Englishgirl in Indiana

Please go to Keith’s Page http://keithjustus.wordpress.com/

Mélaine is at peace. At 10:30 (local time, 11th August) Mélaine died. She stopped breathing and her heart beat on for a few more minutes. She was peaceful and we were all around her, proud of her and privileged to be there. We felt sure Mélaine could hear us and we spoke gentle words of comfort and love.

As you can imagine, there are things we need to do and arrange. There will be a memorial service for Mélaine - this will be in the UK (and quite soon, we hope). When the arrangements are confirmed (shortly) we will publish them here.

Now, it is time to grieve, to remember, and be thankful that Mélaine was in our lives.

From Peter and Avril

Today, our daughter Melaine, the “Englishgirl in Indiana” went to a better place: passing quietly from this life to the next mid morning in her room at the Cleveland Clinic Ohio USA..

For the past few days the weather here has been cool, blustery and with thunderstorms. This morning the sky was heavy and overcast and yet at her demise the sun broke through and clear blue skies appeared….we would like to think that Melaine was beaming her wonderful smile down at us all.

Those of us who have kept vigil at her bedside and those who have administered to her care have been humbled by her strength, her humour and her spirit throughout. There never was a braver little soldier.

She was loved by all; husband, son brother, parents all, family, friends from school and work and even those of short acquaintance. The doctors, nurses and assistants had taken her into their hearts and we will forever have a place in our hearts for them. They fought side by side with Melaine throughout her illness offering support, kindness, comfort and for some a great deal of love.

Throughout the past 6 months we have treasured and gained strength from your heartfelt thoughts and prayers.

So please remember the Melaine you knew…………..and with the new day will come strength, new thoughts and new beginnings

Avril and Peter
Keith and Jay
Peter

Hall N Oats “She’s Gone”
Everybody’s high on consolation
Everybody’s trying to tell me
What is right for me, yeah
I need a drink and a quick decision
Now it’s up to me, ooooh what will be
(Chorus)
She’s gone, she’s gone
Oh, why
Oh, why
I better learn how to face it
She’s gone, she’s gone
Oh, why
Oh, why
I’d pay the devil to replace her
She’s gone, she’s gone
Oh, why
What went wrong

Get up in the morning, look in the mirror
One less tooth brush hanging in the stand
My face ain’t looking any younger
Now what I can see
Love’s taken a toll on me

(Chorus)

Think I’ll spend eternity in the city
Let the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away
And pretty bodies help dissolve the memories
There can never be what she once was to me

(Chorus)

Filed under: health, breaking news on August 12th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Despite being able to provide blood and platelets to support my low blood counts the doctors have essentially said there is nothing that they can do to help me. This being the case the we are starting to look at different remedies and alternatives and other options for cure. I have no doubt of healing as I still have things to do here! I know He has great plans for me and I refuse to be stopped at this stage. So much going on but I’m feeling great and stronger each day and know that as each day passes and each item of medical paraphernalia is removed, (catheter, oxygen line, Hickman changed to PICC, etc, etc.) life is getting nicer. One of the the things K and I are starting to explore is food detoxification and juicing and eating properly as it relates to cancer. The Crazy Sexy Cancer site is a fantastic site for this and I’m really excited at starting this.

I am of course continuing to feel great and enjoying the freedom of not having a catheter in enormously!

Filed under: cancer, Ed, T-cell Lymphoma on July 22nd, 2008 | 5 Comments »

Hello,

This is Keith I am setting up my blog. It is not as cool as Mélaine’s but I will try to blog daily if possible.

Here is the Link

http://keithjustus.wordpress.com

Love and Peace.

Keith

Filed under: uncategorised, links on July 20th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Typed by Keith, dictated by Mélaine

Hey who needs a spleen after all? After my last post, my spleen was causing me much distress and a lot of pain and getting quite enlarged. So the doctors decided to perform a splenectomy on Friday. This went remarkably well as my spleen was the size of my liver when it should have been the size of my palm i.e. way too big! Luc and Keith waited patiently whilst being harassed by a lovely couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The hope was that taking my spleen out would have helped my platelet counts go up enough, (to get the JW off our back), and proceed with either bone marrow transplant, more chemo therapy treatment or an alternative treatment. Unfortunately, my counts did not go up as we had hoped. Platelet counts need to be of a substantial and sustained number to be able to proceed with such treatments. I am still being heavily supported with blood products and pain meds and so we are starting to look at heading back to Fort Wayne at some point next week to proceed with hospice care.

We are all doing well and I am still in good spirits and I am kept in continuos positivity and humor by K, Luc and Jerry who provide a 24 hour circus and comedy act.

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on July 17th, 2008 | 7 Comments »

So much for that plan! Those few days out of the hospital will have to wait. Around the same time that they started me back on Neuprogen, they also decided to taper me off the steroids. As the days have gone on my fevers are getting worse (104 today) and last night I experienced the same excruciating bone pain that I had when I was taken into hospital back in March. So I spent last night sweating up a storm and having the doctors/nurses frantically adjusting my pain meds. I did manage some sleep intermittently throughout the night and woke up to yet more fevers and the pain starting again. So more blood cultures and pain medication assessment. Fortunately my counts have gone up, not much but a small climb which is good but they still gave me platelets and blood. The doctors made the decision to take my steroids back up, to try and get rid of the fevers, and they’re also going to hold off on the Neuprogen and see if my bone pain goes away. As of writing my last few vital takings of my temp have been good, no temperature but it also seems to come on at night a lot as well so we’ll see what happens in a few hours. The worst thing about it all was that last night my legs were so weak and everything was just too painful they brought me a bedside commode to use. For the first time in this disease I felt utterly dependent on someone else; humiliated at the fact that I couldn’t use a proper bathroom. Anyway needs must and I ended up using it to pee but I sure as hell wasn’t going to take a crap in it and staved off my regular until I could make it to the proper toilet. But it did remind me of how low this disease can bring one and while I’m no prude there are certain base human dignities that it’s nice to maintain. Cancer does not allow for that.

And of that lovely note I want to turn you on to a very cool website called My Crazy Sexy Life and Crazy Sexy Cancer. Great sites to check out. The community was started by a girl, Kris Carr, my age diagnosed with terminal cancer. She made a movie that was shown on MTV and brought a super book out last year that I have devoured time and time again. She brings a refreshing take on her approach to dealing with cancer and it was nice to find someone and thus a whole community of people my age dealing with the disease.

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on July 7th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

This was sent from our dear friends, Chris and Renée who own their own dog organic biscuit company - click here for further information on Barkwheats.

Hello Barkwheats Aficionados!

This weekend on Maine’s NBC affiliates WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6, they will be airing a special on Barkwheats during their Weekend 207 Report. It will air on Saturday, July 5 at 7:30 pm. This is a fantastic honor to be featured on the weekend edition. A special “THANKS” goes out to all of you folks who enjoy our biscuits (and I assume your dogs do, too ) and spread the word about our company and our mission for local agriculture and the environment. We wouldn’t be where we are without your support, so thanks again!

Be sure to tune in on Saturday July 5 at 7:30 on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6! If you’re out of state, don’t worry! I’ll have a video of the report to post up Sunday morning at our site.

Filed under: links, famille et amis, culinery delights, living the dream on July 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Still in the hospital, still waiting for my counts to start coming back up, in particular the white counts and the neutrophils. The docs also started me on Neuprogen yesterday. Neuprogen is the bone marrow stimulant that is given on a daily basis. Neulasta is the two week stimulant which I reacted to quite spectacularly those few weeks ago and ended up in ER with a serious allergic reaction. Hopefully the Neuprogen won’t have the same effect - although I reacted about a week after the shots with some minor rashes. Needless to say I ended up with a temperature last night, sooo boring, but didn’t have any other symptoms other than the weird trapped nerve feeling I get with bone marrow stimulants. Very uncomfortable but nothing that some good pain meds can’t control. Anyway so of course with fevers and low white counts they are super reluctant to let me escape. They’ve pushed back the start date for my pre-BMT chemo so we’re probably looking at the latter part of next week rather than the beginning - again the doctors want to make sure that my counts are good, my organ functions are stable, etc, etc. Luc’s harvesting will still take place on the 15th and depending on whether I’m ready for transplant or not on that day, we may end up freezing his cells so they can be put in me at a later date. Still hoping for just a few days out of the hospital before the official admittance onto the BMT floor and I find myself stuck in here in isolation for the next many weeks.

Mentally and emotionally I’m doing okay, although yesterday I did have a little crying session when chatting with Bob (and then my phone totally died right in the middle of our interesting, thoughtful, repertoire - sorry Bob!). Needless to say I felt much better afterwards, nothing like a good cry for an effective cathartic experience. Today I then felt much more with it and able to deal with the doctors. While obviously the emotional side of this whole experience has been underlying I find trying to deal with it with too much emotion utterly exhausting. I’d rather put my energy into getting well, focusing on the fun things I have to do for the upcoming semesters, even just reading, just enjoying life around me, however confined to four, white walls. Besides being British does provide me with a certain amount of stoicism that I actually find huge comfort in. I love knowing I can have a good cry every now and then but that ultimately I can rely on common sense and inner strength. I think that’s what brings me calmness in all of this; the key of course is finding the balance and making sure that every now and then I do have a good cry and get out the innate frustrations.

Luc has been working hard this week, enjoying the ease of wireless technology outside and here’s a pic of me and the bro - it’s a bit grainy unfortunately but I’ll try and get that fixed.

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on July 4th, 2008 | No Comments »

So I have to say that having one’s brother donate Bone Marrow in order to save one’s life is a pretty amazing thing. As things are getting closer for the transplant and now that Luc is here, I’m starting to see what an incredible experience this is. What’s incredible is that the doctors can take Luc’s healthy, happy stem cells and put them into my bare and barren marrow, (once all the pre-BMT chemo has blitzed the cancer and diseased cells) and that my body will use his happy cells to make me new happy cells. Now obviously bone marrow stem cell transplant is a little more complicated than my simple explanation but essentially that’s what we’re playing with. And I’m completely honoured to have my brother’s bone marrow. Of course, if he was a sickly thing it might be another matter but fortunately he’s young and buff and I figure his is probably some of the healthiest bone marrow going! Seriously though, I’m in awe of my brother at this moment and know I will be forever in his stem cell debt.

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma, BMT on June 30th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

Twists and turns all the way. I’ve just finished another session of the McGrath Chemo regime. I enjoyed some lovely time at home, catching up on work, spending time with my little bean and loving being at home with my family. Unfortunately my lymph nodes and fevers thought the time at home was lovely too and decided to come all out. When I came up for my couple of days of Bone Marrow Transplant testing, the doctors decided that I needed to be admitted for another round of chemo and to keep an eye on the fevers as obviously the disease is fairly prevalent and they felt that I wouldn’t last the one - two weeks until the BMT chemo admittance, not due until the 7th. It’s all such fun. So I got admitted on Monday night and started chemo on Tuesday. I’ve felt pretty rough because of it this week but am finally starting to feel a bit more together and even managed some very tasty lamb chops that Keith brought - yummy, scrummy! This evening Luc arrives, providing his delayed flight gets a move on, and tomorrow starts his testing for the BMT. I finish mine off and meet with the specialist and as far as we know everything is on schedule for the transplant.

And a very special Happy Birthday to the birthday boy - eek, I’m married to a 40-year old!

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on June 29th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

It’s crazy how this disease has a mind of its own. Every time I think I can plan and organise, the powers that be say, “Girl, let it go. This is not in your hands.” While I know I have the power to aid in my healing through positive mental attitude and a good diet, filling my body with nutritional and healthy things, I am aware that the timing of things happening throughout this disease is not in my control. Lessening control of that around me and allowing others to do things for me is something I struggle with hugely. Not being in control is just as difficult for me and I am convinced that part of what I must learn from having this is to relinquish control of the things that don’t matter, allow others to help me so that I can enjoy life. The last few years I have experienced such inner conflict with where I am in my life, situationally and mentally. I have struggled with wanting more but not knowing what more is and knowing that really it’s not the answer. I am slowly learning new thought patterns, new ways to appreciate life and others, of accepting what I’m doing, where I am, that some things are not meant to be and that others are. But yet I still cling to trying to control rather than enjoying.

Anyway, all this self-perspective has come about because I went up to see Dr. S last week to discuss further options and next stage of chemo, etc. When I left hospital last I was put on steroids (Prednisone) for all those fun reactions I’d been having and Dr. S was a bit concerned that these may have been masking what the actual disease was doing. So he advised me he was going to take me off them very rapidly. Monday I took my last one and almost immediately I had a temperature, lymph nodes on my neck popped up, I felt that sore muscle and tender to the touch skin feeling. Ugh. So yesterday we were up at the clinic again with the doctors telling me, okay, we’re doing the bone marrow transplant like next week! I was completely and utterly overwhelmed. Not about the bone marrow transplant. That doesn’t bother me, it’s exciting really to think that my brother can donate some of his bone marrow that essential may provide a new lease of life for my sick body. What freaked me out was the concept of not having time to get organised, to plan. Knowing that I will be there for 100 days after the transplant, (at the Lodge, not in hospital), I knew I needed time to prepare, to sort out work, to make up my little boxes of tech stuff, of books, of all those things that will allow me to feel like I have a nurturing and healing environment. We met with several doctors and nurses and coordinators and I just kept bursting into tears, because I was feeling utterly rushed. Eventually K and I were taking a break and having a sandwich and Julie, (she’s the coolest!), came over and said, “Look, just go home, take the next few days to relax, absorb everything, enjoy your family. Start again next week.” So we did.

Today was a better day. We were able to speak to Luc, get some of our timeline questions answered from our transplant coordinator and have a better overall picture of what needs to happen. As it turns out we’ll head up to the clinic on Sunday evening/Monday for a day of testing - PET scan, bone marrow biopsy (yet another one), EKG, a lot of labwork, chest x-ray and all sorts of other fun stuff. Then I have the rest of the week to get myself sorted, put in for my time off at work, figure out clothes to take (!), etc, etc. Luc comes in the following weekend for his testing, not as intensive as mine but equally as annoying I’m sure. On the 7th I am admitted to hospital and my killer chemo starts. This is seven days of chemo that will kill as much of everything in my bone marrow as possible, emptying it out so that the new stem cells can do their thing. I have a day of “rest” (ha-ha) and then on the 15th the transplant takes place. They’ll harvest the bone marrow from my brother in the morning and then transfuse it into me in the afternoon. Obviously these dates could change slightly, but those are our goals. The British Leukaemia Research has an excellent booklet on Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation The Seven Steps. It is really informative and better than anything I’ve seen yet over here, not that I’ve seen much here mind you but I’ve not done huge searching. It also has a bit for the donor who seems to get overlooked in the whole process, at least from what I can tell. And yet, without the donor…as with everything that has gone on during this experience I am overwhelmed and excited that my brother will be leaving his newborn baby and wife at a time when he is needed there and unselfishly offering up a litre - a litre and a half of his bone marrow in order to essentially save my life. How completely humbling is that?

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on June 19th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

I’m still at home! It is so amazing. I have a whole new appreciation for my home and my garden and being with my family and simply enjoying what’s around me.

I was supposed to head back to Cleveland last week but my counts, particularly platelets were still too low to continue with further chemo and I had to go in on Friday for another platelet transfusion. So Dr. S gave me a few more days. Monday my counts were up and doing great but one of my lymph nodes, a particularly persistent one at the back of my head, had come up again. So I called Julie and Dr. S and they decided they needed to see me, so on Tuesday K and I trekked back up to Cleveland. I’m really glad we did as we had a good meeting and I feel like I have some sort of goal. Obviously the goal is the transplant but as to how to get to that point I wasn’t quite sure. Basically Dr. S told me that what they need to see is a period of remission, about four weeks/a month where my counts come back up to normal but I am seemingly “free” of the disease, i.e. no pesky lymph nodes, before doing the transplant. He is pleased with my progress so far but a little concerned that I was still getting this lymph node appearing. However because that was the only one and that otherwise I seem to be doing well, he decided to take me off the steroids and give me another week to see how things go. In other words can I manage to get through another week of being somewhat asymptomatic before we do the next round? If I am able to make it through another week then I’ll have another session of the initial bit of the McGrath chemo regime, here at Lutheran, (yeah!) and then probably another one, maybe even one more after that, before aiming to do the transplant around September. As I said the goal is to have a good period of inactive longevity between each chemo sessions. Dr. S also gave me some other regime options and told me about a new research study they have for a new drug targeted at T-cell and NK T-cell lymphomas that I could participate in. I feel really positive about my options even though I know ultimately we’re aiming for the transplant. I also received the confirmation that my brother is a definite DNA match for bone marrow transplant, which is great news.

I went in to-day for my bi-weekly labs and had fantastic results. My WBC is at 12.4 which is actually over normal but that’s okay. The Neurlasta stem cell stimulant they give me can cause the white blood cells to go into overdrive. Either way I’m not neutropenic and can eat salads! My Hgb is at 10.6, still low but climbing and my platelets are at 174, which is the highest they’re been for months and within the normal range. Totally woo-hoo! As I said to Dr. S and K, for the first time in a very long time I feel “normal”. The body still aches a bit, my hair is very thin and my muscles are completely pathetic, still no jumping up the steps or anything like that, but I feel very well. I even managed to get into the office yesterday and sit at my desk for forty-five minutes or so before heading out for Amberly’s birthday lunch. It was so nice to be DIET again although all the excitement did have me in bed before 9 pm last night! Apparently I can still only cope with so much. I will try and head into the office for a few hours next week as well - it’s super to finally be close enough to consider doing that.

As so often in the last couple of weeks I feel so blessed to be at home and to have such terrific friends and family. They have truly been amazing and I am consistently choked up when I think about how much time my parents are devoting to caring for me and helping us and how much support friends are providing. So incredibly humbling.

And I’m still loving my bed and smooshy, white duvet!

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on June 12th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Very infrequently nowadays I am reminded of the differences in language between US and UK English. Usually these revolve around certain body parts or meaningless expressions. But every now and then I see something that has me shaking my head and my Englishness comes to the forefront. Take for instance one of the topics at my work’s upcoming Staff Development Day, the keynote speech in fact, entitled “Mind If I Call You a Knob?” After my initial shock and horror, then repeated giggling every time I read it, my final thought was, “Yes, I bloody well do mind!“

Filed under: indiana, englishness on June 8th, 2008 | No Comments »

Well, would you believe it? After almost two and half months away I am back in Fort Wayne, enjoying my beautiful garden and seeing my neighbours; catching up with Bob and being able to work at least in the same town; eating good, home-cooked food and reading my little boy bedtime stories. It is truly blissful and is doing absolute wonders for my mental state!

After several false starts, due of course to the latest drug, or chemo, or food, or God knows what, reactions, I was still in hospital on Saturday morning, two days after Dr. S had said I could go home for a bit. Anyway Saturday the on-call doc at the hospital gave me the okay to be discharged, (still a bit dubiously as my white blood count was very low) and K and I got in the car and drove back to Fort Wayne before anyone could stop us. Sunday morning as I woke up buried beneath my fluffy duvet, K opened the windows and I looked out at the flourishing, full, green-leaved, oak trees. The birds were singing, the sun was shining and it was a glorious morning. Home is the best kind of medicine. And to hear a little voice come into my bed saying, “Mummy, mummy,” just made it oh so much better.

As I’m still in the in-between, waiting to get on with the next part of the chemo, I’ve been going in to my local oncologist. Dr. A was actually the doctor who saw me originally, back when I was initially admitted to Lutheran with Aplastic Anemia. I’ve just been going to have labs and then transfusions as needed. Both my Hgb and white blood count have been doing well but my platelets are just really struggling. On Tuesday they were 2. Today they had gone up a bit, to 8 so I go in tomorrow morning for another platelet transfusion. My white blood count today was at 4.2 which is normal. Just. The low of normal is 4.2. But it’s still normal. Anyway I was due to go back to Cleveland today to possibly be admitted and complete this round of chemo but when I called Dr. S’s nurse yesterday she was like, “Yeah, no. Not gonna happen with platelets that low. Stay home for a bit longer.” So now I play the waiting game for the platelets to come up but praying the lymph nodes don’t appear first. In the meantime I am going to enjoy every second of being at home and being with my family. Other than work-work, which entails me sitting on my arse at the laptop, I’m taking it very easy. Mainly under threat by K and my dad that if I don’t they’ll take me back to the Lodge. But no cleaning, no laundry, minimal cooking although I couldn’t help changing over my winter-summer wardrobe and getting all the chest of drawers straightened out again. K and Jay’s sock drawers were frightful! Sorting and organising is my warped sense of therapy!

It is soooo good to be home. Psychologically I think I really needed this break and just to know that home was still here. It’s been great to touch base with Pat, Deb, Earl and Dawn, Mario and Nanette and know that they’re all okay and well. Seeing Bob and actually being able to talk shop in the same room was super. Hopefully I’ll get at least another session with him and Amber - DIET (Distance, Instruction and Education Technologies) isn’t really DIET with me so far away. And while I hope I can stay for maybe another week if they summon me back to CC, I’ll go feeling refreshed and mentally renewed and ready to move forward. Dr. S and I had talked about a bone marrow transplant in August/early September and I’m comfortable that it’s a positive step, possibly providing more of a “cure” than just the likely remission that the 6-8 rounds of chemo can offer. I’ll have more on the transplant situation when I get back to CC. In the meantime I’m off to sit in the porch swing with a cup of tea and a Digestive biscuit and revel in how pretty my garden looks. Did I mention how happy I am to be at home?

Filed under: indiana, bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on June 5th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

- Driving in the sunshine with K, listening to super corny 80s pop group New Kids on the Block and cringingly laughing because we realise we know all the words to The Right Stuff. (God, they were sooo bad - both the lyrics and the singing totally diabolical. Simon would have had a field day!)

- Eating hot dogs, sitting on a bench outside the Clinic, while the sun warms us.

- Reading cartoons and drinking our morning coffee in the Lodge’s tranquil garden, while the Blue Jay splashes in the coi pond and the fat bunny peeps his head out from the hedges.

- Sitting in the Emergency Room, again, wishing aloud for a touch of normalcy to our lives!

Filed under: famille et amis on May 29th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

I successfully completed part a of my second round of chemo. I came out of hospital on Tuesday morning, feeling a little jelly-legged and like I had spent the last five days hooked up to an IV pumping toxic chemicals into my bodies, but overall feeling pretty good. K was with me and it was so nice to see him and be with him. We went out for a great meal downtown where I absolutely gorged myself on filet mignon and Bernaise sauce and crisp asparagus. The following day I went and had my Neurlasta shot. This is a two week injection that boosts or stimulates bone marrow production. About an hour later, however I find myself covered in a rash. So off we trot, back to the Taussig to show Dr. S and Julie, his absolutely fab nurse clinician. Once again, it’s assumed this is a drug reaction although only one case of a Neurlasta allergy has ever been reported. So if it is a Neurlasta reaction I am once again, being a very rare seed. I took the normal Benadryl cure and went on my merry way. The rash cleared up and all was sweet until K and I sat down to supper - gorgeous salmon and swordfish kababs with nutty, brown rice - and all of a sudden I feel the familiar creeping sensation only this time it explodes in/on my eyes and lips and I’m left looking like I’ve just been for a weekly injection of Botox. And then I felt my throat closing and my chest tightening and K gave me the “I’ll go and call the ambulance, shall I?” look. So off again to the ER where I was again dosed up and kept overnight for observation. By morning the rash was gone and I was looking healthy and feeling perky. Nicely discharged this morning, literally not more than half an hour later the rash had returned and I was back in ER! And now, again, I’m back in the hospital so they can run some tests and do the usual lot of trying to figure out something from nothing. Fortunately this rash isn’t really itchy. I don’t think I could have bared that again.

The worst part of this all is that Dr.S had given me the ok to go home for a few days and so it totally thwarted my plans, damn it. Hopefully the docs will get fed up with trying to figure out what the rash is and just let me go anyway tomorrow or Saturday. I am desperate to see the garden as I know the irises and the peonies are flowering and Avril and Jay have planted 50 marigolds throughout the front and back gardens. And to sleep under my fluffy, white duvet…such bliss. I’m counting on being stubborn and balshy and getting out of here regardless.

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on May 29th, 2008 | No Comments »

How cool is this?

So Keith went out to our local Chinese for lunch on Wednesday and at the end of the meal got his fortune cookie. He thought it was a cool and appropriate for our situation message so he sent me a photo.

It’s hard to read but it says, “Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed.”
Later that evening Papa and I got Chinese take-out and at the end of the meal, after a good discussion on how we were not going to eat our fortune cookies, due to Papa having actually seen how they make them in China Town and me having watched a programme on it, but still would read our fortunes. I opened mine and guess what it said?

“Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed.”

(This cancer is so going down!)

Filed under: famille et amis, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma, random coolness on May 22nd, 2008 | 2 Comments »

It looks like we’re moving forward with round 2 of the chemo. I had an appointment with Dr.S yesterday and again Hgb and white cells were doing well and happily my platelets had gone up up to 46! Now I did have a transfusion on Friday but that means that if nothing else they maintained their numbers over the weekend. As we discussed next stages Dr.S decided that the Hyper-CVAD was maybe too aggressive because it was taking my counts so long to recover and I needed a lot of support, (through the platelet and blood transfusions). The problem with my counts taking so long that the longer one gives the blood counts the easier the cancer can surface again between treatments. This seems to be particularly the case with the lymphoma side of things. Two weeks between treatments would be good, (but my counts haven’t been high enough), three weeks is just too long as the lymph nodes on my head and neck and groin, where some of the cancer is, start to come up again. He was also able to determine that I got more out of the second part of the chemo treatment as I’ve had less lymph nodes appear this week that after the very first session of chemo. So, basically he’s adjusted my chemo regime to one called McGrath. It’s very similar to the Hyper-CVAD but has different dosages of drugs and a couple of new ones. We’re giving my platelets a few more days to try and rise a bit more but at the moment I’m scheduled for an appointment with Dr.S on Thursday morning and then they’ll admit me into hospital for four-five days and start the chemo. I’m excited to finally be able to get on with the next round and it’ll be interesting to see how things fair with the new regime. Goooo Chemo! As my dad says chemo treatment is really alchemy - figuring our the correct combination of drugs for the cancer and the patient, based on how the cancer manifests itself and how the patient and the cancer for that matter, reacts to the chemo drugs. Fortunately I have a doctor who is very good at all those things. And he’s English!

