Moving Ahead

I was in Utah this week for business, which was good because it has made this last week without the family go by very quickly. We have gone back and forth on this issue but I believe the family is just bringing their luggage and not shipping anything. The new David Sedaris book is out this week so I was able to pick that up to take back with me.

I pick up the keys to our rental house (end of terrace) pictured here on Saturday so I can get some furniture and the utilities taken care of. We will be living in Amersham, the next village over so I can take the bus or the train to work until we get a car. It’s too far to walk and after wrecking my bike when we lived in Germany, I’m a little scared to choose that mode of transportation!

Pictures of Chesham

As I plan my move out of the B&B next week, I took some pictures of the village I have called home for the last ten months.

Bo Diddley

I am just getting into Utah and turned on the radio to hear that Bo Diddley passed away. I had the pleasure of seeing him perform at the Tip Top Cafe in Huntsville, Alabama in the 90's when my friend Jim played in his band. I recently interviewed Jim and asked him about that experience. You can read that interview here.

J in the UK Gets a Makeover

Thanks to my talented friend M, J in the UK went under the knife this weekend and is back with a new look. I absolutely love it and it's the perfect time for a change. I'm off to Utah this week for work and then when I am back, the family will be here in a matter of days. It's time for phase two.

Pub Drinks

The other night before our pub quiz some of us went to another local country pub for dinner. My brother recently asked me what kind of beer people drink here so I asked my mates if I could line up their drinks for a picture. The beer on the left is an Italian beer. The drink on the right is a London Pride Shandy, which is a mixture of London Pride beer and lemonade. The one in the middle is called Colley’s Dog from the Tring Brewery. About the shandy, the lemonade in the shandy is not what we Americans think of as lemonade. It’s more like a lemon lime soda. This particular pub is a freehouse.

The food was good. One of my dinner mates had the mixed grill which came with a beef steak, a lamb steak and a fried egg on top.

My Friends Are Back!

After T and J visited Paris and Amsterdam they made one more stop in London arriving Saturday morning for two days. We had a fun day walking around the secondhand shops and relaxing in one of the coffee shops. After many days of sightseeing they were ready for a slower pace so we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie, which wasn’t the best of the lot but wasn’t awful either. At some point in the movie Indiana Jones mentions the crystal skull that is housed in the British Museum and I wanted to shout out, “Hey, I’ve seen that!”

Visions of IKEA Dancing in My Head

The stressful stuff is what seems to be left of this move. We are trying to decide now exactly what to ship, and our leased car in the U.S. is causing the biggest headache. One of my colleagues drove me to IKEA Friday so I could look at beds and other things. I woke up in the middle of the night and my brain was working overtime making lists for the arrival and couldn’t go back to sleep until about 4:30.