Month: November 2007

Happy Holidays

If there is one depressing thing about Thanksgiving it is what comes afterwards – yes that’s right: Christmas, or as they say in America “Holidays”.

Now I know the UK is far from perfect but we don’t leap into the “Happy Holiday Spirit” the way our American cousins do. Right after Thanksgiving the “Holiday” adverts begin. Holiday specials on jewellery, on power tools, on cars – yes they have Holiday Specials on the latest Ford Trucks. Its Madness.

But the madness really shows through when it comes to the Radio. Take 94.9 WHOM (Portland, Maine’s “America’s Superstation”) for example. It normally plays music that is OK to listen to… but not now, oh no, its now broadcasting “100% Christmas Music”. Yes you read that correctly – 100% Christmas music.. from now until Boxing Day… and its not even sodding December yet.

To the Coast


It was a wonderful sunny day and we had things to do. Kathy wanted to see the coast and I needed to get my shoes replaced and we needed to do some Christmas shopping.

So lets combine them all into one trip.

We headed off early in the morning down the interstate towards Portland. Our first port of call was LL Bean who are a huge supplier out outdoor clothing, hunting equipment etc. They never close and none of the shop doors have locks on them! Part of their guarantee is that if something goes wrong within the life of a product they will replace it. Well the middle of the sole on the right foot of the boots I bought from them las year had separated, the rest of the boot and the left boot were fine. So we took them back.. they told me to get a new pair. So I did and they were cheaper so they gave us a gift card for the difference – which we then spent on other things we needed in the store.

After that we headed to Portland and Tony’s Donuts which does a wide range of freshly cooked donuts. So after a breakfast of donuts and coffee we headed off to Kittery and The Stonewall Kitchen where we picked up Christmas Gifts for people.

We then headed back up Route 1 to Ogunquit and Perkin’s Cove


where we went for a walk along the Marginal Way which is a coastal path than runs just above the rocky shorefront. I’ll be adding some photos to Flickr soon.

Having had a good dose of ocean views, smells and sounds we continued heading north on Route 1 and stopped for lunch at Maniax Restaurant before continuing up Route 1 through Kennebunk to Portland where we got back on the Interstate and headed back to Sue and Jeff’s.

In the evening we went to Maria Libra’s Italian Restaurant which is just down the road in Hallowell. Extremely good food in a friendly environment – but if you want the Lasagna it’s advisable to book your portion in advance as everything is made fresh on the day and quantities of some dishes are limited.

Thanksgiving

Well its the day of too much food and too much turkey, and too much beer.

The Antacid manufacturers must love Thanksgiving and Christmas!

We are at Kathy’s parents for Lunch and then we will head back to Sue and Jeff’s where we will basically turn up at the end of their meal so it will be a second round of deserts for us

Let it snow!

Apparently whilst we were getting rained on in Maine it was snowing in England. Typical!

Anyway it started snowing here yesterday – it did about half an inch and its still lying on the ground this morning and we have had a few smatterings this morning. They say that its going to be like this for a couple of days so it looks like a white Thanksgiving for us this year.

Sue and Jeff got back from their cruise last night – they were about an hour late due to delays at the airports. Still at least they made it home – it looks like the delays on this day before Thanksgiving might be much longer than that

But cold is different

Well the rain has all gone now and the skies are clear. With clearing skies the temperature has dropped. Overnight it was 19°F (-7°C), it is currently (10am) 34°F (1°C) and temperatures are supposed to be staying low for the next few days. Still at least we are not on top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire – yesterday it was 4°F (-15°C) with the windchill taking it down to -28°F (-33°C).. brrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The other big difference is that the humidity is very low – often below 50% which means everything is very dry and the amount of static you can build up is pretty amazing.

Rain is rain, no matter where you are

It was raining last night and it was raining this morning. We flew several thousand miles and all it can do is rain 🙁 Although at one point the rain also contained some rather damp snow flakes we didn’t actually get any snow – according to the Weather Channel it looks like Augusta was on the southern edges. However they have said we might get some snow over the next day or so along with some colder weather.

It was another lazy day today, we spent some time up at Kathy’s parents before heading over to the Lions Club in Manchester to check the building out as Jen is planning on holding her wedding reception there next May. After that we came home, had some supper and settled down to watch “National Treasure” on TV.

It looks like we have slightly more planned for the weekend – including driving down to South Portland.

Just relaxing doing nothing


Sue and Jeff live outside Hallowell, and even though the interstate is quite close there is no direct access and its not actually that noisy


As you can see from the photo the neighbours are slightly further away than they are at home. When we aren’t here we are spending time over at Kathy’s parents who live on the other side of Augusta. Her Mum makes a mean mug of coffee and always has lots of food to nibble on.


