marthasoft

I can’t take a whole weekend to do this, as I don’t have many weekends left in Seattle. So I thought I would try fitting in as many short reviews as I can.

29 April 2007: Neville’s (at The British Pantry Ltd.) in Redmond

Not a bad high tea, especially considering that it’s in Redmond. The tea included cucumber sandwiches which were nice and fresh, if a bit bland. The tea was great – it was their house blend. They also brought milk in a nice little pitcher without me asking, which is always nice.

The tea also had a delicious scone – it was perfect and even warm! Definitely a bonus. There was butter and strawberry jam for the scone, but it was also good with the cream that came with the tea – I think it was Devonshire, but it’s been a while, and I am not positive. Lastly there was a nice-sized small cake which was also excellent.

The atmosphere of Neville’s is kind of like what you’d find at a small-town pub in England, and it’s quite nice. The tea cups and china are sharp, casual without being dowdy. The import store attached has a great selection of (of course) teas as well as other interesting candies and imported English foods. They also bake pies and other baked goods daily.

I also give Neville’s some bonus points for having the good sense to seat me next to the American version of Chus Lampreave, one of my favorite Spanish actresses and one who I think would make a fun grandmother (seemed to be confirmed by her granddaughter, who was having tea with her – lucky!).

Taking the bus as often as possible, even though I usually can’t take it every day, is definitely worth the effort for the additional time available for reading, napping, listening to music, observing weirdos and occasionally surfing the Internet. I am moving soon, and in my new location I will have a rapid public transit system and no car, so I look forward to continuing to enjoy public transportation and my reading/napping time.

This Winter, I didn’t have time in my schedule to take French Five. Instead, I found this site: http://ftew.libsyn.com/ which has French lessons via podcast, so I’ll be trying to stay in practice with that for the next few months until I can move to the next class.

I am planning to return to Namibia in October 2007 to visit a friend, and during that time we are planning to head to Swakopmund on the West coast of Namibia to run the annual Swakop marathon.

Having come back from vacation to find my car completely dead, I ended up taking the bus for a couple of weeks until I was able to have a friend revive the battery. This was great because I had no choice but to take the bus every day! This helped rebuild it into my routine, so I hope to continue that.

I feel I’ve gotten into enough of a habit of this that I can move it off of my list of goals. Yay for movies!

A++ for great atmosphere – Molly Maguire’s has excellent music from noon to four on Sundays, and today it included a nice variety of instruments. If there hadn’t been so many people watching football, I would have expected to see people get up and clog or something… At least we were definitely clapping.

However. I called ahead of time to make sure they had Irish breakfast, and apparently they did, but that is not what I ended up receiving, although I requested it. I was given what must have been a six-egg omelet wrapped around a mixture of tomatoes and sausage, with nice grilled potatoes on the side and a piece of soda bread with butter. A good breakfast, but not what I had expected, and not what I have had there before. Coffee was fine, bonus points for the nice big mug.

I really love the feeling at Molly’s – it’s very authentic. Actually it was so much so that when I realized the book I had brought was an Oscar Wilde book, I felt embarrassed for trying too hard, so I tried to hide the cover so no one would see it. It’s just a coincidence, I swear.

The price for the Irish breakfast, which I will probably go back and actually get to eat some other time, was $9.95, which is $2 more than they used to charge. I can’t comment on whether or not it’s a good value yet.

And what better time to start something like this than right at the start of fall fashion?

I am very excited – I am two days into this, have had some rough times so far, but I am going to try to keep it up for around 3-4 weeks and see how it goes.

I think I’m finally in enough of a habit of using del.icio.us that I can mark this as completed. Definitely a worthwhile goal – helped me get rid of a lot of clutter in my head and on my computers.

After the first five or so blossoms died, nothing has happened since, and it doesn’t appear to be growing any more. After talking with some plant people, a hypothesis was that perhaps it wasn’t getting cold enough at night for it. So I’ll try putting it outside at night for a few weeks, and maybe moving it back from the sun a bit during the day/evenings.

Even though it’s summer, I still have a tough time with this off and on, as my bedroom window faces west. After talking to my cousin, another midwestern-to-pacific northwest transplant, I decided to try a dawn simulator like she has. Indoor Sun Shoppe in Fremont sells them, and I picked one up today. You can adjust the length of the dawn & the time when you’re actually supposed to wake up. I have also read that they can be effective helping to adjust to a polyphasic sleep cycle – sweet.

After doing a fair amount of work trying to schedule things around naps, I realized that I have too many commitments in the next three weeks for this to work just yet.

I am shooting for a start date of 8/28/2006, and I’m going to try to use a 9:30/1:30/5:30 schedule, so 20-30 minute naps six times a day. These times were selected based on my typical meeting times, extra curricular activities, gym schedule, and an attempt to remain social-ish throughout the whole thing. I also don’t think it’s worth it to try for less than a couple of months, so I am aiming to do this throughout September and Octoboer.

Bummer, because I was excited about possibly starting this coming week, but I don’t want to set myself up for failure either, so I will wait.

• recipes: storing recipes I use or want to try
• book club: lists of books my book club has read/wants to read
• races: races I have done or want to do, as well as my race results
• bands: music I listen to, tour dates, new albums, reviews

I am using this week as a preparation week, trying to figure out times, do my research, plan my meals & rearrange work meetings to give this a shot.

By the end of the week, I should know whether I can start this next week or not – I’m a little nervous about its effect on having visitors in town, so I may end up pushing to mid-August for my start date.

This class is good so far, I just wish I were better about spreading out my homework; I tend to lump it all together the night before my class.

Also need to make an effort to find & use more resources, things like “look at a French news site daily” or “listen to French radio every few days at work” or “get easy-ish French books at the library & try to muddle through them.”

This event hit a lot of firsts for me: first Olympic triathlon, first time to Ocean Shores, first time being the only person without a wet suit (wimps), first time getting eaten alive by mosquitos before the race, and first time getting to the race early (which actually caused the mosquito thing…guess I won’t do that anymore).

Mostly I am surprised that I liked it so much, I am planning on doing another one in August. My times weren’t terrible, but I could of course use some improvement. And, hey, I wasn’t last, which I secretly feared I would be.

The worst part about it all was that afterwards I went to the beach, and they had OMG PONY RIDES ON THE BEACH!!! But I was way, way too sore to be up for that. Next time, ponies, next time…

I have done a terrible job here lately. And after watching the Al Gore movie, I realize I really have no excuse. I have been driving to work due to my gym schedule, but as soon as that can be cut down (less than two weeks), I am going back to taking the bus every day.

All done, finally! Now my only question is whether to save the paint colors for touch ups later or to dispose of them & just save the color swatches. I’m sure I can remember “Beach House” as a color, though…

Finished the first coat, second coat & the border yesterday. Today I did a bunch of touch up work, and so now I just have to wait for it to dry & then see if there’s anything else left to do. I can’t wait to clean it.