Wednesday, 13 August 2008
An undecided voter
I had to laugh the other morning. We were driving into work and were following a car into the building which had bumper stickers for Obama AND McCain. Talk about sitting on the fence!!
Olympics
Stephen and I are enjoying the unbiased Olympics coverage and news reporting. We were watching the synchronised diving final the other night and we got to see dives from the British team, the US team and the Chinese team...and that was about it! They did not show any of the dives from the Australian team - and they got the bronze medal!! They simply didn't exist as far as the coverage was concerned!
Watching Mark Phelps going for Olympic glory is fun though. He's something of a local boy as he comes from Baltimore. There have been numerous features on his training. On a typical day he swims laps for 5 hours, goes to the gym for a couple of hours and spends the rest of the time sleeping and eating - over 10,000 calories a day!
The USA women's gymnastic team came a cropper last night and lost out on gold to China. I had only seen the first rotation on the vault before I called it a night. They were moving onto the Uneven Bars as I hit the stairs. (Incidentally, when did they stop being Asymmetric Bars?) Apparently it all went horribly wrong when they were doing the beam routines and one American girl vaulted on and then immediately fell off. There is a lot of water cooler (and news broadcast) debate about the ages of the Chinese gymnasts as they would appear to be younger than the 16 years old you need to be to compete in that competition...
We might have found Stephen's ideal retirement job. We're getting to see a lot of women's beach volleyball (needless to say the US teams are good, so we get plenty coverage!) and we think that Stephen would be well suited to be the guy who brushes the sand off the girls butts when they've finished the match. I'm sure that I would in no way be jealous of him brushing sand off tall, leggy lovelies in tiny outfits!
Watching Mark Phelps going for Olympic glory is fun though. He's something of a local boy as he comes from Baltimore. There have been numerous features on his training. On a typical day he swims laps for 5 hours, goes to the gym for a couple of hours and spends the rest of the time sleeping and eating - over 10,000 calories a day!
The USA women's gymnastic team came a cropper last night and lost out on gold to China. I had only seen the first rotation on the vault before I called it a night. They were moving onto the Uneven Bars as I hit the stairs. (Incidentally, when did they stop being Asymmetric Bars?) Apparently it all went horribly wrong when they were doing the beam routines and one American girl vaulted on and then immediately fell off. There is a lot of water cooler (and news broadcast) debate about the ages of the Chinese gymnasts as they would appear to be younger than the 16 years old you need to be to compete in that competition...
We might have found Stephen's ideal retirement job. We're getting to see a lot of women's beach volleyball (needless to say the US teams are good, so we get plenty coverage!) and we think that Stephen would be well suited to be the guy who brushes the sand off the girls butts when they've finished the match. I'm sure that I would in no way be jealous of him brushing sand off tall, leggy lovelies in tiny outfits!
Boston - The Photos
The old meets the new
Hotel Lobby
Kerry's personal heaven 
Have you seen Boston Legal? This building might be familiar.
Beacon Hill 
Louisburg Square (where Louisa M Allcott lived) 
The view from near John Kerry's house 
We pick up the Freedom Trail 
The State House
As if we didn't remember where we were... 
The original Cheers Bar
Having lunch at the new Cheers Bar
Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall
The Boston skyline from the Common
Trinity Church 
Trinity Church reflecting in the glass of the Hancock building 
The cute ducklings statue 
One of the Swan Boats 
A lovely day for a Guiness? More like a lovely day for the ducks! The weather on Sunday when we got back to the hotel.Monday, 11 August 2008
A weekend in Boston
We left the office about 11am on Friday and jumped in a taxi to the airport. Yus indeedy, the Sparks were on travel again! A weekend in Boston beckoned...
We had the usual minor inconvenience where we went through the self-service check-in option and at the end it told us to see a ticket agent. So we joined the short but very slow moving queue...we finally got to the agent and 30 seconds later were holding boarding cards! Thankfully security was really quiet so there was still time to grab a panini before they called the flight.
