A thoroughly spooky HAPPY HALLOWEEN from me and my newly-carved pumpkin, Donald.

Hopefully your day has been/is filled with pumpkins, candy and costumes!

The Height of Autumn

Hands-down one of the best things about London - a proper autumn. Full of colors and warmth and birds. Can't be beat.

The weather this week seems to be decent, and while I decided against heading into London on my one day off this week, a walk in the park was lovely. Next weekend there will be more excitement, with a movie premiere, the switching-on of the Oxford Street Christmas lights and Guy Fawkes Day! For now... it's just autumn.

Thames Festival 2009 Photography Competition

About a month and a half ago I submitted this (and a few other) pictures to the Thames 2009 Festival Photo Competition, and I got a wonderful e-mail yesterday saying that my photo was chosen as one of the runners-up! YAY!

You can see the photo (and my mis-spelled name, which, yes, I e-mailed them about), and the other winners on their website here.

My first photo contest! How exciting!

I'm in the Audience!

Remember I went to see a taping of the Graham Norton Show? Well, I found myself in the audience! If you can't find me above, here's where I am:

It was interesting to see how much of the interview got cut out, and which parts made it in vs. out, etc. I've got a ticket to see this show again at the end of next month, but it's the day that Zac Efron (tweeny hunk child from High School Musical saga), and I'm not sure that I a) Care about what he's going to say, and b) Want to be in the room with a bunch of screaming girls. Yikes.

We'll see about that. But for now, that's me, in the audience.

Pumpkin Pie

Well, with the Halloween Season upon us, and with Canadian Thanksgiving just past, and Britain not particularly participating in either, I felt it was necessary to excercise my Canadian-ness and make a pumpkin pie, damnit!

And so I did.

Here's the pumpkin I bought. It's a specific "baking pumpkin", which cost 4 times as much as the carving pumpkin of the same size that it was sitting next too. Whether it was a requirement of the pie, or a sneaky trick used by grocery stores to encourage you to buy a fancy pumpkin, I'll never know.

And here's the liquid I turned it into. Yes, I know it looks a bit like vomit... it's okay. We're all thinking it. I used the recipe off this site here, although instead of microwaving the pumpkin for 30 minutes, I chose to bake it instead to make it soft. Although this took longer than planned and was slightly frustrating.

After scraping the pumpkin out of its shell, and mixed it with evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, and a bunch of spices. Unfortunately I don't have a blender/food purifier, so I couldn't blend the mixture properly, resulting in a slightly lumpy pie. Still has lovely flavor.

First, I baked a bunch of mini-pies, which turned out quite well. Nice, bite sized morsels. Although chunky...

Oh the dishes... so many dishes...

And finally, the masterpiece! I would love to say that I made the pastry myself, too, but I didn't. Maybe next time. I have some pumpkin goop left in the freezer for future use, so who knows. This pie turned out really well, actually better than the mini-pies, since the longer baking time meant that it's less chunky in the middle.

... and, of course, the whipping cream! Can't forget that...

All in all I'm pleased that I tried this recipe, although I'm pretty sure that when I return to the land of canned pumpkin and pre-made pies, I will opt for the easier option. A fun experiment, but time consuming and expensive.

But for now, I've got pie.

Last Chance to See at the Royal Geographic Society

This evening I attended a talk at the National Geographic Society all about the BBC Program Last Chance to See. If you haven't watched/torrented it, I suggest you do, it's well worth watching. Due to attend was one Stephen Fry, who I'm really not all all familiar with (...), and one Mark Cawardine, a BBC Photographer and someone I was very keen to see. Unfortunately Mark was taken ill with the horror that is Swine Flu, and as such, was unable to attend. A bit of a bummer, but of course Stephen Fry made up for it.

The chat lasted about two hours and included some questioning from the audience. Again, I'm so very pleased that photography was allowed. Even if I had to crank the ISO (graininess) up to the highest setting on the camera in order to take photos without using the flash, grainy pictures are better than none.

After the chat there was an auction and a raffle. I didn't enter the raffle because I didn't have the extra money and the prizes (including the LCTS Book and DVD), I own in other, semi-legal ways. Well, not the book, but I really must stop buying books...

