http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/long_beach_oct_2006/
Arrrr, matey!
The one thing I like about LA so far is that it's deliriously easy to “borrow” wi-fi access from anywhere. I'm sitting at a Border's cafe where, instead of using their stupidly expensive t-mobile hotspot, I'm using the connection that the hotel across the road is so kindly providing :)
Are we there yet?
My day started very early and ended very, very late. My cab picked me up at 8am and that's where the travel hassles started. We had to go pick up a colleague 40 minutes away, but he didn't have either of us down as going to Heathrow, so that got sorted out and we were on our way.
The real fun started at Heathrow, where our direct flight to LAX had been cancelled because of mechanical failure of the plane so we were rerouted via Chicago with a 3 hour lay-over. That flight was 2 hours late taking off and was 30 minutes late arriving. I got selected for an enhanced security screen, which meant going through all my carry-on luggage and getting my boots and laptop wiped down and screened.
The flight itself was generally ok. I was able to watch 2 movies (Cars and X-Men 3) and a documentary about crossword puzzles. I'd made myself some grilled turkey breast wraps for lunch and dinner and I had a ton of junk food, so I had enough grub for all the flights (and as a side note, I found out there's a deli and grocery shop close to our hotel, so I should be ok for the flight back, yay!)
At Chicago, we had to pick up all our luggage from O'Hare arrivals and lug it across to the domestic departure terminal where we checked everything back in and went through yet another security check. I have to say, airport security is a big fucking joke. They're just going through the motions to make the sheep feel safer and in the process, waste everybody's time. When I arrived at O'Hare, there were signs everywhere that the department of homeland security would fingerprint and photograph everybody who comes from Europe. Apparently, that doesn't include me (probably because I have a canuck passport) cause they just grunted me through the checkpoint.
That flight was also one and a half hour late getting off the ground. I paid for a seat upgrade to premium economy cause at that point, my back was starting to kill me and those extra 4 inches make the world of difference. It was only 20 quid, so I didn't feel bad doing it..
A sign of the times: the seat I was in had been previously used by somebody that was so fat as to require a seatbelt extension. I'm not a small person by any measure, but with most airline seatbelts, I have about a foot or so belt that is still available to use. That person required a whole extra bit of belt…
When we landed at LAX, we picked up our bags (again). The poster tube I was carrying got broken (they didn't screw the cap back on when they opened it to inspect it so it got lost) and my coworker's bag got inspected by homeland security (they left a note saying they'd done it as a random spot check).
Getting to Long Beach was… interesting. I strongly believe our cab driver was hopped up on coke, weaving through 4 lanes of traffic in the freeway like a fucking maniac while trying to light his cigarette and playing bongo drums on his steering wheel to the beat of the (actually quite good but too loud) cubano jazz that was playing on the radio. When he got to Long Beach, he didn't know where the hotel was so he was driving around like he was using the force.
At one point, he asked another cabby for directions. The dialogue went something like this (and I am NOT exaggerating):
cab1: Hey, son of a gun! Where's the courtyard marriot?
cab2: fuck you!
cab1: fuck you too! courtyard marriot?
cab2: fuck you!
cab1: fuck you too! haha! courtyard marriot?
cab2: fuck you!
And it went like that until the light changed, where the other cab just peeled off and our cab driver starting complaining that nobody liked him in Long Beach.
By pure stupid luck, we found the hotel and checked in. Of course, something went wrong. The room was supposed to be pre-paid with the EBI credit card. Of course, no mention of that is on file. We'll figure that out in the next few days.
By that point, it was 11pm local time, 7am UK time. I'd been on the move for 23 hours and I was braindead. I gave Katy a quick skype call and went to bed.
HUPO day 1
My body is screaming for sleep, fluids and advil right now.
I had a good breakfast at the hotel (the breakfast buffet was a make-your-own waffle iron, how cool is that?)
The hotel is clean and comfy, but for unknown reasons, call it a gut feeling, I don't feel good about leaving Parsley in the hotel room so he's going to have an education in proteomics from my laptop bag.
I've registered at the conference venue and I'm going to sit in to a few talks this morning but the rest of the pre-meeting stuff this weekend doesn't really inspire me so I might play hookie and go back to the hotel. We'll see how things go. I have to say that I'm less than impressed with the session I'm in right now. The session chair and keynote speaker didn't bother to show up – always a good sign. The next speaker's hard drive crashed, the microphone isn't loud enough and the laser pointer doesn't work. All sorts of nice…
I need tea.
One hell of a party :)
So I've finally tallied up all the costs for the wedding and for our honeymoon. Grand total comes up to just under £8500 for the ceremony, reception, trip to canada, 3 hotels (10 nights), lots of food and even more fun :)
A good deal in my book!
This just made my day :)
I love it when random, angry people just stumble on my blog and say stupid things. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
[Recipe] Lasagna Soup
1 pound sausage meat
2 cups diced onions
1 cup diced carrots
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
4 cups chicken broth
1 large tin crushed tomatoes
1 large tin tomato sauce
1 cup dry large-shaped pasta
2 cups chopped fresh spinach
4 ounces diced provolone cheese
1 ounce fresh grated Parmesan cheese
In a dutch oven over medium-high, add sausage and cook until browned – crumble the sausage as you go with a wooden spoon. Add the onions and carrots – cook 3 minutes. Mix in the basil, oregano, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper – cook 1 minute. Pour in the broth, crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce. Bring to a boil and add in the pasta. Simmer soup until the pasta has cooked. Mix in the fresh spinach and cook until wilted – about 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from the heat.
To serve – place 1 ounce of diced provolone in the bottom of 4 bowls. Evenly divide the soup between the 4 bowls. Sprinkle each serving with Parmesan and basil.
