Funny Photo Friday

Pubs around here often sell strange things in loo (bathroom) machines. I suppose this Inverness, Scotland establishment was counting on the whisky hype to sell their product. What Kimberly noticed and what made us take the photo, however, is not the flavor. Oh no, it's the clearly stated warning on the bottom.

And on the 8th day

This is what I originally started writing in reference to my beer making challenge as of late. But then forget about it till after Meg posted (and hers is much more thorough than mine) so I'm just throwing this up for kicks...

Josh said, "It is not good for man to go thirsty." So he went and made beer (but then had to wait eight days because of fermentation... even Josh couldn't get around that) and bottled it (which involved a piece of tubing and suction... it also involved Josh accidentally drinking about a pint of the stuff) and it was good.

Or in the original Greek (as this paricapie only appears in the textual fragment 12Q11Π37b (also known as The fourth account that Josh should be writing):

Josh είπα , "είναι όχι καλός για άντραs σε πηγαίνω δίψα So αυτόs πήγα και φτιαγμένος μπύρα ( μα τότε είχα σε περιμένω οκτώ ημέρες εξαιτίας ζύμωση. ισότιμος Josh θα μπορούσεs αποκτώ τριγύρω ότι ) και μπουκάλι αυτό ( ο οποίος involved έναs κομμάτι του σωλήνωση και αναρρόφηση. αυτό επίσηs Josh τυχαία πίνω για έναs του γεμιστός ) και αυτό καλός

More of Josh's concoctions

...Only this one took a little longer than the chapati or tortillas he's brewed up before.

To encourage Josh's new-found fascination with from-scratch cooking (and thereby potentially saving us from another few Megan-made meals cooked just a tad too long as a result of my quest for constant multi-tasking) and to have some fun of our own with a great English past-time (drinking beer, not making it), I gave Josh a beer making kit for Christmas. After a few months of intense bottle-saving, including the swiping of eleven empty Communion Wine bottles from church (yes, they are so-labeled) and our introduction to British lemonade (imagine a very tame Sprite that comes in the cheapest two-litre bottles we could find), he finally started the process.

Let's make beer...
Step 1: pour in the sugar. Josh always smiles when handling sugar.
Step 2: Add the nasty looking/smelling mix with all the good beer-making stuff in it. Some people do this with big bags of ingredients and measuring cups, not pre-packaged tins; we are first-timers. This is a stout, thus the thick dark color. Also, add the yeast, but that wasn't a very exciting picture.
Step 3: Mix it together.
Step 4: Add water.
Step 5: Let sit for a week in a warm area. We don't have a photo of our little beer cocoon because it looked a bit embarrassing, but since our heat is on only twice a day, we took the nightly precaution of a bubble-wrap-lined cardboard box, communion bottles of hot water, and a big duvet cover. Our "beer" slept better than we did. Also, it stank. Oh, and also, never, ever look directly into the little hole at the top of your overpriced, food-grade plastic container as it causes a surprisingly painful stinging of the eye and may make you question the consumptionability of your concoction.

Step 6: Go back to the Beer Lady at the covered market and buy a plastic tube. Then siphon the beer into your sanitized bottles (if you happen to find sanitation necessary, which, well, Josh did not) while your wife is at work so she can't take photographs of it. Try this in the lounge first; when it makes a big mess, move to the bathtub. Add sugar to each bottle a few hours later for the secondary fermentation when your wife reminds you of this (and the fact that instructions are in fact helpful sometimes) when she gets home.

Step 7: Let the annoying stuff sit in the corner a few more days.
Step 8: Give the liquid yet another week for clarification before consumption, unless you have overseas guests who are leaving soon, and you want to subject them to first-time, home-brewed, not-quite-ready beer.

Step 9: Enjoy! (Notice the skeptical looks. It's not that bad, really. Actually, it's not too bad at all, if you like a slightly flat, dark stout...)

The best gift for England ever

The weather in the Northeast is like a teenager. Not the kind of teenager who violently explodes at the least provocation, then dances about in an extraordinarily bright mood before falling into deep, dark doldrums. No, the weather here is not extreme enough for that (that's more like the monsoon days we encountered in Cambodia). Instead, it's like a hormonal youth whose moods are incrementally but constantly changing, so that you never know quite what you're going to encounter.

Thus, the tiny umbrella I received from my sister for Christmas is by far the most useful gift I received this Christmas. It is so tiny I don't notice it in my bag, but it's always there for when the weather changes. And it does all the time. I can leave Durham on a rainy morning, get off the train in sunny Newcastle, enter the office in drizzle, and sit down to a sunshine-filled window. I watch the clouds from my office window in awe- they move from one side of the window to the other in the time it takes to read this sentence. It's amazing how quickly the weather changes. In some ways it's nice- you can leave expecting a cloudy day and get a sunny-cloudy-misty-sunny one instead. Sometimes it's more mysterious: drops/flakes still seem to fall even with no clouds in sight. (Yes, this has happened at least three times to us.)

