Back and Forth Across the Pond

We received ten shrimp in the mail yesterday. When I mentioned that to people, they would automatically assume I was having seafood shipped to my house. Actually, the shrimp were alive . . . and freshwater versions. They're red cherry shrimp for our aquarium. I wanted to add this little scavengers to our fish community and since I couldn't find any locally I went online. The shrimp arrived priority mail. The first step was to empty their transport bag into a bowl. From there, Steve added a couple of tablespoons of water from the fish tank every five minutes for 45 minutes. This helped them acclimate to the environment within the aquarium. Here they are in the bowl toward the end of their acclimation period. The two really small ones would be juvenile shrimp and the rest are young adults. The juveniles were only about a 1/2 inch long, and one wasn't particularly robust. We ended up losing that one shortly after this photo was taken. :-( Here's a close-up ...

I didn't post a blog about it. I'm not sure why. We had to put our beloved little diva, Valencia, to sleep on January 26. She had been sick for a couple of weeks, been through a series of tests at the vets, and when the doctor said "cancer" we decided that our beautiful girl had suffered enough. It was heart wrenching. And then we tried to adjust to life without a cat. Valencia had come to us as an eight-week old rescue. She was just three months shy of being 14 when she passed. Our home felt so wrong without her. And saying hello and good-bye to the fish just wasn't the same. So on Valentine's weekend, we decided to go the humane society and see who was there. We met a pair of kittens, a brother and a sister, who had just been brought in off the street. I picked up the little girl, a brown/gray tabby and she just settled against my chest. When I went to put her down, she wouldn't let go. Clearly, I had been picked. We went in knowing we wanted two cat...

I know that the news media is in the business to fan flames. Editors will pick the most inflammatory sentence to use in the headline so people will go nuts. What's sad is it works because most people don't bother reading beyond the headline. Have our attention spans grown so small that we can't hang in there beyond the headline? Is it too much bother to read the story? Or are most people so stump stupid that, should they bother to read the article, they cannot suss out the truth behind the inflammatory headline? Whatever the cause, this habit is yet one more reason why the U.S. is going down the toilet . . . fast. Case in point. A big story trending the Internet today is about a Republican senator from North Carolina. The headlines all blare that this senator says that restaurant employees should not be required to wash their hands after using the bathroom. The comments in the various versions of this article reveal that about 99.9% of the respondents did not read the art...

Steve and I had a movie night last night and we saw Into the Woods.  I have been hearing / reading mixed reviews of the flick. It seemed to me that folks who were fans of the play enjoyed it whilst those who had never seen the play were less than thrilled. I am a fan of the play. My daughter, Andrea, and I would sing the soundtrack in the car. We even went to a community college production of it when we lived in South Florida many moons ago. In fact, I had been singing the show's tunes all day yesterday. In contrast, Steve has never seen it. Worse, the other Sondheim play that I love ( Sunday in the Park with George ) put Steve to sleep. Last night proved my theory. I enjoyed the movie. Steve, who admitted that the songs were good, wasn't as impressed. He felt it dragged. The thing is, I could easily see why. I felt the second half of the movie seemed to drag on forever. If I took away my enthusiasm for the play, I would have been pretty fidgety. The thing is, the second act ...

Steve and I have had many adventures since I last blogged. I have photos to share. I still haven't finished blogging about our escapades in New York City in June and we've actually gone again - at Christmas. It's 2015 and I still haven't finished commenting on the second half of 2014. That, dear readers, is how it is when one is writing a dissertation. I will - eventually - get back to this blog in a meaningful way. For now, and possibly even the next year, I can guarantee nothing. Happy 2015!

This blog is a variety of photos I took as we explored the city. There is no defining theme other than New York. This is the view from our apartment in Little Italy. We were right on Mulberry Street. The Chelsea Market is a popular indoor area featuring a variety of shops and restaurants in the Chelsea neighborhood. It's housed in the old National Biscuit Company warehouse. You know NAtional BIScuit COmpany. I was intrigued by the place for two reasons. One, I never knew the origins of the name NABISCO because I never realized that we used to call cookies biscuits like they still do in the UK. Two, I really appreciated how they had the old biscuit tins, advertising, and collectibles on display in windows throughout. I like when a place remembers its history. This is one of the display cases.  Here's another. I love the brand name. Talk about subliminal advertising. Why did Oreo stop the lemon filling? That sounds yummy!  The interior still has some of th...

As you may have noticed, I've renamed this blog to "Back and Forth Across the Pond" because the time has come to share photos and experiences from this (the U.S.) side of the Atlantic. I've pretty much exhausted my stockpile of England photos and I've had other adventures I want to share. I'm pretty hot and heavy with the dissertation writing now, so blog posts will be even fewer and further between but I will do what I can. Steve and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary in June. We marked the occasion with a short holiday to New York City. Steve proposed during an overnight New York trip (technically we were in New Jersey), so it seemed the right place to celebrate 15 years together as Mister and Missus. We used Airbnb and rented an apartment in Little Italy rather than a hotel and that made for a great experience. I highly recommend trying it. We also decided that this trip would be one of firsts. We've been to the Big Apple on several occasions...