The big tree on the corner of the property by the turning into Sparrow Drive has recently come down as it was leaning dangerously, and the small shed in the garden has also gone.. actually its been gone for a while now so I guess the satellite image is quite old

Flying is never a really good experience

I don’t care what any airline claims – flying is not an overly enjoyable experience : well not in economy any way.

We got to the airport, dropped off our luggage and went through security. All remarkably painless and as we didn’t have to be there 3 hours in advance as we were already checked in we didn’t end up kicking our heels and getting bored sitting in the departure lounge for hours.

Boarding was remarkably painless, probably because the flight was only about half full, but of course we ended up with people sitting in the two seats in front of us: two people who were complete pains – they reclined their seats the minute they got into them and never put them up again (even when food was being served). The woman who was sitting in front of me just didn’t sit still for the entire flight, if she wasn’t going to the toilet she was moving round in her seat making the back move all the time which made watching any film just about impossible as unless you leant forward and twisted your neck it wasn’t actually possible to see the screen properly.

The flight left late but managed, due to 75mph tail winds, to actually land on time at 17:05 EST. Immigration, baggage claim and customs was the quickest it has ever been and we got out of the airport at 17:35, just in time to see the Concord Trailways bus for Portland just leaving…. oh well.

So we waited for the next bus at 18:30 which was a couple of minutes late (if only the previous one had been) and headed for Portland. The movie on the coach was Evan Allmighty, not a film I would have chosen to watch due to the fact that the previous film in the”series” starred Jim Carey and I find his manic behaviour extremely tedious. But it wasn’t a bad film and it filled the two hours of trip up the interstate.

It was about 10:30 by the time we had arrived at Sue and Jeff’s and I have to say that it wasn’t long before I headed off to bed.

Look out Maine, here we come


Well I’ve started my holiday today, not that we’ve gone anywhere yet: Kathy is working today so I’m finishing off the packing, getting the car ready, taking some rubbish to the tip and doing some last minute shopping for things we’re taking over which include hot paprika and Paprika flavoured Pringles which for some reason you can’t actually get in Maine.

We don’t actually fly out until tomorrow but we headed down to Heathrow after supper this evening as we’ve got a very good park, sleep, fly deal at the Park Inn which is right by the airport.


We’ve started using these park, sleep, fly deals due to the rather odd concept of a bus service that National Express run (or as is the case of morning buses from Heathrow to Cheltenham, the Service that National Express DON’T run). It also gets rid of the early starts from Cheltenham (6am-7am) and the worry of what happens if there are any hold ups on the way.

The Hotel isn’t bad – its a huge place as you can see from the photo. Inside its quite smart, but I think the interior designer had watched just a few too many episodes of StarTrek – The Next Generation as the corridors look like they could have fallen right out of the enterprise. The mattress was extremely soft and Kathy was worried about her back but it didn’t seem to cause too many problems.

So we can have a nice long lie in tomorrow, take it easy and get to the airport in plenty of time for our flight as we are already checked in and have our boarding passes (oh, the wonders of the internet)

Living in the shed

I’ve not been doing much coding on the Weblogs recently – I’m just too tired. I’ve been on call (3:30am to 9am during the week) alternate weeks for the past year and basically I’ve run out of energy. The alternate weeks was a “short term” requirement after a member of the team at work quit last October, however the management then dithered and the post seemed to vanish so we’ve been a person down on the team for just over a year and there seems to be no real prospect of the person ever being replaced in any meaningful, useful way in the near future, and indeed I found out today that another member of staff has resigned leaving me as the sole UK DBA for the company… Oh Joy and Happiness (NOT!)

I’m hoping that a long break over in Maine will give me chance to recharge my batteries : apart from Thanksgiving we’ve not really got anything planned so hopefully its going to be a relaxing time … well apart from getting involved in planning my step-daughter’s wedding.

As we’ve got cat/house sitters for the duration we are away we tidying up the house a bit – I’ve finally tidied up the book case in the living room by throwing away what looks like a small skip full of old Yellow Pages and Argos catalogues etc. and shuffling a few things around. The computer cupboard sitting in the corner is over powering and we keep having great plans about moving it up stairs… well moving the contents upstairs and into one of the two bedroom cupboards – the one in our bedroom has a power line in it (I know it has because the plumbers cut throught it when they were installing the central heating) and we can easily run a network cable up through where the pipes come down to the radiator (I might even move the coax cable for the TV in our bedroom and use the same route).

Whilst all of this has been going on I’ve noticed that our neighbour seems to go out to his shed late at night and again in the morning. The other day he was in the back garden in his dressing gown… so all I can guess is that he is sleeping in the shed… seems a bit odd but if it cuts down his foul language as he shouts abuse at his kids it can only be a good thing.