And the car name. Andrew suggested Timo after the new driver, (Timo Glock - isn’t that a fantastic name? Such a nice sound to it), for Toyota. Whilst not a huge Toyota fan I very much like the connection with F1 and think the name quite suitable. So unless someone comes up with something better, Timo it is. And no, Luc, I am not calling it Hoff, even though for one incy-wincy moment the thought did cross my mind!

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on May 20th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

To add insult to injury during the whole hive, drug reaction, sitting in ER for ninety billion hours fiasco on that Saturday night whenever it was, K and I also experienced the death of my VW Golf. I know, totally lame. So we finished with Casualty and stopped off at a chemist to stock up on Calamine lotion and cotton wool balls. I stayed in the car, K went in, K came out, got back in the car, put the key in the ignition and nada. Our conversation went a bit like this:
K: “Did you hear that click?”
Me: “What click?”
K: “Something just broke in the ignition barrel. Didn’t you hear the click?”
Me: “I’m sorry, did you say the key is broken?” (By now thinking, oh my husband has such a funny but sometimes wildly inappropriate sense of humour).
K: “No, the key is fine. But there was a click and something’s snapped. Did you not hear the click?”
Me: “No, I didn’t hear the click. Are you telling me the car isn’t working.”
K: “No, something’s broken in the ignition barrel.” (Are you actually listening to me, woman?)
Me, starting to get a touch of anxiety, fueled on by the Benadryl and steroids given to me in ER, because we sitting in a dimly-lit car park of a pharmacy that isn’t 24-hours and is considered a “dodgy” area, at 11 o’clock at night. Example: I had K lock the car with me inside while he went into the chemist: “So, what are we going to do?”
K: “Not to worry. The hotel is round the corner where your dad and Avril are. We’ll get the Audi, go back to the Lodge and leave the Golf here until tomorrow when we can get it towed to the nearest VW garage.”
Me, quite panicky by this time: “There’ll be nothing left of my car tomorrow. At the very least it’ll have no wheels. Oh God!”
Touch of anxiety turned into full-blown panic attack at this point as K gets out of the car.
K: “You’ll be alright. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Me, inner monologue: ” I’m a sick, white girl in a scary area. I’m in a car with ridiculously expensive wheels and low-profile tyres. I’ve got an Indiana plate and I can’t start my car. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God.”

So, what must have only been ten, fifteen minutes later at most, but felt a whole lot longer in my mind, K came back with the Audi. We emptied the Golf, including the good Recaro car seat because I would have been majorly pissed if someone nicked that. The pharmacy employee told us to call Cleveland Clinic Police to have them watch the car. For sure, it’ll be gone by morning. And we drove back to the Lodge.

Sunday, my car was still there, wheels intact, CCP having diligently kept an eye on it throughout the night. And so off my baby went on the back of a tow truck to the VW garage to sit until Monday when K could call them and get it fixed.

Turns out the part had to be special ordered from Germany, would take a couple of weeks to arrive and was going to cost us a whole heap of money to fix it. Well, we have to have the car. So we ordered the part…and then K saw a shiny new Rabbit sitting on the lot. A phone call later, as I was back in hospital with the dreaded hives at this point, we were discussing how we’d already spent over $2000 on the car this year for new timing belt and a whole bunch of other things that needed doing. The car had, (yep, see that past tense there? You’ve guessed it already), over 200,000 miles on it and so we averaged out that including the ignition barrel and no doubt other things this year, we were making a car payment each month in repairs. Plus we figured that the next thing to go would be the transmission and that is not an inexpensive fix.

Soooo, I am now the lessee, (again, I caved and went with the lease rather than a purchase, mainly because I couldn’t face the car payment we would have entailed on a new car after not having one for so long), of a shiny, black new Rabbit with super-duper wheels, although they’re not my boy-racer low-profile Enkes I had on the TDI, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. The coolest thing is that it is a manual transmission - woo-hoo, real driving! The uncoolest thing about this whole new car thing is that I am no longer green. No more feeling virtuous at filling my TDI up with soybean biodiesel and getting sixty billion miles to the gallon. I have to admit that I am very sad about. Unfortunately the new TDI doesn’t come out here until next year.

Here’s my black beauty. I’m thinking Klaus or Hans or maybe Fritz…

Filed under: famille et amis on May 19th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

Having thoroughly been dosed up on Benadryl, steroids, morphine and goodness knows what else, I have finally been released from the dreaded hospital bed back to the Lodge, after the doctors confirmed that the hive reaction was due to one of my antibiotics and neither the lymphoma, (which can apparently sometimes manifest itself through the skin), nor a blood product reaction. They released me on Wednesday after making sure I was 24 hours fever-free. My hives had pretty much been zapped by the time I was let out and other than leaving in a drug-induced fog, felt reasonably well. Yesterday, though, after a restless night of bizarre dreams, (no doubt a delayed reaction to two days of not sleeping in hospital, plus the drug cocktail I was given), I woke up feeling quite, quite awful. Jelly legs and as one of the other patients here described, experiencing a “drug hangover”. Absolutely not fun. For the first time I truly felt like I had cancer. My hands shook when I picked up my tea, my legs shook when I walked, my head felt as if it were shaking. A horrible experience. I was back in to the Tassig Center, (the Cancer clinic), as a outpatient for platelets and by the end of the day was only too glad to fall into bed. Apparently though I had rather more drugs than just a day of recovery warranted, because I woke up this morning feeling the same way as yesterday. Convinced by this time that in actual fact what I needed was a nice big, blood transfusion I was very pleasantly surprised when my blood counts revealed that both my red and white blood counts were up. My hgb was at 11, (low of normal is 12) and my white blood count was at 3.04, (low of normal is 4) so that is fantastic as it means my bone marrow is definitely doing something. Unfortunately my platelets are still tanking. They were at 12, (low of normal is 150!). So along with last week, this week has been a week of platelet transfusions. The annoying thing is that the low platelets are the only thing stopping us moving forward with the chemo. They don’t really like to do chemo until platelets are at least 75 as it can essentially zap the bone marrow completely of cells. So until the wretched things climb I’m a bit stuck with moving onto the next round.

Still, as Patricia, another patient here at the Lodge, said to me yesterday morning when I was feeling, and obviously looking, particularly crap, “You just take it one day at a time.” She was diagnosed in 2006 and recently went through a cord blood transplant as she was unable to find a matching donor for a bone marrow transplant. She is on the road to recovery but it is still “one day at a time” and as frustrating as that is as times, she’s right. I can only take it one day at a time, treat each day as a new experience and a new day to feel blessed that my body is still fighting and that I am continuing to find a strange sort of peace through all of this. So here’s to today’s “one day at a time”

Filed under: bone marrow disorder, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on May 16th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

Itch..scratch, scratch, scratch…itch…itch…scratch…this has been my body for the last four days. Friday I had a platelet transfusion which was fine. I then had a blood transfusion and about ten minutes away from finishing my second unit of blood, I felt like what I thought what an insect bite on my face. Over the next few minutes Papa watched as I was “bitten” several more times. I then went à la toilette and noticed two huge symmetrical welts on either side of my inner thighs. So the transfusion was stopped and I was dosed up with Benadryl and hydrocortisone which seemed to do the trick as by the next morning all evidence of a reaction had gone. I then had another unit of platelets which went fine. About three hours later however, I noticed I was breaking out in a rash all over my skin. Being a Saturday I called the on-call Fellow who suggested 50mg of Benadryl and to see how it went and to call back later. As it got worse as the afternoon progressed by the time I called the Fellow back she suggested I go to ER and have them give me Benadryl and hydrocortisone through my IV. Nothing like some good drugs straight into the blood stream. So off K and I went to spend several hours in A&E. Sunday I woke up and although the rash was still there, it wasn’t as bad as the night before. But again as the day went on I noticed it becoming worse and worse. I was scheduled for an appointment for blood draws and platelets yesterday afternoon anyway and so called my doctor’s personal nurse first thing in the morning…
…and now I’m back in hospital! Anyway hopefully only for a few days. I had a skin biopsy and the doctors are reckoning it’s a drug reaction, although to which drug they have no idea. They treated me with lots of other drugs and by the time I woke up this morning, the hives had gone down considerably. But I’m still rather itchy and my hands are quite swollen and painful. Fortunately the meds seem to be slowly working and things are calming down. Maddeningly enough, because I hadn’t had one for ages, I had a temp of 101 last night. We’re hoping it’s merely a side effect of the drug reaction and not the lymphoma. I haven’t had one since last night so hopefully it was just a one off. But it means they’re keeping me in hospital for a few days just to make sure all is okay.

Of course, having had a taste of freedom at Hope Lodge, to be back in hospital is quite, quite dreadful. The sun is shining outside and it’s a glorious day. Still, hopefully I’ll only be in a few days and can go back to a peaceful recovery at the Lodge.

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on May 13th, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Finally, I’ve finished my grading for Educ.205 and have submitted the students’ final grades…only four days late! Unfortunately it’s been one of those weeks where I’ve been in and out of hospital so much for transfusions and labs that trying to get through their final projects has been quite a task. Still it’s done now, class is finished for the time being and I can take a step back from being teacher and concentrate on the “day job” for a while. Over the summer it’s a lot of putting together training. My big project this summer is MS’s latest version of Office. I’ll be getting myself really familiar with it and putting together training materials, etc so that we can look at rolling it out campus wide, probably in the Fall. Being a Mac user I’ve not had the chance to really explore Vista or the new Office so it’ll be good practice for me. I’m looking forward to getting our Mac training manuals complete and getting some basic videos up for those too. So far, the Macs seem to have been very successful with Faculty which is great.

This week, as expected, my counts have taken a dive. I’ve had platelet transfusions every day since Monday and today I’m getting a couple of units of blood as well, (actually watching someone else’s life force being pumped into me as I write!). Papa and I are now very familiar with the Outpatient clinic! It’ll probably be another five days of low counts and then hopefully we’ll start seeing my bone marrow do its thing and my blood counts start to climb. At that point the doctor can determine when to start the next round of chemo. I’m still feeling okay although some of the chemo side effects have manifested themselves a lot more this past week - still losing the hair. I now have old lady hair, extremely thin, slightly balding on top and at the back. I wear a hat when I go out and the last couple of days have started wearing a scarf indoors - baldness leaves one’s head awfully chilly! My teeth have become quite sensitive, not so much to hot and cold but to hard and chewy foods. Hopefully that won’t get any worse although fortunately I do love soups and smoothies! The platelets are helping all my bruising and my sporadic bloody nose. I have constant nausea however the medicine they’re giving me for that seems to keep the worst at bay and so long as I eat little and often I have yet to have repeated episodes of throwing up as I did in hospital. I’ve had one reaction to an antibiotic which has left me with a very impressive rash all over my torso - so they’ve taken me off that one and replaced it with three others! You can hear me rattle as I walk. Still these are all livable-with things and between the medication and my Bed Buddy, (a saving grace for pain) I can deal with it.

And being in Hope Lodge is a surprisingly replenishing place to be. It’s really lovely to be able to just be. Because there are others in the same or similar situations one doesn’t have to pretend. If I feel crappy I don’t have to put on a brave face, I can just be crappy. I can shuffle around in my Birkenstocks and pashmina, like a decrepit old woman and no-one cares. Everyone’s in different stages of recovery or treatment and there’s an unspoken solidarity and empathy. The Lodge itself has been set up very well with a communal kitchen and dining room; three libraries (yes, I’m in heaven), a sitting room and two tv rooms. There’s always a quiet corner to hide in or if one is feeling a bit more sociable, the dining room always has someone in it. It has a wonderful garden that has been beautifully designed and is just a delightful spot when the sun is shining, and even when it’s not. There are two very rotund bunny rabbits who live in the garden and most evenings at least one of them can be seen alternatively munching his, or her, way through the grass or lying flat on his, or her, belly. I assume cooling down or perhaps just collapsing from all the food in his, or her, tummy. I’ve seen some lovely birds in the garden - a gorgeous Blue Jay, who is just the prettiest shades of blue and an American Robin, who delights in soaking himself in the birdbath, (apparently a gentle wash is nowhere near as satisfying), are among the regulars. While this week my days have been spent mainly at the clinic, it’s nice to go back to the Lodge at the end of the day. Sooo much better than being a patient in hospital.

Filed under: educ 205, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on May 9th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Rather a few days late but massive CONGRATULATIONS to Luc and Claire on the birth of Isaac John. Dudes, my nephew is the cutest kid ever!

Filed under: famille et amis on May 6th, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Filed under: famille et amis on May 5th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

The Methotrexate kicked my butt. I spent a day in la-la land and spent the following day having to be reminded of everything I said or that occurred the previous day. I am now officially finished with round 1 of the Hyper C-VAD chemotherapy regime. I’m back to the waiting stage as we watch my counts dive and crash, thanks to the chemo, and then start coming back up hopefully with no complications. I have successfully gone for well over a week with a platelet transfusion which is fantastic. I did have a blood transfusion the same day I had the Methotrexate so haven’t gone quite as long without blood. But the days in between transfusions seem to be longer. We’ll see how it goes during the “recovery” period as that is typically the time that transfusions are needed the most.

One cool thing is that I am out of hospital and into basically a kind of hospice, only not the sort of hospice one goes to in England, (which means things are not good). Basically a lady and her husband set up a trust, built a house/hotel/hostel type place and offered it free to cancer patients and up to two of their carers. You can stay here during treatment or for many patients during bone marrow transplant treatment and recovery. The house is called Hope Lodge and we’d been on the waiting list for a little while. Anyway a place came up this week so Papa, who’s been up with me this past week, moved in. Then much to our surprise, on Friday, my doctor, after doing the normal rounds, literally popped his head back into my hospital room and said, “I hear you’ve got a place at the Hope Lodge. Do you fancy a few days escape?” Basically because we’re in this interim period where we’re waiting for my counts and body to do its thing, he’s of the mind that I’d only be sitting around in hospital, so I may as well sit around at the Hope Lodge where at least Papa can cook me some decent food, I can rest in one of the three libraries and actually have a night of uninterrupted sleep, (whoever thinks hospital is a restful place to get lots of sleep has obviously never been to hospital with a serious disease. I think the most I ever got was three hours before I was unhooked or hooked up or had a blood draw or was given meds). I’m less than ten minutes away from the hospital so can get back in quick enough if I need to. I have six billion pills that I have to take and I have to check my temperature and change my Hickman dressing daily, (and I had to change all my lumen ends as yesterday was Saturday which is lumen end changing day). But most of what they were doing in the hospital I am able to do myself. The biggest key is hoping I don’t get the fevers as that is a guaranteed hospital return. I go back in tomorrow for lab draws and stuff so it may be that I have to have a transfusion but if so would have it as an outpatient, which would be a novelty. Wednesday I meet with the doctor and he’ll decide if me being at Hope is successful; I imagine based on my counts, what my body is doing, etc, etc. And depending on what my counts are doing will also determine when round 2 of chemo starts.

So it has been quite a busy weekend. It’s great to have a break from the chemo and to have a break from a hospital after a month’s stay. But weird to be living with the disease in the semi-outside world. Getting used to tucking my Hickman inside my bra and wearing a hat if I go outside, because my hair is now so thin on top I don’t want to catch a cold, realising that many foods and drink still taste gross and that the metallic taste in my mouth may not go away anytime soon. It’s definitely an adjustment but I’m feeling really positive that my body has been responding well enough that I’m at this stage. Of course I still have my nadir to face from this last lot of chemo and I’m not looking forward to that as it makes me feel just generally low and tired and a bit fragile to be honest. But it is awfully good to go to sleep at night without the swish-whurr of the IV machine.

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on May 4th, 2008 | No Comments »

I’m sitting here hooked up with two lines to an IV tree of three pumps, one bag of Methotrexate, a bag of saline, a bag of bicarb of soda and a bag of Zofrin antibiotics. It looks like a Christmas tree. Despite feeling a bit crappy over the weekend my blood counts stayed high and most importantly my platelets didn’t drop. They didn’t particularly do anything superfantabulous but they didn’t go down which was the main thing. The good thing is it meant that we could start the final bit of this round of chemo with the Methotrexate today, which is my day 21. It’s when I should have started anyway but they were concerned about the platelet level so we thought we may have to hold off for a while. Anyway we were able to start the chemo. This one is a pretty tough one. I have a two hour infusion of Methotrexate and then a twenty-two, (yep, you read that right!), hour infusion. Then I have three four infusions of Ara-C spread out over the two days following. Hopefully these will do some serious butt kicking. The Methotrexate is a definite for hair loss, which may well have to come off by the end of the week. It is EVERYWHERE. I am shedding worse than Frank and George and spend most of my day picking hair of my shoulders. Still at least I’m not licking it off myself yet. Naturally of course the hair is not falling out of my legs.

I’m feeling alright; the body’s a bit achy and my knees have been quite painful the last couple of days but they’ve got me on some good pain meds so things are peachy ;). K’s gone home his week to have a sanity break, ie. away from hospital. (I’ve heard a lot of “I’m boreds” this past week!). I think he’s going to thoroughly enjoy sleeping in his own bed and eating home-cooked food by Avril and of course being with Jaybean. Papa is here with me for the week which is really nice. Obviously it’s unfortunate circumstances to get to spend time with him but it’s really lovely to see him. We’ve had great conversations today about cash crops and the global food shortage and farmer subsidies, the state of the NHS and English politicians’ salary allowances. It’s been super.

So my next 24 hours are going to be marvelous. One of the side effects of Methotrexate is that it is quite destructive on the kidneys so they run bicarb of soda alongside it to keep things at an alkaline level. Of course then means I’m peeing about every hour - hour and a half. Super fun!

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 28th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

The last couple of days have been interesting; as I’m sure will be the case throughout the treatment it’s been good news and not bad news per se, but not quite as positive as we’d like. My counts are doing well - white blood counts pretty much normal or at least neutrophils are, platelets are hanging around for a bit longer and Hgb is at a good level. Unfortunately I started having fevers again yesterday. Not as high as before but around the 100 mark, so high enough for them to put me back on antibiotics and to keep a closer eye on me again.

Also my hair has started falling out. Already! I can’t believe it. K cut it yesterday to try and take some of the weight off but it’s coming out in big swathes. I guess I’ll be wearing my Hermés scarves sooner than I expected! Other than a bit of nausea though I’m still feeling okay and have a few days before the end of this round finishes with the Methotrexate and whatever the other drug is.

K did manage to snag a recliner last night. I had a Jerry chair in here - they’re like the most uncomfortable things in the world. The recliner is sooo much nicer and gives me a super comfortable place to be other than bed, particularly when computing. Secretly though I think K just wanted a comfy chair to watch movies in!

Pic of me looking very Milly-Molly-Mandy…

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 24th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

I know that today is all about reducing one’s carbon footprint and cutting down on global emissions and the effect that we’re having on the environment through wasteful habits and overuse of resources. While I’m all for such things I can’t help but think of Bob the Builder and that really it just comes down to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Making an effort to reduce the amount of packaging and crap we accumulate whether it’s through buying local produce that’s not wrapped up in six miles of cellophane or simply having less stuff and being able to appreciate what we have that much more. Taking one less car trip a week. Using less water and being more conservationist in our attitude with it. It’s so easy to collect rainwater in a large barrel and use it on the garden and flowerbeds. Composting is another simple and easy way to reuse all that leftover, wasted food and food debris and your garden will love you for it. Looking towards recycled products and cleaning materials that are kinder to both the earth and to you. Small changes can make a difference and the difference isn’t only to the earth and our environment, but to our health and our well-being.

While this photo isn’t necessarily Earth Day specific, these are all locally “grown”, organic, free-range eggs including the ostrich and emu eggs! It sums up for me, the way we should be buying food and produce and represents Earth Day for me.

Filed under: health, media on April 22nd, 2008 | 1 Comment »

I’m currently at the end of stage 1b of the round 1 of chemo. Basically at this stage the chemo regime just starts killing everything - good cells, bad cells, anything that’s floating around and might get in the way of some toxic chemo chemical that’s pumped into my body. This mean that while the chemo is doing what it’s supposed to do - go after the cancer - it also means that all my other blood counts get sucked down as well. Essentially what then happens is that over time the bone marrow starts to regenerate as the cancer cells are killed off and new, healthy cells are formed and my counts start climbing. As you know one of the biggest things I’ve struggled with is super-high temperatures of 104 / 105. Thanks to antibiotics and probably the chemo too, these stopped about five days ago, but my white blood cells, which are typically what would be fighting the fevers were still very low. Today the doctors told me that although my overall white blood count is still fairly low, the neutrophil count, which is one of the super important infection fighting type of white blood cells, was at 2000, which is considered in the pretty much normal range. This is great news and means that my body is doing some good things! I’ve been on neuprogen injections since the start of the chemo, which help to stimulate the bone marrow, in particular the white blood cells and so they’re temporarily stopping that. They’re also going to take me off the antibiotics so super fingers crossed that my fevers stay away and my body is strong enough to manage without assistance. To-day is also my last day of Decadron and then I have about a week or so for my body to try and get the counts up again before round 2 starts. My platelets are still low and this is something that really needs to be in better shape as the risk of internal bleeding is a big concern. My regular HgB is also still up and down; down a bit today so I’m due for a couple of units of red blood cells. But overall I’m feeling great and the white blood cell thing is really fantastic news.

So, one round down, five more to go!

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 21st, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Apparently, for those of you who don’t know Ed, a little introduction is required. Ed is the DIET (Distance, Instruction, Education Technology) mascot and usually takes up residence in mine and Amberly’s office. Ed has a bit of a reputation with the ladies and is a bit of a horny, devil duckie. But he is loyal to Amber, Bob and I and has travelled with us on many of our journeys. Ed also has three “friends” - pirate devil duck who belongs to Bob, ninja devil duck (Bruce?) who belongs to Amber and Hot Rod devil duck who belongs to me and even travelled to England with me at Christmas.
Anyway Ed recently brought me some books and DVDs and some other fun things from Bob and Amber and so is currently residing au hôpital. One of Ed’s little foibles is to insert himself often where he shouldn’t, such as into other people’s blogs. He just likes to make himself known, extend his celebrity status, throw himself out there to the la-dies. Hence the previous blog entry. Totally not my fault. Left the computer on, went for my afternoon stroll up and down the corridors, came back and usurper Ed had sneakily written his blog post, not caring that he may confuse the heck out of my readers and lead everyone to believe that the drugs they’re giving me are finally addling my grey matter. Well they might be, but I’m not so crazy as to be writing in third person devil duckie…yet.

Filed under: Ed on April 20th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

I spent the night watching her. It was kind of boring but she still looked really fine. But even I have my limits with a sick chick. And besides all that icky blood and bags of platelets makes my horns feel kinda funny. The nurses aren’t bad though and the doctors sure are fine, young and foreign. There’s not a whole lot to do but there’s been lots of food - good chocolate, carrot cake, salmon bagels, sushi (that was some sushi as well, from Sushi Rocks in downtown - fresh fish goodness, mmmn). Maybe they’re trying to feed people into wellness. Lot of drugs too, been experimenting with a few, couple of wild trips. Heard there’s some opiates around somewhere, reckon I can sweet-talk one of the nurses and get me a few. Reading some good books, (hey, I told you there wasn’t much to do - this is low-key time, man), mainly mysteries but O was good this month. Lavender’s all in baby.

Got some photos to post, nothing spectacular, just some hospital pics, doing my duty. You know, keeping it real with the sick DIET team member. Thinking I my have to leave soon though. Pretty sure Amberly’s missing me - I know she can’t be without me for too long. Feeling a bit torn between my two blonde ladies, ’cause I know they both need me, man. But what you gonna do? That’s what happens when you’re as irresistible as I. I mean what’s a horny duck to do? There’s only so much feathered amazingness to go around.

Back to nurse watching and chatting up…blonde ladies who?

Filed under: Ed on April 20th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Filed under: famille et amis on April 19th, 2008 | No Comments »

Started 1b of the first round of chemo today. Had the “D’ part of the Hyper-CVAD which is the steroid and the “V” which stands for Vincristine. That’s a pretty rough one - if it gets on the skin it can actually cause necrosis of the skin. Pleasant, huh? And that’s going into my body. Thank goodness for my Hickman line. Ironically, as with many of the chemo drugs, Vincristine is made from, or at least originated from a plant. The Madagascar Periwinkle in fact. This is one of the main ones that causes hair loss but typically takes another round of chemo before that may take effect. I’m hoping to try and get my hair cut before it starts falling out in earnest so it’s not quite as “ooh, that’s an awfully long piece of hair lying on my pillow”. Hopefully it’s currently long enough right now that if I cut it short enough I can donate it to Locks of Love and it’ll be made into a wig or hairpiece for a child who has medical hairloss due to any diagnosis.

The next four days or so will continue with this next lot of drugs and then I get another week or just under of respite. My body has done well these past few days and responded as it should, basically all my counts have gone way down but that’s the idea. Other than a bit of nausea I’ve felt pretty good and even managed to get a whole load of grading done for my student’s recent projects. Not sure they’re that impressed with that! My swelling has finally gone down and I feel much more comfortable. Except for the insatiable appetite I currently have thanks to the steroids. Still I figure I may as well make the most of it seeing as I’ll have many days where food will be the last thing I want. I am making major inroads into the carrot and hummus industry and I may as well just have shares in Green and Blacks! A lot of food does not taste good with the chemo drugs so when I find a food that’s tastes “normal” I’m hooking onto it. Sadly, fresh orange juice, my favourite drink, just tastes awful right now so I’m making my way through various juices to see what tastes good. Things like blackberries and darker berry juices are pretty good. It’s pretty interesting discovering how the taste buds are reacting and sure makes cravings fun. Sushi was my desperate need for today! Luckily I have a wonderful and lovely husband who is willing to go out and get me such food when my body decides it has to have that particular taste.

All in all I’m feeling well. As I said other than the odd bit of nausea and tiredness physically I feel strong. I’m missing the outside and all the beautiful sunshine that’s happening at the moment. I hear our daffodils bulbs are starting to peak out in the garden and I’m quite sad to be missing those as the spring flowers are one of my favourite occurrences of the year. But Renée posted some beautiful photos of the crocuses they have coming out in Maine and they have filled my senses with the flavour of Spring.

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 18th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

Because there’s so much more happening outside my little englishgirl’s world, I just wanted to take a moment to remember the victims of last year’s Virginia Tech shooting. They have a nice Remembrance website. I can’t believe it’s been a year. As part of a college community I think we were all deeply affected and once again made only too aware of both the loneliness and deep-rooted problems that can manifest themselves in such tragic shootings. Sadly I heard today of a college that was considering allowing its students to carry guns on campus. While I’m not sure how we go about better protecting our students I’m pretty sure that’s not it.

