Yesterday tiffany and I went to our first premiership football game. We’d been talking about going to one since we arrived in England, but never got around to it until now. We got tickets to a game at Fulham, which was specifically chosen because the tickets are relatively easy to get.

We rode the tube to the stadium, and I was surprised at how orderly and quiet everyone was as they disembarked the train and made their way out of the station. I would have expected a more rowdy and boisterous crowd, but no, very quiet and calm. As we continued on to the stadium the crowed grew to a rather large steady stream of people and it was still quiet and orderly. Enthusiasm finally picked up as we walked past a few pubs and streams of people leaving the pub joined the now river of people heading to the stadium.

The game started out really well. Brian McBride (an American) scored the first goal for Fulham. Unfortunately for Fulham, after scoring McBride was on the ground with a dislocated knee. He was taken off on a stretcher, but let the crowd know he was okay by clapping along with fans as they cheered his name.

From there it went down hill. Middlesbrough scored an equalizer in the second half that was a result of sloppy defense and goal keeping. Then scored a go ahead goal, the second goal was more earned, but still should have been prevented. After lots of angry shouting by the fans, the mood quickly changed to elation when Fulham seemingly scored an equalizer. However the elation quickly turned to anger when everyone realized that the ref wasn’t counting the score. Tiffany and I were stunned. We thought it had surely gone in. And so did tens of thousands of spectators, the Fulham managers and the Fulham team, and they were all letting the ref know about it.

In the end Fulham lost, and there is nothing more annoying than disappointed, frustrated, angry and vocal football supporters. As a result, the game turned out to not be as fun as we’d hoped. We can check football game off our list of things to do, but I we should go to another game sometime. Though I think maybe we’ll go to a Chelsea game. They’re more likely to win.

After the game we read that replays showed the ball indeed crossed the line and the goal should have counted. Anyway, here’s a writeup of the game, and here’s a picture we took at the game.

A few months ago, when registering online for a lighting tradeshow I was feeling a little silly. When I got to the field where one is to enter one’s title, I went, well… a little overboard. Several months later, after having forgotten about the whole thing my registration packet arrived addressed to me using the title I entered. However, the mailroom accidentally put it in the mailbox of the girl who sits next to me. That day, as she was looking through her mail she cried, “Andrew McNeil, Supreme Commander, what’s this?” That of course got the attention of the entire office, so I proceeded to open it with everyone watching and pulled out my name badge for the trade show. Hilarity ensued…

Following my lead, everyone immediately started making big plans for next year. Titles like “pretty pretty princess” “heinous overlord” “international man of mystery” among others were discussed.

And yes, I did wear it to the show…

One of the things about London is that no matter who you are or where you live you can not avoid leaflets. These are the little flyers that local businesses use to inform you about the services they provide. Limo services, restaurants, take away food, real estate agents, laundromats, the list goes on and on. On any given day you are likely to receive between 2 and 6 leaflets. And the funny thing is EVERYBODY hates leaflets. What it comes down to is that you have two options for dealing with them, and both are an inconvenient. You can pick them up and dispose of them every time you enter and exit, or just let them pile up into a thick loose doormat of sorts.

Moving along, one day we received a leaflet that caught my attention. It was a leaflet that was soliciting would be leaflet distributors. Can you believe it! You too could be cramming useless papers into the mail slots of all your neighbors. It was a career field that I had never considered (and still won’t consider despite the efforts of a leaflet).

If anyone is looking for a new career I have it on good information that the leaflet distribution market is growing and offers many exciting opportunities…

There was a lunar eclipse on Saturday night! I found out that London was going to have a front row seat as long as the clouds didn’t get in the way. While talking to my dad, I mentioned the occasion and was surprised to find that he already knew. He even knew that London was a prime location for viewing. Tiffany thinks it’s very funny that my dad and I would both be clued in about the astronomical event while most of London was completely ignorant.

Lo and behold, Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day in London, clear skies all day. As it seemed that we were going have a rare clear night in London, Tiffany and I decided to take in all the action. We headed over to our local Indian restaurant for a quick meal. After dinner we made a pot of tea, and got in our sleeping bags and sat out in the back yard to watch the moon do it’s thing.

Earlier in the day I read that the moon turns red when it is eclipsed because red light filters around the atmosphere and reflects off the moon. I like to think that the moon is seeing all the sunsets and sunrises around the globe at once. Astronauts who have seen this from orbit call it “the ring of fire.”

