Valentines Day – 21 February 2006

OK OK I know. I really wish I blogged more, too. We’ll probably lose readership at this rate, but we’ll just have to build up our vast following again when we have more time. Basically I started taking those classes I told you about, and I have also been working a bit much lately – they decided to put the weekly, monthly, quarterly, 5-year strategy, and brand planning deadlines all in the same week. Well weekly deadlines are every week, but you know. It should slow down over the next few weeks, so that will help with my prolificacy.

On to the title topic. . . As Andy and I had a very busy day planned on Valentine’s Day itself, we decided to go out to dinner on Saturday night. We went to a Greek restaurant in our village (one of a very few “places we have to try” left on our list), and it was just lovely. We think we learned something, though. We think that when one enters a restaurant in London, rather than saying, “Hi, 2 please,” as one would in the States, it’s probably more effective to say, “Hi, do you have a table for two available?” The reason we think that is because every time we go into a restaurant and say, “Hi, 2 please,” the host says, “Have you booked?” Well, no sir we have not – your restaurant is EMPTY. Here, it doesn’t matter. Here, the options seem to be 1) make a reservation, and 2) ask politely if perhaps maybe they might be able to find room for you. I think. I’ll test it and let you know how it goes.

When Tuesday (the real Valentine’s Day) came, Andy got up early to make me a yummy breakfast, which turned out to be raspberry coffee cake. Look out, future guests – it was WONderful. What began as a romantic idea gradually turned into a ludicrous fiasco, and it happened as follows. The raspberry in the raspberry coffee cake decided to leak its way onto the bottom of the oven and smoke the place out. Andy opened the window while I was in the shower wondering why my yummy breakfast was smelling alarmingly like burnt breakfast.

When he checked on the cake, it set the smoke detector off. He took the cake out ten minutes early, because the smoke was getting a bit intense, and when he did, we were prepared. Our smoke detector is on the ceiling, so I violently waved a dishtowel at it for the few minutes it took Andy to check on the cake and decide to take it out after all. So there I was in my smoky flat on Valentine’s Day franticly waving a dishtowel over my head in the general vicinity of the smoke detector. When we finally sorted the cake out, Andy started the coffee and got in the shower while I continued to get ready for work. I came out of the bedroom to the homey aroma of freshly brewed coffee, burnt raspberry filling, and delicious coffee cake, and then I realized that the coffee smell was particularly strong. Because the coffee was everywhere.

Our coffee maker has a tricky mechanism that, on the whole, makes it much cleaner and keeps the coffee hotter than other coffee makers, but it also means that if the carafe is slightly off the mark, the coffee could potentially go everywhere. We won’t do that again. So I spent a good five minutes mopping up coffee with our recycled paper towels which, though eco-friendly, are complete garbage in the soaking up coffee department.

After I made more coffee, we had a wonderful breakfast, and the cake turned out to be amazing. We then decided that, rather than eat the entire cake, I should take it into work to share. I carted it to work on the tube (after setting my travel mug down on it – oops), and when I arrived, I said, “Andy made a coffee cake.” “Why the h*ll would you ever make a coffee cake?”

Turns out they don’t really have coffee cake here! They thought I meant a cake that tastes like coffee, rather than a cake to eat with coffee. They tried to get me to explain what it would be like: “Is it like a crumble? Is it like a muffin?” Well no, and sort of. Anyway, the ended up loving the coffee cake, but most of all, they were VASTly impressed that Andy and I managed to have so many adventures before the day even began. So, the moral of the story is that waking up early leads to all sorts of new life opportunities, or – at the very least – can on occasion supply some good blog material.

Notes: Getting cat hair out of the keyboard is a challenge I never thought I would have to think about.

Todd was here this past weekend – we had a wonderful time – more on that later.

We’re going to Greece next week and I can NOT wait.

Melinda is coming back in May – this time with the wonderful Kate. We’ll miss Brooke, but we like Kate too, and besides, maybe Kate can just wear her glasses or something.