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Back into the breach
It was a hectic month, with the typical madness at work, loads of house guests and short trips away. Bouncing credit cards at hotel checkout, lost debit cards on the way to airports, forgotten gig tickets, the sorts of thing that can be quite trying even at the best of times. Everything worked out eventually - the kindnesses of friends and ( Read more... ) -
A weekend of jollity
I was intending to head off to London to catch up with some friends and celebrate my birthday, but the whole thing became bigger than Ben Hur. Many many meals at fantastic, interesting and fun restaurants were had ( Read more... ) -
Circus
So the circus is in town, or at least a burlesque/circus group from Australia: La La Parlour. I'm intrigued, and I've been invited along to see the show, so I'll be travelling a few hours into North Holland to see it tonight. Apparently, the Amsterdam Burlesque Festival is also starting in a few days, who knew these things were so popular ( Read more... ) -
How fast can you get a burning toaster out of the kitchen?
Fairly fast, although there was no time to take photos during the excitement ( Read more... ) -
Opera, Food and Books in the Pacific Northwest
Mid-morning flights are ok - enough time to faff around with last-minute emails, packing etc, and still make it to the airport with heaps of time to spare. Better than mid- or late-afternoon flights where I'm always tempted to do a few hours of work after an early check-in: those are normally unbelievably rushy, catastrophic days.
One of the nice ( Read more... ) -
Gratin Dauphinois
I've had a couple of fun dinner parties in the last weeks. Funnily enough, a number of friends who came along have recently embarked on new relationships. When asked if their new squeezes were coming along, it appeared that they weren't even told. I guess I'm the scary friend these days ( Read more... ) -
Delayed by ... stuff
I've decided not to let work get me down.
I was in New York for a long weekend in early September, and had a fabbo night at Terroir in the East Village, ate at Katz's Deli etc.
Ellis Island was more moving than I expected, and an unexpected stuble-across, the African Burial Ground monument and its' memorial that begins "For all those who were lost. ( Read more... ) -
No bacon, but mmm lardons and truffles
I've been in southern France this weekend to catch up with my Dad. It was great apart from the expensive train tickets (more expensive than travelling to New York via Chicago!) and the logistic disasters in Brussels which made my train quite late into Paris, made me skip dinner, and just make my connecting train after good luck with the metro, by 4 ( Read more... ) -
More bacon and an overdose of butter
Last weekend, I was visiting friends in Haarlem where a pretty big Jazz festival was running, and as you do, we kind of ran out acts we wanted to stand around for and found ourselves in one of my favourite little bars, Briljant, which is tucked away from the main squares and streets but which has a pretty good range of whisky (although nothing like ( Read more... ) -
Cheese analogue
There I was, idly reading a newspaper on the train in the morning as part of my work-avoidancechillout regimen, when I was suddenly struck by a report about a consumer association study on commercially available pizzas in the Netherlands. Six of the twenty-nine pizzas sampled were topped with what the researchers called a cheese analogue - ( Read more... )