We were staying at the Lenox hotel just off Copley Sq in Boston. It was lovely! Turns out it was a Historic Hotel of America. The staff were lovely too! We were whisked in and greeted by umpteen staff on the floor and given a REALLY nice room. We dumped our stuff, grabbed our cameras and headed down to Copley Sq and Trinity Church, then onwards to Boston Public Gardens. The Gardens are lovely, but perhaps not being shown at their best on Friday. It was threatening rain and very dark. It didn't seem to put off the participants in not one, but two, weddings going on about 100 yards apart!! Shortly after passing one wedding I was overtaken by a rather grumpy looking bride who strode past me with a friend in hot pursuit, who was shouting back "I'll let you know if I need you" to someone else in the wedding party. "Oh, oh" I thought, "wedding jitters"! Actually it turned out that she was going to get changed in that most private of spots...under the bridge in the Public Gardens, directly across from the huge queue for the Swan Boats!! I only hope that the friend who was in hot pursuit had a sheet to preserve her modesty.
It wasn't long after this that we decided to seek shelter. Cars were passing us which were very wet indeed, so we wimped and headed back towards Copley Sq in search of a Starbucks to wait it out. Well we searched, and searched...I know we had passed one, but neither of us could remember what street it was on! We ended up going to the Prudential Centre shops (where we found a Starbucks) and wandered round there for a while. It was around 5pm and we decided to go to the lounge bar at the top of the Prudential building for a cocktail and to admire the views across Boston.
We were almost finished the drinks when I noticed that it was finally beginning to rain. Big drops were sploshing across the windows. It was time for another round! The weather really began to close in then. There was lightening lighting up the skies all around us - and we had a panoramic view. Stephen joked that if we lost sight of the John Hancock building (less than a half a mile away) then we were in trouble. A few minutes later it had gone, completely engulfed in clouds.
We couldn't afford to stay for a third round so we headed back down to Mall level in search of umbrellas - which we seem to be amassing in industrial quantities! We always seem to end up buying some when we're away. It just seems so defeatist to pack a brolly somehow! As the eternal optimist I like to believe I'll be bathed in sunshine wherever I go!
We sloshed the 2 blocks back to the hotel, got changed and then headed out for dinner. One of the staff recommended Morton's steakhouse which was mercifully close, as at that moment the heavens really decided to open and it was pouring down! I was wearing fabric ballet pumps and they were soaked within seconds. I had to sit through dinner with sopping wet feet - lovely! Dinner was fantastic though - worth getting soaked for!!
We were up early on Saturday, and after a quick Starbucks (yes, I will be checking myself into the Priory when I return to the UK to deal with my latte addiction) we headed over to the Public Gardens. The weather was better on Saturday - alternating between sunny and overcast - so the Gardens were looking much more verdant. We went in search of the Ducklings statue, and eventually found it, completely submerged in children. As even I'm not cruel enough to throw them all off we didn't bother with trying to get photos and marched on towards the Bull & Finch bar which is just across the road. The outside of the bar is instantly recognisable as the bar from Cheers.
We then spent some time wandering round Beacon Hill - the posh district! It was very nice and reminded me a lot of Old Town Alexandria, and even parts of New Town Edinburgh in that it had little cobbled streets, town houses and delightful tiny front gardens. John Kerry lives in Beacon Hill (we stood outside his house) and Louisa M Allcott lived in Louisville Square until her death. After I dragged Stephen away from admiring the Aston Martin parked in the street we walked to the gold domed State House, then picked up the Freedom Trail which we followed past the historic sights until we got to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. We were growing weary by this time - time for lunch!
We ate in the Cheers Bar which was there solely to cash in on the franchise! The original Bull & Finch Cheers bar is always packed out with people (despite the fact the inside is nothing like the TV show..) and I guess they realised there was a good thing going on! Apart from a few cardboard cut outs of Carla and Diane, this bar was nothing like the series either!! As Cheers is the bar "where everybody knows your name", and as you had to give your name to a waitress to go on the waitlist, I was rather disappointed not to enter to a rousing call of "Kerry" or "Steve" when we walked in! Ah well....
