Window Shopping

Last night, I watched an episode of “Bizarre Foods” with Andrew Zimmern that was set primarily in Edinburgh. It was so great to see the city again! All of the restaurants and sights that Zimmern took in were either places that I had been to before in Edinburgh, or had walked past many times. Just seeing a shot of the sign for the “Jolly Judge” pub made me miss the city so badly that I immediately hopped online and window shopped for flights to Edinburgh on Travelocity, looking over travel routes and prices, fantasizing about going there one more time.

Antique shopping in the Grassmarket, walking up and down The Royal Mile, exploring Greyfriar's Cemetary...  I wonder if I'll ever get there again? I really hope so.

One of the best things about living in the UK? Whenever I got a hankering to visit a city and do some exploring, I was always just a short hour train ride away from pretty much anywhere I wanted to go. Even London, which was about as far away from Cumbria as you could possibly get, was only a five hour train ride away. I miss that.

New Year's Eve

This was our family New year's Eve celebration:

Board games, make-your-own-pizza, sparkling cider, and Frankie's first viewing of Wizard of Oz.

Sound good?

Sweet Irony

I am a really light sleeper. Almost any noise will wake me up. I’ve woken up before, hearing Roscoe walk across the kitchen floor. I’ve woken up from hearing a pillow fall off the edge of the bed. I've woken up from hearing the fridge motor kick on during the night.
Now, I can add a new one to the list:

I have woken up from hearing my own snoring.

This is a terrible development for several reasons.

1) My snoring wakes me up every time it happens

2) I wake up SO MAD at myself for snoring that I can’t get back to sleep

3) Matt think’s it’s hilarious that I, someone who really hates snoring, have started to snore


I hope that it's just this cold I have right now that's causing the snoring. Cause if this is a permanent thing, I'm going to lose my mind.

It's Seriously Cold Here

This is Frankie, Dec 31st.

Now, contrast that with Frankie on Christmas afternoon:

From short sleeves and bare legs to snow pants and mufflers in less than a week. It's quite a shock to the system.

The plummeting temperatures have been a real thorn in my side, foiling all sorts of fun Christmas-related plans. A snow & ice storm on the 30th made it impossible for us to meet dad and Olga in Denver for a visit to the Modern Art Museum and a fancy home-cooked meal. I felt just awful having to cancel, but the roads were just too slippery to navigate.  It was really disappointing. Stupid weather.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just move Christmas to June? Seems like that would be a *much* easier time to travel. Far less chance of snow-related obstacles, canceled flights, and bone-chillingly cold weather.

Frankie's New Smile

I can hardly believe it, but Frankie lost her first baby tooth yesterday.

It's exciting and weird all at once... It doesn't quite seem like she could possibly be old enough to start losing her baby teeth. But, here she is. My gap-toothed cutie.

Language Barrier

I'm Facebook friends with a few of the moms from Frankie's UK school, and have learned an interesting thing lately. The people I'm friends with in England have  a completely weird, almost unrecognizable, shorthand they use when writing on their computer. It's gotten to the point that when I log into Faecbook,  I can barely understand what any of them are saying. It's *way* harder than deciphering the Cumbrian accent. It's almost a completely separate bizarro-world language.

For example, here's a Facebook status update posted from one of my Maryport friends today:

"had a belter nite last nite god crack with some good friends, took all my decs down and found a home for most of Mads n Mischas toys now to play with barbie and waybaloo!"

Ok... I think she's saying that she had a good night with friends, took down her Christmas decorations, and found a place for her kids' new Christmas toys. But, what a weird way to phrase it!

And check this bizarre expression out. I can't even guess what this means:

"i wish this cold would dee yan!"

This is like a word puzzle, too:

"queen vic has had its first get out of my pub phrase cat fight and first snog all in one night!"


Or, here's this cryptic written exchange between two friends:

Mum A: "Your car getn markd by sum1s bin haha. U said guess x x"


Mum B: "hahahah you probably won't be wrong summet else is bound to happen everthing ok up your end??"


Mum A: "Ova then my bins n rubish being over my frunt garden b4 i ad to go n pik it al up n move them round backs, ova then that touch wood yeah lol. x x"

And it's not like all this text is just from one odd duck that happens to have a weird linguistic quirk. It seems like everyone from Maryport that I'm in touch with writes this way when they're online. I got a few Christmas cards in the mail, and all of the writing was perfectly normal. But, add the computer into the equation, and everything goes all wonky.

It's fascinating, really. I can't quite figure it out. And even if you asked me to try to imitate it in my own writing, I don't think I could.

I don't know if it's an English thing, a Cumbrian thing, or a young thing (I am, after all, the oldest of the school moms). Either way, I'm fascinated and perplexed.

Resolved

My New Year's resolution for 2011 is to write more.

Even when I don't feel like it... Even when I feel like I don't have anything interesting to say, I'm going to try to write every day.

I'm going bring this blog back to life!