friends showed up to drink sangria, give me lots of presents, and spend some time hanging out and eating cookies and Flake bars. It was wonderful to see everyone - I really miss my girlfriends in Seattle. I'm sad that so many won't be able to join us for our big day, but we knew that was a possibility when we chose to get married in England. Still, quite a few people are making the trek over, and I am so grateful that we'll be able to have an awesome party waiting for them.

The picture above is of me receiving some naughty lingerie from my friend Gretchen. Lesleigh, without having any idea what Gretchen bought, sent me matching red shoes. I am looking forward to modeling both for a certain Spaniard/Englishman I know.

Now I have to focus on the wedding (something I've been needing to do for ages). I've got most of the little pieces done, but it's time to sit down and put it all together. Right now I'm trying to figure out the bachelorette party - I just want to get all of my friends in one place and have a few drinks!

(ed. note - for more photos from the bridal shower, check out Jenn's flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gma1918/sets/72157603703543795/)

Weight Loss for the Impatient

2008-01-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

Check it out - it's called the norovirus. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7169688.stm

I've lost 6 lbs. since 1pm!

Donkey's Years

2008-01-07T02:38:00.000-08:00

It's been ages since Henry and I had a weekend alone together, so we really enjoyed this weekend. We watched two great movies - Charlie Wilson's War, which is TOTALLY worth going to see, and Enchanted, which my mother recommended and we rushed out to see as my mom hates movies (she was right, it was very good) - and even had a date night yesterday with Enchanted and lunch at my favorite restaurant, Wagamama. Henry spent all day Saturday playing video games, which made him immensely happy, and I bought some new cross-stitch stuff so that I could work on our wedding sampler (which I designed myself!).

Today is back to work for both of us, though. Henry's back at work and I'm getting the house cleaned so that he can mess it up completely while I'm in the States. I've also promised myself that today I'll get working on that project for Holiday Golightly that Kerry gave me in December.

I am excited for my Bridal Shower on Saturday. I cannot believe I'm getting married in two months! But the best part is going to be seeing all of my friends, whom I miss terribly. I just cannot wait to see the girls and find out what's been happening and how everything is going and give everyone big hugs. It's going to be awesome.

Third Time's a Charm

2008-01-04T03:29:00.000-08:00

I knew it was too good to be true. I woke up this morning dehydrated and with a head cold and runny nose. It's not the same symptoms as everyone had in Germany, so I'm not sure where it came from, but I do know it means soup and sandwiches for lunch and soup and salad for dinner. I really hate being sick, especially as it's been something like three times since I moved. Guess I'll have to buy more nyquil when I'm in the States next week!

Really?

2008-01-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

I was in the bathroom tonight (I do the most wonderful thinking in the bathroom; doesn't everyone?) and I realized from where I recognized the actress from one of my absolute favorite (cancelled until the writer's strike is over) shows, Pushing Daisies. She plays one of the Aunts:
But then suddenly it hit me that I knew her as Audrey from "Little Shop of Horrors"!

Not a big thing, obviously, just one of those "duh!" moments. Thought I'd share.

Yay for WorldWide Pants!

2008-01-03T04:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't mentioned it on this blog, but I have been avidly watching the WGA Writer's Strike via www.UnitedHollywood.com and press outlets (not that the writers get enough press on this). I am enraged by the idea that a bunch of people with more money than God think it's okay to not pay writers for their intellectual property. I suffer terribly without The Office and other shows that I love from the States (although, thank God, The Amazing Race is still going), but I think that the studios are being unreasonable and that the writers deserve a deal, and a good one at that.

So I was very happy to read that David Letterman struck a deal with the WGA so that he and Craig Ferguson could get back on the air without crossing picket lines like Leno and Conan. I used to like Conan O'Brien quite a bit and could even put up with Leno, but I probably won't watch either show again. I am hoping most big stars agree with me and go to Letterman or Ferguson to plug their new movies (while we still get new movies).

The funny thing is that I'm the kind of person now that watches TV on the internet almost exclusively, since it's the only way to get American TV in Britain. It's for a piece of the money that the stuidos recieve from advertising revenue, ads that I have to watch for them to get paid, that the writers are striking. I think the internet is definitely how most people will watch shows in the future, so it makes sense to me to support the writers now so they don't get completely shafted 20 years down the road.

Holidays on Ice

2008-01-02T06:43:00.000-08:00

Well, the Grand European Holiday Tour is now over and done with, and I came home to a house without any food in the fridge and in desperate need of a cleaning. Henry was not happy that the cats seemed to have exploded on our bed while we were gone and the duvet was covered in cat hair. His displeasure may have been directly linked to the terrible cold he caught while we were in Germany, where his entire family came down sick and I was the only one who escaped unscathed (so far).

We started in Spain on the 22nd, where we landed in Sevilla and spent the evening with Henry's aunt Maria Louisa and her husband, Salvadore. We spent a lovely morning the next day wandering around town before we got in the car and headed off to Zahara, about an hour southeast of Sevilla. It's a gorgeous hill town with a magnificent castle, and Maria Louisa and Salvadore's house in the heart of town was just so quaint I could hardly stand myself. We spent a few days there drinking cava and eating a lot of pork, and generally just chatting about life. My Spanish improved a lot over those few days, if I do say so myself, and I felt comfortable enough by the end to beg a cigarette off of Henry's family and sneak outside for a smoke. (Given that I've had something like 8 cigarettes since I got home from Prague in October, I'm pretty happy with myself despite falling off the wagon a bit in Spain). Everyone else tried to use English with me, as well, and two of Henry's cousins were pretty good. Even Antonio, one of Henry's uncles, would occasionally spout off an English phrase - "Independence Day!" and "Holidays on Ice!" were two of his favorites.

After Spain we had a day at home to pet the kitties, and then we went off again, this time by train. We took the Eurostar over to Brussels and then to Koln, and on to Bonn, where Henry's sister and her family have a huge house. I had a wonderful time hanging out with Cristina's kids and playing Scrabble and just laying around and reading and relaxing. Cristina is a very good cook and her husband, Willi, is very generous with the wine and beer, so I had a great time. The Germans seem to really love New Year and we celebrated by blowing up a lot of fireworks and drinking champagne. It was a good night.

I have to admit that I am happy to be home in our own house, though. It is nice to go visit everyone but I missed our cats and our bed, and I'm glad to have Henry to myself again, even with his cough and runny nose. We have a lot to do for the wedding over the next 9 weeks (OH MY GOD I ONLY HAVE 9 WEEKS), including a trip home to the US for my bridal shower and to prove to my mom that I'm still alive and I can still come home for a visit any time I want.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-26T13:43:00.001-08:00

Sarah.jpg
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge

I hope everyone had a happy one. I spent Christmas in Spain with Henry's family and it was lovely - although I did eat my weight in cheese and pork products (and drink enough cava to drown a small ship). I think my Spanish improved over the few days I was there - or at least I was less timid about using it and failing miserably by the end - and I even managed to have a few Henry-less conversations with members of the fam. It was lovely, and we are off to Germany on Friday for New Year's with his sister Cristina and her family, whom I am very much looking forward to meeting.

I did get a bit homesick on Christmas Eve, however, and I missed the Wooldridge family terribly. As you can see by the photo, I had a lot to miss! Sarah is growing up quick and I'm loathe to miss any of it. She even started crawling a few days ago. Soon she'll be motoring around and I want to make sure she can say, "Hello, Auntie Seattle!" as well as her brother does in a year or so.

I will post more photos from Christmas and New Year's on my return. Tomorrow, we unpack from Spain, wash all of our clothes, kiss the kitties, and re-pack for our very early morning train to France on Friday.

It's a tough life

2007-12-16T05:10:00.000-08:00

Henry and I have spent most of this weekend looking at places to go on our honeymoon. We've narrowed it down to three choices:

1. The Maldives. Pros - great beach, remote, more convenient flights. Cons - All-inclusive isn't, and we're sort of big babies about wanting to be pampered.
2. Sandals, St. Lucia. Pros - lovely island, direct flights, all-inclusive except for room service and beach service. Cons - There are no real cons, but we've heard that there are better resorts in....
3. Secrets Capri, Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Pros - the food and the service are supposed to be outstanding, and I've always wanted to go to Playa del Carmen. Plus, I could eat my weight daily in Mexican food, which would be fabulous as I go without over here. Cons - the beach is nice, but we've read that it's not as nice as other beaches on the Mexican coast.

We're having a hard time deciding what we want to do. For "wow!" factor, we both agree on the Maldives - but we also want to go for 14 days and the food/recreation factor is severely limited on a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The Secrets Capri sounds like an amazing experience but we'd have to give up having the BEST ocean right outside the door and maybe travel a bit to get to a better beach or snorkeling on Cozumel.

It's a hard decision - I know many people will say go for the Maldives or St. Lucia, but I just like the idea of being on a mainland, able to go do a lot of different things, and being treated like a princess the entire time we're there.

