Grand Central and some toys...

After the Intrepid, we made a quick visit to Grand Central, very impressive train station and completed the day in FAO Schwartz before eating at Bubba Gump's Shrimp company.
Then it was off to FAO Schwartz, the (very) exclusive toy shop. Insanely expensive toys for the child who needs to be seriously spoiled. Here's Ellie with the Lego Hagrid.
Lego Chewie...
Lego Vader.
The flight simulator "toy". That small rectangular sign in the bottom left hand corner of the picture is the price tag... $330,000. We're getting two.
Then a play on the ($250,000) revamped "BIG" piano. We'll take two of those also.

Back to NYC... Day #1: Saturday

...not physically, way too tired for that. Here are a few snaps from our trip in August. We started off on the USS Intrepid, the air and space museum which is located on an aircraft carrier and was conveniently at the end of 42nd Street where our hotel was...
Thomas had a go in a fighter plane cockpit.
So did Ellie!
Thomas with Kevin Costner...

Wet night out...

After weeks of anticipation and lovely sunny weather, we went to see the Rolling Stones last night on Halifax Commons (or Mud Bath as it has now become). We arrived at about 3pm in spitting rain and 'enjoyed' 8 hours of progressively wetter weather. It's fortunate that MC and I bought rain coats this week otherwise I suspect it would have been a extra miserable affair.
Support started at 4pm with Sloan followed by Alice Copper and then Kanye West before the main event at 8:30pm, they were excellent if a little slower about the stage, Ronnie Wood didn't think much of the rain, Keith Richard seemed barely able to stand for most of the show, Charlie sat and smiled under his dry drumming canope and Mick charged about in a variety peculiar sequinned outfits performing the sort of dance that would get him laughed out of "So you think you can dance?"
Highlights for me were Paint it Black, Sympathy for the Devil and Satisfaction, oh Alice Cooper and his snake. We got back to the car at about 11pm, scoffed a MacDonald's and came home to investigate if there was any part of us that wasn't wet... As it turned out the new coats had done their job pretty well, pity we didn't invested in rain trousers too!
Next time maybe - oh, no, there isn't going to be a next time unless it's REM... I'm too old to stand in mud for 8 hours.

One year on...

So we landed one year ago yesterday so I'm a day late writing my yearly review (or maybe three weeks early if we take into account the trip to the UK last November). Anyway we were talking about all that has happened in the last twelve months and it's been a busy year...
Moved house twice, first to the rental in Beechville then to Mineville... Finally sold the place in Brighton too, so that's a weight off...
Ellie started school today, after a brief stint at Pre-School before christmas. She had a great time all in all, her new teacher is known by all the area and is rated as brilliant by everyone so I'm happy she's going to have a great year.
Start out with three vehicles, a green one, a red one and a silver one. Finished with three, a green one, a red one and silver one... The green one (came in a container from England), the red one is different (Jeep TJ replaced derelict Clio), as is the silver one (Dodge Caravan replaced Renault Laguna). All in all an improvement...
We've travelled; back to the UK last November, Quebec for Christmas, down to Florida in May and down to New York...
A busy year, I hope we never have another on like it, but it's certainly been worth it...
Back to the New York pics next post.
BTW we're watching the Soprano's at the moment, Series 3, Episode 11: Pine Barrens, it's genius, exceptionally funny. Big thumbs up!

Lost in Maine....

The last road trip of the year... MC and I both concluded that after Disney and camping in Pictou and finally selling the house in England it was time to go on holiday for us. So we settled on to a road trip to New York.
Easy you would think, we did it on the way to Florida three months ago, I-95 from Bangor in Maine... My problem was getting to the I-95, within 10 miles of the the border I was lost, not only was I lost, everyone else in the car was asleep and, more importantly, I didn't know I was lost. So on we went and the road got narrower and narrower and bumpier and bumpier until all we got were signs saying 169... It was 2am, not that it mattered, there were no houses, no people, no nothing, who would we ask anyway?
So I read a lot of Stephen King and John Connolly, both of whom have all the freaks in the world living in the vicinity - good job it's all rubbish!
So eventually, we arrive in Springfield (every cloud etc, didn't see Homer though), so I cost us an hour on the journey and we sill made NYC at 8:30...
Oh - weather was rubbish, thus so were the pictures...

