Becca Jane St Clair

I’m back from a week in Wales with my friend Helen and her son, Mark. Tim was unable to come with us due to his work schedule – he had the overnights this week – so I went without him. Our trip had it’s ups and downs…a major down being the camera (I took Tim’s big fancy Cannon EOS 300D) lens getting fogged up at the Pili Palace and me worrying that I had broken Tim’s camera (I hadn’t), and the rain. It rained one night so badly it was shaking our little static caravan! We had mostly good weather during the day, but then it all let loose on Friday afternoon and made it pretty miserable and wet in Porthmadog. But, a good time was still had by all and I will have several updates, hopefully before I head off to Austria with Tim 🙂

a few photos (highlights, really) are up on Facebook. I still have to pull the pictures off my regular camera (an Olympus SP 320)

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A lot of you have been asking to see our performance at convention, so I’ve finally uploaded it to YouTube:

Or, if the embed doesn’t work, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxusrQBarmo

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So, after bouncing back and forth about switching from Orange to O2, I finally made the definite decision. Because it will take 2-3 business days to transfer my number between the networks and because Orange still hasn’t sent me the damned return package for the phone I don’t want*, I’m not switching yet. After we return from our holiday in Austria (end September), I will be heading into the 02 shop with my PAK code and will be purchasing the LG Cookie.

I popped into the O2 shop last week and spoke with one of the sales associates – a woman who was older than the average mobile phone seller age, which was nice because I sometimes feel the young ones (hah! They’re not that much younger than me!) try to pressure you into buying things you don’t want/need…and at least in the case with the young guy at Orange, didn’t listen and was no help at all. Anyway. I explained to her the situation and she let me play with the Cookie – O2 has LIVE PHONES on display, whereas Orange only has the mock phones. After playing with the Cookie for about 10 minutes, I told her I wanted it but couldn’t buy it until the new Orange phone gets returned. She understood completely, and told me she would see me end September/beginning October.

Because of switching networks I will be current number less for 2-3 business days. BUT, O2 will give me a temporary number that I can use for a few days while it switches over. Better than being totally phoneless for a few days. I’ll probably do the switch the Thursday after we return from Scotland (going to see my favourite band, Barenaked Ladies the weekend after we come back from Austria!) and then be temp numbered over the weekend. I don’t use my phone a whole lot to begin with, but I always like knowing I have it and can use it when it’s needed.

So, final decision made. Not using Orange for mobile anymore. Funny, I almost had Tim convinced to switch HIS mobile to Orange so we could try to package bundle with Internet/Phone. Hah! We do still have Internet through Orange, but we never have any problems with it.

*Even better? After I send the phone back, it can take 30 days for the credit to show up on my card!

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Monday was a day off for Tim. After I got back from a GP appointment, I said to Tim “let’s go on a walk ’round the farmer’s fields”. Tim got out the Ordnance Survey Map for the area instead and picked out a route that went across the A46 through a wooded area and through some fields. We were originally going to walk to the Stepping Stones (some metal stepping stones placed in the river to walk across), but Tim got a phone call while we were out asking him to pick up a shift that evening, so we cut across a nettle-filled path that went right on the edge of a grain field and the beck to get home, but we walked 5 miles in total! We stopped at the corner Spar shop on our way out and picked up some sandwiches and snacks, and filled up our water bottles before we left. Fortunately, the rain held off and we only got spritzed on as we were almost back home.

There are over 140,000 footpaths in England and Wales. Picking up an Ordnance Survey map is a great way to get to know an area. The maps have all the public right of ways marked, so as long as you can read a map (and maybe have a compass) you’re good to go out and explore. You just need to remember to always stay on the footpaths. Some footpaths go around farmer’s fields, and some even cut through people’s gardens! Tim was telling me a story once about a public right-of-way that actually went through a person’s house because their house got built on top of one.

As we were walking, I noticed wild blackberry bushes. I commented that I wished I had brought along a basket…and then I had a brilliant thought. I could use my hat! So, my hat became a basket and we gathered blackberries and hazelnuts (off the trees) while we walked.

Apologies for the photo quality. I forgot to grab my camera and I’m still using the Sony Ericsson W200i phone, and it only has a VGA camera.

I’m going to freeze these, I think. I leave on Saturday for a trip to Wales with my friend H and her son, and I don’t want to make something Tim will forget to eat, so I’ll freeze them and figure out what to do later.

We also have a bumper crop coming in outside on our “cultivated” bushes, as our neighbour called them. Apparently the difference is the “cultivated” bushes have tighter, smaller sections than the wild ones. No matter to me, a blackberry is a blackberry and mmm, I’m already dreaming of blackberry and apple crumbles made from our own apples and blackberries!

