thursday flat dinner parties

IMG_1870
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

tonight was fajitas and green & blacks chocolate ice cream for pudding.
good friends, mel made an amazing green bean+bacon lardons, and the bottles are piled up for recycling.

london = gin+suit

Sarah drinking gin & tonic
Originally uploaded by MelT..

Sarah drinking gin & tonic

source: defra

so we have more than one muffy....

also, i'm eating lettuce as a late night snack. god help the health food gods when i get my hands on them. what on earth could have compelled you to dictacte that peanut butter is bad for the waistline. sheesh.

i'm regressing, old high school sweaters and cord trousers. but then, it's two days without clients, without design meetings, without the need to impress and the drive to get stuff done. that, and i like being a student in libraries doing research some days.

mel arrives tomorrow. there's chinese food somewhere in the evening, and perhaps UT ghosts dragged out on parade. or perhaps it'll be new/old friends, those lovely evenings where you discover friendships different than before, but good, finding new connections with the people in front of you over dinner. and perhaps i havent changed as much as i thought.

and i've bought the fajita ingredients for thursday, so those with invites in the inbox should consider trekking west!

sub-continent

Friday I left the cycle on the stairs, and took the bus to work just so I could relax for an hour, reading Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games. I read it going back as well, high in the double decker, and then walking slowly under the streetlights, and on the couch until I fell asleep at 10.

Saturday was a school bus trip to Birmingham's city centre, to study urban squares. The city was chock full, crowded with shoppers and queues outside the big stores. When the end of Ramadan coincides with Diwali.....it might as well be Christmas for the retailers.

Back just in time to cycle slowly through Bloomsbury, Marylebone, Edgeware and Notting Hill - the smell of Iftar's grilled meats filling the city and the Diwali fireworks exploding above.

It rained all Sunday, and I finished the book. Sartaj Singh triumphs in the end.

In other cultural news, Lord of War is good; Cage shines in his comic timing, but it's a classic tragedy, with the character defeated by his own flaws.

darkness

it's now dark dark when i get up. none of this greyness on the horizon to help in the morning battle out of bed. uggh. instead, you battle against the blackness and the rain on the window panes.

busy at work - london's not going to meet its 2010 carbon reduction targets, i'm trying to explain the design, daylight, sustainaiblity and cost implications of deep floorplates vs shallow ones but i keep getting interrupted by mechanical engineers talking about biomass boilers.
is your ecologist certified by IEMA?

gibberish. but i'm off home in 20 minutes, and i'm looking forward to a long slow jog in dusk, to clear my head.

all the young trees are tinged brown and red, the big ones still green. pretty combinations in the park.

more on the 5th flatmate

i'm learning new things about squirrels every day. muffy reminds me of an oversize gerbil, the kind you had in cages in a kid, running through platstic tubes and on neverending wheels. muffy eats the plastic though, especially if there's nuts or seeds on the otherside. and instead of a cage bedded in straw, she likes to leap across the dirty dishes on the counter, knocking wine glasses and cartons of eggs to the kitchen floor.

looking forward to hibernation time, i am. until then we feed her nibbles, shoo her out, vacuum the chocolate wrapper she stole from the trash and shredded across three rooms, and laugh.

things i'm learning and living

always sit at the desk in the back corner. everyone can see what's on my screen, but i get window views, sunshine, and fresh air.

go to the national portrait gallery at lunch sometimes. stare at the beatles exhibition and a collection of photographs of francis bacon. then go back to laptop screen. remind myself there's a great holbein exibition on at the tate britian right now.

the old ut crowd has moved to london for 6 months. (warning to liver - the end of october is going to be a workout).

finding the perfect o'keeffe landscape for my room is impossible. they're all good.

marscapone goes well with pears.

(other readings in the room)

MAO, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Collapse, by Jared Diamond
Alexandra, the Last Tsarina...

perhaps they're more reflective of the world status...

in a quiet house

the world outside is struggling, the earth is dying,
i am alone in a quiet kitchen, cars rushing outside
reading iris murdoch's the bell, entranced, and
drinking tequila with lime, eating haloumi cheese

running

around a lot recently. lots to see, lots to do.
having to make time just for me, schedule in sarah time into the diary.

run london 10k this morning - 56 min. not great, but not bad
condsidering i was still drinking champagne in a hot tub at two am last night

anyone else embarrased?

US Senate approves border fence

Immigration is a key issue in the run-up to the mid-terms electionsThe US Senate has overwhelmingly endorsed the building of a fence along part of the border with Mexico, in an effort to curb illegal immigration.

more than five hours, and a good weekend

Saturday I lounged until the sunny morning called, and stopped at the library on the way back from the run. The librarian looked at the stack of 6 thick books I couldn’t easily carry, raised an eyebrow and reminded me I only had three weeks. How supportive and encouraging of her. I told her they’d all be back on time, and smiled.

Errands, cleaning, wandering round the house, chill time with Neel in the Scarsdale over the FT and a bottle of too sweet rose. Out with the flatmates to the aquarium launch party, then on to Nick’s roof off Tottenham Court Road and plenty of loud jazz at 3am under the stars. Sunday simply recovering, for once the hangover won and the day was spent in bed, napping and reading biographies of Alexandra, last Tsarina of Russia, and Jung Cheng’s landmark biography (attack on legend) of Mao.

First lectures tomorrow.

the fancy dress never stops

IMG_1800
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

stil recovering