I see this is making some news. There was an earthquake about 200 miles north of me. Did I notice it? Well, no. I was sound asleep 🙂 Ooops!

Soon, I’ll have more pictures of this again:

This is a short little post to point out the fact that, in 17 days, Carolyn will begin the move to London. I say begin because even when she flies here on 14 March, it’ll only be a temporary trip. She will not be living here for real until after the wedding. But that’s pretty soon too! In the meantime, I’m not complaining. I’ll be very very happy to have her in my direct world again. It’s been a long year and I’m glad we’re near the end of it.  🙂

I’ve mentioned a trip I made to Highgate Cemetery before. It was one of the Magnificent Seven, a group of privately run cemetery’s that ringed what was, at the time, London. They were set up because the inner London burial sites were filling up and the dead bodies in the middle of a dense city were causing health problems. The British of the 19th century loved their burials and business in these new cemetery’s was good. As the Victorian fascination with death gave way to more of an interest in things like cremation, they ran into trouble. First they cut back on landscaping and maintenance and eventually, they shut down. Today, I checked out Abney Park, which is one of the other shuttered cemetery. Unlike Highgate, this one was taken over by the local council (Hackney) relatively early, although they didn’t do anything with it to keep it from becoming overgrown. However, it has recently done quite a lot to turn it into public park space. So, unlike Highgate, you can easily just go in and take a stroll around and take in all the impressive sights to see. And, it’s only about a 20 minute walk from my flat. Here would be some highlights:

I think this gives a good impression of the state of things in this burial site. It’s been overrun by this lush greenery which makes it pretty cool looking and feels very relaxing, especially since it’s surrounded by the hustle and bustle of Stoke Newington.

There’s something about the way these graves have all lilted in various directions that I liked.

A unique part of this cemetery is the remains of this old church right in the middle of it. You might notice the supports holding it together as it’s in very bad shape. You’ll also notice the beautiful blue sky today (I was not even wearing a coat). 😛

This is the interior of the church. I love how, in the middle of London (this isn’t the very center of the city, but it’s still central London), you can have this wonderful piece of history and greenery and have buildings like this as a reminder of how old everything is around here. Hackney has done a great job of keeping this space a beautiful combination of history and park space while respecting the fact that’s thousands of people’s final resting place is right here.

For those of you with good memories, you might recall my triumphs last year in both lawn bowling and American bowling. Well, I was heading home one night and ended up catching my bus home in Finsbury Square, which has the lawn bowling pitch in the middle of it. The architecture around it is a mix of 1920s, 1950s and contemporary architecture. This building isn’t that exciting looking, but I do like the colors on it once the sun goes down:

Since it’s a winter lull in the interesting part of my life :), I’m shooting just to capture some of the fun little things in life. Hope you enjoy. And mom, if you’re nice, I might take some pictures of skinny Anna and fat Chewy.

The last couple of mornings have been extremely foggy. However, the fog has burned off and it’s become very lovely. As luck would have it, I thought about an interesting compare and contrast photo and whipped out my camera on my way to the bus stop yesterday morning. Let’s compare shall we:

Normal (slightly overcast and rainy) weather

Slightly foggy 🙂

I saw a picture in one of those horrible free dailys always floating around town where someone managed to get a photo from an airplane in which the entire city was socked in except the tall buildings in Canary Wharf. Pretty cool.

This is unfortunate. It looks like there was a nasty fire at one of the Camden Markets on Saturday night. I’ve written about one of my trips there before. The first picture is inside the section that caught fire, I believe. It’s a bit of a hipster area with a lot of funky shops that are fun to peruse. The part of the market affected is built into an aqueduct which creates a very cool environment. Here’s hoping the local shops are able to recover and rebuild after this. The details still seem to be spotty, so we’ll see what happened and to what extent the damage is soon.

