With one notable exception, pretty much every sentence that I had growing up that began with "I've always wished I could..." has been done or is in-progress. Not that I don't have new dreams popping up all the time, but it's pretty cool to reflect back and realize how lucky I've been for where I am in life.
Some (non-exhaustive) examples:
- "I've always wished I could travel Europe with one of my college buddies." Done, spent time with Camille in London in an absolutely fabulous trip.
- "I've always wished I could learn to draw." Not done yet, but registered for a Drawing 101 class this summer at a local community college.
- "I always wished I could go somewhere fabulous on vacation with a lover." Done, Jeff and I went to Lisbon when we lived in Austin, he took me to Hawaii a couple of years ago, and we're planning to go to the upcoming Winter Olympic Games.
- "I've always wished I could find something related to Computer Science that wasn't coding that I could make a living at." Done, I love my job as a Content Publishing Manager at Microsoft. (It's telling that unlike some years past, I can no longer think of jobs I'd rather be doing.)
- "I've always wished I could have cats of my own." Easily done, once I was out of college.
- "I've always wished I could have painted walls." Done, now that Jeff and I have painted our bedroom, bathroom & living room.
- "I've always wished I could go on a yoga retreat." Done, went to Yelapa, Mexico a few years ago. By myself, which was a huge confidence-builder. Fantastic trip.
- "I've always wished I could leave near a really cool city where public transportation was readily available." Done, Seattle is fun and easily accessible by bus from where I live. (OK, I think the original version of this required a subway and me living in a downtown condo, but I've mostly gotten over that.)
The one exception? I always wished I could go into space. Maybe someday there will be space tourism for more than the super-fantastically wealthy.
- Mood:
cheerful
When I was quite young, my parents still had an old black and white TV where we watched Star Trek. When my mother told me that they were buying a color TV, I was confused because I was absolutely convinced that I could see color on the screen. What follows is the subsequent conversation, after I informed her of this:
Her: Ok, so what color is Spock's uniform?
Me: Gray.
Her: And Captain Kirk's?
Me: Dark gray!
Yesterday morning, while working on the New York Times crossword, the following conversation.
Me: Hmm, this clue says "Vulcans and Romulans" and is 5 letters, but nothing fits. I mean, "pointy-eared" is too long, "green-blooded" is even longer, and frankly, "common ancestor" is too much of a stretch.
Jeff: Hon, you're over-thinking it. What ARE they?
Me: Oh. Aliens. That's not right, Vulcans aren't alien!
- Mood:
amused
I've recently been gorging myself on stories - I'm about to go watch the Star Trek movie again, I've been gobbling up the new Dr. Who episodes, and I recently watched some of the original episodes of the Star Trek TV series again. All this made me think about what you can tell about a person based on their favorite characters or heroes.
Here are my five favorite characters (some fictional, some not), roughly in order of appearance into my life:
( Quick, can you guess any before continuing? )
This was a fun project - I started by tracing some monsters from the monster manual and looking online for sketches people had done of D&D monsters. These were used to create a set of cartoons for the embroidery, such as this one.
Once I had my cartoons, I traced the sketches onto the fabric using a washable ink pen. (A tablet PC works wonders as a lightbox for this part.) This project also taught me how to embroider in the corner of a fabric - once I'd situated the graphic on the edge of the napkin, I could no longer get the correct part of the fabric into the embroidery hoop. The solution is to baste muslin to the napkin fabric, cut a hole in the area behind the inked-on embroidery design, hoop the fabric and complete the embroidery, and then remove the basted-on fabric. I feel sorta foolish that I had to look this up in an embroidery book to figure out, as it was rather obvious once I saw it.
And here's the final result.
For the slightly-less nerdy among you who need identification of the monsters, they are, starting in the upper left and working clockwise: Violet fungi, Owlbear, Roper, Red Dragon, Umberhulk, Rust monster, Beholder, Gelatinous cube
I think my favorites are the Violet fungi and the Roper (lesson learned: embroidery works really well for tentacles), though the severed hand coming out of the Gelatinous cube gives me a giggle every time I look at it.
