Lovely, brilliant and squiffy

I was in England for two weeks - a very long time to be away and NOT be on vacation. I am on the project from hell at work and it has me travelling for two weeks every two weeks. This time it was out office just a few miles from Windsor. It's crazy to me that you walk around the town of Windsor doing shopping...getting coffee...eating lunch...all RIGHT next to a castle. It's nuts. There's a castle. Right there. A castle. Weird. It's huge and big and the Queen stays there. A castle.

So there are a few words that my British colleagues say a lot and I've suddenly picked them up like some sort of linguistic chameleon. I sound like Madonna when she went through her "I live in LA but speak with an English accent" phase. So I find myself saying things like, "brilliant" or "lovely" or my favorite, "squiffy." I didn't mean to go there an pick up new words, although technically only "squiffy" is new - I just never really use the other two. It just happened.

Something else I noticed while there: the English think the Americans are rude...I don't think it is that we are more rude than they are we just don't have inherently polite accents. I heard a man say to a woman, "get out of my way bloody woman." That was rude yet when he said it there was still a polite accent that made him sound better than if an American politely said, "excuse me." It is terribly unfair but it is what it is.

I spent the day today getting food stuff ready for the week. I'm exhausted and wondering when I became a domesticated animal...I am a good cook I am just not known for my womanly care taking skills. But I did meal planning and so I got ready what I could. So the pork tenderloin is marinating in the yummy mojo sauce (Monday's dinner), the chicken is marinating in the yummy tomato/basil sauce (Tuesday), the pesto is made from the basil I picked from my counter top garden (Wednesday's dinner) and my lovely salmon/cream cheese/dill spread is whipped for my snacks. I even decided to make an orange and cranberry granata (sp?) for dessert so they are cooling before going in the freezer. We'll see how those turn out.

So now I am going to try a drink that my friend Denise says soothes her soul...I don't know about all that but it sounds good so I'm off to make myself a Yerba Mate tea with steamed milk and agave nectar. I'll let you know how that turns out...if there's anyone out there who reads this drivel.