A leaving party was thrown in my honour this afternoon and this is the super amazing cake:

Family weekend

I managed to get Stephen up here for my last free weekend in New York. It's a shame, the poor git finally moves to the East Coast (just a four hour Chinatown bus ride away) and I "bugger off to England".

Adam snapped this picture of us at the top of the five flights of stairs to my apartment. Stephen wasn't such a fan of those. We had a pretty relaxed weekend, no rushing to see all the tourist sights, which we covered the last time he visited six (!) years ago.

Sunday we ate our last dinner with Dave and Adam & Lexia. We've been talking about making Poule au Pot, a 16th century French chicken dinner, for Adam our French literature fanatic, so it was now or never. It's good solid "peasant food" and the results were delicious and more than filling.

Saturday afternoon I traded stories of our family heroes and villains with my long lost cousin Cynthia Lovewell. Cynthia’s great-grandmother Elizabeth and my great-great-grandfather John were brother and sister. We’re part of the Ducie clan and there aren’t too many of us [link to Ducies make money not babies] so I was really excited to make contact with someone from this part of my family. The Ducies came from Ireland, via Birmingham, but they split up once they got to America with John settling in Montana and Elizabeth Ducie and husband Charles Chadwick making their own way to San Francisco. We swapped photographs and I got to tell her all about Mrs Ducey's saloon.

Cynthia and her husband John were terrific. Just what I would imagine a couple from California would be like: relaxed, friendly, youthful. They're coming to London in the fall so we have plans to meet up again. Maybe a trip to greater Birmingham is in the offing, how exciting does that sound? And we have a open invitiation to their beautiful big cabin at Lake Tahoe. It was a wonderful afternoon and nice that Stephen was in town. They got two Bovee/Ducies for the price of one!

New Doctor Who = Ahh-MAZING

I ate Blackhound three-layer chocolate mouse cake for breakfast. I'm out of weetabix, and, well, it needed finishing up. I think maybe salad for lunch today. And for dinner.