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I’m nearly to 450 swagbucks, so I was browsing around looking for the Amazon vouchers.

Yeah. US $5 voucher? 450 SB. CA $5 voucher? 450 SB. £5 UK Voucher? Frigging 849 SB.

See?

(click to make bigger)

Not fair, especially when the current US$ -> UK£ rate is really low. 600 SB I can see….but 849? That’s almost double!

So I might start collecting US$ Amazon certificates because I can always use them to buy gifts for people in the US or use them when I’m visiting the US and can bring them back with me…I think 849 is a rip for £5. And it sucks that people who don’t have a US address available to use don’t have the option of getting US certificates.

This all being said, I do like the idea of earning points for things while I search on Google, so if anyone is interested, here’s a pretty graphic link to join from:

Or click here: http://swagbucks.com/refer/BeccaJaneStClair

I could really use the referrals!

[x-posted to LJ]

Everyone else can ignore this. I’m adding my blog to Technorati, and they need me to post a code to verify that I own the blog I’m claiming. Here’s the code:

FRCDJAYCCRAR

I’m pretty sure I’ll be switching to O2. Today AGAIN my phone is having problems with texts, particularly texts from Facebook and Twitter. And honestly? I’m fed up and tired of calling customer service.

I was reading the instructions on the O2 website and it seems pretty straightforward for keeping your number, you just need a PAC code and then fill out a form.

Plus, O2 has the LG Cookie in PURPLE, as well as the LG Chocolate. I think I want the Cookie. (Me want cookie!)

So…there you have it. I just need to decide if I want to go into town and buy it at the shop or order it online….

Ah, the long-awaited Beamish post!

A few months back, Tim and I were trying to come up with something to do as a day trip on one of his long weekends. We contemplated heading to one of our favourite railways (North Yorkshire Moors), but then I was on Facebook and saw on Beamish’s page that they were having a quilt exhibit that weekend, so plans were made for Tim and I to drive up and utilize our annual passes on the Saturday. We invited our friend, Helen, and her son, Mark. Helen was unable to attend, but Mark decided to come with us, so we got to experience Beamish “for the first time” through Mark.

Our first stop was the colliery and village, where Tim and Mark went down into the coal mine (I did it last time and it felt weird being able to touch the ceiling at 4’10”!) and we all explored the winding house and the engine shed, where Tim and I were surprised to find work was almost complete on the Coffee Pot engine!

I found where the quilts were and I spent lots of time in there talking with the women working there. The quilts were amazing. Oh, and Jen? I passed on the link to your website to the ladies I was talking to. They were really interested after the saw my bag you made! I found out about the guild of quilters and was invited to find a local group to join..I still haven’t. We have a local quilter’s group in the village, but their blurb in the newsletter always says “not accepting new members” and says that a non-member can attend three meetings and then go on a waiting list…and frankly, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to put myself into something for three months only to find out that I can’t do it in the end and have to wait for someone to quit, move, or die before I can join. No thanks. But the quilts on display were amazing. I asked if I could take pictures and was given permission, so a few photos appear below of just some of the quilts on display. There were both modern quilts as well as some very old ones!

The boys joined me in the quilting exhibit after they explored the tram/trolly shed and some of the other machinery on display. They discovered a model railway track behind the exhibition hall, and so we’re hoping we can find out when running days are to come back up and see it!

All-in-all, it was a fantastic day. Mark loved it and wants to go back (three cheers for annual passes!).

Recently, Tim and I received the renewal form for our annual passes in the mail and I’ve got to get that form sent back this week! I also noticed the steam fair is September 2-5, but unfortunately it’s right before we leave for Austria. As much as we both want to go to it, especially for the “behind the scenes” tour, Tim asking off for a day right before our long holiday might not be such a good idea, nor would travelling up to Beamish (3 hours each way) right before we make the long drive to Austria. 🙁

Here’s some photos I took while we were visiting:

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What a few days it has been for me.

Last week, I decided it was time to upgrade my phone. I’m an Orange customer, and when I bought my phone it was originally to use as a visitor only, so I picked up a barebones phone (a Sony Ericsson W200i. In pink.). Now that I’m living here full-time, I wanted a phone a little bit more like my old us phone (Verizon – a LG EnV), since I was very satisfied with it and if Verizon had used SIM cards, I’d have just gotten my US phone unlocked and popped the Orange SIM in it. Verizon doesn’t use SIM cards, so I had to purchase a new phone.