Any suggestions/thoughts?

Jungle Cat

2007-12-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

As you can probably tell from the photo, my cats lead a more...pampered...lifestyle than most. Still, Simon (the tabby), thinks that he has the heart and soul of a jungle kitty. While staying with my parents at the farm he went outside every day, only coming in when it was raining or if he needed a pet.

When we moved the cats over here, I knew that he would want to go outside. Since they're both microchipped and collared, I let him out in the back garden occasionally while I was watching. It wasn't long before he was slinking through the fence to go into the back gardens of my neighbors on both sides. As they have high fences on their gardens I knew he couldn't get to the road, but I kept him inside until I was able to speak to both neighbors and make sure it was okay for him to visit their gardens (especially as one neighbor has a big black kitty and the other has a large dog). During this period of imprisonment in the house, he would come in and cry at me whenever I was in the kitchen cooking, doing laundry, or doing dishes. Since that's a lot of my day, I heard a lot of complaints from Simon about wanting to go out.

Last night I finally managed to speak to the neighbor with the dog and she said that it wasn't a problem for Simon to visit, so I let him out while we were having dinner. About 20 minutes later I opened the door to see if he was around and this streak of brown went darting through my legs, followed closely by a large ball of black hissing fur. I managed to keep the neighbor's cat from following Simon inside and shut the door quickly. Simon was standing by the door with all of his fur standing straight out and his tail like a bottlebrush. All of the humans in the house (we had a friend over for dinner) had a laugh at him and it took him about 20 minutes to calm down.

Tonight I thought I might let him out for a bit while I was cooking and opened the door for him to go out. I left it open a bit so that he could come back in if necessary. About two minutes later I heard a MEOW! from the garden and a thud as Simon hit the back door. I rushed over to open it up and he ran inside, once again with a huge tail and his back arched. The neighbor cat hissed loudly and ran back to his own garden.

I checked Simon - he's okay - but I've been peeling Brussels sprouts and prepping dinner for the last 45 minutes and he hasn't even showed his face in the kitchen once. Jungle cat indeed.

Bog-standard cold

2007-12-12T04:30:00.000-08:00

So, it wasn't the Chinese food - it's just my second cold in two months. I am drinking lots of tea and water and taking advantage of my sickness by laying around on the couch and watching a movie. My friend Meghan, a fellow Anglophile, sent me a copy of North & South, a BBC movie about a woman who grew up in Hampshire (where I live) and then moved up to the North of England. It's a good movie, and I'm having a lovely time laying on the couch and sipping my tea.

It's interesting to see how the English do find such cultural differences between these tiny bits of this tiny island. Many people from the North don't know much about the geography of the South, and vice versa. The Scottish don't like the English, as a rule, and the Welsh don't much care for them either. It always makes me laugh a little bit that the people in a country that is so small you could drive top to bottom in a long day manage to find ways to be so different from one another. Not that America is so different, but I notice it much more here.

Chinese restaurant syndrome

2007-12-11T02:20:00.000-08:00

Last night we met up with my friend Bill, who is in town for the launch of the Queen Victoria, leaving on its maiden voyage this evening. We went to the launch ceremony and watched as Camilla, who looked, as Bill's friend described her, like a trucker in drag, failed to break the champagne bottle on the bow of the ship. Then we met up with Henry and went to this awesome Chinese restaurant in Southampton, which was all you could eat. So I ate it all.

Last night around 1:30am I woke up and my entire throat had swollen shut. I felt feverish and nasty, but not in a 'cold' sort of way. When Henry left for work this morning and I told him how awful I felt, he said, "Must've been the Chinese." Wha? How in the hell would Chinese make my throat close up? He mentioned it again in email this afternoon and sent me this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_restaurant_syndrome

You learn something new every day. I will never overeat at the all-you-can-eat Chinese place in Southampton again.

Guess we're stuck now!

2007-12-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

We just ordered invitations for the wedding! I double-checked something like 19 times, and I still know I have a typo in there somewhere; as long as it's not my own name, Henry's name, or the names of our parents, I think I'll be able to live.

Still, one more big hurdle jumped. Now to figure out wedding favors...who knew planning a wedding could be so thrilling?

Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie

2007-12-07T02:57:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, one of the harder things for me to deal with in this move is the inability to get the same ingredients over here that I do in the States. It's been an adventure, to say the least, and I've compensated by buying some English cookbooks (they don't tend to include impossible-to-find ingredients, although I've found Nigella Lawson to be the exception to that rule) and by trying out new ingredients to replace hard-to-find American ones. I've also pretty much given up trying to cook anything of Southwestern or Mexican origin - that is an exercise in futility that my fragile psyche cannot handle at this point.

I have also recently joined a webpage/'bulletin board' of American expats living in the UK. It's nice to have my frustration shared by others, and to be able to read tips on where to find ingredients that I've missed. Apparently, there's even a store that has an American section around here, so I will have to go scout it out.

My latest kitchen adventure has been pie making. I do love me a pecan pie for the holidays, and I have been bound and determined to learn how to make a good one here. Unfortunately, the English don't really seem to be "pie" people, despite their love of a good savory pie. Still, sweet pies seem rare over here.

The last time I made the pie, for dinner with some friends, I found pre-baked pie crusts in the supermarket. I muddled through finding corn syrup (golden syrup) and figuring out how many grams of pecans are in 2 cups. The pies turned out well, but the crusts were no good as the crust needs to bake with the pie. So this time, for Henry's uni friends' holiday party tomorrow, I decided to go with a fresh crust. This is where the fun begins.

First of all, you can buy shortcrust in the supermarket frozen food aisles. But the crust is funky looking and I didn't trust it, and so I decided to make my own. Unfortunately, no one carries pie tins here. There's an entire thread in my expats' forum on the impossibility of finding a pie tin. How the hell do they make pies? The easy explanation is that they don't, of course. But Henry managed to find me a cake tin that looks like it will work, so I'll use that. Then I had an issue finding vegetable shortening. After 20 minutes of scouring the grocery store, I called Henry for a little help. The conversation went like this:

Me: "Hi. If I said the word Crisco to you, would that mean anything?"
Henry: "Crisco? What's Crisco?"
Me: "How about vegetable shortening?"
Henry: "What's vegetable shortening?"
Me: "It's like a lard made from vegetables."
Henry: "Yuck. Seriously? That sounds disgusting. Try in the butter aisle." (side note: you should've seen his face when I told him Crisco is the white stuff in Oreo cookies!)

No such luck. I finally flagged down a Tesco employee, braved using my American accent, and asked if she knew where to find vegetable shortening. "You mean vegetable suet?" Who knew? Plus, the stuff is 'shredded', which means it comes in a baggie and looks like maggots. Not appetizing. Still, it should do.

So now I finally have a cake tin substitute for my pie pan, a substitute for my Crisco, and I am ready to get to the pie-making. Wish me luck!

Not Feeling Myself

2007-12-06T04:08:00.000-08:00

I've been really stressed out lately. I keep trying to give myself credit - I did just move to the other side of the world, give up my job and family, and start planning a wedding. It's just not fun to be in a bad mood most of the time. Sometimes I feel like it places undue stress on Henry, and when he's not happy, that makes me even more miserable. I was thinking this morning that I wish I could just stop being stressed out and be happy again (not that I'll stop worrying about things, I think that's part and parcel of my breathing).

Then today I decided to look up stress factors and surprise! I'm off the charts. They give a list of the most stressful things in life, the first being the death of a spouse. Then they assign a number to each stressful event.

1. Death of spouse 100
2. Divorce 73
3. Marital separation 65
4. In jail 63
5. Death of close family member 63
6. Personal injury or illness 53
7. Marriage 50
8. Fired at work 47
9. Marital reconciliation 45
10. Retirement 45

Other common stressful life events are change in health of family member (point value 44), pregnancy (40), business re-engineering (39), change in financial state (38), change in the line of work (36), change in number of arguments with spouse (35), large loan/mortgage (31), change in responsibilities at work (29), trouble with in-laws (29), spouse begins or stops working (26), change in living conditions (25), trouble with boss (23) and etc..

So, let's see. That gives me a grand total of somewhere in the lower 200's. No wonder I'm not feeling very cheerful lately! I just hope I don't get arrested for that speeding ticket.

Speed Demon

2007-12-05T09:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had the car.

I love days when I have the car. There's a GPS in it so I never worry about getting lost, and I go toodling off into the countryside (Hampshire is pretty much ALL countryside) and get lost for an hour or two and then make the GPS find my way home for me. I love driving down the gorgeous English lanes - really, this is the most beautiful country - and driving through picturesque villages.

What I've discovered I do not like is speed cameras. In England, you don't even have to get caught speeding by a real person. You just have to be driving, for instance, 37 in a 30 and thinking about Christmas presents rather than looking out for a large yellow traffic camera, and POP! you've had your photo taken and you're going to get a ticket around Christmas. Which is just what happened to me yesterday when I was coming home from the mall in Southampton. Henry laughed it off, but I am definitely not pleased - it means 3 points on the UK driver's license that I do not yet have, and a £60 fine.

