An American in Leeds

  It's a country full of sheep.   It's been over 10 years since I updated this blog. I wasn't sure it still even existed when I looked it up a couple of weeks ago. I figured some internet deity deemed it obsolete (Who blogs any more?!?) and deleted it. But nope, there it was when I searched for it.  Two big developments since I last posted in 2016 that have rendered the title of my blog incorrect and incomplete: I moved to Bradford. I became a dual American-British citizen.  I will possibly write about this more in the future.  I don't know what possessed me to look up my old blog. I hadn't thought about it in years. I was halfway through putting on my 30 daily moisturisers when it popped back into my head. My original thought was "Huh, I should get rid of that thing, no one reads it any more." Then I thought "Who cares if no one reads it any more? I've wanted to do more writing, why not start there? Less pressure!" I started brainstorming id...

The entire purpose of this post is to show off my artwork. In my continuing creativity quest, I took an Intro to Cyanotypes class at the Leeds College of Art . Cyanotyping is method of photographic printing using a mixture of potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate then exposed to UV light. Some of these are traced from pictures I've taken in my travels ( Paris , Rome and Brussels ). Two are feathers, garlic skin and a geranium leaf pressed directly onto the paper before exposure. The rest are traced from drawings I've made. More info on how to make cyanotypes here . Or, you know, you could email me and ask. I like to yammer on about art stuff.

Get your mitts on this My fellow Americans living abroad! Unless you've been living under a rock (lucky you), you know that it is an election year. Living abroad is no excuse not to vote! You have to request your ballot from the Federal Voting Assistance Program . It will ask you which state you lived in before you moved abroad, then will tailor what you need from there. If you want to vote in the Presidential primary, you need to get cracking. PS This applies if you need an absentee ballot as well.

Look at these beauties I've been messing around with making croissants for the past year. I hadn't quite gotten them right. But I finally cracked them and now I'm going to tell you how I did it! Originally I was using this recipe from Good Food magazine. It worked out okay, but my croissants never doubled in size when proving. They were too dense as well- more bread-like than light and flaky. I was not satisfied, and figured I could do better. Starting with typing the question "Why are my croissants too dense?" into my search engine of choice, I eventually narrowed the answer down to two possibilities: 1) kneading too long at the very beginning and 2) something something something about dough composition that was not quite right. Basically, something I was doing was turning everything too gluteny. Sooooo, I went hunting around for a recipe that would address both of these issues and turned up this one from Weekend Bakery*. Its answers to the two questi...

Autumnal Hat Heeeeeey there! How ya doin'? Been a while, I know. (By the way, I seem to have lost my ability to determine when to use "a while" and "awhile". Is this a thing that happens when you're old? You forget how to use parts of speech you had no problem using for decades?) What's new? Well, I'm still happily married to the same Yorkshireman. We're coming up on 5 years together in a couple weeks. Two more years, and he and my PhD will have occupied the same amount of time in my life, albeit non-concurrently. I suppose the biggest development is that I'm no longer a research scientist. This was a tough development to accept. I had realized that I didn't want to pursue a research career a while back. I wanted some sort of work-life balance that doesn't really exist in the higher levels of research science. Also, I hate writing grants. The part that was tough to accept was that the decision to not pursue a research care...

Remember that man I mentioned  over a year ago?  Well, reader, I married him. Then embarked on the emotional roller coaster that is a spousal visa application. Luckily, I got my visa, and was able to join him. Also luckily, he did not have a crazy wife in his attic that set the house on fire. I have returned to Leeds after being away for over a year. I've been back for just over a week, and it's been interesting getting back into my UK groove. There's the usual things, like re-programming myself to look right then left when crossing the street, and re-learning the money denominations. But, like when I first moved here in 2008, it's the little things that trip me up. How to use the washing machine. Recipes being in weights instead of volumes. Coriander instead of cilantro. One of the more illuminating things that has come to my attention to me is the importance of an address. It proves you belong to a place. The question of "Do you have a piece of official m...