We had a great time in Canada visiting Niagara Falls and Waterloo where our friends lived. Had a very relaxing week but a long drive home. When we got home, we opened the tons of mail that had arrived during the week – tonight I get to pick up my new ipod from Key Bank for opening a new account. We also got a letter from our insurance company, Hartford, that said they had mislaid 3 backup tapes and that Kristen’s data was on the tape. They are providing the usual 1 year worth of credit monitoring for free (which nowadays seems like a cheap fallback option with no care being taken of the data) but the concerning thing is we were told a month after the tapes were lost and only her data is on the tapes. I’m not convinced this is accurate as surely my SSN is also on the data for the car insurance? We’ll be calling today to get the credit monitoring service set up, setting up a credit freeze and seeing about getting my data included too.

Having a great time in Niagara Falls – whose tagline should be “Tackier than Blackpool*. The street that we walk down on the way to the falls is called Clifton Hill and is super super tacky. There are about 5 or 6 haunted house/horror house type attractions and we’ve counted at least 4 waxwork museums. Fortunately the Falls area is much nicer and there is some nice gardening going on to keep it looking good. Yesterday I went geocaching and walked about 6 or more miles – my feet now ache – and visited both the Canadian and the US side of the falls. Although I took my camera I forgot to bring my sd card reader with me so you will have to wait for a week until I can upload the photos. My first shot across the Horseshoe Falls should hopefully come out really well – as I took the picture a seagull flew straight into the frame – the thumbnail in the camera looks pretty good – hopefully the full size picture will be good too. Kristen and I also took some portrait pictures in the secret garden – again the thumbnails look good…..
Today we’re leaving Niagara and are heading out to Waterloo…now where did I put the Abba collection?

* but our water is cleaner – probably.

8 years ago, in a town not very far from here, we got married. This picture was taken as we left for our honeymoon in Berlin, Ohio.

No need to buy me an iphone though 🙂
For more details check out SysAdmins day

Happy 4th of July to all of the american’s visiting this blog! Today is the third July 4th we’ve celebrated in the States. Last year Kristen was in Texas at a wedding and this year both her brothers, their wives and kids are in town so it is a packed house at the in-laws. Kristen drove to get her brother from Dayton airport this morning so I went to the parade to take some photo’s. This is the second July 4th I’ve been to and the second parade this year (the first being the St Patricks Day parade. I was a bit disappointed with the parade as so many of the entrants were exactly the same as the St Patricks Day and it still makes me wonder why some of the groups are allowed in the parade – surely an empty old people’s home bus should not really be an entrant?
I took several photo’s but haven’t worked out where to put them yet – Zooomr smartset functionality is still down and I’m limited with the number and size of images at Flickr but I will get around to uploading some of them later.
It was nice and sunny this morning but now it is riaing and thundering – hopefully the weather improves as the Village People and KC and the sunshine band are scheduled to play at the concert tonight before the Dublin fireworks.

I started my Square Foot Garden blog this weekend – there are some photos at flickr to go with the project too. So far I’ve just got the soil down – seeds to go in later today

Today is May 25th and therefore Towel Day as a tribute to the late Douglas Adams. Unfortunately I don’t have a don’t panic towel and I can’t find my Steelers terrible towel so I’ll have to make do with carrying a plain towel around instead.