Immeasurably More

I went to dinner with American friends last night, one of whom ordered a pint of tea. I know what you're thinking. Tea comes in pots not pints. Unless it's Traditional English Ale . I tried it myself, just for the pleasure of ordering "a half of tea".

Salsify is a perfect word for the game Balderdash.* My definition would be something like this: Salsify: verb. pronounced "saul-si-fI". Often used in Mexican cookbooks as in, "Start by salsifying the tomato, onion and chilies." You would be very wrong to vote for this definition, though. A saul-si-fee is a root vegetable that looks like a skinny parsnip. (This is someone else's idea of a good description. A picture is worth a thousand parsnips: salsify image .) I had the pleasure of trying salsify gratin at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club this past week. If I hadn't known that it wasn't potato, I would have thought it was potato. But supposedly it tastes like oysters. I'm going to pretend that I was distracted by the music. ~~LeAn *If you've never played Balderdash, contestants submit definitions for unusual words and then choose what they believe to be the correct definition from among the submissions. You get a point for submitting or choo...

Dear Reader, I've been going through my blog archives looking for something describing how I chose my present apartment, but I have been unable to find anything. I apologize if I'm repeating myself, but I started Immeasurably More so I could tell stories like this, so tell it I will, even if it is telling it again. Those of you who visited me in Boston may remember my old apartment. It had bright yellow walls which I liked, but which some of my friends found objectionable. Regardless of their thoughts about the walls, they would all agree that it was cramped, sufficient for a single person, but definitely not for guests. Therefore, one of my primary goals when I moved to the UK was to find an apartment which was big enough for entertaining, for overnight guests and the occasional party. God and I had some serious conversations about this topic. In an effort at fiscal responsibility, I set myself a budget and made an appointment with a local estate agent. He scheduled four...

TIRMa helped me host dinner for several colleagues on Sunday evening, and then went to Edinburgh for work. But before she went, she neatly stacked all the dirty dishes. Thanks TIRMa!

England, like many other places around the world, has been experiencing unusually heavy snowfall this winter. Which means there's a lot of work for the gritters, those invaluable machines which distribute grit onto icy surfaces. Note: I'm still not sure of the exact useage here. Can a person be a gritter? Can you grow up to be a gritter driver? If you work really hard, could you become a Greater Gritter?