For more pictures of the pre-embroidery cartoons, see here.
I unfortunately tried something new on my watch without testing it, so didn't get my timer going until approximately 50 seconds after the start. Next time I'll remember the adage of "Nothing new on race day" and try it first.
I ran the race with
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
zml, and he has an excellent writeup of the joys (and non-joys!) of the hills and the flavor of the race - enough that I'm going to be astonishingly lazy and just point to him instead of writing my own. It was a lot of fun running with him, and there's no way I would have kept up my speed so much on the final hill if it weren't for my competitive streak being unwilling to let him get too far away from me. (One of the magazines given out at the race has an intro that talks about how racing against friends really pushes you to a higher level of fitness - that was absolutely true today for me at the finish.) The final hill to the finish and my last burst of speed at the end left me exhausted and at a sub-barf level (whee), but I recovered quicker than I would have expected after the race, and I'm not as sore (yet?) as I sometimes am. I'm left wondering if I could have pushed the pace a bit more in the back half; it's really hard to know on such a hilly course if a faster pace would have been maintainable, or if it would have merely caused a serious slowdown on the final hills.
Next up is training for a 20-miler. Not that there's actually an official 20 mile race in the area, but I want to have endurance built up for 20 miles by the time my favorite puzzle event, Puzzle Safari, so I don't bonk at mile 9 and 14 again.
- Mood:
accomplished
Anyhow, I finished my second piece using a hybrid of the two tools and am pretty happy with it. Naturally, I gravitated towards something steampunky. (I'm also happy with my first graphic, a running card that will be the logo for our Puzzle Safari team, Seven of Diamonds. But that one was much easier from the tools perspective. I'll post it later, if I remember.) This graphic uses a cute and free train vector from KeepDesigning.com (getting an EPS file into SVG format was an adventure all to itself, taking one and a half evenings of fiddling). The part I actually created from scratch was the old paper underneath, using the Rusted Paper Tutorial from the Gimp forums. The train is mostly there to showcase what one does with old paper.
Behold! I have bent graphics programs to my will:
- Mood: accomplished
( Read more... )
agh ) and I went to a small, but extremely high-quality bluegrass festival called Wintergrass. Fortunately, I was slow enough to write it up that Drew beat me to it and said pretty much everything I would have wanted to say. Thanks, Drew!
- Mood: cheerful
And then, recently, I stumbled across the book Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners, a book that is so adorable in its embroidery that I immediately made the luggage tag in the book and found myself hooked. (See the Flickr pool for the book, here.) I felt goofy for having thrown everything out, though embroidery is an inexpensive hobby, and everything was replaced for around $25. Still, wasteful.
To practice, I decided to do some doodles on the cloth napkins we regularly use. I'm pretty happy with the result, especially this cute little bird I sketched up (based on a design in the book):
( Pictures follow... )
- Mood: accomplished
I may tag a few people over in Facebook, though I think I'm the last of my friends to hop on this meme. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you. If you're on LJ and enjoyed reading this, consider yourself tagged.
( Facebook rules )
- A few years ago, I made a conscious effort to become funnier. (I'm still working on it.)
- I still sometimes ask Jeff to write jokes for me when I'm doing a speech. I envy his ability to make others laugh.
- I often narrate my life in my head in the style of Facebook status or Livejournal entries.
- Despite always swearing I wouldn’t dye my hair when I got older, I was so annoyed by gray hairs in my 30s that I started hennaing.
- I'm always surprised when I realize I'm smarter than someone. When I was quite young, I was often one of the smartest people in the class. Honors classes in college and graduate school quickly cured me of this conceit, though, and I got used to being of average intelligence, at best. It took me a while to realize that graduate school is different than the rest of the world in this regard.