Still, I do love me some driving over here. I am finally used to driving on the left and feel pretty good about getting out on the road - that is, if Henry will ever let me have the car again!

Getting back into the blog of things

2007-12-03T10:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. The last three weeks have been...interesting...to say the least. Henry's parents were out for a visit at the beginning of the month, and then we spent a week with my parents. All told, we went almost 14 days being with 100 ft of one set of parents or another (or on separate airplanes) and I think it stressed both of us out a little bit. We'd gotten quite used to our little routines here. Unfortunately, once I was back, I realized how much I'd missed being social, seeing people all of the time, hanging out with my friends....and I spent most of last week just feeling sort of down about being so far away from everyone again.

It is really hard to be a million miles away from everything that I knew - but mostly because I don't have anything new to take the place of what I've left behind. Everything with Henry is still wonderful, and I love being with him, but I need to build a life here for myself. I'm thinking of looking into some volunteer activities - and, truth be told, wedding planning is beginning to take up more of my time. It's tougher than I thought.

There's a lot more to talk about, but dinner is almost done and we have an episode of the Amazing Race to watch. I'll try to catch up tomorrow.

Happy Veterans Day

2007-11-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

Today is Remembrance Day in England and Veterans Day in the United States. I like to take a moment, each year, to remember what a sacrifice has been made for me by those who have come before. I am the only member of my own immediate family who has never been part of the military, and I think that I am doubly thankful that not only has my entire family served in one capacity or another, but they are all still safe and alive after their service (although my brother continues to serve in the National Guard).

I have noticed for the last two weeks or so that many of the people I see every day are wearing red poppies. The poppy is the symbol of Remembrance Day here, and I was surprised that so many people had bought and was wearing one. I think it’s a great testament to how the people of this tiny island remember their servicemen and women that almost everyone, from 20 years younger to 50 years older than myself, wears a poppy on their lapel.

I remember once, when Henry asked me to name one thing that I get in America but not in England, I said, “Patriotism”. Even now, when I say that I’m going to do something and Henry responds with, “It’s a free country,” I frown a little, thinking, but it’s not America! I think that I have always tended to think of patriotism as something that is uniquely American, and I think I’ve found it surprising to see how wrong I am. The English are quite patriotic, just a tad less boisterous about it. However, we watched the Remembrance Day ceremonies and parades tonight with Henry’s mum, and it struck me that there were people from all generations and walks of life that had come out to say thanks for the people who had died to make this country free. I can’t help but be grateful for them as much as I am grateful for my own countrymen who laid down their life for my freedom.

I do have to admit, though, that when the Queen had laid her wreath and was walking away, they sang “God Save the Queen” – and under my breath I sang, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.”

They're coming!

2007-11-09T11:07:00.000-08:00

My future in-laws arrive tomorrow for a week's visit. As I really like Enrique and Sylvia, I'd been taking this pretty much in stride - until this afternoon when I suddenly had an urge to disinfect and scrub the entire house. I completely sanitized both bathrooms, re-cleaned the guest room, stripped and remade the bed, and started making my vacuum plan of attack to maximize cleanliness for their arrival tomorrow evening. Henry came home around 5pm to find me crouched over the sink furiously scrubbing the draining board and muttering to myself. There is something somewhat terrifying about having the 'rents over to what is now my house for the first time, especially since last time we met I was just Henry's girlfriend, and now I'm the future mother of their future grandchildren. No pressure, though.

So we've got a parentarific few weeks ahead of us as Henry's parents are with us until next Saturday, when we all bundle up in our cars and drive off to separate airports so that they can return to Spain and Henry and I go off to America to see my parents and friends over the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm excited to go home and to hug the family and to see my friends, whom I miss very, very much. And though I swear I'm not Britney Spears, y'all, I am also very excited to go to Costco to purchase large bags of Cheetos (which I've sworn I will forcefeed to our friends over here as they always cock their eyebrows at me whenever I wax poetic about those crunchy cheesy treats) and to eat my weight in Taco Bell. God, I miss Taco Bell. If I had one serious arugment against the British, it's that they cannot do Mexican food to save their lives. Poor souls. So I must get my Taco Bell fix while I can - which will be any time that I'm not consuming turkey or Cheetos.

Who, me?

2007-11-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

Henry and I had to go in to the Southampton Registry office on Wednesday morning to give notice of our intent to marry and, of course, give them money. Because nothing says "wedding" like writing another check!

Anyway, we had to go in and answer a series of simple questions about ourselves to ensure that we weren't lying, we're legally able to get married here, and that we know each other (i.e., that, despite my favorite t-shirt, I am not really an Internet Mail Order Bride). The woman first asked my full name, birthdate, occupation (housewife?) and then asked me Henry's full name, occupation, address, etc. I don't know why, but the entire time I felt like she was going to think we were lying about something, and I was terrified.

I've never been able to lie (which goes along with my inability to keep a secret). Until my mid-20's I was convinced that my mother could read my mind, and lying just made her angry, so I never tried it. If I so much as stretch the truth, my eye starts to twitch and I have to work to maintain eye contact and not visibly sweat. It was tough for me to sit in there and answer questions when I felt like the lady was looking for me to lie, even when I wasn't and had nothing to lie about.

It's hard not to feel like you're up to no good here, though. The UK is one step away from a Big Brother state with all of the cameras everywhere - it's impossible to go more than 20 yards without seeing a camera and wondering whether you're being watched. The other day in the mall I noticed a camera at the end of a long hall near some restrooms - everyone who had to take a wee was getting recorded going in and out of the bathroom. London is awful for cameras, and they're even in our little outlet mall down the street. It's sort of creepy.

Thankfully, however, the lady at the registrar didn't notice my discomfort, or sees it enough to let it pass, and we formally have the date registered for the wedding! YAY! Now, I just have to make it through the rest of my checklist and get all the details ironed out for the ceremony, which is an enormous task. Yikes.

Happy Guy Fawkes Night

2007-11-05T03:10:00.000-08:00

I am slowly getting used to many things about living in England (don't even get me started on the lame water pressure of our shower and our totally infinitesimally small hot water heater), but one of the stranger things for me has been getting used to English holiday practices.

I am not a big fan of Christmas displays that go up before Thanksgiving (a trait inherited from my mother), so imagine my displeasure when I was toodling through the local outlet mall in mid-October and saw the maintenance guys putting up trees and wreaths. My immediate thought was that these people need a buffer holiday, like Thanksgiving, to help them stretch through the winter months with celebration rather than turning them into a 3-month shopping spree.

That’s really not the problem, though – they don’t properly celebrate the buffer holidays that they do have! I was so sad not to see any Halloween decorations up until the actual day. I went for a run on Wednesday morning and nothing was there – on my way back into the neighborhood, women were out putting up these elaborate Halloween displays. One of my neighbors had three carved pumpkins that were beautiful, and they only came out a few hours before dusk on Halloween. We spent the night having dinner with friends near London, so we missed the trick-or-treaters, which was sad, because apparently that’s all the Halloween you get. When I went out for my run the next morning, all of the decorations were down and put away for next year. There were never any huge candy displays in the local market, never any plastic pumpkins up in the shopping center – it’s just, boom, Halloween and then done. I feel sorry for these kids who will never know the pure joy of anticipating the major sugar-high of the year.

For the last two weekends, however, I’ve had to listen to the boom sparkle fizz of roman candles being lit off all over the neighborhood, because tonight is Guy Fawkes’ Night. What the hell is that, my American friends may ask? It’s the night that the English celebrate the foiling of a plot by a man named Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament. So they celebrate by lighting off a bunch of fireworks at everyone’s house. Fireworks started going off before Halloween, and thank God they will likely go for the last time tonight. I am tired of these puny fireworks. Henry and I were out running on Friday night and I was laughing at all of the bottle rockets and roman candles that we could see going off around the neighborhood, and said that, like many things, American fireworks are better. Henry said, “Bigger isn’t always better, Kim,” and I replied that oh, yes, it is, when you’re blowing stuff up. He had to agree.

You know what else is better in the US? Tryptophan-induced naps. I’m glad we’re going home for Thanksgiving.

Elusive Mayo

2007-10-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

No, that's not the name for a new rock band I'm starting up in my garage. That is how I feel now about all sorts of wonderful American ingredients that I cannot get over here.

It all started the first week I was here when I wanted to make this fabulous black bean and Italian sausage recipe that I love. I was in comfort-food-mood, and it's a dish that I can eat straight out of the pan, practically. I went to the local Tesco for the ingredients and...well, no black beans. No Italian sausage, either, which is strange in a country where they have entire aisles of the grocery store dedicated to sausage. I substituted "taco" beans for the black beans, cheddar cheese for the Monterrey jack, and hot chili sausage for the Italian stuff, and managed to make a serviceable dinner.

