Lathany

We've spent the weekend in Bristol - which could arguably rival Milton Keynes for its roundabouts. It was a lovely weekend and we did pretty well with the weather. Each day started with heavy rain, but it disappeared quickly.

Thursday we drove down in the afternoon and met Emma for a late afternoon walk. In the evening Dom, Ryan and I had dinner at a nearby pub - The Golden Heart.

Friday was Wales - Ceiswyn gave us lunch which Icarus begged for. We travelled to see a nearby castle in the afternoon. Friday evening was dinner at the Willy Wicket on Wick Wick roundabout.

Saturday we ended up in south Bristol to see Bernie, Lisa and Max. Also to see a lot of up and down. We had lunch at their local pub and an afternoon walk through the nearby cemetary grounds.



This morning we came home - detouring briefly onto the M3 when some of the M4 was shut.

Things over the last week:
- C's cat Cooper has learned how to get onto the top of the door. Sadly, he has not learned how to come down (other than to yowl until a human gets him).
- Dom bought me roses. The orange ones are all "Yeah! Let's go!" The yellow ones are "OK, we'll open a bit." The red ones are "Shan't."
- We had our first visitor last Thursday. Martin came over for food and to look through old photos from our childhood.
- Kentucky Route Zero continues to be weird, I might post some screenshots from the acts so far. I don't know how to describe it other than a bit not-quite-text-adventure and knows it. Also, a little bit dark.
- We had our road dug up and new gas pipes put in. Fortunately the weather had warmed a little, so losing the heating for most of the day wasn't a problem.

The window today was a birdhouse... again.

I've made a chocolate cake for Dom's birthday. It's always a slightly fragile cake (it works on egg whites), but worthwhile. And Dom has interesting (other) food plans for dinner.

I haven't posted about my half-week in Center Parcs, so I thought I'd better get on and do it.

We did various things there but, as ever, my favourite was the falconry.



There are a lot of activities for children that adults can also do. Consequently, having never had my hair braided back when I was a kid, I had it done by the staff. And Bea came along too.



Also, last time, everyone but me (and my mother-in-law) did pottery painting. I declined, because I've never been terribly artistic. However, this time I did it anyway. The effort is good by my standards, although it is rather put to shame by Dom's bowl of last time and mug of this time.



We also did Aqua-jetting, owls, crazy golf in the pouring rain, ate a lot, drank a lot and pottered around a lot.

I woke up this morning to discover that the journey back from Royston to Ashford was not looking as straightforward as last night's weather forecast has suggested. The BBC weather forecast was having a little wibble between sleet and rain. However, that's not what I call this.



It's snow, BBC Weather. Really it is.

We got home OK in the end. There was a bad delay on the M25 (apparently a crash at 2am caused it) but it only added about half-an-hour for us.

We arrived in Penn Station on the evening of Saturday 13th. This was a grim experience as the station was not air conditioned. We left quickly and took a taxi to meet the person who would let us into our apartment. This turned out to be straightforward and we had a nice, although small, place not that far from Times Square.



We went back out once to buy food and then settled in to sleep.

Sunday was a bit of a non-event, well for me at least, it was hot and I was tired and didn't fancy venturing out. So we only went around the corner (to Amy's Kitchen) for pizza slices and cupcakes for lunch and made use of the apartment kitchen for dinner (vegetable risotto to bring some welcome vegetables to our diet!).

Monday was the Museum of Modern Art. This turned out to be a disappointment. It wasn't bad, but it was the first place we'd been recommended that just wasn't excellent. The Museum tends to rotate artists, so I assume we were just a bit unlucky with the current selection. This was also the day that we discovered that the Lonely Planet book, which had been great for Washington, was not nearly as impressive for New York. It failed to correctly locate the Tourist Information.

Lunchtime we bought some burritos from around the corner. In the afternoon we located a launderette for the mid holiday washing. We found it and found an English couple from Bristol doing theirs (they were out for four weeks). This was good as we got to chat about holidays and also very useful as they were able to advise on using the machines and things. No-one was very hungry for dinner so we bought cake from the bakers around the corner.

Tuesday we had pancakes for breakfast. It was also the day we discovered that the Museum of Modern Photography had moved. So bateleur suggested The Top of the Rock. We thought it was a bit of a long shot - as it's one of those attractions where they advise you to book - but tried to get tickets anyway. And, actually, had no problems at all!



The Top of the Rock was probably my favourite attraction in New York. In the afternoon we visited the M&M store in Times Square and bateleur cooked more veggie risotto for dinner.

