Dinner guests and too much wine

OK...they say you should never blog whilst drunk...it affects your spelling, your objectiveness and you ability to type anything coherent.

Well I'm going to give it a go, and let spell check help me out!

My husband's boss came for an informal dinner this evening..we had antipasto (olives and cippolini onions etc) and some aged provolone from Whole Foods ( for my English buddies..an upscale Waitrose!) with some crusty rosemary bread...delicious...and then roasted vegetable couscous with marinated salmon steaks...

My intention was to take pictures of the whole meal...well that was until Lou, our guest, arrived early, brandishing a super large bottle of Australian Shiraz...

Sooooooooo , you get a picture of the vegetables before they went into the oven..and I'll post the recipes tomorrow!

I can highly recommend the wine..the food tasted good, but that was an age ago...Lou and my husband managed three glasses between them...what I want to know who drank the rest of the bottle?!

Gary was fed too much salmon from the table and is now flat out at my feet...my husband is fast asleep on the sofa next to me and I'm sort of seeing double....should sleep well tonight...Goodnight!

Badminton, English tea and cricket!

In an effort to get fit again I have started playing badminton again. There is a club at Yate's YMCA in Jacksonville on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays...enough times a week to help me shed a few pounds and take out some frustration smacking a shuttle cock (known as a birdie over here, don't ask me why!) I used to play prior to moving to the States, but it's been about 2 1/2 years and it's a bit of a shock to the system. For the uninitiated, think tennis mixed with racket ball with a goose feather shuttle instead of a ball..it's fast, and the air con not being the best at the YMCA, very sweaty...but very enjoyable. I've played since I was about 7. My brother and I were forced to play because we had to go along with our parents to their badminton nights..basically it was a cheap babysitting service, however we both took to it..I used to play for my county in the UK and my brother was at one point world number one in mixed doubles and won a bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics

I guess you could say that he took it a little more seriously than me! Anyway, I babble...I was going to say after badminton last night I slept like a baby and when my husband got up at 5.45 this morning I stayed up and went and switched my computer on..while it was firing up I made 1st cupper of the day. For my non-English readers a cupper is a hot cup of tea... it's the best thing first thing in the morning. When I first moved here I did get into the whole coffee scene, but gradually I'm back to the hot tea with milk of course...I'm British! Currently I'm drinking PG Tips for my first cup of the day, then after that it's anything in the cupboard...Early Grey, or Earl Grey Green Tea are my favourites..

Anyway, where was I,..ahh yes..tea made I sat down in front of my PC and checked the feeds on my IGoogle page...I have a feed for CNN and BBC for the news, my friends Blog, weather for here, home and my parents and BBC sport...the first link on the BBC sport was Live Ashes coverage....


OMG I had completely forgotten...THE ASHES STARTS TODAY


The Ashes are a cricketing tradition, a competition of 5 test matches (each 5 days long) bi-annually between England and Australia. Normally Australia gives us a complete beating, as they did down under in 2007, however they are not so strong this year and there may be an opportunity for England to repeat their 2005 triumph. For a feel for how exciting cricket can be watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpipsMt4c2A&feature=related


The BBC let you follow the action via a revolving text, but when visiting the page I spied a link to 'Live Commentary' (you guessed it no cricket on US t.v.). Normally these links tell you 'sorry, not available in your area' as they contravene agreements between other sports channels who are airing the same commentary...however as no one in the US is bothered about the Ashes, it logged me in straight away and I had the dulcet tones of Geoffrey Boycott wafting through my speakers... Hurrah!!!
I can't drool over KP, , or roar on Freddy as he runs in to bowl...but I can be there in spirit...

I will officially be up early every morning (maybe!) to continue my listening... if it could rain a little every morning in Cardiff then that would suit me too as I would not have to get up so early (there's a 5 hour time difference to here).... please start you rain dances now!

Dog Days.....

Today was a miserable day in Jacksonville (where we live during the week). It has rained intermittently most of the day, at some times really heavily, at other times just sprinkling....guess when Gary wanted to go walking!

I'm sure he can sense the weather change, and had looked glum since our fun walk this morning, where we saw raccoons at the bin store..you can imagine how excited Gary was, although you can't let your dog tangle with a Raccoon, their claws are razor sharp and they are frequent carriers of rabies. I managed to get a quick pic on my Blackberry...shame they are so vicious cause they are super cute.