Camping

We bit the bullet and took them camping this weekend - in a tent. All in all it went pretty well.
We stayed in Pictou on the Sunrise trail, a nice camp site. Plenty of swimming in the sea - "warmest waters north of the Carolinas" it said in the pamphlet and I guess they were right, but it was still nothing to write home about.
The wind got up during the second night so we decided the visit New Glasgow, now there's a saying that goes "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything..." so... We visited New Glasgow and that's it really! Then it was off to the NS musuem of industry, a great place with lots of buttons to press and levers to pull, what made it extra great was that there were more staff than visitors so you could play with all the exhibits without queuing. A great exhibit about coal mining in NS, unfortunately it seems that all the mines here blew up - several times each.
So then back to Pictou which, unlike New Glasgow (oops), is absolutely great. We visited the Hector, the rebuild of the ship which brought the some of the first Scottish settlers to to "New Scotland", an excellent exposition on the journey and the harsh realities of living in NS in the 18th centuries with no money, home or food... Similarly more staff than visitors again.
The only downer of the trip was Thomas' walking on a ember and burning the sole of his foot. Hasn't slowed him down any...

Canadian fun...

I'm quite pleased with myself this evening - I have chopped down a tree with an axe (albeit a small one) and then, the icing on the cake, I tied a rope to the stump and pulled the root out with my jeep. YYYEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!

Anyone seen...

"a five year old girl wearing a blue dress with flowers, 43" tall, dark pink framed glasses, blonde hair". (me)
"Eyes?" (policeman)
"Yes, two." (joke, easy now)
"Same as mine really" (me, taking off my glasses)
"Oh, well, blue... err.. hazel... err... I'll put blue" (policeman)
I think I even forgot to tell my parents about this episode...
She wandered off with her little cousin who was being a little difficult and his dad at the mall, then decided she'd come back to MC and I, unfortunately for Ellie we'd moved on... Then ensued ten minutes of absolute fear when MC and I ran like mad around the Halifax mall. I made it to all car parks and round both levels before realising that more or less everyone in the place was looking for her. By the time I started the police description, I'm sure the lovely lady at Centry 21 real estate had already escorted her to the security office. Anyway we got paged quick enough and what seemed like about 10 hours was surely only 10 minutes and everything turned out okay but my heart did beat a bit quicker than I would have liked...

The perfect afternoon for us men...

Well, Saturday takes some beating for us men. Housewarming at friend's Penny and Steve's house. A few beers, followed by some good food, then "us men" left to play frisbee with varying degrees of success. When tired we returned to the house to fire guns at a line of bottles from a variety of positions - free standing (which yielded very poor results - apart from our gun toting host), leaning on a car bonnet (I managed to KILL two bottle from this position and hence felt very manly for the remainder of the day) and leaning on a wall (see free standing for the results). Then more frisbee made more entertaining by using Thomas as a sort of "irate piggy in the middle". Then a little cake and home for a snooze... Perfect day... for us men.

Another piece of the Canadian dream in the garage!

Crikey... Two weeks since my last wittering about the doomed Lobsters... In my defence it has been a very frantic time with MC's sister and offspring (3 of them under the age of 2) visiting! So what's been going on over here?
Firstly I have wasted an in ordinate amount of time on Google News with the following search terms: "ASTON VILLA RANDY LERNER", "ASTON VILLA TAKEOVER", "ASTON VILLA MARTIN O'NEILL", closely followed by repeatedly hitting F5 to refresh my searches... Anyway they've disappointed me so many times who knows if we'll ever get our multi-millionaire (or preferably billionaire) owner ready to squander obscene (preferably profanely obscene) quantities of money on a squad of international superstars. Only one man stands in the way - our octogenarian (mad) chairman, Herbert Douglas Ellis...
After this pastime became boring, I turned my attention to the other thing which had been bothering me for a while, I still didn't own a 4x4, anyway in 6 mad hours I resolve this issue in a positive manner.
I must take some pictures of it in the day light - I've now removed the roof completely and it's rather good fun. For anyone who is interested here's a brief review.
It's a Jeep TJ Unlimited, 4 litre V6. Selective 4-wheel drive. We test drove a regular TJ a while back, I think there was a picture of an orange one on the blog a few months ago... Problem with that was it had approximately 2 cubic feet of luggage space and certainly not enough room for a stroller (pram). So, outside it's big and bulky, as aerodynamic as a house brick with an x-rated mpg to go with it, cerainly nowhere near the current U.S. industry target of 20mpg! Inside it's surprising small (!) it's has four seat belts for a reason, no way to fit in a fifth person... The ride is rough and possibly even amplifies imperfections in the road surface, and there are plenty of those in Nova Scotia! So those are the things I turned a blind eye to, on the other hand, it looks brilliant, will drive through anything the weather will throw at us in the winter and is convertible which is sooo cool for jeep! We take it to the beach a lot where it looks so much better than the caravan!

Big Day!