Wednesday was Central Park. It made a pleasant change from wandering hot streets (the temperature for the week was mostly 30 degrees C.



For lunch we had hot dogs. Dinner was cous cous and fried beef.

Thursday we went to Madam Tussaud (without Bea as waxworks did not appeal to her). This was a big hit with Ryan as it had both Ghostbusters and The Avengers as exhibits. Lunch was huge pizza slices and dinner was pasta.

Friday again started with pancakes and it was our shopping day. I bought a t-shirt for chrestomancy and chocolate for work. For dinner we went out to a nearby Italian called Amarone Ristorante. I had the Orecchiette ("w/ Leeks, Prosciutto, Smoked Mozzarella, Pink Sauce" - where pink sauce is cream and tomato) and then Tiramisu.

Saturday was a 4am start to catch our plane back. We had arranged to be picked up by a Dial 7 car and this worked well (you can't book yellow cabs, only hail them, although it turned out that we saw plenty at 4am). I was unimpressed by JFK compared to Heathrow - pricey and lacking in seating. The flight was decent (we were served breakfast and also muffins). We landed early at around 7:30pm London time.

We got home to a rather surprised, but well-fed, cat. chrestomancy had looked after him well.

Our flight from Heathrow to BWI (Baltimore Washington International Airport) was very good and took eight hours. We were fed drinks, dinner, water/orange juice and then chocolate with tea/coffee. I re-watched Captain America: Civil War, which was still good and generally felt better than I expected. The rest of Saturday was utterly awful, though. Never fly to BWI if you want to get through immigration and everything else within a decent timespan (I later discovered from condign that it's well known for being awful). Then it took us ages to find the car hire place (which turned out to be a shuttle ride away) and then we queued for another half hour or so to pick up the car (as the car hire place's computers were on the blink). Next we had problems with the car and finally couldn't find the hotel (not helped by it being called something different from its website). A few helpful people later, we eventually arrived, several hours after we had intended and well into Sunday morning (UK time). About the only plus was that the Baltimore people were nice and helpful.

Our hotel in Baltimore (the Radisson) was rather mixed. The receptionists (and other staff) were friendly and helpful, the cost included breakfast (mainly buffet things including waffles, bagel, doughnuts and, curiously, fat-free yoghurt) and the rooms were large with working air-conditioning. However, there was a music festival going on over the weekend and other guests were extremely noisy for the first two (of our three) nights. I particularly hated the girl who spent both nights in the corridor having lengthy mobile phone conversations between two and four am. Also, the traffic noise was loud and took some getting used to. That said, Monday night was good and I think we mostly saw it at a bad time.

Anyway, back to Sunday. We emailed Nina in the morning (after having freshly cooked waffles from the buffet) and, having heard a little of our car woes, she came and collected us and ferried us round for the day. She suggested the American Visionary Art Museum, so we went there.



This turned out to be an excellent suggestion. The museum had a mixture of exhibits, some good and some not so good. The museum describes its stuff as:"Visionary art as defined for the purposes of the American Visionary Art Museum refers to art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself." I liked the pictures made by a prisoner from varied colours of sock thread, I found the Fart display amusing (mostly you can't take photos, but they encourage you to do so of a few things and this was one), the Mouth was weird (you could climb inside and it felt like being on plasticine) and I utterly loved all the clockwork toys that you could play with (they reminded me of the Syberia computer game series).

Here is a photo of the inside of the Mouth.



After the museum, we went for lunch to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I enjoyed my burger and would recommend it, also the fries are actually made from potato. Next, Nina took us back to the hotel and we braved the car journey in our own car to hers for the evening. There we met Bizzy and Silas for the first time. Bizzy had been cooking a huge southern feast including pulled pork and peach cobbler. After dinner bateleur and the duo made badges (Nina has a badge-making kit) and I now have a Loud Quack badge. Overall, an excellent day.

On the Monday, we headed off to Baltimore's big attraction - the National Aquarium. This was rather pricier than the AVAM, but turned out to be totally worth it. All the displays and talks were great - I particularly loved the turtles and the jellyfish.



We lunched at Potbelly which did excellent food (I had an Italian Flat), but none of us knew how you'd actually eat those sandwiches as takeaway without getting the filling all down your clothes, shoes and everything around you.

In the evening, we went back to Nina and Bizzy's. This time we had bolognese and watched Zootopia. It was the first time I had seen the film and I really enjoyed the plot, the voice acting and the scenes.

On Tuesday morning we packed up, checked out and drove to Washington.

