Adventures in Egypt...or East London

The King Tutankhamun Exhibit has been in London for a while...so long, it's almost ready to leave. So we figured we'd better get a move on. On Saturday, we took Drama and Blondie to see it. It was over in East London at the O2 Arena...which is located in the Millenium Dome...which we'd never been to.

We'd especially not been navigating around London from the Ruislip tube station. It was quite fun to start learning a a new way around.

Back to Egypt...Paulster and I went to Egypt in May of 2006, so it gave us a little trip down memory lane. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo was chocked full of antiquities that are just too cool to believe--an "embarrasment of riches" (as Hatchie Gal says), really. So, forgive us for being a little disappointed in the exhibit--they didn't have the "Death Mask"--which is probably the most famous artifact of all or one of the 4 or 5 gold covered nesting-doll-type sarcophaguses (what is the plural of sarcophagus?).

But what they did have were many rare artifacts and the exhibit itself was done quite well. Some of the items looked like they'd been crafted yesterday, rather than 3,000 years ago. It was worth seeing, but a trip to Cairo is much better! :)

Here's a picture of Paulster and me riding camels in Cairo...and the Sphinx. I never expected to be able to see that in person.




After we'd had our fill of King Tut, we wandered outside of the Millenium Dome to see what we could see. The Millenium Dome is the world's largest single-roof structure. It's essentially a large tent supported by 12 tower structures--and is like a city inside. Restaurants, 2 concert venues, a 12 screen movie theatre, convention centre...it's really pretty cool. Oh yeah, and they have 2 Starbucks in there.



We continued to walk around and found the Greenwich Meridian. The line in Greenwich represents the Prime Meridian of the World - Longitude 0º. Every place on Earth is measured in terms of its distance east or west from this line. The line itself divides the eastern and western hemispheres of the Earth - just as the Equator divides the northern and southern hemispheres.



Here's a picture of Drama and Paulster with one foot in each hemisphere.


A good day out.

Home Sweet Home

Well, Thursday was THE night. We finally slept in our own bed, in our own house! It's a bit surreal not to be "visiting" our new house after so long of watching the demolition and rebuilding.

Perfect it isn't...we're living a different kind of nomadic lifestyle...instead of moving ourselves from location to location, we're moving our stuff from one room of the house to another. In order to put the bed together to sleep on it, we had to dig it out of the "self-storage units" that were our bedroom and the guest rooms.

While I cleaned the kitchen cabinets & drawers from the construction debris, Paulster lugged boxes from our bedroom to the dining room to get them out of the way. Finally, we were able to assemble the bed and collapse into it.

I spent Friday unpacking the kitchen. As of Sunday, I cooked our first roast chicken dinner for Paulster and the girls...and tonight--our first evening meal. Also today, the new refrigerator was delivered--ice and water on the door...commonplace in the US, decedance in this country!

I'm only going to show you pictures of the kitchen...primarily because it's the only room that's fit to be photographed just yet--even though it's still cluttered.
Here's a couple of pictures of the kitchen now:




And here's my little Blondie sioux chef--nothing like arming the children:


The interior nomadic lifestyle continues--last night, we moved boxes out of Drama's bedroom so that we could start the painting in there. At some point, we'll be settled...but not yet!

Plan C

If only "Plan C" stood for Cyn's Plan...it doesn't. It means that Plan A AND Plan B didn't go "according to plan" and now we're just playing it by ear!
The first plan was that when we got back from Germany for the weekend trip (Monday), we'd start living in the house, (giving us 2 weeks in the flat in Windsor) even though there was some minor stuff to be finished.

When after my beautiful granite worktops [countertops] and paint job were in the kitchen, the "minor" stuff turned into 2 electrical problems that messed up my beautiful paint job in the kitchen, meant that the bathroom floor had to come up and the tiling needed to be delayed by nearly a week...we just kind of gave up.

So, after Germany (more on that trip later), we moved into the Trooper. A place that had been our favourite pub in Windsor. How fun to live in a pub!!! Turns out...not nearly as much fun as we'd anticipated.

Here's a picture of the Trooper:
A quaint little pub on a back street in Windsor. Great food and decent atmosphere from what we remembered.


See that giant yellow thing out front? That's a FIRE ENGINE!!! The Trooper caught on fire, so no cooked breakfast for those of us staying there. Fortunately, no major damage, just the kitchen well out of commission for a few days. We could still stay in our room--which was shabby, but serviceable. That lasted for about 4 days.

