THE RABBIT AND THE GRANDPA

No this isn't the title of a storybook for children, it's actually the names of our two new cars.

Meet Roger Rabbit. He's Andrew's car. He is a 2.5litre, 2 door silver Volkswagen Rabbit. He's pretty fast for a little car and handles well. So far Andrew's really enjoyed driving him on the desert roads.

                             

Then there's my car; Victor Volvo aka the Grandpa. He's older, a bit slower and shows signs of wear and year but he's reliable. He's a 2.4litre 5 door V50 wagon. We plan to drive him all around the West coast, he is our road trip car so there's lots of space for Macintosh and all our stuff. It's big enough to pick up visitors from the airport and all their copious amounts of luggage.

So there we go the rabbit and the Grandpa! Can't wait to start having adventures in them, once I've mastered driving on the wrong side of the road that is! 

H 

For those of you that are desperate to see the house pictures we are working on that. We don't have internet right now so we are posting via 3G and our phones. It's not ideal for posting photos from our camera. Andrew is working on getting internet sorted so we should be up and running soon... I hope!

MACINTOSH MONDAY

We have missed a Macintosh Monday and we are aware of that fact. We are very sorry to those of you that are fans. Our only excuse is that it has been insanely hectic trying to sort out the house and moving in so we haven't had time to write about Mac.

However Mr Macintosh has been far from neglected, in fact I'd say he's being treated a bit like a king! My parents are walking him lots, he's got their comfy sofas to sleep on, my brothers cat to terrorise, a huge garden to run around in and so much love and affection. Not to mention that my parents-in-law are also there to come over and take him for walks too! Seriously he is one spoilt dog!

Obviously we are missing him though. My dad is putting updates on his walking experiences on Facebook which are always quite amusing and my mum is sending pictures and videos of him too. It's keeping the sadness of being separated at bay...just.

Here are a few of my favourite pictures so far.

                                      

                                  

                              

                         

                                     

This one is my favourite. It's Macintosh giving us kisses. I miss those snuffly kisses. Soon puppy soon!

H

WE'RE IN!

                               

Today we moved into our new house! It all went smoothly. The furniture arrived and looks good.  We haven't got our stuff  from England yet but that's on it's way hopefully. We managed to check out of the hotel without any problems. We have begun to unpack our bags but we didn't get very far as Andrew's car was ready to be picked up from the garage so we dashed off to get that done too.

 So what you are seeing now is our rented house and our lovely new car (although it's a used car really but new to us!) I will give you a house your and more details on the car when I can. Now though I'm off to sit on our sofa! 

H 

BAZINGA!

This past week has been a bit of a crazy one. We have spent far too much time in the car or filling in forms or attached to our phones calling things through or worse just idly waiting. However the good news at the end of all that is that we have now signed a lease on a townhouse! Wahey! A townhouse for those of you who don't know is simply a semi-detached bungalow. Its a really love place and we are thrilled about it. We will tell you more about the house in due course, probably after we have actually moved in!

Now onto the title of the blog post. Those of you who are fans of the TV show "The Big Bang Theory" will understand the name of this blog post and will possibly get excited about where we went to visit this weekend. Yup you guessed it we went to Pasadena! After all the craziness of the week we decided that doing the tourist thing and wandering around would be a good idea and as Pasadena isn't too far from us it was a good place to start. Coincidentally it has lots of lovely shops too!

We left pretty early in the morning intending to beat the LA traffic and guarantee a good parking spot. We managed to do this and parked pretty much in central Pasadena for an amazing $6 all day. That's probably a trivial piece of information to many but it was £1.50 an hour in Lincoln so thats insane! We started off the day shopping, mainly because as we were driving to find the carpark out of nowhere I suddenly spotted two of the most amazing US stores that I have been dying to visit ever since this posting became a reality; Anthropologie and Pottery Barn. Needless to say we spent a lot of time in those two places and came out with bags from each one! 

After a few more shops, and persuading Andrew that we didn't need to buy another Mac (computer not dog!), we decided to grab some lunch. We found an amazing little Italian place, behind Anthropologie, and sat outside in the sun enjoying the pizza and a bit of people watching. There was a real mix of cultures which I really enjoyed. Plus it's always good fun!

After pizza we walked up to a famous art museum in the West of the city called the Norton Simon Museum. It houses art from several centuries and had a sculpture garden to look around. I'm not as big a fan of art as Andrew is but I really enjoyed some of the pieces particularly the sculptures. Now I can informatively tell you about the two I liked best. The first was called King and Queen by Henry Moore and the other was called Sitting Cheetah by Gwynn Murrell.

After the museum we did a bit more shopping intermingled with a wander around some of the older parts of the city. We managed to see the old city hall and some sculptures of the Robinson brothers who did a lot for coloured people in the city. We enjoyed seeing lots of other buildings and Andrew was fascinated with the architecture too. Can't say I remember the names of any of them but they were nice to look at. 

We finished off the day with a meal at the Cheesecake Factory. It was absolutely delicious! We actually bought two extra pieces of cheesecake with our meal so that we can have them in our new house tomorrow night as a celebration that we have finally got it all sorted. Hopefully you'll be able to see pictures of them as we didn't get any pictures in the restaurant. 

