Happy Anniversary

Hard to believe that 2 years have passed since Megan and I got married in Chicago. Things that have changed since September 2006:

• Sold our house on the LES.
  
• Bought a house in Park Slope.
  
• Got married.
  
• Went on a honeymoon to Costa Rica.
  
• Moved to Brooklyn.
  
• Meg got a promotion.
  
• Megan got 2 promotions.
  
• Meg got a job offer to move to London.
  
• Megan found a job in London.
  
• Moved to London.
  
• Moved from corporate housing, to an apartment, then to a house in London (in the span of 4 months).
  
• The Megz combined flew 40,000+ miles in the month of December 2007.
  
• Turbo moved to London!
  
• Megan ran a marathon.
  
• Traveled to Spain, Belgium, France, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, and probably some other places too.
  
• Partied at Glastonbury with 180,000 of our closest friends...
  
• Bought bikes.
  
• Still madly in love with my wife... :)
  

Madonna at Wembley Stadium

On 11 September, Megan and I went to go see Madonna at Wembley Stadium as part of her Sticky & Sweet tour. Not that either one of us are huge Madonna fans, but it is hard to deny the fact that she's a cultural icon, and that of all places, the London show would be notable if for no other reason than it's the Material Girl's adopted home (she lives somewhere near Hyde Park, and allegedly has adopted a British accent which I find hilarious for a girl from Michigan!).

The production of the show was amazing - Unfortunately, we forgot our camera so I've only got this crappy photo taken with my Blackberry from our seats about a half a mile from the stage. The stage seemed to be constantly moving and changing - an effect achieved largely through moving video screens of various shapes and sizes, platforms that moved and also changed shape, and an extremely talenteed troupe of dancers with intricate costumes.

The show lasted 2 hours, and was non-stop. However, the sound sucked and we had to sit quietly to just be able to hear what was being played - hardly conducive to the Madonna dance-party I was planning on having! I don't think I would be eager to see another show in the Stadium, especially if the roof was open. My theory is that, since the roof was open, a lot of the sound was escaping.

Given the Stadium location, I was surprised that tickets were such a hot item; my boss was visiting from the US and expressed interest in going to the show. I did a bit of research on the day of the event, and many brokers had no tickets available - those that did have tickets were selling them for up to £650 each (more than 10 times what we paid for our seats)!!!

All in all, I was glad we went, but I don't think I would run back to see another Madonna show.

Songs played:

• Candy Shop: with a video version of Pharrel from the Neptunes
  
• On the Beat Goes: during the song, Madonna and her dancers drive out onto the stage in a white Rolls Royce, video version of Kanye accompanies her
  
• Human Nature: Madonna plays the guitar... badly
  
• 4 Minutes tease to Vogue: with super-hot girls in bondage outfits
  
• Die Another Day: featuring a boxer theme, Madonna changed from her bondage-style outfit into short shorts and boxing boots
  
• Get Into the Groove: with Madonna doing double dutch - and kicking ass! - and dancing on a DJ booth that had a stripper pole! This was my favorite number... :)
  
• Feel it in my Heartbeat: Madonna and crew dancing on a Jamiroquai-style moving track
  
• Borderline: with more crappy guitar from Madonna
  
• She's Not Me: with a montage of stills from her videos, also several of her dancers were costumed to look like her from the videos... and then Madonna beats them up
  
• Last Night a DJ Saved my Life tease to Music
  
• Devil Wouldn't Recognize You: Madonna performs from behind a video screen with rain projected on it
  
• Spanish Lesson: with dancers dressed in latin-style ninja costumes that become more traditional flamenco outfits
  
• Miles Away: more flamenco dancing
  
• La Isla Bonita: backing band is a mariachi band, who performs a song without Madonna after the conclusion of "La Isla Bonita"
  
• You Must Love Me: from "Evita", performed with the mariachi band
  
• Get Up: played over the PA system while Madonna had a costume change, featured a video with a montage of terrible images of starvation, genocide, and leaders that history has not looked kindly up including Hitler, Lenin, John McCain, etc.); the second half of the song featured "good" images: Desmond Tutu, Ghandi, Bono, Oprah, Barack Obama, etc.
  
