Wine decanter.

I'm having a fantastic week!  I made the volleyball team, got a job (it's only 3 hours a week, but it's something!), and managed to write half my paper!  I also got to spend almost a whole day hanging out with Mat.. that hasn't happened in weeks.

Tuesday, we went to lunch at Carluccio's, a restaurant Mat used to run in Oxford Circus.  Then I went to my trial shift and Mat did some shopping.  When I got back, he had 2 bags in each hand, and had spent almost 2 hours in the kitchen section of Selfridges.  For those of you who don't know Mat, he has a slight obsession with kitchen equipment.  If I hadn't been there, I bet he would've left with an entire kitchen full of Le Creuset dishes, a Kitchen Aid mixer, some new knives, and lots of other things.  Luckily, he only ended up buying some ramekins, a wine decanter, and a couple new cookbooks.  The wine decanter only happened because Mat decided that if he had to choose between the wine decanter and me, he'd choose the wine decanter.  Such a sweet boyfriend :)

This is Mat's heaven - the Le Creuset section of Selfridges

We wandered down to Baker Street to find dinner.  This is just a cool building.  

In our dinner search we ended up at Canteen (shocking, I know!).  I'd never been to the Canteen on Baker Street though, so it was fine.  It's a beautiful restaurant!  We ordered lots of beverages - OJ, water, and a bottle of Prosecco.

Nice shirt Mathew :)

The boys were SO excited about the wine decanter.  Seriously. Such old men.

They then drank the whole bottle (I would've helped but I don't like red wine).

And here's my early birthday present from Mat - a new backpack! It looks pink but it's actually purple. I love it.

That's all for pictures!  

I need to work on my paper today, but I'm severely lacking in the motivation department.  7 and a half hours of lectures on Wednesday afternoons make me lose the desire to do any other work for the rest of the week!

Volleyball and such..

There seems to be no limit to the number of car-related TV shows Mat can find.  I'm learning more about Jaguar's and Mercedes', and Ferrari's than I ever wanted to know.  When there aren't any car shows on, we watch football (soccer, not American football).  That gives me lots of time to pretend to be interested while actually writing in my blog, cruising Pinterest, or creeping on Facebook.  Tonight I've chosen to update my blog :)

Let's start with the good news - I made the volleyball team!  It wasn't really a try-out.. more of just a training.  It was intense.  Very intense.  I haven't touched a volleyball in at least a year so I was a little rusty.  After an hour and a half of setting, my hands were swollen and I was exhausted.   But the girls on the team were great and it was so much fun!  It was really nice to be on the court again.  Today I woke up feeling like I got hit by a train.  Every single muscle in my body hurts.  Muscles I didn't even know I had are sore!  I guess playing volleyball will whip me back into shape.

I had an interview today for a part-time babysitting job for a boy with Autism (similar to what I used to do in the US).  It went well!  I have a trial shift tomorrow, so hopefully that goes well too.

I wrote half of my first grad school paper today!  It's a rough rough draft, but it feels good to at least have part of it done.  I've been spending a lot of time in Canteen drinking OJ and reading about the UNCRC and International Children's Rights.

Here are a few other random pictures:

This is the market outside Mat's restaurant.  It's there every weekend with different food/coffee/beer stalls.  My favourite is the organic beef burger stall.  I could eat there every day!  At the bottom of the screen is the South Bank Centre security making some boys move their busking to another area.  The poor boys were only like 14 and actually sounded good!  I think they added nice background music to the market :)

This is the inside of an Overground train.  They're much roomier and nicer than the Underground trains.  I took the Overground to Shoreditch/Brick Lane to see Amanda at her new stomping grounds!

Look at that precious face!  Nug and his new favourite blanket.  I can't wait to pinch his little cheeks :)

Off to talk Mat into watching something not car/football related.. wish me luck!

Cooking our lives away

Mat was off yesterday so instead of going to Angel/Islington like I wanted to, we spent the day lounging around, grocery shopping and cooking.  I made Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake, which is always magical.  Here's the finished product:

Looks yummy, right?

Mat is such a photographer.

Excited about Blueberry Breakfast Cake.

