Not much to blog about lately. Steve has been really busy at work as the deadline for the last episode of the show (called Xavier) he's working on is this Friday. He had to go into work last Saturday as they were a bit behind, so I went in with him and I got to meet the cute puppies that his co-workers bring into work! One is a Welsh Corgi called Hector who's really excitable and playful and the other puppy was a pug which seemed to be hyperventilating after its long walk.

Spending the day at Steve's work wasn't so bad as I can surf the internet and I played Zelda on my DS (which I've now completed!). They also ordered pizza so we got a free lunch, although they ordered a veggie one as well for the non-meat-eater and we tried it and regretted it as it had artichoke on it - bleeeuggh!!

Steve is hoping that once Xavier is finished then he will get to work on Monsters VS Aliens which is a new feature film by Dreamworks. Failing that, then he'll hopefully take some time off work, maybe the last two weeks of our stay, and we can do more sightseeing as there's still loads to see. It was great when he took 2 days off work for his birthday and we spent 4 straight days together. He really deserves some time off work and a bit of a holiday as we've now only got just over a month left!

Hmmm, let's see, what can I talk about? The weather is always a good topic, seeing as I'm British and it seems to be the law to talk about the weather and drink tea (hence the photo chosen for this blog!). Well the weather has been unseasonably hot according to the girl in the lift who started chatting to me. It's been consistently in the mid-20s °C (around 70°F) so it's definitely been an indian summer. However, Steve and I were caught out when we went to his work on Saturday as we both wore shorts and the weather just happened to turn cold that weekend so we were freezing! But now it's boiling hot again (yesterday it was 27°C in the day and 23°C at night!) so it's pretty strange how quickly it can go from hat and scarf weather to shorts and T-shirts. But we're enjoying the sunshine as we've heard it is miserable back in the UK, so it will be a bit of a shock to the system when we go back.

I've still been busy doing yoga and blogging, which can actually take up most of my day. I can kill quite a lot of time surfing for new recipes and then when I find a recipe I want to try I go out and buy the ingredients. Luckily there's a Safeway 15 minutes walk away and also another store called Trader Joe's which is also a 15 minute walk. Everyone seems to go mad for TJ's here and it's always busy. It's a bit like Marks & Spencers in that they only stock their own brand of food, but it's definitely a lot funkier and without the OAPs clogging up the aisles.

They sell a lot of organic products and make an effort to introduce new ingredients regularly. For instance they have something new called Freekeh (pronounced Free-ka) and it's prepared and served like rice. I haven't tried it yet but it sounds good and it would be quite cool to say "Yeah I've been there and done that" once it becomes popular in the UK!

We got some nice beef in there too for last Sunday's Roast, but it had a mystery marinade which I can only describe as "Anti-Vampire" as the amount of garlic was pretty immense, even by our standards! I have been a bit disloyal to the farmers market and started buying my fruit and veg at TJ's. The market is great for things like spuds, onions and garlic, but the fruit has been disappointing so I'd rather pay a bit more for better quality. Actually TJ's isn't that expensive and some things are cheaper, for example 1 lemon at the market is 30 cents, but at TJ's a bag of 6 lemons is only $1.49 which makes them 25 cents each. At Safeway lemons are $1.49 EACH!! Outrageous!!

So anyway, that's my advertisment for TJ's over for now until I find something else to write about and bore you all to tears with!