Pinterest is like crack

Well as I am not working currently finding myself with lots of time on my hands and working out new and interesting ways to fill it.  Met a lovely fellow American who introduced me to card making and die cutting machines and now I have been sucked into the strong gravitational pull that is craftiness.  I do not mean the sly kind but the omg gots to make all kinds of stuff variety.  Now I have gotten my first die cutting machine a Sizzix Big Kick and just got my first dies via ebay thanks to my wonderful husband.  Have gotten some great paper and my brain is exploding with the possibilities.  With drifting over to pinterest now I want to not only make cards but decoupage the world as well.  LOL!  oh, since my last post got to go to London with my MIL.  We took a coach (to us Americans that is a hired tour bus).  It dropped us off in the middle of London and we just had to be back by a set time.  I got to visit trafalgar square and piccadilly circus as well as buckingham palace.  Must say the palace suffers from a severe lack of bling...hehe.  Now the gates are blingtastic but the palace itself is a rather austere looking gray stone building.  We were awash in young french students as well.  I got to visit the national gallery which was rather fantastic and pretty much walked my little feeties off.  That is one thing that I have done way more of since coming to England.  There were tons of statues everywhere and took a lot of pictures.  There was one cool thing going on at the palace.  They were having "royal investitures" going on.  An Investiture is a very special day when an individual who has been awarded an honour receives their award in person from The Queen, The Prince of Wales or occasionally The Princess Royal.  Think it might have been the queen as my MIL told me that if the queens flag is flying at the palace the queen is in.  It was up while we were there.  Oh and I should add that men dress in what is called Mourning suits for the occasion ; top hats long coat with tails very very snazzy looking or the occasional fulll kilt and for women it is the season of crazy hats.  There were more wild crazy chapeaus in evidence that day that on a sunday morning at a black southern baptist church.  This is a very strange English fetish that I don't understand but do find most amusing and maybe a little bit fun.  The English are also often taken with fascinators which are hair decor peices that are usually quite festive as well, often festooned with flowers feathers etc.  Some of the fascinators even are small hats themselves.  The oft times dour English do like some bling every now and again.  More to come I am sure.  Peace and love!

Still standin

I am still alive and mostly well.  This new country is kicking my ass a bit but trying to work through it.  I get really homesick sometimes and right now the weather is wet and grey but even if I was in the land of cotton right now it wouldnt be much different:)  I have good friends and a new computer and know my life is very good.  Now I just have to live it like it is.  Hope the holidays are treating you all well.  Love and peace!

Sun and Shadow

I realize that not everything I write here will be strictly about the differences between my old home and my new as I want to just talk about my life in general as well.  Today its so beautiful out.  A study of contrasts; parts of the sky slate gray and heavy with rain clouds while other parts are brilliant blue filled with white fluffy clouds and stunning sunlight streaming down.  The land is lush and green studded with lovely red/brown brick as far as the eye can see and gentle rolling hills.  Wind blows through the house; cool, soothing.  I am filled to brimming with joy right now.  I love my husband so much sometimes it just takes my breath away.  I want to climb inside him to just blend with him to become one entity of ecstatic life essence.  So weird to say but true, so true.  Guess I am more than a little weird.  LOL!!

Two countries divided by a common language.

pants= underwear
marking papers= grading papers
armored hand egg= american football
tara=goodbye
ta= thanks
cheers=goodbye or thank you
innocently saying to the engineer on the phone that you are transferring to a coworker that Naz will "give you one" as in give you a job to go to = everyone around me laughing hysterically:)
bum bombs=farts
bottom ballistics= more farting
get a leg over= having sex with
just a few things that are quite different than in the states and just make me laugh or shake my head:)

Pine is not just a tree

Today is a very strange day for me.  Though I have a lot going on that is positive; got a new job with great folks and have the best husband evah; I find myself feeling a bit melancholy.  The worst part is I have no idea why.  I do think a little of it is missing things.  Strangely I do find myself pining a bit for someone who sounds like me.  What is so strange is that I have always loved the English accents and I still do but not hearing an American accent in person for a while can be a bit of a strain.  I must admit that when I was wanting to get over here so badly I thought people were pretty wimpy for being homesick but I can understand it a bit now.  I don't really miss American per se, I miss certain things like how it looked in my countryside, my friends who can relate and had the same experiences as me etc.  Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the adventure, but I am fairly certain that even Indiana Jones liked to chill out at home occasionally with the things he cherished and people he loved and knew.  Change is good, but humans are creatures of habit and I have learned that I am more human than I thought.  Nothing world shattering just a little heart achey and meh for a bit.  Its completely overwhelmed when I see things like I did this past Monday, 2 May at the greenman festival in clun.  There was more breathtaking vistas than I could have imagined and my face hurt from smiling in just pure joy.  Life is good but it has all kinds of moments.  It doesn't hurt to acknowledge them.

Of red clay and steel

On my first visit to England as I was driving away from the airport with the wonderful man who would become my husband, out of the corner of my eye I saw something that made my jaw drop and caused me to chuckle a bit wryly.  I had traveled thousands of miles, crossed the vast ocean to a strange new country and what should my wondering eye behold but a field of red clay.  Deep rich orange red soil such a familiar site in my Birmingham Alabama home where people did everything from dye clothes with it to eat it is also a common feature halfway cross the world.  It made perfect sense when I thought about it.  Our Birmingham is the sister city to the one in UK as both are steel towns.  Where there is steel there must be iron ore and iron ore concentrated in soil gives us that beautiful red clay that I have always thought of as being a strictly southern thing.  I later discovered that this area of the UK is also as loaded with limestone as my dear home state.  Sometimes the world really is a strange and small place for all its vastness.

Its the little things

It is the little things that often knock me for a loop.  Coming to a country where supposedly we share a common language you think that there will only be the slightest of differences and they won't really matter.  This, however, has not proven to be the case.  Just little observations.  One thing I have noticed is how the English refer to foods.  In America we might say that a dish we enjoyed was delicious or quite tasty.  Here in the UK, it is far more common to say such a thing is "lovely" or "beautiful".  I find it interesting in that one seems very much to be taste related whereas the other is a descriptive more commonly (at least in the US) associated with the visual aspect of something.  Other small differences are things like outlets, not the shape but the fact that you can actually switch an outlet here off.  Oh, and a lot of doors to houses don't have a doorknob.  Ours just has this little sort of small handle like thing attached to the lock at the top of the door.  Windows here generally lock with keys.  Where we live they give you a huge trash can (bin) for yard clippings but only give you a supply of black trash bags for your actual garbage.  There are no baggers in grocery stores here at all.  Cashiers may often sit at their till instead of being forced to always stand.  Another huge thing to me, being from the south as I am, is that they don't have the problem with heartworm here that we have in the states.  They use this stuff very much like frontline that you simply put between your dogs shoulder blades and its good for all kinds of vermin including fleas and something they have here carried by snails called lung worm.  The stuff runs about the same as frontline and you dont have to have your dogs tested for anything so its actually less expensive.  That will do for the moment but much more to come, I assure you:)

First time for everything

I have decided there might actually be some interest in my pondhopping adventures and the things I have observed and learned in my epic move from Birmingham Alabama to Birmingham UK.  In light of this thought a blog might be a good place to remark about some of the things I have seen and done if for no one else but myself.  Hope you all enjoy:)