laziness, but picture enjoyment

i'm too lazy right now to write about these pictures. i've just ate a pizza and have been reading (peyton place by grace metalious) and zoning out since toby is away visiting bath press. i'll try to get to it this weekend. in the meantime, you can (for the most part) figure these out for yourself. enjoy.



















those last ones were a bit more confusing, weren't they ...

Support Pete and MS research

hi there,

a buddy from minnesota is racing in the MS 150 ride. it's a cycling race from the twin cities to duluth, minnesota (150 miles!) and raises money for MS research. it would be great if you could support him...he's going to be putting 15% of what he raises, so the more you put in, the more he puts in :)

go to this link:

https://www.nationalmssociety.org//MNM/personal/default.asp?pa=45867136&pd=MNM0EMS120060610150

or check out his blog at www.peterchurch.com and donate some money!!

suck it up

i've recently discovered that our "hoover" or vacuum is one of those types that spits stuff out rather than sucks it up. it is only my third time vacuuming, which is why it has taken me so long. i should have figured, since it was covered in dust and left here from the previous renter. maybe the bag just needs changing, but i'm not touching that. i'm married now and i'm leaving that as a "husband duty." he's out at a pub quiz tonight with co-workers. i've left the vacuum in our bedroom, so he'll be sure to ask me about it and either he'll have to put it away or put in a new bag. clever i am.

i've also re-discovered my old "wallflowers" cd. not bad to have on while tidying up around the house and occasionally dropping by the old internet.

crazy

toby and i very much approve of this, i don't what you call it, band i guess. gnarls barkley. coming to the states soon if you haven't heard it already. this picture was found on their website. nice.

Bank Holiday Monday

I like having four days off of work. Why not always work a week on and then a week off. Not like the firefighters though that do that 24 hour type of thing, but just the normal 35 hour work week on and then an entire week off.

We tried to start the day off early-ish and go visit a park. We went a little further out from our comfort zone, which was nice. Instead of Regent's Park, we headed off to Hype Park. Though we only really got to walk around the Kensington Gardens side.

First off...a view of our Easter basket. Those giant eggs are made of lovely chocolate. It's really slow going on the eating of them though. There IS such a thing as too much chocolate.



This one is taken at the building right next to ours. It seems we have a neighborhood cat. Normally comes out at night to scare the crap out of you. I'd say it looks like my mom's cat, dinah, but let's be honest. My mom's cat is the size of a small pig.



You can't see it too well on the photo, but the headline on the back page of the newspaper says "Wham, Bam, Thank you Glam". He was a pretty groovy guy.



Does this look like some kind of a parrot? We couldn't figure out why there were about 5 of these birds in the trees at the park. Okay, maybe a pet parrot got lose, but that many and all hanging out in the same trees?



And finally, a picture of one of many lovely trees we saw on Monday. This one has a cool face with a long nose. Yea :)

The Marshalls

This is my new last name (or surname as you say it). I wasn't going to do another post, since the last one was so interesting, but I was dinking around on the internet (Toby's watching Match of the Day 2...football) and so, I'm, as I was saying, dinking around on the internet.

Did you know that the people of the Marshall Islands speak a special language? It's called Marshallese. There is a language with my new last name. It's great. Looks incredibly hard to learn though. I found a Peace Corps guide, not that I'd have a clue on how to pronounce anything.

Here's a link the the Marshallese people.

my 100th post

had a lovely easter with toby's family. i hear there's a bit of lovely weather in the midwest right now. enjoy that over your holiday weekend!

the hokey pokey

i think i discovered another cultural difference today. the hokey pokey. the words are different over here in england AND toby swears it's called the "okey cokey".

lyrics for the HOKEY pokey:
you put your left hand in,
you take your left hand out,
you put your left hand in,
and you shake it all about,
you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around,
that's what it's all ABOUT HEY!

lyrics for the OKEY COKEY:
you put your left hand in,
your left hand out,
in out, in out,
shake it all about,
you do the hokey cokey
and you turn around,
that's what it's all ABOUT YEAH!
oh, okey-cokey-cokey, oh, okey-cokey, oh, okey-cokey,
knees bend, arms stretch , rah-rah-rah

now, what's THAT all about?

bits

toby's back at work meaning he's less bored during the day and bugging me with emails at work more. just kidding toby, i don't mind the emailing. i missed it while you were gone.

i made banana bread the other night. toby calls it banana cake. yet another cultural difference as been discovered.

the plumber was supposed to come by at noon today. toby had to call him after work to find out that the plumber was not going to come by today.

office space came in the mail today. toby's first viewing of this classic film. i can't wait until i watch the gang beating of the fax machine. i do enjoy that film.

