Fantastic news and an update.

A while back, (September 15, 2011, to be precise), I wrote a blog post called “We like wine.”  In it, I described the wine goblets that Ashley and I purchased at a thrift store.  While we certainly drank lots of wine from these goblets, we were not sure if a goblet could hold an entire bottle of wine.  I said I would report back when we found out.  Well, seven and a half months later, we finally conducted the experiment.  I am pleased to announce the wonderful results—our goblets do indeed hold an entire bottle each and with room to spare.  Cheers to that.

My goblet and empty bottle

Ashley's goblet and empty bottle.

Cheers.

Somehow, the time here is quickly winding down.  I have just eleven days of work left!  I know I have left many fun stories and experiences unrecorded here (like the story about the time I was running along the canal and saw this mom dragging along two small children and a baby in a stroller and one of the kids was screaming and bawling and as I ran by I realized the mom was smoking pot…her way to deal with it I guess.  Or the time at the grocery store with Kelsey, when I must have forgotten where I was and picked up a bag of pre-cooked spaghetti noodles and said/yelled, “BRITISH PEOPLE ARE SO LAZY” and then got a few dirty looks.  Or the time I was taking a surprise trip to Houston, but got bumped off my British Airways flight.  This is actually a good one.  When British Airways is bumping you off a flight, they try reallllllllly hard to keep you very uninformed.  And when you ask nicely for a little bit of information, they give you a voucher for 3 pounds and say, “Why don’t you go get a coffee?”  And then they get all surprised and offended when you say, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here instead?”  And then when you and the “customer service” agent get into a bit of a heated discussion about why no one knows why you don’t have a seat on this plane when you booked your ticket months ago, she hands you off to another “customer service” agent who doesn’t appreciate your angry snark.  When that discussion progresses and you are provoked into saying things you don’t normally say and the “customer service” agent condescendingly tells you to “please calm down, miss”, you get a sudden flashback to a time when your dad was a basketball coach for your sister’s middle school team and he was loudly letting the referee know what’s up and the ref said to him, “you need to calm down, sir” and your dad replied, "I AM CALM!"  Fortunately, you are not escorted out of Heathrow Airport by the bobbies, but British Airways does bump both you and a sobbing 14-year-old girl who is traveling alone.  At least they reimburse you and upgrade you to “World Traveler Plus” on the next flight.  (That was beginning to feel a little bit like a terrible British Airways version of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".  Sorry.)  (In spite of my travel woes and with a little more cash in my pockets than I expected, I had the best Beer Bike trip ever.))

Ashley and I are feeling pressure to do all the London things we haven’t gotten around to yet.  We made a “London Bucket List” google doc that we spend a lot of time updating while we’re at work.  We made some good progress on it this past weekend, going to the British Library and the Brains exhibit at the Wellcome Collection.  (I found out that I really don’t have the stomach for brains.)  On the way back from the Wellcome Collection (which is a neat little museum I had never heard of before), we ducked into a pub to get out of the rain.  There happened to be a very important soccer game on (Sheffield versus some other team also from Sheffield...so we gathered).  We were so glad we stumbled upon this.  The guys watching the game at that pub were like little boys on Christmas morning.  It was a hilarious thing to witness.  I have never seen anything like it.  Watch this video.  Be sure to watch the guy who first appears at :18.  I particularly enjoy when he falls to his knees at :25. 

Then later that night we went to a place called Dalston Superstore (which is a nightclub, not a superstore).  I’m sure this will come as a shock, but clubbing is not exactly my thing.  But somehow, Ashley and I were both in the mood to go out.  So we did.  And it was hilarious.

Claire: (shouting over the music) YOU KNOW HOW YOU SAID THIS USED TO BE A GAY CLUB?

Ashley: (shouting over the music) YEAH.

Claire: (shouting over the music) I THINK IT STILL IS.

It was.

Luckily, we have a three-day weekend this weekend, so we’ll have time to cross more things off our list.  (Thank you, Early May Bank Holiday!)  That’s all for now, I think.  I’ll end with a really good, but pretty inconvenient way to crack yourself up: give British people pumpkin bread.  They just do not know what to do with it.  At all.

Excuses.

Hello friends/Mary (who may be the only one who reads this anymore—thank you, Mary) (unless Uncle Pat?  Are you there?  I drove successfully on the left!  I even parallel parked.). 

My excuses for not writing:

1. I went to visit Colleen in Dijon. 

Dijon was FABULOUS.  Colleen and I had such a nice time.  As at all quality O’Connor family gatherings, we planned our days around what/when/where we would eat.  I think we would both agree that this was a successful strategy.  Colleen is becoming a master French chef (toast+caramelized onions+goat cheese+honey=masterpiece). 

