George's Three Birthdays

George pretty much had three birthdays. The first, a week before his birthday, Ben and Jeremy came for a sleep-over. They played Game-Boy and built wonderful things with LEGO.

The second was actually on his birthday. He spent the day with us, taking his first trip to the adult part of the gym, opening some presents, including some LEGO and an Arsenal soccer shirt, and having a super birthday cake made especially by mum (who gets very good at birthday cakes this time of year!).

A week later, George wrapped up his birthdays for this year. He had Alex, Brandon, Andrew and Adam around for a sleepover. They all went to Okinawa, in Mount Kisco, and had Hibachi (when the Japanese chef cooks the food in front of you; spins and juggles his utensils, throws eggs in the air, makes volcanoes out of onion rings and throws bits of broccoli and shrimp in guests mouths. They put a big hat on George when everyone sang happy birthday to him.

They got home, played Game-Boy, and built woonderful things with LEGO.

They next day they all had breakfast and went to see the Harlem Wizards play at Horse Greeley, the local High School. The Harlem Wizards are like the Harlem Globetrotters, though their trotting seems to be restricted to the New York area. They played some local teachers.

Anna's 40th birthday

I called Anna to wish her a happy 40th birthday from the canteen in Round Rock Building 5, from Dell, Austin, TX. It was quite surreal. I wanted to give her a big hug. Instead I was standing looking at hordes of hungry workers deciding on whether to get salad or panini.

Nothing down me trousers!

About 2 years ago I was the lardiest I have ever been: 181.2 lbs, or a tad under 13 stones. I thought I had better lose some weight. Whilst hardly embarking on a crash course diet, and subject to unavoidable bouts of good eating - a week eating steaks and dulce de leche ice cream in Beunos Aires for instance - and bad - rounds of evening take outs and pizza when working into evening, which both put the weight on, I have slowly managed to shed the pounds. At times it has seemed to go slowly, slowly, slowly, and even back up (see above!) and then at other times it has gone, almost accidentally, fast, fast, fast; like not meaning to lose 7-8 lbs but doing so nevertheless on vacation in 2007 (bad ranch food and camping did it I think). And even if I don't have any major goal in this adventure - though getting to my wedding weight of 11 stones (or 154 lbs) would be nice - today was a cause for celebration as I broke the 160 lb mark that has been eluding me through several rounds of Jill's terrific Christmas Cake. I was so happy I celebrated with roast dinner, a beer and two white chocolate coins that I stole from the kids.

Squirrels on my Lawn

Ok, I hear you saying, "it's a lawn with pock marks, so what?" You forget; we live in pretty dense woodland and we have many many squirrels hereabouts. And we have had a particularly warm spell this week; it went from zero degrees Fahrenhait to sixty within day or two. Put those two things together and you get a seriously chewed up lawn as the squirrels emerge to try to recall where they buried their stash in The Fall, grab a quick bite to eat and chase each other up and down the trees before returning to their nests before temperatures plumment back to freezing. This they have now done. Last night's frost has solidified the squirrel's pock pattern, and tonight we expecting a pretty big dump of snow; 4-6". The good thing is that the lawn will be covered for a fair stretch now.

Pinewood Derby

Ollie cub's pack held their annual Pinewood Derby. Everyone knows about Pinewood Derbies as they seem to be a nationwide phenomena, as this wikipedia entry shows. In theory the cubs get a block of wood, some nails and wheels and they have to build, and then race, the cars. In practice, it becomes another outlet for parental competition, with very strict rules to boot. Ollie's car is the black one on the left. Ollie did some sawing, painting and design but I 'helped out' a little. Some of the other cars look like they were designed and manufacturered at Maranello, home of the Ferrari Formula 1 workshops, by highly sophisticated adult engineers. In the end we came 5th, 5th, 5th, 3rd, 5th and 4th (out of 6) in our races. So whilst not disgracing ourselves, we hardly set the Pinewood Derby world alight. By the way, some of the cars were measured over the course (see above) at near 200 mph - serious stuff! Wilf and cousin Paul would have loved it. Sorry about the quality of pictures, they were taken with my phone camera. I really need to get a compact digital camera I can slot into my pocket for things like this.

Charlie goes ski-ing

Charlie and I went ski-ing yesterday. Now Charlie has the appetite for it we want to get him going as quickly as possible and after a couple of (dud) lessons between Christmas and New Year we thought I should go and spend some quality time with him on the slopes. We have a nice picture of Charlie, left, and some film. The first film was only his third run of the day.

He had never been down anything remotely this challenging by himself and by the time I shot the second film, an hour or so later, he was looking pretty much in control. Sorry about shaky camera; I was also on skis. Click twice on the play button to play.

Welcome

Welcome to barnettblog for family and friends. This is a regular clippets and snippets journal from me over here. It was becoming difficult to get the letters out so regularly, and once set up the blog is relatively easy to run. Also I can add pictures and film and links and all manner of techie stuff that I haven't got my head around yet. Enjoy.