About a month ago, I went into the Orange shop to browse phones and talked with someone in the shop. I explained the three important things in a new phone:

1) better camera (my old phone was a VGA, I wanted at least a megapixel or 2)
2) the ability to send pictures to facebook
3) a QWERTY keyboard

The sales person recommended the LG KS360. I said thank you, and filed that bit of information away until August, since Tim and I had discussed my new phone being a birthday present.

While I was checking my balance last week, I noticed the phone I wanted was now on sale for £35. With the £14 I had saved up in my “phone bank”*, the phone would only cost us £20. I happily ordered it.

…and then the fun began.

The phone arrived on Tuesday. Since I wanted to keep my current number, I had to call to get things activated. I got sent to a call center in india, where I was told it would take 24-28 hours to activate my new SIM with my old number. Then, he revised it and told me 30 minutes after I expressed shock at it taking so long.

30 minutes passed….no phone active. Called back, got India again. This person reiterated the 24 hours to activate. Fine.

24 and a half hours later….no phone active. Called back, got India. This time I was told that “it hasn’t been 24 hours yet. You didn’t call until 5:59PM yesterday, and it’s only 3PM”. I explained that I had actually originally called at 2:30PM, and the person I spoke with changed the time I called to 4PM. She promised me a call back at 5 to make sure the phone was active.

5PM….no call. I called, FINALLY got the UK call center. And guess what? It only took 2 minutes for the person on the phone to activate the SIM.

Problem. SMS and MMS was not working properly. Called back, got India. Their attempt to fix it didn’t work, as picture messages still were not working.

Called back, got UK. Fixed it in a few minutes.

So, my new phone was now active, and the UK person even told me how to transfer my phone numbers onto it from my old phone. When the new phone imported everything, it dropped characters off of people’s names, so the place I volunteer, Cancer Research UK, became “Research U”, The British Transport Police became “Transpor”, and Welton Family Surgery became “Surgery”, to name a few. It also didn’t thread multiple numbers for people, so it would have something like “Tim/M” and “Tim/H” right in a row. It also deleted email addresses, such as the mobile@facebook.com address for sending pics. I figured this was the kind of stuff I could fix manually, so I went into the address book only to discover that a) you only can have 1 number per entry b) the name space is very short and c) there was no place to add an email address.

Went to bed. Thursday morning, Tim and I went into town so I could return the phone to the high street shop. Person in the shop told me he couldn’t help me b/c it was an online purchase and I would need to call it in. Ok, fine. Each number I called told me they were not the number I needed THREE TIMES (so, three wasted phone calls) until I finally got someone (in the UK!) at the right number. This included a call to the India call centre who told me I couldn’t return my phone!

In order to return the phone, I also needed to return the new SIM. This meant getting my old SIM re-activated. I went through all the steps of returning the new phone except for the last step, because I needed to get the SIM re-activated first. I called the number to re-activate the SIM, got someone in the UK, and guess what? It took only a few minutes. I was told that it should have never taken 24 hours the first time. Nice, right?

So, We’re done with the tale, yes? Old phone is working again, and new phone is ready to be returned, right? No.

My old phone was no longer receiving texts and pics.

Called it in, got India. I was told he was sending an update to my phone. He told me it could take a half hour.

30 minutes later….no texts. Called in, got the UK. Again, the woman tried to send the update to my phone and said it sometimes does take a while for the system to make it go, and said she would call me back in an hour.

No call. I called in, and the person I spoke with said he knew how to fix it, but the problem was I was calling from the phone, so he would make a note on my account for me to call in this morning to get it fixed. We speculated that maybe I also wasn’t receiving phone calls, so he told me when we hung up he’d try to immediately call me and if it didn’t go, we’d know it wasn’t receiving calls, either.

No call. *sigh*

After Tea with Lynne and Jan, I figured I had better ring Tim to let him know that I couldn’t receive messages, just in case he needed to reach me or had been trying to. A few minutes into our call, I got cut off. I tried to call back and got a message “you do not have enough credit for this call” and was advised to switch to the “reserve tank”**. I didn’t understand this, because that morning I had checked my balance and I had over £5!

Annoyed and with the resolve that I was going to switch to O2 in the morning, I went to chorus and then home to bed.

This morning, I called back into Orange, and got a lovely woman in the UK named Emma. Emma is why I am staying with Orange. She looked in my account and saw the notes from the previous night and was able to fix it. Then, when I explained to her that I was thinking about switching over to O2 because I was upset with the number of calls I had to make to Orange in the past few days, upset with the India call centre not being able to help, PLUS the calls all coming out of my credit she asked me to hold, and then came back on the line and told me she was giving me some credit (which most of it had to re-pay the reserve tank, but still). Then, she chit-chatted with me as we waited for my phone to start receiving the messages from yesterday, and even talked me through the process two more times when my phone kept losing messages.