Besides, of course, catching up with Colleen and enjoying many meals and bottles of wine at her apartment, the highlight of the trip was definitely the wine tasting we went to in Beaune, a little town near Dijon.  The little old man who conducted the tasting was a total character.  He would say things like, “Black truffles are like a Latin lover, except they won’t get you pregnant.”  Or “To find a husband, you must have a good wine cellar.  If you do not, you will be alone.  My wife has a friend in her 60s—no prospects, no relations, no wine cellar.  She will end up alone.”  Or “Without wine, you cannot have Mass.   So we can thank the great Catholic Church for bringing wine to the world.”  The other two wine tasters were this nice French couple—the wife understood English, but the husband did not.  Luckily, our lovely host was able to conduct the wine tasting in both English and French, and even more luckily for me, he definitely loved showing off his English.  So while there was always someone who didn’t quite understand what was being said, it was more often the French dude than me. 

We didn’t have to pay anything for the wine tasting itself—it quickly became apparent that this guy just loves wine and telling people about wine and sharing it with them.  We tried 16 wines (6 whites, 8 reds, “the best sparkling wine in the world”, and another champagne—all from Burgundy) plus crème de cassis (a specialty of the Burgundy region).  He had us write down our impressions of the wine, and then he would tell us about each one.  My notes are pretty hilarious to look at (and get a little bit sloppier as we reach the mid-reds.)  “#1.  Tasty, white.”  But when our host started saying things like, “this wine brings you to a moss-covered forest after an autumn rain, and then you may get a hint of limestone,” Colleen and I suddenly understood the world of wine.  I was totally in that mossy forest.  Anything he said, we tasted.  And it was wonderful.

We spent four hours with this guy.  At the end, the French couple bought A TON of wine.  They must have spent hundreds of euros.  Probably just getting their week’s worth.  Colleen and I got a more modest two bottles each.  (I definitely bought the moss-covered-forest-after-rain wine.)  Our host was so sweet as we were leaving, telling us to come back and “bring your boyfriends and your next husbands!!”  Not sure how many lovers he thought we had, or if he thought we were already married…Anyways, he was the best.  I will certainly bring my husband there, although apparently I will have to put together a good wine cellar first, or else I’ll never have a husband to bring.

So Dijon was awesome.  Colleen showed me all the sights, which are marked by a trail of owls (!!!! owls everywhereeee) on the sidewalk.  Because of this famous owl carved into the side of the church there that everyone puts their left hand on it to make a wish as they pass, there is owl paraphernalia everywhere.  It was difficult for me to not buy every owl in sight...I may or may not have bought an owl stein…

I was super impressed with Colleen’s French!  You are good, girl.  I enjoyed being her mute, deer-in-the-headlights friend while she spoke to the people of Dijon.  When we went to the fruit and veggie market, Colleen was talking to the grocer, who at one point looked at me and then said what I knew meant, “She has no idea what’s going on, does she.”  Am I really that obvious…

Dijon=major thumbs up.  Thank you, Colleen!!

Next time, on Excuses For Not Writing, Claire, Ashley, and her cousin Ian risk their lives on a marathon road trip to Edinburgh.

We like wine.

I’m sure the three of you that know of this blog deeply felt my absence yesterday.  I did not post because Ashley and I were experimenting with our new wine glasses.  Goblet is actually probably a more appropriate term.  The other day we went to this little second hand shop that had a crazy sale—everything was A POUND.  It was a bit of a free-for-all, everyone just grabbing stuff.  We ended up with a little set of cups and saucers, six commemorative Spode Christmas plates from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s (everyone else in the shop was visibly disappointed when we snatched these up—and who wouldn’t be?), and, of course, these two goblets.  It occurred to Ashley last night that perhaps the goblets are meant to be decorative and maybe hold candles inside.  All I had really thought about them was, “I wonder how much wine would fit in those.”  Fortunately for me today (though unfortunately for the pursuit of science), we did not test the full limits of the goblets (the question remains if an entire bottle fits in one glass).  But as soon as we find out, I will certainly report back.

So, with our goblets, we decided to celebrate America.  We had a friend over (we have a friend!)—his name is August and he works with Ashley.  He is also American (so many A’s) and thus was not averse to participating in the celebration.  We drank wine (Ashley and I from our goblets, August from a clean spaghetti sauce jar) and ordered Pizza Hut.  It was very nice.  Ashley and I each ate six slices.  America!

Inevitably though, this led to me waking up late this morning, getting in the tub 3 minutes before my usual get-out-of-the-tub time (8:22—this just seems to happen, I don’t plan it), not packing a lunch, being a general crazy trying to get out the door, running down the street, tripping, my shoe falling off, etc.  But, as my first bit of luck for the day, the overground was also running late (did the conductor have America Night too??) so I made the train.  And, as my second bit of luck, our design team went out for Thai food for lunch, so it was a good day not to pack my own.