The picture below on the left is the item that was up for auction. It is a rhino made entirely out of recycled flip-flops that wash up on shore in an African country that I can't remember, and poor village woman make them into things and sell them. I think it helped that Stephen Fry was playing the part of the auctioneer, and that he kept throwing in his own bids, because the woman who won it ended with a bid of over 650 pounds. Yikes.

I know, it's for a charity, but I'm a poor traveller. And I don't really have a need for a large, foamy rhino. Even if it was man-handled by Stephen Fry.

The only reason I posted this photo is that I would like to bring your attention to Mr. Stephen Fry's socks. Because they are purple and awesome. If I remember correctly, last time I saw him he was wearing strangely-colored socks. Can't go wrong with socks.

I don't think I've ever seen someone who so regularly dresses in what appears to be a random assortment of colors and still manages to look all snappy.
Yellow checked shirt? Check.Mauve tie? Check.Black vest? Check.Tan jacket? Check.Blue trousers? Check.Purple socks? Double check!
And somehow, so very English it seems.

All in all a lovely evening. Would've been nice to see Mark Cawardine, but probably best not to get infected with Swine Flu. I'd likely end up passing it along to all sorts of customers.
P.S. If you haven't already seen this clip from the Last Chance to See show, do check it out. It's one of the more famous clips from the show, and don't worry, Mark Cawardine wasn't injured at all.

Twitter

In light of not having much to blog about this evening, and yet having the desire to blog and blog and blog, I'll share with you an amusing Twitter joke I shared with QI's Alan Davies.

(fyi: Read from the bottom to the top of the picture, "tweets" are posted according to time). Poor Alan Davies was complaining that he wasn't getting paid very much money to 'perform'/speak at a literary festival, and to be honest, I was a bit shocked that they were only giving him 150 quid, too. First thing I thought to myself was "Hey, I've got 150 quid, *I* could hire Alan Davies!"... and so I posted it. As the British say, I'm quite chuffed (pleased) that we shared this little moment of banter. If only my birthday was actually coming up and I had 150 quid to send him...

P.S. For those of you who don't know who Alan Davies is, shame on you! No, I'm kidding. But he's really funny and terribly sweet and I met him at the book signing back in the day. He's also wicked smart, despite what you see on QI, having spent a great deal of time on political chat shows following the appearance of the BNP's Nick Griffin on the BBC's Question Time last week. (I imagine this means very little to most of you, just Google it if you want, I really don't know a whole lot about it either).

Okay, back to the point. Alan Davies is awesome. And you should know who he is. Here's some YouTube videos for your amusement:

Here's some clips from QI:

And here's a slightly more serious version talking about his book:

I look forward to more Twitter-inspired conversations in the future... for now I really must clean the kitchen from the pie-making and get some sleep before work!

Some Thoughts

Today was my first day back at work, and I'm very pleased to report that it was AWESOME! Very nice to be back with friends doing a job that's fun and easy.

I was a bit bummed to learn that my manager, Mat, had left Wandsworth for another store, but the new manager, Lindsey, is really great and I'm looking forward to working with her. She's really good at giving feedback, which is something Mat never did, which can be hard.

I'm up late waiting for my pumpkin pie to cook. I made a batch of little pumpkin pies beforehand, and they turned out pretty good, so I'm hoping the same rings true of the full-sized one. The only downside is that I don't have a blender, so the pie itself is a bit... clumpy. Not the best texture, but a nice flavour.

In my spare time I've been messing around with Photoshop - a program I'm slowly learning how to use. I edited and made that picture above, and most of you will recognize it from my Facebook/Twitter accounts. But for those of you who don't have either, I though I'd share. Plus, people seem to whine that *I* don't feature enough on my blog. There's no one around to take my picture!

I'll post more pictures of my attempt at making pumpkin pie when the final pie comes out of the oven and I taste it. No point bragging at my mad pie-making skills if it turns out like the chocolate pie I made in HomeEc in Jr. High. Because that was just chocolate soup in a pastry bowl...

He's Not the Messiah, He's a Very Naughty Boy

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of this picture and the following videos. I wasn't supposed to be taking photos and/or videos in the Royal Albert Hall, so I had to do it sneakily!

