Game, Set, Match!

Hey Everyone!

I took a chance and went to Wimbledon yesterday to see if I could get in. The original plan was to wake up at 6:30 to get there early, but when the alarm went off, it just wasn't happening. I continued to sleep until 9, and then headed out the door. I got to Wimbledon around 10:30, and queued up for a couple of hours. My number in the queue was 8777, lucky I guess since they only were letting in 9000 that day! It was a little overwhelming at first---there was tennis EVERYWHERE! I stopped at the first court I saw and lucky for me it was a women's match with a seeded player in it! After that match ended I was able to get a seat at the court and watched an American play. He was about 7 feet tall and kind of a jerk, complaining about every call, so I left! I went to get a drink and then to find another match, what a jackpot I hit. I landed on court 18, which you would think was full of crappy matches, but it's a "Show Court" with grandstands, so they put a lot of seeded players there. I remained there until about 7:30 when I was just getting too tired to stay. Had I stayed I would have moved over to Court 3 to see Venus and Serena play doubles. The "Day Of" tickets get you into everything except Center Court and Courts 1-2 and they were only 20 GBP.

I did get a little sunburn but it was a really cool experience!

Royal Pain in the Ascot

What a day! While it wasn't the brightest of days, and maybe even a little bit rainy, we had a wonderful day at Ascot. We took a 10:15 train at Waterloo and arrived at Ascot around 11. We went straight to the meadow where we grabbed some benches and set up shop for the day. We certainly had our priorities and the day wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if we hadn't gotten a seat! After that we sent the boys to get us drinks and when they got back, the girls grabbed some pizzas. Mike bet every race, but we didn't really win anything until the last race where we hit on an exacta. At the end of the day, it was probably an expensive way to spend the day--3 bottles of champagne, 2 pizzas, and 2 heavily blistered feet later, we got home around 11PM!

The pageantry at Ascot was at it's best. Men in morning suits and top hats, women in dresses with hats and fascinators (little hats attached to a hair clip), everyone swigging down the champagne, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh just a stone's throw away from us in the "Royal Box", the horse drawn carriages carrying the Queen and her family, the sing-a-long after the races! The list goes on! It was certainly an "English" day and one not to forget!

Today Mike leaves for Frankfurt and will return on Tuesday. I have a "Girls Night Out" planned with some of the other PwC wives. It seems like all of the boys are away this week so we're going to go to the movies on Monday. THEN, we head out to sea for our cruise on FRIDAY! What a week!

I'm conforming my cooking!!!

Steak and Ale pie is quickly becoming Mike's favorite British food---mine too if I'm being honest. You can even ask Drew and Cat...When they visited I think we had them for either lunch or dinner on more than a few of the days they were here! So, today I tried my hand at making one!

I went to the supermarket in search of a ready made pie shell. Shocker! They don't have those here, so I gathered the rest of my ingredients and came home to make my dough from scratch. I have to say that my pie came out fantastically and we had it for dinner tonight, Mike even had 3 helpings! Surprisingly it was easy to make and really very tasty. It would have be even easier had Pillsbury come to the UK with the wonderful ready made shell!

I'm putting the recipe here in case anyone would like to try it!

1.5 lbs. stew beef
1 onion chopped
1 can of lager
2 cloves of garlic chopped
2 Tablespoons of flat leaf parsley chopped
2 Tablespoons of Worchesteshire Sauce
2 Tablespoons of flour
1/2 teaspoon of Thyme
1 potato peeled and chopped
1 carrot peeled and chopped

In a saucepan, put beef, onion and lager. Let this simmer for about 30 minutes (until beef is tender). Then add garlic, parsley, worchestshire sauce and thyme. Let this simmer for 5 minutes. Add the potato and carrot. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the potato is fork tender. Take out a small amount of the liquid and mix with flour. Add this to the pot and stir. Simmer for a few minutes until it thickens up.

Put the mixture into the pie shell and cover with the top crust. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 40 minutes!


Easy Peasey!

Tomorrow I think I'm going to go to Wimbledon and check out the situation there. They are playing qualifying rounds and I just want to see what's up. It's not TERRIBLY far from our house, so I might as well see what all the hub bub is for. I looked into getting tickets next week, but they want 500 to 1000 GBP. Apparently, you can get day-of tickets, but you have to SLEEP OUT for them! SICK! But who knows, maybe Rafael Nadal will be roaming the grounds and I'll catch a glimpse!

The Euro Cup 2008 in in full action. We're actually getting really into football here. England hasn't qualified so we have been going game by game on who we're cheering for. Last night was Italy v. France, and Italy won! Tonight we're watching Sweden v. Russia. We're cheering on Sweden because they are part of NATO...This is our logic! LOL!

Other than that, our sights are set on our cruise which departs 9 days from today! Mike can't wait to have 2 whole weeks off from work!

Trip home to the USA!

Hello Everyone!
I took me a little while to fight the jet lag (I suck at getting back on schedule here) and then had my bout with sickness, but now I'm back on top of the world and raring to go! This trip back home was billed to be a little more relaxing. Relaxing? Hmmm. I guess nothing is relaxing when you constantly have things to do, but it was still nice to be home.