A few days later I wanted to make chilaquiles for my visiting friends. I've made it here before, so I knew I could find the ingredients somewhere, but this time our local Tesco was out of tortilla chips. No worries, I thought. I'll buy corn tortillas and fry them up myself they're better that way anyway. Except, of course, when your corn tortillas aren't tortillas at all, but little flat pieces of cornbread, which is what they are here. They are far too sweet and not at all what I wanted, but still, the dish was eaten with only compliments to the chef.

So, basically, the new thing for me is trying to find ingredients that are either the same as what I can get back home or even an improvement. Some spices over here are cheaper and easier to get, and Asian and Indian ingredients are much better and there's a wide range of choices. It's taken me two weeks to hunt down a place where I could buy black beans and I found corn tortilla chips that are pretty decent at Costco. Yes, they have a Costco over here, and it is a bastion of American over-indulgence. I literally clapped my hands with joy in the car when we pulled into the parking lot, frightening Henry terribly.

Unfortunately, Costco let me down when it came to mayo. See, I grew up on Kraft Mayo. I literally gag a little if I'm forced to eat Best Foods, and Hellman's, which is Best Foods, the only thing I've been able to find over here. My diet limits my mayo intake, but I cannot live without a jar of it in the fridge, and so I have made Henry go into many a grocery store with me in search of Kraft. No dice. But this is where knowing the translation between American and British brands comes in handy, because last night we were at ASDA, which is owned by Wal-mart, and I bought a tiny jar of mayo that had similar branding to Kraft. I know many of you will cringe at this, but I couldn't wait to get home and try it out - and the second I was in the kitchen, I screwed off the top, stuck my finger straight into the jar, and licked. Success!! ASDA mayo is a Kraft mayo doppelganger, and I am happier for it.

Next on the list? Cheetos. I've heard that I can get them in Spain, so our trip to Seville over Christmas suddenly looks even more appealing....

Bad Blogger Kimmy!

2007-10-29T01:40:00.001-07:00

I have gotten endless reams of shit from friends (Gretchen, you weren't alone!) about not blogging for two weeks. I didn't realize that I was that popular! So when Henry kissed me this morning before leaving for work and asked me what I had planned for the day, I muttered, "Must blog!" and rolled over for a little extra snooze.

So here's what's been happening -

I moved to England three weeks ago, and had a hard time settling in at first. Moving in to a new house is hard - moving in to a new house with a man you've never lived with in a country that is nothing like your own is even harder than I ever imagined. But since Henry puts a smile the size of Texas on my face:

I managed to buck up and make it through. I really didn't have that much to cry about - after the first week of "Oh my god the house is a mess and I don't have a job and you have to be kidding me that I need to vacuum AGAIN" we've been busy ever since. The first weekend that I was in town we went to Andrew and Mari's wedding in York. They are a lovely couple and the wedding was quite fun, ending with me getting totally trashed with all of Henry's friends and making him drive me back to the hotel even though I had PROMISED I wouldn't have more than one glass of wine. Best laid plans of mice and men, I suppose.

The problem with too much drink is that it can lower your immune system, and I finally fell victim to the cold that Henry had been carrying around all week. I was sniffly and cold all the way home, which sucked as we had guests waiting for us. My friends Christine and Nancy Jane from the US had come over to visit for a few days before we all went off to meet up with Gretchen and Kerry in Prague. The visit was lovely and we did lots of touristy stuff:

including shoping for cute hats:

even though I was still very sick and blew my nose a lot. I was not fun. However, it was so much fun to be with the girls so soon after moving, and it made me feel much better about things. I felt more like England was home after I shared it with friends, and knowing that I'm now only a short flight from all of Europe and that I can go see it whenever I want makes me quite happy.

We all went off to Prague on the 17th and had a wonderful time. At Gatwick, in the waiting lounge, I got all pissed off because there was a guy taking up three - THREE! - seats in the lounge and talking on his cell phone in a loud American accent. NJ and I sat on either side of him and I even gave him a bit of my elbow to get him to budge up and not be so seat-greedy. He walked away shortly afterward, and the three girls were able to sit together. The plane was compltely packed so we all just grabbed random seats, and it turned out that Christine was sitting across from Three-Seater on the plane from London to Prague. She got to talking to him and it turned out that he was actually a really nice guy, and a Brit to boot (although he went to college in the US) and we shared a taxi into Prague with him. We talked a little bit about his work and he's actually in the same industry that I was in in the States (e-learning) and so I got his business card and I'm talking to him later today to hopefully discuss some opportunities in the future! Hurrah!

Prague was wonderful. We stayed in a lovely 5-star hotel in a little suite with two bedrooms. It was like having our own apartment in Prague. The only downside to our apartment was that the upstairs bedroom had a mattress like a brick, so I ended up displacing NJ from the pull-out couch and making her sleep upstairs in the brick bed (she swore she could sleep anywhere!) so that I could get a night's sleep. We also had a lovely jacuzzi tub in the upstairs bedroom that we took advantage of:

The city itself is gorgeous. We did lots of shopping, eating, and drinking, but we did manage to squeeze some sightseeing in there as well. I really enjoyed the city and hopefully I can take Henry back there some day.

The girls left on Saturday to move on to Bratislava, and I left shortly afterward to head back to my soon-to-be-husband. My train didn't get in until almost 9pm, and I was exhausted, but once again I came home to houseguests. Henry's friends John and Jema were in town with their daughter Abbi, and we had a fun evening of drinking too much (John was trying out Long Island Ice Tea recipes). Once again, all the drinking didn't help my lingering cold very much and I felt pretty bad the next day.

On Sunday we packed up Abbi and the five of us went off to brunch with some of J&J's friends, and then off to Marwell Zoo to take a look at the Hall:

I love Marwell Hall. It is just a gorgeous place to get married, and I love the fact that it's smack dab in the middle of a Zoo. You walk out front and see zebras and rhinos - out back there are meerkats and lemurs. It's perfect. Thankfully, Henry agreed and we're going to get married there! It's wonderful.

We spent some time walking around the zoo a bit and looking at the other animals. Unfortunately, while visiting the tigers, John failed to carefully read this sign:

Apparently, John and his daughter were standing a bit too close to the tiger enclosure for the tiger's own happiness, so he came over and sprayed them to give them what-for. Henry and I were a few hundred yards away when we heard Jema screaming with laughter, and came up to find a rather disgusted looking John and a completely un-fazed Abbi covered in giant cat pee. I took it as a sign that getting married in the zoo is a good idea.

So that was last weekend. I should've been good and blogged about everything this last week, but my cold went from bad to okay to really bad on Monday and Tuesday, and I had terrible bronchitis. It felt like knives in my throat and lungs every time I coughed. I was under strict orders from Dr. Henry not to do anything - don't run, don't go to the shops, just take my medicine and lay there - and I followed his orders by not blogging as well. I will try to keep up in the future.

Off to Prague

2007-10-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Nancy Jane and Christine are in town, and we're off to London tomorrow and Prague on Wednesday. I'll blog more after my return on Sunday!

My first day as a housewife

2007-10-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy day so far. There's lots of furniture assembly to be done, but I cannot say I ever truly feel at home until I have broken in the kitchen, so I am busy roasting a chicken and rearranging the cupboards. I know Henry is probably going to hate the fact that I've switched the plates and cups with the spices and cereal, but he said I could do what pleases me and that did. Plus, the new rack we installed last night has hooks, so I have all sorts of fun kitchen utensils hanging from the wall now.

As I am busy settling in, and while Henry is at work and I can have a good poke around the house and the neighborhood, I find little surprises everywhere. For instance, I have Marmite in my house. I assume it belongs to Sylvia, Henry's mum, because he said he doesn't eat it. My mom asked me about whether or not I would buy Marmite and I said no - I've tasted it once and it is what I think earwax would taste like - but it looks like I've inherited some anyway.

I went for a run this morning, an activity that I forgot is not fully embraced by the English, although as soon as I was out on the trail I remembered. I used to jog around my neighborhood when I lived in London and remember people looking at me funny - the English tend to work out in the gym rather than on the path, although I know Henry goes for a run around the same track I was on. Still, I got some weird looks.

I also managed to freak out the lady at Tesco just by talking - she was looking at me as though I was an alien just because I asked her how the Tesco Clubcard works. I know that there probably aren't a lot of Americans out here in suburban England, but I still find it disconcerting when people look startled the second I start speaking.

I thought it would be awful to be unemployed, and I did tear up a bit when Henry left for work and I was all alone in the house, but frankly, it's not so bad. It turns out there is lots of stuff to keep me busy as I'm settling in, and I'm sure I'll find more to do when I'm done with my already long and growing to-do list.