Filed under: media on April 16th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

I’m in the in-between days of chemo and feeling pretty good. I had a couple of days of nausea but it’s fairly low-key at the moment and the anti-nausea meds seem to keep it at bay. I’ve tried to be up and about a bit, or as much as is possible in a six by six room or whatever I’m in! I have been able to walk up and down the corridors and around the oncology ward a bit. Hopefully tomorrow they’re going to let me go outside for a bit or at least venture to another part of the hospital. K will take me down in a wheelchair and then I can walk in the courtyard. The weather is supposed to be very nice, high 60s so it’ll be good to get some vitamin A and D. I miss the sunshine on my bones. I’m trying to make the most of feeling okay because Friday I start the next lot of chemo and get three lots of drugs so it’ll be a rough one. I’ve finally managed to start a book, Map of Bones by James Rollins. I’ve had a hard time concentrating and just getting my mind to focus when it comes to reading. I try to read and my brain is just all over the place, looping one thought into another into another, so that it takes me about ten minutes to read one page. Definitely not my usual pace of reading. I think though I’m finally starting to get my head around things a bit and essentially calm my thoughts down a bit.

The fevers have been absent for the last three days or so which is great. My platelets are still being gobbled up though, probably by my spleen although today’s platelet transfusion seems to have stuck around and my count was good this afternoon. I’ve not had the number of doctors come to see me as before. Dr. Rob said, very kindly, it’s because I’m boring at the moment for the fellows. But this is a good thing! It means my body’s doing what it’s supposed to do and responding to the drugs as expected. As he said when he left last night “Stay boring!”

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 16th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Filed under: famille et amis, cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 13th, 2008 | No Comments »

So my first round or ‘1a’ of chemo has finished. Today it’s just the usual fluids and antibiotics. The chemo seemed to go okay, I had one morning of nausea while I was having the chemo but the nausea meds fixes that pretty easily. Yesterday was a rough day as as I had three of the four drugs so felt really wiped out and really just wanted to sleep but other than that I didn’t feel too bad.

The doctors are pleased with how the chemo is going and even though all my counts are going down, this is normal and to be expected. We did have an interesting piece of news yesterday from Dr.M, my specialist and that was that they have adjusted the diagnosis, after further stains and cultures have completed. They’ve adjusted it to T-cell Lymphomia. The treatment is the same so none of that has changed, it just means that the cancer is a different type to that which originally thought. The other thing is that this type makes bone marrow transplant far more receptive. So Luc and I have been starting on out sibling type and match and will determine if we are a sibling match in the next two - four weeks. Transplant wouldn’t happen for some time as they want me to have at least several rounds of the chemo and basically get all those bad cells kaput and me into some kind of remission.

And another little photo to make you smile.

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 12th, 2008 | 6 Comments »

Started chemo last night. They’ve put me on a chemo regimen called Hyper-CVAD which works on some crazy 14 day cycle. So for days 1-4 I get a mix of some kind of drugs, then I get a bone marrow/cell stimulus drug on day 5. Then I get a break. Then on days 11-14 I get a repeat mix of drugs, then I get a five day break and then I get a treatment of Methotrexate and something else. Then I get a break and then I repeat the whole thing over again. This goes on for six cycles! Last night and today went well but the doctors did advise that side effects, etc typically don’t kick in until the later treatments and that usually the first cycle isn’t too bad. I also got a Hickman line put in today. This is basically a IV line that goes into a main vein up under the clavical. It then comes out with three “lumens” and allows for me to be hooked up to several IV lines at once and to have blood drawn from it. The really wonderful thing is it means no more pricks and pokes in the arms, which means my junkie arms can finally start healing up and the Hickman can stay in for months and months, basically as long as I need it for the chemo.

My fevers seem to have finally abated, well I’ve had a couple of 100F but that’s nothing like the 104/5 I was having. This is likely due to the steroids they giving me. Steroids are one of the drugs in the chemo mix.

And just so you know, I’m still pretty much looking like me, here’s a pic of me in my lovely blue hospital gown, (I’ve actually just sent Keith out to buy me some suitably-hospital-like nighties!)

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 9th, 2008 | 6 Comments »

Having just done an hour or so of work and realising that life just goes on I also realise that I am feeling quite at peace. I’m not scared, I’ve been so fed up with these bloody fevers that to know they’ll finally stop is a huge relief. To know what is finally wrong with me is a huge relief and to know that something can be done about it is a huge relief. I know the next months aren’t going to be easy and that I’ll feel crappy and sick and sorry for myself and there will be days where I’ll look in the mirror at my bald head and think “Oh Brittany, what were you thinking girl?”. Although one good thing about losing my hair is I’ll finally get rid of this stupid fringe. Why do I continue to do it? Every time I cut one I regret it, I should totally know better.

Oooh, K just brought me a cup of tea and some pastries so sorry, Zweites Frühstück demands my attention, more later. Some of you have asked for a further explanation of NK cells and the whole thing. As K is a better listener than I am and totally got what the doctor was talking about I’ll use his explanation when I blog later.

Filed under: cancer, T-cell Lymphoma on April 8th, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Finally, after weeks, make that months of waiting and waiting and transfusions and many drugs and hospital visits, we have an answer. I have NK & T cell Lymphoma Leukemia. Although it is very strange and bizarre to be told one has cancer, quite honestly I am just so relieved to finally know what it is and to know that we can start moving forward with treatment. The doctors have been superb and are eager to start treatment as well.

We have two main options for treatment - CHOP and PEGS (aren’t they great acronyms?!). Basically they’re both chemotherapy and are simply different combinations of drugs. PEGS is newer but has been recently tested more with the NK cell cancers. CHOP is the more standard and results in all the typical side effects such as nausea, hair loss, etc. I figure it’ll be a great excuse for some new Hermés scarves! I mean I’m not going to tie just any old rag around my head!

Anyway K and I only just found out so we’re going to do some chatting and then SKYPE with the bambino who’s with Grandma S at the moment.

Keep giving blood!

Filed under: cancer on April 7th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Another bone marrow test yesterday, third one! The doctor who did it did a great job and it really wasn’t too awful, not that I recommend for everyone to rush out and get bone marrow biopsies! Also had another CT scan and an EKG plus the usual trillion and one blood draws. With regards to the biopsy the doctors were able to see that the abnormal cells were now in the blood and not just in the bone marrow. However they still have not been able to make a diagnostic and are considering that the next stage may be to take out the spleen. Because of the way the spleen works - essentially it destroys old, red blood cells and keeps a certain amount of a blood reservoir - removing it would allow the doctors to make a diagnosis based on the blood cells contained there. My spleen has been quite enlarged this whole time and often times removing the spleen can make a patient in this situation generally feel much better. Once they make a diagnostic based on the spleen they can start to determine a treatment for the actual problem going on in the bone marrow. But the splenectomy is still somewhat of a last resort and they’ll be spending the weekend doing some more blood research and looking at the cores they got from the bone marrow. Fevers are still pretty bad, the morning ones spiking at 104/5 again. Last night they had me wrapped in some green plastic ice blanket - it was all very astronauty but it brought the temperature down! I’m having to get blood almost every other day and the same with platelets, which are hovering down around the 8,000 range. I have dreadful, dreadful edema which is very painful and means I’m carrying about 20lbs of additional water weight so it would be nice to not have that anymore. My ankles and knees are so swollen, it’s excruciating.
Other than that I’m still trying to maintain a positive frame of mind. As my friend Teodora always says, “What can you do?” and she’s right. I can’t change what I’m going through. But I can kick it’s butt!

Filed under: bone marrow disorder on April 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

By the way, I just want to say a humongous thank you to everyone who has given blood recently, whether you have always given blood anyway or reading about the aplastic anemia and bone marrow disorders has prompted you to go and give blood, I just want to let you know that it truly saves lives. It continually saves mine and all the cancer patients (as well as car crash victims and trauma patients), I see weekly at the outpatient clinic, along with their chemo, often receive blood and platelet transfusions. There is a definite shortage of blood and it truly does make a difference when you give. Rock on giving blood!

Filed under: aplastic anemia, bone marrow disorder on April 3rd, 2008 | 1 Comment »

I have quite surpassed even myself. Saturday night I had a temperature of 105 F! I don’t know that I’ve ever had such a high temperature, although I’m sure my mum could correct me on that one! I thought it was rather impressive.

So a very interesting last few days. Sunday I felt quite good. We didn’t do anything remotely energetic, watched movies, folded clothes, did a bit of schoolwork. Although I had woken up with a high temp, 103, I’d had a pretty good night with no major peaks. I went to bed at a reasonable time, temp was at 99 and again I managed a night without any distinct fevers. Monday morning was when it started getting interesting. I woke up with a temperature 0f 103 and a slight pressure headache at the back of head and top of my neck. I’d had some lymph nodes come up in the last week and these seemed to be responsible for the headache. I carried on as normal, got Jay breakfast and dressed so Keith could take him to school. I checked work email and got stuff ready for the day’s work. Then I went and had a shower. While I was in the shower my knees started to really hurt and feel very swollen, so that I couldn’t really straighten my legs. This is another symptom that’s come up in the last few weeks - very painful aching knees and ankles. Then my lower back and hips started to hurt. I got out of the shower and managed to get myself dressed. At this point I was experiencing such intense pressure from the base of my back, through my hips down my bottom and into my legs. My knees and ankles were extremely painful and I could barely walk. I managed to get myself downstairs and called Keith who asked if I wanted an ambulance. I was in such pain at this point and knew something wasn’t right so I agreed. Less than ten minutes later, it may even have been only five, the fire brigade turned up, closely followed by the paramedic. They got me into the ambulance and gave me four shots of morphine over the course of the journey. This did nothing for the pain which was a bit concerning. When I arrived in ER they gave me something called Dilaudid, an opiate based medication, which, thank goodness did finally kill the pain, without making me doolally and keeping me fairly lucid. Not sure what that says for my drug tolerance! I can honestly say that it was the worst pain I’ve ever experience, worse than labour. They promptly did a pelvic and lower back x-ray and ran some blood tests, in particular a CBC. My HgB and white blood cells were good but my platelets which has been 12,000 last Wednesday were now at 10,000 and that was with the platelet transfusion on Thursday. The on-call hematologist in the hospital here spoke with Dr.M in Cleveland and they decided to start IVIG, or iv delivered Immuno-Globulin. It’s a five-day treatment and should help get my platelets up and boost my other counts. They’ve also raised my Predisone dosage to 80mg and so hopefully between that and the IVIG by the end of the week I should be in a good, stable condition.

I have to say that out of everything I’ve been through in the last eight weeks, this was the most scariest and I think it was because of the pain. Whatever’s been going on in my body finally manifested itself into something that was very tangible.

I’ll be in hospital for a few days. They want to keep an eye on me as I start the IVIG treatment and make sure my platelets are heading back up. They also would like to do a biopsy on one of the several lymph nodes that I’ve had come up at the back of my neck and base of my throat. Apparently they can often find out as much information from a lymph node biopsy as with a bone marrow biopsy. Hopefully it’ll be a helpful procedure for everything that’s been going on.

I’d forgotten how horribly uncomfortable the beds were and how crap the food was!

P.S. Update - Looks like some serious testing going on. I’ve got lots of doctors poking and prodding me and another bone marrow biopsy in about an hour and a half. I feel pretty crummy so let’s hope we get some answers in the next few days with all the tests they’re doing.

Filed under: bone marrow disorder on April 3rd, 2008 | 3 Comments »

When I first stayed with Estelle in Paris I remember her using two phrases that still to this day I love - the first ca m’est egal (I don’t care) and the other j’en ai marre (I’m fed up). Last week was most definitely a marre week. The grey cloud above my head made every day feel yucky and miry. I started getting temperatures again last weekend and they just make me feel crap. Hot, cold, hot, cold, shiver, shiver, hot, cold. In fact it’s more like freezing, burning, freezing, burning. It’s exhausting. I also ended up having another CT scan and more bloodwork and on Thursday had another blood transfusion. I spent a lot of time in the hospital last week. And it seems like this one fairing no better. Tuesday I was on for bloodwork, yesterday was my CBC and then thanks to the results of that CBC I’m now back in the friendly outpatient clinic, (the nurses here are fab), once again, receiving another unit of blood and a unit of platelets (first time for those!). I’ve then got to come back in tomorrow for another unit of blood as they could only get me one today. The blood typically comes from the Red Cross. Mine also has to be CMV Negative and eradiated which always makes it take longer. Anyway the nurse and I were commenting how disconcerting it is they could only get me one. So go out and give blood! Save a life!

Friday we drove down to Huntsville for the Easter weekend and I’m so glad we did. Friday and Saturday the weather was gorgeous, 70 degrees. We left at the crack of dawn so that we would get there with at least some afternoon to spare. Jay spent the weekend riding bikes with the little girl next door and kicking a soccer ball in the meadow that is mummy and Jerry’s garden - a very ordered and tidy meadow mind you. The perfect garden for an Easter egg hunt which Jay thoroughly enjoyed, retrieving all his camouflage eggs rather quickly! And of course we all ate far too much chocolate, in fact we all ate far too much full stop. K took Jay to the rocket museum, their idea of heaven and mummy took me to Anthropologie, our idea of heaven. The Southern hospitality flowed and the warm sunshine felt delicious on my bones, banishing that grey cloud that had hung out all week.

I miss the sun.

It’s raining here. The Outpatient Clinic has big windows and huge drops of rain are racing each other down the glass, plopping on to the finish line of the sill below. The sky is bereft of colour, a washed out grey that’s almost white.

I think they were predicting snow tonight.

Filed under: famille et amis, travel on March 28th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

So having been resorted to listening to a recap of the Australian Grand Prix, the starting race of the 2008 Formula 1 season, I apparently missed rather a good race. And when I say good I mean rather interesting. Six cars finished the race, that would be six out of twenty-one, which gives you some indication of the type of race it was. The safety car was out three or four times and the rule of chaos seemed to be prevalent. A bunch of drivers including Fisi, Vettel, Mark Webber went out in the first couple of laps. Lewis Hamilton, predictably perhaps as he led the race from the start, brought home first place. I’m utterly thrilled to see Nico Rosberg in third place, Nick Heidfeld took second and really great to see a Williams on the podium. Fernando Alonso finished fourth and showed some fair driving, although nothing spectacular. It’ll be interesting to see how everyone fairs as they really start getting to grips with the cars and everyone gets truly settled into their new teams. There’s a big difference between the so many months of testing preceding the actual races and it’s really not until the season races are underway that we start seeing how the car and driver suit, how the different technical set-ups impact the course style and weather conditions, etc. It seems to me that this year, and I know we’re only at the first race, there seems to be more equilibrium between the cars themselves. I guess with so many of the regs changed for this year so that the constructors don’t have as much, shall we say, licence to be creative, the cars are perhaps more on an equal footing. The great thing about this is that it’ll be a chance to really see what the drivers are made of this year.

Malaysia next!

Filed under: Formula 1 on March 16th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Sitting on the big French settee folding warm, just-out-of-the-tumble-dryer clothes and listening to the shipping forecast.

Filed under: englishness on March 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

I’ve been wanting to change/redo the blog for a while now and as of late have been having manic spring-cleaning urges whether it’s to do with the house, getting rid of clothes, generally tidy up and getting rid of the excess. I’m open to ideas. Amberly seems to think I should have a “crack” (inside joke!), at the redesign myself but I’m not sure I can manage that much html and css. I do like the idea of the suitcase somewhere as my icon. Obviously clean is the key. I like the chocolate brown of my top portion background and wouldn’t mind including some pink, mint green and orange. Could this be influenced by my current addiction to Green and Black’s Almond milk chocolate perhaps! I quite like the ease and simplicity of tumblr - for example Renée’s blog.

Any suggestions are greatly welcomed, let me know what you think…

Filed under: new site on March 12th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Sunday night we told Jay we were going on a trip. One that involved a four hour car journey there and back. For Jay, usually a long car journey means Chicago and the museums or going to stay with Mamie and Grandpa Jerry. He was extremely unimpressed when he realised that Monday’s trip involved four hours in a car, five hours in a very boring hospital and then another four hours in the car back home. Although not quite his words, a sentence along the lines, “Exactly what kind of crazy-arsed trip do you call that?” surely came out of his mouth.

Our trip on Monday involved going to the Cleveland Clinic to meet with the Aplastic Anemia and Bone Marrow specialist. What a positive experience! I spent an hour with Dr. M’s Fellow, also Dr. M, otherwise known as Sanjay. We basically went through the timeline of things, when I started feeling bad, what they did in the hospital, the usual ‘any history of‘ questions. My records had already been faxed and I had taken along the bone marrow samples from the first biopsy plus all my patho and radiology slides and reports, etc so they had plenty to look at. Then I had a good hour and a bit with the specialist. Both Sanjay and Dr. M are truly fantastic. They clearly know A LOT about this stuff and even though much of the conversation occurred at a level beyond my true comprehension, (they talked a lot about the DNA, genetic level of things), Sanjay was brilliant in translating the more illusive, medical terminology and making sure K and I understood what they were saying. What was really nice was that they were both so totally open and receptive, and perhaps even a little excited, to whatever I have being a very real issue. We had kind of got to the point here in Fort Wayne that we were almost made to feel to be overreacting and being excessive in our concern. As the Taussig Centre is also a research centre as well naturally there are a lot more resources available to Dr. M than there is here at say, Lutheran Hospital. Our meeting ending with the decision to do a second bone marrow biopsy and then a load of blood draws. I went and had the biopsy, no less uncomfortable than the first time and they still experienced the same issue of having trouble getting liquid from my marrow, too fibrous apparently. And then my blood draws. Both Dr. M and Sanjay basically said their goal was to make a diagnosis within the next couple of weeks. This was one of the biggest problems we’ve been experiencing is that there has been no diagnosis. The bone marrow results will likely take until the end of the week to get any real answers but I did get a call from Sanjay yesterday letting me know what he had found so far, in the 24 hours since I left the clinic!

The bone marrow is still showing an abnormally high count of T-cells, indicating that whatever the problem was a month ago, it’s still there. He was able to see some immature cells (new cells) which is great as it shows that my bone marrow is still working and is trying to essentially keep up with the anemia. The great news is that my blood counts are currently at a good level, overall HGB was at 10.9, WBC at 4.7 and my platelets at 90,000. I think this is the highest they’re been for the last three months. However because whatever is going on in my bone marrow is still going on, the chance for these to move up and down on a weekly basis is likely. Either way, it means no transfusion this week! And in true Mélaine fashion, you know, always wanting to be special, Sanjay pointed out that while bone marrow and blood disorders have a lot of rarity to the various diseases, within the specialty there are the bread-and-butter diseases. What I have is not one of them. Like I said, I like to be special. Really, I just want a research paper written about me…Caucasian woman, 31 years of age, admitted to hospital with aplastic anemia, symptomatic of…

We came back home feeling like it had been very worth going to see Dr. M. Both he and Sanjay confirmed that they were really pleased we did as this is an unusual case. I think they were secretly rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a research project! For the immediate they will call me as results come in and as they review the blood and bone marrow samples. I’m still on all my antibiotics and prednisone and they are having me continue to work with my ID doctor here for that. Dr. M did advise that so long as my WBC is within reasonable levels there’s no reason for me to be on so many antibiotics, mainly because it can lead to all sorts of other complications. The prednisone is kind of a catch-all and I’m on a tapered treatment anyway so the dosage gets less and less each week. Thank goodness because I’d forgotten what an emotional, moody cow steroids make me!

Finally I feel like we are moving forward.

Filed under: health, aplastic anemia, bone marrow disorder on March 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

This weekend K took off to Denver to practice with The Band and to surprise his dad at a birthday celebration breakfast. In his absence Jay and I enjoyed a weekend of comfort eating. I had warned Jay that still not feeling up to chasing a 4 year old around the place and going to the mall and crowded places was still not on my agenda, that our weekend would be a quiet one. Naturally this was met with a look of raised eyebrows and small huffs until I explained that the weekend would revolve around food. I love my son - more often than not his choice of snack will be “a carrot and celery please” rather than a biscuit or sweets, although I’m sure he’d take those given half the chance if we had them in the house, as his attitude to food so closely matches my own. As in food is great, let’s eat lots of it. So on Friday evening we had a picnic in front of the tele. I made cucumber sandwiches on fresh white bread with the crusts cut off and smoked salmon sandwiches on multigrain bread with lemon, pb and j sandwiches with natural peanut butter and St. Dalfour strawberry jam. I bought a small strawberry gateau and a swiss roll and made homemade oatmeal and raisin cookies. Between the two of us we demolished the lot. Jay ate all the pb and j sandwiches, most of the cucumber sandwiches and one of the smoked salmon sandwiches as well as cake and cookies. This was all washed down with gallons of tea of course. (And yes, both of us had tummy aches later). Saturday we had to brave the supermarket and so he was treated to a doughnut via the drive-through window at Krispy Kreme. Needless to say I was still recovering from the previous nights’ assault and did not partake in doughnut scoffing. Lunchtime I made us sausages piled into rolls with relish, a Saturday staple from my childhood, usually eaten whilst watching Airwolf.

Now every now and then I get a real taste for good old English liver and onions. You couldn’t have paid me to eat them as a child and it wasn’t until I got to uni that I developed a taste for them. Not that I could eat them a lot but once in a while, they just hit the spot. Jay had been playing outside most of the afternoon and so by supper time was ruddy-cheeked and starving. We’d finished off the swiss roll for tea so I figured something hearty and British was in order. I had picked up some lovely pieces of veal’s liver from Fresh Market and had found a recipe to serve it with leek mashed potato. The key with liver and onions is one, to get really good quality liver, preferably lamb or veal, and two, make a really good gravy. My recipe follows, modified a bit from here, as with everything I cook/make I measure nothing and just do what looks and tastes right:

Mélaine’s Saturday night Liver ‘n’ Onions
1lb lamb or veal liver
flour
2-3 large onions
bayleaf
1/2 handful dried thyme or a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme
glass of red wine
pint of beef stock

Cut the liver into strips, the thinner the better but not so it turns into mush when cooked. On a plate absolutely smother the liver in flour, season with salt and pepper. Using a casserole dish heat the dish on the hob and then add a generous knob of butter and a splash of olive oil. Get it nice and hot and then plop in the liver, getting it all nice and browned and a bit crusty. Remove the liver and put on a plate. Slice your onions into long thin slices and cook in a separate frying pan with a bit of olive oil until soft and a few are a bit caramelised. Take off the heat. Add the red wine to the casserole dish and simmer, scraping up all the stuck brown liver bits. Reduce the wine until a bit thick and then add the beef stock and herbs. Again scrape up all the bits so it makes a really nice, flavourful gravy. Add the onions to the gravy and stir. You should have a lovely thick gravy that is really dominated by the onions. It should smell heavenly as well with all that red wine. Add the liver back into the casserole dish and make sure that all the liver pieces sit below the gravy - no liver fingers poking out! Put the casserole dish into a pre-heated 350F oven and cook for about 30 minutes.

To make the leek mash, heat a frying pan with some butter and a little olive oil and add 3 - 4 very thinly sliced leeks. Cook until very softened, but don’t allow to brown or burn. Make your mash potato (NOT out of a packet please, what do think this is? Cooking with Colonel Sanders?). Once the potato is mashed, add your leeks, lots of butter and a splash of milk. You want the potato a bit stodgy not puréed like normal American mash so literally a splash of milk is all you want. It needs lots of texture. Stir in the leeks and season to taste.

Put a mound of leek mashed potato on a plate and then a couple of good spoonfuls of the liver and onions piled on top with plenty of the gravy over the lot. The gravy makes this quite a rich dish and it needs to be served piping hot.

Surprisingly Jay ate his mash and then went through his liver and onions, picking out all the liver…to eat it! I figured the gravy might be a bit rich but he gave the liver a thumbs up!

Filed under: englishness, culinery delights on March 11th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Yet another piece of Fort Wayne culture and history slipping away. Nancy wrote a good post about it and said everything I would wish to say, only much better and more succinctly. As previous owner of my house I keep hoping remnants of her ghost will infuse in me the skill and natural ability to write, only that probably requires me actually writing on a regular basis. Hmmn, not doing so well on that front.

Had another blood transfusion this morning. My CBC yesterday showed that my White Blood Count had improved, yeah, from 1.6 to 2.1 or something around there but that my overall HGB had dropped from 8 to 6.2. So I spent four hours in the Outpatient Clinic sucking up some red cells and grading all my students’ most recent projects and papers! I think I feel better, not so breathless, but I actually felt pretty out of it afterwards. Of course that could be all the antibiotics and Predisone I guess. So just a bit more background on my particular case. As I mentioned the analysis and diagnosis from my little sojourn in the hospital was fairly inconclusive. I was admitted into hospital with severe (HGB of 4 or under) aplastic anemia which basically just means that all of one’s blood counts are low, not just the red as in the case of normal anemia, (typically low from an iron deficiency or similar). After the bone marrow biopsy they were able to see that I had an abnormally high number of T-cells in my bone marrow. The bone marrow basically acts as the factory for stem cell and blood cell creation. T-cells are part of the fighting cells. When you have an infection or virus T-cells are one of the cells that go out and suppress the virus or infection. In someone with AIDS or HIV, the T-cell count or production is very low because the body’s immune system is compromised. So, the assumption was made that I had either had a virus that had resulted in my T-cells going crazy or more likely, that I had some kind of auto-immune assault on my bone marrow. And that’s pretty much where we still are to-day. We have managed to get an appointment with a specialist doctor in aplastic anemia and bone marrow disorders at the Cleveland Clinic for Monday so perhaps we’ll have a better idea of how to move forward after that.

Filed under: indiana, health, aplastic anemia, bone marrow disorder on March 6th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

In all my getting caught up with other stuff in life, only a comment from Mr. Stouder brought me back to reality. I was completely unaware there were only 10 days until the opening race of the 2008 F1 season. Where have I been? How can this be? I’ve written not a word about Signor Fisichella’s move to Force India, Alonso being back in the Renault saddle, Heikki venturing over to join not-so-rookie-now teammate, Lewis Hamilton over at McLaren. I haven’t even decided where my support will lie this year. Obviously Fisi gets the ooh-he’s-so-dreamy-in-that-Italian-racing-car-driver-sort-of-way but let’s face it, I hardly think he’ll be a contender. I do wish he’d get his own team up and running. Renault has been my team for the last two years and I do admire Alonso, not sure of the young Piquet yet. However I’m definitely partial to the youngster team of Heikki and Hamilton over at McLaren so they may indeed get my vote this year. Besides their livery is so much cooler than Renault’s. Renault’s just looks a bit like French air stewardesses from like 20 years ago.