- The first serious project I managed was when I was on the Renaissance Fair committee (I think I owned merchants or performers, can’t remember now) at Ohio State. I often think that experience taught me more skills that I currently use than pretty much any college course.
- I have always loved cats and can generally mimic their sounds well enough to elicit responses.
- I used to be embarrassed that I liked to craft and listen to country music, as neither of those fit my image of what a young, sophisticated, intelligent woman did. Crafting used to seem less hip than it is now. Country music hasn't gotten any more hip, but I've gotten more mellow.
- I sometimes wish I could be less image-conscious. I've always thought it would be great to have dread falls and gothic or Victorian clothing, but fear that would brand me as "that goth girl" and people would see only the stereotype. That, and I've never wanted a bunch of clothes I can only wear outside of work.
- At one point in school, I was taking weekly lessons in flute, voice, piano, tap, ballet, and gymnastics. I remember being angry that my parents wouldn't let me add track that year unless I dropped something else. The fewest lessons I ever took at one time was piano and tap.
- I identified as a Pagan for about two years of my life before I realized that although I was in love with the idea of gods, and really found ritual powerful, I was just playing an elaborate game of “let’s pretend” with myself.
- I love to dance. In college, I took belly dance lessons, ballroom dance classes, tap dance classes and learned Renaissance dances in the SCA. Thinking myself an excellent dancer, I took a two hour masters Baroque workshop and found myself completely out of my depth.
- In high school, I was quite active in science fairs and was proud to place third in the International Science and Engineering Fair. As part of that, I won a trip to Spain to the EU science fair, and that was the first time I went overseas.
- The first time I got tipsy was when I was served sangria in Spain (see #13). It was complete culture shock that alcohol would be served at a high school event, and I didn't realize it was alcoholic until I'd already drank several glasses. I also developed an extreme distaste for being around drunken people there, as drunken high school kids don’t behave particularly well.
- I find it nearly impossible to not write in complete, fully-punctuated and capitalized sentences, even when text messaging or IM'ing people. I suspect this somewhat has the effect of making me sound stilted or formal.
- For a while when I was dissatisfied with technical writing, I investigated becoming a UU minister. I looked at divinity programs, preached a sermon at my church in Austin and did several mini-sermons. Doing these made me realize that coming up with something inspirational to say week after week wasn't something I thought I could do.
- I've always thought it would be fun to start a small business of my own, but have never found an idea that I'm passionate enough about to pour my life into.
- I love personality tests. I usually test as an INFP on Meyers-Briggs, though I am gradually becoming more extroverted as I get older.
- I caught a bad case of pessimism in college and later realized that it was making me unhappy. Ditching that attitude was one of the best things I've ever done.
- I asked Jeff for something to add to this list. He suggests noting that I’m the only little girl he ever heard of who asked for a pony and got one. (Technically, I had an Appaloosa horse, not a pony.)
- Jeff and I were engaged before we’d ever permanently lived in the same city. We had been at two summer internships together.
- The dance that Jeff and I did as our wedding dance was an Italian Renaissance dance (Amoroso) instead of a ballroom dance.
- I did not attempt or complete a crossword until I was in college.
- Even though I sang in choir for several years and took two years of voice lessons, I don’t like singing for others now; I notice too many imperfections in my voice.
- I started running seriously because the Austin Distance Challenge sounded like one heck of a challenge. When I started it, I had only done a couple of 5K races. When I completed, I’d run over 100 miles in races and finished my first marathon.
- Mood:
tired
But, happy to be home again, if a little jetlagged. I stayed up as late as I could last night, which helped me go back to sleep at 2 AM when I woke up briefly. I've always heard going West is easier than going East.
All and all, a trip with a lot of downs, but definitely more ups than downs, even so. I absolutely want to go back soon -- there's so MUCH amazing stuff to see and do in London that I'd love to go explore it some more.