Cheri brought the funk...

...and the funk is saltine crackers. these are the tasty crackers ever because you get to suck the salt off before you eat them. thank you VERY much to cheri paul for the lovely birthday package. the neighbors brought it round tonight after dinner. i was able to enjoy a lovely pepperidge farm milano cookie. that farm makes really good cookies.

i've decided to do a little importing today and so, you get a picture treat! yea for you!

firstly, a mold update



i mentioned that toby's been couped up in the flat. well, he found something new to occupy his time. his brand new rickenbacker bass. notice the track pants...he's been wearing them since last thursday. without a wash *sigh*



next up is a picture of me making some cornbread muffins. we're talking the jiffy mix folks. good old mom sent over two packages. such good stuff!



notice the water coming out of the tap? yeah, it's not supposed to but it WON'T TURN OFF. a major grr there.



have i mentioned the kite? oh dear, the kite. toby's discovered that he loves kite flying. i've discovered that it's not a winter time activity. we had to climb all the way up primrose hill to get it going, but it did fly. look at that grin on toby. he loves it :)



and finally...a look out the window at night. that's what i've been looking at as i've been typing this. well, it's completely dark now (8.34pm...and it's just dark now) so, goodnight all. i'll chat with you laters...abs

music for the masses

i think i'm one of those people. you know, the people wearing headphones but everyone else has to listen to the music too? the thing is, with the noise of the bus and the traffic i just can't hear the music without turning it up to full volume. so what if i get a few nasty looks? it's the only way i can keep a little bit sane on the way to and from work.

keep up the happy faces people.

legoland

the road out front is colorful and looks like someone threw confetti all over it. actually, a box of legos was left out and spread everything. crushed legos everywhere in the pavement. it's pretty though....

Poor sport

being forced to watch curling everyday for two weeks, i was happy to see the olympics end. unfortunately, england is involved in something called the commonwealth games. this event takes place every four years and is exactly like the olympics except only countries that are in the commonwealth compete. this allows the crap countries to have a chance at winning medals. i know that sounds horrible of me to say, but i got SOOO sick of turning on one of our five channels and having to watch these events. it got really boring, that is until sunday when they showed the closing ceremony. that was the coolest thing ever. the games were held in melbourne and so the ceremony celebrated famous people from the area. dame edna being one of them. she sang a song about melbourne and there were about 100 people dressed up as her dancing around and then they all formed the classic dame edna glasses. it was pretty darn cool.

Living in the City

Living in a city where I use public transportation can be great but a little crappy at times.

Today is an example where I just wanted to get in my car and make a Target run. Instead I did something I've never done before. I grabbed my big ol' travelling backpack (you know the one, the huge motherload you where you carry everything on your back) and I hopped on the bus and headed to Sainsbury's to buy groceries. Toby wasn't able to go with because he a little unable to move about at the moment and we really needed some groceries. I stuck the bag in the shopping cart and went to it. I thought people would think this was a little odd, but I didn't get any weird looks. People don't always use a car to get around here, so I guess it's exceptable. Anyay, I spent more than we ever have before and packed up the pack. It was SOOO heavy. The backpack really helped and now we aren't stuck with a bunch of plastic bags. Yea! Still need a Target run though....

