Obviously in need of spirital guidance?

It was a beautiful Sunday here in Essex, crazy warm and sunny. New friend Ian and I were out and about. We had separate shopping to do, with an appointed meeting time and place, on a small bridge in town. Plenty of people pass over this bridge, so I didn't mind that I was a few minutes early, it's a fun people watching spot with full sun.

As I was sitting there on my heels with my back against the bridge wall, I was re-arranging my backpack a bit. It was comfortable enough, so I remained there on my heels with my backpack in front of my, just waiting.

A woman of Indian descent walking by says, 'quite a beautiful day'
Heather: yes indeed.
Woman: so unexpected for fall.
Heather: yes
Woman: I'm not sure if you are from around here...or visiting?
Heather: yes, I live here.
Woman: then you would know, usually rain is quite common for this time of year.
Heather: mmmmm.
Woman: it is so wonderful that this weather is on a Sunday, when many people are off from work and can enjoy it.
Heather: yes. (secretly looking at watch, it's bang on when Ian and I were supposed to meet).
Woman: Of course, if you are of Christian faith, it makes your Sunday even more enjoyable. Are you a practicing Christian?
Heather: umm. I was raised Catholic.
Woman: Catholic. (now launches into a spiel about the coming of the end of the world.)
Heather: (thinking: this is sort of lost on me)
Woman: Have you read much of the Gospels? Have you heard the Good News?
Heather: um, no.
Woman: (begins second spiel, on the intricacies of Matthew and John)
Heather: (noticing that Ian is now 3 minutes late)

Ian thankfully shows up and the woman thanks me for the conversation and wishes me a lovely rest of my day. Interestingly, she didn't try to offer me any reading materials.

Do you remember when the Jehovah's Witness tried to convert me in Germany? That wasn't the only time actually. I think I ran into enough of them to cause them to start carrying English materials in my corner of DE, even in the tiny town of B where a woman tried to hoist the Watchtower in Turkish on me when I declined it in German. When I had to revert to German to explain that I wasn't Turkish and couldn't read German, she seemed so terribly disappointed.

I have no idea why I appear to be a magnet for those who feel called to bring the Good News. Apparently though, whatever it is transcends cultural boundaries. In particular, I think I go out a lot less than the average person, especially as I work from home. Therefore, my contact with people is probably lower than average, which makes the number of these interactions even more interesting, as I think I get more than an average number of such meetings.

Guest #3 - Biddy the horsewoman

As I came back from New friend Ian's house after guest #2, I had a request the next day from Airbnb, another of the homestay websites. I had only put the most basic details on this one, such as photos, and this was my first guest with it.

The request was from Biddy who was coming to a horse class being held at one of the farms near to my corner of Essex. It was the weekend before Dubai, but the flat was still in super clean condition so I decided to take the reservation.

Biddy wasn't here so much, really only the overnight as the horse classes were all day Saturday and Sunday. However, I came home to some lovely flowers--such a great view from my entrance upon my return:

In addition, she managed to break one of my (ultra cheap) Turkish tea glasses from Germany that I keep as wine glasses. She very graciously left a 5 pound note to pay for a replacement, which was well beyond anything I would have expected, considering they sell in six packs for below 5 EUR. However, I left her with thanks, nice feedback, and a promise of a discount the next time around if she gets a chance to come back for further horse classes.

Overall I was pleased with Airbnb, payment through the site was quick and their take appears to be lower than Crashpadder's, so I plan to fill in more details on their site to hopefully have more guests to visit.

Back from Dubai

I could probably wax on endlessly about thoughts on political or cultural Dubai, and that was only after a short one week visit. However, my purpose in going was work and then a few days on the beach. A few general thoughts:

Jumeirah beach was lovely:

However, October only begins the cooler season. Here in late Sept it was 30 C/90 F as soon as the sun rose before 7 AM and only continued upward until the sunset at 6.30 PM.