Of Jet lag and Ikea

2007-10-07T20:03:00.000-07:00

I arrived safely in England on Saturday morning after no sleep and too much wine on the flight, but Henry was waiting for me on the other side of customs and I made it through to him with no trouble. I had been dreading the process of handing over my visa and going through the third degree on what I was doing here, but the lady basically just said, "Congratulations!" and stamped my visa. The drive home was slightly panic-inducing - I just MOVED to another COUNTRY - but Henry was so sweet about everything and by the time we got home and I took a nap, everything looked much more rosy.

Today we went up to London to go to Ikea and buy some new storage space (I even drove and didn't kill anyone!). Henry's house is lovely, but it is a perfect fit for one person and I have managed, somehow, to import about 8 suitcases full of my things over the last 8 months. Most of it has been deposited in the tiny third bedroom or left out over the guest beds. As I have plans to turn the box room into an office and we have guests coming to visit on Sunday, we had to buy some storage so I could clean out those spaces. We bought a new dresser, nightside stand, and set of file drawers, along with some shelving for the kitchen and pantry. Already everything is starting to come together and we have more space than before. I'm trying to make it so that Henry doesn't feel like I've invaded the house, but a girl needs a place to put her underwear, and strewn about the guest bedroom isn't it.

Tomorrow Henry is off to work and I face my first day in the house alone with no job. I think I have enough stuff to keep me busy this week with furniture assembly and trips to Tesco to buy such important household items as a mop and larger trash bags. but it still frightens me a bit that I may be bored without work. I also have a few potential wedding venues to check out this week, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking. The next big goal, now that I am all moved, is to decide on a place to get married and get the information out to everyone so people can start making travel plans. Next week we have a wedding and then my friends Christine and Nancy Jane are visiting prior to our big Prague trip, so I should be quite busy through the end of October.

Henry's parents are coming out in November for a week and I am really looking forward to that. They sent me a great email yesterday to welcome me to England and remind me that both Henry's mother and sister have done this before - both moved to different countries to be with the men with whom they fell in love - and have happy and wonderful marriages for it. I know that the precedent in the family bears well for us, and that I did the right thing to be with the man I love. Especially since, thanks to modern technology, I've already been able to see my parents twice via webcam since I arrived! It's nice to know that I'll be able to keep in touch so well with my family - it makes the distance feel less intimidating.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

2007-10-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

I leave tomorrow for England! I am so full of so many emotions, most of which are wrapped around utter joy that I get to hold my Henry in my arms in about 29 hours.

My mom is really unhappy today about the move, because we're going to miss each other terribly, and it breaks my heart. I know it would be enough for me to call it all off if I wasn't absolutely postiive that I'm doing the right thing, and I am going to do everything in my power to make my relationships here work even when I'm there. Especially with my Mom - now I need to prove to her that I can.

I had a chance to say goodbye to my brother and his wife and kids today - they seem not upset about my move, but Rob and I have lived very far apart from each other most of our adult lives, and we know that this is part of the deal (and that I will try to be very much a part of Hunter and Sarah's lives). Thank God for webcams - I will get to see the kids whenever we can make it happen.

But I will miss my parents and my family, and my friends, and I will work very very hard at making sure that I keep those relationships alive.

The more things change...

2007-09-30T19:09:00.000-07:00

Nine years ago, in September, I packed up everything I owned, stuffed it into the back of my dad's '73 VW Bug, and drove down to my parents' house to put everything away so that I could move off to England.

This weekend, I packed up the rest of what I owned (that I hadn't given to Goodwill, thrown in the dump, or sold to friends) into the back of my dad's '00 VW Bug, drove down to my parents' house, and I have a lot of sorting and storing to do before I get on the plane this Friday to move off to England.

It has been tough, and I'm still dealing with a lot of different emotions. But it is amazing to me that the drive today felt very much like the last time I made this same drive, car full of stuff, off to my next adventure - excited, terrified, and mostly just hopeful that this is all going to work out okay and I'm going to have the time of my life.

This time, though, I know it's going to be the best thing ever - in 5 days, I get to move in with Henry and spend the rest of my life with the man I love. The year that it has taken to get to this point has taken so long (probably because I counted every day) and I am just so grateful that it's over and I get to move on to the next step - planning our wedding and settling in to my new life.

Moving Sucks

2007-09-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

I love my fiance. Let's make no bones about it - Henry rules, and we're going to have a great life together.

We'd better, because it is so clear to me what a great life I'm leaving behind.

Because I am leaving these friends:

And these friends:

And, even these friends, that I've had since 1994:

Worse yet, I'm leaving my best friend:

And my bestest best friends:

I will miss them, terribly. But at least they can use their computers; what will I do without my my favorite nephew?

And my favorite neice and sister-in-law?

Baby Time
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge

God forbid I even have to live without this guy:

What will I do without this man?

I know I'm lucky to have Henry. But I am so lucky to be friends with and to love all of you. Thank you for making my life the best I could ever know.

The Wishing Chair

2007-09-25T08:22:00.001-07:00

One of the worst things about moving, especially in this situation, is that I have to go through every single thing I own and decide if it is worth hauling overseas or throwing away. One of the best things about this move is that I have to touch everything I own, and sometimes I find tiny little treasures, like I did this morning.

Henry and I woke up early to get a start on the day and take the rest of my stuff to Goodwill for disposal and my Mom and Dad's house for storage (thanks, M&D!). I was going through some of my things to figure out on which pile it belonged, and I found a ticket to go to the top of the Smith Tower here in Seattle from June 2006.

The Smith Tower was built in 1914 and was the tallest building on the West Coast until the 1960s. You can read all about it here. At the very top of the Tower is an observatory, and in the observatory is a chair that was given to Smith by the Empress of China. The legend goes that a single woman who sits in the chair and wishes to get married will be wed within a year.

One day last summer, when I was feeling particularly low, I looked up and saw the Smith Tower and remembered hearing that legend. I knew it was silly, but it was a beautiful day and I thought, "I'll just go take a look at the view and if I get a chance, I'll sit in the chair and feel like an idiot for a few minutes - it couldn't hurt."

Needless to say, I sat in the chair and felt like an idiot. But now I am watching my gorgeous fiance walk around my living room and packing up all of my stuff to move to a place that I've always wanted to live again. I'm not saying it was the chair...I'm just saying that if you're still single in Seattle, it might be worth a try.

Today's the day!

2007-09-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

Henry's coming in to town tonight to help me with the move. It has been over 10 weeks since we saw each other last and I am just so tired of the distance and the not being together. He'll be here until Wednesday and then I follow 9 days later.

I miss him so much, so it will be wonderful just to be near him again. 8 hours! It just feels like an age on these days when I'm waiting for him to arrive.

Turns out you can go home again

2007-09-17T19:21:00.001-07:00

The ladies
Originally uploaded by Kim1998

We are under three weeks until the big move, and I am feeling a little bit better about things. Last week was the last big business trip and I am activley handing off my accounts to the new guy, Nate.

I planned the trip so that we would end up in New York on Friday and I spent the weekend with friends in the city. It was a great trip. On Friday night, Brook and I went to Conker Hill, Kieron's new bar. It's a great place and I highly recommend it for anyone who is visiting Manhattan. Over the course of the evening a bunch of old friends from bar at which we used to hang out all came by, and I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in at least 2 years (including Pam and Nicki, above). It was a great night. Well, at least until I realized that I wasn't going to get to sleep before 4:30am.

On Saturday, I had one of the best New York days. I woke up late and talked to Henry for a bit until Brook stirred out of his room, and then we went for a bit of brunch around 2pm. The weather was gorgeous and so we went for a several-hour walk around Central Park. It was a perfect day - just warm enough to feel like summer, but with a cool fall breeze that meant we needed sweaters that we took off and on depending on how cloudy it got. After we walked through much of the Park, we went up to the UWS and went shopping for birthday gifts for a birthday party on Sunday. And Saturday night Craig came down to the bar to hang out, and I was able to have breakfast with him the next morning. It was so great to hang out with Brook and Craig and just be around friends.

It was a great weekend and I was so grateful to see everyone again (and be reminded why I don't drink that much anymore - whew!). But I am glad to be home and packing, waiting for Henry to arrive on Thursday night so that we can do what we've got to do to make sure we can start our life together - in 19 days.

Yay!!

Janice!

2007-09-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

I sat next to this woman on the airplane on the way home from New York last night.

I kid you not. She was just lips and dark eyelashes and dyed blonde hair the consistency of straw. I would feel bad about making fun of someone based on bad hair had she not been somewhat rude when awake and then snored through the entire flight while wearing a shirt that says "It's My Birthday, Bitch!"

