Two Milestones

In all the excitement preceding last week's parental visit, I completely missed two major TBF milestones :

June 16th marked the 25th anniversary of my graduation from Northwestern University, and...

June 17th marked the 5th anniversary of my first blog post.

Having blogged for five years is no big deal, but JEE-ZUS! I graduated from college over 25 years ago! YIKES!!!

Time flies!

More Proof That I'm Old!

After Mrs. TBF woke me up from my (extremely short) afternoon nap by texting me from her meeting...

Mrs. TBF: what are u doing now?

TBF: I WAS taking a nap!

I got up (groggily) and noticed a little table with a few magazines on it. In fact, here's what I saw.

And... here's what I chose.

Energy saving? Are you kidding me? What could be more exciting than that?

Somebody, HELP ME!

Not As Planned...

The trip to London was quick...but good. I guess if I had to rate the trip, I'd put it in the "not-quite-as-planned" category. Nothing bad happened, it's just that I ended up not going to Madame Tussauds as planned - and that was one of the things I had really set out to do.

Everything started out OK for my day on my own. I walked out of the hotel into the unexpected sunshine, enjoyed the leisurely 25 minute stroll to Madame Tussauds, and then was confronted with THIS upon arriving. I'm not joking, there had to be 300 people in line waiting to get in. Not being one who enjoys waiting in line, I decided to just wander off...aimlessly. The weather began to change, so I ended up killing some time (while it rained) inside a Selfridges. After browsing for about and hour or so, I ended up at a pub that served up an excellent steak and kidney pie. After lunch, I just went back to the hotel and took a nap.

OK... so what else did we do? When Mrs. TBF wasn't working, we managed (as I said before) to squeeze in a little shopping, and we also met up (at a pub) with Julie of This non-American Life who just happened to be in London at the same time we were. Finally, we also enjoyed a couple of really nice dinners.

The first night, we ate at Marcus Wareing At The Berkeley which we really enjoyed and would recommend. Then, the next night, we ate at Nobu Berkeley Street which had really good food, but we wouldn't recommend. OK...maybe we're getting old, but... we don't like eating in a place where the music is so loud that you have to yell to each other while you're eating dinner. That's for bars, not for restaurants. Also, we showed up on time for our reservation, but our table wasn't ready and they kept us waiting. Sure, it was only for ten minutes, but...

Oh...my...GOD!

We're not only old, but we've become Swiss.

OH. MY. GOD!!!!!

We've become old Swiss people!!!!!!

People Who Need People...

...are the luckiest people...in the world!

Mrs. TBF was in the U.S. this week....for one night.

She flew in on Tuesday, spent the night, had meetings on Wednesday, left on Wednesday evening, and slept for five hours on the return flight between NY and London.

Me? I went to bed at 3 a.m. on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning because I got sucked into a couple of really bad movies. Yes, at one point I found myself watching the Ann Jillian Story and felt that the only two options at that point were to either throw myself off the balcony OR go to bed, wake up the next morning, and pretend that it was all just a bad dream.

I chose the latter.

On Wednesday evening, I once again began to hear the sucking sound of the movie channels. However, the lack of sleep the previous night caused me to begin dozing on and off on the sofa, and I eventually stumbled to bed at the more reasonable hour of 12:45 a.m.

Yesterday evening, Mrs. TBF returned to Basel (Thank God!), and not empty-handed I might add.

Along with some hotel shower gel for me to use at the gym (I rarely have to buy shower gel), and a bottle of Tanqueray No. 10 from Heathrow Duty Free, she also brought home the latest issue of People magazine. I'm usually more of an Us fan, but Mrs. TBF knows that I LOVE the Best & Worst Dressed issue.

Hours of fun!

Of course, having lived outside of the U.S. for nearly eight years now, I haven't the slightest clue who many of the people are (Kim Kardashian, Leighton Meester, Selena Gomez, Mario Lopez, Ellen Pompeo, Diane Kruger, Kristen Bell, etc., etc.). But hey, it doesn't matter. It's still good reading.

This morning, while Mrs. TBF was getting ready for work, I came across a feature called Chic at Every AGE where they showed ten celebrity women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Suddenly, I found myself blurting out:

"You know what? Maybe I'm getting old, but I think the women in their 50s are the hottest looking group! As a matter of fact, I think I'd rank the 50s as the hottest, followed by the 40s, 30s, and then the 20s coming in last."

Of course, Rihanna wasn't included in the 20s group because she had been featured in The 10 Best Dressed section.

I don't know...Rihanna coupled with Scarlett Johansson and the also-rans that made up the rest of the 20s group would probably have bumped them up into third place....or maybe even second. And...

Oh...MY...GOD!!!

I just realized that...I'M OLD ENOUGH TO BE THEIR FATHER!!!!!!

Where's that balcony?

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep...

I'm not really sure why, but I woke up at 4:30 this morning (after going to bed at 12:15 a.m.), and I felt completely rested. I tried staying in bed until 5:30 to see if I'd fall back to sleep, but nothing doing. Maybe I'm just excited about our upcoming trip to Paris. Who knows?

In complete contrast to this morning, I had the opposite problem last Saturday night/Sunday morning - I couldn't stay awake...

Last weekend was a rare "just the three of us" weekend and Mrs. TBF said she'd cook whatever I wanted for dinner. My Saturday request was Japanese. More specifically, sushi and sukiyaki.

I'm not really sure what she put in that sukiyaki, but almost immediately after dinner (about 9:45), I hauled my bloated belly over to the sofa where I found myself getting verrrrrrry sleepy. I think it was something like 10 p.m. when Mrs. TBF gave up trying to talk to me and just went into our TV room where she watched TV until about midnight. At midnight, she woke me up to tell me that she was going to bed.

I somehow managed to stumble to the bathroom, pee, brush my teeth, go through my entire skincare regimen, and plop in the little thingamajiggy that keeps me from clenching my teeth. At least I think I did all those things - my memory is kind of hazy. I also managed to put moisturizer on my hands AND put on my sleeping gloves. Then, I slept until 10 a.m. That's right...a total of TWELVE HOURS OF SLEEP!!!

Oh, and YES...I wear gloves when I sleep so that my hands are nice and soft when I wake up. The gloves are pink and have little ruffles on the wrists. What about it?

The next night, it was King's turn to have sleep issues...

On Sunday evening, we used (for the first time) a cookbook that was a gift from the Ex-Expatters and made a delicious oxtail and tongue stew. Yeah, the beef tongue looks kind of disgusting, but believe me, it's tastes REALLY good. When we sat down to eat, King would not leave us alone, so I gave him a piece of oxtail and a piece of tongue. It turned out that he liked it so much that he just kept begging for more.

I guess I fed him too much tongue.

Let's just say that King had litter box issues on Sunday night. He'd use his box and then run around the apartment howling. Then, he'd beat up on one of his toys for awhile, carry it around, and howl some more. This went on all night. I'm not kidding, the beast must have woken us up ten times.

So, my sleep recap for those of you keeping score at home:

Saturday night - abnormal

Sunday night - abnormal

Monday night - normal

Tuesday night - abnormal

I've been noticing lately that I often wake up between 4 and 5 a.m., although I normally fall back to sleep after about ten minutes.

Is this a sign of old age?