Theatre in Bristol

The highlight of our day in Bristol was seeing our friend Kate on stage.  Kate and Steve were in first grade together and then I was in the band with Kate in high school.  She has been in Bristol for the last year at the Old Vic theatre school.  The last time I had seen her on stage was her senior year school musical.

The show was an adaptation of Emma, very timely because I was about 1/3 of the way through the book.  We enjoyed the show very much.  It was an ensemble cast, 10 performers switching off the characters throughout.  It skipped over a lot of the boring bits to cover the story in 2 1/2 hours.  Kate played Mrs Elton, Mrs Weston and Emma at the end.  She was great.  She is very gregarious in person and even more so on stage.  It took me back to sitting in the pit orchestra for the Morton High School spring musicals, strugling through my trumpet parts in crazy keys, and watching Kate and my other classmates up on stage.  Of course, this show was much more professional, not the least of which being my sitting in the audience and keeping quiet.

 

After the show we had some time to catch up with Kate, and her mom Martha.  It was nice to chat with someone from ‘back home’ and compare notes on our experiences.  We left as Kate had to get ready for the evening’s performance. 

We walked back through town and grabbed dinner at a Thai restaurant.  As we were leaving we ran into a colleague of mine, literally the only other person I know who lives in Bristol.  Very strange coincidence.  I hope she doesn’t think I’m stalking her.

After we got home I tried to read more of the book, but I was already getting bored and now that I know the ending I think I’m just going to let it lie.

Bristol

Yesterday (Saturday) Steve and I took a day trip to Bristol, in the West of England.  An old school mate of ours has been in theatre school in Bristol for the last year, and she is performing in  a play, the perfect excuse to make Bristol the destination for the day.

Bristol is only a 1:45 drive from Reading, a very comfortable drive.  Our first stop in Bristol was the Bristol City Museum , recommended to us by Wendy, who grew up near Bristol.  The museum had a great old atmosphere. 

My favorite exhibit was the Gorilla.  Alfred had been a favorite attraction for many years at the Bristol zoo, and when he died they stuffed him and put him in the city museum.  They had some clever signage to help you find him.

After exploring the museum we had several hours to explore the city.  We stopped in a couple neat shops and a small cafe for a snack.  There was a Veteran’s day celebration in a park, with a regimental band whose bus we had passed on the M4 earlier that morning.  The city was bustling with activity, and felt very alive.  There is a lot of recent refurbishment of the areas around the city centre, and a lot of construction going on.  I had bad memories of a crazy one-way system trying to get to the city centre on our trip to England in 2004, but the petrol station attendant where we bought our map kindly warned us that the map would do us no good in that part of the centre as the roads have been completely rerouted and a huge new car park is being built.

We stumbled upon the St Nicholas market, which Hilary had also recommended.  It had a really nice assortment on stalls, not too junky and not too yuppie.  Just right.  Steve stopped for a haircut and I bought a small zippered bag for my Zune.  The market had a number of wonderful food stalls, if we had the time we would have tried the Moroccan chicken, but we had a chicken pie and mash instead.  We had to scurry over to the theatre to catch the matinee…

Christmas shopping at the pub

Steve and I tried out one of our new neighborhood pubs last Friday.  It was quite good – traditional pub menu in an old half-timbered pub with a friendly barmaid. 

Bonus is that we made a dent in our Christmas shopping.  As I was standing at the bar, waiting for my drink, i was looking at the local brochures on the end of the bar.  Then, looking through a bin of charity lapel pins I found the perfect one for my uncle Rick.  I put my pound in the box and brought the pin home.  He’ll have to wait until Christmas for it though.

Strawberries

A week or so ago we picked up a pound of strawberries at the local Tesco.  They were fabulous.  We have been back to Tesco every second day and are going through a full pound a day.  Got to enjoy them while they are in season!

People at work found it amusing that I had no clue that everyone eats strawberries and cream at Wimbledon.  I guess it is like not knowing that everyone gets popcorn at the movie theatre. 

Unlucky with the bank cards

Steve and I have had a run of bad luck with our bank cards this week.  Monday we got a call asking if we were using Steve’s bank card in Panama.  Um, no, so that card got cancelled.  Tuesday I decided that I should better get some cash for Steve.  Bad time for the ATM to crash and eat my card, but it did.  Today I had to go to the ‘real bank’ to ‘talk to a real person’ to withdraw cash to hold us over until our new cards arrive.

Sorry the posting has been very in frequent lately.  We do not have internet at our new place yet.  Otherwise, on the moving front, things are going great.  We are mostly settled – should be all set after the weekend. 

Checkout

Schrockinator here…

Today we checked out of the old place and handed over the keys. Sarah specifically requested the same inventory clerk we had when we checked in. This was a very good move because the clerk clearly remembered the often poor condition some things were when we moved in.

We had placed almost all of the loose items that were on the inventory into the shed. This included valuable things such as a padlock without a key and a rusty nail. Fortunately for us they were all accounted for.  The only thing we will probably lose some deposit for is a burnt-out bulb over the stove. I have my doubts that we ever even turned on said bulb. If that is all we end up getting charged for then we did pretty well.

This also means that our gardening and lawn work are complete for the forseeable future because our new place includes a gardener. Life is good.

We’ve made the move

We got moved over to the new place and everything went very smoothly.  The movers showed up at the old house at 8:30 and they were wrapping up at noon.  We then had the whole afternoon to get settled in and things unpacked.   

The only thing that didn’t make it upstairs that I had hoped for was a wood chair we had been using at Steve’s desk.  So Steve gets a new desk chair.

Flickr seems to be down today – so pictures coming later.

Ready to go

We’re all packed up and ready to go.  A moving van and guys are coming tomorrow to move our boxes over to the new place.

The game for tomorrow is “what will fit through the landing”?  The landing on the 2nd floor is only about 17 inches wide at its narrowest point, followed by a sharp corner to get up the stairs to the 3rd floor.  The biggest thing we want up there is our filing cabinet – so hopefully it will fit.  I imagine the movers are going to have to leave several of the boxes on the 2nd floor to unpack there and carry the contents up as I put some of my things in the medium size boxes before I measured, and they are not going to fit through that slot.

Wish us luck!

My new shoes

By popular demand here is a photo of my new shoes.  The ones that made me almost miss my flight home to London.

 

 

Packing up a little house

The movers are coming for the boxes on Tuesday, so we’ve been packing this weekend.  I was worried that being out of town for 4 days before we started the move would make things crazy but it is really easy to pack up a little house.  Friday night we packed up downstairs.  Saturday morning we got everything upstairs packed in just a few hours.  Today we packed up the kitchen (the hardest room of the house) and the electronics.

There are just a few odds and ends that we need to use for the next 48 hours left to pack.  It makes me so happy for this to be so easy.  All that work we did to get rid of junk in Seattle is paying off.