Back from NY

Holy moly - it's been a month since I posted. I was in NY for two weeks of it, which is my excuse. Sort of.

I finally managed to connect with the bell ringers at Trinity Church on Wall St in NYC. This picture is of the never-before-seen-by-Kate combination of a bell tower with working bells and an American flag. The bells were amazing, the people were SUPER nice and great ringers, and if/when we move back to the US, I will be putting in more appearances at their tower. Awesome.

I basically spent the two weeks going from meal to meal, and person to person. I missed a few (you know who you are and I apologize), but in the end I ran out of time. I also fit a few days up in RI with my parents, which was really nice. Dels and fried clams and the bike path and the Bristol 4th of July parade. Here I am with my Dad (the fried clams are just off camera).

The award for "most distance travelled," which usually belongs to me, was awarded to my college roommate, Liz. She flew in (not just to see me) from New Zealand. We spent a very fun New York City day together, waving at tourists on open-top buses and pretending to be models in Soho. Wait, normal people don't do that?

And we were both Pinkberry virgins. Not anymore!

Below, the TRUE reason for the trip (yes, Mom and Dad, I love you a lot, but she wins on cuteness): my (other) friend Liz's new baby girl. Her name is Gabi and she's awesome. It was all I could do not to baby-nap her and take her home with me. Liz would have noticed, I think. Isn't the cuteness just overwhelming? Liz took this picture on my last day in the US - I got to feed, burp, stroll(er?), cuddle, and generally hang out with Gabi. And Liz, of course. Well, not the feeding or burping.

I come by it honestly!

Our Evil Fridge of Doom is on the fritz again. We're starting the formal complaints process with the manufacturer. 4 callout-requiring faults in 2 years is too many, we think.

We're also anticipating needing to defrost it (again) some time in the next few weeks. Which means that the culinary delights that are currently in there are being eaten up.

We had some people over for a BBQ last weekend, and had a last minute cancellation which left us with a bit more food than we needed. Mostly peppers (we were going to roast them on the grill). I don't particularly like peppers, unless they're in something. However, on Sunday night, they really did need eating. I found a recipe on the web for stuffed peppers, which basically used rice, a meat of some sort, stock, and some herbs and spices, all together in the oven for 45 minutes. As part of the freezer raid, I found some turkey pieces and some stock (which we think was turkey stock). Followed the instructions, mixed it all together, cooked and ate it.  Reasonably yummy (remember, I don't like peppers to begin with).

Then, John said, "When was this turkey from, by the way?"

"Hmm," I mused, "We last had turkey...um...oh. I think it might be from...er...Thanksgiving."

Oops.

When I mentioned it to my parents, though, my mom reassured me that I do, in fact, come by it honestly. My maternal grandmother was a really good cook but as a child of the depression had a reputation for keeping "vintage" meatloaf  (meatloaves?) in her freezer. And the scary part was that she would eventually eat it...

I also have started using Evernote, which I think is going to be a good way to keep track of what's in the freezer. A sort of anti-shopping-list.

An Indigo Girls review, 2 months late

The latest Indigo Girls album, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug, came out at the end of March. However, that was the US release date, and since my iTunes is configured for the UK (so I can use my iPhone), I had to wait. And wait. And wait some more. And then I got distracted.

I finally downloaded the album this weekend, and listened to it all the way through at work today (hooray for having my own office). Amy, Emily and I go WAAY back - my dad first heard them on NPR back in the early 90s, then I spent lots of time sitting around campfires in Vermont singing Closer To Fine, then listened to them all through high school, went to a few concerts (and wrote a few musicology papers) in college, and then have seen them perform in New York (lots of times) and Cambridge (just once). I'm predisposed to enjoy me some Indigos.

I'm still on the fence about this album, though, which I think is partly a result of the way it's presented. I bought the 'deluxe edition' on iTunes, and it features every song in both a "studio" and "acoustic" version. Why? Give me the same number of tracks, once, and YOU as the artist decide if it sounds better as the studio version or the acoustic version. Please? Even I, the hardcore IG fan who can listen to hours and hours of Amy 'n Emily, have trouble listening to the same album twice in a row. And what will become of me if I put the album on "shuffle"? I may suffer the indignity of hearing the same song twice in a row. On MORE than one song!

Taking the album as ONE set of songs, though, the songs are classic Indigo. There were two where I found the music particularly interesting:

First, "Love Of Our Lives" opens with Amy and Emily singing in unison, followed by a section with them singing in octaves - I can't think of any other songs of theirs where they sing together without harmonising for more than a note or two.

Second (although it's earlier on the album), "Sugar Tongue" has Amy singing a very "Emily" song, in a much higher register than she usually sings. It makes her sound completely different - it's almost like a falsetto.

Musicologists, start your engines!

Old Married Couple

John and I had our 3-year anniversary yesterday. I still have moments of "we've been married for HOW long?"

