Going Domestic

everything is bigger in calgary

We received our 2008 Property Tax Assessment for the house we own in the mail yesterday. Oh, City of Calgary - you're such a bunch of dreamers!

How does a person say "tape measure" in Thai?

We've spent the past two Saturdays in Bangkok proper, but sadly, it wasn't because we were doing cool Bangkok things like braving the crowds at Chatuchak, cruising the klongs, or hunting down the best quality pirated DVDs. We were looking for some new furniture.

Before we moved here, we rented a huge dumpster, parked it behind our garage in Calgary, and purged tons of old stuff from deep within our closets and basement, including some well-worn furniture. There were some items that we didn't toss out, but put into storage, so when our container arrived at the dock here in Bangkok, it held about 2/3 as much furniture as our house in Calgary did. Which was alright, except that our apartment here is more than twice as big. Luckily, nice furniture is much more affordable here than in Canada, so the process of filling up our new abode isn't an extravagant endeavor.   Like that  Ikea winter sale commercial where the lady sprints to her vehicle and scream at her partner to start the car, we usually leave furniture stores after a purchase with a feeling of disbelief.

Last weekend, we were on the hunt for a larger dining table. I am very fond of the little pine one from Ikea with the gate legs that we've been using, but it only fit four people comfortably, and when my folks arrive in a week, we'll need something for at least five people. Luckily, Chris and I found a table that we both really liked nearly immediately. It's finished in a brown-black stain, has a tempered glass insert that is etched with a checker-board patten, and is 150 cm x 75 cm in size.  Upon arriving home, we pondered our soon-to-be-retired dining table, and noticed that something looked rather familiar about it. We took out a measuring tape and checked it's dimensions: 150 cm x 75. Familar indeed. Is there another couple out there who would set out to buy a larger table and end up buying one exactly the same size? Just us? That's what I thought ...

Dimensions figured prominently in this past Saturday's shopping adventure. We were looking for a matching pair of bedside tables. We'd meander from one bedroom display at Index to the next, and all of the bedside tables stood about eighteen inches high, like they'd been designed for Hobbit bedrooms. While they probably work fine for platform beds, which seem to be popular here in Thailand, they're in no way going to work with our North American boxspring and pillow-top ensemble, unless at step-stools to help us climb on onto the rather high bed. This set-back is kind of a "one door closes and another door opens" thing, though. It's the perfect opportunity for us to pick out bedside tables from the Ikea catalog or the Pottery Barn website and have copies made.

Which would be kind of cool!

greenish

  Julie's Gauntlets 
  Originally uploaded by goingdomestic

Today I was originally going to type out a huge rant about how much I hate Blogger because they keep changing the layout of their commenting form and it's all in Thai for me, but then I realized that I've had a knitting project complete for two weeks without mentioning it!  The horror!

These are fingerless gloves, knit from a pattern my sister saw at River City Yarn. I really ought not to have knit them already as I already had a project on the go, but the yarn was so pretty and tempting. It was a nice break from Madeline's knitted tank, actually. The pattern is a simple 2x2 rib, and they knit up very quickly. I was a little worried as I saw another pair of these knit in the same yarn (different colourway), and the colour variation on each glove is so different that it looks like they were knit with two different colour ways! Luckily, both of these gloves complement each other. I hope that Julie likes them ...

I'm very close to finishing Madeline's tank - the body is finished, and I am two rounds away from completing the ruffle for the top. My next step after that is tacking a three-needle bind-off to attach the two pieces (going to be interesting as I've knit everything in the round and don't have three needles in the same size), and then, when my parents arrive in a few weeks with my Harmony DPNs, I can start the i-cord for the straps.

don't know what colour the kitchen was, and there was no beef wellington

My dear husband Chris often tells me, after an interesting day out, "it was fun doing X today - why don't you blog about it?" Sometimes, I get around to it, but most of the time I end up doing something else, something more urgent, with my time. I'm going to try to be a little better about that this year - it bothers me to neglect my blogs!

Anyway, I think there were two things that Chris really wanted to do on our winter holiday in London. The first was see a Premiership match. For awhile it looked like the Dec 22 Sunderland vs. Reading match was the best prospect, but Chris managed to get a ticket from some grandfatherly-sort of ticket scalper to see a Arsenal play Tottenham at home (Arsenal's home, if that wasn't clear). The other thing that Chris really wanted to do was eat at one of either Gordon Ramsey's or Jamie Oliver's restaurants.

Getting a table at a celebrity-chef restaurant during the holiday season wasn't the easiest thing, the concierge at our hotel warned, but we did end up having an early Sunday dinner at the Boxwood Cafe, opened by Gordon Ramsey.

Us adults ordered the roast beef dinner from the set menu, and Madeline had a grilled chicken breast from the children's menu. Gosh, I was impressed that there was a children's menu. The food was all very nicely prepared. Our yorkshire puddings were topped by some very delicious cream with horseradish. Madeline spent most of the meal playing with the stickers and crayons in the activity pack that the hostess gave her.  Her dessert was strawberry sorbet in a homemade waffle cone, and it looked really good.

I'm kind of cynical about the whole celebrity chef thing, but my roast beef dinner at the Boxwood was the best meal that I had on our trip. I liked that it was simple. Two slices of roast beef, yorkshire pudding, and green beans on the side. Still, the thing that impresses me the most is that Gordon Ramsey actually operates a restaurant that has a children's menu and stickers :)

round the world in 365 days

A year ago, we were living in St. John's, Newfoundland and feeling kind of smug that we got to celebrate the arrival of 2007 before anyone else in Canada. Now? Well, let's say that one of the benefits of living so close to the international date line is that we're already more than halfway through the first day of 2008.

It's also the warmest January 1 I've ever experienced. Mid-twenties here in BKK.

I can't remember if Chris first mentioned it while we were still in London for our winter holiday or whether it was two nights ago when we'd just arrived home, but 2007 was our Most-Travelled Year. I think that I may have taken as many flights when I was a grad student, traveling between Vancouver and Edmonton all the time, but that ninety-minute flight is nothing compared to what we've experienced this year. The flight from Bangkok to Heathrow was about twelve hours, similar to all of our flights between St. John's and Edmonton or Calgary, but those hours in the air pale in comparison to the roughly 24 hour jaunt between Alberta and Bangkok. Which I've done three times this year. I really should be collecting some sort of frequent-flyer points. Thank goodness Chris does, as I kind of like waiting for my flight in airport lounges instead of at the gate.

For 2008, I want to keep my feet on the ground a little more.

I didn't quite meet my goal of finishing Madeline's 2006 scrapbook by the end of 2007, but I'm awfully close. I have four more photos to paste in, and then some small journalling. Scrapbooking and champagne don't mix very well.  Instead, I finished knitting the second fingerless glove of a pair.

Last night, before watching the second installment of LOTR, we caught a re-run of Martha (who knew that she had an avid audience in Thailand?), and she was making German Apple Pancakes. So, I did, too, for our first lunch of the new year.