Wherever my allegiance lies this year, I’ll be watching the opening race, the Melbourne Grand Prix on the 16th March. Oh no, no, no, no, no. F&$#@. No I won’t. We recently got rid of cable/FIOS TV and now I have no Speed Channel. Oh my God, hyperventilating. No F1 on tv. Must go and lie down, feeling a bit light-headed. No F1. Breath. Breath.

Filed under: Formula 1 on March 3rd, 2008 | 2 Comments »

My blog may start to become a little bit medical over the next few posts, mainly because my recovery process is not going quite as we had expected. Infectious Diseases are still running tests on all my blood smears, etc but still have no answer or diagnosis as to what caused this. And as we’ve read, apparently 50% of aplastic anemia cases are in fact undiagnosed, putting them in the idiopathic aplastic anemia category. The week I left hospital I had my blood count done on Wednesday (I was discharged the Saturday afternoon prior), and my red blood count was up to 10, my platelets normal and my white blood count at 3.1. While these are still considered on the abnormal scale for my RBC and WBC on the testing charts, it was normal enough for the doctors. Once a WBC is over 3, typically for Cancer patients for example, they’re permitted with caution to “enter back into society”; go to the shops, restaurants, etc. It was also a significant improvement from my last blood count. Now that week I had also been on a series of antibiotics - Levaquin, Fluconazole and Doxycycline and a three day treatment of Predisone, (although having been on steriods for 13 or so years for my Nephrotic Syndrome can hardly imagine what three days of the stuff would do). By the time I went on for last Wednesday’s labs I had finished all my antibiotics. I had a couple of days of fevers and chills, enough of a concern to call the ID doctor for advice. She added a couple of additional tests to my weekly CBC (Complete Blood Count) labs and so I went in on the Wednesday. Thursday I got a call from someone at my hematologist’s office basically saying, “Your blood counts haven’t gone up as much as expected, so Dr.A is ordering another CBC next week.” Okay, except for the fact that I have CBCs scheduled for the next five weeks but fine. So not gone up as much as expected led me to believe that my counts had maybe only marginally improved. Friday I got a call from my ID doctor who said, “Your CBC isn’t so good. Your red blood count has gone down from 10 to 8 and your white blood count from 3.1 to 1.6.” Well, that’s a little different from not gone up as we’d expected. Under 8 in the hospital they were giving me transfusions and 1.6 for a WBC is considered border-line neutropenic and leaves me open for catching God knows what. Anyway, deep breath, the ID doctor, Dr. M ordered more labs which I went in to the hospital yesterday and had done and has put me back on a longer course of antibiotics (same ones as before) and a six week course of Predisone.
Naturally at this stage I’m thinking what the hell? I’m told my body is getting better on its own and yet clearly it’s not. So K and I went to our trusty, information source, le internet to see what we could see. Despite having done much research on aplastic anemia and bone marrow disorders while I was hospitalised neither of us managed to find the Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation site. It has been fantastic explaining things and talking about treatment, short term, which is what I’ve had so far, and long term, bone marrow transplant and immunosuppressive therapy - neither of which any of my doctors have mentioned, mainly because I think they were of the opinion that my body was recovering on its own. Anyway they have a great webinar series and in particular a fantastic video from Dr. Neal Young, one of the leading Aplastic Anemia specialists at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, MD. The link here will launch the video in your browser and provides an excellent explanation of what Aplastic Anemia is, its rarety, (only a few new cases per million in the USA are diagnosed each year), treatments, finding specialists, etc, etc. http://www.aamds.org/webinar/present_3/qt_holder.html.
And I’m spent…for now!

Filed under: health, aplastic anemia, bone marrow disorder on March 2nd, 2008 | 2 Comments »

I’m not going to write too much right now, I really just wanted to post some photos from Jay’s 4th birthday party for the grandfolks.

mvi_1290.AVI

It has been quite a surreal couple of weeks. After three weeks of feeling utterly exhausted, as in I’d climb a flight of stairs, have to stop and catch my breath; get dressed and have to have a rest, racing heartbeat, ridiculous muscle fatigue, etc, etc I ended up in hospital with aplastic anemia. A normal person’s blood count is around 12, mine was 4. Both my doctor and the hematologist couldn’t believe I was still standing. Two weeks later, six blood transfusions and a bone marrow biopsy later I am finally at home. The doctors none the wiser as to what caused my condition and no firm diagnosis given. My body seems to be healing itself and although my white blood count is still dangerously low, I feel hugely better. The main thing is we know for sure it’s not leukemia or any other lymphatic cancer and that it’s just going to be a matter of allowing my blood count to build itself back up again. The whole experience was/is quite, quite bizarre. I’ll share more as I start to get my head around it.

Filed under: famille et amis, health, aplastic anemia, bone marrow disorder on February 19th, 2008 | No Comments »

Just having a rest for a while. A bit of a forced holiday. All is well and I’ll be back soon.

Filed under: indiana on February 8th, 2008 | No Comments »

During the years we lived in Hampshire, my mum and I would often go to the various shows and parades at the barracks and parade grounds in Winchester. I was really chuffed to see this as regardless of what one thinks of the war(s), we certainly don’t do enough of it.

Hampshire welcomes home all three services

Filed under: englishness, media on January 29th, 2008 | No Comments »

I’ve been listening to the debate over the government’s recent announcement that companies should providing their own internal training and certification programmes, allowing employees who don’t necessarily have traditional degrees or strong academic results to be able to gain more “trade” like skills and qualifications. It’s an interesting debate. Most of the companies I’ve worked for have had their own programmes: classes that focus on skills and acquiring knowledge particular to the job and/or the company. I haven’t necessarily received certifications for it, although receiving my Cartier Authentication certification when I worked at the jewellery store was pretty cool and would have been most useful had I continued in that line of work. But the fact of that matter is what’s wrong with asking companies to continue the education of their employees, particularly if it’s going to be giving employees useful skills and training that will allow them to better themselves, prepare them to move up within the company and perhaps even encourage loyalty on both the part of the employer and employee.

What isn’t acceptable of course, is thinking that such qualifications or certifications can be a substitute for finishing school and having a good lot of GCSEs under your belt. I fully understand that not everyone’s cut out for A levels, but isn’t that what tech schools and vocational colleges are for? To give people alternative opportunities? Oh wait, that’s right, they got rid of most of those. While I’m not really familiar with the level of education that most British school-leavers end up with, I am familiar with the US and if there is any comparison, which I’m sure there is, honestly it’s pretty dire. To start college and have to take remedial English, Maths and learn how to read and write analytically is, quite frankly, appalling. Why even go to college if you think writing a 2000 word reflective essay is too much effort or you’re unable to make a post on a discussion board without reverting to all lower case and far too many OMG, LOL and do u think that 2? Were you no taught what’s appropriate to write in an academic setting at high school?

I’m digressing…the point is I think it’s great that companies should offer training programmes and valid, industry-recognisable qualifications. But maybe the next thing that the government should do is look at how to raise the standards of general education and ensure that students leaving school, armed with their five or six GCSEs, have the ability to read and write properly so that companies aren’t having to waste their time training employees to a GCSE standard, but instead, can provide them with training on job-related skill-sets that will allow employees to gain master skills and knowledge in their specific industry or trade. When did having a vocational trade become something to scoff at?

Times opinion article
Times article
Guardian article

Filed under: englishness on January 29th, 2008 | No Comments »

A day late but a whisky toast to you! As with some of my most cherished memories, one of the best Burn’s night suppers I experienced was in Rome. We started off in one flat for drinks and nibbles, adjourned to another flat for our tatties, neaps and haggis and then moved onto to another flat where they’d cleared out their sitting room and we danced the night away with some Scottish country dancing. I remember standing on the patio under the cool January Roman sky, flushed and exhilarated from a few rounds of reeling and thinking that some traditions were just worth celebrating year after year.
And in true celebration, even though I did not eat haggis last night, (and I would have done because good haggis is actually quite delicious), here is Robert Burn’s famous Address to a Haggis:
address-to-a-haggis.html

Filed under: culinery delights, global britishness on January 26th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

So a few weeks ago, K got a call from one his old friends and band member with the news that they’d been asked to play at a rock festival in Oklahoma this summer. Seeing as how Valor have been broken up for years, and I’m talking at least a decade, we kind of laughed a bit and while not exactly dismissing the rather fanciful idea of five, now in their very late 30s/borderline 40s for some, passé 80s rockers getting up on the stage again, we didn’t give it too much thought. Except that over the past few weeks K’s had several phone calls with various other band members and their old manager, and now here’s this…

Valor

And here’s an article I read on the web…

Retrospect Records begins 2008 with a six-pack of exciting new releases.
Valor: Toy Soldiers and Make It Big. For the first time ever on cd meet Melodic Rockers VALOR. Hailing from Colorado , Valor was one of the biggest draws in Denver from 1987-1993. These two releases are chock-full of big hooks, layered harmonies and guitar work that rivals heroes such as Nuno Bettencourt, Vito Bratta and Reb Beach. Recorded between 1988 and 1991 and engineered by such legends as Geoff Workman and Rodney Mills, these two cd’s are high-class slabs of top-notch Melodic Hard Rock / AOR. Sounds like a mix of Firehouse, Journey, Extreme and Europe.

And then there’s this, where they’re headlining one of the stages…

Rocklahoma

Maybe I’ll be able to give up the day job after all.

Filed under: famille et amis, living the dream on January 24th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Complete and utter lusciousness. Did I mention I’m a Mac addict…way past the helping or intervention stage. I’m totally intravenous Mac at this point.

Filed under: tech, shamelessly stolen, educ 205 on January 20th, 2008 | No Comments »

Twelfth Night Act 2 sc 3.

Having been particularly anti-social for much of the year, I’d like to say simply the festive season but it just isn’t true. Our anti-socialness pervavded 2007 in its entirety, we, well, I decided to have a Twelfth night party. Sort of. We forwent the costumes and the games and the veal but managed plenty of booze (Thanks Wes!) and food and I even made a Galette de Rois. Invitations were sent out with quotes from the bard’s comedic play and I spent the days in between arriving back from England and trying to recover and the party, cooking and cleaning, trying to get the house to look as if it hadn’t been solely occupied for two weeks by two rather careless, stinky and malting cats. Nearly everyone turned up and Troy and Michelle brought Pimms so naturally we had to make up a large batch…Craig and Bob are now converts, (see, this is how the English take over the world, through booze. So fitting, n’est ce pas?). Although Twelfth Night is traditionally veal, a meat I love but wasn’t sure about everyone else, I kept the menu simple - Irish sausages, jacket potatoes, carrot and parsnip mash and of course, the English staple, peas. Pudding was cheese and grapes, a wicked Jamie Oliver chocolate tarte and the Galette de Rois, delicately flavoured with orange flower oil and made following a French recipe that I was amazed I managed to figure out. By the time everyone left and we’d finished clearing up (thank you K and Troy for washing up!), and I’d put away the last of the Christmas decorations, hoping that my diligence in getting them down by midnight of the 6th would mean another year of good fortune and happiness, I realised how glad I was that we’d made the effort to have a party. In Germany our lives were full of parties and get togethers, any excuse for a celebration. Even Phoenix we enjoyed our fair share of parties throughout the years. Maybe an English tea-party in the Spring for my girlfriends will be the next one…

Jamie’s Chocolate Tarte
(taken from my Christmas present Cook with Jamie - I’ll check the measurements, they’re off the top my head.)
Make short-crust pastry to fill a 28cm/11 inch tin

325g butter

225g caster sugar

565g flour

3 eggs

orange zest

65g cocoa powder

Bake blind for 10 - 15 minutes.
Bring 2 3/4 cups of heavy cream and 3 tbsp of fine caster sugar to the boil (Jamie’s recipe calls for milk and cream but I like the richness of just the cream - I have no pity for my cholesterol). Take off the boil and stir in 400g of broken up semi-sweet or bitter chocolate. Whisk until smooth and add 2 eggs. Whisk again until blended smoothly. Pour into a jug and then into the pie tin (having removed your pie beans of course!). Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes. When the chocolate mixture is firm to the touch it is done. It will feel wobbly but will continue to cook after being taken out of the oven. Once cooled put in fridge until ready to eat. Serve alone or with creme fraiche. Truly scrumptious.

Filed under: famille et amis, culinery delights on January 11th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Perhaps one more year then, before he really is forced into retirement. Better make this one count, Fisi.

Fisichella signs on with Force India

Filed under: Formula 1 on January 11th, 2008 | No Comments »

Happy New Year!

I hope that 2008 brings you good fortune and blessings and that it is a year full of richness and joy.

Peace.

Filed under: global englishness on December 31st, 2007 | 2 Comments »

I’ve tried to take Jay down to the canal to feed the ducks most days since we’ve been here. On Thursday we went down, snug in our raincoat and Barbor respectively, armed with our bag of bread. As we waited to cross the road at the pub, a local police car drove past. It was a particularly “cool” one, with all it’s lurid yellow stripes, looking very British police boy-racerish. Obviously Jay got very excited and much pointing and jumping up and down ensued. Once it had passed we crossed the road to make our way down the stone steps to the canal path. Before we reached the steps though I noticed the same police car having turned around and was now pulling up to the curb next to us. Oh great, I thought, I’m being done for jaywalking in the middle of the British countryside. Imagine my surprise when the policeman wound down his window and said, “I noticed someone getting very excited when I drove past. Do you fancy having a ride?” And yes, for one second as I strapped Jay in and climbed in myself, I did think, Oh God, I’m about to get abducted by a policeman…but Jay’s grinning face had that thought quashed instantly. So we got driven round the block, very fast and with lights and siren flashing on the straight strip of road behind the house, Jay an immobile mass of smiles and dancing eyes. When we were dropped back at our departure point the policeman let Jay sit in the front and turn on all the lights and have his photo taken (of course the one time I didn’t have my camera, but I did have the mobile - photo to follow). After that duck feeding was a bit of an anti-climax. So thank you Mr.Policeman of Mercia Constabulary; you definitely made a little boy’s day…and his mum’s as well!

Interesting links for Bob regarding Mercia, who I know will digg the English history, (note all the Beowulf references)!

Filed under: englishness on December 30th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Too busy enjoying a proper English Christmas to write much - have just been for the obligatory afternoon walk down to the canal to feed the ducks and walk off all those calories. The light was gorgeous over the canal, the barges festively decorated and so indicative of this part of the world. The bare trees with their long branches reaching out their fingertips to touch the trees on the other side of the still water provided a strangely comforting frame to my photo, taken from a perfect viewpoint, tucked under the arch of one of the canal bridges. Although the rolling landscape is anything but, it is still surprisingly very green and there is certainly no snow, Holst’s tune of Christina Rossetti’s song In the bleak midwinter is playing in my head…”Yet what can I give Him: give Him my heart.”

Filed under: englishness, famille et amis on December 25th, 2007 | No Comments »

There’s so much going on in the world of F1 lately I’m overwhelmed by it all. The need to blog continuously is thwarted only by the complete craziness of my life outside my obsession with fast cars and handsome men. Anyway inevitable I suppose since Renault escaped with no penalty from the FIA hearing, that Senor Fernando Alonso would return to Renault. If nothing else it’ll be interesting to see what he makes of the new car and whether it really is as bad as Fisi and Heikki seemed to make it. Sad that due to Nelson Piquet Jr’s elevation to second seat, Heikki loses his drive at Renault but he’s got so much potential I know he’ll get picked up by one of the other teams. Would be nice, perhaps to see him driving with Lewis over at McLaren. And it looks like I shall have to find a new gorgeous driver to obsess about this season…unless Fisi gets picked up by Force India I can’t see him getting a drive in 2008. I personally think he’d be better off sorting out his driving school and considering taking his F2 team and creating his own F1 team. The guy is a brilliant driver and his experience of the sport invaluable. I think if he brought his own team in they’d have a mighty good chance of doing something spectacular. Ferrari of course, are one of the few with no change to their driver set-up and I think we’ll see an excellent year from Massa and Kimi, who are now familiar with the car and can start to really knuckle down and concentrate on the driving.

If nothing else, let’s hope the year will be a bit less scandalous. More stories like this one about F1 would be much preferred rather than the recent spate of “but you said he said and no I didn’t, he stole it first” crap.

Filed under: Formula 1 on December 13th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

No penalty for Renault

I’m so tired of all this “spygate” - hopefully we’re seeing the end of it.

Filed under: Formula 1 on December 6th, 2007 | 5 Comments »

Every now and then I stumble across a children’s book that has me sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bookshop, captivated and enthralled. I recently came across two that inspired such child-like responses. The first book is The Story of Ferdinand. A simple story about a Spanish bull who would rather sit and smell the flowers than be charging at a red cape in an arena. It was originally written in 1935, first published in 1936 and is truly timeless. The other book is a new publication of Puff the Magic Dragon. Having grown up on Peter, Paul and Mary with a head full of memories of being in the car listening to Leaving on a Jet Plane and Puff the Magic Dragon I was instantly overjoyed to find it and eager to share it with Jay. However what excited me most about this book was its illustrations. They are easily the most beautiful illustrations I have seen for a long time. French artist Eric Puybaret has created a story in pictures that is ethereal and delightful, bold colours softened by muted curves and emotionally expressive, cartoon-like eyes. And it came with a CD of a new recording of the song, which Jay loves. So does his mummy.

Filed under: literature on December 4th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’ve been having an interesting time of late with the love of my life. Nope, not the husband, my beloved Macbook. A few weeks ago, against K’s better judgement and under the influence of my Mac pusher (you know who you are), I installed the Leopard OS. Not wanting to bother with moving everything to an external drive, etc I just did an Archive and Install. For the first week everything was great. The only thing I had problems with was adding my hotmail account to Mail due to it not having a pop3, but soon enough there was a hack for it and I was able to, in a fashion manage my hotmail account as well. And then Tuesday happened. First of all it started with me getting locked out of Photoshop. Okay, I thought, reasonable explanation I’m sure. After a bit of web exploration and reading about permissions going haywire, my Mac started locking me out of stuff. I couldn’t change information in iTunes, even on music I had installed from a CD, I was unable to drop files into other another user’s dropbox and I couldn’t delete files or folders, when I created new folders in email it created them as read-only denying me any write access. So Bob and I got our thinking caps on and after some web research figured out it was the permissions. I ended up doing a couple of things - the first was a single user start up, basically requiring me to hack into the Linux code as the machine was starting up, giving my profile God of all Gods’ admin rights and forcing the machine to see me as a root user. This sort of worked but my machine was sooo slow now. I continued to find all kinds of information on line, none of it particularly promising and all a bit depressing. I reinstalled Photoshop CS3 but still locked out. So then I ran a disc utility verification only this ended up taking over 6 hours (it used to take a max of 5 minutes on Tiger), and so I force stopped it. Later that evening I did a disc utility verification from my Tiger install disc. It found literally hundreds of errors, as had running the disc utility from my Mac HD, but didn’t really repair any of them. Then I read that doing a disc utility verification and repair from the previous OS disc was not recommended. By this time, the OS was crazy slow and starting to just do weird crap. So I was like, damn it and did an Archive and Install back to Tiger. The system was operating at normal speed again but lots of other stuff was off - it required a re-install of all my other software that I had added (Windows for Mac, iWorks, etc). Finally this morning K spoke to one of his Mac tech guys at work who said the permissions errors are a problem with soft installs and so now I am on the final conclusion, well sort of. I now have to do a clean install (basically dump the new OS onto a clean drive). No probs I thought before getting home this evening, I’ll back up my stuff into my external and voila, by tomorrow morning I’ll be sorted. Except that my external hard drive was super full and I couldn’t dump my files, etc onto it. Aghhhhh. There’s no way I’m not saving all my recent music and docs first. As usual K came to my rescue when he got home, with the sweetest words ever, “I’ve ordered you another external and a 250 drive for your computer from my guys in Chicago. If the weather’s good they’ll be here tomorrow. You can pull the current drive from your Mac, put in the new one, install Leopard onto the new drive and you should be good to go. You won’t need to save anything because you’re going to just take out the old drive and keep it as an external back-up plus you’ll have another external hard drive so you can download your music to your heart’s content.“.

So, guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow evening, the evening of my 9th wedding anniversary? Oh yeah, unleashing the pussy…cat. Roar

Filed under: tech on December 4th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Most weekends pass by in a crazy two days of cleaning and laundry and food shopping and doing all those things that I never seem to have time to do during the week. But once in a while a weekend throws itself up that allows me to get all the cleaning, laundry and food shopping done and feeling like I’ve actually had some quality downtime. American boy’s been working on the cars all weekend leaving me time to just get on and be productive. Today I was given a lie-in, (I did get up at 6 am yesterday with Jay so felt totally justified in burrowing further under the duvet when a little boy, fully dressed in army fatigues complete with K’s old cap, entered our bedroom at 7 this morning demanding orange juice and passage downstairs), later woken up with a cup of tea and a bacon sarnie. Jay and I finally ventured out mid morning to do a little bit of Christmas shopping. I have done none of it yet; usually I love Christmas shopping, well any shopping, but quite frankly this year the thought of facing all those people and crowds - bleurgh. I’m becoming rather anti-social in my old age. Anyway I did manage to secure a few items and the little boy sweet-talked himself into new Spiderman jammies and underwear. I always was a sucker where clothes are concerned - needless to say it pleases me no end that Jay already picks out colour coordinating outfits! Mid afternoon Jay collapsed in front of the Italian Job and I started a lamb and pear tagine before we decided that it was really about time to put up some Christmas decorations; so out came the nutcracker, the crib from Rome when my mum and Andrew went with Luc and the Clayesmore Prep School choir to sing before Pope JP II in 1990, the two German smoking men from Lechlade, my Papa Christmas Toby Jug that G and G gave me when I was a little girl - so many memories encapsulated in festive trinkets and seasonal nick-knacks. By this time it was full on raining outside and any good intention I’d had of raking up the leaves was slowly going to pot until K said it wasn’t actually that cold, just raining. And so I thought, well, mad dogs and englishman and all. Pulling on my Hunters and Barbour rainhat I kitted out Jay in his Aigles en bleu marine and raincoat and the pair of us tromped outside, me to rake up soggy leaves, Jay to ride his new big-boy bike. Only Jay soon discovered that because of the mass pile up of leaves in the curb, a small waterway had emerged, creating the perfect splashing-wading-getting soaked environment. So as I was furiously raking, Jay was getting wetter and wetter and with each new body part would come and show me…”look, mummy, I’ve got water in my wellies…mummy, mummy, my trackie bums are all wet…mummy, I’ve got water up my sleeve…“. By the time we came in he was totally soaked, ruddy cheeked and blissfully happy. He went straight into a bath and we then thoroughly enjoyed our lamb tagine and cous-cous, followed by raspberry sorbet. American boy and I are now just sitting at the dining room table, having enjoyed an excellent bottle of red with our tagine and then cracking open a very nah-it’s-okay, (it’ll be good for bolognaise) bottle of red, discarding it and are now on our second glass of limoncello, checking out our macbook and iphone, listening to Dolly Parton’s Little Sparrow, Conjure One and Colbie Caillet’s Coco and counting down the days until we’ll be in England for Christmas.
I know, for me, it can’t come soon enough.

Filed under: indiana, popculture, englishness, famille et amis on December 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »

I know it’s not yet Christmas but we are at the start of the festive season - Bob did one for Amberly, he and I and I found it one of the most hysterical things I’ve seen for a while. I just couldn’t resist, so enjoy!
Dancing elves (click on the link)

Filed under: famille et amis on November 26th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’m standing at the stove, stirring a risotto to all its luscious creaminess with one hand and blogging with the other - probably not the best thing to do but c’est la vie, or more appropriately, c’est ma vie. Anyway I’m standing here, stirring and blogging and thinking about trains. I rather like trains. Not in that “there goes a 22FPN with a Vitracom engine mount and 63 ballister hardrive” trainspotting kind of way, more in a “how lovely, an hour and a half to Winchester. Just in time to polish off this latest bosom-heaving, far more sex than you’d think Harlequin novel Machievelli’s The Prince” kind of way. Most of the trains I see here in America are a bit boring - ruddy great freight trains that go on for miles, leaving plenty of time to dig out that novel interesting historical writing as you’re waiting at the crossing. And then today I was on my way to pick up the boy to take him to school and got unusually stopped (in my over-zealous frequenting of train tracks I now have the train timetable quite firmly committed to memory) by a train at the racquet club crossing. At first I was rather surprised because it seemed to be a passenger train and in the whole three years I’ve lived here I have never seen a passenger train. Folks were leaning out of windows, grinning and waving at the cars. Then I noticed that the train cars were silver with rather fancy red lettering on the side and that the carriages became boxes with animals and tent-like protrusions and a couple of small bobcat diggers. It was a circus train for the famous Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey on their way down to Alabama. It was a lovely sight. Rather reminded me of the time the gypsy circus came to Wiesloch and set up shop in the field up from our flat. I never was so shocked to be out for my morning stroll up Zum Keitelberg and come face to face with a lion sharing my pavement and an elephant doing his morning ablutions. Talk about circus life.

P.S. Just found this on Wikipedia… “In 1996, Feld Entertainment, Inc. was created as the parent company of the circus, as well as a skating-themed sister show, Disney on Ice. The company also produces several large-scale Broadway and Las Vegas productions.

RBBX 41307 after refurbishment — Tampa, Florida.
Currently, the circus maintains two train-based shows, the Blue Tour and the Red Tour, as well as the truck-based Gold Tour. Each train stretches a mile in length. The Blue and Red Tours present a full three-ring production for two years each (taking the month of December off), visiting alternating major cities each year. Each train presents a different “edition” of the show, using a numbering scheme that dates back to circus origins in 1871. The Blue Tour presents the even-numbered editions (beginning each even-numbered year), and the Red Tour presents the odd-numbered editions (beginning each odd-numbered year). The Gold Tour presents a scaled-back, single-ring version of the show, designed to serve smaller markets deemed incapable of supporting the three-ring versions.“

Filed under: indiana, global englishness, living the dream on November 26th, 2007 | No Comments »

So who’d have thought that the winter hiatus would be this exciting? At this point it seems like all of the big three are as bad as each other. What happened to healthy, harmless competition? Now we’re just playing schoolboy cheats. Between Ferrari and McLaren (and now Renault) the tit for tat is escalating to unnecessary proportions. I sincerely hope that before the 2008 season starts most of this will be behind us; sadly though I think this may be the evolving persona of Formula 1.