Hey, you can keep my things, they've come to take me home

2007-09-09T20:53:00.000-07:00

Less than four weeks to go until the big move, and I have to admit that I'm living on a razor's edge. The guys at work are pushing me hard to get things done before I leave, and I've been working late and on weekends. I am leaving on Tuesday for a business trip that will take me to Chicago and New York, where I'm staying until Sunday night so that I can continue the achingly painful task of saying good-bye to my friends in the States. I have a million things to pack or sell and I feel paralyzed when I look around at an apartment full of things of which I have to dispose in the next 21 days. I haven't seen my fiance in 9 weeks, which, not to put too fine a point on it, means I haven't kissed or been hugged by my love in 9 weeks. I've been upset because I thought my parents were never going to forgive me for leaving for the UK, despite the fact that they're just happy that I'm happy. I also dropped one of my cats off at my parents' house this weekend because he needs constant medication and someone has to take care of him while I'm traveling. So I feel guilty about not having one of cats around, not doing enough work, not spending enough time talking to Henry over the webcam, deserting my parents, not packing enough, not getting enough ready to go....I won't feel normal again until I get on the plane to England.

Last night I had dinner at a friend's house and burst into tears when I dropped a bottle of wine on the sidewalk as I was getting out of my car (Thanks to Jenn and Kat who went and bought me a new bottle of wine while I cried on Jeff's shoulder!). It wasn't a big deal, but it was completely the straw that broke my back. I think I knew then that I had been pushing myself too hard, that I had been trying to "handle" everything and not break down. Now I feel like I just have to keep moving forward without trying to rush everything or take on far too much, because I am about 10 seconds from killing myself and only 9 from killing anyone else who is standing too close or saying something I don't like (which right now especially means one of the guys at work telling me that I have more work to do and that I would "feel better" if I worked all night to get it done).

It turns out that moving to England is harder than I remembered. Of course, the last time I moved I could fit everything I owned into the back of my '73 VW bug. Now I take up a very large one bedroom apartment that is full of stuff that I've collected in the last 10 years. It's tough to throw stuff out, but it's even harder trying to decide what is important enough to pack and haul over half the world.

The only thing that keeps me moving is Enrique. Three more weeks and change and then we'll be together for the rest of our lives, and this whole awful month will be nothing but a bad memory. I just hope that I (and everyone around me) will survive!

One Month Left

2007-09-05T09:30:00.001-07:00

Henry and Kim
Originally uploaded by Kim1998

I leave for England one month from today. It's coming up so fast! I feel like I have a million things to do and I am completely paralyzed by it all. I'm so excited to go, though, and I am just so ready to spend the rest of my life with Henry.

I still have to sell my car, work out the kitty transfer (they're staying with my parents for two months before we ship them to the UK to live with us) and pack the rest of my apartment. It just feels like a ton to do! But I'll get it done - and a month from today I'll be on my way!

America, Fuck Yeah!

2007-08-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

I know there are many things I'm going to miss about the States. Target, for one. And the fact that just now I bumped into the last 30 minutes of Independence Day on cable and it actually made me tear up.

I can say that, as a rule, the English are far more reserved. They don't bang their own drum. They certainly don't mention that they want something. They stiff upper lip mostly everything. They certainly don't make cheesy movies about how awesome they are.

The English also don't write cool songs about themselves. God Save the Queen? Lee Greenwood's 'Proud to Be an American' makes me weep every time. Seriously. It's on my iPod. Makes for a bad bus trip when it comes through my earphones on shuffle. The Star Spangled Banner is the best, even humming the bars makes me cry.

I'm looking forward to being an American in the UK. Partly because I will get whatever I want, just by being outgoing enough to ask for it, for the rest of my life. But mostly because I feel that I will be more proud of where I'm from because of where I am.

Kicking it Old Skool

2007-08-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

I spent this last weekend in Denver with my best friend EB. I flew in on Thursday and that night we went to the Beastie Boys concert at Red Rocks. First of all, any concert at Red Rocks would kick ass. But the Beastie Boys are still amazing in concert (I saw them when I was in HIGH SCHOOL) and they played such a variety of music that anyone would have been pleased with the concert.

EB and I spent most of the weekend eating, drinking, and shopping for shoes for the bridesmaids for the wedding. I also found a really lovely white dress that I may or may not wear for the wedding, depending on whether or not I find something I like better or I lose about 10 more pounds. We'll see.

So it was a good weekend altogether. It's always fun to hang out with EB and we had a really great time.

This weekend is the big Fremont pub crawl. We're doing Fast Times at Fremont High this year - I am very excited! 80's costume is required, so I am breaking out some of my old roller skating costumes to see what works...

Oh, and I move to England in six weeks. WOO!!!

Seven Saturdays

2007-08-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

I only have 7 weekends left in the United States before I move to England. Everything feels a little surreal. I've been saying for weeks that my head and my heart are in the UK with Henry, but now I feel as though even more of me is there. It's like my soul is there. My body is just putting one foot in front of the other.

I'm trying to keep my eye on the prize (Henry) while keeping my feet on the ground here. It's tough. Thankfully I have a few things to keep me busy. Next weekend I'm heading to Denver to visit EB. Then we've got the Fremont pub crawl. This time I have to dress up in 80's gear. I won't look cute, but I'll look awesome. Then I've got two weekends to pack. I'm spending a weekend in New York with Brook and Craig, and then Henry comes to help me finish up my packing and get everything settled...and then I can move and catch up with the rest of myself.

The Bestest Best Man Ever

2007-08-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever spoken to me that I love my fiance, Henry. But I don't know if everyone knows how awesome he is (despite the fact that I mention it, like, every five minutes).

I went to FedEx yesterday to pick up my visa (why do I always have major emotional moments at FedEx? I picked up my engagement ring there, too) and when I took a look at it, I had a range of different emotions. The visa itself is almost "ironed" into my passport - it's not quite a sticker, it looks like it has been ironed on to the page like one of those appliques you would iron on to a T-shirt as a kid. It also says "Visa - Marriage - E Romero" and "No work or recourse to public funds". I am so excited about moving but I feel a little useless about the whole no work until March thing, so it's a lot to handle.

Anyway, last night Henry and I ended up having a really emotional talk about me having to do all this moving stuff by myself, including packing up everything I own and getting rid of my furniture and all that. It all feels like a bit much. We talked about it more this morning and I was still feeling sort of overwhelmed when suddenly I got an email - with Henry's itinerary. He's coming out in September for a week to help me move!

It's amazing to me that I finally have a real partner in this life - that when things got tough for me, Henry helps shoulder the burden. It's not something I'm used to, but it's really great to feel like someone's there to share the bad and the good with me, no matter what. It makes all the difference in the world.

I'm in!

2007-08-08T10:02:00.001-07:00

My visa just got approved - I'm officially moving to England in October!!

For my Bus Drivers

2007-07-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

Almost every day I take the 15 Express from Ballard to Seattle and back again.  The journey isn't long, but it's usually crowded - the bus is cramped with commuters (and, unfortunately, the occasional ex-boyfriend).  My schedule at work is dictated by my clients rather than the clock, so even though I try for the 7:36 downtown and the 5:05 to Blue Ridge, I often catch a different bus.  If I do catch the 7:36 downtown, my driver is a lovely young woman who says, "Good morning!" when I swipe my pass; she often chats with the woman who works at the coffee shop and always sits in the front seat, the driver's microphone close enough to catch both sides of the conversation and relay them to the entire bus.  It's always pleasant, full of laughter about life's minor distractions.  By the time we hit 1st and Bell, I'm usually smiling enough to start the day on a good foot.

If I catch the 5:05, it's driven by a man who is both just enough nerdy and flamboyant to make me question if he really is gay (or it was until his cellphone went off one day and it was playing, "Promiscuous Girl" by Nelly Furtado, and then I knew).  He's sweet enough to remember each of the folks who wait for his bus, kind enough to warn us if he's going to make a quick traffic change or stop too soon, and aware enough to say, "See you tomorrow!" to his regulars.  He also reminds me a lot of bus drivers I had when I was a kid, when I went to a magnet school in San Diego and had to bus in over an hour from my house in the suburbs to a school in the inner city.  We would sing songs and chant the entire way in and out, and the bus drivers encouraged us - if we were singing, we were happy and seated, whereas if we weren't, we would get into all sorts of trouble.  My afternoon bus driver in Seattle once encouraged his entire bus to sing rainy-day songs, and it made everyone laugh (although no one broke into song - a shame as it might have made the day a little less dreary).

What made me think of all this was my commute today.  Both my "regular" drivers are kind enough to say hello with a smile, look glad to see us, and open the back door so we don't have to cram in or queue out like cattle (knowing that we'll come up and flash our passes or give up our transfers; Seattlites are amazingly law-abiding).  But when I miss those buses, I get the jackass driver who frowns at everyone when they come on board, who makes us all stand in line on the bus waiting for the front door to swipe our cards, even though it's 110 degrees inside, and the guy who balls out the kid who accidentally got on the Express (whereas my kind drivers pull over and let them out).  It made me realize how far those smiles, "Hello!"s and attempts at song go.

OUCH!

2007-07-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

I am officialy old.