Would you like to know the problem? Apparently a single tower was down yesterday and my phone had been programmed to use that tower, so all they had to do was swap me over to a different tower.

I won’t go into what happened when Emma had to (apologetically) send me to the India call centre to finish the return, since once again, the India call centre proved to be useless (and told me again that I couldn’t return the phone, when the paperwork clearly stated “7 day return”) and I had to call back yet again (to the UK) to finally get it handled.

So…I’m sticking with Orange. Because of Emma. Because of finally getting someone who was competent, friendly, and able to understand my frustrations.

Emma, if you’re reading this….Thank you!

(They are sending me a mailbag to return my phone in. It can take a week for this bag to arrive. I have 30 days to send it back now that I’ve called to return it and the credit will go back to my account when they get the phone back, including the money from my phone fund, so while I will be researching some of the other phones available through Orange, I won’t be purchasing anything until the credit goes back on, and I probably will purchase the phone directly at the store to save all the hassle.)

*Phone Bank is an Orange gimmick. For every £10 you top-up by, they put £1 into a phone fund for purchasing a new phone.
**Another Orange feature, where they give you an extra £2.50 in credit you can use if you go dead, and then when you top-up, it repays the reserve tank back.

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Here’s the vlog I promised in my earlier entry:

Link, for those of you who can’t watch embedded video: http://www.youtube.com/v/vuuLwoL3MnY

A few weeks ago, Tim and I went camping in our garden. One of his co-workers alerted him to a great deal at Halford’s – a 4-man tent, 4 sleeping bags, 2 air mattresses, & 2 lanterns for £90 online marked down from over £200. We also tacked on to the purchase a cooking kit which has a burner, 4 pots/pans, 4 plastic containers, utensils, and a carrying case for £25, and then we picked up a kettle at Tesco for £6. We thought we ought to try to put together the tent – a) to make sure we knew how it went together before we book a pitch somewhere, b) to make sure there aren’t any defects with the tent or gear, and c) because it’s been on the warm side and last week I told Tim I wanted to sleep outside.

It was….

-Chilly. We unzipped two of the sleeping bags and used one as a pad for the air mattress and the other as a cover. But unzipped it isn’t quite big enough to cover both of us if we aren’t cuddled up, so I wound up covering myself with the spare blanket I grabbed last night (my Penn State stadium blanket) But it was also…

-Hot. Tim and I always are warm at night because both of us are human furnaces. It was difficult trying to sleep in it because if our bodies were touching, I felt sticky from the combined body sweat. But then when we weren’t touching/cuddled up, it was chilly!

-Small. The mattress, despite claims of being a double, is smaller than our bed upstairs. I wound up moving practically off the mattress close to the “bedroom” wall in order to try to put some space between us, and Tim rolled (in his sleep) towards the other wall. Another word to use might be…

-Cozy. Even though we have a huge 4-man tent, the side “bedrooms” are only large enough to hold the air mattress. It was nice when Tim and I were cuddling before bed, but once I zipped shut the door to the “bedroom”, it felt really small.

-Hard. The air mattress lost air overnight, but I think that’s fairly typical when using an air mattress. I’m wondering if we should get a bedroll/mat type thing for underneath it, since my back started to get cold from feeling it seep through the mattress. I think Tim has one already, but it might just be for a single mattress. Alternatively, since we have 4 sleeping bags, we could always line the floor with a sleeping bag, then put the mattress on top or even just get a tarp to add a layer between the mattress and groundsheet. I’ll talk it over with Tim and see what he thinks. (also, how did I manage to sleep on an air mattress at Mom’s for years*?)

-Noisy. Lots of wind that kept waking me up. I know at least twice I woke Tim up, too. Actually, I’m awake now at 5:30AM because I needed the loo around 4 and figured I might as well stay in here until I’m tired enough to go back to sleep.

Fortunately, the tent is a “two bedroom” tent. Our plans are/were to use the second “bedroom” to store gear, but I might suggest we take along the second mattress and set it up for moments like this. If I’m going to be awake well before Tim, I’ll need somewhere to go/something to do. I could keep a book in there and just move my pillows and a blanket if I couldn’t sleep, that way I wouldn’t disturb Tim trying to read until I felt tired again.

