This is now the fifth (I think) Thanksgiving celebrated in the States. It’s a funny holiday as part of it is so traditional with the relatives around, Turkey dinner and the listing of things that we are thankful for (and the football game) . Kristen’s brothers and family are up for Thanksgiving which is cool, Brian’s daughters have been keeping us amused with Kate’s love of spaghetti and attempts at clicking her fingers and Mia’s pride in the pink cake we had last night and it was cute when she couldn’t wait to give me the pretzel they had brought from the mall (and waited patiently for her tip – a piece of Kristen’s pretzel). I’m really thankful for the 4 day break as I need some rest and a chance to recharge my batteries. No studying will be done this weekend.
The Cruise photos are now online at zooomr. There are a lot of them and a couple of big panorama ones too so don’t view them on dialup! All the photos are in the Cruise album or you can look at each country individually. Let me know what you think and what you think of the zooomr interface. There are a couple of things I’d love to change but at least it gives me free storage for the large amount of photos. All the photos are also downloadable in their original size too.
After surviving the tornado that wasn’t (although it did chuck it down with rain) I went out with friends to Columbus’s Red, White and Boom firework show. We had a great time, we spread the picnic blankets down on a nice little park (that google doesn’t have on the map) and enjoyed the show. As Kristen has the camera there are no photos to upload though.
Kristen had the day off so I took the day off and we went to Cincinnati. We went to Newport Aquarium in the morning and I tried to do some geocaching.
We also saw Over the Hedge. I was not sure that I wanted to see it as the commercials looked too cheesy and I enjoy the comic online so didn’t want to get disappointed by watching the film. The film was very funny but the ironic thing is that the film has been plugged by Walmart and Kroger a lot – yet the film is about the excess purchasing and food eating habits of humans. My favourite character was Hammy – the squirrel (thats squ-ir-rel).
I’ve loaded some of the pictures we took up to flickr – there are more photo’s but these ones will do to start with.
Apparently today is Cinco de Mayo – something I’ve never heard of before. My first thought when I saw it in an email was that it was someone playing battleships with sandwich fillings but a quick google search later shows that it commemorates the astounding victory of the Mexican Army over the French at the Battle of Puebla on the 5th of May, 1862. As I don’t want to be accused of inciting racial hatred I won’t say any more but it does sound like a GREAT day today 😉
Oh – and happy Birthday to my Sister for Sunday!
Happy New Year to you Brits who are now 1 hour and 7 mins into 2005. I’ve got another 3 hours and 52 minutes to go for that priveledge. Hopefully I’ll still be awake by then. This will be the first year I’ve seen the apple fall in New York “live” on TV, so that will be interesting. Certainly it will be different to the bong of Big Ben I normally hear (or the fireworks that wake me up if I’ve gone to bed early)
I may publish a reflective post when we get back to the UK.
Delayed as I’ve not been able to get to the computer for an extended period of time – below is a quick run through of the journey to america.
The Beeb are reporting that America is planning to insist on people having biometric passports to enter under the visa waiver program and as usual in this country there is no way that the Passport agency will be able to produce this information in passports by the deadline (let alone handling the hundreds thousands of passport applications they will receive). It will be a nice little money earner for the government though and an extra step towards the national ID card scheme so I doubt they will complain too much. Apparently they are “lobbying hard” to get america to extend the time limit.
Hope you all have a great Christmas day and for those of you travelling today hope you have a safe journey. Enjoy the time with family and remember the real reason we celebrate Christmas
We’ve booked two nights at Ohio’s Getaway Cabins, Log Cabin Rentals in Hocking Hills which looks really neat. I also did a google search to see if anyone had stayed at these cabins and what their impressions were. Micah and Susan had stayed at one of the cabins and looking through their photos it looks like there is loads to do and theres always the hottub if required! Their photos are really good too so I’m looking forward to getting some good pictures when we go.