So I limited my beach time to early AM and after 3 PM. There was a pleasant breeze and the sand was soft. While you see cars in the photo and maybe 50 or so were on the beach, it didn't really seem crowded with people. In addition, there was a paved car lot next to the beach. There is a drop on the beach, so cars could only come so close, and in addition, the sand was deeper as one got closer to the water, so cars had to stay a short distance away.

The food was very international. Every chain imaginable can be found in Dubai. I saw McDonalds, Subway, TGIFridays, Pizza Express (UK), Ruby Tuesdays, and some other repeated restaurants like 'Wok Away'.

After a work week of being on the business travel and having our hosts take us to wonderful restaurants, I had to detox and eat out of the supermarket once the weekend came and I was on my own. I had asked at the hotel for the closest supermarket and was pleasantly surprised by their fresh food offerings. Everything here was packaged that morning and expired the next day and included no preservatives or chemical ingredients:

This ended up being lunch and dinner on Saturday as I had a minibar fridge in the room. From the back left: a salad with tuna, moutabal, humous, and then in the middle row were artichokes and a fava bean salad, and in front, fresh bread.

Everything together ran me about 8 GBP. Not bad for two healthy meals while on holiday.

On the frugal side, I was lucky on this trip. The flights were covered by work due to the business travel. In addition, Emirates Air was running a special deal on UK Business class tickets from the UK and issued in the UK during the 'summer season' which still includes September--two nights of a hotel on their special list was free. Utterly and completely free. So after I checked out of the work meetings, I checked into my free hotel for two nights of beach and relaxing.

From the special Emirates hotel list, I chose the Sofitel Jumeirah Beach, a five star hotel that is located outside of the city center, on the beach. Or more appropriately, across the parking lot to a public beach. In addition, the pool was down for maintenance, although there was still a deck lounge area near the pool. I had reviewed in advance online, a lot of people gave the hotel a hard time for not having a private beach, and for being across the parking lot from the beach. Considering I paid nothing to stay two nights, I have no right to complain, but I found the hotel to be lovely, parking lot and all. In addition, the hotel had free wireless throughout, which is always a big plus in my book. The biggest negative? I had only a 'side-beach view', which I knew before arriving from the literature. So I could see the beach and water while sitting on the balcony or directly in front of the doors to it, but not from the rest of the room. So I sat on the shaded balcony during those hot mid-day hours with my cool drinks from inside and my books.

I did find it interesting to be near the locals on the beach, or Middle Eastern tourists perhaps. No one gave me any hassles and someone noticed my collecting of seashells at the water and came back from snorkeling and dropped off a few for me, without a word. There were a fair number of tourists on the beach as well, they were easy to pick out by their sunburns.

While I saw their big, airconditioned mega malls, I didn't really see anything that I needed to buy. I did bring back the seashells and some sand in my shoes, however. ;-) I also tucked away the posh little extra shampoos and the like, for my occasional visitors.

While I probably wouldn't have gone on my own for holidays (primarily due to the distance of 7 hours to London), I'm glad I did get to go. As well, my liver probably appreciated the alcohol free adventure. While certain restaurants are able to sell alcohol and even the hotel had 'happy hour' where there were able to sell alcohol from 6-8 PM each night, I wasn't taking any chances in that society based on some of the stories I was hearing during the week about the government intervention into local life. In addition, I noticed that alcohol was expensive, higher than Iceland prices even which was previously the highest I've seen it, and that would have blown the frugal budget at 6 GBP for a beer. :-)

One more while I'm away - Slocombe in the window

The photo is a little tough to see, but that's Slocombe the cat on this side of the window while she is on vacation. On the other side is some other cat who is pretending to be interested in something to its left.

After another few seconds the other cat turned tail and ran. SC was mighty confused, as she was more curious than anything else about another furry being. She spent the rest of the day periodically sneaking on the counter to get to this window to peek out, wondering if the other cat came back.