• 4 Minutes: Madonna's new costume featured her wearing American football shoulder pads decorated with sparkles and other flair, Justin Timberlake "performed" on small video screens that moved around the stage as Madonna "danced" with him
  
• Like a Prayer : sung in tandem with a video featuring lots of Kabbalah images and Hebrew and English text
  
• Ray of Light: featuring more crappy guitar from Madonna and dancers in Daft Punk-style helmets
  
• Express Yourself: sung a cappella with the crowd
  
• Hung Up: with LOTS of crap guitar from Madonna, complete with Pete Townshend-style shredding and amp humping, played in tandem with a strange video featuring chess pieces
  
• Give It 2 Me: Madonna's new single, performed by herself on stage, featuring a crazy-good solo dance party from Madonna
  

New Restaurant Tuesday: The Clerkenwell

Meg and I decided that we're starting a new tradition called New Restaurant Tuesday. It's not hard to understand: (nearly) every Tuesday we'll go someplace we've never eaten before and write about it. Meg picked last night, so I get the honors of writing the first NRT post.

After a crap day at work, I arrive on time for our 8:30 reservation at The Clerkenwell. We wait a few minutes as our table isn't quite ready. There's a bar, but no place to sit at it - you just have to sort of hang around in the hallway by the toilets. We decline a drink and idly peruse the menus.

We bring our menus with us when we get seated. We've left the wine list at the bar but it arrives promptly when requested. The staff kindly leave us alone while I have a good cathartic cry. I pull myself together and we order. After a long wait suddenly everything appears nearly at once: tap water, amuse, wine, bread. The staff are alternately attentive and absent. Nicely spaced courses.

The space itself is beautiful and (with the exception of the odd rendition of "Happy Birthday") quiet enough to have an intimate conversation without being so quiet as to inspire a feeling that everyone will notice if you, say, happen to clang your knife against the plate. We agree that we would definitely return, and it would make a nice business lunch location.

The Clerkenwell, 69-73 St John St, London, EC1M 4AN
Date: 9 September 2008
Wine: Solabal Rioja (2005). Pleasant without being overpowering. Goes with nearly everything we order.
On the table: my favourite, salt and pepper wells. The pepper isn't quite ground enough, though.
Water: tap water brought quickly when requested. Arrives with lemon slices in a pitcher just for our table, which I think is a nice touch
Bread: Warm from the oven, more slices than we care to eat in a basket. It's crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside, just as it should be. White bread is a little bland for my taste, especially when there's no butter (even though the bread plates have butter knives).
Amuse: a surprise from the chef! Not sure if this happens for everyone, or if it's to make up for the long-ish (but not bad at all) wait to order the wine. It's a creamy soup with a basil oil on top. I ask a bunch of times and can never understand the name, but it's delicious.
Apps:

1. Salad of crab and avocado, chilled gaspacho. Meg loves this. I don't even like the ingredients, but even I agree that it's quite good. It's a log of crab salad on top of sushi-style avocado slices in a log, in a bowl of gaspacho. Meg tries to take a picture but it comes out terribly.
2. Beignet of courgette flower, provencal vegetables and buffalo mozzarella.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   They appear to have stuffed some delicious mixed veg into the flower of the courgette (zucchini) before dipping in a light batter and frying. There's a fan of mozzarella and surprise tomatos (grr) next to it. A strange combination, but it works. I think it would have been more successful if they'd used just the flower part - not the stem - and put both the mozz and veg inside. Perhaps 2 flowers on a plate? Still, quite good.

Mains:

1. Crisp confit pork belly, fricassée of coco beans and new season garlic.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Meg likes when there's bacon for dinner, so this was an easy sell for her. I only had one bite so don't remember much about this, but I do remember thinking it was good.
   