We still need to get a folding table (for dining/food prep), and some kind of cooler and then we might have everything we need to go camping. Our first big trip is scheduled for this September, when we’ll be camping in Germany & Austria! I’m really excited. Originally, we were going to take the train the whole way and stay in B&Bs and things, but even with adding in the cost of petrol, camping will save us money. The average campsite cost is €6/night, and with making our own food, we’ll even have money leftover for a few nights out at nice restaurants or for some souvenirs!

I practised cooking with the gas stove, and while I completely trashed the pan (fortunately, I was able to clean it!), I still managed to cook breakfast 2 mornings – the first morning I did scrambled eggs and sausage, and the second bacon & fried eggs. Tim even bought a device for making toast on the stove that works pretty well!

The tent we purchased IS kind of big for just two people, but the hope is that this will be a long-term investment even after we have kids. If we can keep the tent in good condition, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t be able to use it in the years to come.

….now to find a place to store it! I’m hoping it will fit in the loft after we get the flooring laid in there, but for now I guess we’ll have to store it in one of the bedrooms, since the workshop and shed are a bit full of workshop/shed stuff!

There also is a video, but youtube is taking too long to upload it, so I will have to post it later, as I’ve had this window open for THREE weeks…..

*Long story short – when I moved to Michigan in 2006, I told Mom to sell my bedroom suite because it was a four-poster twin sized bed and I knew I wouldn’t want it in the future. I had an air mattress (with bedframe) to use in my house in MI. After I broke my foot and had to move back to PA, my old bed was gone, so I set up the air mattress. The plan was to eventually buy a new bed, but I just never had the money for it, so I lived on the air mattress until the bedframe finally broke and then I yanked the mattress off the sofabed and used that on the floor.

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There’s so many things I haven’t yet blogged about that I need to, so I’m making myself a handy list to remind myself what I need to write about in the comming weeks. I always hope I can bang out an entry each day, or at least a few times a week, but real life just catches up with me.

Sweet Adelines Region 31 Convention (all the way back at the first weekend in May!)
Beamish
Train ride across Hadrian’s Wall
Garden 2010 update
Beckenscot
Richmond
London
Abbey
Tattershall Castle (From Mom’s visit!)
Lincolnshire Life Museum (from Feb!!)
Trolley Museum

…yeah, looks like quite a bit to catch up on! I better start blogging….

This past Saturday, Lincoln Castle held their annual Armed Forces Day and my chorus, Lincoln Sounds, performed. Armed Forces Day offers free admission to the castle and grounds. Everything is open at the castle, so it’s a great day out for anyone who hasn’t yet experienced the castle. On the lawn, each branch of the armed forces, as well as their youth programs, organizations for retired service men & women, widow/widower organizations, and support charities set up booths with information, demonstrations, and exhibits.

The youth organizations all appeared in uniform and participated in a group march from the castle to the cathedral and back, including one of the military bands.

The whole concept of an Armed Forces day was “foreign” to me. As far as I know, we’ve never done anything like this anywhere in the US, and Armed Forces Day is a country-wide event in the UK. I’ve seen various booths set up for each branch of the US military at fairs and expos, but usually they were only there for recruitment. It blew me away to see all the crowds there. An email my chorus received told us they had over 8,000 people come through the gates! That’s absolutely amazing. All money raised at the event went to Help for Heroes, an organization for wounded soldiers (of all branches of the military).

Check out the Armed Forces Day website to see when an event is in your area!

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We’ve hit a heat wave in the UK this past week (or two, actually!) and I’ve been spending time away from the computer and outside in the garden….until it got even too hot to do that.

Yesterday, we were melting. I had just finished making dinner, and standing in front of the hot stove/oven had overheated me. I went outside (where it was cooler!) and watered the garden before coming back in and Tim suggested we head on over to the Yarborough Leisure Centre to have a swim. Entry costs £2.90/adult for casual swim, which gives you about an hour and half of swim time.

It was….interesting. Nothing like what I expected, and nothing like what I’m used to in the US. In the US, I’ve always had community pools at my disposal (either in my development or within a short walk) and your fee for using it was always included in your annual fees. At the pools where I grew up, you would walk in, flash your pool pass, and then head into the gender segregated changing rooms/toilets. At this one? We all got herded into one single changing “pavilion” (I believe that was the word used) which had coin-operated lockers (£1) and individual changing stalls (with locks). Men, women, and children all together in the same room with plenty of attendants on hand. If you needed to change, you were expected to use one of the changing rooms, and the only shower facility was the group shower area (so no way to really wash with shampoo/body wash, etc. unless you went into the gym’s segregated changing facilities). To say that I was shocked was an understatement. The attendants didn’t even say anything when Tim and I went into the same changing cubicle post-swim.