Here are some pictures we took of the event.

On this, the occasion of Melinda’s THIRD visit to see Andy & Tiffany in London, we present her with an award to recognize her outstanding achievements in the field of visitation. For achieving a visitation rate unparalleled by any other visitor to date, we present Melinda Spence, Frequent Visitor Extraordinaire, with a framed photograph of the celebration light. While it is no longer with us (we parted ways with the light when we moved to another flat) it has been lit in celebration of Melinda’s arrival on more occasions than any other guest.

Along with the award, Melinda has earned a frequent visitor’s card that will help her to earn miles redeemable for free nights accommodation at the McNeil Flat. If anyone is interested in a frequent visitor’s card, apply now and receive a free stay with your enrollment.

A few Pictures of Melinda’s visit…

Yesterday Tiffany and I went to the Tate Modern because they have a really cool installation in the turbine hall. In order to experience the exhibit, we had to wait in the queue to get free tickets.

At the moment, one of the coolest things for 10 year-old English children are shoes that have wheels in the heal. I’m not sure if they are popular in the States, but here, everyone under 13 seems to have them. With the shoes kids will walk along and suddenly lift their toes off the floor and glide. It’s the weirdest thing the first time you see it. After you quickly figure out what’s going on, you are overcome with a desire to get the shoes yourself. I’ve been looking for the shoes in adult sizes, but have yet to see some.

Anyway, you see kids gliding along everywhere, the supermarket, the sidewalk, and while waiting for tickets at the Tate Modern. The floor in the hall is a long gentle slope, so while we waited we were treated to a spectacle of children wheeling down the slope weaving around passersby and crashing into their parents. It was quite fun.

After the “Kids on Wheels” show, we finally got our tickets and proceeded to the upper floors of the museum. The point of the exhibit is to return to the bottom of the turbine hall in record time. Yes, they have installed slides that wind their way down from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th floor to the ground floor of the turbine hall! It was really, really fun. The slides were similar to waterslides, but instead of water, you slid down on a sack. The turns in the slide were a little bumpy, so when people screamed it sounded funny as they hit the turns, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.”

All in all, it was a really fun day. We took a few pics of the slides.

For thanksgiving this year we decided that we would cook a small dinner for just the two of us. Since we had other plans both Saturday and Sunday this week so I decided that I would take the afternoon off and cook on the thanksgiving day.

Instead of getting a whole turkey we got a stuffed turkey breast. We figured that a breast would suit the two of us. The decision to get the roast might also have had something to do with the fact that turkeys ring up at $5.18/lb!

Going into the day, I was worried that this would go horribly wrong. I tried to counter act this by developing a matrix detailing when to do what, how to manage the oven, and how to do it all with one oven timer. The matrix was working well, and everything was going to plan!

So while I was prepping the mac and cheese and draining the broccoli, the timer went off. The timer indicated that it was T-70 minutes to finish, the roast turkey had been in for 10 minutes and needed nothing, the candied sweet potatoes had been in for 30 minutes and needed to be basted, and the pumpkin pie had been in for 45 minutes and needed to be checked for burning crust and rotated. As I was rotating the pie, POP! Pop-pop-pop! The Pyrex pie plate containing the pumpkin pie on the shelf above the turkey and sweet potatoes exploded. I was shocked, surprised and finally disappointed. The turkey and sweet potatoes were showered with large and small glass shards, and the pie, well, it no longer had a container.

With a stiff upper lip, I cleaned up the mess and pressed forward with what was left. This year we’ll have to settle for a ’side-dish’ thanksgiving dinner. All that remained was mashed potatoes, stuffing, macaroni & cheese, broccoli casserole, cranberry sauce, and bread. We ate what was left (which all came out of the oven at the same time, a little late thanks to the matrix and a minor delay while picking shards of glass off the oven rack with tongs). For dessert, we had a lovely bag of marshmallows that was intended for the sweet potatoes.

Well, I’m off to go see if the oven has cooled enough to vacuum the bits of glass off the bottom. Here are some pictures of our meal.