Tonight was the one and only London showing of Eric Idle's/Monty Python (minus Cleese) new show called "He's Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)", based on the movie Life of Brian. It was performed at the Royal Albert Hall, which is a lovely venue. It was an opera, hence the full orchestra. This, of course, didn't stop the silliness.

Eric Idle was on stage all of the time, providing one of the singing voices along with some other trained singers. The other 3 guys did random cameos throughout the performance, which were always awesome.

Here are the sneaky videos that I took, and, seriously, the quality is crap. I'm just warning you.

This is the finale of the actual show, a lovely rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" sung by the wonderful Eric Idle and the crowd. You might be able to see that we're all swinging lights in the air. We were given proper electric candles when we checked our ticket, with instructions on when to use it. That's right. We're a coordinated crowd.

And here's the encore, a wonderful rendition of "I'm a Lumberjack" by the wonderful Michael Palin. I missed the beginning bit where he tore his toga off (first picture) to reveal his lumberjack uniform.
This video really is all over the place, particularly at the beginning. I was fumbling with the camera. Sit still, it'll get better after about 15 seconds.


Always good fun. Glad to see that they still enjoy performing the crowd favorites.
They were also taping this whole performance, so I'm hoping it'll end up as a DVD as one point. Then I see a better quality video than these. However, in the meantime, enjoy the videos here.
I don't know if the guys stuck around to do autographs or not, I didn't stay. I'm not sure I wanted to battle the 5,500 other people to say hi and snap a photo. Next time!

Deer Park Without the Deer

Wonderful weather today, at the park. Found some mushrooms, too, which I imagine you noticed.

Didn't find any deer at the deer park, unfortunately, but made up for it in lovely colors.

Graham Norton

Didn't do a whole lot for most of the day, and spent the rest of the day in the queue to go see the Graham Norton Show. Which is a shame since the weather was actually clear and sunny, despite the BBC's prediction of rain and misery all around.

The Graham Norton Show itself was really entertaining! Not as funny as when I got to see Jo Brand, Alan Carr and Sean Locke on another comedy show, since they were brilliant, but pretty entertaining none the less.

The guests included Isabella Rossellini, some comedian lady (who was very funny), Lily Cole (model/actress - appearing in the new The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus), and fellow Canadian and singer-man, Micheal Buble. Of all the guests, Micheal Buble was probably the most surprising - he was damn funny and really fun to watch, despite not being a fan of his music. Plus, he's Canadian. So that's cool.

As a side, I've been super lucky with seating for most of these shows. Even though I'm there early enough to be within the first 10 people in the main queue, we get bumped behind "production guests" and "priority pass people", and in this case, there were about a hundred of people that got into the studio before us. It's a big studio, and so I ended up around the middle, but far enough away that it wasn't going to be super fun. But, because I was on my own, I ended up being bumped up to the 3rd row because they had holes to fill. Haha! Take that all you people with friends! Suckers!

I didn't take any pictures... since you're not allowed to in the studio, so instead I'll share with you some of my favorite YouTube clips of the Graham Norton Show:

Here's Glenn Close and Alan Carr:

Part 2 can be found here.

And here's part 1 of 4 of Eddie Izzard and Harry Shearer's visit, which is wicked fun if you watch all 4 parts.

Here you can find part 2, part 3, and part 4.

And here's part 2 of 3 of David Tennant and Jo Brand's Visit:

You can see part 1 and part 3. I posted part 2 since it was the funniest.
The show airs on Monday, so maybe I'll tune in and see what the finished product looks like.
Cheerio for now!

You've got Mail!

And let me tell you, what a total shock (and pleasant surprise!) to find this sitting in my inbox when I woke up on Tuesday:

I had given it a shot and sent him an e-mail after the Oscar Wilde book launch on Thursday because he had mentioned a quote I liked and despite my best Googling and Wikipedia-ing I couldn't find anything about it. Didn't expect an e-mail back... but to my surprise I got one!

Good lord. What's happening?!

Unfortunately, he can't remember who said the quote either. I wish I had written it down. But absolutely wonderful, none the less. What a nice gesture.

1 Terabyte and Counting...

Just bought a new 1 Terabyte Hard Drive this afternoon to continue my ever-expanding selection of games/movies and of course, pictures. Now begins the transfer...

And that folder that you see in the picture is only the pictures...