By popular demand (aka. my mom’s request), I give you Dina’s dish:

(and the garden below her flat in the darkness)

Now, let’s get a little mundane. We have two things at work here. First, I have a TV now. One thing you learn about having a TV in the UK is the licensing scheme. Like all things in life, the BBC is not free. It gets paid for by a yearly fee you pay. If you own a TV, you pay about £11 a month. This alone is no big deal. Why they just don’t deduct it out of a payroll tax is beyond me. But, regardless of that, it goes to a worthy cause as the BBC has come out with some great shit and most of the quality programming in the UK that isn’t Simpsons syndication comes from the BBC. My issue is the collection method. The BBC has paid a bunch of companies to act as Big Brother, checking address databases with who has paid the fee and who hasn’t and allegedly roaming the streets and looking for signals from places that haven’t paid. Earlier this fall, they had adverts up with things like “We’re watching you so pay up” all over the city. It’s creepy and overkill. On top of that, there is a presumption that everyone has a TV and if you haven’t paid, they assume you’re hiding something and harass you and threaten so show up and inspect your home. I have no idea what authority they have, but my colleague, who really doesn’t have a TV has had to call repeatedly to get to stop sending threatening notes about their obvious guilt because everyone has a TV.

Anyway, the point is, I have a TV and I wanna get a real signal, so I’m paid up on my license and I’m looking at the two big TV providers Sky and Virgin. As I started trying to sign up for Sky, they asked about installing a dish which confused me because i thought they were terrestrial cable. So I asked Dina who mentioned it and I realized I had some sort of dish outside my window so I asked what hers looked like so she sent me a photo. I’m obviously ignorant because Sky is satellite TV. Very exciting, no? 🙂

Here ends a daily mundane post. Was it boring as shit?

OK, this is about the longest I’ve gone without posting. It’s January and I’m basically working and doing the usual day-to-day things. If you’d like me to write about the mundane, I can try 🙂

In the meantime, the first Super Bowl in ages that was actually a game (well, I guess lately they haven’t been total jokes) and it starts a little before midnight my time. Not only that, but the Giants freaking ruined the Patriots perfect season. How cool is that?!?!

Anyway, I need to figure out what to do with this blog when there isn’t tons of exciting things to be written about/photographed. In the meantime, I’ll jump in with whatever random I can come up with.

So less than a week ago, I was still on vacation. Granted, I was flying between AZ and NJ, hoping the nor’easter coming into the East Coast would not mess up any of my flights, but I had yet to return to the UK. Allow me to give you a the nickel tour of my nice 10 days off in back in the homeland:

1. A trip to New Jersey – I got to spend some time with Carolyn and her family in New Jersey. It was also my first real chance to assist in the wedding planning. So I saw a lot of the malls of New Jersey and got to sample delicious cake and see where the wedding will be. I was happy to be a part of it, but I’m a terrible shopper, so it could be exhausting at times 🙂
2. Lots of flying. I flew from London -> Newark. Then four days later, I flew from Newark->Tucson via Phoenix. A short 5 days later, I was back on a plane from Tucson->Newark. 12 hours after that, it was back to London again. In a 24 hours period, I was on 4+ hour flights, 1.5 hours on a train and various time on buses and in cars. But it was alllll worth it.
3. Some fun in Arizona. There was still a wedding component to it, but I was able to take a little timeout and relax after a crazy year. I swam, hiked, took in the beauty of the desert, golfed and got to see this wonderful new home my parents built. And my sister came down for a visit as well which was nice since I hadn’t seen her in a year (sniffle).

There’s the quick tour. Here are some photos:

Since I missed Christmas with family this year (not to say that Dina and Adrian weren’t saints for helping me through a nasty flu), I got a nice welcome back to the US with lots of Christmas. Both the Hysons and Badanes’ kept their Christmas decorations up for me and I got a Christmas dinner from the Hysons. This is Linda and Jim wearing the crowns you get out of those Christmas popper things.

I’m very impressed with Tucson. It is obviously a very dry place, but the geography is diverse, rugged  and mountainous. My parents look out on an 8000 foot mountain, which gets snow in the winter. There are crazy passes that look out over canyons and go up into areas with skiing. And the saguaro’s are everywhere, creating a forest of cacti. This picture doesn’t quite capture that forest, but it is nice nonetheless. It was taken a wild 15 minute drive from my parents place on some cool-ass roads.

