Communion and Pizza

Take a look at the image above. What do you think it is? That's right, it's a handy, all-in-one, germ-free communion solution. If you look closely you can see the wafer in the top of the film, and more clearly below, the blood, so to speak. After a bit of church-hopping before Christmas, we tried a branch of Vineyard Columbus that is within walking distance. The first week we didn't know about the communion trick, on Sunday we were smarter and picked up some as we went into the hall. I actually took an extra (above), but don't worry: I'll use it next week. Can't be having a reputation for stealing from the church.

Today the temperature has been somewhere around 42 deg F. Last week it was around 15, which in europe is about -9 C. Seems that it can't make its mind up; we had snow and ice last week and torrential downpours today. We wrapped up and got out a bit last week, which was good. On Friday we went to see a play at the University Arts center ("The Wex"). It was an Argentinean play and as a result, had English subtitles on boards either side of the revolving stage.

Almudena Crespo

The play followed the lives of four different people over the course of ten years. As the stage revolved, each quadrant played out one person's life. There were only four actors, so when they weren't playing themselves they had jumped into another quadrant to play another character in someone else's life. If they weren't doing that they were narrating! It was pretty impressive stuff, but between reading the subtitles, concentrating on which story line was which and trying my best not to be embarrassed by all the making-out (they were 4 passionate characters), it was kind of a tiring experience.

The day previous we stopped by the Gateway film Center to see something called "The other F word".

It was pretty much about old Southern Californian punk rocker type chaps that become fathers. It was decent and pretty moving in places and gave me some new found respect for Flea from Red Hot Chilli Peppers and the lead singer from Pennywise. We decided to walk home afterwards and reward ourselves with a slice of pizza from Mikey's Late Night Slice. I went for the pizza of the week and very much enjoyed the dijon ham and cheddar topping.

This and That

View from Brooklyn bound Q train of Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan.

This update has been a while coming. No good reason really: trying to find a job, K actually using the computer for her studies. Since the last update we have survived Christmas celebrations in the Christmas city, a few days in New York, and looked after two dogs.

During our time in Bethlehem we were lucky enough to be in the middle of the Christmas cookie bonanza that is undertaken every year, though maybe for the last time this year. Check above to see about half of the plates that were delivered to friends and family. Each plate is made up of 12 different varieties baked by K's mom over a period of a lot of days. Of course we helped out by eating the leftovers, but were later informed there are still more to eat...

Regular readers will be well aware of challenges with finding good cheese here in the US. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas though without a few different bits and pieces to pick through. Fortunately Wegmans in Bethlehem did a pretty good job of providing some Welsh Cheddar, Stilton, White Stilton with Cranberries and some sort of creamy Brie for around about $25. A good chuck of this was washed down with a slightly smoked local Porter.

Since our last visit to New York, another section of the High Line had been opened. It was good to get a sense of some different bits of the city from a few floors up. Pictured above is a view uptown featuring part of an installation based on dazzle camouflage used in World War One.

New Year's Eve was spent at Maxwell's in Hoboken in the company of Ted Leo, Sharon Van Etten, a comedian named Kurt, and a bunch of good friends. It was a fun night and the New Jersey natives went suitably crazy when Ted encored with a couple of Misfits covers. Our walk to and from the venue was spent playing New Year's Eve bingo, wherein points were collected if you spotted sequined NYE dresses, girls walking barefoot while carrying their high heeled shoes, trampled streamers, 2012 glasses, and dropped pizza. Sadly, the "girl crying walking barefoot having lost her friends earlier in the night" box wasn't ticked, missing out on a good 50 points.

Also, weird: it's called Budvar everywhere else in the world, but in America and Canada you are to refer to it as Czechvar. Even though the Budvar name was around five years before Budweiser started knocking out their American lager, this is the way things stand.

For Joff: pictures of the dogs we hung out with for a weekend while their owners were out of town. (Luna on the left, Sylvia on the right.) 12 bags of poo later, we're still not sure we're ready to be dog owners, but they're very lovely.

And finally, winter has arrived in Columbus, and what better day for an appointment at a temping agency in a hard to get to bit of town? Turns out that the usually (I'm assured) reliable(ish) number 5 bus service didn't arrive at 1.13 PM today and after waiting 30 minutes in the snowy windy mess, I had missed my appointment. Thanks, Columbus, and your shitty public transport system