That's right. There's actually a soft drink here flavored with dandelion. And burdock too, but no one knows what that is, so who cares. Dandelions is all you need to know. Yard weeds in a soft drink.
Apparently it goes all the way back to the 1200's or so, when apparently people were terribly desperate to find things to put in their drinks. So it's a very traditional British drink, and we had to try it. Though I don't think there's really much of the tradition left in what we bought...it's carbonated, and all the flavors and sweeteners are artificial. So there's not actually any dandelion in there. The worst part about that is, that means someone actually had to go out of their way in order to artificially mimic the taste of dandelion.
Let's just say, it's about as tasty as it sounds. So the fact that someone thought it was a good idea to artificially create such a...unique...flavor, is, well, quite ridiculous.
Anyway, strange soft drinks aren't all that's going on around here. I finally got my guitar in the mail from my parents! Woo!
They were quite paranoid about the case getting damaged in shipping, so I had quite a task in unwrapping it upon arrival:
Once I managed to cut my way into my mummy guitar though, it was quite a joy to have my guitar in my hands again. I've been playing it quite a lot, and Chelsea's even been trying to learn to play it upside down (she's left handed, and already knows how to play a left handed guitar). She's coming along quite nicely. Such a fast learner!
I also got to play at church this past Tuesday night, with my friend J, from church. He plays keyboard (and drums, but since it's a house church, his keyboard is the only thing portable enough to bring to church). So he lead the worship, and I backed him up with guitar. It was a lot of fun, and it felt really good to play in a corporate worship setting like that again.
I've also been asked to lead worship this Sunday for our gathering as well. All by myself! Scary! Though Chelsea's gonna play bongos with me, so that'll take some of the pressure off. Sunday's are also more like the equivalent of Wednesday night services at churches back home (Tuesday is the main gathering), so there will be less people there and it will be a little more laid back. But I've been practicing quite a bit anyway, and we're both really looking forward to playing together again.
We've also been helping J and his wife Chrissy with renovating their house a little bit. They're really cool people, and it's nice that we both have enough free time that we're able to help them out every now and then. J, if you remember, was one of the first ones at the church to reach out to us (though they've all been incredibly welcoming and made us feel so loved), and he and I got pizza together and went back to his house to play Wii the very next day after we first met, after our first visit to the church.
Speaking of the hospitality of the church, this happened a while ago but I don't think we ever wrote about it. Our friend at church Rachel invited us over to her house for brunch one Sunday before church. The plan was for everyone to make a little something and bring it over. So it was us, her, and the Roseblades (Owen, the photographer I did the shoot with, and Ruth, his wife). We decided we would represent the South with some good ole' biscuits and gravy.
Well, that was quite an undertaking. First of all, biscuit here means cookie. They don't really have anything like what we call a biscuit. Scones are sort of close, but they generally have fruit in them and are really more like a stale biscuit. So, there was no hope of finding canned biscuits or even a mix. So we had to do them completely from scratch (of course the first time we made biscuits and gravy from scratch was in the U.K....we have habit of doings backwards like that, of waiting till we come here to do very American things...I had my very first Big Mac the last time we were in the UK, for example). That was quite an undertaking. Thankfully, we did a test run the night before, because the first batch was awful. Turns out, if a recipe only calls for flour, that specifically means don't use self-rising flour. We didn't know that. Apparently self-rising flour already has baking soda in it, and we added even more as the recipe said. So, those biscuits tasted kind of like a metal parking meter. Not good. We figured it out though, and found another recipe that called for self-rising flour, and the next morning it was much more successful. We couldn't find like American breakfast sausage for the grease, so I made bacon (which here is like a cross between real bacon and Canadian bacon...the strips are thicker and wider, but still more bacon-y than ham-y). Apparently making lumpless gravy is a gift in my family on my mother's side, as everyone has always seemed to be impressed with her gravy and her mother's, and I, without having any clue what I was doing, was able to make a perfectly smooth, lump-free gravy. So it must run in the family. Anyway, it turned out great, and they were quite intrigued by them at brunch, and Owen especially loved them.
Bringing things back to the present, Chelsea and I also went to the National Gallery yesterday, and saw a whole bunch of art. Seriously, we've seen so much art already in the course of our marriage, it's a bit overwhelming. But, though it's quite a large museum, it's not the Louvre, and we weren't rushing around trying to cram as much stuff as possible into one day like we were in Scotland. So, we were able to take our time a bit more with this one, and were able to see everything at a leisurely pace. We even took a long lunch together out on Trafalgar Square, which was really nice.
After that, we took a nice walk through nearby St. James Park, which is really lovely. I remembered it as one of my favorite things we saw in London the first time around 2 years ago, and it definitely lived up to my memories.
In other news, I've hit some major writer's block recently, so I've diverted my attention elsewhere. I've almost finished all of the photo editing, and my biggest new project has been building a website for my hopeful photography business. This has been quite a task, as I'm having to teach myself everything from the beginning, and I'm trying to do it using only free software.
So there have been quite a few frustrating moments and changes of plan. However, I've pretty much finished the all-important homepage, which I think looks quite nice and professional, coming from an ignorant amateur. Here's a little sneak-peak screenshot:
That's all for now. We're celebrating Dave's completion of his PhD tonight at the Mason's Arms pub, so we're pretty excited about that. Dave is the titular leader of the church, whatever that means, but he's a really cool guy and fun to hang out with. Hopefully he actually has completed his dissertation and turned it in. When we last saw him on Tuesday night, he was still finishing it up. So, he said tonight, if he has indeed succeeded, he'll be at the pub celebrating. And if he hasn't, well, then he'll still be at the pub, only much sadder, and for a different reason. Hopefully it will be a joyful occasion!