This is going to take a long time. Better make some tea.

Weather

Well, according to the BBC it seems as though we're having a NO WEATHER SUNDAY. And that's fine by me, since the rest of the week is supposed to be soggy and wet.

Didn't do much exciting today. Went to see a taping of the Piers Morgan's Life Stories, which I've seen several times now. It's a fun show to see, although the weather is starting to get too chilly to wait outside for 4 hours. I've got a ticket to see a talk show on Thursday called The Graham Norton Show, which looks entertaining, so I'll see that, but I think after that, I'll call it quits for the queuing up.

I've also added a new feature to the blog, that probably won't affect... well... anyone. I've labelled all the posts, so you'll notice at the bottom of the posts is a series of words like "Church" "TFL" "Parks" "Movie Premieres" or "Stephen Fry" etc etc. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, there's a huge clump of these words. If you click on one of them, you'll get a list of all the posts which relate to that topic. I've only got the labels showing when they have been used more than once, so you won't always get obscure labels.

As well I've added a handy search tool, which is way down there too. If you feel the need to search something, you can use that. I haven't tried it yet, but it's made from Google, so it can't be all bad.

That's all from me, really. If the weather continues to be like this for the next week I'm going to find it hard to get my bottom outside and DO things, so hopefully the weather will clear up just a bit.

Crystal Palace Park

I spent most of Saturday down at Crystal Palace Park in East Croydon, London. It's a place I've wanted to visit for a long time, but it's out of the way and I never got down. There is quite a bit of history here, which I'm going to share with you.

First of all, the dinosaur park.

So called the "world's first" dinosaur park, it was opened in 1854 and at the time caused outrage because of it's proposal of the theory of evolution. In fact, the park was opened 6 years before Darwin published his Origin of Species.

One of the men who worked on the park was Richard Owen, who also first coined the term "dinosauria", meaning "terrible lizard".

The park underwent a restoration in 2001, and while the models can't compete with the ones we've got in Calgary... they are much, much older.

Secondly, and slightly more impressive, is the location of the now-destroyed Crystal Palace Park.

To give you an idea, here is what the location looks like today:

And here's what it looked like when it was built:You can see in this picture the stairs and columns and the walkway. The sheer size of this building is beyond my ability to imagine, and it's a shame it isn't around any more.
Here's another view of the stairs, which will give you an idea of how massive Crystal Palace was.

Here's a brief history of Crystal Palace (thanks from the BBC):

The Crystal Palace was a huge glass and iron structure originally built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition held in London's Hyde Park. Prince Albert, head of the Society of Arts, had the idea of an exhibition to impress the world with Britain's industrial achievements.

Countries including France, the United States, Russia, Turkey and Egypt all attended with exhibits falling into four main categories - Raw Materials, Machinery, Manufacturers and Fine Arts.

The Palace was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and after the Great Exhibition finished in October 1851 he had the idea of moving it to Penge Place Estate. Sydenham as a 'Winter Park and Garden under Glass'.

August 1852 saw the rebuilding work begin and in June 1854 Crystal Palace was re-opened in its new location by Queen Victoria. The whole building was enormous - 1,848 feet long and 408 feet wide including two huge towers and many fountains with over 11,000 jets rising into the air.

The palace and the grounds became the world's first theme park offering education, entertainment, a rollercoaster, cricket matches, and even 20 F.A. Cup Finals between 1895 -1914.

The site attracted 2 million visitors a year and was also home to displays, festivals, music shows and over one hundred thousand soldiers during the First World War.

Crystal Palace was cursed by bad luck and financial crisis. In 1861 the Palace was damaged by strong winds and on Sunday 30th December 1866 a fire broke out destroying the North End of the building along with many natural history exhibits.

Although the palace saw many successful years and millions of visitors financial problems plagued the Palace. Its sheer size meant it was impossible to maintain financially and it was declared bankrupt in 1911.

However, it was the night of 30th November 1936 that saw the most devastation. A huge fire broke out across the building. By morning most of the Palace was destroyed. There had been 88 fire engines, 438 officers, men from 4 fire brigades and 749 police officers on duty that historic night.

Here's a picture of the damage that the fire had done to the palace. It really is a shame, since it would've been such an impressive sight today, but oh well. The grounds are still fun to walk around on.

