Life is like a box of chocolates.....

 Hello Dear Readers,


Well for the final catching up, this week I'm home on what I like to think of as "Spring Break".  My contract at the Natural History Museum finished on the 31st of March and I was a free agent.....until today.  I just emailed Kew to let them know that I will accept the position they offered me as Quality Assurance Team Leader ......... part time, until December 2013.  I was hoping for a full time post, but at least this will still allow me to volunteer at Kew on other projects I'm interested, volunteer at the Museum and hopefully something else will come up, either botany or knitting related so stay tuned.


In other happy news, when I was cruising around Ireland in a Renault being driven like a Porsche, I got an email from an old High School friend, Luke.

We went to the Homecoming dance together Sophomore, Junior and Senior years, if I remember correctly, and played in Solo and Ensemble (he was the best clarinet in the county, I was arguably the worst flute player in the school as the Senior who never made it to Wind Ensemble, but hey, I ENJOYED it!).  We both ended up in Biology for careers, though he's in molecular and bioinformatics.  He was in London to attend a conference and came to the house for dinner one night where I served up a very English nut roast, mashed celeriac and cabbage.  Later he came to the museum for a whirlwind tour.  What fun!  And there is a rumor on the wind that another long lost high school friend will be visiting me in May.......I'm the luckiest girl in London.

Speaking of lucky, a few months ago, do you remember this snowfall?  Ok, so I thought it was longer ago (thank goodness for the blog) but the next day we found that someone had pulled one of the posts down for our brick wall.  It was pretty annoying because it made our front area look a bit white trash, a bit council estate as they would say here.  Also, our landlord doesn't really fix anything cosmetic (and sometimes not even necessary, like our shower handle....grr.....) so when we told him about it we didn't expect much.  Our next door neighbor even commented on it, but pointed out that it was on our side so probably our responsibility.









 Well, no job is too big, no task to complicated for me, I am the master problem solver.  If there was a problem, yo, I solve it, and you can even check out the hook while DJ revolves it.  Basically I've been ruminating what to do, it's such a little thing, putting this post on that I don't think our landlord would justify calling someone out, but it takes equipment that would be so expensive to buy all out.  As I was upstairs in the attic brushing my teeth one morning, I looked out on a man......building a brick wall.  BOOM! Out of the room as soon as I could get shoes on and in my most polite way I asked if I could possibly have enough mortar to just fix this post on our wall.
  Chris loves building walls so he was out there quickly with the hammer chiseling off the old mortar.  Calvin, the engineer, needed to supervise us, tell me what I was doing wrong, then do it for me so I can see how it was done.  Patrick, unfortunately, wasn't working that day (remember, it's 8 am) so I went up and jumped on his bed until he came down to lift the post up like it was a caber and he was a burly Irish man (instead of a skinny one, like he is.).  All in all a good day, and there were enough slaves, er, helpers that allowed me to take a few photos for posterity.  The poor bricklayer had to give me two servings of mortar and kept saying he was concerned about having enough to finish his wall, but I've seen it's finished now so I can't have taken too much.  The lesson here folks, it never hurts to ask.  Or to keep your eyes open.  Or to live with a bunch of guys who think they know best and will do your work for you.

Ahhh.

Next week, my Spring Break with Molly and Katelyn, get ready for super artsy photos from my new camera.

Christmas Party Rockin' in the Museum Tonight!

Hello Dear Readers,

I meant to get this post to you on Sunday, but after recovering from my party week (Grandma would be so proud) and working Sunday morning, I was so exhausted!  I even went to bed at 8 last night instead of going to yoga, and I hate missing yoga.

Anyway, the NHM Life Sciences Christmas Party was, by all accounts, a rip roaring success.  Not to brag, but phrases like "Best party of the past 25 years" were thrown about, and it's certainly been a topic of conversation over the past week or so.  Perhaps I've missed my calling as an event planner, but then, it's never too late is it?

Here are a few photos of the night, which was themed "All that glitters......"

 This is me (on the right, recognize the dress?) and the girl who has been working with me for the past two months, Katie.  We are sparkle queens!  I had body glitter on, but this photo shows that clearly, I didn't put on enough.

One of the complaints I heard from last year which I tried to address this time was the lack of enough and good quality food, so this year we had tons!  Of course people complained when we ran out of alcohol, but honestly, I think we would have drank it all no matter how much we got..... You can see we were really cutting it up on the dance floor.

 Here is most of the Botany Gang. L to R are Caroline, Katie, Chris, Olivia, Sam, Jacek, James, Aurelie and Jacquie.  Most of them also helped with the setup-food prep, which was fantastic.

Jacek (who won best costume for guys) is emulating Lady Gaga's mirrorball dress that she wore at Glastonbury last year.  He can really pull it off, he reminded me of Luke Ward's famous shiny dress for the Ghetto Superstar number in the marching band talent show.....

We had so many people thanking us and saying what  a great party it was, it was so worth all the hard work we put into it, and I met a lot of people at the museum I wouldn't have had a chance to otherwise, so I'm very pleased.

In other news, I finished my Chickadee sweater, but I'm afraid that was not a success.  Phrases like, "frumpy old lady sweater" have been thrown around.  I'll have to take a photo so you can judge for yourselves.  That will probably be in Cyprus, the light will be better, and I'll have more time!

House Christmas dinner tomorrow night, Chris's cousin Christiana is coming tonight and we'll do Tofurky tomorrow (I found it at Whole Foods!).  Then, flying to Cyprus on Saturday at the butt-crack of dawn... I hate these Easy Jet flights......


