Well, the holidays are winding down and now I am getting ready to really move back to California.  I am not ready to say goodbye to my friends yet!! I just cant.  I had a lovely dinner with John and Marlene and made plans to see the 1st Emperor exhibition at the British Museum with them a few days before I fly home.

I am not good at goodbyes.  I go all 'opium' and fuzzy.  then a week later I find myself sighing, sad, missing them.  But it is a great excuse to come back and visit!   

I came home from work last night and made chocolate chip cookies for dinner.  I was of course pretty wired from the sugar, which was great because it helped me with my packing (I am moving to housesit at a friends in a few weeks) and getting rid of things (I am moving back to CALIFORNIA in October) and was a lovely chocolate hug 'you can do it girl!' I did a nice colour meditation before bed, fell asleep around 1230am, woke with a full spinning head around 630am but thought, 'its ok if I don't fall back asleep, but I would like to, and to have nice dreams'.  I did fall back asleep, and dreamt I was at my parent's house, petting their lovely cats and kittens!

I woke up sleepy, with a smile on my face.  I am now eating my porridge (porridge, like broccoli, absolves one of all food sins, nourishes nerves, high in B vits, great for High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, stress, balances blood sugar levels, will even hoover your carpet and dust your furniture if you ask it politely).

Its grey and warm, I think the sun will come out in the afternoon!

For the past few days I have been editing and loading all of my minidiscs onto Audacity on my computer.  My plan is to edit it (further) and make some CDs.  Strange to hear myself so much.  I was really amazing in 2002, just as I was meeting Simon.  Why did fate throw him in my path? I felt so professional, so ready at that concert.  If I had not met him, would I now have a professional career?  Where would I be? 

I should upgrade so I can put audio tracks on this blog (is it worth $11 per month, or should I just use myspace?).  I am listening to a touching rendetion of Vedrai Carino (featuring me!), during a voice lesson, with just a hint of piano accompaniment by my teacher Paula. 

Sigh.  I miss it.  Not the ambition, or need to express my sadness or anger, but the beauty, spirit, colours of the sound island I inhabited for varying lenghs of time, sometimes only a few precious seconds, sometimes a glorious, langourous uncountable length of time.

It is so hard to come back to reality. I am currently rewarding myself for all my completed tasks with fresh brewed ginger ice tea and organic lemon biscuits.

Completed:
1. Read and replied to divorce petition (wasn't too bad really, just the anticipation of opening the letter). Takes up to 6 months. Official papers coming later by post.

2. Rearranged furniture and cleaned room (my usual coping mechanism, completed before task #1)

3. Opened, filed and organised post

4. Did 2 loads of laundry

Became Frustrated with:
Nero 7 trial.  Downloaded it in hopes of being able to make CDs.  A simple task, I would think, but I am stuck.  All I want to do is save a bunch of my CDs to my hard drive, with the names of the individual songs listed, so I can later go to 'my music', pick songs and make compilation CDs.  Tried using Windows media player and Nero and got totally confused, felt like a computer idiot.

Recovered a bit with:
Updating and adding a bunch of my favourite pages to my blog. It really was only simple cut and paste into the HTML, but it made me feel better!

Looking forward to:
Dancing tonight at Thames Rowing Club!

A gourmet day:

Listening to the passion and enthusiasm of the owner of Chateau Joliet as he described the alchemy of wine making

did you know they use fire and water to shape the wine barrels?

Discovering a grape variety I had never heard of - Negrette - dark ruby, floral, smooth

A visit to the midaevil village Cordes Sur Ciel

A superb dinner on the terrace of Bistrot Tonin'ty, under a 300 year old wisteria

Roasted rack of lamb with lavender, thyme, garlic, courgette and carrot flan

Right.  was out with a sweet friend Lin, at a lovely wine bar.  only three glasses (plus a few sips of tasting).... what a light weight, no?

Super evening, talking, catching up.... reminiscing about the lovely weekend in Montpellier and so looking forward to Toulouse next week.  Funny, never thought I'd be a Francophile, but then je suis arrive et instantement une 'fan'.... (that is probably all not real French, no matter).  I just loved the people, the way they thought about things, their courtesy (greet and kiss everyone in a group when you arrive), the food (aperitif, entree, course,vin, cafe), the history, the atmosphere... why has so much architecture and art and history in France survived the war?  Did they see that playing the game, eg, accepting the situation, however atrocious, served a longer term goal of perserving art, culture, buildings, history? 

Just a tipsy question....

What the hell am I doing in this country? After a boring day at work, where I was the only one to sell a 'bundle' (latest promo) half-heartedly at the end of the day, I decided to get a 'burrito' takeaway.  Because my landlord (I live in a bed-sit/roomates type situation) is having colleagues/friends for dinner this evening, and I dont want to be in the kitchen. I really wanted to go out, but of course this is one evening everyone is busy, and I thought, great, I can hang out in my room, add some stuff to my myspace page, watch a film, relax. I look in the phone book - 2 listings under 'mexican', one I have been to and it was rubbish.  So I go to the second place to pick up my 2 vegie burritos for £8.95 (yes, thats about $15).  There are 2 containers.  I open the top one, it is full of chips.  Not tortilla chips, noooo, english chips, about a double order of mcdonalds size fries. 

'Excuse me, I didn't order these...'

'Oh, it comes with chips'.

I hazard a request 'You wouldn't happen to have TORTILLA chips, would you?'

She looks at me, a bit confused. 'No, sorry'. 

I tasted a few of the chips on my way home. Yup, just like mcdonalds, tho less salt.  I came home, parked and put the chips under my car to discard later (I dont want my bedroom smelling of chips), go upstairs and try the burritos.  Two smallish flour tortillas, filled with what looks and tastes like a bland tomato based pasta sauce, with a few mange tout, carrots, tomato chunks, maybe a bit of onion.  A couple of jalapenos dot the top of the burritos, along with more tomato sauce, and a glowing green tasteless avacado based creamy paste.  (I skipped the cheese and sour'ed' cream.) I put some plain yoghurt on it, and ate it quickly. 

This tragic experience is spurring me to contact Elephant Pharm next week.  Why the hell wait till the Autumn?  The only real joy right now is dancing, and seeing friends.  And I have both in SF. 

I have great faith in the ability of broccoli to absolve me from all food and drink sins.  I went into the zone at waitrose today, thinking of which veg to get to make mr broccoli really yummy.  Oh, I succeded.  Foodie bliss.

your favourite breed of rice

1 biggish broccoli

1 butternut squash (I attacked it first with the bread knife, chopping it roughly because its so damn hard)

1/2 bulb garlic

Red onion, also attacked with bread knife

Glug some decent olive oil over the veg (but not mr broccoli), and chuck it into a medium/high heat oven for about 45 mins.  If you leave some of the outer dry bits on the red onion and break it apart a bit, the outer bits come out like chips, to be devoured immediately as they come out of the oven.

Take the veg out, chop it and mixed it all together while separately steaming the broccoli and boiling the rice.

Add 3 sprigs of fresh marjoram to the olive oil reserves in the veg pan, turn up the heat a bit and caramalize the marjoram.

mix it all together and eat too much because it tastes so damn good.

Ok.  I am trying to read the news again. A bit at least, the important stuff.

Could this really be happening?  ooh, the anticipation! 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/22/wgore22.xml