We walked on round the harbour (or rather round the habba) then picked up the Freedom Trail once again out to North End Church before heading back to Quincy Market for another coffee stop before climbing in a cab back to the hotel. We hit the Irish bar for a couple of drinks before heading out for a walk round Back Bay and Newbury Street (posh shopping and nice restaurants). We had dinner in what turned out to be the worst restaurant in Boston! It looked promising - a nice patio, a basket of foccacia which was scrummy, a G&T strong enough to fell an elephant... but they really spoilt it by microwaving the main course. There was no way that they could have cooked the entrees in the 5 minutes that elapsed between us ordering and the food coming out, and sure enough my "homecooked" lasagna was made of rubber. We took a walk further along Newbury St after dinner and passed a couple of really lovely looking restaurants (with patio seating), including an Indian restaurant. D'oh!!!!
The Irish bar beckoned at the end of the evening. At one point in the evening I realised that Stephen obviously needed to have his ears re-excavated when he asked the obviously American sounding barman how long he had been in the US as he thought he was Irish....
Sunday dawned a beautiful day with clear blue skies and sunshine. We headed back down towards the Public Garden and found the duckling statue free of children for a few brief moments...yay! A chance of a photo op....shame the lighting wasn't great. It was actually too sunny and there was a huge contrast between light and shade. The brief seconds between waves of kids didn't allow for more than a few snatched shots. The sunshine did wonders for the Trinity Church though. It transformed when caressed by the golden rays of sunshine. We headed back to the hotel to pack, stopping en-route for Sunday brunch at Stephanies (another lovely restaurant on Newbury St). Stephen wanted bacon and eggs which was the one thing not on the menu so he had to order it as sides...I had to giggle later when it all arrived on separate plates - and he looked surprised!!
We packed, checked out and headed to the airport. Again we had a problem with the self-service check in and were again told to wait in the extremely slow moving line. We noticed that there were a few flight cancellations but put this down to the flights being empty. It wasn't until we got to the gate that we began to realise there was a bigger problem... There was a severe weather system over the Eastern seaboard which was making its way towards Boston. The plane that we were supposed to be getting on hadn't left the ground in Washington, nor was it likely to for some time...they couldn't fly over, around or through the storm. We held on for a few hours whilst they kept pushing the departure time further out. Eventually they told us that there was a strong possibility that no-one would be going anywhere that night and the best thing we could do would be to go away and come back in the morning - which is precisely what we did. Around 30 minutes later we were checking back into the hotel we had left only a few hours before! I had phoned and taken their cheapest room (which wasn't particularly cheap - Boston is eye-wateringly expensive for hotels), and the lovely, lovely girl on the desk upgraded us to a deluxe King room as we poured out our sob story and said how happy we were to be back.
Staying an extra unplanned day meant shopping. We grabbed brollies and sprinted through the bouncing rain to Lord and Taylor next door. Stephen did remarkably well considering that we went in to buy him pants and socks! He came out with a whole raft of polo shirts, shirts and jumpers as well as the pants and socks. The pants were rather misjudged actually. He thought he'd save a few dollars by buying the pack on sale rather than the Calvin Kleins. I realised this was a mistake when I opened the pack back in the room. A HUGE mistake! These were hardly the tighty whities as modelled by David Beckham....These were a HUGE pair of Y-fronts!!! It has taken me most of the day to overcome my hysterical laughter....
I was also laughing hysterically when we left the store as he was rather rough with his brolly and completely broke it! It was still absolutely pouring down and I wasn't sharing, so he had to try and hold the fabric end onto the pole and also hold it outward into a brolly shape....at least that's one less brolly to store carefully in the stockpile.
The great news about the flight delay (in addition to another night in Boston which is a lovely city) was getting to try again for dinner. Of course we headed directly for the Indian restaurant. It was delicious!! Scottish readers will appreciate this - they did pakora and spicy onions...both missing from an English curry experience. It was fantastic!
