Anyone got a cigar?

I felt like I should have had a smoking jacket and a snifter of whiskey tonight.
Hanging at the Royal Automobile Club - a private members only club in London that celebrates the history of cars and 'motoring' as they say. Here for a client event and it's got that old school British royalty feel to it...I'm thinking it was definitely a male-only club years ago where old dudes sat around smoking cigars and throwing back 100 year old whiskey while chatting about autos. Here's the featured car which perhaps only my Uncle Bobby would recognize - a Bristol 405 Drophead:

Don't forget your brolly

I've lived in London over a year and I still haven't learned one of the golden rules of living in London: never leave home without your brolly.
(Brollie = umbrella. Londoners love to "-y" lots of words. Some of my faves: breky = breakfast, telly = television, footy = football/soccer)
So I got up in a rainstorm on my way out of work. Not great weather for stopping to capture a piece of my day. The type of weather that made me want to curl up on the couch, put on a 'spot of tea' and break out a good book. Here's what I'm reading...from the author that wrote probably one of my favorite books of all time that I only recently discovered, The Alchemist.

The kettle is whistling...Cheerio :)

I'm a Sloaney

That's what they call us who live in Sloane Square - sloaneys. Known as a "posh" part of London, it looks amazing at Christmas time. Here's what I see every night coming off the tube...capturing the lights before they take them down!

Meat is good

So now that I'm eating red meat again (and LOVING it), I made my first beef dish in a slow cooker. Very proud moment! So proud that it made my picture of the day:

Project 2012

Wow, I haven't done this in over a year. I had to look back in my initial email to my family to even get the web address. But I decided to pick this up again and here's why.


My friend Danielle recently shared her "Project 2011" with me. It was 365 photos, one thoughtfully taken for every day of the year. Ugh - sounds like a LOT of work, particularly for someone like me who is easily distracted/forgetful/inconsistent with this type of stuff. However, she explained it to me like this: it makes you stop and look around every once in a while. Because you're always looking for your "picture of the day", your eyes are a bit more open to taking everything in. (And there's a lot to take in here.) She's also away from her home country and started this project as a bit of a documentary. 


I think it's a big task, but I love the whole idea of it...less of a documentary (think I've already proved that too daunting), and more just daily snapshots. So some days it might be boring given some days I may not do or see much of anything outside of my flat, work and the gym. It may end up being more for myself to force me to stop keeping up with the rat race and appreciate what's around me sometimes, and to remember at least a tiny piece of every day and (hopefully) capture some of the neat things I see or do. Here is my Jan 1 entry...cuz technically this was taken after midnight. 

Ringing in the New Year at the Blitz Party. The Blitz (from German, "lightning") was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between September 1940 and May 1941 during WW II. London was bombed for 76 consecutive nights. Here we are in a former bomb shelter - 40's swing music all night, plenty of polka dots, pin curls and lots of men in uniform...

Thanksgiving in London

I actually had 2 Thanksgiving dinners...pretty good for being in England.
The first, scouted by a fellow American at State Street, was hosted by a website called MeetUp. They organized an American "expat" dinner - complete with all the trimmings and of course...American football. So I got to watch the Pats spank the Lions! It was held at a 200 year old Victorian Dockhouse that has recently been refurbished with stone and marble flooring. The crowd was a bit lame (the only table that actually watched the game was mine) and there was infiltrators (Canadians). I learned that they do in fact celebrate Thanksgiving...but it's Canadian Thanksgiving and it's in October (inferiority complex perhaps?)

The second was organized by this "friend of a friend" and her husband. They live in a beautiful mews with a cobblestone street and a great group of neighbors. (A mews is row of horse stables that have been converted into homes. The horses would live in the garage area, and the drivers of the carriages would live above it - they have gorgeous barn doors, now garages, and are typically narrow houses with three stories.)
They had the most massive spread I've honestly ever seen (aside from my mum's typical dessert spread of course). Everyone that brought a dish made something from their own family's traditions - so we had a first course of calamari salad and antipasti and about 3 other salads. It was so much food and wine.


Though it wasn't my mom's cooking and a day with my family - I was surrounded by good people and good food. 

A couple of observations...

...about Brits:
- They are very anal about "cueing" (standing in line). So much so, that during rush hour at the tube (subway) station - people line up, single file in front of where the doors to the train are going to open. Can you imagine that in Boston? We know that would not work...with the likes of the Quincy residents posturing and elbowing themselves to the front of the line!  It is so incredibly organized, it's amusing.
And even better is the sense of humor of the train drivers.  A few weeks ago, during an incredibly crowded commute, the driver was encouraging people to move "to the middle of the carriage" to make way for additional passengers. After repeating himself 3-4 times, he finally said "I think you'll find that the air in the middle of the carriage is much more fresh...because your face won't be in someone's armpit". And today, after a train stopped due to the emergency brake being pulled by a passenger...he asked everyone who was standing near the emergency levers to stand clear and make sure their jackets, purses, etc. were not at risk of catching on to the lever to stop the train...and if you have any children who tend to like big, red, shiny levers - please be sure they control themselves.

- They smoke and they drink A LOT. Almost every pub or restaurant has outside seating...and people are still sitting outside in 50 degree weather! At first I didn't get it...thought their skin was thicker than mine and more insulated or something. But i realized it's cause they all smoke. And drinking...well let's just say the pubs here will never go out of business. I don't know how they all do it! The country has recognized that it really has a binge drinking problem and therefore started a law that shuts down pubs fairly early - last call i think is 11 - thinking that would deter binge drinking...but I think it just made people drink faster :)  They call drinking it "getting pissed" - isn't that great?  I'll have to start a chart of my favorite British-isms...there are some good ones.