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.