We had the usual minor inconvenience where we went through the self-service check-in option and at the end it told us to see a ticket agent. So we joined the short but very slow moving queue...we finally got to the agent and 30 seconds later were holding boarding cards! Thankfully security was really quiet so there was still time to grab a panini before they called the flight.
We were staying at the Lenox hotel just off Copley Sq in Boston. It was lovely! Turns out it was a Historic Hotel of America. The staff were lovely too! We were whisked in and greeted by umpteen staff on the floor and given a REALLY nice room. We dumped our stuff, grabbed our cameras and headed down to Copley Sq and Trinity Church, then onwards to Boston Public Gardens. The Gardens are lovely, but perhaps not being shown at their best on Friday. It was threatening rain and very dark. It didn't seem to put off the participants in not one, but two, weddings going on about 100 yards apart!! Shortly after passing one wedding I was overtaken by a rather grumpy looking bride who strode past me with a friend in hot pursuit, who was shouting back "I'll let you know if I need you" to someone else in the wedding party. "Oh, oh" I thought, "wedding jitters"! Actually it turned out that she was going to get changed in that most private of spots...under the bridge in the Public Gardens, directly across from the huge queue for the Swan Boats!! I only hope that the friend who was in hot pursuit had a sheet to preserve her modesty.
It wasn't long after this that we decided to seek shelter. Cars were passing us which were very wet indeed, so we wimped and headed back towards Copley Sq in search of a Starbucks to wait it out. Well we searched, and searched...I know we had passed one, but neither of us could remember what street it was on! We ended up going to the Prudential Centre shops (where we found a Starbucks) and wandered round there for a while. It was around 5pm and we decided to go to the lounge bar at the top of the Prudential building for a cocktail and to admire the views across Boston.
We were almost finished the drinks when I noticed that it was finally beginning to rain. Big drops were sploshing across the windows. It was time for another round! The weather really began to close in then. There was lightening lighting up the skies all around us - and we had a panoramic view. Stephen joked that if we lost sight of the John Hancock building (less than a half a mile away) then we were in trouble. A few minutes later it had gone, completely engulfed in clouds.
We couldn't afford to stay for a third round so we headed back down to Mall level in search of umbrellas - which we seem to be amassing in industrial quantities! We always seem to end up buying some when we're away. It just seems so defeatist to pack a brolly somehow! As the eternal optimist I like to believe I'll be bathed in sunshine wherever I go!
We sloshed the 2 blocks back to the hotel, got changed and then headed out for dinner. One of the staff recommended Morton's steakhouse which was mercifully close, as at that moment the heavens really decided to open and it was pouring down! I was wearing fabric ballet pumps and they were soaked within seconds. I had to sit through dinner with sopping wet feet - lovely! Dinner was fantastic though - worth getting soaked for!!
We were up early on Saturday, and after a quick Starbucks (yes, I will be checking myself into the Priory when I return to the UK to deal with my latte addiction) we headed over to the Public Gardens. The weather was better on Saturday - alternating between sunny and overcast - so the Gardens were looking much more verdant. We went in search of the Ducklings statue, and eventually found it, completely submerged in children. As even I'm not cruel enough to throw them all off we didn't bother with trying to get photos and marched on towards the Bull & Finch bar which is just across the road. The outside of the bar is instantly recognisable as the bar from Cheers.
We then spent some time wandering round Beacon Hill - the posh district! It was very nice and reminded me a lot of Old Town Alexandria, and even parts of New Town Edinburgh in that it had little cobbled streets, town houses and delightful tiny front gardens. John Kerry lives in Beacon Hill (we stood outside his house) and Louisa M Allcott lived in Louisville Square until her death. After I dragged Stephen away from admiring the Aston Martin parked in the street we walked to the gold domed State House, then picked up the Freedom Trail which we followed past the historic sights until we got to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. We were growing weary by this time - time for lunch!