I'm still ill, although it's mostly fading now and the cough sounds much less painful. I've realised that I never posted about my birthday at the end of March. I went out for a curry on the Saturday before (the duo's first restaurant curry) which was rather fine. Then the day itself included fizz and cake. My presents were mainly books, but also a wonderful spiced rum.

I have read three of the books I received for my birthday:

• Superior Saturday by Garth Nix - Book six of the series and only one to go. I still enjoy these, although I have been reading them infrequently and have had difficulties always remembering where I was. I think it's a good series, but not in the same league as The Old Kingdom books. Although I should really reserve judgement for when I'm finished.
• White Night by Jim Butcher - I find that I regard these in the same way as Pratchetts; namely reliably enjoyable. However, Dresden appears to becoming more unstoppable with every book.
• The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones and her sister Ursula Jones - This is the book that DWJ was writing when she died. Her sister finished it and I can't tell where the join is. It's a good read, it's standalone and I enjoyed it, although it is not in my list of favourites.

We have also seen a couple of films this month (courtesy of Lovefilms).

• The Hunt - Danish with subtitles. It's the story of a teacher wrongly accused of being a paedophile. Needless to say it's a fairly harrowing story, although well-acted by all the cast including the child. Its tensions come from wondering what will happen to the man rather than wondering whether or not he did it (the film is very explicit about the fact he is innocent). I think I would recommend it, but with caveats about content.
• The Devil Wears Prada - A graduate wanting to be a journalist applies to a fashion magazine for a role without knowing that "a million girls would die for" it and is then awarded the job. She ends up working for a very exacting editor-in-chief who expects her to go beyond the boundaries of her job. Anne Hathaway is the graduate and Meryl Streep takes on the role that may or may not be based on Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue. The result is interesting, but a little too in awe of the fashion industry (apparently all the designer labels made this one of the most expensively-costumed movies in cinema history). I enjoyed it, but felt at times it wanted to be Pretty Woman, although it's a much more acidic film.

I'm now about to start the visits round. I'm hoping that Scotland won't bring back more of my cough.

It was Bea's school fair today. Bea wandered around with her friends while bateleur and I walked around with Ryan. He tried out various rides, we all ate hamburgers and I thought the bubble machine (blowing bubbles in one area) was great. It was also rather nice weather - much better than I remember the rest of the month being.

Reeve has more or less recovered from whatever it was that happened to him on Monday. He came home very late that night with a wound in one of his rear legs, he was subdued and limping around slowly. He also seemed much keener on us and on being fussed over than he usually is. However, he proceeded to recover over the next few days and now seems back to his usual speedy, grumpy self.

I bought myself a second-hand copy of the omnibus of the first five Carré books and I've now read the first three stories on the train.

• Call for the Dead - In many ways this was rather more murder mystery than spy story. It introduces Smiley and I found him an instantly engaging protagonist. I liked the plot, the atmosphere and other characters and headed straight on to book two.
• A Murder of Quality - This one isn't a spy story at all. It's a straightforward murder mystery set around an elitist school. Smiley plays detective and I thought it was all rather well done. It helps that I really like murder mysteries.
• The Spy who came in from the Cold - Smiley is barely in this one, instead a colleague, Alec Leamas, takes centre stage and it starts with him waiting to extract the last of his agents from East Germany. It's difficult to say much about this one without spoilering everywhere, but it's definitely a spy story and I can see why it won awards. I'm not a huge fan of the ending, but there you go.

After having to send back the first copy of North by Northwest to LoveFilms because it wouldn't play, bateleur and I watched three films in fairly quick succession.

• Skyfall - Loved Judi Dench. The rest of the cast were pretty good as well. It was gripping and enjoyable... but didn't really feel like Bond.
• North by Northwest - Ancient, but still very watchable. The three things that aged it the most were the sexism, the lighting and the car scenes. It's a lovely concept, although I suspect I was less taken with Cary Grant than I was supposed to be.
• The Hunger Games - Enjoyable, atmospheric and it seemed nicely done (although I haven't read the book). The film was obviously the first of a set. I wasn't entirely convinced by Jennifer Lawerence (although not the easiest part to act), but I liked Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz and Donald Sutherland.

The month has been very light on role-playing, but we did have the second session of Alistair's Star Wars game. It was a huge combat in a space station, followed by a huge space combat outside said station. Lots of dice rolling and damage. We also now have most of our character sheets.

My parents are here for New Year. This means more Christmas presents (Bea finally got the irritating hamster thing she's been wanting for ages) and a walk around Kew.

Tired now.