dancing lady
When Navid first looked, he only saw counterclockwise and I only saw clockwise. Then eventually we both could see it the other way. Then I tried for a long time to get her going clockwise again. I got it, but can't keep her going clockwise...she seems to switch back sometimes when her leg is to the left side of the screen. How about you?
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( 3.3 / 12 )Work on the house continues. We spent the weekend mowing the lawn, mopping the floor, putting plastic up on the fences to try to keep Simon inside, shopping for a coffee table (we are already waiting for the other furniture), buying curtains and flowers, doing laundry, and painting.
Last night we planted the flowers and I did ironing. Tonight we painted the trim in the family room.
The touch-up on the family room walls went fine except that we bought the wrong type of paint--who would have thought eggshell versus flat would make such a difference? If you come over, please pretend not to see the shiny spots on the walls.
Touch-up on the living and dining rooms and office went better, but there are still lots of door frames to touch up, or repaint if we can't find a color match. Since when did white come in so many shades? I posted a few more pictures in the gallery .
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( 2.8 / 13 )Did anyone else hear NPR's coverage of anti-gay statements by Ugandan officials yesterday? I got into the car and turned on the radio and heard a spokesman explaining that it is not okay to be gay in Uganda and foreigners should butt out and leave them alone. Then a new story started, leaving me wondering "What was that all about?" and more importantly, "Why did they let that guy have the last word??"
In the paper today I read that they want to deport American student journalist Katherine Roubos because she covered a gay rights announcement by Ugandans. There was an anti-gay demonstration yesterday in the capital. I hope the Ugandan gay community will stay strong and not let themselves be intimidated, despite the possible life sentence they face simply for being homosexual. And I hope the Ugandan government has the integrity to allow Roubos to stay in the country and cover events as they unfold, realizing that their own people are the ones demanding equality and respect for all.
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( 3.3 / 12 )It feels strange to have just bought a new house when all the financial news is about the collapse of the sub-prime lenders and the resulting ripples through the home market and the economy as a whole. Our broker informed us right after we went into escrow that a new record for home foreclosures had just been set, and our rates had jumped up seemingly overnight. Navid likes to ponder the gloom-and-doom scenarios, in which one of us loses our job, we can't make the payments, and the value of the house has gone down, so we end up on the street (or in jail, as he likes to say). But short of the worst-case scenario, I don't think it should affect us a great deal if the house prices don't climb right away. As far as I'm concerned, you buy a house to live in it, not to play the market.
Having a yard of my own to maintain has completely changed my outlook on yard maintenance. While I previously enjoyed planting seeds and picking vegetables, I never thought too highly of weeding the lawn. In fact, when I was growing up I generally sided with the dandelions against the grass. But since we've been here I can't wait to get outside and pull weeds. Whether I'm cleaning up the rocks around the edge of the backyard or yanking dandelions from the front lawn, I find great satisfaction in getting rid of green invaders. I'm sure the pleasure will fade when the same weeds start to reappear week after week, but for now you'll find me squatting outside with dirt on my hands and a smile on my face.
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( 2 / 3 )Sorry it's been a while since I've written, but we were busy buying a new house and moving! Now we are finally all moved in, although not all unpacked. I've posted some photos of the exterior...inside pics will have to wait until we finish unpacking and decorating.
Needless to say, we are very happy with our new surroundings.
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( 3 / 12 )I have started posting the photos from our trip . Enjoy.
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( 3 / 20 )Well, as it turned out the drive was not as bad as it could have been. Thankfully the highways were better labeled than the city streets had been, and towards the end I did find a decent map among our brochures, so we were able to avoid getting majorly lost even though we did miss one of the exits and then had to take an alternate route due to a road closure. It got quite light out by 4 am, so that helped us stay awake.
Just around 7 am we entered the long line of backed-up cars going to Gatwick Airport. We found our way to the North Terminal, where police, some carrying really scary guns, were funneling five lanes of traffic into two lanes to keep anyone from driving right up to the terminal. (You'd think they could have thought of that when they were designing the airport, or any time in recent years, but apparently they waited until something actually happened.) We finally made it to the car rental return and into the terminal, where we didn't find US Airways and had to catch a train to the South Terminal. There were long lines to check in and the first station was the passport check. The lady took our passports and took a while to look at them and look things up in the computer, and then she called us out of the line, gave us our boarding passes, and tagged our luggage, and we thought we'd lucked out, but instead of putting our baggage onto the conveyor belt she led us across to a little room where we had to give all of our luggage to someone else. She also gave him our passports and boarding passes. We were told to go sit down on the other side, where we couldn't see what they were doing with our bags, although they were swabbing down someone's bike for explosive residues or whatever.
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( 2.9 / 21 )I have never been this happy to come home from a vacation!
