Our Loose Neighbors

So a nearby town has an unfortunate, but very humorous name; Loose. This presents numerous possibilities that fortunately the town embraces. Examples:

Loose Bowls Club (Bowls being a lawn sport similar to bocce)
Loose Women's Society
All Saints' Loose (The Parish Church)
and my personal favorite; Loose Baptist Church (As opposed to those rather strict Baptist churches)

Happy Thanking!

Zac's and my First Thanksgiving away from home was today, celebrated with Zac's sister Anna from Geneva. Determined not to let the size of the company to diminish the feast, I planned and bought food for at least 6, greedily anticipating next-day leftovers. The results:
A 4.5 chicken, which I repeatedly and mistakenly referred to as a turkey
A huge pot of mashed potatoes (delicious, though strangely sweet. Blame the variety of potatoes we bought)
A disproportionate amount of gravy (after we were satiated on potatoes and chicken, had barely eaten a quarter of the gravy)
Stuffing (unfortunately purchased 3 boxes of the cheapest stuffing Sainsbury had, with the result that after the feasting now have masses of what looks like gray-green soggy cat litter)
Mashed sweet potatoes, which were decidedly sweet even before Zac and Anna put sugar on theirs
Real cranberry sauce, which Zac once again boycotted because "it wasn't a smooth jellied form in the shape of a tin can"
Broccoli (for some reason repeatedly disparaged by Anna and Zac)
Cheese sauce (the redemption of broccoli)
Biscuits (ended up with a triple batch when Anna misread how much butter to put in)
Pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream (delicious, though contains only 70% pumpkin and 30% squash)
Apple Pie (with Bramley apples, excellent for cooking, horribly for eating)
Apple Cider (was going to be drunk warm, but we ended up so uncomfortably hot after all the cooking that we opted for cold apple juice instead)
With the exception of the stuffing, which will be tossed, we will be enjoying Thanksgiving, the sequel, tomorrow for lunch via the microwave.

The Free-Wheelin Freecycle

Even before we moved over here Erica and I were online looking at potential cars, homes, and household items. One thing that kept reoccuring was that people didn't seem to be selling that much used stuff online. The use of craigslist is nearly non-existent and a few of the links for the county of Kent hook up to Kent, Ohio. There are other sites such as gumtree.com, but we weren't too impressed. Well it seems the reason that we couldn't find anyone selling used stuff is because they tend to give it away for free! We joined an internet community known as freecycle and stuff has been pouring in. Freecycle was founded in Arizona and communities exist all over the world. The concept is pretty simple. If you have something you want to give away you set up a listing of the item and your general location. Then it goes on a message board where people who want the item can e-mail you. Someone e-mails you asks if you still have it and then you set up a time to have it picked up. All that we've accumulated more than makes up for the out-of-our-price range guest bed that we recently bought. In no particular order, our freecycle booty.

• A partial set of golf clubs with bag and push cart
• Motorized foot spa.
• Veggie Steamer
• 4 dining chairs
• An outdoor wicker chair
• Small dining table
• Ironing board
• Vacuu
• Clock Radio
• 2 Dozen French Novels
• Single mattress (though very poor condition)
• Assorted picture frames
• Bag of Christmas ornaments
• Microwave
• Juicer
• 8 wine glasses
• Moderately useless cleaning supplies
• Sewing machine (mostly works)
• Computer desk
• Man's bike (picking up on Friday)
  
• The following items were obtained for free but not through Freecyle: bookcase, mirror, double duvet, white curtains and pyrex baking dish.
  

Just some of the things we're thankful for.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Disconnected

The terrace house next door just went up for sale and our free (ghosted) internet disappeared as of Monday. Coincidence? Thus the lack of contact.

Disconnected: that's how we've feeling this week on a few fronts, yet on one front it is looking up.