I threw my back out today. Not sure how - I was leaning over to put something in my car - but I am now in IMMENSE pain. I don't think I have ever hurt this bad. I am leaning back against a hot bean bag (courtesy of Jule Laing) hoping it will help, but now I am on fire and in pain to boot. This sucks. Any suggestions, help, etc. would be greatly appreciated!!

Neverending Cookie Jar

2007-07-08T12:14:00.001-07:00

Henry left today to go home. It's been a whirlwind of a week, starting with the engagement last Saturday and ending this morning when I walked him to security at a very crowded SeaTac airport. We spent time with my parents, my college friends, my girlfriends, my other set of girlfriends, my best friend from high school...and a few minutes alone together enjoying each other's company. It was a wonderful week and we were both very happy to be together.

Today was a little weird, though. Usually, the trip to the airport and the goodbyes are tearful, awful times that reduce both of us to sobbing blobs of unhappiness. But today we were both....calm, even almost happy. It was terrible to see him go, but inside I felt so glad that we're just that much closer to spending the rest of our lives together. The next time I'm with him will be in the UK after the move, and I will arrive on my fiancee visa and be free to stay with him forever. I asked him how he felt about it, and he said that he felt the same way - we've made such a huge commitment, and we're so close to being together for the rest of our lives, that it's hard not to be giddy at the prospect. He said it was like finding a never-ending cookie jar - once you knew it was never going away, you felt less stressed out about your cookies. Now that we know we've made this lifelong commitment, it feels like every good-bye is more of a see-you-later. And that next time is the beginning of the rest of our lives.

It's official!!

2007-07-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

At around 2am on Saturday, June 30, Henry asked me to be his wife. I said yes!

His flight had been 2 hours late leaving PHL, where he'd had to change planes on his way from Gatwick. He got off the airplane and we waited for ages only to realized they'd lost his luggage. When we finally left, we were driving out of the parking lot and Henry pointed out that my battery light was on - we made it about 2 miles from home before the car died completely and I had to call for a tow. When we finally got home, we collapsed into bed...and then Henry asked me to marry him.

It was the best night of my life!

Longest Day of My Life

2007-06-29T21:31:00.000-07:00

Good god, could the minutes tick by any slower? Henry's coming in tonight. His plane is late, and this day has lasted longer than any other that I have ever lived through.

I can't wait to just be near him again. I am off to the airport to pick up the love of my life.

Of Green Shorts and Grey Trousers

2007-06-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

When I lived in New York, I bought these green Capri shorts (a little too short to call them Capri pants, a little too long to call them shorts).  They were perfect.  Size 12.  And when I put them on, they hung around my hips like an over-indulgent boyfriend.  I loved them.  Then, they started getting tight.  And suddenly they no longer fit, and I parted with them reluctantly.

When I moved into my new apartment last November, I had given up on ever seeing my NYC weight again.  And so I went through my things and threw out quite a bit of my old clothes.  There were a few things I could not bear to part with, and they went in a box, and into my storage space downstairs.  Among them - my green shorts, and a pair of gray pants that I love.

As the scale crept down towards my NYC weight, these remained the holy grail of my time at Weight Watchers.  "Just wait until I hit 1XX, I'll wear those shorts," I thought.

Two days ago, I hit my NYC weight for the fifth day in a row, and I thought it was time to pull "the box" out of the closet.

So I wore the green shorts today, and it turns out I have missed my window - they're too big!  I'll wear them for a bit, but they're not quite fitting right and back in the box I'm afraid they'll go.

And the grey pants.  Well, they fit fine now.  5 more pounds, and they'll look as fantastic like they used to.  8 more weeks and they'll become my fat pants.  I can't wait.

Weight Watchers rules.  I look awesome, I feel awesome - and I am 8 lbs. away from my weight when I was 16.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

2007-06-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

The good news? HENRY BOUGHT A RING. We're getting engaged!

The bad news? Keeping my happy secret from my work had turned me into a terribly hard person to deal with (I was afraid to let them know I might be leaving). I wanted to sing from the rooftops, not pretend that my long-distance relationship was casual! I had been a complete mess, and on top of that I'm working 55+ hours a week and feeling mighty overwhelmed, so...

I finally told my boss that I was getting engaged and chances are that I'm moving to England....and he was super cool with it. I'll be staying in Seattle for a while, so I can keep working until I go, but my boss made it clear that I probably won't be doing any work for them from the UK. Oh, well - I have a wedding to plan!

It's all happy here. I can't believe that the man of my dreams is going to propose. I feel like everything is right in the world - this is truly the best thing that could happen. I can't wait for him to be here in two weeks!!!

AND - AND! - I hit the 15lb. weight loss mark today. I may fit in a wedding dress yet.

Out of Africa

2007-06-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching Out of Africa. This is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen, and should be watched and/or re-watched be everyone.

Gorgeous.

Visiting the Wooldridges

2007-06-02T22:57:00.001-07:00

bro and sis in the stroller
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge

Spent last weekend at my brother's house in California. Look at how cute my niece and nephew are! Sarah is a gorgeous, lovely baby and mostly just slept on my chest and let me hang out with her a lot. Hunter recently turned 2 and is definitely living the "terrible twos" but he is super cute so it's hard to be frustrated with him.

Sarema continues to amaze me with her patience - she's a very good mom. And Rob is also very patient with the kids, which I am hoping is a good sign that I might be patient, too, once the time comes for me and Henry.

It was a good trip all in all and there are a ton of really cute pictures up on my flickr page - check them out!

Bad Hangover, Good Greek Food

2007-06-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

Last night I went out with the girls for drinks at the Pink Door. We had a wonderful time, and I had a bit too much to drink, before we all headed over to Carol's brother's fabulous new yacht (not a word to be used lightly, but this thing has three bedrooms, hardwood furniture, and flat screen TVs all over the place). Having not had a drink since last weekend, I was a little woozy at this point. Thanks to Ms. Berg, who graciously drove my very talkative drunk ass safely home (thank you, Gretchen!).

I woke up this morning with the worst hangover I've had in months, and felt very blah all day long. Talked to Henry a bit, who put up with me having to take a break during our conversation for an hour nap, and actually managed to get out and get my car's emmissions tested and tabs renewed (they expired in April) so I that could be street legal again.

Tonight I met the Groovy Frankenfriends out for dinner at Costas Opa in Fremont. Good food, terrible service. We had a wonderful time hanging out together and I even bumped into Kerry, who was at the restaurant to celebrate Kara's daughter's first birthday. I am still feeling a little poorly, so I came home after dropping by the office to grab my laptop (work is totally rough right now, I have a million things to do and no time to do them). I am thinking a nice good night's sleep and then a long conversation with Henry, a walk around the lake, and 4-5 hours of work tomorrow. Boo! But it will make the rest of the week easier if I get stuff done now.

Oh, and my cat, Simon, was really sick earlier this week. We're trying some new medication for his issues and hope that will clear things up - I really can't afford $300 a month in vet bills! These are very expensive kitties lately.

Oh! And I hit the 10 lbs. weight loss mark this week. Woot!

Trip to Spain

2007-05-27T19:41:00.001-07:00

Do a little dance
Originally uploaded by Kim1998

Finally - the Spain trip.

Of course, it was wonderful. I flew into Heathrow on May 6th and met up with Henry. We basically just laid around the house on Sunday together and then on Monday we had to go shopping to replace the cosmetics I had left in the bathroom on the plane (I get dolled up before we land so I can be all grungy and comfortable for the first 8 hours and still look happy and fresh when I land) because I'd had a few too many sleeping pills and was still a bit stoned when I was getting ready. On Monday night we went out with Simon, Claire, and CJ and hit the local pub. We had a really great time chatting and hanging out - it's a good thing I like Henry's friends so much! On Tuesday we hopped a plane to Santander to meet Henry's parents. I was a little nervous, but they are very lovely people. Henry's mom is very sweet and actually pretty talkative and straightforward (well, for an English person - by American standards she's quiet and polite) and Henry's father is a very funny and kind man who I think probably took great delight in my wide-eyed state.

They really have the life over there, I have to say. We would wake up at around 10am, have breakfast, go for a walk on the beach, have lunch, take a siesta, and then go out again in the afternoon and back at 8pm or so for dinner, which lasts until midnight and includes cheese, 8 different forms of pork, and my new best friend, cava. Cava is a Spanish champagne of sorts and it was really good. Unfortunately, the first night I was there I knocked my glass all over the food on the table in my own nervousness - I was so embarrassed! Henry was awesome, though, and made that go away by opening a bottle of cava which then exploded all over the table and was a much bigger mess than mine. :> I think he did it on purpose to make me feel better.

The whole trip was wonderful, and I was sad to leave Spain (especially as it signaled that the end of my time with Henry was coming up). We spent Saturday in England (where I was able to actually spill a large glass of red wine on his carpet, my signature calling card) and watched Eurovision and just hung out together.