Burt Reynolds in Suffolk (well, almost)

We rented A Bunch Of Amateurs this weekend. The general premise is that Burt Reynolds plays a washed-up Hollywood actor who ends up coming to "Stratford" in England to perform King Lear. He thinks he's going to Stratford-upon-Avon to perform with the RSC, when in fact he's in the (fictional) village of Stratford St John, performing with the amateur drama society. And where have they put this village supposedly at the end of the earth? Suffolk, baby! They didn't actually FILM it in Suffolk (which is silly, since the style of house-building here is completely different from the houses in the film).

John and I both thought it was pretty funny - Imelda Staunton was really good, and Burt Reynolds was well-cast as the no-longer-leading-man. They were both entirely overshadowed by a supporting role from the Suffolk Mobile Libraries van. Too funny.


I can FINALLY blog about this, since the gift has been given: I made a baby quilt for my friend Liz's new baby, Gabi. Both of Gabi's parents went to the University of Wisconsin, so my initial thought was to knit a red baby sweater with a big W in it.

I think everyone is glad that I abandoned that idea once I found some Wisconsin Badgers fabric on the web. I ordered it, had it shipped to England, matched it up with some polka dots, and started in. I intended to make a small-ish crib quilt for her, and then went a little overboard when I was cutting my squares. Pattern? Me? Naw! It ended up about the size of a twin bed, FAR too big for a newborn (even if she IS tall like her dad). I had some leftover fabric, so I made a stroller blanket as well.

Here she is, modeling it.

There are a few more scraps left (a yard of Wisconsin fabric goes a very long way), so there will be a few more UW items delivered when I'm in NY next month.

My little (BIG) brother

My brother came to visit last week. He has now decided that Suffolk is NOT entirely composed of fields full of sheep. There are some fields with pigs in them.

Here we are with the Bury St Edmunds Cathedral tower:

Me (note: fully airborne) in front of the Norman Tower (12 bells, baby!):

Future beer...mmm. We took the tour at Greene King (yes, beer purists, it's not the best beer, but it's pretty tasty). There were four rules, according to our tour guide: stay with the tour (it's a working factory), don't step in puddles, turn off your phones, and don't touch anything.

We'd all been up to the roof (great view) and back down again, and were standing near the mash tuns when one of the women on the tour (who had been an insufferable know-it-all) started turning a valve on one of the huge pots. Edward and I yelped and ran to the other side of the room, and our tour guide caught her before she caused the whole thing to explode. EEK!

Here's Ed, with some actual beer, at lunch (note, beer AND cider):

We also stopped in at Ickworth, where Ed was treated to the full experience. We arrived at 4:30, knowing that the house was already closed. We were told that the gardens were still open, so paid our £4 each to go see them. When we got to the gardens, there was a sign on the gate saying that last admission had been at 4:30, with the gardens closing at 5. We tried to find a staff member to get our money back, but there were none. Finally, we found someone, who let us out into the garden, where we were then yelled at by the gardener who told us we shouldn't have been there. It was truly mind-boggling. I'm toying with the idea of issuing a proper complaint to the National Trust, but I don't think I have the energy.

We did a running tour of the garden, then walked down to the falling-down church. Don't worry, we didn't go in...

In stark contrast, we went to Framlingham Castle on our way back from Aldeburgh the next day. Competent staff, clear signs, and a very English "if you fall off the 50-foot wall it's your own damn fault" set of fences. We gave it a shot to reenact all of the various potential amusements, listed below:

We had a blast (and I got to visit a whole bunch of things that I only really think to do when I'm playing "tour guide")!

Non-horizontal horizons

We've been letting James take pictures with our SLR. He has his own camera (my trusty Canon Elph), but he doesn't always have it with him.

He has a really good eye for composition, and he's always coming up with really unlikely angles to shoot from, but we've found that about 80% of his pictures list ever so slightly to the right. As if the pressure of pushing down the shutter button tilts the camera. Teehee.

Here are two. I'm an evil stepmother and have left them "au naturel" (i.e. a little slonchwise):

These were both taken at Snape Maltings, after we fled Aldeburgh on Monday. (Aldeburgh? On the May Bank Holiday Monday? With scattered showers? WHAT WERE WE THINKING??)

My garden has been coming along (to the detriment of the blog, I think). Here are some seedlings (some that I started myself and some that have been adopted - thanks, Janet!). The ones in the foreground are sunflowers, and the first one has just popped above the soil this morning.

I'm completely obsessed with Gardener's World on the BBC. Who else but the Beeb would film and air a gardening program for n00bs like me, detailing exactly what to do, when. It was their idea to plant the sunflower seeds in POTS - apparently slugs (::seething hatred::) love to munch on freshly-planted sunflower seeds. Can't get 'em up here, bitches!

Oh, and this was a "plant in a basket" that Michelle gave us back in January. It was supposed to last two weeks. Ahem. It's happy as a clam on the windowsill...

After all my evangelising about how awesome the library is, John has discovered that they have a fairly extensive art movie collection. £2 for a week, per movie. Can't beat it!

We watched The Science of Sleep (another movie featuring a naked Gael Garcia Bernal - does the boy not like to wear clothes?), which was suitably surreal but quite enjoyable.