We think we have settled on the large C.O.E. in Maidstone as our home church. We went on Sunday morning and Erica bit the bullet and introduced us to a trio of young people (Chantel, Faith, and Scott) who looked about our age. They were very receptive and we chatted with them for quite a bit. Chantel and Scott are engaged? and Chantel is a professional graphic designer at the creative agency that Erica drools at everytime we drive by. Scott is currently in university studying to be a P.E. teacher. He played basketball (semi-professionally?) in London for a few years and spent a summer in Columbus, Ohio (believe it or not) playing basketball. Faith is a youth-worker (a pseudo-youth pastor in the public schools) in maidstone and is one of those infectious personality types. We've been invited to join them for dinner Sunday night and it turns out that a guy (Daveo Ho) that went to Moody at the same time we did is originally from this church.

We went to a (young persons') small group on Wednesday that Faith invited us to. Out of the 13 normal people there were 5 including us, and we were the youngest by a good 20? years. We'll see how that goes.

The job at the sporting goods store is going well. I am getting more hours and am still doing well at it and gaining more responsibility there. Erica's classes are going well and we're looking forward to having Anna over from Switzerland for Thanksgiving. Other exciting news is that this summer we're going to be an aunt and uncle. Allie and Evan are expecting.

Sorry for the bare details version of this post. More exciting material to come later.

Cheers!

The Real Gunpowder Plot or The Legend Lives On From The Kentish On Down...

Today is a pretty important day in the UK; Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Night. But there will be more of that later. The true Gunpowder Plot is an active threat that started just over sixty-five years ago. The SS Richard Montgomery is an American Liberty ship that was built during the middle of World War II. The Montgomery was on its way to France in August of 1944 when, during a storm, it became stuck in one of the many sandbars that dot the English Channel. After becoming lodged in the sand, a mile and a half from the town of Sheerness, the ship was bashed by the storm until it split into half under its own weight and sank. There were thousands of boats sunk during World War II. What makes this one noteworthy? Why is it a regular topic of conversation for Brits; especially the townspeople of Sheerness?

The SS Richard Montgomery is one of 2,710 hastily built a Liberty Ships that the U.S. military forces used to get supplies to the war fronts. The supplies that the Montgomery were carrying were 6,127 tons of munitions. After the ship began to break apart the munitions were attempted to be salvaged, and yet 1,400+ tons of munitions still remain on board! 1,400 Tons! Nearly, three-million pounds of explosives!

The decision to leave the remaining explosives on board was made in respect to another ship, the Kielce that sank off Folkstone in 1946. In 1967 an attempt was made to difuse the explosive cargo of the Kielce with the explosive result of the equivalent of a 4.5 magnitude earthquake. Currently the site of the wreck is cordoned off and is monitored visually and by RADAR. Although the wreck is in a percarious spot as it falls at the intersection of serveral major shipping lanes.

One has to choose whom to believe regarding the risk of explosion sixty-five years later. The governing authorities have always reported that it is better to leave the wreck alone rather than risk having anything occur while trying to alleviate the situation. According to them, any leaking explosives would be counteracted by the fridged Channel waters. Others however insist that the saltwater could corrode the casings of many of the exposives and eventually cause them to explode, they also are quick to point out that a significant portion of the munitions are TNT, and that TNT is not water solvable.

What could the detonation of the ship mean? According to the BBC, a report released by the British government shows that "a blast would hurl a 1,000ft wide column of water, mud, metal and munitions almost 10,000ft into the air. The shock of the blast would shatter almost every window in Sheerness and damage buildings. The explosion would also generate a 16ft high wave that could sink a small craft." Other not so optomistic folk forsee an explosion causing a tsunami and flooding large portions of the South East of England. Sheerness is just a little less than 15 miles from us, and the river Medway runs right through downtown Maidstone.

The wreck has been featured in various novels that usually depict nefarious groups planning on causing it to explode and thus create chaos for the surrounding areas. An enterprising soul has even claimed the domain name www.ssrichardmontgomery.com and has the domain name along with a movie script entitled "The Richard Montgomery Matter" for sale and one very interesting video is on youtube.