Such a fierce and mighty cat she is!

(As far as inside, 12 year old lap cats go) ;-)

More from the rooftop garden - peppers

A little more pre-posting in advance while I'm away. Another winner this year on the roof was the old standby, the hot peppers:

This year I branched out a little in trying other varieties. Somehow, though, none of my scotch bonnet seeds took off, but the regular jalapenos took up the slack.

Tomatos from the garden

While I'm on the road, a little pre-posting.
Here is what I picked from the rooftop garden the night before I left:

On the road

Or rather, on the way to be in the air to Dubai. I'm rather looking forward to this trip as I just got my new law books on Friday, so I'll have a good few hours to get cracking while on the flight after I get through my work emails. Thankfully, I'm in business class since it's for work so I won't be squashed with my books.

5 AM calls rather early, but it had to be that way as Essex is on the 'wrong' side of London to get to Heathrow during the morning rush hour. So I'll be there in good time to enjoy a coffee.

Update on the crashpadder guests #1 Luisa & Peter

I've been a little busy for studying for an exam two weeks back and I'm realizing that I missed to finish the story about how it turned out with the lent out flat, and now I'm on my third guest already, so I'd better get moving.


You may recall, I had an idea to make a little spare cash, by lending out the flat. With a bit of trepidation I handed over the keys to Peter (of Luisa and Peter), as Luisa had taken a potty break on the train and then missed to get off the train as it was so crowded. However, Peter seemed harmless enough and managed to get off at the right stop with assurances that he would find Luisa again, so keys out of hand, off I went on a Friday while my corner of Essex started to heat up with incoming festival crowds.

Upon my return my flat was in absolutely pristine condition. It looked the same as when I go away to the weekend to new friend Ian's and return on Sunday, except that
1. The sheets, pillowcases and duvet cover were waiting next to the washing machine and the used towels were hanging up to dry
2. Someone left food in the fridge for me: 1 egg, some oj, candy, chocolate, doritos, salsa
3. Luisa and Peter had left a lovely card for me on the desk:






In case you're wondering about the 'funny, lovely & helpful notes' (Luisa teaches English as a second language so well written there!)--I had left little helpful post-its as their train was late. So I penned some messages, for example:

I have a collection of hotel shampoos and soaps. To make it feel more like a holiday I had set them all out in a basket, but I didn't want them to think that they couldn't use the normal ones standing in the shower, so the post-it next to them said:

• 'Use us! Pick me! No me!' (said all of the little soap and shampoo bottles). Or use the normal size ones in the shower, whichever you prefer.

Or in the kitchen, I had left a note in relation to the garbage, because the garbage area has a special key and has had all sorts of drama with people leaving it unlocked and the department of health being called out to go through any rubbish not in the dumpster, as well the key is perhaps made of sterling silver, because copies of lost ones cost 50 GBP. So the note said:

• The rubbish bin is only reachable by a series of secret handshakes and passwords and only when the moon and its comets align. Therefore, leave any garbage here or tied up on the terrace and I'll take care of it upon my return, assuming that the comets are in a good mood about getting in line!

Yeah, I amuse myself.

The big surprise to me, however, was the giftcard that was with the card. I had just assumed it was one of those little 'thank you' cards that people sometimes get over here for various promotions--like donating a marks & spencers item to oxfam gets you a 5 GBP voucher, etc. Imagine my surprise when I went to use it and found that they had put 20 GBP on it. So I will definitely be blocking the flat for their reservation next year if they come again to the festival.

In the week after the festival I've already had an inquiry for next year, someone wanting to book early, good grief.

So overall, experience #1 was a winner. :-)

packing

First for Dubai, then for a week in Germany. Fortunately it's back to the UK in between, so I'm not hauling around an extensive wardrobe.

Weather predictions for Dubai while there: above 100 F/35 C and sunny
Weather while I'll be away from the UK? around 61 F/16 C and partly cloudy, with Germany weather similar.