We ate in the Cheers Bar which was there solely to cash in on the franchise! The original Bull & Finch Cheers bar is always packed out with people (despite the fact the inside is nothing like the TV show..) and I guess they realised there was a good thing going on! Apart from a few cardboard cut outs of Carla and Diane, this bar was nothing like the series either!! As Cheers is the bar "where everybody knows your name", and as you had to give your name to a waitress to go on the waitlist, I was rather disappointed not to enter to a rousing call of "Kerry" or "Steve" when we walked in! Ah well....
We walked on round the harbour (or rather round the habba) then picked up the Freedom Trail once again out to North End Church before heading back to Quincy Market for another coffee stop before climbing in a cab back to the hotel. We hit the Irish bar for a couple of drinks before heading out for a walk round Back Bay and Newbury Street (posh shopping and nice restaurants). We had dinner in what turned out to be the worst restaurant in Boston! It looked promising - a nice patio, a basket of foccacia which was scrummy, a G&T strong enough to fell an elephant... but they really spoilt it by microwaving the main course. There was no way that they could have cooked the entrees in the 5 minutes that elapsed between us ordering and the food coming out, and sure enough my "homecooked" lasagna was made of rubber. We took a walk further along Newbury St after dinner and passed a couple of really lovely looking restaurants (with patio seating), including an Indian restaurant. D'oh!!!!
The Irish bar beckoned at the end of the evening. At one point in the evening I realised that Stephen obviously needed to have his ears re-excavated when he asked the obviously American sounding barman how long he had been in the US as he thought he was Irish....
Sunday dawned a beautiful day with clear blue skies and sunshine. We headed back down towards the Public Garden and found the duckling statue free of children for a few brief moments...yay! A chance of a photo op....shame the lighting wasn't great. It was actually too sunny and there was a huge contrast between light and shade. The brief seconds between waves of kids didn't allow for more than a few snatched shots. The sunshine did wonders for the Trinity Church though. It transformed when caressed by the golden rays of sunshine. We headed back to the hotel to pack, stopping en-route for Sunday brunch at Stephanies (another lovely restaurant on Newbury St). Stephen wanted bacon and eggs which was the one thing not on the menu so he had to order it as sides...I had to giggle later when it all arrived on separate plates - and he looked surprised!!
We packed, checked out and headed to the airport. Again we had a problem with the self-service check in and were again told to wait in the extremely slow moving line. We noticed that there were a few flight cancellations but put this down to the flights being empty. It wasn't until we got to the gate that we began to realise there was a bigger problem... There was a severe weather system over the Eastern seaboard which was making its way towards Boston. The plane that we were supposed to be getting on hadn't left the ground in Washington, nor was it likely to for some time...they couldn't fly over, around or through the storm. We held on for a few hours whilst they kept pushing the departure time further out. Eventually they told us that there was a strong possibility that no-one would be going anywhere that night and the best thing we could do would be to go away and come back in the morning - which is precisely what we did. Around 30 minutes later we were checking back into the hotel we had left only a few hours before! I had phoned and taken their cheapest room (which wasn't particularly cheap - Boston is eye-wateringly expensive for hotels), and the lovely, lovely girl on the desk upgraded us to a deluxe King room as we poured out our sob story and said how happy we were to be back.
Staying an extra unplanned day meant shopping. We grabbed brollies and sprinted through the bouncing rain to Lord and Taylor next door. Stephen did remarkably well considering that we went in to buy him pants and socks! He came out with a whole raft of polo shirts, shirts and jumpers as well as the pants and socks. The pants were rather misjudged actually. He thought he'd save a few dollars by buying the pack on sale rather than the Calvin Kleins. I realised this was a mistake when I opened the pack back in the room. A HUGE mistake! These were hardly the tighty whities as modelled by David Beckham....These were a HUGE pair of Y-fronts!!! It has taken me most of the day to overcome my hysterical laughter....