2. Seared salmon, crushed new potatoes, watercress and beurre rouge.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Um, yum! I had forgotten the potatoes were "crushed" so wasn't really expecting the pile of mash but it was so good. Actually I don't think they really did make mash, I'm pretty sure it was just crushed potatoes with maybe a little salt. On the plate is the buerre rouge sauce, and a lightly herb-y green sauce as well. The salmon is perfectly done, flaky and moist, and well seasoned.

Dessert: Let's get crazy here. NRT won't always be like this but why not tonight after all the craziness at work. I'm a sucker for anything with pine nuts, so I can barely read past the Ricotta Lemon cheesecake, pine nuts and raisins.









The ricotta gives the cheesecake a nice grainy-ness. Lemon flavor is not too strong. Pine nuts, and especially the raisins, feel a bit added-on. It goes nicely with the Tokaji dessert wine, though.
Damage: £145 inclusive, which sounds crazy until you consider that the dessert wine set us back £40 alone.

I'm going bananas in the fight against leukaemia

As I'm sure you all know, I completed my first marathon this spring. This fall, I'm running a half marathon to raise money for Leukaemia Research UK. (Their running team is known as the Banana Army. I don't know why, and I don't really understand it, but that's where the title of this post comes from.)

You may have already received a plea from me, in which case feel free to ignore our sadly neglected blog until Meg writes something new. Or, read on to find out how you can help...

I'd love to raise £300 between now and October 5, 2008, so I'm running a little contest. Details can be found at my donations page: http://www.justgiving.com/meganhall.

As of this writing, I'm nearly half-way there thanks to donations from Mom & Dad, Grandpa, Kate, Mikaela, and Meg. I've gotten commitments from a few other people that will definitely get me to >50% - but I can still use your help getting all the way there!

If you're inclined to support me, I'd be thrilled and honored. Even $1 will get you an entry to the sweepstakes! And if you should happen to find yourself in London on October 5, I'll be wearing a bright yellow t-shirt and would love to high-five you on the way to the finish line.

Red Bull Air Races

We have also recently gone to the Red Bull Air Races. This is really cool, and if you have a chance to check it out you definitely should. Pilots flying <20 feet off the Thames between big air-filled pylons at 200+ miles per hour. Pretty incredible. Sometimes they'd misjudge the pylons and fly into them - they were made of special parachute-like material that was designed to explode or disintegrate in sections on impact to stay out of their propellers. Then the crew would stitch a new section back on and fill it full of air again and it would be back up in less than 5 minutes. Really spectacular.

For your viewing pleasure:

Update

I know, I know. No updates makes Megz bad cross-Atlantic bloggers. Sorry.

First, something fun to read today, following on from my last love of science post: How to define a gram.

Quick update: Since our last post, we've been to

• Edinburgh

• Glastonbury Music Festival (pictures still stuck in a different camera)

• Cape Cod for our god-daughter's baptism

• Meg also went to Germany to drive the Nurburgring

Meg's brother Rob and his wife Hilary are here visiting this week.

We're both crazy about/with work so apologies for lack of posts. Love to see you.

I like science!

I am a big nerd, I know. I love science museums, especially if they've got some interactive component. The Exploratorium was my preferred San Franscisco activity well into my 20s. So our trip to the Wellcome Collection this afternoon was a big treat. Wellcome himself was, in addition to being an early pharmaecutical baron, an indiscriminate collector of anything even tangentially related to medicine. There's the mummified person and the used guillotine blade, the glass chemist's jars and the lock of some king's hair. Bizarre yet educational and fun.

My favourite part of the museum today was a temporary exhibit called Life Before Death. It features photographs of terminally ill peple shortly before they died and shortly after, plus exerpts from interviews with them. Beautifully shot, and extraordinarily powerful. It's closing here, but if you've ever got a chance to see it, I recommend it.

One of their permanent exhibits is Medicine Now, which among other things lets you create an "ID" for yourself based on a few biometric details.

Like many museums in London, this one is free. Next time you come to visit, put it on your list!