Dept of Urban Censorship Strikes Again

On my favorite abandoned building in Camden. You can clearly see the "18" in the red circle next to the door. "This area contains violence, drug use, and bad language" the sign reads.
I'd love to see this place turned into a monastic house where prayer and glassblowing are the order of the day.

Dept Urban Censorship

This 'sign' has been popping up in random places around Camden. It's quite big - maybe a meter wide. There's one on the side of the Dev pub, and one on the empty office building across the street from us. It's a clever bit of graffiti - if that is the right term (it looks like it's just a massive sticker). But what does it all mean?

Learning to Follow Jesus

One of the things I want for my girls is that they learn what it means to follow Jesus by walking along that path with us. We've been handing out small bags to welcome traders to the new market that opened up down the street from our house. It's one small way of bringing Jesus' love to them. The girls were really excited about the whole idea, and insisted on helping put the bags together.

Lemon Cupcakes

Right, so Somer has stopped blogging about food, but that doesn't mean she's stopped baking (nor have I stopped eating). Last night one of our neighbors invited us around for her birthday. These are the cupcakes Somer made. I cannot provide a recipe, but I can tell you that in addition to the lemon gummy candy on top, and the lemony cream-cheese icing, they also had a bit of lemon curd hidden in the middle. I can also tell you that the lemon curd was too sweet for me, so I scooped it out with a spoon.

I like big bumpers...

So says the writing on the back of the Streetcar van. Streetcar is a company that provides car rental services in half-hour increments, with as little as 1 hour advance notice. We've used them since 2006 and have found it very useful to have a car (or in this case a van) available to us on short notice. I've lost count of how many cars they have parked around London - there are 3 vans and about 15 cars within a short walk from our flat. We've used them mostly for trips to Ikea or to pick up stuff for the homeless shelter. But on several occasions we've also helped friends move, as was the case earlier this afternoon. I was taking a when I first noticed the aforementioned quote. Why I decided to take a picture of the van open, instead of with the doors closed so you could actually see the writing on the back, I don't know.

Annoyed at Photoshop Elements

Well, not so much at Elements as at the general slowness of my computer. My version of Elements only runs on OS 9, and as the new Intel Macs don't run OS 9, I have to use my old Powerbook, which is woefully under-powered. I was helping my friend Al with the sign for his new shop, which is a 3x1 meter beast of a file - 400+ Mb. Every time I made a change I had to wait a few minutes for it to render. We played a game of chess in between changes.

Holiday in the Park

This past weekend was the first holiday weekend, meaning the start of summer and an extra day off work. As usual, the weekend started off with some glorious weather to lure us into a false sense of hope that summer was in deed upon us. By Monday, the cloud, cold, and wind had returned. But we made the most of the sunshine, getting to the park on Saturday. Our friend Caro joined us with her dog (empty can of Heineken firmly in his mouth like a chew toy). We walked back past our favorite bakery and took cupcakes back to Caro's boat.

London Marathon

This is woefully late, but we went to Shannon's apartment a couple weeks ago to watch the London Marathon. She lives in Wapping, and the race went right in front of her building. She is also starting an enterprise that involves selling repurposed jewelery. The girls helped her with some of her necklaces.