- Mood:
sleepy
- Although I think of suet as a bird food, it actually makes an amazingly good pastry
crust for suet pie. - London women are all quite fashionable and dress up more than I'm used to, particularly with the shoes. They either have more comfortable dress shoes here, or they all have feet of
steel. Given the fortitude of the English, I'm going with feet of steel. - London is a very, very, very, big city. If I'd spent this much time in Seattle, I would know a lot more of it.
- I think most of London doesn't really realize how great they have it with the Underground. The tube is amazing and wonderful and I totally love it.
- UK folk giggle if I say "downtown". I'm not sure why.
- Similarly, I giggle at signs that say, "Way out", because it's hard for me not to mentally read that with a hippie voice saying, "Way out, man..."
- I have trouble telling the difference between British accents, although some people are easier to understand than others. Somewhat related, I think Britain still has more of a sense of different classes than the US does, and I feel rather blind to that.
- 90% of the time, I don't need to "mind the gap" as there's no gap. The problem is, 10% of the time, the gap is a gaping maw ready to eat my legs up.
- I love the Victoria and Albert museum. Both because it's an eclectic mix of things, but mostly because they allow flash photography of their items. I have odd tastes, and because of this, it's nearly impossible to find pictures of the things I want in gift shops. In Westminister, I wanted close up detailed portraits of Elizabethan and Tudor ladies' clothes. They just don't sell that for most tourists. In the portrait gallery, I wanted high-quality photos of every painting they have from the Tudor gallery (again, to look at dress details - I would have loved some closeup shots of Catherine Parr's dress). Again, not possible to buy.
- For weight loss ads, the UK's "before" pictures look about the the weight that American "after" pictures are.
- Despite sounding vaguely medical, I don't think digestive biscuits dipped in chocolate are good for the body. I am quite sure, however, that they're good for the soul.
- Mood:
hungry
Some amusing (and slightly odd) quotes were on the news from people on the street. One woman: "I've just come back from America, and they have this amount of snow and are still running! It's amazing." Clearly this woman did not just come in from Florida or Hawaii. And one man had this odd slam against Canada: "If even Canada can manage this, we should be able to as well." (What does this guy have against our northern neighbors, eh?)
To boost readership during the surprisingly long London trip, I've decided to discuss underwear again. Specifically, long underwear, and how happy I am to have packed it on this trip. I almost didn't pack any, but I remembered that sometimes in Seattle if I'm outside for a long time, it's really nice to have an extra layer on my legs. I hadn't worn it until yesterday, but with the snow this morning, it's quite nice to have when I venture out for food. I'm also really happy to have a light hiking shoe that I've been using; it grips much better on the slushy sidewalks than a regular tennis shoe would.
It took me many hours for American Airline's systems to update enough to even agree that I needed to rebook (when I first called them, they told me my flight was "confirmed", despite the British Airways site telling me it was canceled), and then once they did, they informed me they couldn't rebook me and I would have to call British Airways. Most of the day, the British Airways phone was busy and would just hang up on me and tell me to call back later - I finally found a different number around 1:30PM and was able to get through and rebook for tomorrow. More snowfall is due tonight, so it's unclear what will happen (maybe I should have rebooked for two days later? Who knows). Anyhow, all that information because I have very few pictures from today, having spent most of the day in my room or taking tea (in between trying to call) with the ladies downstairs. But, the few photos I did take are available, here - fourth picture from the left.
I'm considering walking to Hyde Park later this afternoon just to get out and stretch my legs. It's not actually that cold (hovering just around freezing), and it'd be nice to be out for a bit.
- Mood:
anxious
I started by going to Camden Market, which had both been recommended to me and looked interesting in the guide book. It was a lot of fun, although it started snowing while I was there - crazy. I picked up a couple of cool crafted objects and then headed to Notthing Hill to purchase some tea from Tea Palace, which was highly recommended online as the best tea shop. I had tea there, where I tried some Lady Gray (a more delicate and flowery version of Early Gray, and wasn't actually called Lady Gray because apparently Twinnings has trademarked the name), which I subsequently bought. I also tried toasted crumpets and am happy to report that although the US is absolutely losing the scone wars, it is ahead in the crumpet wars, with the Pike Place Crumpet shop firmly ahead of my UK crumpets. Go us!
