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!)
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