Just Under the Wire

Hello Dear Readers,

Had another really great weekend (this year seems to have been full of them!).  Adding to the list of my high school friends who have made the trek out here to visit me (Jennifer, Adam and Melch, Matt, Devin, Luke, Amy) Susan sneaks in right at the end of the year!  Hoooray!  She came under the pretense of giving a talk at the Institute of Physics, but I think we can all agree that seeing me is the highlight of the visit!

 Sunday morning I took the tube out to pick her up from Heathrow.  We went up to Great Portland Street to drop her luggage off at the hotel.  Fortunately it was very close to Oxford street so we could spend the day doing a bit of shopping!

 I took her to YumChaa, my favorite tea shop in Berwick Street, then we wandered around such highlights as Liberty, where I fondled the yarn section (as usual, they have ALL the Rowan yarns!)

 And we had fancy tea in their tea room, complete with Christmas themed mini mince pies and a delicious but mysterious jelly (English jelly, Jell-o to Americans) thing with cinnamon flavor.

 We walked around Regent street to see the lights, and of course hit up UniQlo and LUSH!!  Walked to Chinatown, Leicester Square where the Hobbit grand opening was on Friday, Trafalgar Square for some truly weird carols before walking Susan back to her hotel, wet and tired but so happy.

Monday night Susan came to my house for a traditional English dinner of Bangers and Mash.  Don't get excited, that just means sausages (vegan in our case) and mashed potatoes, which I served with a side of stir fried kale.  Yum!  And mango for dessert.

Afterwards we went into the living room to try to get a nice serious photo together, unfortunately we were talking so much and laughing so hard we couldn't really get one.

It looks a bit like that strip of photos you get in a photo booth.  In the third one Susan is recreating a funny high school photo which I don't think I have an electronic copy of (Jennifer?).  I like the last one which is a classic Susan pose where she is clearly explaining something to me in a hilarious manner.  My brother came downstairs and asked what all the laughing and screaming was about but really we couldn't say, it was just funny!

 We did get a semi serious one over here by the fireplace, which is in full Christmas swing now.

My mother and sister sent boxes with gifts, so they are piled up, PLUS the huge mystery present from Chris to me.  No idea.  Also, if you look closely to the right of the American flag is a sweet handmade hand painted Nativity scene Susan's mother, avid reader of this blog (Hello Mrs. Clark!!Thanks for the gift, I love it!) made and sent to me.  It's fantastic!  I'm sure I took a close up photo, but I think it might have been on Susan's camera, which is very similar to mine.

Well, Christmas will be a let down now after Susan's visit, but what can we do? Just get along until the next visit comes around, which I hope will be sooner, rather than later.  Miss you already Susan.

We are spending a quiet Christmas at home, I have Monday through Wednesday off (the day after Christmas, called Boxing Day, is also a national holiday here) so I plan to do ALL the laundry in the house, sheets, towels, heck, maybe even curtains!!  We'll see.  It would just be nice to know that everything was clean starting in the new year.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas, I'll report back soon.

Cheers