Is it, or is it not?

So....it started with a sore throat. And some nasal issues. So, I took some daytime cold medicine and went to work. Then, in the evening I took some night-formula cold medicine. I slept really well, only waking Sweetie up once in a coughing fit. But, then the alarm went off and I could barely lift my arm 2 inches to turn it off. I tried to sit up in bed and it was clear that I wasn't going to be making it to the living room anytime soon, let alone the office. I dashed off an email to my colleagues, stumbled back into bed, and slept for another full 4 hours and 45 minutes. Extraordinary.

I didn't have a fever, but then again, I was already taking antibiotics for an unrelated medical issue, and my body temperature is naturally a degree or two below normal, so what defines a fever for me is not entirely clear.

Yesterday I felt somewhat recovered -- at least enough to take a shower and comb my hair, so I went to the office and managed to eek out about 4 hours of work.

Sweetie has since displayed similar symptoms.

And then there was the email from the college where we work saying that a student has probable swine flu.

Hmmmm.....

So, at this point, we're thinking, maybe what we had/have WAS the swine flu?? Can I now run around campus touching door handles and drinking fountains with abandon, flaunting my new immunity?

Or, was it just a head cold?

Catching up

I'm a bad blogger. I just realized that I'm averaging one post a month. That's bad. Well, patient readers, this is what the RSS is for. Click the magic orange button on the side of your screen and you be alerted via email on those increasingly rare occasions that I post something:-)

Shock and School

As some of you know, I work at a college. And I just recently settled into a nice, quiet, work-on-projects-I-never-have-time-to-work-on summer mode, and all of a sudden, there are STUDENTS around. Making noise. Talking in the halls (horror of all horrors!). Using the bathrooms. Shouting. Interrupting my productivity-inducing tranquility. It's quite a shock to my system.

And presumably bringing swine flu back with them from all reaches of the country and world.  Should be a fun fall!

Taking a break
As some of you might also know, Sweetie and I have been house-hunting for some time now. It finally reached a point where we were so disgusted with the process that we needed to stop. So, we're taking a break for a month or two. We're not meeting our realtor, not making offers on any houses, and not visiting any open houses. Hooray for sanity.

England

I still haven't written about our trip to England. Well, it got off to a great start when I breezed through immigration and customs (my suitcase was one of the first off the carousel) so quickly that Sweetie had to do a double-take when he saw me emerge through the glass doors.  

This time, we had wisely reserved a room at an airport hotel (I arrived at night), so we took a shuttle there and were able to crash for the evening before heading out to the countryside the next day.

Brockenhurst and the Whitley Ridge Hotel

After a brief stop in the quaint, pony-populated village of Burley, we proceded toward Brockenhurst, a town which we drove around in circles approximately twice looking for our B&B for the night.  We finally asked a woman walking down the street (a non-English speaker it turned out -- isn't it always the case that the foreigner gets asked for directions?).  She was able to point us straight in the correct direction.

We entered a private, wooded driveway and at the end of it was the most elegant ivy-covered building.  An assortment of young French men greeted us and got us settled in our room.  We had some time to explore the grounds before our dinner reservation at the Michelin-starred LePoussin restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel.

They had an enchanting walled garden bursting with vegetables.  And beyond that a wild garden with a waterfall and a serene lilly pond.  

Dinner was so good, it was practically life-changing.  I shudder thinking about the pasta with canned beans and sauce that I made for dinner tonight.  You cannot call that food in comparison to what we ate at Le Poussin.  Sweetie actually declared upon eating a white truffle (of the dessert variety, not the mushroom -- those kinds of truffles were in my first course risotto) that he would never eat in a non-Michelin-starred restaurant again.  (Needless to say, that lasted all of 24 hours).  To put this comment into perspective, Sweetie is not the type to get excited about food.  He usually barely notices food.  In fact, once I came home from work looking forward to eating my leftover cheese-free vegetable pizza, only to find that Sweetie had consumed it without even noticing that it was my pizza and not his own meat and cheese encrusted pizza.

So, to make a long story slightly less long, if you go to England, you really must spend the night at the Whitley Ridge and reserve a dinner in advance at Le Poussin!  Well worth it!!!  (Easy for me to say, since it was Sweetie's treat.  Thanks Sweetie!  I love you!)

Gardens and Castles and Great Food

Sweetie and I recently escaped to England. In short, it was wonderful. I'll write more later, but here's a picture to get things started -- it's a place called Mottisfont Abbey and has the most wonderful and extensive walled garden.

Note the appropriately cloudy sky.  Miraculously, we dodged the rain for most of the trip!

Secret Gardens

Today we saw the neighbors' gardens, or yards as most Americans call them. Little did we know what wonders were hidden behind the non-descript homes on our street.

It turns out that this year's local garden tour featured homes exclusively on our street. Luckilly, we learned about this two-day fest from someone where I work. Our neighbor across the street (Rodeo) was not so lucky and was out in all his shirtless, drunken glory from 8AM until about 2PM providing the masses with some unexpected entertainment (ever watch a completely toasted man hack away at a small tree with an 6 foot electric trimmer from an 8 foot ladder? Well, lots of unsuspecting folks witnessed the spectacle today).

