Visa Trip to UK

We had to take a trip back to UK to get our visas renewed. We stayed with Joan and Wilf for the for most of the week then drove around to Anna and Rupert's. After a relaxing Sunday with Joan and Wilf, including a very English walk on Bookham Common.....

...we had to be ready for our visa renewal process at 8am Monday outside the American Embassy. With the jet lag meant we were very late to bed but being on UK time meant we had to get up with our bodies thinking it was 2am! The visa interviews themselves went smoothly but we had to wait in the UK for our passports to be returned to us with the visa in. We took the opportunity to visit Sally and Bob, the Whites in Bath........

...and some work contacts in London before heading north to see the Handley's.

Easter Weekend in San Francisco

I was in San Francisco on business all the preceding week and the following week. It didn't make any sense to return to New York on Saturday, only to turn round and fly back out on the Sunday. I decided to make the most of my Saturday and Sunday mornings and then work in the afternoons. Saturday morning I went to my first ever yoga class at the Sasatori yoga studio, before heading to the San Francisco MOMA,

and then off to the seafood restaurant, Swans.

After lunch I worked.

Sunday morning I set off early and walked to Fisherman's Wharf, where I hired a bicycle for the morning. I rode over the Golden Gate bridge and up into the hills of Marin County. It was steep but wonderful. Lots of serious cyclists with 'racers' and lycra and me on my hire mountain bike.

I cycled up Conzelman Rd...

...and got a great view back of the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco,


before pushing onto Rodeo Beach, which is on the other side of this headland, below. (I befriended a group of the 'serious' cyclists who helped direct me).

Jill phoned me whilst I was sitting by the beach. Whilst I was in San Francisco and George was in Orlando at s in Orlando in Universal studios with his friend Jeremy. Jill was going to take Ollie and The Wooz on a couple of days out up near home, though Ollie got pretty ill, confining Jill to the house for the best part of a week. Jill wasn't happy when I told her where I was and what I had been doing.

Ski Butternut

We went to Butternut. It was very good. Here is George:

And here is Ollie


There are more pictures of our winter ski-ing on the Flickr site

Charlie's Birthday

Today was Charlie's birthday party. We had the party at Club Fit. Charlie had a great time.

Charlie especially enjoyed wearing his new David Beckham England shirt; he is quite the soccer fan.

Charlie has also got into LEGO's Mars Mission and was very excited about recieving the Recon Dropship, the Switch Fighter, the Astro Fighter and the Trike (to add to the Base Station and the Mother Ship and the Speeder he and his brothers already have), as the picture below suggests.

The Wii

The Wii, at last, in our house. The Wii was this years "must-have" Christmas present. Thing was, it was a birthday present for Ollie! Ollie wanted a party this year and also wanted it the same year as his birthday - usually we have had his party in the New Year following. Lydia, mum of Ollie's friend David, suggested that instead of Ollie getting a large number of cheaper presents, as many parents as she could muster club together and get him a Wii (pro-nouced 'we' by the way). Ollie was overjoyed. It is a pretty big deal. We were also very happy though our happiness was slightly mitigated by two factors: firstly, the shortage of supplies. Though Lydia phoned, scoured on-line and went to our local Target alot, there was none to be got. The only place in the country that seemed to be selling Wiis (except Ebay at exorbitant prices) was the Nintendo store in Manhattan and that meant queueing at 3am for a chance of getting one when the store opened at 9am. By 20 January I only faced the prospect of an hours wait. That was ok, so I got it. The second factor was that we needed four controllers and Nanchucks (!), and of course the console only comes with one. Hmm, costly accessories. By early February we were ready to play.

It is totally excellent. Even on our tiny telly. If you don't know, you use the remote (and Nanchuck where appropriate) as a raquet in tennis, bat/throw in baseball, roll in bowling, etc. It isn't like really really playing but it does bear some resemblance. The technology is quiet amazing. So we now have the Wii in the basement and we can all go down and play happily, though with five in the family and a maximum of four players we have to rotate pretty furiously!

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.