1 project complete

Thanks to a helping hand from Sergey, I now have a nice shelf under our basement steps and rolling carts for storage. The reason behind it is we hope to create a little play area for X in the basement so that Amanda can play in her sewing area or workout and X can play and be semi-attended. In order to do that we had to make room for X's play area by getting rid of what we had stored there. So now our camping gear is stored under the stairs.

Here are 2 before pictures:

Here are the after pictures:

My next work in progress is our garden. I made a wall to go around the garden (16X5) to keep the rabbits out. I'm told that I have tomato plants arriving for my birthday....and I think we'll put in some sweet corn, zucchinni, onion and peppers. I brought some used coffee grounds home from work and put them in there today. I heard that coffee grounds are good nitrogen boost so I spread them over entire bed.

dr visit and other news

I'm starting to grow up. There have been 2 new developments around here that tell me that. The first is there is a new radio station in town that plays 90's music (93 up to some new stuff...skipping some garbage from 00-04) that is fricking awesome. That's got to be a sign that I'm ...oooh, ...I hate to say it, aging. However the radio station is awesome! It takes me way, way back to 95 and 96.

Second is the fact that we have a family doctor and I went on a visit voluntarily (with minor *harrrumph* motivation from Hugs). He told me to get some blood work done, all routine, so I did that this morning.

Have you ever had blood drawn from you and had it make a noise as if it was coming out of a high pressure hose? You know the sound when you take your garden hose and go to fill up a bucket when you wash the car and the sound it makes when the water squirts into the bucket? Well, my blood did that into the test tube this morning. Of course you couldn't hear it in the next room, but I didn't imagine it.

There was something else I was going to yap about but I can't remember....must be aging to fast to remember.

redneck weekend

I spent my first weekend home from 2 weeks out of the country outside in the beautiful Ohio weather. We replanted some daffodils and some other plants to make room for our garden. Hopefully next weekend I can put that in. Oh, but I need to remember to put up a fence to keep the rabbits out. And I sharpened my reel lawnmower so he should be ready to roll very soon.

And now that I've given myself the inaugural farmers tan for the season I'm ready for summer. My neck and forearms are killing me!

It was great leaving work today and 1) not being the last one out and 2) it still was daylight.

Here's a picture of Amanda in her "Football kit" (soccer jersey) and X in his new coat. When we first put the jacket on him and pulled the hood up we though he looked and sounded like Kenny from South Park.

Day Seven through Twelve

On Sunday we were invited to a guys house to have a traditional English breakfast. It was great! Carrot and curryander (sp?) soup, roast, veggies, worchester pudding (not really pudding) and for dessert spotted dick. I'll just come right out and say it...

I ate the spotted dick. The spotted dick was good. I had seconds on the spotted dick.

Spotted dick is a sweet bread with custard and currants.

The rest of the days are a bit of a blur. We worked late every night and seeking a new pub to eat at wasn't as high of a priority as getting back to the hotel to go to bed was.

Driving back to Heathrow at 4am the GPS was a godsend again because I had to take a detour and when I went off course the GPS automatically recalculated the roads to take.

Overall it was a great time.

Some other thoughts I had while I was there...
The forearm tattoo is big over in England.

So is smoking! Thank heavens that the smoking bans in the UK are strict like they are over here in the US.

Alright, the jet lag is starting to catch up to me a little bit...need to get to bed.

Day Six

I think the jet lag is catching up to me. I feel like crap. I’m very tired and have zero motivation.

For lunch I had a bacon and brie baguette with some onion soup. The baguette was awesome. I ignored my chips. I’m sick of their chips. Everywhere they are the same. There must be only one chip vendor for this town.

I’m getting used to round-a-bouts. However, I’ve been driving on streets that aren’t too busy, so there isn’t too much traffic to content with as I count the exits on my way around-the-bout.

We had some fancy Indian food for diner. The Brits here tell me that curry has replaced fish and chips as the national meal. The dinner was okay, not as good as the Indian restaurants in Cincinnati.

Day Five

We finally left work at a decent hour and went to a pub. It was a nice place, but the employee that brought out our food gave me the creeps because I couldn’t figure out if it was a man or a woman. I had the lamb (fatty) with a potato in a jacket served with a side of, wait for it, wait for it…peas!

Back at the hotel I had a great hot chocolate and fell asleep watching the original Transformers cartoon. That was awesome!

Day Four

Busy day at work. Ended up trying to eat at a carvery, but it was after 9pm and the dinner choices were very very slim. That's one weird thing about England, all the kitchens close at 8:30 or 9pm and stop serving food. Of course they keep serving beer. I ended up back at the hotel restaurant eating a sausage and onion sandwich and some nachos. The sausages were puny, but the bread was very good. Over here, when you order a sandwich they ask you if you want white or brown bread. I’ve only had the brown and it is good.