Anyway I digress. Gary had spent most of the day on the bed, looking glum. I tried to coax him out with biscuits and ice cubes, but he always returned to the bed. He was even too miserable to play with his ball..so I left him alone and went to do some work on my website..http://www.lovesparkles.com/ which I'm in process of re-writing... it was getting greyer and more miserable outside and there had been a few claps of thunder. Now Gary is not scared of storms, but they do wake him up, and in he toddles and sits by the door to the balcony to look outside.

Unable to resist his little face I offered him a walk, thinking the thunder had ceased for the moment, but not actually looking out of the window at the rain. Well he hadn't looked so happy all day and went to find his lead.

We headed out the front door and it was then I realised that we were going to get very wet....but unable to back out of my promise of 'walkies' had to go...

I've just got changed...soaked to the skin..Gary was loving jumping in and out of the puddles, whilst I encouraged him to 'do his business!!' so we could get back. I guess he could feel my desire to get back in the dry because we were out there nearly 30 minutes and he waited until we were nearly home, with his mummy totally frustrated, to finally do what he was supposed to...it was if he was laughing at me...

They call these the dog days...now I know why!

Hurricanes....

Since moving to Florida I have developed somewhat of a fascination with hurricanes, and I don't mean the University of Miami Football program, although granted there's probably something to be said for fit young athletes running around a football field....my husband would kill me though if I wasn't cheering for the Gators, http://www.gatorzone.com/.

No I mean the blow you away, massive storms that hit the south eastern US, Caribbean and Mexico .The Atlantic hurricane season is from June 1 to November 30, but most hurricanes occur during the fall (autumn) months, but basically we're in it now...

To anyone from the UK who is not used to such huge weather formations (although my family went though the The Great Storm of 1987 which had hurricane force winds - read about this Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987 )the thought of a hurricane is an extremely scary prospect. Vivid in all our memories are the scenes from New Orleans (Hurricane Katrina) and last year Galveston (Hurricane Ike). Those cities had mandatory evacuations and still people chose to stay. It focuses the mind....what would I do in a hurricane situation?

Hurricane Katrina...simply huge

As Florida residents we are reminded each year to be hurricane prepared.... to know our evacuation routes ( I see them posted on I95 each week - the route out of Florida into Georgia).. but many are complacent, especially with a major storm not hitting Florida in the last few years. We should be hurricane prepared... although Fema's advice to 'Consider building a safe room.' seems a little out of most peoples budgets!

So this year I am trying to ready myself for hurricane season. I have my plastic box full of essentials - from tins of food to a first aid kit, extra gas for the barbie in case we have no power for days and it's the only way of cooking, and I'll make sure I have a battery powered radio and a car charger for my cell phone...oh and lots of water!... I have bookmarked the National Hurricane Center http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml - and I obsessively look everyday to make sure nothing nasty looking is starting to loom.... I don't worry about them, but I don't want to be one of those people corralled into a football stadium with nothing...fingers crossed Central Florida will escape any major damage this year too.

So you've cancelled your summer holiday to Florida now!! don't despair, the sun shines all year here! and don't worry about Gary, he says he'll be OK as long as he has his chewy stick

My first post....

Ok..new to blogging that I am, this maybe short and sweet...or it might ramble on for ages..you never know!

My friend Anne runs a blog for her furniture business, http://baumhausltd.blogspot.com/ and I've found myself inexplicably drawn to it everyday to find out the latest goings on in a furniture wholesale business...sounds boring!! ..not really, she blogs on her life, holidays, her weekends and her dog George (yes his name is George!...naughty George to be exact).

Naughty George standing in front of Anne's new house

She has been trying to convince me to to start blogging for ages, so today, in a moment of boredom, I thought...why not!

What shall I blog on...everything and anything .. her idea was for my dog, Gary, to have his own blog, but there is only so much a Jack Russell can say for himself...to illustrate he is fast asleep on the bed at the moment..it truely is a dog's life!

So Gary will be part of the blog, but so will anything else I care to think about. I love to cook so I thought I'd post recipes here, and critic latest restaurants etc etc...I'm just going to talk about life really...it will be a way for my friends around the world to keep up with me and me with them!

For those who don't know me personally I'm of English descent, but live in Florida now with my husband and of course Gary..It was a big change upping sticks and moving here, but I love the sun, so it's mostly been all good! Also it seems that mention to anyone that you live in Florida and they have bought the plane tickets and are arriving next Thursday...so it has it's benefits!

Well enough for now...I was just practicing...let see if I can't get this think posted to the web now...probably more tomorrow!!!