After you changed into your swimming costume (US: swimsuit/bathing suit) you went through the showers (required before swimming) and handed your ticket to a lifeguard. He then handed you a colour-coded wrist band (though mine was large enough to go on my ankle) based on what time you entered. Along one side of the lifeguard station was a strip of bright lights. When your time was up, a buzzer sounded and a coloured light lit up based on your wrist band colour.

Despite the crowds of people waiting to get in and milling around the changing room, the pool itself wasn’t too crowded. I imagine the colour-coded wrist bands help. Tim and I swam a bit, and did “water aerobics” until our colour lit up. Then, it was out of the pool, back into street clothes, and home with just enough time for Tim to get ready for the overnight shift.

We’re hoping to swim again soon. Our plan is to eventually feel comfortable enough to attend lane swimming instead of open swim so we can get in more exercise, but it’s been a while since both of us swam, so we’re taking it slow!

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When you’re a kid, you don’t really think about where food comes from. An adult (usually a family member) puts a complete meal in front of you, and you eat it. Pretty simple. As you get older, you might even start helping to prepare those meals, doing small tasks like mixing or pouring. You still don’t really give much thought about where the food actually comes from, again, you just eat it when it’s placed in front of you. The same thing happens when you are away at college/university. A cafeteria worker puts food in front of you. You know that somewhere behind the buffet line there is a kitchen and staff who make things, but you hardly give it any thought.

Eventually, you might move away from your family, and into your own home. You’ve entered the “real world” and you’re probably spending too much time at work to really think about preparing food. Purchasing pre-made meals sounds like a good idea. You don’t know who made them, or how much work went into them, but they’re good.

So here I am, married, and for the first time cooking every single day. I don’t use pre-made meals and I try to make most things from “scratch”. Sometimes we buy a loaf of bread, but I most often put to use the bread machine we got as a wedding gift. I make things like spaghetti sauce and sweet & sour sauce from base ingredients. I don’t even buy pre-formed hamburger patties, preferring to mix my own mince and shape the patties by hand.

Tim got this brilliant idea that we should have a burger party sometime and make mini burgers out of all the types I make. Of course, mini burgers require mini buns, and I decided I might like to try my hand at making my own buns. I searched all over the internet, and most of the recipes seemed a bit too involved for a beginner. I don’t count my bread machine as experience at all, and the only other bread items I’ve made on my own have been things like banana bread and blueberry muffins. Nothing that involves kneading and punching and rising at any rate. I did finally stumble on a “no knead” roll recipe that I might like to try, but it involves 12 hours of rising! Which means that I either have to wake up really early in the morning to mix it together, or I need to stay up late at night to mix it together. Neither of which really appeals to me, but I still might give it a go one week when Tim’s on the overnight shift (since I never seem to sleep on those) and I need something to do.

A few days ago I was reading my Betty Crocker cookbook looking for ideas for meal planning and I stumbled on a recipe for regular dinner rolls. Now, this wouldn’t be interesting, except that there were directions for making cloverleaf dinner rolls, and as I looked at the picture in the cookbook I had one of those childhood epiphanies – this is where the Thanksgiving rolls my Aunt Beatie makes come from. Her rolls are slightly sweet, perfectly shaped, and pull apart into thirds giving you extra room for butter. She makes them ahead of time at her house in MD, and then heats them at Aunt Janie’s house before we eat.

Well, I just had to try this out for myself. Since I have a bread machine, I followed the directions for making the dough in the bread machine, and I even left the dough in the bread machine to rise (since it calls for a warm place!). Here’s the recipe. I copied it off of the Betty Crocker website, so it uses US measurements. I keep a handy chart inside my kitchen cabinet for easy converting, but I also keep a set of US measuring cups.

1 cup water [cookbook calls for room temperature]
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
3 1/4 cups Gold Medal® Better for Bread™ flour [used regular bread flour]
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons bread machine or active dry yeast [The cookbook only calls for 2 1/4]
Butter or margarine, melted, if desired

1. Measure carefully, placing all ingredients except melted butter in bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough/Manual cycle. Do not use delay cycle.
2. Remove dough from pan, using lightly floured hands. Cover and let rest 10 minutes on lightly floured surface. [this step was not in my cookbook. Cookbook advised to let rise for 1 hour, then if you could poke it and not have the hole fill in, you punched it down, then did step 3]
3. Grease large cookie sheet with shortening. Divide dough into 15 equal pieces*. Shape each piece into a ball. Place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Cover and let rise in warm place 30 to 40 minutes or until double. (Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.)
4. Heat oven to 375°F. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Brush tops with melted butter. Serve warm, or cool on wire rack.