Ok, that's just stupid now
You've all heard of pimping your ride. This is the next fad, apparently.
http://www.pierceyourride.com/
I just hope it goes the way of the bumper nuts and die a quick and painful death.
So lets recap, shall we? [Part 2]
More on Quebec
I really recommend the hotel we stayed at: le Chateau de Pierre. It was just above the Terrasses Dufferin, with a great view on the old city and the river. We got settled in and then had a good wander around the old town. Our goal was to do as much walking as possible on the first day because they were forecasting rain for the following day. We took in the Petit Champlain (where both great restaurants were located), then went to the farmer's market and then got lost trying to find the old port museum, but feh, we scared tourists with the pie-ton! stick. The colours were in full bloom around town, which was really nice.
The next day saw us back in the old city, doing a bit of window shopping and general exploring. We saw a roman-catholic squiggle that day and a canon ball lodged in a tree. All good stuff :) It was Katy's mom's birthday, so she spent a looooong time on the phone while I entertained myself by bugging her with my camera, hehe. We were too late that day to go see the citadel, but we did sneak in a visit to the Governor General's house, which undoubtedly has the best view in all of Quebec. By that point, I think Katy was getting fed up with me being as avid a shutterbug as I am, so we packed it in and went for dinner. The place we wanted to go for dinner was booked solid (note to potential tourists: reservations are usually a Very Good Thing), so we ended up in this little bar & grill which, while ok, was definitely sub par compared to all the other meals we had in Quebec.
Our last full day saw us to and from the museums. Blergh. Kiddy school trip nightmares! When I went with my high school class, we were never that bad. Those were not kids, those were large feral weasels that trashed everything that wasn't tied down or behind glass. We managed to eat at both places that were packed the day before (yay, reservations) and ate really delicious rabbit at one place and I had caribou/wapiti/beef/pork meat pie. Hmmmm, pie! I've never had tourtiere du Lac St-Jean before, but that thing was wonderful.
The following day was our last in Quebec, so we indulged ourselves with one last sinful brunch at the Cochon Dingue, by far our fav restaurant for this trip, then we were off to the bus station. We missed the bus to Montreal by 5 minutes so we had to wait an hour for the next one. Then more waiting in Montreal, followed by wrist-slitting traffic out of the city to finally make it to Ottawa around 8:30. It took us almost as long to cross the Atlantic as it did to get from Quebec to Ottawa. Nice work, boys.
More on Ottawa
We got to the Hilton before our room was ready, so we went for a stroll around Lemay lake while housekeeping did up our room. When we came back, it still wasn't ready, so we just left for Ottawa on the promise that when we got back, everything would be settled. We investigated the little shops in the Byward Market and I introduced Katy to the concept of the beaver tail. We found a little tea shop that had absolutely no pretences but peace & quiet and good, cheap tea. We found a shop that sold smoked meats and tons of sausages, a cheese shop, went to Piccolo Grande (after years of not going because of fear for my allergies – at this point, I just said fuck it and had me some gelato. If anything, this trip was a good thing for me because I was really laid back with my allergies. I didn't even freak out when I accidentally ate a bit of garlic crouton). That night, we had some of the best sushi I've eaten outside of Bishoku. To be perfectly honest, it was even on par with Bishoku, if not a bit better on some aspects. The place is called Kinki, in the market, and is a really hip place with funky lighting and jazz and Santana playing while you eat.
The next day, after a gorgeous breakfast buffet, was museum day: the Civilization museum and the National Gallery. The former is one of my favourite places in Ottawa. The latter was disappointing and not as I remembered it. After too many attempts to record here, I finally managed to lose my clip-on sunglasses. Next time, I'll just get 5 extra clip-ons and leave them everywhere. Anyway. We had high tea in the afternoon at Zoe's lounge at the Chateau Laurier. Posh? yes. Tasty? you bed. Pretentious, hell yeah! Cucumber sandwiches without the crust and scones with cream and jam. It was really good though, but some people take themselves waaay too seriously :)
We had a nice meal at the hotel restaurant (where we'd first come two years previously on Katy's first trip to Ottawa), had drinks in the Lounge, then retired to bed.
More on the trip back to Cambridge
The flight back was uneventful, really, except to say that it was long. It left Ottawa at 7:30pm on Saturday and was scheduled to land in London at 7:00am on Sunday morning (or put it another way, at 2am Sunday, Canada time). We took the train from Gatwick to Victoria station in London, and then switched to the tube to get to a station where we could get the train to Cambridge. We got home at 11am and went to pick up the pussycat shortly after.
The beast has finally grown into his tail and his pelt has fluffed out, being in an outdoor cattery. He didn't stop purring for the whole day Sunday.
We, on the other hand, were dead on our feet. We weren't in the mood to cook so we went to the pub for dinner. By that time, we were running on a 30+ hour day. The worst thing we could have done was go to sleep, because that would have made it even more difficult to get back on UK time. The people at the pub took pity on us and told us we looked like death warmed over. We went to bed shortly after coming home after a good meal. I made it to work at 3pm the following day. Katy didn't go in at all. Like I said, it's going to be a rough week. I'm feel like I'm pretty much over it now, but it means it'll just hurt that much more when I go to California.
Wedding pictures, take 2
As some of you may already know, there have been technical difficulties getting the wedding pictures up online. In a nutshell, my web provider was providing crap service and has now been replaced. I've now switched over to a host which I hope will give better results.
You can now see the wedding pictures here:
http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/wedding_pics/
There might be some of you still experiencing problems as the DNS servers switch over to the new configurations. If this happens, the link below will work:
http://70.103.16.183/~flubucom/various_pics/wedding_pics/
Note that most of the pictures are under the “michel” subfolder.