Pictures of the house

Here are a few pics of the house now that we have (almost) everything unpacked. Will put up a few of the upstairs once it's done!

This is the kitchen table area:



This is the view looking from the kitchen area towards the front of the house:

This is walking in the front door and looking right:

Walking in the front door and looking straight ahead:



Walking in the front door and looking left:

The kitchen:

And that's all for now!

Feels like a home...

After two days away from work and an embarrassing number of trash bags filled to the rim, we're finally feeling "moved in" to our new house. It's pretty neat to see all of our things from San Francisco in totally new surroundings. The green cabinet next to the desk... the table from the kitchen holding up our TV. My goal is to take pictures and post "before and afters" comparing the house now to what it looked like before we moved in. Pretty drastic change.

The only two casualties from the move over were the box spring and the bedroom dresser, both of which couldn't fit up the tiny staircase. But we got a new mattress base (as they call them here) and a new dresser arrives on Monday. By the time Ric's mom gets here on Thursday (which we're SO excited about) we should be all set.

It hasn't rained yet today and there's actually been a little sun shining. Trying to enjoy it while it lasts. According to the Guardian, the UK is having more rain this summer than it has had in 200 years!!! Here's the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jul/27/1

Hooray for Harry!

Potter that is... Ric and I have been on the couch all day with the newest (and last!) Harry Potter book. We reserved our copies (yes, that is copies purlal...didn't want to fight over who got it first) about a month ago and have been eagerly anticipating this day. And it finally arrived! It's 600 pages, called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and so far (I'm about 1/3 of the way through), it's amazing! The action starts right on page one and just keeps going. I'm trying to pace myself so I don't finish it too quickly... have to drag it out becuase there (supposedly) won't be any more after this one. Anyone else out there as excited about this as we are?

I did read that they've set up special helplines for kids in the UK to help them deal with "emotional issues" that the book may cause. If that doesn't build up suspense about the ending I don't know what does!

Happy reading!

Our furniture has arrived!!

Hurray! It pulls into the dock today and then just has to clear customs (fingers crossed). Now comes the fun part... unloading all of the boxes.

What a Weekend!

After my run-in with the neighbor, we had a seriously pro-London weekend... here's just a glimpse of what Ric and I were up to, if you'd like to see all the pictures (there are quite a few from the Tour de France and art fair), go to our Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelbremer/

Tour de France
It started in London this year, and after not realizing how early things kicked off, Ric and I were running down the street to a viewing point hoping to see everyone before they rode by. With just about 4 minutes to spare, we got there in time and it was SO cool. Hard to explain because it's just a bunch of people on bikes, but the crowd was really excited and it was really neat being there with so many other people just to see these guys ride by.

We watched this right by the Tower Bridge and there were a ton of people lined up on both sides of the street:

And here's a picture of Ric and I afterwards, down by the River Thames

Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair

(which means people were selling art out of the boots, or trunks, of their cars)

This was a really quirky little art fair that we went to in East London. Absolutely hilarious display of British humor. Here's one of the exhibits where they're selling Gin and Tonics out of a trailer, and also selling puzzle pieces (which is what they're standing in), both for a pound.

And here is Ric's favorite exhibit - the Carbon Footprint, where you put your foot in carbon and stand on the piece of blank paper.

And here's another funny one... a guy was selling countries for 3 pound each. Once a country was purchased he would put a little orange sticker on the map to show that it was no longer available. Someone bought Paraguay while we were standing there.

Another thing you may have noticed in these pictures is the lack of umbrellas, dark clouds and rain. It was a wonderfully sunny, warm weekend which made these festivities even better!

A friend to the environment... but not the neighborhood cats...

So I'm on the front porch, really excited about cleaning things up... you know, the usual weeding, sweeping, etc, and one of my lovely British neighbors walks by. If you've been to the UK recently you'll understand how CRAZY they are about this whole "green" thing, but if you haven't, there's really no way for you to comprehend the fanaticism. I'm all for saving the environment, I guess, but it's taken to a whole new level here.

Proof in point... this neighbor who walks by, whom I've never met or seen before, stops because out of the corner of her eye she spies a spray bottle of some sort sitting on the porch. She picks up the bottle, realizes it's weed killer and proceeds to lecture me about how it's bad for the environment AND it's bad for the cats who like to hang out on our front porch at night.

There are two things wrong with this conversation:

1. I don't really like cats and they should not be hanging out on our front porch any time of day.

2. If neighbor-lady wants to save the environment by using weed killer that doesn't work, be my guest, but in America, we have a little something called Freedom of Choice. I chose to use actual weed killer that kills actual weeds.

And I think we're now officially known as "The Americans who don't care about saving the planet" and that does not go over very well... I'm actually more worried about the neighborhood environmentalists than the Al Qaeda.

Global Warming Hysteria

Just when I thought the global warming fears couldn't get any worse, now it snows in July and inevitably we'll have to deal with Global Cooling worries (again)!

-Ric

The aftermath of the storm Rachel pictured earlier:

Word of the Day

Fortnight -- it means two weeks. As I learned when I had to ask someone yesterday. If that doesn't scream out "American" I don't know what does...

Dark and stormy

Just so you don't think we're lying about the weather... here's a picture of London on Tuesday. During this storm I was sitting at my desk on the fifth floor, looking out a huge picture window at the rolling clouds and incredible lighting. We've learned not to go ANYWHERE without our umbrellas...

Yummy, quick and healthy

Here's what Ric and I had for dinner last night. It's a great recipe that's really easy to make, tastes great, and is pretty healthy. The trick is getting good fish and making about twice as much salsa as the recipe calls for. You can use about any thin, white fish. I made it with cod last night and just baked it normally rather than broiling.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1134116

It's another cloudy/rainy day in London and I read in the paper yesterday that they are forecasting ONE sunny day in all of July. It's supposed to be July 15th. No joke... that's the only day all month that it's not supposed to rain. Wettest summer on record thanks to good old La Nina. Really excited about my rain jacket arriving with the rest of our furniture sometime at the end of July...

Just in case anyone has forgotten what we look like...

We're ok

Thanks to everyone who has emailed and called to make sure that Ric and I are ok after the bomb scares in London. We're doing fine and are just going about our normal routines. I read today that they're expecting more attacks, but from a practical perspective I think they have to say that in case one happens, so they don't look like they have no idea what's going on... kind of a CYA thing.

Also have to apologize for being MIA on the blog for so long. We actually couldn't figure out how to log in. Does anyone else have this problem... too many user names, passwords, email addresses?? I can't keep them all straight. Anyway, I think that's sorted out now, so be on the look out for much more frequent postings.