Friday, while I was making my way to the office, there was a man walking down the street the opposite way. And guess what, he was wearing a monocle! I saw a man wearing a monocle! Who wears a monocle? I know, when I moved here I thought there would be loads of men wearing monocles, but no, it’s a deceiving stereotype. Some of them wear tweed, some smoke pipes, lots carry big umbrellas with a hook handle, but nobody wears monocles. Except this guy! Wow. It was exhilarating. The monocle was on a cord that was around his neck, and it just stayed in place in his eye socket. Awesome. Now I just need to see someone wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat, and I’ll feel like I’ve seen everything.

Incidentally, the very same day I was wearing a new shirt. My new shirt has French cuffs, which means I need to wear cufflinks. So there I was studded out with my silver cufflinks and my new shirt… and my new sneakers. HA! Who wears cufflinks and sneakers?!? It didn’t notice the combination until I was halfway to work. I bet monocle man is writing in his blog about how he saw a guy wearing cufflinks and sneakers. “I was on my way to the cobbler when I was struck by the strangest sight. Unless my glass onion deceived me, I saw a chap wearing both cufflinks and trainers. Who’d have guessed that such a prosperous combination was possible?”

In case you were wondering my new sneakers are Converse One Stars. Yeah, they’re not good enough to be given all the stars, just one. On a scale of zero stars to all stars, my sneakers score a paltry one. My cuff links, on the other hand, are stylin’.

We’ve neglected to tell you about our July trip to Scotland, so we’re going to go back a couple of months to recount events of our eight day anniversary trip to the western highlands and islands.

We spent the first two days of our trip on the island of Barra. Barra is in the outer hebrides, and is about as far west as one can go and still be in Brittan. The main reason we visited Bara is because it is the island from which a large part of the MacNeil clan originated. Opting not to take the seven-hour ferry we decided to fly from Glasgow.

The flight to Barra was an interesting experience by itself. The island is serviced by one flight per day, operated by British airways. The plane lands on a large flat beach. After landing the plane is unloaded, reloaded and departs before the tide comes in and covers the “runway” with water. The flight times vary daily so ensure that the plane lands during low tide.

The Barra airport has three runways each marked with a pole at both ends. There are no lights, no lines or markings of any kind. Just sand. After we got off the plane, Tiffany foolishly tried to grab he bag off the rack. The guy motioned her to leave it and explained that it would be taken to baggage claim where she could pick it up. The baggage claim area is a shelf under an awning beside the control tower. We had no trouble finding the baggage claim shed because it was fitted with a huge sign that read “Baggage Claim.” We watched the ground crew guy pull the cart up to the shed and place all six bags on the shelf where we were then allowed to retrieve it.

After we arrived on the island we rode the MacNeil bus driven by Mr. MacNeil to Castle Bay. The bus took us directly to our b&b, which was operated by Mrs. MacNeil. The bikes we rented were owned by a man who was married to a MacNeil. The island was truly bursting at the seams with MacNeils! And to think, we missed the bi-annual MacNeil clan gathering by only two weeks. That might have been a few too many MacNeils for us.

We went straight to the MacNeil Castle (Kismul Castle), which sits in the middle of the bay. We also had the best Scottish tablet of the whole trip at the hebridian toffee factory / sandwich cafe place. Then we rented bicycles and rode the whole way around the island. We finished our day with a meal at the pub in Castle Bay. The next day we rode bikes in the morning and took the McNeil van back to the airport.

I forgot to mention that when we booked our flights from London to Glasgow to Barra and back the website said, “We cannot issue e-tickets for this flight, paper tickets will be posted to you.” So we had to do it the old fashioned way, “honey where are the tickets” “I put them in my purse” etc… When we checked in to our flight from London to Glasgow we embarrassingly presented our paper tickets. Who uses paper tickets anymore? Then, when checking in at the Barra airport the whole paper ticket made more sense. The lady looked at our tickets and crossed our names off the list that was faxed over this morning and carried our luggage over to the cart.

All in all Barra was a fun experience. The island was picturesque and the people were friendly.

A while back I posted pictures from our time on Barra.

Flying to Barra


Kisimul Castle


Cycling round Barra

Tonight I made spinach fettuccine and impressed myself with the results so much that I had to take pictures. I know it’s a little strange to photograph your dinner, but as they say in Spain, a todos les gusta la pasta fresca! I only wish I started photographing at the beginning. It wasn’t until the sheets were rolled that I saw how well it turned out. Ingredients: Flour, Spinach, Egg.


Pasta Photos