I'm still working through a list of things I'd like to get done before I return to work at the end of the month, so hopefully the weather holds out and you can expect more blog posts!

Best. Weekend. EVER.

Okay, apologies in advance. I know it's been a Stephen Fry-heavy weekend. But I couldn't resist just one more post...

LOOK WHO I FOUND IN PICCADILLY CIRCUS THIS EVENING!!

Ahh! Twice in one weekend, who would've thought?!

Ahem... pardon the goofy smile. It's hard to maintain composure sometimes, especially when camera chooses this of all moments to act up. Silly beast.

What a weekend. It's been lovely.

Now, back to reality. Maybe. For now.

Autumn in Hyde Park

Fall is in, ahem, 'full bloom' here, not to use a cliche or anything. (Even though I think you technically refer to spring as being in 'full bloom'.) But it is. And it's all sorts of lovely. While today was cloudy and grey, yesterday (when I took these pictures) was all sorts of blue and warm.

Since then, we've been reduced to turning the heat on, but that's okay. I'm still hoping for some blue days over the next week or so.

And yes, hate me or not, but I'm still telling everyone I can about my brief meeting with Stephen Fry. Because it was hella cool. That's right. Hella. (I'm actually just as excited about being able to take photos of him as I am about meeting him. I'm such a photo-nut...). Okay, I'll shut up now.

A test

Playing with some HTML - trying to make the pictures stay side-by-side. Blogger sure doesn't make it easy. I'm trying to take advantage of a wider blog! Yeesh.
So far it seems to be working. Although there's a huge amount of white space at the bottom of the pictures that I don't approve of. Oh well.

If you're wondering, these are photos I took while walking through the Royal Academy of Art on Thursday. There's more, and full-size pictures on my flickr.

-------------------- EDIT --------------------

Excellent. Looks like I have mastered the HTML. Well, sort of. We'll see how long I can keep it mastered.

Some changes...

I've made some changes to the layout - I was getting bored and tired of trying to squeeze things into the narrow width of the middle column. So I've changed it up to mimic the look of my photo blog, which, if you've never visited, can be found here.

The links to my flickr page are still at the bottom, as well as the archive, so should you want a post that is old, you can still sort through there.

Hopefully I haven't upset your routine too badly! Heh.

Stephen Fry

BEST. DAY. EVER.

I'll post more photos when I'm less all-over-the-place.

STEPHEN FRY!

(That's my book! It's says "To Leanna" on it!)

-------------------- EDIT: --------------------

Phew, Okay. Calmed down a bit. Here's more photos from Mr. Fry's talk:

The event took place at the Bloomsbury Theatre in Euston, London. He was there to launch his new book, "Stephen Fry presents Oscar Wilde's Stories for all ages." While I know little to nothing about Oscar Wilde, I always wanted to, and I really couldn't pass up the opportunity to see Stephen Fry.

Stephen Fry talked a bit about Oscar Wilde and then read one of the short stories from the book, "The Happy Prince."

... I can't remember what is going on here.

I'm really grateful that no one had a problem with photo-taking. They even encouraged it, which was a welcome treat in a theatre-type event.

The presentation, while short, was amazing. He is an amazing public speaker and the story itself was wonderful. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book. What a treat.

Everyone did queue up afterwards to get their book signed, including me. I think everyone in the line got through, although I was at the halfway mark or so, so I don't know. Also signing the book was the artist, Nicole Stewart, who does the artwork for Stephen Fry's website as well. Here's the original picture with both of them in it:

I cropped it earlier for dramatic effect. Heh. I really can't say any more. It was a wonderful opportunity, and for free! At least I'm completely reassured that the £50 I paid to go see Stephen Fry again with Mark Cawardine (photographer and partner on the show "Last Chance to See" on the BBC) at the Royal Geographic Society at the end of the month will be worth the money. Not that I ever thought it wouldn't be. Can't wait!

-------------------- EDIT: --------------------

I've added a video that I took that evening. You'll have to turn the volume up if you'd like a listen, since the noise quality isn't very good. Stephen Fry is reading part of "The Happy Prince", a story which he read quite well. Started out amusing and by the end everyone was teary, including him. Just a small clip, though. Enjoy.