As previously described, I bought a bunch of embroidery stuff online.  Appleton Bros. Ltd. London is my new thread fetish.  These are crewel wools which I picked up in a great sale, and which I can't wait to use.

See that?  It's an empty playground.  The kids have gone back to school.  Which is good news for daytime dog walkers, but I reckon the kids aren't amused.

On Friday, the funeral for Mark Duggan was held in the church across the street from the studio.  Mark was the man who was shot by police in Tottenham, which (some say) is what kicked off the riots in London and across the UK last month.

The funeral was a bit of a media circus (4 vans with masts parked all day) but I think they were a bit disappointed that is was uneventful, in that it was a typical funeral - maybe times 100 in terms of attendance.  No looting or rioting, which is decidedly unnewsworthy behaviour.

We actually forced ourselves to leave the office and go for a walk up to Alexandria Palace for lunch at The Gate.  The walk was okay (Billie was a devil), the lunch was disappointing (a bit slapdash and unfriendly) and we were really glad we did it.

Billie enjoys a nap while we eat our lunch.

We've decided that every weekend we'll spend at least 4 hours together working on Operation Relocation, which is our move back to the States. The whole family gets together and talks about any issues and decides what we need to do next.  Being a tech-savvy family we have a special app to help us.  By using this app we have determined that our number one priority is winning the lottery.  This will speed up our move tremendously.

After our hard work planning, I made us a delicious ham sandwich.  It was like a hoagie, but not as good.  When we move back to the States we will eat delicious hoagies every day.  It's in the app, so I know it's true.