Afterwards, I was planning on heading to the Geffrye Museum, which is a sort of interior design museum from the 1600s on. Unfortunately, I hadn't written down the address before I left the room, and the Rick Steven's book didn't include the street name or number. From prior experience, I know navigating in London with limited information is doomed to fail. London streets are a little like what might occur if at every corner, a city designer rolled dice to determine how to rename the streets proceeding from the intersection. Small streets rarely stay the same name for more than a block, and wander crazily about as if someone wanted to make as many funny-shaped intersections as possible. The numbers wander to and fro across the street so that at one point, I stood staring at 176, 176b and 174 and couldn't find 175 until I walked about a half block down the other side of the street. That was actually easier than in some places, where the odd/even convention of the US doesn't seem to hold.
Anyhow, I knew that with little more information than a tube stop, there was no way I was locating the Geffrye. Instead, I noticed that the Transport museum was near the Covent Garden market, and so I went there instead. Amusingly, I still got lost getting there (again, Steves didn't bother to provide a street number, though I could guess from his map which street it was on). Just as I was about to give up, I saw a small street fair labeled "London's Arts and Craft fair", which I naturally had to wander through. When I came out on the other side, I realized I was directly in front of the museum. Yay!
The museum was an homage to all things tube and underground, which was actually quite fun. (It also had a section on buses, but I mostly focused on the tube history.) It was somewhat overpriced (for what it was) at 10 pound, but it had some particularly interesting things to see and read about. For example, apparently the original underground railroad was powered by steam, and they built grilles above the tracks to vent the steam (sometimes surprising pedestrians on the sidewalks above)! The fumes were apparently extremely noxious and foul smelling, making it somewhat amusing that smoking was originally banned on the underground rail.
Anyhow, it was a diverting way to spend the afternoon. Afterwards, I just grabbed a stack of fruit and a veg sandwich from Marks & Spencer Simply Food (think an extremely upscale 7-11) and ate in my room. I was thinking about getting pub food, but I'm a bit pub-fooded out for a while; the stuff is fantastic, but also low on vegetables and quite heavy.
Tomorrow I travel home on a 2PM flight, so not sure what I'm going to do in the morning, if anything. Probably going to sleep in and then just head to the airport.
- Mood: tired
Today was another museum day. We started in line at the tkts booth in Leicester square (inexplicably pronounced "Lester"- losing multiple vowels and constants in there), and picked up tickets to Zorro at a very reasonable half off for seats in row 14. After that, we headed to the Portrait Gallery, where I basked in ambling through Tudor portraits on the top floor. Sadly, the Portrait Gallery only displays part of their collection at any one time, so the Catherine Howard portrait that I used as a reference when I did my Tudor dress was not displayed today. I wonder if I come back if it's possible to meet with a curator to see specific portraits, if you ask nicely enough. However, I did see the cartoon for the Whitehall Mural of Henry VIII, probably the most iconic picture of him around. The mural burned down some time ago, so this is all that is left.
As for Tudor women (my favorite!), I did get to see my favorite portrait of Mary I (and WOW that blue is so much better in person), possibly the only contemporary surviving portrait of Lady Jane Gray (the "9 day Queen" of England), and a portrait of Catherine Parr. The Parr portrait one of the only surviving full length portraits of a woman from this era, and a painting so amazing that when I got my nose close enough to nearly set off an alarm, I could see clear evidence that the dress is fur-lined, because the artist painted little tiny hairs around the hem and bodice. I also saw the canonical image of Catherine of Aragon, and the canonical image of Anne Boleyn.
