Category: Uncategorized

After working in the yard all morning we went up to Hillsborough to see the garden sculpture exhibition . We very nearly purchased one called ‘Quantum Dog’… still deliberating about it… might get a kayak instead. Who knows? We put some photo’s on flickr. After we met Josh and Jamie for a few beers in Carrboro. The Kentuky Derby was on TV.. but I think we ended up watching the wrong race.

Note to self. Horse racing is pretty boring unless you have money on it.

So I’m sitting in my kitchen deleting emails – as you do, when the phone rings. At the other end of the line is an earnest man asking me to contribute to ‘dogs against drugs’. As you can imagine, I thought it was someone taking the piss, but no – they were really cold calling, asking for a 100% tax deductible donation to what turns out to be a program where police officers take drug sniffing dogs to schools, and pitch the little buggers on the danger of ingesting unknown chemicals sold by shady geezers.

It all sounds very worthy, but I’m not sure I can take seriously anyone who opens their pitch with ‘would you like to donate to dogs against drugs’.

a vacation…. bloody Nora we needed one, what with leaving the country, and all that entailed, and buying a house we decided to take a vacation (note it’s not even a holiday anymore)
Well after an evening getting all excited over Mexico, Grand Cayman and the Car-RIB-eean, even Disney, we settled on Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for our anniversary vacation.
We’ve never been to a family resort destination in high season, but after the initial culture shock I think we would do it again. No fine dining, or high culture, but plenty to keep us occupied, straight out onto the beach and indoor and outdoor pools- lazy rivers are all the rage it seems, but with temperatures and humidity both through the roof you can see why sitting in a rubber ring and just floating around to cool off is such a hit.

As I write a storm is outside and everyone waits for it to get rid of the humidity and make things a bit more bearable, we’re getting ready to go try something called Magiquest

In Borders (the book shop) I noticed that they had one of those central stands full of Vinyl records. There was an odd selection, I can remember seeing the new Radiohead album (or was it Coldplay, I can never really remember which is which) and bizarrely the ‘Violator’ by Depeche Mode. Anyhow I realised what a genius idea it is for record companies start pushing vinyl records.

• It’s easy to convince customers via nostalgia that vinyl sounds better than CD, and so they should pay a premium price.(*)
• It’s a real pain in the arse to copy a vinyl record and share it with your friends.

(*)The records were prices at around $24 whilst CD’s are more like $15. In terms of fidelity, I think that a properly setup vinyl HiFi probably is superior to CD, but for the layman I still reckon CD’s are easier to get a decent sound from.

less than a week in, and owing to recognising our faults we schedule a housewarming to spur us into action, but due to yet more faults we omit swathes of photography due to alcohol consumption, great turn out, shame on those that wouldn’t pay the transatlantic fare to attend !!!
The playroom in the basement proves to be a capital investment, paying off already with all the kids largely held captive by Rock Band.
The local bottle bank saw some action on Saturday, as did the store adjacent that happily took our hungover souls in during the thunder storm during their sale.

Sometimes I get confused; when I read IOW. Is it ‘Isle Of Wight’ or ‘In Other Words’? To me it will always be ‘Isle of Wight’ so much so that when it doesn’t make sense I have to stop reading and pause. It’s very annoying.

We were going to pop to the park, as we had no big plans, but a quick phone call later and we were off to Jordan Lake for a picnic. Amanda kindly offered to make scones, Howard stepped up to the mark with a background yell that he would bring the tea, so all that was left for us to do was dig out the Christmas rations of clotted cream, the food parcel offerings of Cadbury’s chocolate and make some cucumber sandwiches.

She managed to raise $150 and couldn’t have done that without you – take a bow!

Of course Daddy and Amanda had to have a go too ;0)

Thank you again everyone.