Plan B was that we'd just start staying in the house on Friday, with some minor stuff to be done. When the tiling delay turned that into two major rooms we need to use regularly (namely the kitchen and bath) aren't going to be ready for us...we turned to Plan C. Especially since Drama and Blondie were coming to stay for the weekend.

On Friday, we moved to the Travelodge in Central Windsor. This place, in a word is: BASIC. No artwork on the walls, no hairdryer in the room, no ice machine, pay-a-fee-for-early-checkin kind of place.
Cheaper than the Trooper for the weekend, when we needed a Family Room.

At this point, I can't even plan my way out of a paper bag. We've both run out of clean underwear and the only laundry facilities are in a Laundromat (coincidentally, near the Trooper). So guess where I spent my Sunday afternoon? That's right, Bubbles, the laundromat. I think it's been since college when I last went to a laundromat. Oh well...at least the Trooper is about 1/2 a block away, I could go in there to wait for my clothes to get clean and dry!

The upside to tonight is that we got to spend some time in Windsor with Sven and Banana and Banana's brother and cousin. We had a few drinks and went for dinner and laughed a lot. So, all is not lost...but I'm really, really, really over all this remodeling and nomadic living stuff.

Painting Help

On the Sunday, we painted our arms off...12 hours of nearly straight painting meant a second coat of the white primer on all the walls and ceilings in the bathroom and kitchen. Then, we launched in with the colour [color]. We managed one finish coat of white on the ceilings and a single coat of colour on the walls. We needed at least one more coat of both to call it good...but we didn't have time that day.

We left the Ruislip house after 2am on Sunday (Monday morning, technically), and I had to be up at 4:30am for an early flight to Munich for a client meeting. So, I had a "nap" of 1 hour. Not really the best start to the week.

I returned from Munich on Tuesday night. Wednesday night was slated as another painting night--so we enlisted a few more pair of arms.

Introducing Sven and Banana--pretending to eat the paint. We're really fortunate that these two only live 2 tube stops away from us. They were a big help to get the final ceiling coat on in both the bathroom and kitchen--and as you can see, a pair that can be goofy enough to make nights out (or in) fun!

We decided to wait on the final colour coat in both rooms, as there's still lots of knocking about and fixtures & cupboards [cabinets] to be hung. On the advice of the builder, we'll do the finish colour coat once they're gone. His advice was "the painter should be the last one out of the house". Sadly, we'll just have to be extra careful when we put on that finish coat!

Here is a shot of the kitchen with the colour coat on.


There's lots more to tell about the last 2 weeks, but it's just too late to finish the story tonight. I'll do another post or three tomorrow!

Primed to Perfection

We've now been homeowners for 10 weeks now. In the first week or two, we launched into action by stripping wallpaper and tearing up carpet in nearly every room. After the professionals got started, our activity came to a screeching halt. So, apparently, this weekend was the time for us to spring back into action. It was really our only chance to get the kitchen and bathroom painted before all the cabinets, tile and worktops get installed completely--making the job that much more difficult. More importantly, it would require a level of precision that we probably cannot muster.

Here's a picture of the kitchen now that it's got 1 coat of primer on it--all the walls and ceiling!



After vacuuming and covering everything in neon yellow masking tape, we managed to get the actual painting started by 4pm. We lost the natural light in the house after we got 1 complete coat on all the walls and ceiling in the kitchen and bathroom. Not too bad a start, but we have a long way to go tomorrow!

Wish us luck.

Hello Ruislip!

Well, this won't be a long post...just a little taster of the mess that is in Ruislip, waiting on us to settle in.
Here is a picture of our bedroom, where 50% of the boxes, artwork, furniture, etc. are being "self-stored" at the moment.
It wasn't helpful that I didn't notice the movers bringing in the "sky box" [cable box/tivo]...and it ended up at the front of this room. Big Freddy had to traverse the chaos to retrieve it so that we didn't miss recording any of our favourite shows!


Here is a picture of the guest room, in it's capacity as a self-storage unit. We expect it to be much improved by the time we entertain guests at the house!


...yes, that's my Granny's pink painted piano stool turned upside down on all that stuff!

Also, this morning before work, we were over at the house paying the builder another instalment, when the kitchen arrived!!! Having mapped out the island, we also discovered it may be a smidge too big for the area as planned...so there will be a little exchange of cabinetry, then it's all good... oops!

We just need to pick out the kitchen floor tiles, make final decisions on the granite worktops [countertops] and start picking out wallpaper/paint.