Conclusion: I'm just not a healthy person

i'm ill again. this time, it's more of a cough along with the congested sinuses, but still, i'm not well. so i took off of work today and went to the doctor. he asks what's wrong and then checks my ears, my throat and my breathing. all clear he says. ALL CLEAR?? then why, i ask, am i coughing up dark green ickiness? oh, well you must have some sort of viral thing. that's going around right now. you let me know if it hasn't stopped by the end of the week. sooooooOOOOOOO frustrating to be told you're fine when you don't feel it. i've come to the conclusion that i'm just basically an unhealthly person who is suspectible to whatever sort of thing is "going around".

when i cam home from the doctor i called up work (which i've forgotten the reception number for, i couldn't call my boss because he's in norway today and tomorrow). once i finally got through i found out that basically the whole design department is out sick too. i sit next to them. so, obviously something IS going round. any suggestions for a nice multivitamin i should be taking? i've been eating up oranges and stuff....anyway. that's the lovely news from here.

friday was nice though. toby wanted to take me out for my birthday a little early, so we went out after work. he had a nice suprise for me. some friends were at the big chill (a bar near brick lane i've been saying we should go to at some point) waiting to have a drink with us. that was very nice and then we went out for a curry on brick lane. i've discovered that when people here say "go for a curry" they actually just mean...go eat some indian food. you walk down brick lane and hope for the best deal. there are always men outside the restaurants saying they'll give you a 10% 20% discount, first drinks free!...etc..etc...finally you get sick of wondering what the deals are and you go wherever you feel...normally NOT getting the best discount, but there you go :)

one month

i was just thinking the other day....yes the blog's still abby jo dennis, but yes, i have changed my name. it's official/unofficial. meaning that i've been using it at work and stuff, but i haven't changed my passport or my bank details yet and i still have a minnesota (i never even changed it back to wisconsin) drivers license. it's all a matter of getting around to dealing with it.

a quick hello to mr. charlie hobart. thanks for the comments! always a pleasure to know someone's reading. i hope you're doing well despite your hectic life. i can't wait to hear your opinions of the english ladies when you make a trip across the pond.

as for the title of this post, toby and i have now been married for a whole month! and people said it wouldn't last. i'll admit, we've had our disagreements (why did you have to buy another video game?), but the majority of the time things have been really great and smiley. we enjoy the really boring things like grocery shopping on a friday night (there's hardly anyone around!) and putting toothpaste on one another toothbrushes. i don't really know if it feels different to be "married" but knowing that he'll be around for awhile makes me feel great. so, yea! for toby :)

now....down here you'll see a lovely photo of some mold. this particular mold can be found above our tv in the corner of our living room. this flat is a haven for mold, i just don't understand. anyway, i thought we have a fun game of "watch the mold grow". this picture is from....i think the 3rd of march. be on the lookout for more mold pics......!!



keep well y'all,
abs

alright then...some of those posts now

hi again,

got a bit of time on my hands, so i'll post up a few more pictures. i have a feeling if i played with photoshop i'd love it, BUT i think it's a bit wrong to mess with pictures that way. maybe not wrong, but it's something i don't want to do...i don't think people should rely on it that is. anyway, these are just a few snapshots we've taken lately to go along with some posts i wanted to write. this will be the short version of everything.

first up...pancake day. british pancakes are more like crepes. toby did an american/british version. a little bit light and a little bit thick buttermilk. the typical toppings for pancakes? lemon juice and sugar. i know! where's the maple syrup?? toby did manage to find me some 'canadian maple syrup'. quite tasty.





and what's that? ANOTHER brown couch? yep. we got a new sofa that's way more comfortable than the other one (which we've kept for guests :) also...notice the rug. check us out with our domestic furnishings.

a shout out to cheripaul





does my hair look red to you? i recently acquired 'fringe' or bangs. toby though this would be a nice picture. well done, my dear toby.

and finally....i had to take one of toby if he took one of me!

another go

i had to try it again because the cake looked so cool. and did i say it weighed a few tons? yeah, fruit cake isn't the lightest of things...

wedding photo time

hello all,

my bus journeys to and from work have been excellent times to think of posts, but i'm not going to use any of them because i'm going to post you some wedding photos instead. this is proving to take a heck of a long time, so that's all you're getting! these were all taken by/for my mom, but it's a taster of the photographs to come.



it was very cold, so sorry if we all look like we're freezing. this is outside the church.



i look as white as my dress, don't ya think? this is toby and me with my mom.



that's with toby's mom and dad.



that's joel on the far left and zoe on the far right. toby's brother and sister.





i've tried to resize all of the images so they aren't huge, but in doing so, i've somehow messed up the focus. sorry that i can't get a close up on the cake. the little pictures on it are coat of arms and flags of america and england. nice touch, huh?

the first signs of spring

that is the wisconsin state bird. also known as a robin. the only robin i thought ever existed.

