a week recap in which no pictures were taken, on accident

i've tried to add a ridiculous amount of links to pictures, articles and things that sort of give you more information due to the lack of pictures.

wednesday, i managed to find a decent mexican restaurant in london! it's not perfect, but it's as close to a divey mexican paradise with a crazy amount of refried beans and spanish rice that i'm going to find on this side of the atlantic, i reckon. the only complaint--the ranchera sauce on the enchiladas tasted more like an italian tomato sauce, but ah, well. it was tasty! and they have bohemia beer, which i've not seen very often outside of chicago. though to be honest, i'm usually a negra modelo or dos equis fan, so i don't often peruse midwestern beer menus for it.

friday, i had lunch at borough market on my lunch break. discovered some of the best falafel around! the line was crazy long--so i had high hopes and wasn't disappointed.

we also so wall-e on friday night at the cinema, and it was really enjoyable. i managed to eat most of a large tub of popcorn on my own. the UK sells popcorn as either sweet or salty, neither of which are my favorite, but usually the concession stand staff mixes the two together if you ask. they did a pretty poor job friday, so i was eating away at all the sweet popcorn on top searching for the salty when i realised i was nearing the bottom. oops. it's a harrington genetic dominance--the popcorn consumption gene. it's one of those thing that is never wasted amongst us. it's usually gone in record time, too.

we had planned on going to ikea this weekend, but southwest trains are lame and are using buses for part of the journey toward london, so instead we stayed in town. this a.m. we went for a long walk/jog along the river. let's see, richard was worried he'd be charged by a bull (he was wearing red!), and we actually had to 'mind' the cows on the path. i lived in essex when foot and mouth disease broke out in 2001, and i never understood why public foot paths were closed--i assumed it was only people on them, as the foot paths i had been on definitely didn't have livestock. apparently not. was strange being so close to someone's cattle whilst out on a jog.

take the last train to . . . . Dorking

i've had the flu for the last week and a couple days. i wound up working from home a lot, just so i wouldn't lose my mind with worry that nothing was getting done. i'm a lot better today. generally drained, but no fever. well, actually, i now have hayfever, which i've never had before, and it's crappy, because my lungs and ribs are all still store from the flu, so everytime i sneeze i utter a little 'ow' under my breath. ah, flu and allergies, eh?

so, richard surprised me today. he's been building up a big surprise trip since Friday, and i didn't know where we were going until he handed me my ticket at the train station this morning. it was once-in-a-lifetime trip to the fabulous Dorking! with Dorks walking the street, Dorky antique window shopping and the oldest Dorky building--the 500-year-old King's Arm Pub! We had a nice pub lunch, in which I didn't have any beer. A rarity for me if I'm in the pub.

I guess it's an inside joke? For a year now, ever since I first saw the Dorking Deepdene train station on a train ride from Gatwick to Guildford, whenever Richard asks where i want to live, where i want to go, I always say Dorking and laugh and he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. I never thought the dream would happn. It's a really nice place--good views of the hills, easy to walk around, cleaner than Guildford and full of old buildings. We did go on Sunday a.m. though, so most of the local shops were unfortunately closed. Here are some shots of the magical day.

pimientos de padrón

well, i finally got around to borough market on a friday lunch break. it's funny, the only 2 things i've been to london bridge for, before working there every day, were borough market and the george pub. both of which were attended on friday. can't believe this was the first friday i rememberd the market, but ah well. we spent most of yesterday recovering from the george. let's just say we celebrated independence day with many pints, our friend sigga, and no food. was a lovely night! and then, we fell asleep on the train, missed our stop, and wound up in liphook (20 miles beyond the great guildford, in the middle of nowhere, down many a windy road) a £50 cab fare later, we were home. and saturday, we woke up and remembered all the goodies i'd bought at the market--jams, and pimientos de padrón! we were too hazy to make them yesterday, so saved them for today. apparently, eating these as tapas is called Madrileno Roulette. apparently, it' s like Russian roulette, only instead of a gun with a random bullet, one pepper in every so many packs a lot of heat. we made them today, and though neither of us had a particularly hot one, they were fun to eat and wash down with bulmer's pear cider whilst watching 'blackadder goes forth.' a good, post-hungover, incredibly rainy day cure. the cooked version below, cooking version above.

happy independence day!

um, not surprisingly, independence day isn't a holiday over here, so i'm off to work. but, alice cooper hosts a morning show over here on the classic rock station--so i've been patriotic in rewinding live radio and listening to jimi hendrix's 'star spangled banner.' right. and now off to work.

let them eat crepe

it's a little delayed, but here's last weekend's delicious recap. first, i bought a digital radio.

the reception is so far medicore, but it seems like every day, i get more stations than the day before. i can record radio on an SD card, kind of like recording shows on cassette tapes back in the day!

then, we ate crepes with sigga in hampstead. we had one, then after catching some morris dancers at the local pub, decided to go back for dessert before heading back to guildford. i'm not sure what it is, but we seem to catch morris dancing
accidentally every time we head to a pub on a sunny day.
this time, it was a roving band of drunk morris dancers, on a morris dancing pub crawl. was um, okay? they only sang and dance and played a flute for one tune.

here are some pics of our pilgrimage destination--the hampstead crepe stand. as you can see, we aren't the only devoted pilgrims. the crepes are so good. seriously. and usually the stand has two people working--but at this particular moment, the other chef was out--so i have a rare pic where you can actually see the teeny tiny crepe kitchen that packs a whole lotta happy, buttery crepe batter. if you're wondering, this is a short queue. this is about a 30-35 minute wait length of line. we've waited much, much longer in the past...