The blustery winds bring greetings

While it's still August in the UK, it's been crazy windy and cool. It feels like October and summer is officially over. It's been so windy that I've been keeping Slocombe the cat inside; even though she's easily over 10 pounds in her pudgy state, I could see her being picked up and wisked away in this crazy wind.

As you may recall, my mother sends greetings from heaven to my balcony on special days. With this wind I imagine she finds it easy to lauch things up. As it was her birthday today, she made sure to send somehing up, to acknowledge that I was thinking of her:
This was a catalog, and a heavy one a that, at least 100 pages, and it wasn't here yesterday. She positioned this one next to my lettuce, on the page as you see it. Apparently she sends her love through bic pens to me. Considering the paper floating around in my corner of Essex (chat line adverts, get out of debt fast, etc), this is quite impressive.

Step 1 in the massive declutter & clean-up: remove, release

As mentioned over here in The Big Declutter, things were all a flutter here this month. It seems a little amazing, I pared down everything before I left DE, and here we are all over again...with too much after only 18 months.

When I need to clean, I see extra stuff as a barrier that needs to be dusted, moved, hidden, cleaned, etc, and end the end is useless, extra work. It sorta stacks up until I have an impetus to move it, although, I think it would behoove me to do this once per year if I can't improve at it. So what moved this time?

1. ebay - I sold off the excess of items that were absolutely useless to me. What went?

• My law books from last year's course. May as well sell them while they're still fresh, and I need a whole different set for this year's course.
• Camper brand shoes that I bought secondhand. I love the idea of Camper shoes, the style, the look, they're of great quality, but somehow they just don't wear right on me.
• Clothes that I no longer need or want. In the UK we have stand-along wardrobes like in Germany, so no fixed closets. I don't like when they operate like overstuffed sausages, so there was a culling of the masses. I did an intial run through and then left the box there for two weeks as I ran into random items, in they went. The end result was a box lot.
• books - I send my already read pile to D's mom, but I know some of them won't be in her style. Most of them come from Oxfam or the like, so I'd drop them back off, if closer. For the more recent, lighter ones (less postage), I listed them for sale.
• a mirror and hardware - purchased early on, this was a DIY nightmare that required a phD in home improvement to get the hidden mirror clasps onto the wall. Sold in 'pick up only' mode to a local couple.

So how much did I get for things that were just getting in my way?
--> 37 GBP (45 EUR/57 USD) was my final profit after ebay fees etc.

2. the recycleables - the UK is not as good as Germany as far as recycling goes, at least in my corner of Essex. Paper recycling is a 20 minute walk away, plastics need to be carted along to Ian's house who has plastics recycling, and glass and cans are at least five minutes away. So I end up with full bags of these things as none of them are on my way to town, all are special trips. So mountains of items went out the door.

3. Excess packaging - I find myself squirrelling away bubble wrap and the like because it was so expensive in DE and isn't much better here. Fortunately the pile was thinned so much by the outgoing ebay packages.

4. The unsold ebay items - off to the charity shop. There's some kind of animal charity down the street that is staffed by volunteers. This one is two minutes from my house and seems to have customers who are down on their luck and can afford the 1 pound t shirts and 20 cent tea cups. It's a very nice place so any auction that didn't win found a resting place there.

Getting the things out the door put me in the right mood to get started.
Need some inspiration? There's a lot of great blogs right now who are chronicling their decluttering activities:

From close to home in the expat community G is hard at work.

Downsizing is a great read in the archive, even though his year of work is now complete.

However, his cousin has picked up the downsizing challenge in Downsizing Too.

And of course Katie in Making This Home is doing lots of clutter challenge activities as well.

How to declutter and create a beautiful space in 30 days

In case you were wondering where I've been, I've been a little, ahem, busy with the above.