I was also laughing hysterically when we left the store as he was rather rough with his brolly and completely broke it! It was still absolutely pouring down and I wasn't sharing, so he had to try and hold the fabric end onto the pole and also hold it outward into a brolly shape....at least that's one less brolly to store carefully in the stockpile.
The great news about the flight delay (in addition to another night in Boston which is a lovely city) was getting to try again for dinner. Of course we headed directly for the Indian restaurant. It was delicious!! Scottish readers will appreciate this - they did pakora and spicy onions...both missing from an English curry experience. It was fantastic!
Friday, 8 August 2008
Thursday is Daiquiri Day
Random sight of the day. A woman in full George Washington costume (including the hat) sitting in Cafe Manna eating a sandwich at lunchtime. Which means that in the past couple of weeks we've seen two Presidents in Arlington. Not the current one of course, but we're working through them!!
Dawn and I were feeling the need to shake loose a little tonight. And what better way to do that than to make daiquiris? It just so happened that Dawn had a blender in the car...and a bottle of rum (of course, we had in no way had planned this!). After Dawn made a quick trip to Harris Teeter for mango we were good to go. We were in the kitchen just before 5pm whizzing up a blender-full of rather good mango daiquiris. We managed to make quite a mess, and the consistency took a little work - mine was first out and needed a spoon to consume it - but we got it down pretty well in the end! We were pretty quickly joined by a large portion of the office, responding to the siren call of the blender. There was a party going on!
Dawn and I were feeling the need to shake loose a little tonight. And what better way to do that than to make daiquiris? It just so happened that Dawn had a blender in the car...and a bottle of rum (of course, we had in no way had planned this!). After Dawn made a quick trip to Harris Teeter for mango we were good to go. We were in the kitchen just before 5pm whizzing up a blender-full of rather good mango daiquiris. We managed to make quite a mess, and the consistency took a little work - mine was first out and needed a spoon to consume it - but we got it down pretty well in the end! We were pretty quickly joined by a large portion of the office, responding to the siren call of the blender. There was a party going on!
Thursday, 7 August 2008
Little fridge of horrors
Joni and I tackled the icky fridge this afternoon. People aren't very good about removing their uneaten lunches. I found something that had become a "liquid lunch" the other day. You know it can't be good when your sarnie turns into soup!
We went through the collection of sticky jars and wrinkled apples. I found a couple of stonkers - apple juice that was a year old and (this was pretty amazing!) a jar of grape jelly that was best before October 2005!!!! This pre-dates the office build-out and the existence of the fridge it was sitting in, which means that someone took the jar of (at that point) year out of date jam out of the old fridge and put it in the new one where it has sat for a further 2 years!
We were ruthless! We threw it all out. We washed. We wiped. It is a delightful, sweet smelling place now! People need no longer live in fear of opening the door and having some new life form leap out and try and strangle them...
We went through the collection of sticky jars and wrinkled apples. I found a couple of stonkers - apple juice that was a year old and (this was pretty amazing!) a jar of grape jelly that was best before October 2005!!!! This pre-dates the office build-out and the existence of the fridge it was sitting in, which means that someone took the jar of (at that point) year out of date jam out of the old fridge and put it in the new one where it has sat for a further 2 years!
We were ruthless! We threw it all out. We washed. We wiped. It is a delightful, sweet smelling place now! People need no longer live in fear of opening the door and having some new life form leap out and try and strangle them...
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
Peachy!!
I picked up some lovey ripe peaches when I was at the supermarket on Sunday and sat down to enjoy one last night. It was beautifully ripe and very juicy and sweet. Imagine then, me sitting on the sofa, the peach sitting peachily on a plate. I take a bite - no more than a teeny nibble. The peach juice-bomb explodes and I end up with juice all over my face, up my nose, on my glasses, dripping off my elbows....Luckily I had the foresight to take kitchen towel with me so I was able to mop up, but I was a mess! My leason is learned. Eat the next one whilst wearing a bib, sitting in the bath!!
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