Filed under: Formula 1 on November 23rd, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Some days are just as you would want them. It’s unbelievably fresh outside, I think it’s desperate to snow but not quite managing it. The house is warm and toasty and a bit later on we’ll stick some logs in the fire and get that blazing. The turkey, a la Jamie, is roasting in the oven and the rest of the food, (small beef joint, roasted root veggies with olive oil and rosemary, shredded brussels with bacon, steamed green beans with lemon juice, mashed potato, apple pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice fairy cakes) are prepped and waiting to join the happy bird. Jay has received his Christmas present from Grandma and Grandpa, who arrived Tuesday night to be with us, and spent twenty minutes in the icy chill racing up and down the pavement on his new “big boy” bicycle. I’m about to crack open a bottle of champagne, I do after all have a lot to be thankful for; most of all that I have a lovely and healthy family, plentiful food on my table every day, a beautiful house and God’s grace.

Filed under: indiana, famille et amis on November 22nd, 2007 | No Comments »

British military style…

Filed under: englishness on November 9th, 2007 | No Comments »

Will it never end?

Renault in the doghouse too?

It’s just getting farcical and really, a little bit silly. Come on boys, just drop it and move on alright?

Filed under: Formula 1 on November 8th, 2007 | No Comments »

A bit late but…Happy Halloween! Once again impressing even myself with the culinary skills, (wholewheat cookies and pumpkin fairy cakes with orange buttercream icing). Jay spent the day as a ghost at school and then decided he’d had enough of that and wanted to be something else for trick or treating. With my usual last minute crap-what-can-I throw-together panic Jay chose to be a knight. When I advised him he needed a cloak I then had to spend fifteen minutes justifying the reason by showing him photos of crusaders on the internet and assuring him that knights wore cloaks to hide their weapons from their enemies. Or maybe it was telling him that if he didn’t wear a proper costume people wouldn’t give him any candy…the power of sugar.

Filed under: indiana, culinery delights on November 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »

Looking out of our office window, Amberly, Bob (who had stopped by for a little Friday afternoon chat) and I watched as black smoke billowed into the sky, creating a stark contrast to the clear, otherwise cloudless blue. Here are some pictures of the fire at the Fort Wayne Children’s zoo…

Filed under: indiana, breaking news on November 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »

Just sometimes, I am desparate for Friday to arrive. Some weeks have me questioning my sanity and desire to do and have it all. Working full-time and running a house full-time and being a mummy full-time has left me exhausted this week. I’m desparate to write but have neither the time nor the energy. My fridge is full of luridly-decorated Halloween cookies and fairy cakes smothered in lashings of pale orange buttercream icing and all I want is a rocket salad with sweet, pop-in-the-mouth cherry tomatos and a few shavings of hard, nutty parmigiana, drizzled with sweet balsamic vinegar. There’s overdue ironing, washing, dusting and cleaning, leaves to rake, bulbs to plant and windows to fix; paperwork’s in a pile on top of the files and there’s three boxes that need to go to the post office; tomorrow is food shopping day and I promised Jay I’d take him swimming; I’m late on birthday cards and owe emails, the grass needs cutting and the dining room table looks like a bomb’s hit it. My unwritten novel never gets further than a few lines as I fall asleep writing it in my head. The online application I’m recommending to my students won’t save my bloody recordings for podcasts and I have a workshop and presentation that require a lot more prepping than I’ve done so far and I’ve just seen the Audi pull into the garage which means I should have a supper ready that I have no inclination to either cook or eat.
I’m going to open a bottle a wine…

Filed under: famille et amis on October 26th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’ve lots to comment on the final Grand Prix of the season, (it’s just started and although I’m not watching it, I am listening as I manically clean the house due us being gone all day yesterday). So, until I have time enough to comment fully on the finale of what has been a fascinating and thrilling F1 year, here’s a little light entertainment from some Norwegian soldiers, sent to me from Jerry. Needless to say the folks posting it on YouTube obviously don’t know their own country’s uniforms or military vehicles and it keeps getting passed off as American soliders, although granted I thought they were Finns, but at least I narrowed it down to Scandinavia! And then I found this one and the flag rather gave it away. World geography anyone? As music and performing were pretty much Keith’s army career, (sorry, Apache mechanic? And exactly how long did you do that before joining the US Solider Show, darling?), we thoroughly enjoyed it. I could totally have seen Shurd and Keith putting together something like this!

kosovomusicvideo.wmv

Filed under: popculture, media on October 21st, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Rome Reborn 1.0 Pictures

One of my major passions, other than geeky technology, Formula 1, Italy and clothes, is the ancient world, particularly ancient Greece and Rome. My ultimate job, (other than being a writer, a spy for MI5 or MI6 or working for the NATO Defense College in Rome), is to work at the British Museum, spending my days poring over tiny bits of pottery, testing the warped bronze shields and polishing jagged spears, translating texts and flicking my toga over my shoulder when it gets in the way…so you can imagine my barely contained excitement when I discovered that thanks to the marvel of technology ancient Rome has been digitally recreated as an “ancient virtual city”. The project is based out of the University of Virginia whose project directors are working with the Politecnico di Milano. It’s kind of like looking at a Second Life Rome. Fantastically cool.

Rome Reborn

Article on Rome Reborn: an ancient virtual city (The Times)

Article on Rome Reborn (Newsweek)

Filed under: tech, living the dream, shamelessly stolen on October 11th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Because I’m totally not above duplication and shamlessly stealing, expecially seeing as it’s my own work, I have merely copied this post from my EDUC.205 blog…

I know I didn’t blog last week but I have a great excuse, no really I do. And it’s totally technology related. It was my brother’s wedding last week so I hightailed it back to England for four days to watch my baby bro marry his girlfriend of ten years. As always, even when “off-duty” and travelling I had my Mac firmly clutched in my hands. Due to inclement weather at Chicago I was delayed at Fort Wayne airport for four hours, (oh yes, that is so totally the place to be delayed I can tell you), so I made full use of their free wireless, sorting out the usual Blackboard nightmares and the like. Finally I was on the plane to Chicago and then to London. Although I knew I was about to face twenty-four hours sans internet - my mum’s cottage is in the depths of the English countryside. She doesn’t even have a landline or dial-up internet let alone wireless internet. But the following day I was driving to the beautiful hotel for the wedding. Surely there would be wireless, or at least wired internet there. It is after all a known getaway for the rich and famous city folk in need of a “weekend in the country, dahling”. We get to the hotel, a gorgeous manor house in the Cotswolds only to discover that I barely have mobile phone reception and although there is one little computer discretely tucked away in a corner the hotel is computer and internet free. I can feel the slight panic arise whenever I am forced to be without internet and access to the world beyond my immediate but then I remember what I’ve been telling you all about how we shouldn’t and can’t rely on technology and so for the first time in a VERY long time I enjoy four days without checking email, without blogging, without updating my podcasts or reading my RSS subscriptions, without having any kind of connection to my laptop. And you know what? It was truly and utterly blissful.
Oh, and the wedding wasn’t bad either.

Filed under: englishness, travel, tech, shamelessly stolen on October 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’ll post all about it soon and I’ve still got to Photoshop the good photos to make them really good but figured I’d get a bunch of them up as soon as possible. Needless to say it was the most loveliest wedding I’ve ever been to, although Soph’s in Vegas was pretty darn cool too.
Love and kisses to Luc and Claire, you make a fabulous couple.

Filed under: englishness, famille et amis on October 5th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’m waiting at Fort Wayne International (so called for the one cargo flight a week to Toronto I believe or was that because of the one time they had a cargo flight to Toronto, I can never remember) airport, making full use of the free wireless. Even though I said I was going to forget about Blackboard and work I couldn’t stop myself and spent forty minutes checking work email. I’m heading back to England for four days (I know, I know, I blanche every time I think of the cost for so little time) for my brother’s wedding. And I’m travelling sans enfant. While I’ve had several business trips where I travel without the bambino I’ve not had a trip back to England without him since he was born. It is both a little strange, like I’ve forgotten something, and oddly exhilerating, like I’m free and untangled. Despite my huge sac of a handbag I feel strangely light, travelling as I used to travel way back when - free and single (not so much of the young anymore) and ready to jump on a plane to anywhere. And while I’m sad that the little pickle can’t come back with me this time I’m looking forward to attending my brother’s wedding as a grown-up, being able to drink without worrying, knowing I can sneak off and have a few ciggies should the alcohol really kick in, knowing that my evening won’t end at 9 o’clock because someone is overly tired and being a small monster. I’m looking forward to chatting with my family and friends without having to interrupt every conversation in mid sentence with the words “hang on a minute” or “I’ll be back in a sec.” My hold bag is unusually light - my clothes folded into obscurity, even the two pairs of shoes I’ve packed strangely bereft without being stuffed full of tiny socks or matchbox cars. I have no teddy bear trailing out of handbag, no My or Sophie lamb to be dropped and picked up, repeatedly. I have four days of a holiday without my child. It is odd.

Hmmn, I’ve just realised my flight is delayed. It’s twenty five past three and the plane was due to depart at 3:30. The gal over the loudspeaker has just tried to tell me all the passenger connections will be fine - bugger, I knew I should have flown with the tried and tested American and not United…I think I’ll finish the FIA court transcripts seeing as I’m stuck at the world’s most exciting airport ever…help me…

Filed under: travel, global englishness on September 25th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I’m horrified to see that a week has gone by and I’ve not so much as glanced at my blog. Life has been too damn busy. I think we’re finally getting straight with all the Blackboard frightfulness and I’m hoping that the system will start to operate as it should with our new integrated snapshot process and LDAP authentication piece. I daren’t say too much in case I jinx the whole darn system and am back to continuing my very close telephone relationship with Tim in ASP Tech Support!

I’ve also been busy updating my technology blog for the Technology in Education class that Bob and I are teaching this semester. It’s essentially a hybrid class so we have a few on-ground meetings but the majority of the teaching takes place online. It’s really fun actually and our students are great, actively participating in the discussion forums and updating their own technology blogs every week. Their first project is coming up this weekend - creating a video using YouTube and then developing a lesson plan incorporating some kind of online technology, whether it’s YouTube or wikis or simply using the internet as a resource or even, for the braver among them, using a virtual environment such as Second Life. I think for Bob and I it’s been great to see what our Macbooks can really do. Multimedia is sooo easy with a Mac it’s ridiculous. I think we should ban all Windows OS and everyone in the world be forced to use a Mac.

There seem to have been a few interesting things going on locally lately as well. Well, state locally anyway. Indiana opened its first ethanol plant in Portland. POET is the company that owns/operates the plant and what’s exciting for me is to see that they are the ones supplying the fuel for the Indycar series. I would love for Formula 1 to start looking at biofuels and I know Honda are making inroads in that direction, but I have the feeling it’ll be quite some time before F1 goes green where the juice is concerned, (particularly if Bernie has his way and the Middle East becomes more prevalent in hosting F1 races). I think it’s brilliant that Indiana has gone ahead with such a plant. I already have a great source of biodiesel here in Fort Wayne, although there is only the one station to buy biodiesel at, and it’s encouraging to know that there is a movement towards lessening our dependance on foreign oil and making better use of cleaner, greener alternatives to fill all those huge Fort trucks they make down the road! Snippet from POET representative on the plant’s capacity.

And of course over at McLaren, the drama continues…

The FIA released the hearing transcripts today - while I’m only on about page 40 of the 115 from last Thursday’s session it makes for some very fascinating and quite enlightening reading (Brian - you should peruse it - great stuff!)
And the revised 2008 schedule was released from the FIA yesterday, without a USA date. Damn it. There is absolutely no point in my living in Indiana anymore.

Filed under: indiana, Formula 1, tech on September 19th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Exercise caution with future lunchtime drinking sessions on birthdays…
Give Jay extra hugs for choosing carrot cake for my birthday cake…
Special loving for husband for giving me the best present ever; well except for my delicious Macbook - wow, husband is really excelling with presents of late…

Filed under: famille et amis on September 13th, 2007 | No Comments »

I was having an excellent birthday but this is now officially a very bad birthday - what the fuck are the FIA thinking? I cannot believe that they have stripped McLaren of all of their championship points. There has to be more going there than what we’ve been told. Ferrari and their bloody golden child status - they can’t do anything wrong. Utterly ridiculous. I am crushed for Fernando and Lewis Hamilton, who, at least I guess, get to keep their points but honestly…they’d better start revealing some of the evidence because quite frankly at the moment the FIA and Ferrari, (because let’s face it they’re the ones creating the fuss), seem to be hell bent on destroying McLaren’s reputation.

McLaren fined and stripped of constructor’s points
McLaren Press Statement
FIA Statement

Filed under: Formula 1 on September 13th, 2007 | 3 Comments »

I’m not good with birthdays. My ideal birthday would be to slink away on my own to my favourite city in the world and drown myself in good food, champagne and shopping. And so in good gloomy birthday form I decided to post the lyrics to a Switchfoot song that has been playing through my head non-stop for the last few days and seems suitably fitting for another year’s passing…

02-this-is-your-life.mp3 (click to play)

Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead
Yesterday is a promise that you’ve broken
Don’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes
This is your life and today is all you’ve got now
Yeah, and today is all you’ll ever have
Don’t close your eyes
Don’t close your eyes

This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

Yesterday is a kid in the corner
Yesterday is dead and over

This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

Don’t close your eyes
Don’t close your eyes
Don’t close your eyes
Don’t close your eyes

This is your life are you who you want to be
This is your life are you who you want to be

This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

And you had everything to lose

Filed under: englishness on September 12th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

I had my first “Professor” yesterday which was kind of wierd and funny and cool all at the same time. Needless to say I did not correct the student and tell them that technically, as I did not hold a PhD I was not a professor and that using my first name was just fine. Instead I revelled in it and laughed because it reminded me of when I was back in fifth form and involved in the play “The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew” -(ahh, yes, the very same play that I met a certain KLM Dutch pilot and descended into schoolgirl debauchery) - and in it I played a wizard who assumed a disguise as a “Professor Innocent”. It was actually in the script as Professor Innocent. Truly I was perfect for the role.

I’m now back in Fort Wayne, the heat and excitement of Las Vegas a mere flicker away. It was really nice to get home though: Blackboard was going crazy in my absence, (though major kudos to Patrick who held down the fort) and my brain is now filled with Photoshop goodness and delight. I spent yesterday evening grading tests and today catching up and troubleshooting and I’m hoping to God that by the end of the week some semblance of order starts to take place within the realm of Blackboard. Of course then, I’ll only have a week before hightailing back to Europe for Nosher’s wedding. I am super excited about heading back for that even if I don’t quite have my outfit complete yet.

So many things to blog about but honestly, I’m a little tech weary. I can feel autumn setting in and I’m desparately trying to fend off the looming blackness that follows closely behind the first crunchy leaves as they flutter to the ground. Damn SAD, why do I have to have Italian blood in my veins - the whole requiring sunshine 365 days a year is a bit hard in northern Indiana.

Filed under: englishness on September 11th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Things are really spicing up in the McLaren scandal; it seems now that the drivers may be knowing more than they’ve let on.

Meanwhile back at the fort…actually I’m in the desert and loving it. I didn’t realise how much I missed the soaring temperatures, no bugs and the perma sunshine on my bones. Las Vegas is as glitzy and tacky and fabulous as ever. The amount of building that has gone up, and down, since I was last here three years ago is incredible. It must easily rival Dubai on its manic building schedule.

Apparently I’ve got to go - early sessions at the conference and a cab ride ensues. Photos and more drivel later….

Filed under: Formula 1, travel, tech on September 7th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Technically the first day of school was last Monday but quite honestly, last week was the worst week to be had since I started working at the uni. That whole stress-free, easy-going environment I love so much? Not so stress-free anymore. And what’s it due to? Why technology of course! Wretched technology or to be more specific wretched Blackboard. (Beside the fact that I have just not had the time to blog, the thought of coming home and spending more time shackled to a computer has been very unappealing, hence the lack of writing on my part for the last week). We spent a loooong time this summer working on an integration piece between our management system and Blackboard in an effort to automate a lot of the work I was doing manually. Theoretically this should have been the easiest start of semester ever. Instead it has been fraught with nothing but issues, one thing after another. And not just little issues that I can fix easily but horrible, sucky issues that require me spending much time on the phone with Blackboard Tech Support. I can only say thank God that I have someone at college who knows what he’s doing when it comes to scripting the extract files because I know without that we’d really be up the creek. I spent all weekend troubleshooting, on a holiday weekend as well and can only say I am hugely thankful that tomorrow morning I get on a plane to join Bob and Amberly in Las Vegas for the Photoshop World conference and don’t have to show my face in front of all the professors relying on Blackboard to work seemlessly. Naturally stuff still is nowhere near seamless…
On a far more positive note Jay started his proper school this week. And loved it. He’d been asking when he was going to Canterbury for the past four weeks so was most ready. Of course now he’s hopelessly disappointed that he doesn’t get to go all the time and has to split his school day between Canterbury and his daycare. Last Monday night we had a parents’ orientation which Keith and I went to. It was a bit of a shock, not in the school or anything. I went to private school, I know exactly how it works. It just made Keith and I feel super grown-up and not necessarily in a good way, more in a crap-we’d-better-start-being-a-bit-more-responsible kind of way. It was highly amusing though watching everyone. My grandpa always said that the mummies at Clayesmore, Canford, St.Swithun’s, etc were cloned, (back in the days of the 80s Sloane and striped shirts, pearls and headbands) and Monday night proved that things have not changed. Only this was the American Gap uniform of fitted ts and chinos. Needless to say I kept my end up and had on a trendy Next dress with my Ken Cole six inch heels. With my icy English hauteur (all generated through looks, I’m not big on the whole talking thing if I don’t need to) I’m sure I’ve managed to earn an appropriate label.
Jay’s teacher is wonderful, amazingly energetic and clearly loves what she does. He’s is a nice small class, ten pupils - naturally he already knows all the girls’ names but couldn’t quite tell me all of the boys in his class. Although I blanche when I think about the cost I know already it is totally worth it. The one thing I am eternally grateful to my parents is for my education. It has enabled me throughout life, both intelectually and in the skills it provided socially and otherwise, to succeed and tackle any situation that comes up. I know that all I can do is equip Jay with the right tools and the rest, as they say, is up to him.
Congratulations to Dan and Judith, who got married in Vegas over the weekend. I am so sorry I couldn’t be there to share in your wonderful time but Keith said he had a blast.
And finally…tomorrow.Me.Plane.Vegas. Oh yeah…

Filed under: englishness, famille et amis, travel, tech on September 3rd, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Fisi, you’re losing me baby…

Results for Qualifying, Turkish Grand Prix

Filed under: Formula 1 on August 25th, 2007 | No Comments »

I was sitting on the top step of my front porch at about 10 o’clock last night. The day had cooled to a pleasant balmy temperature and the wind weaved its way through the trees, playing catch with their leaves and teasing the branches. The cicadas were going nuts, their cacophany rising to a crescendo of abnormally large insect proportions to still, subito; a break in the movement while they waxed their strings and changed out their reeds, the maestro mopping his brow before taking up his baton and moving onto the next libretto. Amongst the pulsating rubbing of their legs was a noise I’ve not heard for several months, the sound of a woodpecker. Two woodpeckers actually, their tap, tap, tapping on the oak trees a ferociously fast conversation to which I had the fortune to be privy to. The relentless back and forth of their staccato duet stood out clearly, a plesant escape from the wild chattering of the cicadas. I thought of my dad and Avril and how I wished they were there, sitting on the steps with me, drinking limoncello, talking about nothing in particular and listening to the late night concert of the birds.

Filed under: indiana on August 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

I have a secret affliction. I adore country music. I’m very selective in my choices but I do have a serious weakness for a guy with a six-pack , a pair of blue jeans and a cowboy hat, especially one who sings with a sexy Southern drawl.

My current country music crush is Brad Paisley. Mainly because his lyrics are all so tongue in cheek. I like a man who can laugh at himself and particularly one who can laugh at the ridiculous environments created by society. As a Mac geek and soon-to-be Second Life addict I love this song, the words make me smile every time.

Celebrity and Alcohol are another two of his songs that make me chuckle. He writes such great singalong songs and his affinity for William Shatner and Jason Alexander only increases the enamouration (yes, I do know it’s not a word.).
I also have a thing about Billy Currington’s voice. Sure he’s got the ab thing down but it’s his voice that does it for me. It’s like someone’s taken molten chocolate, cooled and hardened it and then put it through a grater. Tell me this man doesn’t have a sexy voice…

Or Dierks Bentley, (isn’t that a great name, I’m sure it’s made up) with his Lot a Leavin’ Left To Do or What Was I Thinkin’ “Her daddy had a heart like a 9lb hammer, Think he even did a little time in the slammer.” Impressive rhyming scheme there, heh?
And then of course there’s Keith Urban, my country singer of choice as I cross the Indiana / Kentucky state line on the way down to Alabama. Nothing beats driving through the rolling greenery of beautiful Kentucky listening to Who Wouldn’t Want to Be Me. His voice just begs for the windows to be open, the sun to shine and worries to fall out of the windows. He’s got the whole Australian cowboy thing going on. I have to say though some of his songs are positively depressing while others are full of promise and quite jolly.

Of course all of this is a far leap from the country music I grew up on - Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Don Williams, Roger Whittaker (although he could be considered more folk than country). NPR had a programme on several months ago about Kenya’s obsession with country music, yep you did read that right, Kenya. Apparently it’s a national pastime. My uncle spent a lot of time in Africa, Zimbabwe back when in was Rhodesia, married (and subsequently divorced) a Zimbabwean research scientist. Anyway it was he who used to record tapes of Don Williams for my mum who would then play them repeatedly until even now when I hear Don Williams I can sing every word to most of his songs. His songs were so heartfelt and so country, cowboy stuff through and through. I still remember the Christmas, Father Christmas put Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits in my stocking. I must have been all of about six, waking everyone up to Dolly repeatedly singing 9 to 5 and Two Doors Down. During our 12 hours in the car (six there and six back) on the way to the conference in Madison, WI Bob asked me what music makes me happy. Of course Nek is always at the top of my list but I have to say that a good country song makes me smile and always lightens the load.
Coincindently the second song I ever heard Keith sing (Johnny B Goode was the first - and yes, defintely think of the Top Gun Balls of Fire scene: men in uniform who can actually sing…oh yeah baby), was country great Garth Brook’s I Got Friends in Low Places.
As Trace Atkins sings Ladies, this one anyway Love Country Boys…

Filed under: popculture on August 16th, 2007 | No Comments »

Really, it’s true, of course the rich bit comes into it but then power and money tend to be intertwined. Anyway how totally lush is the new iMac? Even lusher with Leopard. When it eventually comes out. Come on Mac, you’ve been tantilising me for months with your expected gloriousness and I’m ready for Time Machine baby.

Filed under: tech on August 15th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Filed under: writing on August 14th, 2007 | No Comments »

Now I love the Royal family. They provide an endless source of amusement. Seriously though I would be among the first to admit that while I’m not exactly sure as to why England still requires a monarchy the fact of the matter is we have one and so as a good English subject I respect the Queen enormously, simply managaing her crazy family is enough to earn a few medals. Anyway my boss sent this to me which had me in hysterics. The princes are my favourite members of the Royal family and I like Harry in particular. He’s well on his way to political uncorrectness and for that you gotta love him.

Filed under: englishness on August 9th, 2007 | No Comments »

Bob and I are up in Madison, WI for a three day conference on Distance Education and Technology. We drove up yesterday and went through all the registration frou-frou in the afternoon before deciding that our evening was going to be best spent ensconced in a most quaint cinema watching the third installment of Jason Bourne…The Bourne Ultimatium. As with the first two, of which I am a huge fan, this one was fantastic. As Bob noted it’s just one long, non-stop car chase that spans New York, London, Turin, Paris and Morocco. You get a couple of moments respite and to catch your breath when Jason pauses for reflection or to wash off the blood and then it’s back in the car (VW or Audi - I always knew Jason Bourne had his head screwed on), and resume the run again. Oh and I did learn a very cool thing - Jason Bourne has the same birthday as me, September 13th. I now feel very cool. So, definitely recommend the film, equally as exciting and thrilling as the first.
Madison itself is quite delightful. It’s very quaint and surprisingly clean, shiny, white buildings and swept sidewalks. I noticed the same with DC. I’ve decided it must be the fact it’s the state capital. The lake is of course beautiful; have I mentioned how much I love the water? Oh, only sixty billion times before? I have a nice little walk around the capitol building from the conference centre to my hotel. The conference centre is quite lovely. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright it’s right on the waterfront and rather fetching. A fun place to spend three days in seminars and lectures. Today I’m in a full day workshop on Second Life. Yep, you heard me. I get to find out how to use the virtual environment for education. Now that’s technology in education.

Filed under: popculture, tech on August 8th, 2007 | 3 Comments »

What the heck is happening at the Hungarian Grand Prix? Alonso demoted five places from pole and McLaren due to lose any championship points they may earn during tomorrow’s race? I wonder if Alonso had gone to bed when the FIA stewards made the announcement close to midnight; either he’s in for a bad night’s sleep or he’s going to be well pissed when he wakes up tomorrow and finds out. I wonder what time a driver does go to bed before a race…oh right, missing the point. Read the latest over at grandprix.com.

http://www.grandprix.com/race/r779q1report.html

If Bernie wanted some publicity for F1, then he’s certainly got it.

Filed under: Formula 1 on August 4th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Saturday we took a break from all the DIY that is going on in our house that we’re pretending not to be doing because it doesn’t need it (see previous post) and drove for two hours to the next state and spent the day at the Dayton Air Show. It was a beautiful day and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Very sadly however, half way through the afternoon one of the small bi-planes doing stunt formations had problems doing a downward spiral and never pulled out, crashing onto the tarmac. The pilot died on the way to the hospital and because the crash site had to be invesitgated, they couldn’t fly any more planes that day. One of those tragedies you hope never to see at an event like that. Our hearts went out to his family, apparently the pilot had a very young son.
Earlier on that morning we had watched one of the most incredible displays of flight formation by the Esquadrilha da Fumaça or “Smoke Squadron”, a squadron from the Brazilian Air Force not dissimiliar to the Red Arrows. Watching them fly was truly unbelievable. They had the tightest formations I’ve ever seen, just amazing. They had some fabulous aircraft including an Antonov, B2 Stealth bomber and a F117A NightHawk. There was also the obligatory C130 and BlackHawk helicopter. The AH-64 Apache naturally won loads of kudos with Keith and Jay and cracked me up because the pilot and crew chiefs seemed to do nothing but pose all over the helicopter and all the photos I have of Keith from his Apache crew chief days he is suitably draped over said metal bird. The weather was glorious and we had beautiful sunshine all day, resulting in much ice-cream and beer. It was nice to be in the familiar environment of the military. Surprisingly we still miss it.