my married an english chap has taught me that there are other robins too. and apparently the robin is the national bird of britain. doesn't look quite the same though...

so, instead of calling these birds completely different names (which maybe there is some sort of scientific name for them), they are called 'american robin' and 'european robin'.

just thought i'd share.

warning: mentions icky stuff in my nose

it's about 9.30 in the morning and i'm wide awake. you can certainly tell that i've been getting up early for work every day. i normally get up around 7.30 and leave at 8.30 and get to work around 9.15. it feels like the world's longest bus journey.

plus, i've been sick lately, so a crowded bus doesn't ever help. yesterday i thought i was getting better. i just had this fake sounding cough, but my throat was tickling all the time. well, this morning i'm blowing out blood into the tissue. eeewww, abby, we didn't need to know. i know. but now that i've told you, do you think it's one of those 'it's got to get better before it gets worse' things and because they is now blood involved, it's obviously getting worse and therefore you'll be better before you know it. i hope so. it started last sunday and i'm still not feeling perky. now, i've always had sinus/nose problems. you people know this. and never in my 25 (almost 26 years) has any doctor prescribed me with a nasal spray (well, not that i know of, maybe when i was a baby or something). but a doctor here did. i don't really think it's helping so maybe i'll have to give the dr's surgery another shoutout on monday. *sigh* anyway.

toby and i have been married for 2 weeks now! good job for us! unfortunately, we are both working now and don't get to see each other too much. but we've made the most of our weekends. mainly, we like to feed birds in regent's park. we've only does this twice so far, but want to make a habit of it. though, toby's informed me that because of the possibility of bird flu, he thinks we should stop. i think that's a little more than cautious, though they have found it in france and it's only a matter of time before it hits here. here are a couple of pictures from last saturday.





i'm enjoy having the digital camera around, but i get really frustrated with it. there's too much of a time delay for me and i'm always making the pictures look a little blurry. i guess i'll get used to it though.

we have also got ourselves a new sofa addition. went to the ikea and purchased a brown three-seat "leather" sofa. it's much more comfortable and now we've got seats for 7! not much moving around space but it's great.

oh, before i forget. here's a photo of my wedding bouquet.



and here are some pics i've been meaning to show y'all of this great example of quirky london. there's a house around!





and now. about my job. well, it's a production assistant with the time warner book group. though they've just been bought by the french company hachette and by the end of march should have new name. hachette are now the 3rd largest publisher in the uk. but really, my office only has about 100 people, so it feels really small. the production dept. has 4 people (including me). they have the following imprints: little, brown; atom and orbit; abacus; virago; and warner books. the office is in an amazing location. right after waterloo bridge on the strand. so, it's super near covent garden, trafalgar square...etc. really nice and tempting at lunchtime. right now i don't have full responsiblities, so i'm not doing much. but soon i'll be working on the reprints and they have loads of those, so i should be busy all the time. on thursday night week i'm going to visit 'clays' one of our printers. staying over in their cottage in bunyard (what a name) on thurs and getting a tour on friday. they are the printers that do the harry potter books. so, yep. i'm FINALLY WORKING!! and a real publishing job, so good job abby.

things are finally starting to settle down. once the sinus/cold fiasco is over, everything should be fairly normal.

oh. and toby. well, he's doing well too. he just received his first copy of a guitar magazine subscription that he got for his birthday, so he's pretty absorbed in that right now and he made a down payment on a rickenbacher (sp?) bass, which i'll admit looks really beautiful.

now. i'm going to go back to eating my hot cross bun and enjoying my lowkey saturday morning.

keep well y'all, i think of you often
abs

update

i'm going to post something this weekend (internet permitting). so, if anyone is watching this, it'd be best to watch it then. (this possibly means YOU amie, good job on the knitting!! i've got some pretty yarn, but not sure what to use it on, as there's only one ball of each color).

what a knob

the man simply had a thing for doorknobs and now....well, a lesson to you all

i've got pictures!

this is our living room and our little brown couch. it looks comfortable, but once you've sat in it as long as i have it becomes really UNcomfortable. at least we have a couch though! and the dinner in front is one of toby's instant classics : chicken wrapped in bacon. tasty!