Although I find that the Queen Elizabeth (as opposed to Princess Elizabeth) less interesting in her dresses than some others, there were several excellent portraits of Elizabeth I (including the famous Ditchley portrait, and now I will stop tossing around random Tudor portrait names, simply because I know if any of you are still reading this - hi Jeff - I'm probably about ready to bore you to tears -or past tears, if I got you there already.)
After the Portrait Gallery, we spent the rest of the day ambling through the National Gallery, where we saw a lot of other paintings. By the way, if you ever go, pick up the free audio guides - they are AMAZING. It's like having a personal tour guide for practically every picture. Almost all pictures (except new acquisitions) have a number next to them that you key in, and you suddenly get a 3-5 minute talk from the curator about why this painting is cool. We saw too many paintings to note, and I got a bit burnt out on art, but I did see Van Gogh's sunflowers, the Arnolfini Portrait, Rembrandt's self portrait, and Vermeer's Young woman standing at a Virginal, among many, many, other paintings I recognized and had studied.
After dinner, we went to see Zorro, which is a musical that has music by the Gipsy Kings. It was fantastic! Lots of flamenco dancing (instead of the traditional tap of musicals), and some simply arresting songs that were Spanish-style laments. Add in a good love story, some pretty good sword fighting and stunts, and a lot of fire and pyrotechnics, and it makes for an amazing ending to the day.
Tomorrow is my last full day in London. I'm still trying to decide what to do, but I might go to the Toy museum or the interior design museum. Not sure. The Tate Britain has one particular portrait I've always loved - this Unknown woman, but I don't know that I want to go over there for simply one portrait (and as much as I adore art, I don't want to spend another entire day looking at it).
- Mood:
ecstatic
Today was a slower day, with us starting to get breakfast around noon (going to bed at 2AM will do that). After breakfast, we took the tube (man, I love subway systems) to Westminster. Initially when we got off the tube, we thought the structure to our right was the Westminster Abbey, but it seemed WAY too large. Only later, when we saw the enormous clock did we realize we were actually looking at the Houses of Parliament. Oops.
We spent a couple of hours wandering around Westminster, listening to the audio tour. Parts of Westminster are jaw-droppingly amazing (for example, the Lady Chapel ceiling). Other parts just seem cluttered to me -- a thousand years of burying anyone remotely important in a single cathedral makes for a LOT of monuments crammed into a rapidly shrinking space. On the plus side, it's fascinating to look at burial effigies of women from the Tudor and Elizabethan age (and there are a lot of them in Westminster because things looked like they weren't getting seriously crowded until the 18th or 19th century). The sculptures are really quite detailed, and I can actually see some dress-construction details off of the stone.
After Westminster, we dropped by Harrods, which had been pitched as an amazing upscale department store. Frankly, after the frownie woman and morning coats at Fortnum & Mason, Harrods reminded me a bit more of a casino than of an upscale department store. (Lots of glitz and glam, but too many people milling around to actually be amazing.) There was a really nice children's section, and we had a nice tea there (the scones weren't quite as good as The Orangery's, but were quite acceptable, and I think the tea sandwiches were actually superior). I also had a Rose tea that was absolutely amazing. I know "high tea" isn't really a thing in the UK anymore, but more's the pity. It's quite a lovely little meal to have, especially if you've missed lunch.
After tea, we came back to our room, rested a bit, and went back out for fish and chips at a nearby pub. It was relaxing, and we managed to get the first proof that Camille and I are actually in the same city together. (We keep taking pictures of each other, but not of us together, which requires roping in a random passerby. Also, we have proof that I can actually be seen in London in something OTHER than a black trench, cloche, and gray pants.) I was disappointed that they were out of "jacket potatoes" (baked potatoes), because I had planned to order tuna and mayo-topped jacket potatoes, something all the Londonders with Hugh swore was a fantastic baked potato topping. Maybe tomorrow night!
Pictures are now in a new album (Facebook only allows 60 pictures per album, and I just hit that today), here.