Filed under: indiana on July 31st, 2007 | No Comments »

Keith and I bought our house mainly because it needed nothing doing to it. One of my prerequisites of moving to the mid-west was that we would have an old house. Keith really dislikes old houses and would give anything to be living in a modern box like we had in Phoenix. His deal was we could have an old house so long as it needed nothing doing. So anyway, we bought this house which had been lovingly cared for and upkept brilliantly by the previous owners. We did a few cosmetic adjustments before we moved in such as painting the bedrooms but other than that nothing. Until about a year and a half ago and we decided to paint the entirety of the basement’s very 70s wood panelling because it felt like a cave down there. Then we removed the wallpaper from the to half of the dining room and painted it. Next came the kitchen with a fresh coat of paint. Then we thought we’d test out the dining room floors and ripped up the carpet to discover beautiful oak floorboards. Then we ripped up the carpet in the sitting room and the tv/reading room. Only the tv room was a later addition and so we had to lay floorboards in there. Then we stripped the paint on the staircase because we figured if the flooring was in such good nick then maybe the wood underneath the paint was too. And we were right. Next came stripping the paint off the downstairs window frames and doors, repainting the front and back porch and the stairs from the French doors into the garden, ripping up the carpet in the hall landing upstairs, retiling the upstairs bathroom and now replacing the old sink vanity with a more era-friendly pedestal sink and laying new floor tiles. This is no longer a house that was bought because it needed nothing done - now it is a project.

Filed under: home renovation on July 31st, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Jay’s favourite books are those by Richard Scarry, read dutifully by Keith or I every night along with our forced choice of something not by Lowly Worm’s creator. Sometime ago whilst reading What Do People Do All Day, I asked Jay what Mummy and Papa do for their work…

Me: “What does Papa do?”
J: “He fixes things and plays the guitar.”
Me: “And what does Mummy do?”
J: “Reads books and computers and cleans.”

Being that Keith’s actually a keyboard and piano player he was a bit devestated about the guitar bit but we put it down to the fact that Jay and Keith had recently been having guitar jamm sessions. As for me…he’s got me sussed.

Filed under: literature, famille et amis on July 30th, 2007 | No Comments »

Me: “Ooo, it’s Doctor Who tomorrow night. Looks like a good one. The Daleks are back.”
K: “I thought he killed them off in the last season.”
Me: “Obviously not. Wouldn’t like to meet them on a dark night. The Doctor on the other hand…”
K: (ignoring my suggestive noises about the Doctor). I think people have the Daleks wrong.”
Me: “In what way?”
K: “They’re like the terrorists.”
Me: “Huh?”
K: “I think they’re very misunderstood. I mean they’re just trying to take over the world, kill those who don’t believe what they believe and purge the human race from any non-Dalek kind.”
Me: “Okaaaay. Good job I know when you’re being sarcastic.”
K: “Me? Sarcastic?”

There was an excellent interview on NPR the other day with the Iraqi ambassador to the US, Samir al-Sumaidaie. He makes some excellent points - essentially that living under Saddam was crap and it was super that the US got rid of him because the guy was a major bastard, having the Americans there isn’t great because who wants “intervention” from outside telling you what to do in your own country but if the US were to simply pull out and leave, there would be an even bigger mess, if possible, than what exists right now. As usual too much politics and not enough action and decisions.
Iraqi Diplomat Says U.S. Must Clean Up Mess in Iraq
Listen

Filed under: popculture, media on July 27th, 2007 | No Comments »

It seems that the proof needed to show that McLaren had indeed benefitted from any leaked material didn’t show and the FIA ruled today that no penalty should be imposed, although they are on “probation”, if future evidence presents itself they will be disqualified from the Constructor’s competition. While the council didn’t disagree with the fact that Coughlin had possesed the leaked information from Ferrari there was little evidence to suggest that it had materialised its way into the engineering of the McLaren car(s). Despite them saying it didn’t affect them I’m sure that Hamilton and Alonso are breathing at least a little sigh of relief.

Grandprix.com
formula1.com
BBC Sport
The Times

Filed under: Formula 1 on July 26th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I know I’ve not mentioned anything of the scandal going on between McLaren and Ferrari and certains Mr. Stepney and Coughlan, mainly because it seems to twist and turn so much with every passing Grand Prix that I almost can’t keep up. There’s an emergency meeting of the World Motor Sport Council next week in Paris. McLaren’s up to answer FIA brought charges of fraudulent conduct. I guess ultimately it’ll come down to whether or not McLaren can prove that their car reflects no added value/benefit that may have been gleamed from any document leakage from Ferrari but really, who knows. If the allegations are as serious as they sound it could well mean the World Championship for McLaren, Alonso and Hamilton. But then I’d like to think that McLaren wouldn’t have been so utterly foolish as to use anything that may have been presented to them from a rival team and will be doing their utmost to provide evidence to prove this. Obviously the FIA have to provide a fair ruling and if McLaren are proved to have used leaky information when it comes to movable floors, then their punishment could be harsh.

* Title shamelessly stolen from one of my favourite books The Grand Prix Saboteurs, written by grandprix.com’s very own Joe Saward.

Filed under: Formula 1, literature on July 23rd, 2007 | 2 Comments »

I was thrilled the weather threw a spanner in the works yesterday at the European Grand Prix at Nurnberg. It made for a more exciting race than I’ve seen for a while. I mean, in all honesty the season’s been rather boring - Lewis the wunderkind, Felipe and Kimi and Alonso and…oh you mean there are more drivers in F1? Really? Because I hadn’t noticed as everyone else seems to be doing bloody dreadfully. Yesterday however put change to that, at least a little bit. Fisi and Heikki still did appalling, so much so that I’m temporarily ignoring them, although boys, just so you know, my heart still skips a beat when I see those R27 engines revving. Anyway, the race yesterday. Terrential rain brought the race to a stop after about 5 laps, having seen an farcical play of most of the cars slipping off the super slick road onto the gravel, most of them still on dry tyres, desparately trying to get back into the pits to change onto intermediates or wet. Wet weather always was Bridgestone’s downfall and yesterday proved no exception. Only this year of course, we didn’t get to see those cars running Michelins gain an advantage. Instead everyone suffered. When the race restarted 30 minutes later Markus Winkelhock, the last-minute Spyker driver brought in to replace the dismissed Christijan Albers, was leading. That’s how crazy the aquaplaning and water fallout was. Felipe Massa led for most of the race with Alonso claiming second place after Kimi retired due to a technical failure. The last few laps of the race was superb. It was fantastic to see some of Alonso’s old spirit return as he dueled it out with Felipe to claim victory for the McLaren team, overtaking him in a car to car touching scenario that resulted in a few choice words between the drivers en route to the podium (all that Latin temperament). Alonso drives like a demon in wet conditions and without Hamilton there to distract him, Alonso demonstrated exactly why he is the World Champion. The podium finishers ended up being Alonso, Massa taking second and then much to my delight, Mark Webber taking third place for Red Bull. I was really chuffed for the likable Australian. As with his teammate, DC, you rather get the feeling that these guys have been doing F1 for so long, (both in their 30s they’re on the more ‘ancienne’ side in comparison to drivers such as Hamilton, Rosberg and Alonso), that a race finish such as Sunday’s is more than well deserved.
Overall it was a refreshing change to be able to sit on the edge of my seat urging Alonso on, appreciating once more the excitement of Formula 1.

Oh and then I came across this. Whichever ad exec over at Merc thought of it…fantastic. The boys looked like they had a great time shooting it. Oh, and for those of you new to F1, the guy at the end…Mika Häkkinen

Filed under: Formula 1 on July 23rd, 2007 | 2 Comments »

In the car after picking Jay up from school today…

“Mummy, can we listen to ‘Stacy’s Mom Has Got It Going On‘ on your iPod?”

Filed under: popculture, famille et amis on July 20th, 2007 | No Comments »

Having noted that once again it’s Ferrari, McLaren and BMW’s Nick Heidfeld that are ruling the roost with practice times today at the Nurburgring, I decided to totally drench myself in the top three and bought this month’s copy of F1 Racing. The magazine featured pieces, articles or interviews with every single driver. It made for some great reading although as always it is the Iceman that has me in hysterics, coffee out my nose once again as I struggle to maintain that European cool that is fast disintegrating the longer I live here. The article on Kimi was a countdown of his most expressive utterances, pretty darn eloquent is our Finn I can tell you, such as his response to being asked who was on the phone after his first Ferrari win…“I think it was Michael but the line went dead.” Uh-huh. Or his retelling of a crash in 2001 on the track at Mugello…“Had a big one in testing at Mugello last year (2001). Fast corner. Lost it. Hit a concrete wall. Felt a bit bad. They took me to hospital. It was okay.” The man of understatement is Mr. Raikonnen. Or my favourite when asked what Finns do in their spare time…“Well, in summer there’s fishing and screwing. And in winter…the fishing is bad.” Gotta love him.

So as usual my hopes and dreams resting on Renault are pretty much shattered. Both Heikki and Fisi drove times that put them way down in the pack so I can only hope that it’s no indication of what qualifying will be like tomorrow. I depress myself if I think about it too much so I’m off to look at shoes and then I’m taking Jay to see Transformers. Nothing like a bit of robot kick-arse action to forget one’s troubles. Besides I am so dying to see if Optimus Prime actually dies this time or whether Megatron will succeed in his dastardly Decepticon destruction over the autobots. Not just a pretty face.

Filed under: Formula 1 on July 20th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I came across this article the other day while doing my usual interent trawling. Shurd was Keith’s guitarist back in the USAREUR band and chorus, when we lived in Heidelberg. An unlikely soldier if ever there was one I still have clear recollections of Shurd’s voice saying, “But Sarge…” to Keith over some military protocol with which he didn’t agree. His wife, Jane is Zimbabwean/South African and I relished the times we spent together, talking about literature and how the hell we ended up married to soldiers, drinking mugs of english tea and smoking flavoured tobacco from a hookah they had picked up on one of their many travels around the globe. Jane and Shurd left Southern Germany shortly before we did with Shurd making the bold, and completely unexpected move to retrain as an army helicopter pilot. They were based in Hawaii for a time, Jane finishing her degree whilst they forwent base housing and lived on a boat…the bohmeian lifestyle continuing to capture their hearts even within the rigid confines of army committment. Shurd’s out in Iraq now, a CWO2 flying Black Hawk helicopters, taking part in a war he can neither believe in nor support, while Jane is at home, wondering and waiting.

The Unlikely Soldier
article link from San Francisco Bay Guardian

Filed under: famille et amis, media on July 19th, 2007 | No Comments »

It’s so nice to read an article that doesn’t rack up feelings of guilt and child abandonment with regards to placing one’s child in nursery while maman goes out to work. And I have to admit that Jay’s language skills have really improved from being around other children. Well, if you can call “you’re a silly poo-poo head” improvement…

Nursery: the place to be

Filed under: media, global englishness on July 19th, 2007 | No Comments »

Is there any wonder that I have such a warped perception of reality when I grew up with these tv shows? Were all the BBC childrens’ programme creators on acid? It must have been put in the coffee during writing sessions.

Magic Roundabout
Button Moon
Mr.Benn
Bagpuss
Thunderbirds
Clangers
Wombles
Fingermouse (Fingerbobs)

Most of these shows were actually created in the late 60s, early 70s but were still running well into my childhood. Does anyone else remember any others?

Filed under: popculture on July 18th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I’ve always thought Indianapolis was perfect for the USGP, particularly in light of its racing history but aparently glitz and glamour and of course, lining Bernie Ecclestone’s pockets, is what F1 is all about…funny that, I always thought it should be about the racing.

Goodbye Indianapolis

Filed under: Formula 1 on July 16th, 2007 | No Comments »

I want one…

The new Fiat Cinquecento (500)

Filed under: popculture on July 13th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’m using a Wordpress theme, Peaceful Rush, created/designed by Small Potatoes over at Wpdesigner. I love the theme and although there are a few quirks (probably due to my lack of understanding of html) for the most part I have been able to easily modify anything I want. Except for the fact that I just can’t get it to accept foreign language characters and non-alphabetical symbols. I’ve tried a few things within the style sheets but not sure if this is where my encoding set should go, (I tell you I think I’m doing okay with the tech stuff and then something happens and I’m thrust back into html/xhtml virginity!). I guess I can just use character entities but I’m sure there must be a way to add code so that any time I type a foreign character in the sidebar, header, etc, it’ll pick it up, n’est ce pas? Anyway any suggestions, including if just using character entities is the best course of action, are appreciated.

Filed under: new site, tech on July 13th, 2007 | 8 Comments »

I lose myself in the drive from dropping Jay off at school to my work. Every weekday morning I whizz down Bass road, windows open to catch the wind in my hair, aching for just a drop of salt-sea breeze that never comes, watching the mid-west corn fields and the west, with all its adventuring, pioneer promises of a better life, disappear in my rear view mirror the closer to work and into town I drive. The sun blinds me through the trees as I seek refuge further behind my designer sunglasses, refusing to block its brightness by lowering my sunsvisor because the sun is my lifeline. Between the comforting rays, the pale blue sky with its milky clouds, the speed and the crescendo bridge and refrain of Nek’s Cielo e Terra* I am able to lose myself from the routine of daily life for the entire ten minutes of the journey and cast my running wild imagination to the eternal winding road trimmed with cypress trees, leading to my mind’s destiny of a sun-bleached villa with a terraced view of the Tyrrhenian Sea .

*Nek is my favourite music artist and my two favourite songs of his are Parte di Me and this one, Cielo e Terra. His lyrics are always beautiful.

Filed under: indiana, popculture, living the dream on July 12th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’m always on the look-out for a car that is both kind to the environment and looks good. When it comes to cars I am completely shallow - how can I not be when my favourite car of all times is the Bugatti EB 110? However I am super conscious of milage and petrol consumption and become very anxious on the rare occasions when I have to fill up my Golf TDI with regular diesel instead of my usual soybean biodiesel. I love the fact that my Golf looks great, can overtake most American cars (granted their off-the-line acceleration is often better) and gets terrific milage. The car also runs better on biodiesel, gear changes are smoother and the car is way peppier. Ironically for my small contribution of “petrol that’s kind to the earth” (Jay’s words not mine), I pay a mere few cents more than if I was filling up on regular diesel. Electric cars never appealed to me, always looking too out of shape, rather like the wierd boot thing they did to the Renault Clio (it’s awful Renault, NOT cool cutting-edge, just odd French design) until this one… Tesla Roadster

However I would gladly give up any effort to be eco-friendly for this…

Filed under: living the dream on July 12th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Oh my God! Someone please detach my fingers from the keyboard and delete Facebook. Who the f*%# thought it was a good idea to create that kind of social networking timewaster? I am getting NOTHING done. I’m supposed to be stripping the remains of paint from an oak window frame and instead I am sitting here gorging myself on my friends’ lives. I have better things to do. Just…click…on…the…log out…button. I can do it, it’s okay. I CAN do this. Ooo, wait a minute, Alex just posted new photos and Luc sent me a message and Rae finally got herself on Facebook and…

I need help…

Filed under: popculture, tech on July 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

We recently put up a big, flat screen tv in our UTS (University Technology Services) area and now have CNN news distracting us all day. For the most part I’m able to ignore it but every now and then something comes on that has me rushing to my office doorway to watch whatever national crisis has befallen the United States. 99% of the time the “national crisis” is a segment of pop culture or overblown media hype that has me starring incredulously at the screen and wondering, as I do at least sixty billion times a time, “and I live in this country?“. Anyway this morning Taryn Southern was on talking about her music video, Hott 4 Hill. I had to show it, it is truly hysterical. Quite Saturday Night Life-ish. Check out the Obama video “Crush on Obama” as well. While I totally love the parady and I know they’re just tongue in cheek, I’m sorry but I just can’t take American politics seriously now…but then did I ever?

Filed under: popculture, media on July 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

I finally got around to watching the British Grand Prix at 11 o’clock on Sunday night through a haze of red wine and good food*, having forced myself not to sneak onto the web and look up the results. It was quite an enjoyable race and there was a little interesting twist with Kimi ending up winning and Alonso second. Lewis Hamilton took thrid which keeps him in the lead for the Championship and while I know it’s terribly unpatriotic of me a tiny bit of me was glad he didn’t win - his rookie season just seems to have been too easy and no, I’m not disputing that he is an excellent driver, I’d just like to see Alonso win the Championship one more time before, at twenty-six, he is relegated to being past his prime. Fisi and Heikki moved not one position and finished where they started in 8th and 7th, most uneventful. I do wish there was some more challenging driving, a few more battles on the track - the races, like when Herr Schumacher was in play, just seem a bit too predictable.

* We had friends round to supper on Sunday night, I made risotto bianco with homemade pesto (totally stripped my basil plant clean but it was oh so worth it) and we were very euro and simply had fruit and cheese for desert. As I was taking the bottles out to the recycling later that night I noticed that we’d managed to get through four bottles of wine, being that there were only four of us means we pretty much all enjoyed a bottle of plonk each. Not bad for a Sunday night with a six o’clock start the next day. Monday seemed like a very long day.

Filed under: indiana, Formula 1 on July 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

So Mr. Hamilton has pole for tomorrow’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The last Brit to win the British Grand Prix was DC in 2000 so naturally the pressure is on for the rookie. Kimi takes second place with Hamilton’s McLaren teammate, Fernando Alonso taking third on the line-up, (Heikki and Fisi are somewhere down in the depths - 7th and 8th respectively). With the expected rain looking like it will actually hold off tomorrow it should be either a very challenging race or a rather predictable one. While the other contructors are doing a pretty nice job quite honestly it’s all Ferrari and McLaren. Despite the fact that Lewis isn’t one of my favourite drivers (sacrilege I know), I am thrilled that a Brit has the potential to win the British Grand Prix, because let’s face it a certain Monsieur Button isn’t exactly getting the job done is he? I have to say that I am quite astounded at Lewis Hamilton’s success so far this season. Has there been anyone else to have this kind of F1 season debut? Certainly not for some time. His racing and winning consistency is quite, quite incredible. It’ll be interesting to see if Hamilton can keep it together on home ground before a home crowd - nothing like a touch of raw patriotism to throw you off balance.

Filed under: Formula 1, englishness on July 7th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’m spending the Fourth of July doing absolutely nothing, (well except for enjoying a few beers), because I figure that’s exactly what the British did 200 odd years ago.

You know we let you win, right?

Filed under: englishness on July 4th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

For Christmas my grandmother knitted Jay a beautiful dressing-gown, the sort that reminded me of Harry Potter and Charles Dickens and made Jay so snuggly and soft when he wears it that it was a huge hit.

Over the next few months I idly dropped several hints at how nice it would be to have a dressing gown as beautifully and lovingly made and as soft and so BCBG and how all I have is an old, tatty Habitat dressing gown that has long since lost its delicate cream to simply be dirty white. Grummns replied that she would happily knit me a dressing-gown (how totally cool) and so for the last month (she is a super speedy knitter) she has been lovingly and painstakingly making me the most beautiful dressing-gown / cardigan coat ever. And then on Monday, when I got home from work feeling crappy and blah due to Jay’s stomach bug that of course I had caught, there it was waiting for me. Wrapped in layers of crunchy tissue paper was my scrumptious dressing-gown. It’s made from bamboo wool (very eco-friendly of her!) and is just the softest, softest it’s wonderful. I haven’t taken it off since. Thank you Grummns. I adore it. (Please excuse the self-photo - husband was at work)

On another grandmother note Jay has a blanket, aka ‘My’, so called because he used to just say “my, my, my” and never got the blanket bit so “my blanket” just became ‘My’ as in “where’s my My?” Anyway My, coincidently also lovingly and painstakingly knitted my Grummns (Great-Grummns to Jay), was in a VERY sorry state. I had already sewn it up several times, apparently not very well as less than a week later it was really just scraps of My hanging together by single threads of yarn. Because Jay has grandmothers that love and adore him when Grandma Schreiber was last here she spent four hours sewing My onto a piece of muslin so My’s life could be extended. Four hours! I would never spend four hours sewing a ratty, old blanket back together but Grandma S patiently sewed My onto the piece of muslin in such a manner that My is still attached to said muslin, has survived several washes and continues to be sucked on, chewed, dragged, supermanned and all the other things little boys do to their blankets without showing so much as a loose thread. Now that’s sewn with love…

The Fall and Rise of My

(Brand new / newish / dying / resurrected and in full use)

Filed under: famille et amis on June 29th, 2007 | No Comments »

With the unlikelyhood that F1 will be racing at Magny-Cours next year, this weekend will no doubt be bittersweet, regardless of the race, for Renault. Magny-Cours is close to their factory in Viry and naturally there has always been tremendous support for Renault at the M-C track. Of course the team isn’t displaying much of its world champion status this year and I’m not sure really, just how good a race it’ll be for them. Giancarlo continues to plod on, showing little of his true capability, (Ed Gorman of the Times has had a funny send-in going on his blog ‘drivers in a word of phrase’ - one described Fisi as “Movie star playing a driver”. While he does have the looks, he also has the talent, we’re just not seeing much of it this season) and Heikki is so sporadic one’s not really sure what you’re going to get with him from one race to the next.
Either way it’ll be a send off for Renault one way or another. The Renault blog has a nice entry for the start of the Magny-Cours race weekend 2007 French GP: The first home race is underway…

Filed under: Formula 1 on June 29th, 2007 | No Comments »

A few weeks ago my grandmother sent Jay some DVDs of Shaun the Sheep. We don’t get it here and Grummns had thought that Jay would enjoy it. Check out his reaction for yourself.

My grandmother also said the theme song was addictive - Jay had it down after watching two episodes!

Filed under: popculture, famille et amis on June 27th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Are you frackin’ kidding me? Paris Hilton on Larry King and a huge segment on Anderson Cooper? What the f@$%? What is wrong with the American media? What happened to decent journalism for God’s sake? Utterly ridiculous.

I love Anderson Cooper…”How much of it is an act? That whole…appearing like a moron?“

Filed under: media on June 27th, 2007 | No Comments »

Keith and I were doing our usual how-and-where-shall-we-live-in-Europe discussion the other day; Keith’s requirement is simple – he wants mountains. Mine are a little more demanding - I want ocean and beach and Italy. He asked me why I liked Italy so much, in particular Rome and my reply was that it felt like home. Papa sent me a postcard when he and Avril where in Rome which I received this weekend. Written on the back it said “Nothing changed, it is still the most amazing city ever. Just like going home!“.

Filed under: famille et amis on June 25th, 2007 | No Comments »

One of the things I miss most about being in Europe is the chance to just pop off to somewhere totally different for the weekend. Of course there’s always the country cottage or seaside house but for GPB 60 or so you can get on a plane and go to a whole different country and spend two days and nights of cultural immersion that breaks the routine and recharges the batteries. My papa and Avril went to Rome last weekend and talking to my brother he was telling me one of his mates was going to Spain for the weekend. True I spent three days in Indianapolis last weekend but we’re not exactly talking the Louvre or the Sagrada Familia here. And while I do sometimes struggle a little with the accent in Chicago it’s not like I can flex my French and Italian linguistic skills and spend two days ordering acqua minerale e linguine con cozze.
Anyway this weekend I was in for a veritable treat when Wes and Christine invited us to Wes’ family lake house on Lake Sylvan (click for photos) in Rome City, IN. And while it wasn’t quite the summer holiday retreats of the past, (Tyrrhenian Sea port of Livorno, the Cornish Coast or my favourite, Port-Grimaud) it was quite blissful to get out of Fort Wayne for 48 hours and live life at a snail’s pace. The weather wasn’t particularly kind but the rain held off and we spent Saturday in the pontoon, paddle boat and fishing and Sunday went out in the speedboat, most definitely Jay’s favourite! Above all it was heavenly to be by the water. To wake up and drink that first morning coffee overlooking an overcast but shimmering lake where the only sounds were the ducks and the odd fishing boat engine. To go to bed hearing the waves lapping against the wall at the end of the garden. I think what I miss the most about being back in Europe is the proximity to water, real water, as in the sea, the ocean, le grand bleu. I achingly miss the sea and all that it inspires.

Filed under: indiana, famille et amis, travel on June 25th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I always thought I’d marry a man who was as suitably obsessed with clothes and looking good as I was/am. At least one who knew not to wear white socks unless with trainers and for sport, one who understood the golden rule of matching belt and shoes and one who knows the difference between a casual shirt and a dress shirt. Instead I threw more than caution to the wind when I broke my three life rules of 1) Never Get Married; 2) Never Marry a Soldier and 3) Never Marry an American. 3 out of 3 - I don’t just do things in halves! And marry an American I did, one who felt that a tshirt was pretty much staple wear in a wardrobe. For the first two years of our marriage the only time I saw Keith in a pair of shoes other than trainers or army boots was when he was in dress blues and wore those ridiculously shiny black dress shoes, (granted this was quite a lot due to the almost weekly shows and performances). Then with the four years at MD Helicopters where trainers were de rigeur, being rather too practical not to wear on the flightline and the two years at the Conservatory where professors mirrored the dress of their students and tshirts and trainers were uniform, I slowly began to resign myself to the fact that I had married a man who while sort of cared what he looked like would aways take comfort over fashion and even when faced with having to dress in a shirt and tie for the current job, had little clue as to how to marry colours and fabrics.
Until this morning.
Keith walked out the door, having chosen his clothes himself (without any narrowed eyed glance from me that usually prompts a change of shirt or socks or shoes), dressed immaculately in a well-fitting Lacoste shirt with the sleeves rolled up to below the elbow (as a good English gentleman would), pristine navy flat-front (pleats? Really? Are you living in the 80s?) trousers, black belt, black socks and black Italian loafers. I rewarded myself with a second look from the bathroom window as he walked to the garage. A well-dressed man does it for me everytime.