It was really eye-opening for us to see what secret worlds our neighbors were hiding beside and behind their homes.   There were colonies of hostas, trickling waterfalls and fountains,  fragrant gardens of basil and verbena, lush hydrangeas, benches nestled in shaded hillside nooks, large swaths of wooded areas providing privacy, built-in professional-grade out-door grills, and all sorts of gorgeous flowering beauties that I cannot name.  

One home was actually showing off its kitchen (we were a bit baffled until we went inside).  It turns out the owner is a builder and built the house and now has added a cabinet business.  We had complete and total home envy.  The home was like a luxury lodge inside, with refined yet hearty woods (the hardwood floors were the most gorgeous I have ever seen), stucco walls, a pretty amazing kitchen, and all sorts of built-in wooden cabinets.   We had no idea walking by that house on our evening walks.....It was pretty amazing.

So, we walked home to our "power sub-station"-looking house slightly dejected.  :-)  We look forward to the day when we have some at least semi-permanent, a place that we feel like investing in.  Somewhere I can plant herbs and flowers and we can build our own private paradise.  

Dear Neighbor

I need a Zen moment like this chipmunk.  Why? Because our neighbors are driving us crazy.... 

Dear Neighbor (aka Rodeo),

I know that life is tough when you have Adult ADHD and other assorted conditions that cause you to use your leafblower approximately 18 hours a day for no purpose whatsoever than to blow non-existent dust off your driveway and into your yard, at which point you crank up your lawn vacuum (a new and very exciting toy for Rodeo) and suck up all the dirt and leaves in your yard.  And I know that you really LOVE hacking your trees and bushes apart with your various electric cutters, so that you can then repeat the leaf blower+lawn vacuum process.  And yes, I am sure there are many pieces of wood that then really must be sawed apart in your garage at 10PM.  

But, for the love of every human being within earshort (roughly 5 miles) of your machines and toys, can you just.....stuff it!!!!  

Dear Neighbor #2 (aka Crazy Guy)

Listen, I know some people are really dedicated to their Lawn Boy mowers.  It's a bit like a cult, I believe.  But when the day comes that you have to run the mower over each patch of grass roughly 15 times, I think the mower needs to be laid to rest.  When it takes you one hour and approximately 10 gallons of sweat to mow a patch of grass the size of my dining room table, I think that's a problem.

Dear Neighbor #3 (aka Guy We Like) 

Although it was slightly irritating for about a week when you had heavy equipment moving between a two-story-tall cement pile on the street  and your back yard multiple times a day, we now praise you for your very considerate gesture of paving over your entire backyard and creating some sort of entertainment masterpiece of tiered patios and assorted amenities such as a hot tub.  Pure genius!!

Wild Kingdom

Lately our backyard has become quite the wild kingdom.  Some robins hatched on a ledge just underneath our deck.  Whenever mommy bird isn't there, the dad stands watch in the yard and squaks incessantly at me if I dare to walk anywhere in the backyard.  He's also been known to buzz through the narrow area under the deck in some sort of intimidation move.

 Perhaps this is why I've seen less the past few days of our family of chipmunks, who have a rather substantial hole in the backyard.  

They tend to poke their heads  out one by one at around 8AM each morning, surveying the surroundings until they determine it safe to leave their hole.  

They then head over to the fish pond and frolic around on the rocks surrounding the pond. They like to stand up on a large rock and I've even seen one leap onto Sweetie's Japanese lantern and sit up on top of it like a king.

And occasionally we'll catch sight of one of the goldfish we bought recently for the pond, although they tend to stay on the bottom.  I hope they will start to surface more once they grow a bit and are less intimidated by all the other creatures in the yard.

Unplanned Travel

I can't believe it has been so long since I've written.  Sweetie and I have had a lot of travel lately, much of it unplanned.  My wonderful grandma had a heart attack a few weeks ago, so we rushed home one weekend to visit her.  She looked suprisingly well and it was wonderful to see her.  

Everytime I have gone overseas since 1992, I have worried that it might be the last time I would see my grandparents.  It proved true with my grandpa during my last overseas stint, but that means that he had many great healthy years with us, for which I am very grateful.  I do miss his handmade Christmas chocolates and peanut brittle, and the hugs he gave me, particularly after my father died 6 years ago unexpectedly.  For some reason, Grandpa's consolation was the only thing that helped me at that time.  I felt like he really understood how I was feeling.

Then we were off to Virginia for my college reunion (I cannot believe it has been that long...and how long that is, I will not say!).  How interesting it was to meet up with the same girls who I shared a hall with all those years ago (and it really does not feel like that long ago AT ALL).  We've stayed in touch fairly well, and I'd seen them all within the past 3 years, so there were no big shockers.  I think the only shocker is how little we have all changed in the grand scheme.  Even though we've all grown and matured, the lush is still the lush, the study bug is still the party pooper, the perky one is still the perky one...and you know how it goes.  It's such a fun group and we all balance eachother so well!