For cloverleaf rolls, use a cupcake/muffin pan and divide roll into 45 pieces, then put three pieces in each cup.

Here’s what my rolls looked like:

Not quite as perfect as my aunt’s, but close enough!

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I’ve just watched the season finale of Glee, and I’ve been trying to catch Gleeful: The Real Show Choirs of America that aired on E4 on Monday….and from what I’ve seen so far, it really doesn’t paint a very positive view of choir in the UK. My children are not going to experience the thrills of musicals and singing pop songs in harmony and showtunes….and it just really upsets me that my children won’t discover music in school the way I did. Like the one American they had on…I started singing in choruses when I was 6! And anyone who knew me when I was younger (which is a handful of you reading this on LJ, more if you’re reading this on FB) knows that music was a huge driving force in my life. At one point, I think I was involved in 6 or 7 music groups between school choirs, band, church choirs, bell/handchime choir, etc….not to mention the annual school musical! I really can only assume the reason HHS didn’t do a show choir was simply because a) we already had 5 choirs b) we put money into marching band shows and the annual musicals and wouldn’t have had money to go into a show choir.

But this isn’t about me being sad that I didn’t have a show choir to be part of. I was pretty proud of what I did accomplish, and was awarded several awards for my involvement in music.

Do British schools really NOT have music education/choir? One of the British women spoke about choir being “once a week. We started with a hymn, then we sang another hymn, and oh, then we sung another hymn”. It just breaks my heart that my children might not get that exposure to music at school. Not to say I won’t be educating them about music on my own, but there’s something really special about performing on stage.

I mean, all is not lost. If Tim and I have a girl, and if she enjoys singing, she could join Sweet Adeline’s Young Women in Harmony when she is 7 and/or LABBS (and Sweet Adeline’s) Ivy League. I can only assume that BABS has something similar for boys.

Tim and I are at least 3 years away from having any children of our own, and a long way away from starting music education, but it still makes me think and makes me want to find a music program for them to be involved in…or at least try. Obviously, there’s a possibility that our children won’t inherit my voice or my love for singing/music. Our children might not even inherit Tim’s love of trains…and that’s alright. But we both want to be able to expose them to our interests and at least have them try them out before deciding they’d rather do something else (Just watch. We’ll wind up with footballers for kids or something).

And a big you suck to the British Comedian who says “what good is this” and doesn’t think it should be taught in school!

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Tim said he loves my burger combinations, because it’s an adult update to a favourite kid meal. Tonight’s meal was Turkey Pizza Burgers.

No pic, but here’s the recipe:

500g minced turkey (ground turkey)
2 TBS green pesto sauce (I used Bertolli)
2 TBS tomato sauce (not ketchup, sauce that comes in a jar. I used leftover pizza sauce)
handful of shredded cheese
1 egg
1/4-1/2 cup breadcrumbs (start with 1/4, if it’s still too wet to shape, add the second 1/4)
salt & pepper
sprinkle of oregano

Mix all together and shape into palm sized patties. Cook until done (on the George Foreman this takes 4-5 minutes). Serve on rolls with lettuce, tomato, and fresh basil leaves.

I am well on the way to becoming the burger queen :). Next up? Trying my hand at creating sweet and sour burgers.

I volunteer once a week for Cancer Research UK in their charity shop on the high street in Lincoln (if anyone wants to visit, I’m there on a Thursday and we are located near the base of Steep Hill across from the Slug & Lettuce). My job is mostly downstairs in the shop – running the till, putting clothing and other items out on the racks/shelves, and general tidying up. Sometimes I also help W, the other volunteer with picking items for the window display, make price labels for B, our manager, and set up displays. I love volunteering and helping out…but the biggest benefit of working in a charity shop? Shopping in a charity shop.

Charity shops in the UK are different from shops in the US. In the US, the two big shops are Salvation Army and Goodwill. At SA you can get t-shirts for $0.50, jeans for $2, and even prom dresses for less than $10. You really have to comb through the racks of clothing to try your luck at finding something branded. I remember one time I found an Express skirt for $2, but most of the time it was combing through lots of discount chain brands and promotional items.

Charity shops in the UK are different. First of all, most big charities (Cancer Research UK, British Red Cross, British Heart Foundation, OxFam, etc.) have their own shops where they sell commercial goods for fundraising, branded items, and donated items. Some charities have multiple shops, such as the OxFam bookshop or the Heart Foundation furniture & appliance shop. Signs in the window at the British Heart Foundation shop advertise used televisions starting at £15 and other used appliances for under £100. I wish I had known of their existence when we had to buy a new washing machine in February!