Filed under: famille et amis on June 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

Fantastic day at the 2007 US Formula 1 Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton took his second victory with Fernando second, followed by the two boys in red Massa and Kimi. Heikki gave a superb performance managing to keep Kimi off his back for the better part of the race but succombing to the (other) Finn’s stellar driving to take fifth. Fisi didn’t fare so well but as always when he’s got a fight on his hands offers up some great driving, edged with a determination that I wish was present in every race. He started in tenth and then lost the rear end in lap 2 which cost him dearly and threw him way back in the pack. However as I said when faced with a little adversity Fisico turns it up a notch and gained some terrific spots and although his ninth place finish left him just outside of the points I was happy to see some of the grit in his driving that I’ve not see for a while. Finally too the R27s seem to be experiencing some better performance and while still not at optimum range yet, it was a vast improvement to previous races. Nice to think we’re finally competative. McLaren though are really having their cake and eating it; it’s going to take some serious driving by Ferrari let alone the other teams to make an impression on McLaren’s 35 point lead in the Constructor’s standings. Another movie snippet - blame Keith for the orientation! Distracted by F1 racecars.MPG

US F1 GP results

1. L.Hamilton (McLaren)
2. F.Alonso (McLaren)
3. F.Massa (Ferrari)
4. K.Räikkönen (Ferrari)
5. H.Kovalainen (ING Renault)
6. J.Trulli (Toyota)
7. M.Webber (Red Bull)
8. S.Vettel (BMW Sauber)
9. G.Fisichella (ING Renault)
10. A.Wurz (Williams)
11. A.Davidson (Super Aguri)
12. J.Button (Honda)
13. S.Speed (Torro Rosso)
14. A.Sutil (Spyker)
15. C.Albers (Spyker)

Did not finish
N.Rosberg (Williams)
V.Liuzzi (Torro Rosso)
R.Barichello (Honda)
N.Heidfeld (BMW Sauber)
D.Coulthard (Red Bull)
T.Sato (Super Aguri)
R.Schumacher (Toyota)

Filed under: indiana, Formula 1 on June 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

I think I’m going to just have to accept that Renault is not the team it was last year. Not that they’re doing horribly, 6th and 10th on the grid is okaay but quite frankly compared to McLaren and Ferrari, Renault are sucking. Qualifying was super fun to watch today. It didn’t seem quite as hot as yesterday but it was still warm and blue skies abounded. Hamilton won pole for tomorrow’s race with Fernando second and Massa third. Heikki managed sixth which isn’t bad but Fisi starts tenth (it must have been my overwhelming presence that put him off), so he’ll have his work cut out for him tomorrow if he wants to gain some places and have a chance at the points.

Got a nice little bit of video, (it’s a bit wobbly because I was trying to keep a little boy from wiping his chocolate ice-cream fingers all over my white skirt - failed miserably needless to say), from the Bridgestone bridge. Thought you’d appreciate the noise and the speed if nothing else US F1 GP 07.MPG. Couldn’t tell you who I’ve videoed but I know there were the McLarens, Ferraris, Renault boys, at least one Williams, a BMW Sauber and I think a Red Bull and maybe a Super Aguri and even a Spyker. I’ll leave the initiated among you to try and figure it out!

Filed under: Formula 1 on June 16th, 2007 | No Comments »

Posted pics above, (click on the slideshow gallery to view), although I know most of you will be bored to death. And I’m not sure being there would have made an R27 nose cone or wing shell any more interesting, but let me tell you, it got me hot and I ain’t talking about le soleil est brille either

Talking of shining sun, it was bloody hot, 91 degrees in Indy today but absolutely fantastic watching the mechanics working on the cars and walking the pit lane. Listened to Heikki and Fisi’s Q & A with Peter Windsor (I sooo want his job!) - Just a snippet but how damn sexy is that accent? mov04603.MPG - and a bit of Massa and Kimi’s (those two are just way too cool for school, it must be the Ferrari thing although I’m thinking it’s just all Kimi’s ‘Iceman’ persona as Michael was definitely NOT that cool - did you ever notice his dress sense off the track?). Sorry to hear Kubica won’t be running this weekend but after last weekend’s crash I guess it was to be expected. I understand he’s doing well so that’s the main thing. We spent a good two and a half hours sucking up the fuel filled atmosphere and then took ourselves off to Indianapolis Zoo for the rest of the day. We thoroughly enjoyed that and were really quite impressed with it - the dolphin show was great although thanks to the wretched film Happy Feet, I’m now shrouded in guilt when I look at the penguins and the whole dolphin thing rather lost all its appeal the more I thought about the base fact that they were animals doing tricks. Dance monkey, dance. Then the elephants were doing their I’m sad and bored swaying thing and I felt a bit wretched. Be free, be free lovely dolphins, penguins, elephants…

Filed under: Formula 1 on June 14th, 2007 | No Comments »

How goddamn excited am I about tomorrow? Way, way too excited for any normal person to be. I have butterflies I am so excited. Oh my god, I’m actually going to be in the immediate presence of an R27 and Giancarlo Fisichella. I can’t think any more, let alone put together a decent, coherent entry so I shall take my jelly state of mind and dancing insides and go and suppress my excitement in Microsoft OneNote training…

Filed under: Formula 1 on June 13th, 2007 | No Comments »

Just occasionally I impress even me with my cooking capabilities - mainly when it comes to the baking genre, of which I am particularly bad. Don’t really understand it as my Great-grandmother was a professional cook, my grandmother is a fabulous cook and makes amazing puddings and my mum is just a genius in the kitchen. I’m fine with starters and first courses, even salads and pastas but when it comes to desserts, forget it. Poor Pat, whenever he comes round to Sunday lunch he’s resorted to eating fruit and cream (very English) for afters or in the recent case of my in-laws, having to eat apple pie that is made with only a top crust because I totally forgot to line the pie dish with pastry. Yeah. However recently I made a lamb tagine with apricots and pears and pine nuts and madeleines and like I said, impressed myself hugely. They were both scrumptious.
Lamb Tagine

Madeleines

Filed under: famille et amis, culinery delights on June 12th, 2007 | No Comments »

So instead of spending a gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon inside watching the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal I was instead actually spending it outside in the glorious sunshine. Keith, Jay and I went to Kings Island for the day and immersed ourselves in amusement rides, the water park, over indulged in Dippin’ Dots and Starbucks coffee and had a fantastic time wearing Jay out. The last two years we’ve gone have followed the rule of me looking after Jay because I have no interest in going on amusement rides and Keith making himself sick by going on all the really obnoxious roller-coasters. This year though Jay was totally into it and so our day pretty much revolved around him which was cool and surprisingly fun. He went on the mini racecars, twice on the Jimmy Neutron dogems, the Days of Thunder racetrack with Keith, (seeing a pattern here? He is my son!), Sportucus helicopter ride and the Scooby Doo haunted mansion ride where we got to zap ghosts and gouls with our fantastic Scooby zapping torches. I got my fill of dogems (the only thing I ever go on) and then we spent the last part of the day at the adjoining water park, floating in inner tubes along the lazy river. When we eventually got back into the car to head home Jay uttered the blissful words, “I’m ti-red,” and promptly fell alseep. If only every day could be so easy in wearing him out.

+ =

Filed under: indiana, famille et amis on June 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

I canNOT believe that I missed the race yesterday. And not only did I miss it but my stupid DVR decided that it’s not intuitive enough to determine that when I ask it to record anything with Formula 1 in it, it can’t deal with the fact that the grand prix was titled Candian Formula 1 Grand Prix and so I don’t even have it on playback. AHHHHHHHHH. One of the most exciting races of the season and I miss it because I was at an amusement park. An amusement park! I missed Hamilton winning, Fisi and Massa getting black flagged, Heikki taking 4th, Alonso getting beaten by Sato and Kubica’s horrific crash. I missed the very drama that I love about F1. Well, actually I didn’t, not all of it because thanks to YouTube I was able to watch Hamilton’s final lap and victory and watch Kubica flying across the track upside down and into the wall over and over and over again (60 entries at least). The other nice thing about catching up with the race on YouTube is that I got to watch it with the Brit commentators who are so charmingly British and unequivocally pleased as punch when Hamilton won.

As it is only THREE DAYS TO GO…to the US Grand Prix. Thursday is open pit, look at the cars, check out the drivers (oh yeah); Friday Practice; Saturday Qualifying and Sunday the BIG DAY. Both Keith and I have taken holiday time for Thursday and Friday. I’ve just ordered noise cancelling headphones for Jaybean and I AM READY. Actually so excited it’s just as well I have three days of facilitating training so I’m not completely obsessing about it. I am already? No, no it’s just your imagination. I’m barely thinking about it, barely thinking about it at all in fact…(dreamlike trance beginning) Giancarlo Fisichella, Giancarlo Fisichella, smell of burnt rubber, the sound of an R27 engine, shiny metal, Giancar…

Filed under: Formula 1 on June 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

To be perfectly honest I don’t care too much about what a politician gets up in the privacy of his own home, I don’t even really care if he’s corrupt and sneaky. Just make the right moves to increase funds for education, make healthcare better and cheaper (never going to happen I know) and install good public transport throughout America, (I live in a pipe dream). What I do care about though is if they’re stupid. And right up there with stupidity would be getting caught (ahem, Mr former President). Democratic Rep.William Jefferson rather nailed both of those - first with stashing the $90,000 in his freezer and then getting his house raided and the investigators finding the money. Really? In the freezer? You’re kidding me right? What happened to promptly pouring bribery money into dodgy arms deals or Venezuelan drug cartels or investing it in off-shore accounts or squandering it on yachts or…you get the picture. I can think of much better things to do with it, none of them involving stuffing it into Tupperware and putting it in the freezer. Quite glad permanent residency prohibits me from voting.

Filed under: media on June 7th, 2007 | No Comments »

This would have been breaking news if I had posted it when I actually received the text message…oh what it’s like to have friends on the inside…

S: “Turkish Armed Forces have just walked into Northern Iraq. I’m sure America will go apeshit.”
Me:”…here we go. Uh, Nato? Hello?”
S: “Yes, we are part of Nato. We’ll kick some ass now.”

Spoken like a good Turkish yuppie, educated in England and Boston, MA, who’s just finished his military service and has absolutely no intention of picking up a gun, going anywhere near a military vehicle and has discarded his uniform without a backward glance.

Filed under: media on June 6th, 2007 | No Comments »

I know I bust Keith’s balls a lot but when it comes to fixing stuff the guy is incredible. He’s currently downstairs having completely taken apart our five year-old Frigidaire front-loading washing machine in order to put in a new ‘rear outer tub assembly with bearing and shaft seal’. If it was left to me we’d be forking out another grand to buy a new washer.

15 minutes later…there’s rather a lot of swearing coming from the basement. I’m assuming things are not going well…

Filed under: famille et amis on June 5th, 2007 | No Comments »

Malthazar (voiced by David Bowie in the US version), Arthur and the Invisibles.

Friday night is movie night at our house. I make pizza (Genoa salami and portabello mushrooms, goats cheese and smoked salmon - scrummy), Keith makes proper popcorn (we don’t have a microwave so no carcinogenic butter here) and Jay gets to stay up late. This Friday along with finally buying DVDs of Star Wars I and II, I also bought Arthur and the Invisibles or in its original French Arthur et les Minimoys. I’ve been a big fan of Luc Besson for a long time. Le Grand Bleu still is one of my most favourite films. The soundtrack by Eric Serra just immense. So anyway although the critics totally slammed Arthur, I think I have yet to read one positive review, I was already a little biased because of my Besson appreciation. Naturally Jay adored it and Keith and I thoroughly enjoyed it, (not sure Grandpa was too impressed about having to watch a kids’ animated flick but even he seemed to see its charm). The critics claimed its animation was flawed and basic but I feel that added to the ‘Frenchness” of the film. I actually thought the animation very good but what do I know about these things? I rather liked that it wasn’t overly processed, that the characters had flaws and the scenery a little more watercoloured than Pixar or Disney’s overly accurate renditions. It reminded me of the Water Babies in its parallel use of animation and live action. I loved the vast quantities of pop-culture references, another no-no from the critics. And I found the humour really French - obviously funny as apposed to English sarcasm. Apparently the US distributors changed it up and cut several scenes from the original so of course now I’m on a quest to buy the original French version.

Filed under: popculture, famille et amis on June 4th, 2007 | No Comments »

Happy Sun
by Molly

It’s that time of year again and it seemes to happen to all of my friends…the sun starts dangling his long, caressing fingers through the grey, dull shadows of winter, batting the spring showers away with the back of his hand to stroke one’s body in delicious warmth and whispering promises of long sultry days filled with socialising and Pimms and barbecues that go on late into the evening…as soon as those fingers start trailing their way along your face friends decide to get married, birthday parties abound and non-stop frivolity takes stride. I spoke with Sophie yesterday who was telling me of two weddings, a 30th birthday plus endless 1 and 2 year old parties that she, Alex and Hux had coming up in the next month alone. I so relate. Memorial Day weekend we took Keith’s new car (pictures to come) for a spin down to red-neck country in Huntsville, Alabama to stay with my mum and Jerry for the long weekend. Huntsville is in fact very un-rednecky due to it being filled with super brainy NASA and aerospace engineers and boffins creating the latest micro-shuttle that not only will take us to the moon but to infinity and beyond! Jay is so going to Space Camp when he’s a bit older. Anway I love going down to my mum’s. Their house is so lovely and there’s a pool and the food is always amazing and the weather is permanently wonderful whenever I visit. The day after we got back Keith’s folks arrived for the week. They left this morning after a really nice visit. This coming weekend I’m contemplating a garage sale on Saturday (to get rid of all the crap that’s accumulating in my basement as I try my bestest to clear us of excess) and Sunday it Keith’s work’s do to Kings Island. Apparently this year we have passes to the water park which I am super stoked about. You can take the amusement park rides and have done with them but if there’s one thing I love is water and the chance to bring some colour to my Indiana pale skin. Then next weekend is….drum roll please, confetti, banners flying…THE US FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX. How frackin’ (wretched Battlestar Overactica) excited am I? Just thinking about the sound of those F1 engines as they tear down the Bridgestone straight at 200+ mph only to slow down to 70 mph to take turn 8 which is almost a 90 degree turn is enough to leave me quivering. Pause in writing as I lose myself in delicious open-wheel daydream…Right, enough about that. I can bore you utterly after the event. The weekend after that I think we have a break only it’ll be taken up with barbecues and having friends that we’ve neglected all winter around for nosh and booze. The weekend after that is Keith’s brithday and the Dayton Air Show. Thank goodness that’s happening, I was at a severe loss as to what to do for Keith’s birthday. A day filled with fighter jets and planes is his idea of orgasmic heaven…my job’s done then!
So as you see, silly season is upon us and I love it. Having waited eight months for weather that’s nice enough to do all this stuff I am once again lulled into a false sense of loving Fort Wayne. Life is totally peachy when the sun shines.

Filed under: indiana, Formula 1, famille et amis on June 4th, 2007 | No Comments »

Me: “So, who are you going to support this year?”
K: “I’m not sure. Do you want to read up on policies together and I’ll vote for both of us?”
Me: “Huh?” (Pause, cogs turning) “No, I meant at the Grand Prix.”
K: “Oh. I just support colours. Who are the blue ones?”
Me: “They’re not blue anymore. They’re gay white and orange…with a tiny bit of blue.”
K: “Well, I’ve got a Kimi hat. I’ll just support that team.”
Me: “But Kimi now drives for Ferrari and your cap is McLaren colours.”
K: (with all the authority of someone who hasn’t watched a single GP this season) “I don’t think Ferrari will do well this year.”
Me: “They’ve been on the podium every race this year. Ferrari and McLaren are the major contenders for the DC and CC.” (Drivers and Constructors Championship/Cup respectively)
K: “Yeah but without Michael…I guess I’ll support McLaren then. They’re German right?”
Me: “Uh, no.”
K: “Who’s German then?”
Me: “I don’t think there are any German constructors.”
K: “And McLaren are?”
Me: “British…pretty much.”
K: “British. British is okay. I’ll support McLaren. I’ve got a McLaren cap. Black and silver right? Who drives for McLaren?”

Sidenote: in case you didn’t already know I support Renault including its two drivers Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen. However I do have a soft spot for Nico Rosberg (Williams), Fernando Alonso (McLaren) and Felipe Massa (Ferrari).

Filed under: Formula 1 on May 31st, 2007 | No Comments »

Crap, I’m totally addicted to Facebook. It’s worse than being at school as far as the whole popularity/coolness factor goes. For someone who will never go to a high school reunion, hates the whole cheerleading, popularity contest drama that goes on at schools, I am completely and utterly sucked in to cyber social networking. Damn internet.

Facebook

Filed under: popculture, tech on May 30th, 2007 | No Comments »

Just checked the results and feeling blissfully content because Fisi maintained his fourth place on the grid to finish fourth. At last Fisi! Alonso, Hamilton and Massa took the podium. I’m looking forward to watching the race this week if for nothing else but to gaze longingly at the blue ocean of the Monaco coast. They have the best oceanographic museum in Monte Carlo, it’s built into the side of a cliff and has an incredible open pirhana tank where half the pirhanas have chunks taken out of them by their tank mates. Pleasant. But well worth a look if you’re ever stopping by in the principality. Plus Monte Carlo has to be the cleanest city ever, except for Lago Lugano which was eerily clean and rubbish-free. Oh and of course it’s full of amazing yachts and even more scummier cars. And men speaking French and Italian. Pretty much my idea of heaven then…

Filed under: Formula 1, travel on May 27th, 2007 | No Comments »

Fisico’s starting fourth in tomorrow’s Grand Prix in Monaco. Finally a qualifying I can get on board with. Now let’s see a decent result tomorrow Renault. Oh and terrific job by the way; I knew you’d get there eventually. Currently down in very sunny Huntsville, AL spending time at the pool, feasting on some good Southern barbecue and enjoying time with ma and Jerry. Unfortunately they don’t have Speed so I shan’t be watching the Grand Prix and will be resorted to watching the Indy 500 instead (what is the world coming to I ask you?). Luckily I was forward thinking enough to set the DVD so even though I’ll be checking the results on the super fabuloso internet I can still enjoy watching what I’m sure is going to be a suberb F1 race.

Filed under: Formula 1, famille et amis on May 26th, 2007 | No Comments »

Jay’s current obsession is the Scooby Doo movies. For the last six nights we have watched one of either the first or second Scooby Doo films and while I have little objection to watching Freddie Prinze Jr parading around in 70s polyester garb and with a very fetching ascot; (the scene where he fights the black knight on the Indian motorbike is one of his more trés appealing movie staredom scenes - did you see I Know What You Did Last Summer - perlease!) even I have my limits. But apparently a gang of come-to-life cartoon characters and a talking dog solving mysteries and taking down monsters with some kick-ass Buffy moves is pretty darn cool when you’re three and a half. And as one comment I read on the movie said, try as I might I just can’t hate it.

Filed under: popculture, famille et amis on May 23rd, 2007 | No Comments »

In a determined effort to raise the tone of my recent entries - I know my preoccupation with men with cheekbones who drive at 180 mph or slay aliens with a single blast whilst maintaining an air of bored cool is getting a little obsessive (for those of you who know me this really shouldn’t be any surprise - there was a reason I went to an all girls school for A levels), I was reviewing the Times and was instantly catipulted into a state of surprised loss. I spent a good deal of my childhood exploring the wonders of Greenwich and visiting the Cutty Sark was always right up there along with walking along the Thames past the Naval Academy and looking down over London from the top of Greenwich hill. A view that always had me catching my breath in my throat. I was quite sad, therefore when I read that the Cutty Sark was struck by fire this morning, devestating much of the 19th Century ship. A representation of a bygone era the Cutty Sark was a lovely example of a tea clipper. The kind of ship that epitomised Britain’s maritime heritage. The ravages of fire are relentless, as Windsor Castle showed during their devestating blaze some years ago. But it always reminds me that we often place too much importance on the past, on history’s objects that can disappear in a moment due to events outside our control. Reading some of the comments regarding the Cutty Sark fire it made me think shouldn’t our national history and heritage simply be ingrained within us? Isn’t it the manifestations of such national icons inside us that make us British?
Who am I kidding? I’m a Classics grad. I thrive on historical objects and archaeological evidence. I think it’s precisely having such objects and evidence that enables us to claim our national historical pride. Look at Rome. You only have to wonder through the archaelogically-clad streets to know you are intrinsically in a city whose greatness transcends into every core of its being. Its the artifacts, buildings and objects that are its history. Just as England’s castles, stately homes, maritime museums and treasures are evidence of our history and through them our national pride and sense of greatness.

Filed under: englishness on May 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

So, I have a huge crush on Ben Browder, aka Colonel Mitchell from Stargate SG-1. Actually let’s make that plural crushes because I happen to think that Dr. Daniel Jackson is one hot archaelogist and Teal’c sure can demolish an alien with that wickedly impressive upper body. But this entry is about Colonel Mitchell…the man is sexy as hell and amusing in that sarcastic, bored sort of way. And he gets to travel through the universe, exploring other planets and defending the earth from the evil macchinations (my word of the moment by the way in case you were wondering at its frequency in my blog lately), from the truly dubious Ori Priors. For ages I’ve been trying to figure out who he reminds me of, humour and all and then this weekend I came across Keith’s old army uniform in our basement and it totally hit me. How bizarre is that? I find the resemblance uncanny and more than a little concupiscent.

Filed under: popculture, famille et amis on May 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

I’ve made my decision and despite the stomach-churning and headache-making thought that went into it I do feel like I made the right choice. So often in making momentous decisions in my life I suffer from the twinge of regret afterwards but with this one…nothing. Thank you Tim, for your words. You have no idea how much it meant to hear you say that I had made the right choice. There’s always something incredibly reassuring to hear those words from someone who knows so completely what you are giving up by letting that rabbit go and chasing the other. The wonderful thing about this recent spate of life-changing macchinations is that I do feel renewed and determined. Other decisions came out of my main decision and those have sent me into flurries of activity, things that I should have done and haven’t, subsequent decisions I should have made and hadn’t.
Anyway as I am wont to usually spending far too much time thinking what if? (Mark, I think at least once a week about that Grand Tour!), I shall say nothing further on the subject other than the decision I made means that we will be staying in Indiana a little while longer.
And besides how could I leave knowing that in four weeks time I’m actually going to get to see Fisico, Heikki Kovalainen, Kimi, Nico Rosberg, DC et al in the flesh? Really it’s just all about timing…oh and Giancarlo Fisichella.

Filed under: indiana, Formula 1, famille et amis on May 20th, 2007 | No Comments »

I have a decision to make. A really big one. The kind of decision that could totally change my path in life. The kind of decision that is utterly consuming me and making me sick to my stomach. Not because either of the options I have before me are bad but just so momentous. I have the chance to shape my future and it’s scaring the crap out of me…

Filed under: indiana, famille et amis, travel, global englishness on May 16th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

It’s Saturday morning and I’m getting ready for work (wretched student registration training). I’m in Jay’s room choosing his clothes and hear voices outside. I look out and see Jay in his navy McQueen pjs, Crocs and a fireman’s helmet riding his train on the pavement, screwdriver in hand. Keith is a little way off sweeping the blossoms and tree debris that I complained about yesterday, that litters our front garden and pavement like confetti. He’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt and a child’s plastic blue police motorbike helmet. The early morning sun is shining down on them sending crystals of light sparkling off their hats. I lean my forehead against the already warm glass of the sash window and smile.

Filed under: famille et amis on May 14th, 2007 | No Comments »

Renault - you’re kidding me right? Seventh and ninth? What the f*$#?

I have to confess I watched only the last four laps of the Spanish Grand Prix (even F1 loses out to a sunny day and the ability to play outside!) and even those were half-hearted as I realised Massa was a clear numero uno, Hamilton second and Alonso third. Heikki scraped through on seventh and Fisi in ninth. And while both drivers set some good lap times they’re still not showing their winning streak. It wasn’t until I read the reviews today that I realised it was quite an exciting race what with the little tussle between Massa and Fernando at the first corner, Kimi retiring and the surprise finishes by Sato and DC. Nice driving by Nico Rosberg too.

Heikki and Giancarlo - I hope you’re going to give me something better to watch in four weeks time…

Filed under: Formula 1 on May 14th, 2007 | No Comments »

A friend and I were talking the other day and I mentioned how when I returned from DC there was rather a lot of things in the house that weren’t done, (none of the mail was opened, Jay’s school fees weren’t paid for the week, the washing was done but no ironing, all the fruit and vegetables unopened and untouched, Renée’s dish still sitting on the dining room table despite my asking for it to be returned…you get the picture). She laughed and replied that it sounded like her and J, only her husband was the anal retentive one and she the ‘who cares?’one. She then added, “People like that just shouldn’t marry! Opposites attracting? It’s a disaster.” We both laughed, one of those telling, nervous laughs that revealed far more than either of us commenting ever could have. Not that we don’t love our husbands but it did get me a pondering. Man needs woman so much more than woman needs man. Two of my dear friends are getting divorced, both of them having married guys who are the complete antithesis of them. Both are infinitely happier now. I’m reading a book by Alan Epstein at the moment, As the Romans Do. I’ve just finished a chapter on the family and the Roman perspective on marriage and love relationships. My conclusion at the end of reading it is that I’m Roman. I have little time for the sentimentality of marriage but plenty for that of the family. I’m far more into the idea that God puts two people together because they make great and perfect children not because they are necessarily the most suited couple. Despite my affinity with romantic novels, or maybe because of it, I’m not really a strong believer in the whole one man for one woman/one woman for one man school of thought. I always had too much of an appreciation for the opposite sex. In every way Keith and I are opposites – despite his nonchalant disregard for G.W. he’s a convincing Republic. I’m a European liberal who cringes at the black and white fences that surround American politics. I’m a perfectionist, a Virgo and a Dragon. Must…have…control…of…everything. He’s a musician. At heart anyway. The day job’s a whole other subject. But it does mean his concept of self-discipline and perseverance and ambition is quite different to mine. He’s overly sensitive. I am apparently a duck. A very large one it would seem as most things slide right off my back without the merest murmur of ruffling my feathers. For my husband life is a California beach-highway cruise. For me it’s a F1 grand prix (sorry but the analogy is too perfect!). I don’t want the runners-up plate. I want the fuck-off giant gold trophy from which I can drink the magnum of vintage champagne. He settles. I don’t. But together we have made a beautiful little boy who is kind and sensitive and has captured all the good bits from each of his parents and that’s why we’re meant to be married.

