High Tea Etc.

(I could swear I posted this but APPARENTLY NOT… this draft was written and has been sitting in the draft folder since August 13. Oh well.)

LIFE UPDATE:

So this weekend, the Nice ladies headed to Lovejoy’s in SF for an afternoon high tea! Lovejoy’s is where I went for Malvina’s bachelorette tea back in April. This time, my cousin Amanda arranged for the ladies of the family to meet up and spend an afternoon catching up – some of us hadn’t seen each other since Christmas so that was nice. Since my grandpa died we haven’t had our monthly birthday dinners so we don’t see each other as often.

We mostly ordered the Queen’s Tea (the biggest, fanciest tea with two sandwiches, a scone, fruit, salad, crumpet, a butter cookie, and petit four plus lemon curd, raspberry preserves and DEVON CREAM my favorite), but my aunt January and mother ordered the high tea and ploughman’s lunch respectively. The high tea is basically a smaller Queen’s Tea (sans crumpet and petit four) and I’m not too sure what exactly was the ploughman’s lunch except it had chutney (ew) and stilton cheese. I know about the stilton cheese because my mom gave me some to try – it’s kind of like bleu cheese. With my Queen’s Tea my two sandwich choices were Asparagus Hummus (super delish) and Cream Cheese & Mandarin Orange.

Anyway, we were a noisy bunch and it was fun to catch up with everyone. It was a nice day in the city – we even opened up the front window of the restaurant to let in the breeze.

Some pics, stolen shamelessly from Janelle’s Facebook:

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and then went over to Abby’s house afterwards, as nobody had seen her house yet. While the aunties were touring I sat in the living room with Amanda and Lauren and we professed our disdain over Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel that has taken the nation by storm.

I personally have not read it because I picked it up at Target and flipped through it and it’s written in first-person-present, a literary tense I find 98% unreadable. I loathe it so much you don’t even know. It has prevented me from reading many popular books, such as The Hunger Games, some of Meg Cabot’s work, etc. I LOATHE FIRST-PERSON-PRESENT IT IS THE WORST.

Also notable: Fifty Shades of Grey started out its life as Twilight fanfic. So, just know that you are reading the (former) erotic adventures of BELLA SWAN and EDWARD CULLEN!

Say it with me now: ew.

Lauren was pretty adamant how terrible it was. Amanda was disappointed they were terrible, as she had just bought all three. Knowing what I know about it (that’s it’s basically beefed up fanfic and first-person-present) I shall not be reading it. I just can’t with fanfic, guys. I know a lot of people write it, read it, and defend it, but I am just not one of them. It’s like stealing and I just can’t get behind it. If it’s your thing, that’s great – but it’s not mine. I’m not going to argue with anyone about it, and I’m not going to judge you if you like it and you write it or whatever, but I don’t want to know about it or read it. And I sure as f*ck am not going to pay money for something that lived a previous life as (bad) BDSM Bella/Edward drivel.

(Yeah I said it) (Yes, I am judging something based on not reading it and making assumptions. Whatevs! :P)

Anyhoodle.

So, then we went home and got stuck on the San Mateo Bridge for an hour just getting over the incline, and by the time we got to the accident site, it was not worthy of that sort of backup! Pulled off to the side, some flares, some damaged cars… When you’re stuck in that bad of traffic I want to see ambulances and flipped cars and maybe a fire or helicopter. Sadly, it was two sad damaged cars and a highway patrol car. NOT WORTH THE DELAY, FOLKS.

But then we finally got home and on Sunday I went to the reservoir with my dad where it was hot and gross but I managed to not get a headache. Yay!

 

CRAFTING

Next up (if I get around to it) I have resurrected the Willow Afghan from UFO purgatory. I’ve made six new squares and finished the first batch of 24 squares – with my color combo, there are 24 individual squares with their own unique color sequence. I’m thinking I need three batches of 24 squares for a total of 72. I laid the 24 squares out on my queen sized bed and it definitely looks like 72 squares will be a good size – it’ll be bigger than my regular sized woven afghans that I like. However, I’m thinking that I might want it to be even bigger (more of a bedspread size?). Sooooo I’m either 1/4 of the way or 1/3 of the way done. [Since I wrote this on 8/13 I’ve finished a few more squares and have 30 squares finished and am working on the next batch of 6. Once I finish these six I will be half done with the squares. I’m still not sure about if I want extra squares, but having laid it out on the bed again, I do think 72 is a good number, however I might add one more row  for a blanket that is 9×9 squares for a total of 81 squares. Boo.]