Tomorrow has the National Gallery up, and possibly a final show (to be decided based on what's available at the half-price ticket office). Then one more day, that one by myself, and I'm back home.
- Mood: tired
We decided to get a short ways out of London and went to Hampton Palace, the pleasure palace of Henry VIII and, later, William and Mary's palace. It was quite nice; we hopped on a train at Waterloo to Hampton Court. They run twice an hour and it's a 35 minute ride through some of the countryside near London. Hampton was really nice (although it was QUITE cold the entire day - just barely above freezing); we took a guided tour of the Tudor parts of the palace and used the audio tour feature to see William's apartments. Both were quite nice. We also got to see the chapel Henry VIII built, where his son, Edward, was baptized. The ceiling was phenomenal - unfortunately, we weren't allowed to photograph it, but an okay picture of it can be seen here. The Tudor kitchens were pretty amazing, with several fireplaces that could probably hold 20 people inside of them!
After Hampton Court, Camille and I returned to The Orangery, where I had tea two days before. It was still quite lovely, although we had to rush slightly because we got there at 4:30 and the site closed at 5. But the scones were as amazing as ever and I got to try a different pot of tea.
After tea, we returned to our room and took a nap, in preparation for our long evening. To begin, we went to I Knit, a local knitting shop that has beer & knitting every Wednesday and Thursday. It was quite fun to chat with some locals, although it was surprising that we weren't outted as tourists until just about 15 minutes before we left. It's clear London is a really diverse city, and two American accents don't seem completely abnormal if you're in a non-touristy area of town.
After knitting for a couple of hours, we went to Murano. As it has only been open September, it was quite hard to get a reservation - we eventually managed to get one at 9:30 at night for 2! When we arrived, they didn't have our table ready, so we actually started the chef's tasting menu around 10:00. The food was quite good - they had an olive oil with the bread that was, hands down, the most amazing olive oil I'd ever tasted. I didn't even know olive oil could taste that amazingly fruity. Fantastic. There was also a pumpkin ravioli that was quite good, as well as a lamb with sweetbreads (first sweetbreads I've had - yum!) that had a faint dusting of wasabi powder on top. Yummy. The absolute highlight of the meal, though, was a pistachio souffle that was to DIE for. Fluffy, not super-eggy tasting, and presented with the server sticking a spoon in it and then pouring in a rich chocolate sauce -- it was so amazing, it was like eating a pistachio-flavored cloud. The wait staff was also fantastic - they did an excellent job of judging when we wanted to talk and when we wanted to be left alone, and the waiter we spoke with at the end gave us all sorts of tips for London markets to go to (including where to get that oh-so-amazing olive oil). It was interesting, for while we were hardly noticed as American at all in the knitting shop, it was clear that the staff of Murano was slightly surprised to see Americans in their restaurant. (It was well out of the touristy area, so perhaps we were somewhat of an oddity there. Both our back waiter and one of the head waiters asked us about it, as well as a gentleman that we thought was possibly a part owner.) We finally finished our meal at around 1:30AM and took the proffered cab from the waitstaff and left really happy and completely stuffed.
Pictures (primarily of Hampton court) start here, on the second line, second picture from the left.
- Mood: tired
After that, we headed to the British Museum and spent a very enjoyable afternoon (particularly since it was rainy outside today) combing through all sorts of amazing treasures. I particularly liked the Lewis Chessmen - their expressions were priceless, and I was amazed to realize chess was from as early as the late 12th century.
The other objects that were really striking were the Mummy portraits from the Roman period in Egypt. These are portraits that are put on mummy cases that are stunningly realistic - if the museum curators had stuck them in with Renaissance art, I would have been none the wiser for it.
Finally, we saw a clockworks exhibit that had me in steampunk heaven. Some of the clocks from 1500-1800 were just fantastic. The exhibit included a completely gold pirate ship clock that when it chimed, would move forward several feet and then fire all of its cannons. There were also all sorts of clockwork gadgets (including an original "daylight alarm clock") that were fun and beautiful to look at.
