"We are the Sherlock Holmes English Speaking Vernacular"*

Some of my "more favorite" photos from my recent vacation...



    




Clouds in London rock!!

*lyrics from "The Village Green Preservation Society" by The Kinks

Re-Entry

So much has been going on with me lately that I have really been neglecting my blog, but things should be shaping up so that I can redirect my full attention to this again soon.

"What have I been doing?" you may ask; well, I am glad you did. First, I have been taking a 19th century English literature class at Wesleyan University and have crammed in A LOT of 19th century fiction into a very short period of time and have had to write my first academic papers in 17 years a REALLY long time. And that is NOT an easy thing when you haven't had to write an analytical argument of a text since you got out of college 17 years!! a REALLY long time ago.

And then, of course, because I am taking this 19th century literature class about London, I felt it was necessary to go there and do research in person... as you do...

We read Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, so I thought it would be a good idea to go to Greenwich and check it out the Royal Observatory, completely for class...

And we also read Phineas Finn, which is about an Irish MP, so I thought I would check out the Palace of Westminster...again, final paper research...

There is really nothing quite like a first person accounting of things...

Or bluebells, which always make me think of both Howards End and I Capture the Castle.

"Down by the river, Down by the banks of the River Charles"*

Newbury and Berkeley streets

From 1996 until 2012, I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and I still have a lot of friends who live and work in town and its neighborhoods. So today's news of the explosions at the Boston Marathon was very personal to me. This morning, my Facebook newsfeed was full of friends and friends of friends running in the marathon or just going to watch the running of the marathon. (When my alarm went off this morning, I thought to myself that this is the first time in a dozen years that I had to work on Marathon Monday. Blerg.) Marathon Monday is a day for barbeques, beers, and cheering on crazy people who run 26.2 miles like they are there to help Paul Revere spread the word about the Redcoats coming. They run for causes and for themselves, and it is a happy, springtime thing that unites the people of Greater Boston.

Shortly before 3pm, I was in a meeting with someone about something rather routine when we were interrupted by a colleague who walked in to tell us that two explosions had just happened at the race. My response was: "Are you sure it wasn't a manhole cover?" because that happens, not infrequently, in Boston. But when he said that wasn't what CNN was reporting, I walked out of the meeting as quickly as I could without drawing attention to myself to get on a computer and find out what happened.

For a while, it was 9/11 all over again - the desperate search for information, the need to know what had happened - except this time, I had people I cared about personally who could have been hurt. Thank goodness for cell phones and Facebook. By 4:15pm, the last of my friends who were at the race checked in, no one was injured, and the nauseous feeling in my stomach started to settle down.

Of course, I am in no way calm about this, and part of me wishes I could be there to help, doing what, I don't know, but being there for my old city. It is saddening and frightening. And it makes me mad too. What do those runners ever do to anyone? They were celebrating the accomplishment of a difficult test of physical and mental endurance; they didn't deserve this and neither did the people there to cheer them on. All I can do is pray and hope. I pray for the police (especially PH, thinking of him), who put their lives on the line all the time to protect Bostonians; hopefully they can stop any further destruction and arrest the people responsible. And I also pray for all the medical personnel at the hospitals who are treating the people hurt in the explosions; they are among the very best in this country and I hope they can save the rest of the badly injured. I pray for the people of Boston, that they don't let this stop them from being "wicked awesome". (I don't think it will. Bostonians have been fighting back against their oppressors for nearly 240 years. They know how to handle this kind of stuff. Just ask those Redcoats...)

Oh, Boston, you're still my home and hopefully always will be.


*lyrics from Dirty Water by the Standells

Spring has Sprung!

This past fall, I planted a bunch of early spring bulbs up the length of my front walk and outside my front door, and, finally over this weekend, the first ones opened up!!  It is my first spring in my new house, and I am really looking forward to starting up the garden.

My first crocus in bloom!

Definitely going to be planting roses and hydrangeas - it doesn't seem right to me to live in a Cape Cod style house without hydrangeas!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

When Sister K and I went to Ireland back in 2010, I had my first experience with the very delicious potato and leek soup. I loved it and ended up eating some in pretty much every stop on our tour (along with the brown bread and scones. Actually, the whole scone thing became kind of an obsession.)

Today, I am hosting a St. Patrick's Day dinner at my house for my family and in addition to the traditional (American) corned beef and cabbage, I wanted to make something that was actually authentically Irish. I found this easy and delicious recipe over on the Irish American Mom blog and am really looking forward to sharing this with the fam this evening. (I made it earlier today - so that the flavors could meld more and so that I would have time for a redo, if necessary. It is sitting on the warming burner right now, smelling amazing, just teasing me with its deliciousness. But I am being good... for now. Couple of modifications that I made to the recipe: I doubled the number of potatoes and I added some chicken low sodium Better Than Boullion to the vegetable stock. I used Ina Garten's suggestion for cleaning the leeks - a salad spinner. Next time I might use more stock as the soup is on the thicker side.)

Off to start the corned beef...

"Winter is Coming"*

(Well, actually, I was hoping that winter is ending, but...)

I started watching HBO's "Game of Thrones" recently. LOVE IT!  I am really glad that I started now instead of earlier when I would have had a longer wait until the next series starts. (This must be how all the "Downton Abbey" newbies feel! And another reason why "series binging" is both a good thing and a bad thing.)

You know that you are a Brit tv/movie addict when you can ID Tara Fitzgerald's voice in a 10 second "Game of Thrones" advert. (I read on IMDB that she is going to be in series 3.)

Photo credit: BBC America on Facebook

You also know you are a Brit tv/movie movie addict when you get excited that a "Downton Abbey"/"Game of Thrones" person (Iain Glen) is on "Ripper Street" with the "Ripper Street" man (Jerome Flynn) from "Game of Thrones"! Worlds (or in this case, fandoms) collide!

And, yes, I have been watching "Game of Thrones" playing a mega game of "Name that Brit" with myself.  (Hello, Tonks! Hello man from Doctor Who "Tooth and Claw"! [There were 3 of those.])  The best one was when I learned that Dagmer Cleftjaw, the guy helping Theon Grayjoy (Alfie Allen), was Chris Finch from "The Office (UK)" (Ralph Ineson). That was making me NUTS! (Thanks, IMDB!)  Of course, the drawback to this is that I don't bother learning the "Game of Thrones" characters' names. I keep calling them "Ripper Street Guy" or "Full Monty Guy" or "Doctor Who Guy" or "Boromir" (just kidding about that - love you, Sean Bean!)


* The motto of House Stark. Sean Bean plays Ned Stark. I actually learned that one.

Blizzard Weekend

A friend from Twitter wished me luck weathering Winter Storm Charlotte (what CT called the storm)/Nemo (what the National Weather Service called the storm), saying that people from Connecticut are made of strong stuff. I like to think that I am made of strong stuff, in a Rosalind Russell/Katharine Hepburn (both Connecticut natives) kind of way. But I wasn't really into being strong when I had to dig myself out of 4' snow drifts. While I got my driveway done (with some help at the end from a neighbor) on Saturday, the street didn't get plowed out until during the second hour of Sunday's episode of "Downton Abbey". Thankfully the melting has already shrunk the piles on either side of my driveway.

(When the birds starting making appearances, I felt a little less like a member of the Donner party. I SO wouldn't have made it through that winter of 1846. The cabin fever would have gotten to me early on.)

I may not have one right now, but you can be certain that I will be buying a snow blower very soon. (I did the research on Consumer Reports over the weekend; I want a two stage with an electric starter. Let me know if you have one that you like!)