Filed under: famille et amis on May 9th, 2007 | No Comments »

Dude, it’s a Golf on steroids…

VW Tiguan Concept Car LAAutoShow

Filed under: popculture, media on May 8th, 2007 | No Comments »

I really thought that a week away sans famille, washing, ironing, paperwork and filing, cleaning and cooking (I know, who’d have thought I actually had a job as well?) that I would get to update every day, have masses of glorious time to myself and spend my evenings reading all the books that I took to DC with me. As it turns out I spent the week flitting from one social engagement to another, revelling in my newly shaken-out, primped and preened wings, eager to show them off.  Wednesday night, after several hours at the National Portrait Gallery perusing two fabulous visiting exhibitions - Harry Benson and Great Britons on loan from the NPG in London, I met up with Will, someone I’ve known since he was all of about 0. His sister and I used to play as children, she is my age and Will is the same age as Luc or close enough. And it was rather like going out with my brother in that totally easy, talk non-stop kind of way. Utterly wonderful to spend the evening with a fellow Americanised Brit. Then Thursday night my evening started off sedately enough with Tim…until we’d had two bottles of wine and decided to go on to Halo for after-dinner cocktails and beers and well, thank God it was Friday the next day and my interview in French already taken place. I woke up feeling a little weary to say the least but Friday the weather was warm and between several pints of coffee and several blocks of walking later I felt much revived and clearer-headed. Friday I saw my last evening of freedom  in DC at a very charming little Italian restaurant in Georgetown where I was overly cautious in my alcohol consumption and enjoyed a more than pleasant walk down by Potomac at trendy Washington Harbor.

The flight back to the mid-west on Saturday was hard.

Supper on Wednesday Levante’s, Dupont Circle
Supper on Thursday Logan Tavern, Logan Circle; After-dinner drinks Halo
Supper on Friday Ristorante Piccolo, Georgetown

Filed under: travel, Washington DC on May 7th, 2007 | No Comments »

So France has a new president. Nicolas Sarkosky was voted in last night with a six percent margin; 53 % of the votes to Royal’s 47. Apparently 85% of people turned out to vote - an impressive example of democracy to say the least. Puts some of the more perceived “democratic” countries quite to shame.

 Some perspectives…

 A Franco-American perspective
The Times Online
Le Figaro
Le Monde

Filed under: media on May 7th, 2007 | No Comments »

  

Pixar has totally put their brain jelly-making tools into the minds of all little boys with the movie Cars. I went out with Jim and Carmen last night and they have a two year old, (he is a little Cherub complete with blond curly hair and chubby arms and legs). Apparently, like Jay, he has also been sucked into the phenomena that is talking automobiles. He had no less than three Maters clutching in his pudgy little hands throughout the evening. And there seemed to be more when we got back into the car. Multiplying Maters…

Supper on Tuesday Peking Gourmet Inn

Filed under: popculture, travel, Washington DC on May 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »

As I crawled back to the hotel last night in the almost early hours of the morning after too many glasses of wine and many hours of non-stop chatter with Vanessa, I felt a warm sense of belonging. I love the city, did I mention that recently?
I’d forgotten that Washingtonian women have a dreadful habit of wearing beautiful suits and outfits with trainers - something that has always distinguished them from their European counterparts. And while many would think I’m utterly foolish and somewhat of a sadist in walking the twenty minutes or so from hotel to office in a pair of six-inch Ken Cole stillettos, I refuse to bow to comfort and instead revel in the knowledge that I look impeccable from head to toe!

Supper on Monday J.Paul’s, Georgetown

Filed under: travel, Washington DC on May 1st, 2007 | No Comments »

I had forgotten how much I totally love living in a big city. I have slipped easily into the booted and suited, walk everywhere lifestyle and I’m only on day one of my week in DC. I feel like I’m in another country - everyone is trendily or smartly dressed…and thin! I’d forgotten that totally delicious, yuppy men who have impeccable dress sense actually exist, (quite, quite non-existent in Fort Wayne). The weather is fabulously sunny and I have a twenty minute walk to the office. I’m in a blissful parallel world. I’m staying in a delightful hotel in Georgetown. If I exit the hotel and turn right I’m on the main drag of Georgetown, complete with endless cafes, delicious restaurants wafting heavently smells and evil, enticing shops that have sucked me in with their Diane von Furstenberg dresses and Italian shoes. If I exit the hotel and turn left I’m at Washington Harbor with it’s uber-chic, ‘It’ waterfront restuarants and bars. I spent most of yesterday evening down on the banks of the Potomac, watching the rowers, getting propositioned by Arabs on boats and generally just enjoying people-watching. I had supper at a nice little Italian restauarant and enjoyed some pretty good Linguine Vongole (sadly still not better than any I had in Rome). And to complete my state of nirvana my social diary is fast filling up - supper out tonight with Vanessa; supper tomorrow at Jim and Carmen’s; out Wednesday night with Will; Thursday night with Tim…I could get used to this. Either that or it has just been waaaay too long since I had any kind of social life and I am desparately trying to quench the drought of what my life has become since motherhood.
Oh and training went great today - I even learned a few new things…

Supper on Sunday Paper Moon, Georgetown

Filed under: travel, Washington DC on April 30th, 2007 | No Comments »

I picked up April’s edition of F1 magazine, (B & N seem to be notoriously bad at getting the publication anywhere near it’s intended release date and I am routinely a month behind, reading previews and strategery for races that I watched two weeks ago). As always there was the usual car dissection articles on helping one to understand the finer points of Formula 1 and an interesting comparison between Ferrari’s 248 and the F2007. There were also a few comments that had me laughing, out loud, coffee through the nose type thing, not a pleasant site when I’m in the B & N café, trying to maintain my usual European cool. Take this one from an article on Heikki Kovalainen, “…(Kimi parties - DRINKING in a karaoke bar) shreiks the headline. Inside there’s another photo, of a vodka bottle with Kimi’s autograph on the label. Karaoke? I don’t expect Kimi is a great singer, but I have a surreal vision of him reciting Shakespearean soliloquies to music and in the style of William Shatner.” Somehow the image so fits the Kimster. The other one that had me chuckling was in the ‘Where to hang out in Bahrain’, “...Ritz-Carlton’s Italian eatery, where you’ll definitely find Giancarlo Fisichella of an evening. Fisico last ate something other than pizza or pasta some time in about 1987.” And they say Americans are unadventurous with cuisine…
Anyway, the main reason for bloggage today was to mention Jay’s new found love, inititiated by my purchase of F1 magazine. There was a teeny-tiny reference to a a new TV series coming out in the UK, created by the fine creators of Bob the Builder and narrated by Stirling Moss…yes, narrated by Stirling Moss. The show is called Roary the Racing Car and features a single open wheel race car, Roary, as the main character. Mike the mechanic has a delightfully thick Bolton accent and intersperses his speech with Italian phrases such as “Avanti!” There’s a stock car, read token Nascar, with a suitably Southern accent; an F1 car resplendant in Jordan colours who I think is meant to be Italian but sounds suspiciously German; ‘Drifter’ who is of course, a decked out Japanese ride with monster spoiler and various other characters. I found the website which shows tasters of upcoming shows and some of the most annoying but inevitably-stick-in-your-head-all-day songs. Naturally Jay is now totally obsessed.

Filed under: Formula 1, popculture, famille et amis on April 28th, 2007 | No Comments »

I love working with brainy people who know so much more about technology and web design than I do. I just want to say thank you Amberly, for providing me with some lovely code for a selection form/drop-down menu, (currently being used for the Global Englishness links in my sidebar). I’m sure I would have figured it out evenutally…not…but Amber, being the genius webmistress that she is did it in like five minutes. Oh to actually know what one is doing…

Filed under: new site, tech on April 26th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I’ve been utterly absorbed and hugely enjoying FX’s new Monday night show The Riches, (kindly televised by FX at 10:00 pm so I can tutor at Literacy Alliance and still come home and watch Digging for the Truth and The Riches,) starring Eddie Izzard. As I’ve mentioned before, I have long been a fan of Eddie Izzard and his rambling, euro humour and have always found him quite sexy in that intelligent, executive transvestite sort of way. Come to think of it there is an element of DeCaunes and Gautier about him, (now, that was a funny show and Antoine DeCaunes  one very sexy, sort of executive transvestite). But yeah, so, anyway…just wanted to post this lovely article from the Sunday Times about Monsieur Izzard. I’m so glad that his show is doing well over here and America is finally appreciating that I which always have.

Steady Eddie plays it straight

Filed under: popculture on April 26th, 2007 | No Comments »

You know how sometimes you lose something and you are so pissed off, mainly at yourself for being completely irresponsible and recklessly lacking in basic asset management. And then you find what you’ve lost and you are so pleased with yourself, it’s like God himself is giving you a second helping of Ciao Bella’s Blackberry Cabernet sorbet. It’s even better when the thing you lost was banished to the world of cyberspace and the never to be seen again hard drive black hole. I love that I know how to use technology to my advantage. It’s just all about having the right tools. It’s like Jay said to me last night, complete avec roll of eyes and ’silly mummy’ when I asked him if he wanted me to attach the cape to the Superman pajama top he was putting on, “You can’t fly without a cape, mummy. If you don’t have a cape, you’ll fall out of the sky.”
And here was I thinking that Superman’s flying prowess was inherent in his Krypton genes…silly mummy.

Filed under: famille et amis, tech on April 23rd, 2007 | No Comments »

     V.    

Keith forwarded me an email today about his works’ annual trip to Kings Island (sort of like Alton Towers); the date in the header line clearly stating that it was Sunday 17th June. The day of the US Grand Prix. Which I bought tickets for before Christmas. The day that exists as one of the highlights of my summer. Kings Island v. Giancarlo Fisichella? Kings Island v. Giancarlo Fisichella? A day on amusement rides (which I dislike strongly) or a day fueled with European testosterone and high speed (my idea of heaven)? Is that even a contest? Does my husband not know me at all?

Filed under: Formula 1 on April 19th, 2007 | No Comments »

 …or more rightly, (because I’m actually a pretty good shot and enjoy shooting at a range, in a controlled environment), the people who think they have a right to own them and yet are too stupid and crazy to handle them properly. I’m sorry but the whole “right to bear arms” - anyone heard of the word ‘context’?

This is the current front page of the Times Online…

Latest: 22 killed in US campus shooting spree . A lone gunman shoots dead at least 21 at Virginia Tech before being killed in latest tragedy at US schools or colleges

• Timeline: US high school and college shootings

• Eight die in double US shootings

• New start for Amish survivors (six died including the shooter)

Just another day in paradise…

Filed under: media on April 16th, 2007 | No Comments »

Some amazing racing by rookie, Lewis Hamilton in yesterday’s third Grand Prix of the season, in Bahrain. Does the guy have any flaws? No doubt Hamilton’s prowess will lead to some uneasy feelings in the pits with Alonso; when questioned by reporters if he had any comment on his teammate’s success, Alonso’s reply was telling “…you (the Press) do enough.”
As to Fisi and Renault - I love you but please, give me something to love…

Filed under: Formula 1 on April 16th, 2007 | No Comments »

Thank God, Fisi. Things were looking a bit scary for Renault during Q1…

Filed under: Formula 1 on April 14th, 2007 | No Comments »

One of the biggest things I miss about being single and sans enfant is being able to spend a thoroughly sinful weekend doing nothing but reading, as in nothing (staying in pjs, maybe eating, maybe not, conusming quantities of coffee during the day and cracking opening a bottle of wine mid afternoon) but reading. Although I really do try and get through a book every fortnight or so I don’t read half as much as I used to and I hugely miss it. I struggle to comprehend how Keith can get through life without reading (I don’t count his how-to-take-things-apart-and-put-them-back-together manuals and Science magazines). The wealth of life that books bring is overwhelming to me. Anyway I’m whittering a bit because I was actually going to talk about the books Jay and I are reading at bedtime. Talk about madeleine moments! This week we’ve been reading Milly-Molly-Mandy and Little Grey Rabbit. I never realised that Milly-Molly-Mandy was written and first published in 1925! For those of you aren’t familiar with her, Milly-Molly-Mandy lived in a nice white cottage with the thatched roof with her mother, father, aunty, uncle, grandma and grandpa. The books tell of her adventures with Little friend Susan and Billy Blunt, whose father owned the corn shop in the village. The village that MMM lives in is the quinessential English village, where everyone knows everyone, the corner shop stocks glass jars full of aniseed balls and the little girl who lives in the big white house goes off to boarding school (an innocent dig at the class system perhaps?). It is almost trite in its representation but so utterly charming that MMM’s innocent antics cannot fail to bring a gentle smile to the lips.

Little Grey Rabbit by Alison Uttley is another series of books that I still adore to this day. Last night we read Little Grey Rabbit’s Birthday. Hare with his conceited, gentlemanly manner and vain Squirrel and gentle, kind Grey Rabbit. I’d forgotten how beautiful the illustrations (by Margaret Tempest) are in their muted woody colours with flashes of brightness that act as illustative pathetic fallacy to the soothing tones of the text with the sporadic bursts of Hare’s insensitivity, “Go away Grey Rabbit, we don’t want you here” or Owl’s sudden and unwelcome appearance at the party.  Apparently Alison Uttley was only the second woman to graduate from Manchester University with a Physics degree, in 1906. That’s my kind of author.

Filed under: literature on April 13th, 2007 | No Comments »

Watching the Malaysian, (whenever I hear that word I hear echoes in my head of Will Ferrell screaming “kill the Malaysian prime minister”. Watch Zoolander for comprehension), Grand Prix I was reminded of why I am so besotted with the sport and why I like Fisi as a driver.  In sweltering temperatures and horribly high humidity, leaving drivers feeling like they’ve been in a sauna for two hours and not one of those I’ll-just-sit-here-and-relax kind either, the second race of the season was a cracker to watch. Ignoring the outstanding performance of McLaren and its two wunderkinds, Fernando Alonso and rookie Lewis Hamilton (now firmly being viewed as Britian’s F1 saviour and rightly so, the 21 year old is superb), I was horrified at Renualt’s position on the grid at the start of the race. I hadn’t had time to watch the Qualifying which is probably just as well as head would have been firmly in hands throughout due to Renault’s dire results. However horrified reaction soon turned to pleasant surprise and finally grudging admiration as I watched Fisichella move up six places from 12th to 6th and Heikki (whom I am fast developing a very soft spot for), move up from 11th to 8th, earning his first point of the season; the team earning four pointsoverall. I am still undecided as to whether the Renault drivers have quite got their act together - though the car still needs a lot of work. Of course Alonso is proving that the driver defintely makes the car (I have trouble believing that McLaren have improved that much since Kimi was lead driver for them last year despite their inordinate amount of testing and engineering work) and Kimi’s doing a pretty darn good job over at Ferrari (despite engine troubles during practice and qualifying Kimi ran a good race with some incredible lap times depsite not quite being able to catch the young Brit), but it does seem like the synchronisation between car and driver over at Renault is lacking.  Credit, however goes to Heikki who ended up driving the spare car instead of his own due to a fuel pump problem. Nothing like breaking in a new chassis during critical moments of qualifying! Both Engineering and Management are fully aware that things need to be improved on the R27 - unfortunately the five days until Bahrain do not give them a lot of time.
As to the first few laps of Sunday’s grand prix, absolutely fantastic driving by Alonso and Hamilton. The little tussle with Massa and Hamilton - beautiful.  But I’m starting to expect nothing less from the team that houses the current world champion and his teammate prodigy. A dangerous expection I’m sure.

Filed under: Formula 1 on April 9th, 2007 | No Comments »

 

There are a few things that have sent me on an eternal quest here in the States. Along with sausages are Yakult, Elderflower cordial, Birds Eye fish fingers and around Easter time Hot Cross Buns. Now I’ve found hot cross buns, the bakery at Fresh Market sells them, only they’re not really like any hot cross buns I’ve ever had. The bun itself isn’t bad, soft, squidgy dough suitably littered with raisins, quite hot cross bunnish. It’s what they do with them next that takes a hot cross bun from being something I grew up with to something that has me furrowing my brow and thinking “my great-grandmother (a professional cook no less) would turn in her grave.” The lovely browned ’shell’ is glazed in icing, rather like on a Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut, (rather than the very light glaze they should have) and then, shudder, the cross on top of the bun is made from icing. The result at this point is a sickly sweet dough bun and definitely not one I can make hot. I did buy some, painstakingly removing the icing crosses with kitchen towel before putting them in the toaster. Unfortuantely the icing glaze was a little trickier to remove and while the bottom half of my hot cross bun was quite delicious, smothered lavishly with unsalted butter that melted swiftly onto the toasted bun, the top half merely burnt, filling my kitchen with an almost suffocating sugary smell that left me muttering and deciding that next year I’ll just have to make my own.

Delia Smith’s recipe for Hot Cross Buns

Further comments on Hot Cross Buns from abroad

Filed under: englishness on April 9th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

 

During my morning review of the online papers I came across this article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1615350.ece Naturally it was the picture that piqued my curiousity and had me mouthing the words “that’s just wierd” as I stared a little bemused to say the least.  Deciding that what’s not good for cats is probably just fine for me I decided to google giant rabbits and lo and behold there’s a veritable plethora of these giant bunnies.  Have a look at these two, Herman and Bodmin http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/giantrabbit.asp Apparently these giant bunnies are a special breed of rabbits called, orignially enough, Giant Rabbits, (there are then variations such as the Flemish Giant, British Giant, Continental Giant, etc). They can weigh up to 30+ lbs and on average grow to be about 3 feet in length, the size of a small 3 year old!  They live up to about 12 years. Last year an escaped giant rabbit stalked the English village of Felton terrorising townsfolk and eating all the cabbages, turnips and carrots grown by local residents, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0411_060411_rabbit.html

How would you like one of those knocking at your door with a basket of chocolate eggs?

Filed under: media on April 5th, 2007 | No Comments »

Ah great, more guilt about being a working mother…bloody academics…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1613591.ece

Couldn’t resist linking to this one - the comments on the six-inch rule reminded me of Rachel and Duncan receiving -4s each for osculation; Catherine was the only one who didn’t have to go and look up the word in a dictionary! I think we were about 12…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article1603332.ece

Filed under: englishness, media on April 4th, 2007 | No Comments »

I have yet to see Al Gore’s An Irrelevant Truth, feeling that perhaps I don’t necessarily need to see a film about something that I’m witnessing first hand. The weather at the moment is crazy. I arrived back from Angleland to 70 degree weather and today it’s barely 30 and we’re predicted snow! I am soooo sick of this weather, I’m aching for sunshine. Mexico was a horrible teaser, bathing me in 80/90 degree warmth and drowning me in vitamin e. I am longing for summer. My daffodils and tulips are all up shouting “yeah, yeah, spring’s here, spring’s here”. Little do they know that Monsieur Frost is about to come and break all their pretty yellow heads off. The tragedy of a midwest spring.

As you’ll notice I’m slowly getting to grips with the sidebar - managed to insert some minor html for my quote. I shamelessly stole the quote from French-Word-A-Day because I thought it utterly charming and it reminded me of a friend who texted me on my 30th birthday with words to the effect of I remember turning 28, fun year, enjoy it darling! Who doesn’t love friends like that! Despite my reluctance and resistance to face my 30s I am feeling a sense of grown-upness that didn’t seem to exist in my 20s. I shan’t call it maturity as that seems like something I should save for my 40s, maybe even 50s! Still the quote gave me cause to smile as I found myself feeling blessed at the number of  ’diplomates’ I have in my life! Regarding the photos link, if you click on the photo of Jay it will take you to the web albums. I have yet to update Picasa with photos from Mexico, England and all the various celebrations but shall do that soon, probably when I’m enjoying my three day weekend this Easter weekend. As to the rest of the sidebar reorg it’ll happen over time. You’ll just need to scroll up and down to locate links until I get them sorted. I’ll try and get it into a similar order as with the old site.

Happy Spring…sort of.

Filed under: new site, indiana on April 4th, 2007 | No Comments »

I have now officially moved out of blogspot and will be posting only to the new website here at englishtraveller.org. I really loved my home at Blogspot, it enabled me to delve into the twisted and revealing word of letting-it-all-hang-out-there blogging, but as I’ve become more technically competent (oh really? I hear you say), I’ve discovered the limitations of a blogging house such as Blogger. Wordpress will hopefully allow me to experiment a bit with my new found html knowledge amd my new love of Wordpress plugins and the like. Plus I’m ready for a change, something new. A better representation of who I am. I have to move forward with a spirit of positivity and determination and I want my website to reflect my zeal of creativity and the untapped passion that I seem to spend most of my time forcing back down when it tries to surface. I feel so in limbo in my life and I want desparately to feel like I’m moving forward. I spoke to one of my best friends the other day and he was telling me about all the exciting new business opportunities in his life, his new girlfriend, his new adventures and it really made me think “girl, get off your arse and seize life.”

So that’s what I’m doing.

Starting with the new website.

Filed under: new site on April 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »

Jay and I are sitting at Chicago airport with a, now after time spent/wasted going through immigration and collecting luggage, two hour layover until our flight to Fort Wayne. Despite feeling my usual sadness and premptive homesickness at leaving England, I have to say that after two weeks of non-stop travelling, (other than the four nights on the ship we didn’t spend longer than two nights in any one place) I am quite relieved to be heading home. Of course, unfortunately I’m back at work tomorrow so won’t have the opportunity to unwind, do the laundry, make my house clean and shiny, gaze adoringly at all my new clothes, but fortunately with it being Easter this weekend it is a short week. The advantages of working at a Catholic university is that I do have Good Friday off. In good American style Keith does not.
Despite the whistle-stop tour England was, as always, wonderful, particularly the two days at Clivedon spent with family celebrating my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. The hotel was incredible although after many days of formal suppers on board ship Jay did say to me as I was making him put on a dress shirt and black trousers for another sit down, four course meal, “Mummy, I just want to eat supper in front of the tele”. I have to admit that by that time so did I! But it was really great to see family that I don’t get to see that often, my cousins from Edinburgh, Australia and Zimbabwe. It’s beeen a while since we were all together and it’s always refreshing to know that we’re as functionally dysfunctional as ever! Photos of the event will be posted shortly.
I can’t believe how big Hux is. Jay and Luc and I had a lovely evening over at Sophie and Alex’s, enjoying a yummy curry and catching up on the last six months. I do miss being close to her but I guess it makes the time we share together extra special.
God, I’m dying for a shower. What is it about travelling on planes (and trains) that always makes you feel so yucks?

Filed under: travel on April 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »

The usual frivolities and cruise capers were interrupted by an air and sea rescue. At about 11:30 this morning the captain announced over the ship’s intercom that we would be detouring off the coast of New Orleans in order for the US Coast Guard to be able to airlift a patient from ship to shore. We’ve just spent the last 30 minutes watching the Coast Guard performing an amazing, and successful transfer of the patient from the upper decks of Royal Caribbean’s Splendour of the Seas to the Coast Guard’s Augusta helicopter. Seeing such an amazing feat being performed leaves one a little breathless and choked up and once again, I’m amazed at the selfless bravery of folks such as those in the Coast Guard. Not an easy operation by any means and yet they performed it with an ease and precision that comes about only as a result of countless hours of practice and drill. Coast Guard guys, whoever you are, incredible job you just performed, a macabre pleasure to watch.

Filed under: travel on April 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »

I’ve just discovered plugins and totally love all those fabulous computer geeks who spend their time writing code to share with other people. Yeah open source! I just used a great plugin to transfer posts from my Blogger site to my new Wordpress and it so totally worked - easily!  While it hasn’t transferred exactly perfectly (will need to adjust some graphics if I can actually be bothered) it’s pretty amazing. The plugin I used can be found at http://www.romantika.name/v2/2007/01/31/import-new-blogger-to-wordpress. I love you ady@romantika.name - you have made my moving in process so much smoother!

Filed under: new site on March 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

Received second rejection from M&B yesterday. This one took less than a month to favour a reply - not sure that’s a good thing. Either it’s a quieter time of year or this submission was so bad it didn’t require much pondering. Felt a bit glum yesterday but feeling renewed and positive today. I’m thinking I might try my hand at some of the other writing projects I’ve got on the back burner in an effort to broaden my writing style.  The problem is these wretched M&B storylines and characters keep filling my head and I can’t shake them. Stupid, sexy Mediterranean men who live in vast palazzos and drive Bugattis.  And of course my resistance to my other writing ideas is naturellement the usual procrastination and laziness - kick up the arse thus given; I’m off to Abercrombie to drown my sorrows in a little retail therapy before spending some time crunching on the Apple and putting thoughts into action.  Children’s book? Family history? Cookbook? I’m welcoming the creative challenge!

Filed under: self-pity, writing on March 20th, 2007 | No Comments »

Holy crap, I am so bad at Photoshop! I cannot get my lovely red suitcase to look anything other than super super-imposed, rather like those really bad B films with the guy walking away from the burning wreckage of a car that’s so obviously not behind him, (oh wait, that wasn’t a bad B film, that was CSI Miami and the man of the Sunglasses of Justice fame). I will continue to work on my header so that eventually it looks professional I promise. I just need some practice with my magnetic lasso.

Filed under: new site on March 19th, 2007 | No Comments »

Whilst watching the Australian Grand Prix yesterday I heard one of the commentators chatting about how Mr Kimi Räikkönen had recently entered and won a snowmobile competition, the 24k Enduro Sprint at the Kopparberg King back in his native Finland just a week before the opening grand prix of the 2007 season took place. So that Ferrari wouldn’t find out that the errant scoundrel had entered he used an assumed name. And the name he used? That of the illustrous and equally scoundrelous F1 driver James Hunt.
Fittingly, the French Word-A-Day word for today is crapulerie. I love it!

Filed under: Formula 1 on March 19th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’m beginning to think that perhaps Giancarlo Fisichella doesn’t have the potential to be a truly great race driver. Once again his qualifying position and Grand Prix finish, fifth place just smidgens ahead of Massa, leads me to believe that unfortunately Fisi is merely a mediocre driver. I sincerely hope he proves me wrong this season, no doubt to be his last. His driving technique is truly a pleasure to watch, he is at times a true Italian driver, his narrow miss with Trulli when he came out of the pit lane shows he can be aggressive when he needs to be. I just think sometimes the “domani” mentality follows him onto the track. There’s just no way he has a hope of any kind of Championship though unless he qualifies better than his typical fifth or sixth. Kimi has the right car this season and Alonso is just the right driver and Fisi has got to qualify better if he is to have any chance of success this season.
Fantastic drive by Lewis Hamilton who came home in third place, helping to put McLaren Mercedes on top for the Constructor’s ratings. Now that’s a driver with potential and young enough to be able to maximise it fully.

Come on Fisi, prove me wrong….please.

Filed under: Formula 1 on March 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’ve been sooo good in not mentioning it and trying to concentrate on other things but…it’s the first Formula 1 Grand Prix of the season this weekend. Practice tomorrow, qualifying Saturday and the race on Sunday. Couple the excitement of the impending race with the fact that I’ll be spending the weekend packing for a four-day cruise to Mexico and a week back in England (yeah, englishgirl is finally travelling again) and I’m going to need more than just the relaxing aroma of lavender over the next few days. Trying hard to contain myself but the thought of those engines revving and those hard-helmeted dri