NorthDownMuse

Romance is not dead

After choir practice tonight, we fulfilled a request for one of the church’s members. Adam is about to propose to his fiancé. Her favourite song is Unchained Melody. (Oh, my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch...). So we sang two verses of the song into the camera

Drumroll please...

1. Steam off paper. 2. Steam and scrape off glue. 3. Sand and sponge 4. Spackle, sand, and sponge. 5. Two undercoats of paint. 6. One coat of colour. 7. Paint three rows of trim. 8. Second coat of colour. 9. Spray paint radiator cover grills and paint frame. A

Friends with Benefits

I’m pretty sure that has a naughty connotation. In this context, I’m thinking of friends who are not only thoughtful and generous but also have very good taste. My friend Marta gave me this pumpkin as a housewarming present in 1999. It’s my only Halloween decoration and

Spitballing

Today was the deadline for article ideas for the next ESG Magazine (I’ve written articles for the last two editions). After a few hours of research, here’s what I submitted: 1. You Get What You Pay For If the business world is going to move toward a 2-degree-compliant

Things that don’t work, part 2

Swimming at the leisure centre today, I noted several annoying things. Like there is no flag rope to tell you when you’re getting near the wall, which is a good way to crack your skull when you are doing back stroke. The lockers have no hooks in them, so

Jingle Mingle

To counteract the loneliness of working from home, I make myself go to MeetUps, even if I can make a very good case for staying in with a book. Tonight I went to the Midweek Mingle, had a G&T, chatted with a few people, then headed home. The

Happy Birthday, Bobbi

When I moved to Pennsylvania in 1999, Bobbi, aka Roberta Lynn, was one of the first friends I made. This was at the Unitarian Fellowship of West Chester, where she was an unofficial greeter. She used to stay with me once a week after working a night shift at a

New McDonald's

Today I treated myself to a massage. Not because of the painting, necessarily, but because I hope that getting knots out of my calf muscles will help my feet calm down so I can run. It was pure heaven. It’s painful when she puts pressure on all the little

Things that don’t work

Bill Bryson has made a career out of comparing the British and American personalities. He sees British people as being pessimistic and having low expectations (while Americans are optimistic and self-delusional). The British stoicism may explain why people here settle for a lot of things that don’t work. For

Mirror, mirror

I woke up this morning feeling really tired. Maybe because I’ve been painting for four or five days straight? Yesterday I also raked leaves, vacuumed, scrubbed the kitchen floor, went swimming, so I was properly knackered by bedtime. I’ve been letting the cats sleep in the bedroom, for

Locker room talk

I wasn’t able to swim all week because I had tape all over my back with allergy test patches. Today I got back in the pool and it felt great. Avoniel Leisure Centre (similar to a Y) is a great place to notice the contrasts between the US and

Non-holiday

It’s hard to get in the holiday mood here when it isn’t a holiday. I painted for a few hours last night and a few more hours this morning. The long stairway wall now has its first coat of yellow. I’ve decided, before I do the second

Citizen Cope

Let’s say a friend sent me a link to important information. Is that link: in an e-mail on my yahoo account? in an e-mail in my Preventable Surprises inbox? in a tweet? in a private message in Facebook? in a text message on my phone? in a Skype chat

I have a kitchen only because it came with the house

I really don’t like to cook. Today I remembered why. The other day I baked the small cooking pumpkin David bought as decoration. Today I tried to turn it into a pie. Here were just some of the obstacles: 1. Does the U.S.-purchased hand/wand blender need

Love the NHS

This morning I had a 10:40 a.m. appointment for an allergy test. I’ve had a problem since I moved here with my lips becoming inflamed and the skin around them becoming red and itchy. Hence the allergy test. Downside is it took 2 years and three months

Copeland Islands II

So I played hookie from two services at church today, including the Transgendered Day of Remembrance. I feel pretty badly about not joining the choir for the Remembrance service. I skipped out for the LAME-est of reasons. I had proposed two songs for the service, both very appropriate and very

Copeland Islands

Tomorrow, I will hop on a boat with my hiking and photography group to take a walk around the largest of the Copeland Islands, off of Donaghadee. Given that I’m constantly playing catchup, I’ll begin posting photos today of tomorrow’s trip. Here’s the view from our

For a good cause...

Children In Need is a big annual national appeal, when a lot of creative fundraisers are held to provide funding for programs that serve children with special challenges (poverty, handicap, etc.). My favourite radio station had an auction today with a lot of enticing goodies. Tickets to Cold Play, for

Storehouse

This week I’ve been working on case studies of utilities that are transitioning to a low-carbon business model. More interesting than it sounds. Did you know that Denmark is the world leader in building offshore wind parks? I wrote earlier that the average European uses 6000 watts of power

Time management

Since I took my job in July, my time mainly has been split between four activities: working cleaning house watching TV looking at Facebook That’s a very bad mix for me. Missing: Regular exercise Reading books Cooking proper food Socialising In the past two weeks, I’ve gone to

Rich idiom

One of the things I loved about living in Derry in my youth was all of the colourful phrases. I still get a tickle out of a colourful turn of phrase. I’d like to capture some today, however I’ll barely scratch the surface. To save time, I won’

Queen’s tours

The girls took two tours of Queen’s, a subject tour (chemistry for Maisie, archaeology for Ella) and then a campus tour. My job was to get them to the right places at the right times and collect them in time to get them to the airport for their 4

Coasting

Maisie lives in Sheffield, which isn’t near the sea, and she’s a big fan of coastal areas. The girls spent the morning at St. George’s Market and Victoria Square--an urban shopping centre--while I was at church, then I took them to Donaghadee for lunch, with a great

Frenzy

I spent the morning cleaning. After a week of sanding, there’s a layer of dark grit everywhere (you can see that the white stairs are brown). My niece and her friend arrive tonight, so I also needed to get the guest room spit spot. I spent the afternoon walking

How we will trump Trump

I sent a newsletter today with the above subject line to nearly 500 environmentalists, investors, academics, authors, etc. who follow our work. I also elevated four articles to our website--a productive day. One was a message from our chair, Carolyn Hayman. She’s a really good writer and she’s