and this is the view from our front door. i wish that place was still a pub. i've only found one local pub in the area. it's called 'the star'. there are a couple of pub/restaurants though. which means, a fancier pub with over priced food. we'll be hitting one of those up tomorrow night when my mom's in town :)

keep well.

groundhog day

it's cold. it's so cold here in london and it just keeps getting colder and colder. we're talking 0 folks. we're talking 1 folks. brrrr.

right. i'm going to go be domestic some more and clean the kitchen.

d'oh, what?

this isn't what i was going to write about, but as it just happened to spark my interest i will.

i'm watching countdown and that chick carol does on to explain to everyone what 'doughnut' means in america. and she ain't talking about that lovely treat that homer and the cops are known to eat. SHE says that 'doughnut' refers to when people wave hello and say 'hi ma' when they are in the background of a live news broadcast. i'm american. i've never heard of this before in my life. am i just slow on the pickup or is this a real term that people use?

now. what i was going to write about was just to let you know what interesting little streets i've been down today. i'm trying to be ultra-cheap and only take as little public transport as i can. this means that i walk. A LOT. during my journey from the strand to brick lane, i passed down 'poultry street' and 'frying pan alley' and also a great looking pub on the tiniest of streets called 'grapeshots'.

isn't london quaint?

with a little help from my friends

i'm feeling a bit frustrated. i'd really like to work my blog a bit more, but i just can't get these to work. meaning, i want my links to work and my pictures to go up correctly. i look at the help bits and think i'm doing everything right and then the internet goes out or something like that. i just can't get it to work.

toby's away tonight and it the first time i've spent an evening in the flat by myself. i watched a show on bbc2 about illegal chinese immigrants. the aliens they were filming seemed to live down in 'the gate' and the elephant and castle. just like i did. i thought it was a bit odd to see the old neighborhood in a show like this just because, well, the area is really more populated with africans and jamicians. i never noticed a chinese population in the area. the show talked a lot about how necessary it is for them to come to england to make money for their families. the only jobs they can find here are selling illegal dvd's on the streets. i know that life is tough for them and they are just looking for ways to make money, but it really bothers me that they are selling these dvds. i could care less that they are taking money away from the big studios and all that, but in the end it screws with me because then ticket prices go up and i'll never get to see a movie in a cinema again. did you follow my logic there? it's hidden, but it's there.

now i'm on to a cooking show called 'the hairy bikers cookbook.' much better.

tomorrow, i'm heading to time warner to begin learning about my new job.

keep well.

bargains and guitars

Greetings,

Toby likes guitars as much as he likes bowling in wisconsin, so today we went looking at guitars around tottenham court rd. there's an area around there know as "tin pan alley", mainly denmark st. area, and there are loads of music shops there. he liked a few, played a couple, and i looked at the pretty guitars while he did so. apparently, i have a thing for gretsch guitars. they're so pretty.

anyway, after that we headed over to the portabello market. we almost got ourselves a free ride on the bus, but there was a checky-person thingy there, so we had to use our cards before he gave us fines. we got these card things called 'oyster cards'. so, we're walking around the market and i make the comment of how it feels like we should be on bargain hunt. you guys know the show, right? sometimes they show it on the good old PBS. they've got two teams looking for antique treasures and then they take it off to auction and see how well they do. a very short amount of time goes by and what do we see? the blue team with a camera crew! really! we eventually found the red team too. all very exciting. here's a bit about bargain hunt for you to enjoy!

so that was our saturday. very nice in my opinion.

keep well.

Snooker and Russians

Greetings you lovely people.

Today started out beaUtifully. Toby and I took a walk around Regent's Park and down to Baker St. and back. Lots of comments on the fancy cars (and the noises they make...examples: Mercedes Mclaren SLR (Toby got excited when he saw this one), Bentley Contential GT (x)5 and a very cool Aston Martin DB9 etc...) He's still mentioning cars that we saw, but I think you get the picture: there a lot of nice cars in the area.

The park itself is really nice and because it was such a blue sky sort of day, there were a lot of people walking about with their dogs and small child people. Naturally, there were loads of people to comment about. We also think we've found the American ambassador's home. It looks very fancy and there's an American flag out on their property. So it's either that or some weird rich person that really likes America.