Wow, what a day, I'm typing in the dark, I guess it's me (but not you whether I can touch type or not - more or less I can otherwise I wouldn't bother with something so banale would I?)
What an exciting and expensive day it's been in domestic servitude land... Plumber arrived at 8am to sort out varies problems and to connect my fridge to the "mains", I say "mains" advisedly as we don't have "mains" but a well. Then the septic pumping man arrived... I need to elaborate here a little at least. I've harped on for ages about how I can't type because of Carpal Tunnel and all that, not true this time, for the last couple of weeks my dear son has decided the best way to get off to sleep is to scream for two hours each night leaving us exhausted, then to lessen my attempted blogging efforts I decided to find my septic tank in order that it be emptied before winter arrives again.
Anyway I dug a good two and a half feet down in the designated location (according to the roughly drawn map in the garage) without reaching fruition and, given the amount of rock I encountered) gave up. I looked up the previous owner and gave him a call... incidentally he installed septic systems for a living (and told me so)... He didn't even get the right side of the building... anyway shortly after the plumber arrived the septic bloke turned up leading the neighbours to think we had a major septic incident, fortunately for us it was merely co-incident! Thomas enjoyed the digger that churned up my garden.
Then Jeep I was test driving wouldn't start, so all fun and games, I ended up racing it back to the dealership just before closing. No elaboration, going to bed!

Canada Day...

Canada Day!
And that means tattooed children for the day...
Thomas has been learning poses from Ellie unfortunately...

A good day, a tour around a frigate then I left MC and the kids to dash to the pub for another demo in how not to take penalties. There we go again, at least England played well... 44 years of hurt and all that.

Spiders...

Seen on our decking, about 3 inches from the dining room window...I've got nothing against spiders in general... but this many, that close to my house? Put the kettle on...

One out of two

Got one out of two from my selection of today's games. On reflection I would have gone for Germany simply for Jurgen Klinsmann who I developed a soft spot for when he came to England to play for Tottenham (although I am a Villa fan!). Added to that are his wonderful touchline theatrics, on the other hand I will have to watch Ballack at least once more.

Who to support...

...when two of my least favourite teams (apart from Australia - what a delight their game against Italy was) are playing each other? Argentina or Germany? May the best team win? Certainly not. May the team England will have the least poor prospects against in the unlikely even that they need a hotel in Munich next weekend? Certainly, and that's Germany, although it will be a pleasure to see Ballack's smug face leaving the field for the last time.
I've been hoping for semi finals of:
Ukraine vs Germany
and
England (obviously) vs France
What's the betting I've named the four sides to be eliminated over the next two days!
Ooh, Argie keeper injured and being replaced, Ballack claiming the game should continue with the goalie on the floor...
Do you get the impression not a lot is happening over at the moment? You'd be right. We seem to be in monsoon season (not well known in NS), but there seems to be so much water in the sky, it's surprising there's any left in the ocean!
Tomorrow is Canada Day, clashes very badly with England - Portugal and has caused minor tension in the household until it became clear I would not buckle and go and join the masses in town, instead, the pub with other men of a similar disposition.
Argentines dropping like flies, time wasting. Germans throwing in a dive or two of their own. Hilarious. Hopefully Ellie and Thomas will continue to amuse each other for another 15 minutes.

The limit...

We might not have played so well... But I do take exception at being ridiculed by the Rogers Sportsnet summarisers. A country ranked 83 in the world, a good 30 places below Trinidad and Tobago rubbing shoulders with the likes of Oman and Wales (and we all know how bad they are) isn't really best placed to pass judgement is it? Results are always "one to nothing", err, "one nil" please or a "2-2 tie", DRAW! ;-)

Scans - is the most exciting bit of the World Up over?

What a day, the excitement here in Mineville has been palpable, right from the minute dear Wayne got aboard the plane in Germany. Many thanks to bbc.co.uk for updating us every five minutes on his arrival at the hospital, his departure, his return for the results, what would happen in the event of an argument between the ManU doctor and the England physio, the news that he'd left the hospital again (*** importantly with a smiley David Davies from the FA ***) and ultimately the wonderful sighting of the man himself on the 9:45 flight back to Germany hence the conclusion that he would be playing some part in yet another under achieving bid for glory or did he just forget his shower bag? We must wait until tomorrow for the official word.
I think I need to have a little lie down now to recover.

Messed up...

My domain has been messed up for the last ten days or so hence no blog... or email for that matter.
Since getting back Thomas has enjoyed much throwing, kicking and stamping of feet followed by plenty of time for reflection on the naughty step and latterly in the pen, not "state", but "play" - without the benefit of toys.
It's bug season here - black flies have been feasting on Ellie, Thomas and MC, they don't seem so interested in me, maybe I'm not tender enough. The June bugs have arrived early (again), not supposed to get here until June, big stupid things always arrive in May apparently. Still we await the mosquitos. I have a "Mosquito Magnet" down by the pond in the hope of catching some of them before they can lay their eggs. Then of course there are the frogs! Lots and lots of frogs in the pond. I go to visit them everyday... Sad?
We also have rabbits, ducks, bluejays and grey jays around most of the time, kinda nicer than starlings and sparrows, there were even a couple of visiting eagles at the weekend. There are some other things out in the woods somewhere, I hear them, but haven't seen them yet!