Some backgound--there is perhaps an opportunity opening up that I could be in a slightly different location, for a temporary period. With that in mind, I would need to think about renting out the flat, or getting a house sitter maybe. So on that basis, I decided to give renting a test drive, to see how it would make me feel about my space and what direction to go for a longer term plan. Here comes the decluttering bit...

My space is currently very--'lived in'. Since I work from home most of the time I have a tendency to have work and career related ideas everywhere. It's been one merry-go-round after another of tests and certificates and presentations. First it was the driver's licence in Feb after a few months practice and studying, then I had another two in April that didn't happen due to the ash cloud. One of them happened three weeks ago (a pass), the other make-up is in two weeks...so 'housekeeping skills' has been low on the agenda, and this new location option gave it a boost up. So then what? I fell upon the idea that my motivation for getting the place up to snuff would come from renting it out to complete strangers.

I know some declutter sites have various ideas to motivate you like:

• Imagine that you're going to move overseas, what is really important to you? (been there, done that)
• Imagine that you suddenly die and your relatives are left to sift through your belongings. (so what would it matter than, if I'm already dead, besides, my relatives already know that I can border on slobdom.)

My motiviation-->rent the place out to total strangers for a short period, and make that period soon enough in the future that I would need to crack down and clean it up quickly, rather than a long, drawn out process.

No really.

Some background--I've had plenty of couchsurfers over, hospitality club people, etc. Granted, they're staying a night for free so expectations are lower. However, it gave me the impression that I'm comfortable to have people in my space. Shocking behavior for an only child, I realize. I believe living in Germany socialized me somewhat to more of a community lifestyle.

So there are a few sites out there, that are basically extensions of the couchsurfing idea, but that you pay to stay at someone's place, rather than staying at a hotel. I had picked up on this idea from a New York Times article on the topic.

So I chose a future date where there was an event happening in my corner of Essex and I put up an ad about 6 weeks before it. At 4 weeks before it, a young couple were in contact, and they booked up and paid via the site. So I had 30 days to get the place into tip top shape. Sidenote: I have ads on a few of the sites the Times' article mentions. In this specific instance, I used Crashpadder. If you would like further nitty gritty details of the transaction or to friend me there or view my flat description, if you have my email send me a note, or send a note to this one: phillygirl06 @ the opposite of coldmail.com.

So I broke apart the 30 days and went after the largest items first. Specifically, that was the impetus behind my recent painting mission. :-)

So many tasks I had been sitting on now had a reason to get done, and a self-imposed deadline.

So that will probably be the focus of the next few blog posts, the flurry and activity of getting things done and how they turned out in the end. No before photos were taken to protect the innocent. ;-)

From the rooftop garden: the industrious spider

Each morning when I work from home, I will often take a small coffee break around 10 ish to peek outside at what is happening in the rooftop garden. In Essex we've been having a lot of rain recently, so I take advantage of the moment to step outside as those opportunities are starting to become limited.

Specifically, I was looking at the tomato plant, to figure out if I should use the tomatoes today or tomorrow:

When I heard a buzzing out and realized that a bee or wasp was captured in a spider's web. The spider tend to build webs near my plants as they tend to attract insects.

As the insects tend to cause damage to the plants, I leave the spiders there to do their work. This was on Friday, so I imagine the spider was saying 'Woo-hoo! What a great way to start off the weekend with a big treat!'

As the wasp was stuck in the web, the spider wrapped around him, so that he was then one package. Afterwards, he brought the bounty up the web:

And a little further up:

I'm wondering if there is a family of spiders living inside my metal railing. After another 20 seconds, the wasp was fully gone from the scene.

Open mouth, insert foot

Since I work from home most of the time, I accept packages for the neighbors on my floor. Having to take the 15 minute walk to the post office package distribution office is just a hassle if you miss your delivery. We're only three total flats and with very limited shared walls, so things are quiet up here, and both sets of neighbors are very nice. One is from Italy, a beautiful doctor who speaks fluent English, the other a young couple who work in London so are almost never around.