The only down side to the umbrella is that its color, carefully chosen for Aunt Megan by my 2- and 4-year-old nephews, clashes terribly with another great Christmas gift (from my my mother-in-law) shown in the photo: a red coat. Oh well, the weather changes fast.




By the way, here are some examples of the weather from the free paper I pick up each morning. I like the one symbol for rain/cloud/sun. Also note that it's about 20 miles from Durham to Newcastle... so all those different symbols/temps are within a half hour of each other! I don't know why they bother- the weather is always the same: always different.

Funny Photo Friday: Tell it like it is.

I love this. Some of these containers that stand ready at street corners in Durham for slippery winter roads are labeled salt. This is just so descriptive!

Paper Airplane

cool.

Bookshelves and Hanging Items...

Time for the results of our previous guessing game...

Number of bookshelves in our Lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe-esque house: 45

Number of hanging items on the walls between the front door and out flat: 68

So well done Waldo! You even got the number of hanging items right, good job!

Funny Photo Friday: On the wall of the cathedral in Edinburgh

An interesting thing to hang next to personal memorials and rememberences, but, yes, thank God.

Moving on... again.

Last year this time, Josh and I were wondering where we'd be this year. I think the year before we were wondering the same thing- would we really be brave (and foolish) enough to live the Colorado Ski Bum Then Asian Backpacker lifestyle? We were, and we did, and last year in Colorado we were wondering what schools Josh would gain entry to and which one we'd choose.

Well, now Josh is contemplating residence life jobs at various liberal arts Christian colleges around the United States, and we are again left wondering... what is to come? On 11 February 2009, what city will we live in? What country? Will we have a dishwasher or a second bedroom? Will we own a car for the first time in our married lives? Will we (gasp) increase the size of our family? (I'm talking about a dog, Mom.)

I've gotten so used to this transient lifestyle, having lived it since college really, that I have trouble imagining myself in the same place for more than, say, five years. How predictable! How ordinary! How... nice?

How many of those do you have!?

Alright everyone, time for another guessing game. We live, in case you forgot, in an old double-fronted English house, full of books, photos, trinkets, and other accouterments of well-lived lives. So then, with that in mind, the next game is going to be "How many of those do you have!?"

There are two parts:

1) How many hanging objects are there from the front door, up two flights of stairs, and directly to our flat? This number should not include any hung objects inside of rooms but solely in the hallway/shared spave. The picture to the left should give a frame of reference.

2) How many bookshelves exist in this glorious olde house? (Let's define a bookshelf as something that is 3 feet wide by 8 feet tall and one book deep).

We await your guesses.





P.S.
To give you an idea of the excesses that exist in this house, here are two photos of the Christmas cards received by our landlord this year. (We've been waiting for some time to post them but needed an excuse.) We've heard that Christmas cards are a much, much bigger deal here, thus the high numbers. And the professor's son told us they think their dad plays favourites- the best cards make the top row, while the most banal get the floor. We made the middle tier... I'll take that.

Funny Photo Friday

Sign from Wall, England.
Mmmm... a doggy bag of poo...

Political Correctness

I just found something out and simply must share. Apparently in the UK the term brain storm is no longer kosher, seeing as how it is associated with epileptic seizures (who'd have thunk it?) and so the preferred term is, I was told, thought showers. Really?!?! Wow....

We're missing the party.

I only lived in New York City for about five years. But other than a few brief periods when I did otherwise to antagonize various colleagues/bosses/classmates, I secretly rooted for all local professional sports teams. It's not that I was overly excited about the games, players, or sports themselves (I find baseball a bit tedious after the 6th or so inning and I think I prefer college American football to the pros), but I was desperately hoping to take part in a Manhattan ticker tape parade.

Thus, I was devastated when the Yankees lost in the 2003 World Series, disappointed as a 3-0 lead to the Red Socks in the AL championship series ended with 4 losses in 2004, and a bit forlorn as their 2005 and 2006 prospects rapidly went from not bad to not a chance... Other NYC sports teams didn't get close.

And, inevitably, without my attendance or participation... it happens. And with a half ton of confetti, even.

I bet it's not as much fun as it looks. Sigh.

Funny Photo Friday: English food has funny names.

For the first time since autumn...

This morning at 8:24, as the rolling hills gave away to the Tyne valley and my North-bound train crossed the River Tyne into Newcastle on the King Edward Bridge, the rising sun was just high enough to clear the bank on the south Gateshead side, illuminating the stone buildings of Newcastle in the most magical way, especially with a dark blue stormy sky as backdrop. The light didn't make it down to the lower parts of the city, but I know now that that will come soon enough.

I suppose one nice thing about the incredibly short, sun-starved winter days here is the joy that comes with the noticeable change to longer ones. It's uplifting to the heart on typically-dark morning commutes...