Since I started volunteering in March, I think I’ve spent around £30 total in different charity shops (though most in the one I volunteer at!). But if I had purchased those same things on the high street? I bet I would have easily spent £300. I shop for high street branded items – I’ve scored per una (Marks & Spencers) blouses and tops for £3-£5, a dress from Evans for £7, a dress from Monsoon for £4, and assorted practically new books for £1-£3. And a quick glance at M&S shows a shirt similar to the one I purchased for £3 selling in their shop for £22, a new-with-tags shirt I paid £5 for selling at £25, and another new-with-tags shirt I paid £4 for selling at £19. And the dress from Evans would have set me back at least £25, and the Monsoon dress at least £55!

And I can’t forget about books. If I forget a book when I go into town, I usually stop in at the OxFam shop and pick out a book and spend £1-2, less than the cost of a magazine. I’ve even picked up the latest Phillipa Gregory book at the charity shop for £2. Buying books used is a great way to expand your collection if you don’t have much to spend. I also decided to purchase cookbooks at charity shops and used book shops instead of £25-30 at Waterstones.

So please, if you’re looking for some new clothing, consider checking in a charity shop first. Not only will you save some money, you’re money will go to a good cause. Or even better, donate some time to your local charity shop!

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For those of you who don’t know (and really, unless you’ve stumbled on this randomly, if you’re a friend or a family member you know), I have severe arachnophobia. Spiders make me scream, cry, and run away in fear…even just looking at photos of spiders can cause me to hyperventilate. It all started when I was in high school, at least as far as I can tell. In the same summer, my friend Beth and I found what everyone assumes was a Black Widow Spider while on a trip to Maine, and then a few weeks later when I was away at camp in North Carolina, I woke up from an afternoon nap to have a spider crawling up my arm. I’m sure I probably didn’t like spiders when I was younger, either, but my first real memories of being truly afraid of them was when I was around age 14.

This evening, Tim and I were out in the garden taking some pictures, and I happened to look over at what we now call “my tree” because I dug out all the junk and weeds around the bottom of the lilac and planted some flowers, herbs, and vegetables. I spotted what looked like a ball of something very tiny. I thought it might have been a spider’s web and the spider might have caught a lot of tiny bugs or something, so I asked Tim to get rid of it (fear of spiders = not wanting them around “my tree” because then I wouldn’t be able to even pull weeds there). Uhm. He tried to touch it and about a hundred (Tim will probably say it was less) teeny tiny spiders started to move. A momma spider LAID AN EGG in my garden and the damn thing hatched.

Fortunately, Tim was able to yank up the plant it had formed on (it was only an offshoot of the lilac) and tossed it in the green refuse bin….but now all I can think about is those little spiders and how some of them might still be in my garden, building webs in my flower beds and even possibly crawling into the house.

Sometimes, I really hate my fear. And, it’s stupid because everyone tells me that there are no poisonous spiders in the UK…but I still am scared of them. We bought an electronic “spider repeller”, and while it’s kept away the bulk of the spiders, we still get some…that Tim always has to catch and release outside.

Maybe I’ll be able to sleep at some point tonight….or maybe the thought of the spiders will keep me up all night.

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When my mom had her extended visit courtesy of volcanic ash, we decided to take advantage of Tim’s day off and took Mom to Stratford-upon-Avon. Tim and I had previously been there in October 2008, but we hadn’t seen all the attractions, and it’s just a nice place to go!

Fortunately, the weather agreed with us, and we had a fantastic day. We started with Shakespeare’s birthplace and walked on floors he once walked on as a child. We even got treated to an impromptu performance of selected scenes from Macbath, Othello, Romeo & Juliet, and several other plays. The performers were more than happy to continue to perform for us as the crowd kept asking for more!

We had a picnic lunch along the Avon before we wandered over to Nash’s house and gardens where they are currently doing “Dig for Shakespeare” – an archaeological dig to try to find the original house! Dig for Shakespeare includes a display where you can touch artefacts they found and I got to hold a 500yr old brick and some Roman coins. Pretty nifty.

After that, we headed to the car to drive out to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. We just made it before they closed, and as we were the only people there, the guide went above and beyond in talking to us, showing us everything, and telling us stories that had been passed down.

We had an absolutely fantastic day, and since the Shakespeare homes offer an annual pass with your admission, we can go back again within the year without having to pay again!

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