home sweet home

SO sick of flat/apartment/house/loft hunting. I think we have only seen about 8 places but 6 of them were complete disasters, in one, the bathroom was spraypainted silver, the lounge in another had a HUGE 70's orange fireplace that filled the entire room and a bedroom in one had a horrendous black gate where one the wall should have been.

But the hunt has finally come to an end. We signed the lease on a three bed house in Italian market yesterday. How grown up are we, it is gorgeous...all wooden floors, great kitchen and room for lots and lots of people to stay. We move in on October 1st and I cannot wait. The place we are in at the moment was perfect when we first got here but a couple of weeks down the line living in one room, even with your nearest and dearest, becomes very very claustrophobic. Every sound and action is noticed - especially when one of you gets up at 5 in the morning and desperately tries to be quiet by doing everything slowly and delicately which obviously ends up being much noisier than normal, waking up the other one and causing a lot of tossing and turning and crankiness. Happiness is not found in a studio....Bring on the house!

Yesterday was a very good day. As well as signing a lease we saw The Roots at the symphony hall in downtown Philly. (It is one of my Philly goals to make friends with the Roots) The tickets were pretty expensive because of the venue and I'm not joking, in the entire time I've been here I have not seen so many white people in one place in Philly....and yes this was a Roots concert.

It started with the band entering with Black Thought (MC supreme), armed with megaphone, leading the New Orleans Brass Band through the audience to the stage and then gave the best performance I had ever seen. You couldn't understand a word he was saying but the whole thing was just amazing.

?estlove is the greatest drummer alive - anyone can disagree but you will be wrong.

At the end they left the way they came and the brass band led them out and this time the whole audience followed them. The Roots made a quick exit but the band kept playing and started to march around the lobby and made their way out onto the street with the entire audience following them into the Philly night. Then, in true marching band fashion, they started to march (!) down the street and for about 15 minutes the band and audience danced down the street together, stopping traffic, bemusing passers-by and basically having a wonderful time - every single person had a huge smile on their face. It was a very cool experience.

We are going to see the White Stripes in Atlantic City in a few weeks and they will have to go some to top that experience....will let you know.

Hugs and love

Listening to: Love Child - Diana Ross

Feeling: itchy (they have mutant mosquitoes over here and my delicate British flesh is not liking them very much!)

Thinking: iced tea kicks ass