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.