Before we left Glasgow, Navid's laptop was stolen, or at the very least someone found it in the lobby and decided to keep it, which is still stealing, isn't it?! At that point in the trip we decided that "Everything happens to us," and started speculating on what else would go wrong. Well, we weren't kept guessing for long: our first day in Edinburgh (Thursday) we found an on-street parking spot with a sign saying "No Parking Saturday, July 30th for a special event" so we figured that others had just seen No Parking and moved on, and that's why there was a space available. We were on the way to the information center to get a proper map, after having a hard time of it trying to find our way into town, so off we went, and proceeded to sight-see all day, with the naive assumption that the car would stay where we left it. It was a rainy day, with the rain getting quite heavy in the evening, so we were totally soaked by the time we got back to where the car was parked. But there was no car to be found! We found the transport police in the train station, who called the Edinburgh police and told us our car had been towed and we'd have to get to the impound lot ASAP before they closed, and we should catch a taxi, so we went out of the station and tried to hail a cab but none of them would stop and we had to go back inside and wait in a long, slow line to catch one. When we finally got there they made us pay 135 pounds, almost 300 dollars, to get the car back! Apparently we were supposed to pay to park there, although there the nearest parking meter was out of sight down the street. She gave us a form to appeal the decision, but who knows if that's ever done anyone any good.
The following day we left the car at the hotel, which by the way was a twin bed room again but by that time we were too worn down to fight it, and we had a pretty good time despite continued high prices and rain.
On Saturday we set out for a drive through some more of the country on the way to the Glasgow airport, and we did have a great time at Linlithgow Palace, but then we heard on the news, as by now everyone has, that terrorists had crashed a burning car into the Glasgow airport, the airport was closed, and all the flights were "suspended." Not having cell phone service of course, there wasn't much we could do but keep driving toward Glasgow, which we were doing when an accident happened on the road just four cars ahead of us and we were stopped for a long time. After waiting for a while we decided to make use of the delay to turn around and see Loch Lomond, since our flight would almost certainly be cancelled.
When we got into town we didn't know where to go, since the airport was still closed and many poor passengers had been kept there by the police all day, so we went to the alternate location of the car rental company, only to find it closed. Next we went to the train station, where I found out to my disgust that you can't even use the restroom without paying! There were no more trains leaving for London that night, and we were informed that all of the buses were already sold out. Thinking perhaps one of the airlines (EasyJet for the domestic flight and US Airways for international) could help us, we first looked for their phone numbers in our paperwork but found only an 800 number for US Airways and nothing for EasyJet. The 800 number didn't work, so we made the first of many calls to directory assistance, but no matter how many phone numbers we tried, all we got were closed offices and referrals to websites, so we begged our way into an internet cafe that was just closing and tried the websites, but to no avail. At this point it was around ten o'clock at night and it was clear to us that the only way for us to make our flight in the morning was to drive ourselves to London overnight. We got some fast food and then tried to call the 24-hour number for Europcar, but it didn't work either, so we had to go out to the car for the third time to look for the paperwork for another number, then go back into the train station to get yet more money in the pay phone. We were finally able to reach them and they said we could return the car in London for an extra fee but we'd have to return the car at the North Terminal since the South Terminal at Gatwick Airport was sealed off from cars due to the Critical terror alert level. So we realized we'd have to get to the airport really early.
It was now eleven o'clock at night and we were about to embark on a trip that everyone told us would take eight to nine hours, driving through the darkness in a strange country with hand-written Mapquest directions (the internet cafe had no printer) and no map of the UK, and since I do not drive stick shift, Navid would have to do all of the driving. Off we went . . .
Stay tuned for the rest of the story.
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( 3.6 / 7 )Navid and I are in Glasgow, Scotland for the ICC conference. We flew into London on Saturday and stayed for two nights before flying to Glasgow last night. From our experience so far I can share several travel tips for the UK:
1. Don’t go to the South Kensington underground station if you want to stay at the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum. The correct stop is Gloucester Road. And don’t stop at the wrong Holiday Inn: there are two different ones a block apart on the same street.
2. Don’t look for street signs. The names of the streets are written on the buildings.
3. Don’t expect the little map in the tour guide to have enough detail to actually help you.
4. Don’t rely on directions from strangers. They probably don’t know what they’re talking about and may not be too polite.
5. Wear comfortable shoes since you will be walking a lot and even when you get on the bus or the underground or the train it will be very crowded and you will have to stand up.
6. Don’t try to cross the street unless you’re willing to take your life in your hands. The walk lights are very short and the taxis will not slow down for you at all, and if you have the audacity to cross when they are trying to make a turn they will honk at you, since apparently cars have the right-of-way over pedestrians.