It looks so pretty in those pictures.. Too bad this is what the inside looked like:

It was batter.  Just batter.  I baked it for longer than the recipe said, and I put a toothpick in it and it came out clean!  We had to throw the whole middle away :(

Not even close to cooked. I'm going to blame the oven.

We also made French Onion Soup (by 'we' I mean Mat made it), which is always good. 

Not quite enough cheese but it was magical!

Mat also prepped Chicken Pot Pies but we just weren't hungry after soup, so we're going to make them tonight I think.  

Since we didn't go anywhere really yesterday, I was getting restless around 8 o'clock last night.  So we walked outside in the rain, got on a random bus, and then got off at a random stop.  We ended up in the middle of a not so nice part of town full of men in massive round fur hats (think Russian mafia).  We walked around (in the rain) for a few minutes and then went home.  We got nothing accomplished on that trip, but at least we got out of the house!

I woke up with a sore throat today (not happy about it).  Mat's had a cold so I'm sure he gave it to me.

I have volleyball try-outs tomorrow!  Very exciting.  It's a club at school.  They have two teams, the competitive one and the non-competitive one.  I'm sure I'm a little rusty but I should be good enough to make the competitive team. Fingers crossed! :)

I'm heading to the library shortly to do a ton of studying.  It's only open until 530, which sucks, but I'll get a good few hours of reading in before they close.

Time to start being productive!

Thursday

As I was waiting for the bus home today after printing lots of £'s worth of pages of reading in the library, I was taking pictures (shocking, I know. I'm still such a tourist).  I'm sure you're all getting sick of pictures of the London Eye and Big Ben, but I just can't help posting them!  So here's the view in the gap between the buildings by the bus stop :)

90 degrees counterclockwise from the last picture is this one.  The big round thing in the middle is the BFI IMAX, which is right in the middle of a roundabout.  There are underground tunnels to get to to the IMAX and to all the different sides of the roundabout (Waterloo Station, the Southbank, etc.).  That white-ish coloured building on the left is part of King's College.  I have two classes there every week. 

This is coming out of the tunnel from the Southbank (walking by the door to the IMAX) to go to school.  You can barely see the door to my school in the top of the picture!

This is the other building on the Waterloo Campus.  King's College is huge.  I have 1 class in this building every week.

We got our first essay assignment for class.  I'm planning on spending all day Saturday in the library reading!  I found the silent study room in the library the other day, and it's a magical place.  No cell phones, laptops, or food allowed.  It's actually silent.  I love it.  I read an entire 30-page article in one sitting with no distractions (trust me, that's quite a feat).

Tonight, I'm going to BYOB Indian dinner with Amanda.  Apparently the Indian restaurants don't sell alcohol, so you buy it from the store next door and take it in the restaurant.  Should be fun!  

Mat's off tomorrow so we're going to do some exploring.  I think we're going to go to Angel/Islington and do some shopping (with all the money I don't have!).  

Bus route.

First, here's Nug in his favourite onesie:

He is honestly the most adorable thing I've ever seen. I can't get over it. Well done, Katie and Andrew!

Today I took the bus from the end of our road into Waterloo to go to the library.  It's cheaper than the tube, but takes a while longer (45-60 minutes).  I took pictures along the way.. it's not a bad route!  Almost like a sight-seeing tour of parts of London :)

They haven't quite gotten around to taking down the Olympic flags.  This one was in Angel.

Museum of London, about halfway to Waterloo.  Never been here, but it's on my list!

Side of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Front steps of St. Paul's Cathedral

No idea what road this is, but it's kind of pretty.  Getting close to Waterloo now.

Coming up to the Royal Courts of Justice (bus stop is Chancery Lane).

The Royal Courts of Justice. Such a cool building.

Australian Embassy.

Strand Campus of King's College.  I don't go to classes at this campus, but we had orientation here.  And the Union is here. And another library and things.

After this, the bus turns left and goes across Waterloo Bridge, where I get off to go to school and to Canteen.  Such a pretty view but I had to get off the bus, so I didn't take a picture!  Then I spent the next 2 hours frantically printing things I didn't realise I needed to read for tomorrow, then reading them in the silent study room in the library (my new favourite place - no laptops or phones allowed).

