peacock

ninja cat

This sweetie is Ninja (his parents are Katie and Brendon). He is a fiesty kitty who is a Mama's boy and doesn't like it when you stick your nose in his face. Whenever I visit my pet owning friends I spend more time cuddling the kittens than chatting with them (slight exaggeration)! I so so want a little kitty all of my own but the building I live in has a strict no pet rule. One day I own my little marmalade kitty; until then I will just continue to borrow cats like Ninja for snuggles.

in and around my window

For the first few months living in London I had to be careful entering the kitchen in the morning because pigeons would fly in the open window! Other things happening through my windows, a woman decided to ride her horse to the neighborhood pub! Bizarre.

puppy time

love.

snow animals

You may have heard that it snowed in London this past week and that's true. It wasn't a lot of snow but it's always exciting to get any at all. It's unusual for London to get snow this early but I think everyone is getting used to the idea that seasons are changing and have been for the past few years. I went over to Hyde Park the other day to take some snow pictures but only ended up staying about 30 minutes. It's so icy that I almost fell three or four times. I wish I had shoes with traction over here! Geez.

I was excited to see animals out and about. Although, I felt sad for the squirrels and birds who looked so cold. The pigeons have just been fluffing their feathers out and sitting still; normally they're flying about and begging for food! It's distressing to see them shiver. I think my favorite photo is the puppy running towards me but I also really like the pigeon on the statue's head! Oh, and squirrel tails are cute too :).

blue skies, i don't need them

I've only recently been able to work up the nerve to start looking through photos from Boyfriend's visit. These were taken our first night in Carlisle, England. We walked up a country road from the B&B to a charming restaurant for a late dinner. The English countryside is like something out of a beautiful, Hollywood dream.

amstercats

Amsterdam is full of cats. They wander the street and almost every establishment seems to have one lying around. Apparently they are for the mice; or rather, to catch and eat the mice that run rampant in the old Amsterdam buildings. We didn't see any mice but I managed to snap a few photos of the cats.

This one was asleep on this bear every time we walked by this window on Saturday. When we walked past the window Sunday morning the cat had been joined by another cat. Lovebirds?

We spotted this marmalade cat within the first ten minutes of arriving in Amsterdam. He was trying to climb in an open window. Cat burglar or just a cat returning home?

This beauty (who looks a lot like my cat at home) is named Poncho.

Luckily, Poncho lives in a bar not a coffee shop. All the coffee shop cats looked stoned out of their minds (DON'T GET YOUR PETS HIGH! It's cruel and they are wired differently. It's like getting a baby high--they don't have a choice in the matter). Poncho just tries to steal Bullet (like Redbull).

This is Poncho's person. The owner of the bar, he was very nice and drew us a map to important places like the Van Gough Museum and the Sex Museum. He also explained what space cakes are (cupcakes with marijuana inside). Only in Amsterdam.

Gonna Be All Right

Today was a stressful morning that turned into a successful evening. Due to phone malfunction I didn't wake up until noon and therefore missed 3.5 hours of work- that's the stressful part. The successful part is that I picked up my visa, navigated I 95/I 395 without a GPS, and found cool things at the thrift store! All in all, an OK day. These photos are miscellaneous and of things I love: my pets, little french restaurants, fun houses in Adams Morgan, and love.

a historic downtown Saturdate

Saturday was a day of Adventure (note the capital A). We started the day with lunch at noon and from there we headed to the NRA Museum. This was totally for Boyfriend; as you can tell from my pictures--they are from all things non-gun related. It was actually pretty interesting and we were only there for an hour. They had a special exhibit on guns from Hollywood. We saw the guns and lightsabers from Star Wars and the gun the Joker used in Batman and other famous guns. That was pretty cool!



The couch was just begging to be posed on;
unfortunately, this was the only picture that turned out.


My favorite things were non-gun related.
Like giant animal heads!



After the museum we drove to Manasses and stopped here:

Then we checked out a few used book stores. Prospero's was beautiful but I really lucked out at McKay's Used Books (photos of my goodies to come).


I love tiny, used book stores where the shelves are like a maze you have to wander through to find your treasures.

Books I would have bought had they not been $50.




After I determined that the store did not have Neil Gaiman or Francesca Lia Block, I got a little bored and camera-happy. Boyfriend, of course, kept browsing!


As always, a bookstore cat!
It seems to be quite common for used book stores to have cats.

We stopped at an antique store and almost purchased these (not) and I didn't buy a really pretty ring (saving my money!)

Old Town Manasses is really pretty but only about six blocks in total.




Dinner was at Secret Thai. The food was prepared quickly and was pretty good (but made better by the speed at which it reached our table).





It was a beautiful day.

This upcoming Saturday, we're going on another date!
Outfit photos to come, once my flickr resets itself (I reached my monthly limit).