Our flat feels pretty
empty right now. We have had a
constant stream of visitors coming and going for the past two weeks. Ashley’s friend Lance stayed with us
the whole two weeks (he left Monday), Philip (hi Philip) was here the weekend
before last, and Catherine and her friend Morgan were here this past weekend
and left early yesterday morning.
It was really nice to see some familiar faces. Plus, everyone came bearing delicious gifts from their
adopted lands. Philip brought us stroopwafel
and stroopkoeken from Rotterdam—AMAZING waffle-ish cookies with caramel filling
inside. So good. They did not last long at all. Catherine and Morgan brought mantecados
and bonbons from their little Spanish pueblo called Estepa. Mantecados are a little difficult to
describe—they are these addictive, crumbly shortbread balls that come in
different flavors. I’m trying to
only have one a day (my treat at work), but it’s really difficult not to eat several
in one go.
Highlights from the
visits include, but certainly are not limited to: being a good little
architecture nerd with Philip and going to the OMA exhibition at the Barbican
(it was really good and the Barbican is SWEET. I could live there.), celebrating Ashley’s birthday with
Lance (he had chicken cordon bleu all cooked and ready for us when we got home
from work! We also ate lots of
cake from my favorite little bakery that is on the way to work.), and
participating in London’s Halloween zombie pub crawl with Catherine, Morgan,
and Ashley (Catherine went as zombie butcher, Morgan went as zombie Statue of
Liberty, and Ashley and I were Pinky and the Brain. We were going to be Pinky and the Brain zombies but we liked
our costumes too much to zombify them.
Our zombie post rationalization for our costume was “Pinky and the
brains brains brains brains.” The
zombies on the crawl were way more intense than we were, and they quickly
smeared blood all over us because we were just too clean.)
The visiting continues
on Friday when my mom, Erin, and Colleen come to London. I cannot wait. And they will come bearing gifts from America—primarily Jif. And good news for Erin—the dog poop and pee in our stairwell
(mentioned several posts ago) has become a fairly regular occurrence. But, never fear. We talked to our landlady (she is
awesome) and she and her husband set the neighbors straight (I WISH I could
have witnessed that). When I got
home from work, instead of having to cover my nose and mouth to shield from the
stench, I enjoyed a fresh, bleachy, poop-free trip up the recently
scrubbed stairs. Just in time for
the Queen of Clean’s visit this weekend!
(Part of me is a little worried that our complaints will earn us our very own deposit of poop outside our front door...I could kind of see our neighbors doing that.)
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| Pinky and the Brain take a stand against poop. |