I'm back to missing my man and wishing we were together - he'll be out in four weeks to celebrate the 4th of July. I'm trying to teach him all about American holidays - he's spending Thanksgiving with my family this year. I'll learn a thing or two myself, I'm sure, since we're spending Christmas in the south of Spain with his family and New Year's in Germany with his sister.

So the cute picture above is of Henry doing a little dance for me on the beach. Every time I look at that photo I smile, and I think how very happy he makes me and how lucky I am to have found him in this great big world. Yay for Henry!

Stupidity

2007-05-21T23:35:00.000-07:00

Do you ever think of something dumb you've done in a past life and it makes you recoil in horror that it even entered your mind to do something that stupid? I was just remembering last summer, not long before I met Henry, that I was feeling a little bit lonely (and a little bit drunk) and hunted down an ex-boyfriend of mine (not exaggerating by using the word 'hunt'). I googled him and found out where his band was playing, showed up, threw myself at him mercilessly, and then insisted he kiss me good night before he got out of the car. Thinking about this now almost kills me, especially as I was a mere few weeks from meeting the man I'm going to love forever, and if I had just held out....plus, he's friends with a bunch of people I used to hang out with but had a not-so-nice falling out with and the thought that my antics just gave them fodder to think LESS of me makes me want to crawl under the couch. Why do the opinions of people who have nothing to do with me matter? And why do idiotic decisions I made years ago still bother me? I don't know. But if I could erase that moment, oh god, would I.

Spain was awesome and I will blog about it soon, I promise. But I returned to a mess of work, a business trip to California and a trip to the farm to watch my parents' place for a weekend, and I have just been too tired to do my duty. However, I hate to disappoint my very few loyal friends who read my blog, so I'll be sure to post tomorrow if I get a free moment during lunch.

Safe in Spain

2007-05-09T02:31:00.001-07:00

It is beautiful here, Henry's parents are delightful, and I´m having a wonderful time. Off to the beach!

Safe in Henry's arms

2007-05-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

Landed safe in the UK this afternoon about 3:30 local time. The flight was long, but uneventful. Right now I am battling a terrible case of jetlag - it's 2am here and Henry is sleeping peacefully upstairs. I'm hoping a few rounds of internet solitaire will put me right back to sleep.

It's great to be here, and I'm really looking forward to our trip to Spain this week. Yay!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2007-04-29T17:32:00.001-07:00

Eyes Open
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Photos of my new niece Sarah are up at my bro's Flickr account. She has that baby look that all new babies do - wide eyes, red face, small everything - but I am convinced that she is the next great American beauty. She is settling in at home and according to my brother is a real dream child - doesn't cry a lot, sleeps when she's supposed to, etc. I am going down to visit at the end of May and am very excited to meet her and give them rest of my family a big hug.

I am leaving in less than a week to go over to the UK again - very exciting! It's my turn to go visit Henry and I am looking forward to seeing his place again and hanging out in Southampton a bit. We are also heading over to his parents' place in Spain for a short trip so I can finally be introduced to the family. I am really excited for that part as Henry assures me that he has a lovely family and we'll have a good time. Plus, I haven't been to Spain since '99, so I'm interested in seeing the country again, and especially to spend some time outside of the major cities.

The weight loss is going well, although I was sidetracked by a few garlic fries on Friday night at Safeco field. My boss gave us his kickass season tix for the night and a few people from work went - wow. I indulged a bit, but not too bad, and then I got back on track. I went to a potluck at my friend Trina's house last night and thankfully a bunch of us are doing WW, so we had some very figure-friendly foods to go along with our not-so-figure friendly steaks and ribs. It was a good night, and as always, we had a lot of fun just sitting around and laughing with each other. We need to do that kind of thing more often.

I am also preparing to deal with the temptations that come from traveling. I love food and am excited to sample the Spanish food I'll be seeing, but have to keep reminding myself to moderate my intake. I especially have to remember that when I go to visit my brother and his family - no trip to California would be complete without a stop by In-N-Out!! A Double-Double Protein Style is 13 points, but if I go down to a hamburger with no mayo, it's only 6 points. Fries are another 9, but I can skip those. So even at my favorite places I can still find something to make me (and my waistline) happy!

All in all, I have to say that this is the happiest I've ever been. I am madly, deeply in love with Henry; I'm happy at work; I'm surrounded by good friends; my family is growing; and, I'm losing weight and feeling better about my body. It's a good life. :>

Welcome to the world, Sarah Ann Wooldridge!

2007-04-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

My niece was born tonight! YAY!!

Sarah Ann Wooldridge
7 lbs, 5 oz.
19.5 inches tall

Rob says she's a gorgeous and has a full head of dark hair. Sarema was in a lot of pain, but thankfully it was shortlived - she was in labor for less than three hours. Congrats to Rob and Sarema on the new addition!

I'm so excited for my niece!!

4 pounds!

2007-04-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

I joined Weight Watchers last week and I attend meetings on Tuesday. Yesterday I went to weigh in, and I had lost 4 pounds! In a week! I was pretty happy as my goal is to lose 2 pounds a week. At that rate, I should meet my goal of losing 40 pounds by the end of this year, easy. I am very excited to see the pounds drop on the scale but I am very much looking forward to getting into the skinny jeans I wore when I was 24 and had lost a bunch of weight (I got down to my high school weight then, not that I was super skinny, but that was still 25 pounds ago). It's really not that hard to follow the diet, but I do miss some foods - Mexican food, mostly. I promised myself that when I hit a particular goal (I'm not telling) I will allow myself a lovely meal out with friends at one of my favorite local Mexican restaurants and I'm going to have as many margaritas as I want! I'm won't pass on the bowl of tortilla chips and salsa, either. But that's just for one night, and then back on the diet.

The other day, my co-workers and I went out to a pizza place. I had a salad, no dressing, and a small glass of wine. Earlier in the day I had thought about having a piece of pizza and then I thought about those skinny jeans....if I can fit in those jeans again, I am going to dance all around my apartment and wear them out for days (even though they're terribly out of style and are going to look totally ridiculous). However, having a piece of pizza was not going to make me dance around the room and talk about pizza for days, it was only going to make me feel guilty and silly for backing down on a promise to myself. That was enough to prompt me to be good for the evening!

Even tonight, I was craving a particular trail mix I love. I had 1/2 cup of the mix and then did the math - it was something like 300 calories!! That's about 1/5 of what I'm allowed in a day, and it didn't even taste as good as I remembered. I have more than enough flex points to cover it and it probably won't dent my weight loss, but if it does, it totally wasn't worth it. Plus, it was twice as many calories than a Skinny Cow Mint ice cream sandwich, and that tastes even better. I wonder if I'll feel the same way about my big Mexican feast as I do about eating that trail mix...probably. It'll be good for me to remember that even when I allow myself to splurge.

Mostly, though, I just feel really good about what I'm doing for myself and I'm going to stick with it. My friend Jenn lost over 30 lbs and our friend Trina lost even more than that, I think, so I've been very lucky to have the inspiration right in front of me. Every time I see Jenn in her cute little pants and Trina sporting a fabulous belt around her little hips, I think, I would like to do that. So I will. Patience is not my virtue but I think I can stick with this diet for the long run. I really want to see what I look like under all of this!

Speaking of pounds, the GBP hit 2 American dollars today. So, basically, I'll pay twice as much for everything in the UK when I'm over there. Of course, everything seems half price to Henry when he visits! I am heading over in 2 weeks and am very much looking forward to the visit, of course. For two people who live so far apart, we do a pretty darn good job of seeeing each other as often as possible, and I'm glad we do!

New York, New York!

2007-04-09T18:35:00.001-07:00

DSC02595
Originally uploaded by Wedge_II.

I just got home last night from a lovely weekend with Henry in New York. I'll post more in a bit, but I wanted to share a cute picture we took at the Top of the Rock. Despite the chilly weather, we had a wonderful time.

New York State of Mind

2007-04-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving in 90 minutes to go catch a flight to New York! WOO! Henry and I are spending the Easter weekend together and it should be lovely. I will post photos on my return.

New Blog Link

2007-04-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

Check out my friend Gretchen's Seattle Travel Blog here. Not only will she tell you the hot spots that need to be visited, but she'll let you know what shoes to wear when you go.

Frankenfriends!

2007-04-01T18:12:00.001-07:00

Frankenfriends!
Originally uploaded by Kim1998.

I had a bunch of my friends over on Saturday night for a little get together potluck. We had some pretty nummy dishes - in fact, I just finished a bit of Trina's cabbage salad for dinner. Yum! Jeff and Jenn brought my favorite meatballs, David and Katt brought the shrimp tray, Kat brought some vegetarian cous cous, Trina and David brought snickerdoodles (num!) in additiong to the cabbage salad, and Steve and Airi and Steve brought a tray of hot wings. I made some artichoke dip and a shrimp dip (fat on top of fat) and it was all good. I also made a big batch of margaritas, which I have continued to enjoy this afternoon. :>

It was a good meal and time had by all - it's always fun to get the frankenfriends together!