This is my parents new place. That long bank of windows in the middle is the kitchen and living room. To the left is the master bedroom area. To the right (out of this photo) are the guest rooms/lisa and my bedrooms. It’s a wonderful house. They built it from scratch (I was there about a year ago when it was in progress), but it was nice to see the mostly finished product. They did some really nice things to it and made it a high-quality, comfortable place to be.

I forgot how easy it is to eat like shit (and eat a lot of it) in the US. However, I couldn’t resist in some situations. Like the above meal I had with Lisa before she headed back home for Arizona. That’d be Jack’s Barbecue – a pork sandwich and fries. Yummy.

I’m back in England again and just getting back into the flow of things. I’ll be posting some stuff over the next few days. In the meantime, here’s some Chicago news for you:

1. Looks like calling Cook County Hospital (where ER takes place) Stroger Hospital is no longer so creepy. The man they named it after, former Cook Country Board President John Stroger, died yesterday. He suffered a stroke a few days before a hotly contested primary almost 2 years ago in which his family used some shameful tactics to have his son put in his place.
2. After many years of political bullshit, the Illinois legislature has actually passed a funding bill that’ll stop the CTA (local public transit) from whinging every year or two about not having enough money. I bitched about this late last year when they yet again dodged a doomsday situation.

So, my parents are retired or in the process of retiring. They’ve moved to a lovely house in Arizona with magnificent views of the desert. Since this is Arizona, they have to play golf, right? Well, here’s a golf course about 10 minutes from their house:

As a fun family outing, we decided to give 18 holes a shot. Personally, I play golf once or twice every couple of years. And, while it’s probably not the best use of water in the desert, it can be a fun and relaxing way to spend a few hours. They’re usually very nicely laid out and you spend the time walking around or tooling around in a golf cart (which is fun). But I suck at golf. I can get a few decent shots off now and then, but I am completely inconsistent and have a nasty slice. I lost a crap-ton of balls into the desert on this course. Still, here’s evidence of me playing 🙂

(Oh jeez, that’s the same hole — and here I was hoping to give you a different view — here’s looking back at the 18th hole)

My dad is the best golfer in my family. But my mom is learning and now that they have the time, they should see their games improving. My sister is a hack like me although she should feel free to contest that description in the comments 😛

Well, let’s try to get things started back up with a view in my parents backyard.

I woke up nice and early and watched the sun coming up over that mountain range. They basically live in a forest of cacti. Very nice. I might need a number of posts to show off this really nice house.

Prior to that, I was in New Jersey having fun doing prep for my upcoming wedding. Carolyn and her mom have been doing an amazing amount of work on this, so I just showed up for some mall trips and tasting cakes (mmmm). I was able to make a quick trip into NYC to see some folks as well. Then I hopped a couple of planes to Arizona where I’m taking in the beauty that is the Arizona desert. More to come!

Sorry for the radio silence. I’m in New Jersey and I’ve been spending heaps o’ time getting wedding related things done. I’m flying to Arizona tomorrow and hopefully, I’ll have some more downtime whilst I there to provide some entertaining updates. In the meantime, talk amongst yerselves or something.

I figured I should start the new year out with a blog posting since it’s been exactly a year since I first posted something on in it and, in three days, since I publicly told anyone I’d be making a trip to England. It’s been a long and busy year. Let’s hope the adventures don’t stop 🙂

I’ll be making a US trip in 2 days. I’ll be in New Jersey to see Carolyn for a few days and then off to Arizona to see my parents in their new environment and my sister. It’ll be a much needed break.

As a result, I was in the UK for the whole of the holidays. Considering how hectic London is during the bulk of the year (7 million people in a single city makes it a little crowded), this was a ghost town the last week. My commute, short as it normally is, was absurd. The roads were empty, the buses were empty, the office was empty. Alas, I was sick, so all the work I planned on catching up on became ‘This needs to be done yesterday’ again. But it’s been nice and relaxing to have everyone off on holidays. And now I get to flee before it gets to crazy again. I’ll post more once I’m stateside!

Oh yeah, if you’re in NYC on 5 January (it’s a Saturday), lemme know as I’m hoping to spend the evening in the city.