Usually I just slip a note under the door, 'Hi, I have a package for you, stop by before 10 or tomorrow after 8 AM.'

The Italian was lamenting a few weeks back that she doesn't have a boyfriend. As she is educated, gorgeous and has only been in the UK for six months, I was telling her that it's only a matter of time. She is, however, interviewing for the position, but most only last one or two dates before being dismissed. There is one who seems to be on a trial period, so I see him repeated in the parade of men...

So the flower guy drops off a huge vase of lovely flowers and a box of chocolates for her on Tuesday. She didn't drop by that night though, but sometime she works some unsocial hours at the hospital so she's coming in at 6 AM or some ridiculous time before I'm awake. Although strangely, I didn't catch her later in the day either. Finally at 9 PM, I hear the fine Italian leather boots clomping up the stairs and into her flat.

She pops over an hour later, I hear the telltale incessant knocking...apparently in Italy you knock low, but repeatedly until the person answers. Couple that with the shouting from the hall "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet -er' It seems the Italians are like the Germans, my name loses the 'TH' in the middle. Slocombe always heads under the bed when A comes around. With most visitors Slocombe will stand in the bedroom doorway to evaluate them, with the noise of A, she isn't taking that chance!

A is always very sweet, however.
'Ah, het-er! Do you have a package for me?'
-Ah yes A, someone must really like you! (I point to the vase of flowers on the floor)

She just blinks and looks at me.

I pause for a minute, thinking: maybe I should not have put them on the floor? It's the safest place as the table is covered with books due to painting....and they were delivered in a cardboard box, so it's the box that's on the floor, not the vase...and I always leave the cardboard boxes by the door on the floor, it's not usually an issue.

Or maybe she's just appalled that I have masking tape and paint cans and paintbrushes in a 'in progress' state here. Although it is an 'in progress' job this week....so to further along this interaction, I slide the flowers out from my flat from inside the door to just outside the door at her feet.

She now has a deer in the headlights look. I'm racking my brain to try and figure out where the problem is...is is the language? Was I too forward in what I said? Did she mistake it for something else, but what?

I realize as I hear a footstep from her flat, that the boy toy must have been in the bathroom freshening up as they're on their way out, and she was probably popping round for the package in a spare two minutes, not realizing that it was going to be flowers, and I'm further now connecting the dots--that the flowers and chocolates were from a different boy that is now poking his head out the doorway into the hall.

Oops. Fortunately he was a good sport about it.

and the painting continues

The cumbersome part, to clear the bookshelves and then move the away from the walls to get behind them is now in process. Here Slocombe surveys the room from on top of a moved bookshelf, because a cat must do such things, of course. Fortunately I had just dusted the top off or someone may have done that for me instead. ;-)

So this is low tack (read: expensive) medium blue masking tap lining the edges and they've now been down in the blue/grey colour. So the next step will be to colour inside of the lines and then to peel off the tape.

The end is in sight, for the walls, at least. The ceiling is still to come...

The painting progress continues

This wall was previously the 'delivered' new build off-white color. As the 'new build' was 2.5 years when I bought it, at over 3.5 years the walls were beginning to show their age.

The blueish grey color serves to bring more of the outside in as it matches and contrasts with the various temperaments of the sky outside.

And now, off to a hot bubble bath and an early bedtime.

In progress - painting the living room

This is what I've been up to, day two:

I'm doing the living room in a light blue/grey color. So the outlining is done on this wall, now just to fill in tomorrow night.

The frugal side of this:

The paint come from the discontinued markdown shelf at homebase. Apparently environmentally friendly paints were not a big seller. When I googled them online people seemed pleased enough with them. At half the orginal sale price, I was extremely pleased with them.

But what if you later decide that you need more of the same paint, you won't be able to get it?

To test this theory, I went to look at the bathroom and kitchen paints I purchased and used last year. Sure enough--they revamped the color offerings and my colors are not being sold there. Deeper and darker colors appear to be the new trend.