I've been doing yoga lately - very beginner yoga.  I attempted to do an intermediate video today, which went okay.  I'm definitely not flexible enough for most of it though.  A few minutes ago, I was trying to show Mat all the things I couldn't do in the video and he started doing them.  All of them.  And doing them well.  I've never been so annoyed.

Also, Chelsea is winning 3-0!  They've never won a game that I've watched because I'm apparently bad luck.  Looks like my luck is changing!

We bought tickets to Belfast today!  We're going the 3rd-5th of November.  One of Mat's best friends live there, and he had a baby a while ago so we're going for a quick visit!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPS!

First of all.. a very happy belated birthday to my pops!  He got the best birthday present - getting to meet Nugget :)  Look how cute they are!

Best friends.

I spent a lot of time shopping the last few days looking for a skinny pink tie for Chris for his birthday/Christmas.  I failed miserably.  Believe it or not, not a single store on Oxford Street sells skinny pink ties.  Not a single one.  Ridiculous.  But I did find lots of other (weird) ties.  For example, this one: 

If you can see, you can find a green tie with purple rabbits, or a purple tie with green rabbits.. but not a skinny pink tie.  

Luckily, this store redeemed itself by having this upstairs:

SOMEONE BUY ME THIS DRESS! Come on, it's beautiful. Only costs £700 - pocket change, right?

When I was walking around London at night with Hanna and Brianna, I tried to take some pictures with my phone.  London it absolutely beautiful all lit up at night, but it's hard to capture with a phone camera.  I did my best though! 

London Eye + River Thames

Big Ben :)

Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.

Yesterday Mat and I went to Dorking for his niece Evie's christening.  Miraculously, we all made it to the church on time.  The service was nice, and Evie did so well during the christening.  Afterwards, we all went to Emma and Andy's for champagne and cake.  They live in a cute little village near Dorking called Westcott.  After the bulk of the people left, we went to the pub with Mat's family for a drink (Evie didn't get to have one - it's hard being a baby).  Then we had dinner at Mat's parents' house (which was wonderful) and headed back to London around 9.  Got home around 1030 after a 50 minute train ride and then the tube home.

Mat didn't warn me about how much walking would be involved in the day so I wore heels - rookie mistake.  I should just throw all my heels away because there's not really anywhere we go in England that we don't have to walk long distances.  I will be living in flats from now on! :)

Today I need to catch up on a massive amount of reading, and do some laundry.  Should be an exciting day.

September 28

It's been a realllllly busy week this week!  I've hardly been home at all so I haven't had time to write in my blog.

Wednesday - I had my first full day of lectures at school.  11 am to 730 pm.  It was a really long day. Really long.  Afterwards I went to meet Amanda at a bar and we drank a lot of wine.

Thursday - Amanda and I went to lunch at Canteen, then spent the day in Oxford Circus doing some shopping.  We went in a million stores and didn't buy a single thing all day!  We were exhausted by 5 o'clock.  We met Mat in Covent Garden and had drinks at Jamie's Union Jacks pop-up.  Then we went home.

This morning I had an interview for a nanny agency.  I just had to go in and fill out some paperwork and things.  Now I have to wait until I get a National Insurance Number before I can get a CRB check to actually start working.  Annoying.

I've taken about 4 pictures this week, and none of them are that great... but here they are!

Ship on top of the Hayward Gallery.  I don't exactly know who gets to stay in it, but they have dinners there and Mat's restaurant does the food for the dinners.  And people get to spend the night up there.  I want to do it!

Skatepark on the Southbank.  The skateboarders are usually pretty good, and it's legal to do graffiti there (obviously).

Here's a guy doing some graffiti.

Hanna and her friend Brianna are visiting from Dublin this weekend, so we did a quick tour of all the big London sights today (Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, etc.).  Now we're exhausted so they're napping and I'm blogging!

We're going to meet Mat later and walk around Trafalgar Square and maybe have a few adult beverages.  That's all for today! I'll try to take more pictures this weekend :)