When we got back to our flat we made some lunch and sat on our little couch (which there will someday be a picture of up here on the blog, I know you're all excited). We've been watching snooker and playing on the internet ever since. It's now 5 o'clock and getting dark outside. Among the things we've been looking at on the web....mail order russian brides and a website for "bored people who type st. john's wood into google". Both have been entertaining. Let me know if you want the link for the russians.

Hope your saturday was as nice as ours! :)

shocker: i'm easily annoyed

so, this post was going to be about my frustrations so far, but i took a walk and am feeling a bit better about things.
i think i'm just feeling frustrated really easily because
1. i'm not here for school. this means that i don't get the feeling that i can slack off whenever i want to (you know what i mean, it's the nicest day in weeks and you feel that it's okay to skip class type of thing), also it means that i don't have the same type of funds that i did during the school days. no more student loans to lean back on.
and 2. i don't have a job and i can't work. i can still look for jobs and stuff, but it's a little annoying that i'm not entirely sure i can apply because i don't know when exactly i can start working.

there you go. i get very easily miffed.

yesterday, toby and i went to go get a second set of keys for the flat. there are two of us living here, so obviously we both need keys, right? the landlord told us to go to this estate agent and they'd have an extra set for us, but they didn't, so now we have to go get a second set cut. meaning that we have to pay for it. what is rent for anyway? i really feel like this is an expense that the landlord needs to take care of but there you go. apparently that isn't how things like that work around here. something i need to get used to.

then today i went to the doctor's to sign up with a gp. there was someone at the reception desk, so i waited a little ways behind him. you can't just stand right up against the guy, right? so, i'm waiting patiently and this other lady comes in and what does she do? just goes right up between me and the guy at the reception. how in the hell did she not see me? it was OBVIOUS!! that i was waiting in line. i mean, she was practically touching the guy in front of her. i just stood there annoyed because that sort of thing happens all of the time and i had nothing else to do today, so i waited. finally, i get up to the desk and tell the lady that i've moved to the area and want to sign up. see asks where i live and if i have a letter that confirms my address. i figured something like that would happen, so i told her that my fiance has the mail come to us in his name, but this will be changed soon. anyway, it went on like that for a few moments and finally i just repeated what she said to confirm that that was all i would need to bring in the next time i was there. she said "yeah" and immediately looked away and started talking to her colleague while i stood there waiting for some sort of polite response. you know a social signal that the conversation ended correctly. but nope. people are really frickin' short and rude and annoying around here. GRRRR...

anyway, i thought i'd take a walk to make myself feel better. and it helped. i found a little wine/bar type place with wireless called 'the elgin'. i think i might check it out next week. get a little sloshed and do a little typing. who knows what'll come out.

also, we'll be picking up toby's digital camera this weekend so i'll be able to take some pics of the neighborhood. there is this great house on the corner that is super skinny and tall and call 12 1/2 or something like that. really odd.

till then.

back in london

abby's blog

i'm back in london, england. first, i thought i'd post a few pictures from toby's american adventure.

toby really, REALLY wanted a hot dog. for some reason, he thinks these are very american things to eat. maybe so. they are in a lot of movies anyway. we didnt' go for the streetside variety, but instead went to the doghouse in janesville. any type of hot dog you could imagine there. what did we get? a corndog for me and a basic ketchup hotdog for toby.

another adorable picture of toby:

another thing we had on our american "to do" list was to go find a typical diner type place. there was talk of going to the truckstop just outside of janesville. you know, the one with all of the guns on the wall...well, we didn't get a chance, but before we left chicago we found this place. it was perfect.

we did pancakes a lot while he was here. made two trips down to the ihop (international house of pancakes for those of you not in the know). pigs in a blanket was the choice breakfast.

let's see...a couple more pictures. random ones that filled the memory of toby's camera.

why are they tied to the tree? i mean, was someone afraid they would be stolen? it's mary and joseph! how pathetic does someone have to be to steal them. maybe they're trying to make some sort of political statement. boo to that.


this is just good fun. who wouldn't want a fiesta in their mouths?

and finally, a nice time out at the bar with lisa, cheripaul (as toby loves to call her now), megan, and i. the pub crawl didn't get as howdy as thought, but heck, i still had a great time. and we found out that toby likes the lite american beer. someone is going to have to send some over. miller or bud lite is preferred :)