The Friday before I left, Mike and I had tickets to see Springsteen here in London at Emirates Stadium. It was a great show with a great set list, but the crowd was really weird. Nobody stood up! I guess I was bopping in my seat a little too much when the lady sitting next to me asked if I was American. Hahaha!

I had to get up only a few hours from when I got home to catch my flight but it was worth it! When I first arrived at Newark I headed straight for Kim's birthday Luau. 29 ain't so bad--I guess we'll see when I get there in September. Kim was really excited and surprised to see me so I have happy I was able to be there for it. Sunday, Karen and the boys picked me up at Kim's a delivered me to Mom's house. It was a pretty relaxing day. Monday, I bought Macy's out of boxer shorts for Mike and did quite a bit of shopping. Tuesday was lunch with Mike's mom and more shopping. Wednesday was the Yankee game w/ Prail and his fiance', Thursday more shopping, Friday was Matty's Graduation! Pre-K is a pretty big deal in Randolph! Proper caps and gowns and all! He led in the whole group. It was priceless. Saturday, I went to Christopher's baseball game. It's hard to believe that he's not in t-ball anymore!

I've included some pics of Matty's graduation and Chris' game. I guess looking back it was a relaxing week. I was able to spend a lot of quality time with my family and in the end, that's all that counts!

This week, Mike's got training in Buckinghamshire today and tomorrow and we have Royal Ascot on Saturday!

Yesterday we started a big project in our back yard clearing out all the overgrowth and weeding. I'm not sure where I'm going to put all the clippings, but I guess we'll figure it out!

2-Nil...

Yes, unfortunately, the Yanks couldn't get it together last night and we lost 2-0 to the Brits in the "Friendly" football match we went to yesterday with our friends Duff and Larissa. I was happy that my favorite player from Chelsea, John Terry scored a goal. He's been getting quite a bit of flack for missing his penalty kick last week in the UEFA Championship, so it was great to see him back on his A-game. Sadly, the four of us knew more players on the England team than we did on the US one!

While Mike and I were waiting for Duff and Larissa outside the stadium, we must have had "Drunk Americans, please come talk to us" stamped on our foreheads. We had a steady stream of people from all over trying to get us to swig out of their disgusting vodka and Jim Beam bottles! Bleh! Out of the 70,000 in attendance I would say only 500 were cheering for the stars and stripes!

I think one of the funniest things was that England had a marching band in the stadium like at a high school football game. It just goes to show how backward this country is...no recorded music.

Our week of craziness is underway...Friday is Springsteen night! We can't wait to head to Arsenal to see the concert!

We Lost...

It was a 1-1 at the end of regulation, then went into 2 30 minute "extratimes", then went to a shoot out. Man U missed first when their star Ronaldo missed his kick. It came down to captain, and my favorite player, John Terry to score. Unfortunately, he lost his footing and hit the post. So then it goes to sudden death, and Chelsea loses!

Mike was on his way home from Spamalot and I told him the bad news. He had to roll right into Chelsea Territory. His report was that he went to leave the train and was pushed as he was trying to go up the steps. Chelsea fans were crying, muttering to themselves, and even angry. As he left the tube, the police were out in full force, wearing total riot gear! It was probably necessary as Mike saw an old lady get trampled into a parking garage! Women were yelling at their boyfriends, men were screaming, etc. so Mike quickly tried to get to the safety of our little alcove of a street! He came in saying it was the craziest walk he'd ever had! Luckily he's home in one piece!

Sadly, Chelsea lost, and my favorite player failed to produce, but in the end it's only a football game that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things!

Yeah, tell that to the fans. It's hard to compare how passionate people are when it comes to this sport to anything we have in the states. Even if you take the greatest rivalry in baseball--Yankees/Red Sox, I don't think you have as much hatred and aggression as you do in any random "football" game. I'm sure you've seen in the soccer stadiums how they separate the fans--home on one side, away on the other. What you probably don't see is that there is a line of police separating them. For Chelsea games, there are 2 entrances/exits for home and away supporters. The orchestrate it so that as trains pull into the tube stop, one train will hold home, the next away, etc. They try to limit the mingling as much as possible because they are really violent fights if they don't.

My new mission is to figure out where all this pent up aggression comes from! Is it really just testosterone getting the better of them?

Let's Go Chelsea!!!

As I've mentioned before, we leave within eye-shot and certainly within ear-shot of the Chelsea Football Club. Due to our proximity we've become fast fans! Lucky for us, Chelsea is AWESOME and is in the Champions League Final this Wednesday against Manchester United! Needless to say the neighborhood is all abuzz with excitement! I'm excited to breakout my Chelsea Blue Gear on Wednesday and settle in to watch the game. Unfortunately, Mike has a team building event at work and has to go to see Spamalot in the West End---Sucker!

Ironically, the game is in Moscow and the two teams have actually posted "Hooligan Spotters" at all major English airports and will have them in Moscow as well. I don't know what it is about the football fans here, but they tend to get a little crazy. When Manchester United won their spot in the finals, there was a RIOT in Manchester. Luckily, here is lovely Fulham, we just have a bunch of drunkard roaming the streets chanting their songs...They're harmless!

Though Chelsea is the underdog, here's hoping that Terry, Lampard, and Didier Drogba can lead the team to victory!!