Merry Christmas!

Heather

P.S. Incidentally, this is my 100th post!  Go me!

Revenge of Mothra

Hello Dear Readers,
Well I had a pretty nice reverse staycation (went to work, but stayed in a different place) at my friend's place in Ealing. It's quite a bit different than Putney, more of a little town feeling in some ways. There is a lovely park with an old house that used to be Sir John Sloane's country house. It also has a nice mall and a good little organic grocery store. We also discovered a Cypriot restaurant with a lot of, shall we call it character? Big portions and bigger personalities on the owners/staff. It is certainly a place I'd visit again on a nice Saturday or Sunday for shopping and general wandering about. The kitties were good too, but a bit insistent in the mornings with their meowing. I really enjoyed having my own space for two weeks, listening to BBC radio 4 in the mornings with breakfast, enjoying Lucy's vast collection of teapots and catching up on knitting and tv watching. Yesterday we had an amazing event at the Natural History Museum, it was a "Science Uncovered" Friday night, with bars, jars, and life on mars at the theme.

There were scientists on soap boxes talking about controversial subjects, a science bar where you could have a drink and a chat with a "real scientist", and plenty of tables set up by different departments to talk to the public about what they do. There were also a bunch of tours, and I gave 3 of the area where I work, the Cryptogamic herbairum. It was so much fun, I was hyped up all night with excitement, though I crashed and burned when I finally got home (to Putney for the first time in two weeks).

Here are some photos of me taken by Chris who came on the last tour. I had a good time, and people were asking a lot of questions which is usually a sign they were engaged and enjoyed it. Hopefully I'm around next year to do the same thing!

I spent the rest of the weekend working on various projects that were percolating in my brain while I was away. One was to do more spinning, mix it up a bit, but unfortunately I found this little guy in a stash of fiber. AHHHHH, MOTH!! Certainly that's a four letter word in this house. I popped the offending wool in the freezer, and I think it's just isolated to this one section of un-spun wool since it was open, in my room and probably smelled irresistible to the moths since it still has some lanolin. Oh well, at least it's still spin-able, though I'm going to start organizing my other stash into zip lock bags.... I did tons of other knitting, and got some amazing yarn from my friend who I was cat sitting for, but I'll save that for next weekend's post as it's already Monday.

Cheerio!

Party Girl

Hello Dear Readers,

April has been a party month, last weekend a friend from work had a duel birthday party with her fiance. They are both from Cyprus so I got to practice my Greek a little bit.

Here I am, sporting my REAL pearls (thank's Mom, I love 'em) and my convertible top/skirt. It isn't quite warm enough here for strapless tops, but I'm gearing up for our trip to Cyprus next week.

This week was the opening of the butterfly exibit at the Natural History Museum. They had face painting there for the Friends and Family event, and Hannah and I had ours done. To my knowledge it was the first time I had it done. We requested ferns, but I think it was a little outside the scope of her expertise....

The best part was going home with it, I haven't had that many looks and double takes on my way home. Of course I would forget that I had it on and think, why is that person looking at me funny? The weather was so lovely and so are we!

Cyprus trip on the 24th, lots of lovely photos promised for that!

Musings on a Snowy morning

Hello Dear Readers,

Ahh, the 2nd of December and the snow is gently falling outside my window as I sip hot tea and wait for the oatmeal to finish on the stove.....This was the scene that greeted me as I put the trash on the back porch:
Which gave me the perfect opportunity to photograph my newest sweater for Odie in the early morning light and the glow of the snow:
Unfortunately it's still in the 70's in Cyprus right now but hey, it gets chilly sometimes......

Still all the snow is great ambiance and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here. I have my penguin pajama's on, and have hung stockings by the chimney with care
and loaded up the presents delivered by Santa via my brother when he came back from visiting the States over Thanksgiving. Still haven't touched them yet, aren't I GOOD!

Yesterday was my first day at the new job at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. The old building is AMAZING as you would expect it to be. I'm in the "crypt" as it's called, short for the Cryptogamic Herbarium where the non flowering plants are kept. It's a really nice setup because the two other girls I work with have desks right next to mine (there are 4 in a square). So different from my isolation unit over at Kew where I could not see a soul for HOURS in between tea times...... One of the girls is from Cyprus, so I'm hoping I'll be able to practice my Greek a little bit more. Yesterday we started at the luxurious hour of 10 (as we do today which is why I'm getting in some early morning blogging and cooking/cleaning) and pretty much straight away went for tea and cake. I love working in England! Then we had tours around the buildings and met a ton of people. Everyone seems perfectly lovely but I couldn't help feeling pangs of homesickness for my friends at Kew, an Irish girl reminding me of my friend Emma, a fashionably dressed Londner reminding me of Nina. Sigh.

Today is more of the same I think, meeting people, learning about the collections, wandering like rats through the labyrinth of old and new and newer buildings. They keep telling me not to worry if I can't remember the way. I tell them I'm not worried, I KNOW I won't remember the way. But I'll figure it out soon, my army brat new places new faces instincts kicking in. Another year, another house, another job.

Time to eat some oatmeal and get dressed and get prepared to go out my front door into this:
Ahh, I love weather, and there is so much of it here! Hope the buses are running alright, I'll have my knitting (almost finished with a fantastic apple vest for my friend's son) so I'll have plenty to keep me occupied.