7. Look both ways when you want to cross, since the cars are not coming from the direction you expect, and it’s hard to tell two-way streets from one-way streets because the centerline is a dashed white line just like the lane dividers. And if you see an arrow pointing down the right lane, it’s not actually an arrow at all but a triangle, and even the locals don’t know what it means.
8. If you do decide to drive, be prepared to not only drive on the left side but also use a stick shift, since it costs an extra $50 per day to get an automatic.
9. Don’t use hotwire.com if you want to actually get the kind of room you want, because even though you pay in advance for a non-smoking room with a double bed, when you show up there exhausted from flying all night and catching the train and the underground and getting lost a few times on the walk over, the hotel is not required to give it to you, and if they are booked up they will put you in a smoking room, and they will not care if you don’t like it, and they may tell you to wait for a non-smoking room to come along, but if you wait they will run out of double beds altogether and give you a room with single beds in it, and don’t listen if they promise to upgrade you to an executive suite the next day and move your bags for you, because they are lying and they won’t do it. And for $119 a night you get a room with barely enough space to walk past the end of the bed, and a bathroom so small they had to put a sliding door on it to save room. (If you’re staying at the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum.)
10. If the lights in the room don’t turn on, it’s because you were supposed to stick your room key card into a funny-looking holder on the wall which is completely unlabeled with no instructions anywhere.
11. Take a rain jacket when you go outside, because it rains frequently, usually just when you go outside.
12. Be prepared to pay at least double for everything, because the price may look the same but every pound you spend costs two dollars.
13. If you want to fly out of Luton Airport to get a cheaper fare, keep in mind that it will take you $160 to go there in a taxi, or else two hours to get there using the underground, the train, and the shuttle bus.
14. Make sure you know which train you want to take because King’s Cross Station actually has three different train stations and they all have different schedules and routes.
15. Don’t listen if the lady at the check-in counter tells you your plane is boarding already. The plane you are supposed to take probably hasn’t even arrived yet and you will get worried and sweaty for nothing.
16. Don’t expect comfort from EasyJet. Your departure gate isn’t assigned until the last minute, at which point you all stampede down long hallways (bummer for you if you’re not in top shape) to get to the “gate” which is really just a holding area with rope lines dividing the boarding groups, and there you all stand and wait until they open the door and let you tramp across the windy tarmac and climb a rickety, shaking ladder up to the plane, where you try to search out a decent seat for yourself, and when you do find one and you’re finally in the air, you can’t even get anything to drink without paying for it, and it costs $1.40 for a miniature can of Sprite.
There are a few other things you should do in London/Glasgow:
1. Do visit the Natural History Museum, which is free and has so many interesting exhibits you probably won’t finish them all. They have lots of dinosaur skeletons, specimens of different animal groups, interactive and multimedia exhibits on topics ranging from volcanoes and gemstones to photosynthesis and conservation. The building is beautiful too.
2. Do visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, another free museum in a beautiful old building, with amazing historic art, furnishings, and more. The free tour is very interesting. Even the museum cafeteria is beautiful.
3. Do walk through the large, green parks, which feel even fresher and greener in the rain.
4. Do check out the wonderfully ornate old buildings, especially the House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.
5. Do eat in the delicious restaurants, which range from traditional pubs to Chinese and Indian fare. We’ve enjoyed everything we’ve tried so far. And after July 1 they will all be smoke free!
6. Do try the English breakfast if you enjoy your eggs and toast with sausage, bacon, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, and mushrooms.
7. Do try the delightful pastries, gelato, and crepes. Why can’t American bakeries make desserts that good?
8. Do visit Harrod’s (if you have time) to take in the fantastical décor and gasp at the outrageous prices and out-there fashions.
9. Do stay in the Crowne Plaza in Glasgow if your budget allows or your employer is paying: the staff is friendly, the rooms are deluxe, and the location is perfect: right on the River Clyde next to the Exhibition Center and across from the Science Center.
Stay tuned for updates as the adventure continues!
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( 3.1 / 49 )Have you heard about the Healthy Pets Act, California Assembly Bill 1634? It would require spaying and neutering of all cats and dogs, but purebred animals would be exempted. Here's more info:
http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/member ... -07%29.pdf
Here's the message I sent my State Senator, Christine Kehoe:
We got our cat from the Humane Society and he is neutered, and we would do the same thing again, but I don't think that the legal right to have kittens or puppies should be limited to official breeders and purebred animals. Breeding animals to show more and more exaggerated traits that humans consider valuable robs them of the natural genetic variability that keeps them healthy. My cat doesn't have a pedigree but he is every bit as beautiful and lovable as the fanciest special breed. It's not right to make a law that only purebreds can reproduce.
If you would like to comment, find your state senator here:
http://www.senate.ca.gov/~newsen/senato ... ctmaps.HTP
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