Overall it was a lovely day out and we really enjoyed being tourists. I also really enjoyed the shops and purchasing a few lovely pieces for our home. We move in tomorrow so it'll be a while until pictures arrive on the blog as we'll be busy trying to straighten everything out. Plus our things don't arrive from the UK for a little while longer so it'll still look a bit empty, but I promise there'll be pictures as soon as we can. 

BUFFALO WILD WINGS

Last night Andrew and I had Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. Andrew wanted me to experience the 'wings experience'. Due to the fact we still don't have a house to live in and are still living in a hotel we are obliged to eat out every night. It's hard to stay healthy in America when you can't cook for yourself but most nights we have been fairly good. However with wings we knew we weren't being good! 

Buffalo Wild Wings is the sports fan's favourite place. The entire place is covered in TVs which show a variety of different sports all at once. These pictures show you the TVs we could see easily form our booth. 

For people who are non-sports fans or for Andrew who gets lost in a TV when it's on it was rather distracting. Putting that aside the menu had a pretty extensive range of flavourings for your wings and even included boneless wings which made me happy. (I don't particularly enjoy eating meat off the bone) They even had different types of food such as burgers or sandwiches. None were any healthier than the wings though. 

                            

After much deliberation Andrew and I ordered two sodas (cokes in UK English) and then he had traditional wings with an assortment of hotter flavourings and I had boneless wings with the obviously milder/non-spicy flavours. Here is our food, doesn't it look healthy!

                             

Please note the healthy carrot and celery sticks accompanying mine. I may have enjoyed these the most out of the whole meal! 

At this point I must confess that I never finished all my wings as I was way too full. The idea of leaving food still grates on me as it goes against everything I was taught growing up. Still at least I remember not to have pudding if I can't finish! Andrew on the other hand finished his wings. He only had 15 this time. This was apparently a mere snack as his current wings challenge total is 37!! The boy is a lunatic! 

                           

The whole experience was certainly interesting and I can see why Andrew spent so much time there with the boys whilst in Florida. Not sure it'll become one of our frequent haunts though. We may take our guests there though to see if anyone is able to defeat Andrew. Anyone reckon they can?

H

LATELY...

Now that I'm here in the USA I'm finding that there is a whole new lot of shops to get used to and to learn about. I'm rather excited about this as its got new styles too. Although having said that I was in a line at a Starbucks when a girl said she loved my purse (read handbag) and when I said it was from England she remarked how ahead we were in fashion! I'm not sure that's how England sees it, guess the grass is always greener on the other side. 

Anyway, here's some of the things I've been liking or looking lately. 

Lately I've enjoyed this tee from Hollister. Well I actually bought it for $18 which currently is about £10. Nice!

I've been looking at bedding ready for getting the new sets for our house. I found this on Pinterest and I love the chevrons. In the USA they really are everywhere which is fabulous. The yellow accents on this may perhaps be a step too far though. I'll see if I can convince Andrew that chevrons are necessary! 

Lately I've been itching to get into LA. This is LA at night. It looks insane. We arrived at LAX at night so we have seen a few of the lights but only as we drove really quickly out of the city. We have been really busy house hunting though so haven't made it out there just yet. I can't wait to visit though. 

I've also been crushing on typewriters. They are just so simple and yet elegant. I am a letter writer so the idea of taking the time to write to someone really appeals. I'd love a cool looking one too. 

The other day I tried Oprah's Chai tea latte at Starbucks. I had it as an iced version. It was incredibly good. I have a feeling I'll be drinking a few of these in the wonderful sun we are enjoying! 

So there we go a round up of all the little things I've been contemplating. It'll be interesting to do next months and see how 'American' its become!! 

H 

TO SEE THE SEA

After a very long week of work and driving around house hunting we just needed some time to let the dust settle for a day and mull over the decisions to be made in the coming week. So we decided to head to the coast. This begun with amazing views over the our valley as we headed west into the hills.

We drove down the incredible Bouquet Canyon Road through the Angeles National Forest, a small winding road that cuts right through the mountains and hills north of LA. Emerging from the forest road we drove through vast orange groves nestled between the hills. From a single lane the Canyon Road widens to seven lanes as we pass through Santa Clarita.

We headed out towards the state beach at Ventura and parked up only to discover we were near to a minor bomb threat cordon, our first one in the USA. No one seem too worried though and it was all gone by the time we got back.

We then walked, yes walked down the beach, we had been driving everywhere during the week we just needed to stretch our legs for a good stroll. It was a lil cooler than the climate we are slowly getting used to. The water was freezing so we had a quick paddle before heading further down the beach. We were more in the residential part so I enjoyed the different designs of houses along the beach, pointing out the positives and negatives of each one to Hannah (much to her dismay)

We then headed back to the Social Tap, a restaurant bar half way along the beach frequented by cyclists with some very cool bikes. We enjoyed a burger and a BLT sandwich whilst listening to the Americans get very excited about the Kentucky Derby. Two mins of craziness. We then strolled back along the warm sand to the car to head back through the hills and finish the day with a Ben and Jerry's Ice-cream and a beer.

A