So I bought enough to make sure that I would get the room done with some left over. :-) As I'm only picking this up after work each evening until it gets dark out, it will be a project of a few days.

More photos tomorrow, with tomorrow's progress.

The painted bathroom

Do you remember, last year I mentioned about painting the kitchen with my Germany couch surfer? I had done the bathroom also around that time, but still the ceiling remained. And then, the mirror finally went up and the new one was smaller than the fitting holes left on the wall, so those were finally filled in and painted. So then I may as well do a general touch up of the walls again, so I did. ;-)

And now it is finally finished:

Heated towel rack on the right. I have a 'modern' UK bathroom (=tile rather than carpeted bathroom floor!)

In the mirror you can see the reflection of the world map shower curtain. The male visitors usually comment positively upon the sink upon seeing it, no idea why:

The sink is tiny like the rest of the bathroom...and the rest of the flat. Although I do have a bath/shower, as opposed to the 'shower only' that many new flats in this area offer. The bathroom is on a sharp triangle angle; it doesn't actually feel small because of that.

Here's a close of of 'surf's up duck', behind him is the painted wall. The little tiles were pre-existing.

The newly painted ceiling is 'milky white', so not much to see there. :-)
One thing done, a few hundred more to go...

Back to school

Over the weekend I sent in my acceptance to start a part-time masters in law in the fall. Remember the law class from last fall? It ended up going really well so I'd like to continue with it in the fall. Ironically, my local college had their funding cut so they won't offer the second year of this national course, so I had to look elsewhere. As well, while the course was interesting and practical, I have no plans to work in a law office or change careers at all, so something more academic would be a better fit now that I'm past all the intro coursework.

When I looked elsewhere, I began to get a little stuck; my local college made no differentiation on foreign vs. local tuition. Somehow, they accepted my 5+ years in the EU as authorizing me for local tuition. Not so on all of the bigger universities I was looking at, all of them were expecting to charge me as a foreign student as I have no permanent residency in the UK. But what about my documented time in DE? Not worth EU rates without an EU passport apparently. It became the difference between paying 3500 GBP and 9500 GBP which is too much when it's not work endorsed, i.e. paid, merely my personal interest. If I could have held on a few years, I could have qualified for residency and then started, but that would have pushed completion out to 10 years. Time is not on my side here... ;-)

Scholarship money? It became a catch 22 as sall of the cholarships from the US I had seen had residency requirements or that one is applying from the US, so I no longer qualified for those, even though I am still a proud US tax paying citizen.

In my quest to not pay 10k GBP, I started to look at distance learning programs, where location does not matter. In addition, I work from home most of the time, so I may as well do this from home as well. I found a few programs which really aligned with what I do professionally, so that it will supplement my current activities.

Therefore I put the envelope into the post this weekend to start a part-time two year's distance learning masters in law from a very nice university in southern england. The ironic thing is that this program is dead on with my interest area, so a perfect match. Had the local options not been so expensive, I probably would have missed it. :-)

Update from the rooftop garden - caterpillars

The great thing about this being only my second summer in the UK is that I can continue to learn what works well on the rooftop and what does not. Brussels sprouts, well, perhaps not so much the winner:


Not sure if they had those 'spot the hiding object' pictures in other places like they did in the US when I was growing up, but this one is a fine one with the nice blend of greens.

And if anyone in Essex wants to feed approximately 15 or so live caterpillars to some sort of pet like a bird, lizard, or whatever else would eat them, please let me know. I imagine they'll taste like brussel sprout leaves since they've basically demolished the two plants.



Of course, I imagine that this veritable siege of locusts, er caterpillars, is due to the fact that their natural predators, the rooftop birds stay well away, due to the every vigilant presence of Slocombe the mightly attack cat.

Good thing I still have one plant out on the back terrace. Now...how to dispose of the caterpillars, beyond throwing them in the rubbish bin. Hmm...