After the museum (which was exhausting!), we took a break in our room and then headed back out for "a curry" (i.e., Indian food) at The Red Fort, a restaurant that had been recommended to me before I left. It was amazing; easily the best Indian food I've ever had.
Photos from today start here, with the rightmost picture on the third row.
Tomorrow's plan is Hampton court, unless it's really rainy.
- Mood: accomplished
The second and third problems, though, were more controllable. Because it plays in London, they obviously have a cast of largely British actors. The problem is ... they chose to speak with American accents and only one main actor is any good at it. One woman sounded inexplicably like she was from New Jersey (despite this being set in Maine), and everyone else wandered between sounding normal, suddenly being from the deep south, and occasionally pronouncing words that sounded just weird and were neither British or American. It was more like they chose to add "American spice" to their words rather than to actually sound American, and for Americans in the audience it would have been much better to just speak without an affected accent and let the accent fade into the background instead of inadvertently making it a main feature.
Finally, it looked like the show decided to save on prop money by hiring a computer graphics person to create animation that is projected on large screens either in front of or behind the actors. This sometimes worked, as when the Carousel is animated at the beginning in front of the actors and they artistically leap in time with the horses. It most certainly does not work when it looks like a badly-rendered Spanish Armada has sailed into Maine and camped out in the background. It especially doesn't work when one lonely ship from the Spanish Armada is sailing around distractingly during the final, rousing, speech of the play.
Anyhow, off to bed. Not sure what we're going to do tomorrow, but chances are good that it will be a palace, a museum, or a cathedral.
- Mood: amused
Speaking of, even the Internets have a foreign flavor in England. Before I went on the trip, I used to use Weather Underground to check London weather. It would helpfully provide me information in Fahrenheit. Now when I go to the same site, it not so helpfully shows it to me in Celsius, because it detects that I'm coming from the UK. Facebook keeps asking me if I want to help translate the site into "UK English", which gives me a little giggle every time I see the dialog. (I'm not sure what it expects - should I run around and replace "restroom" with "toilet" every time I see it?)
I finally got out the door around 11 with a plan to go to Hyde park and Kensington Gardens (really just two halves of one big park) and scout around for running purposes. I should have probably just set out with my running gear, but was too chicken to go out the first time without a map.
Hyde park, where my buddy Henry VIII went hunting (game, not women... usually):
Kensington gardens:
Partway around the approximately 4-mile loop, I realized I was both hungry and right next to The Orangery, a restaurant on the Kensington Palace grounds. I remembered reading about their tea in several guide books, so I detoured in to have a look. It was quite elegant (I was almost, but not quite, too under dressed for the place in my tourist walkabout garb), and I had the "Orangery Tea", which included a delight so amazing that I had to ask the waiter what it was, only to be informed it was a fruit scone. A scone! It looked and tasted so little like what passes for a scone in the US that I'm afraid there needs to be some consumer protection law passed requiring coffeehouses to rename those dry triangular things they sell. REAL scones apparently are round and delicious. Who know? (Ok, anyone reading this from the UK, please put your hand down now. I know your entire country knew. You could have shared sooner, is all I'm saying.) Oh, yes, I was so taken by my scone that I completely forgot to snap a picture of the beautiful setting. But they helpfully have one online. See here - it's lovely! I was at the third table on the left.
After tea, I came back to the room, donned my running gear, and went back out around the four-mile (ish) loop. Unfortunately I don't know exactly how long it is, because it took between a quarter and half mile for my GPS to find the satellites. (It finally correctly used the "Have you moved hundreds of miles?" dialog.) My second loop was significantly quicker (~44 min for 3.75 miles) than the first, because despite being tempted, I refrained from detouring for tea a second time.
I'm now heading out to meet friends in Covent, where we're getting dinner and then going to see Carousel at the Savoy Theatre.
- Mood:
happy
