Thursday, August 21, 2003
Living in Nottingham gives me relief from one of the horrors of living in New England-watching the Boston Red Sox. It is that time of year to watch my favorite team’s annual slide to hell. You cannot fully understand what it is like to go to work and hear you co-workers moan about blown pitches, limp bats, and leaving runners on bases. One of my co-workers is a spry 72 years young. He has been a season ticket holder for the past 65 years and to hear the litany of sins that has been committed by the management and the team is biblical in proportion. So every night I have been surfing over to the Red Sox web site to see that they are barely holding the wild card spot for post-season play and it is disheartening. I am thinking of getting North American Sports Network (NASN) and praying to God that the Red Sox will win the World Series.
While taking a trip to Dublin, we were waiting for a our flight at airport restaurant, there was one gentlemen who had a set of binoculars, radio scanner and a thick notebook, to which he was writing notes down. I asked him what he was doing and he explained the hobby of plane spotting. He was a storehouse of aviation knowledge of East Midlands Airport and aviation in general. He told us about traveling around the world to collect tail numbers, meeting other plane spotters, and working on the engines of the Concord.
I wished him the best of luck and few over to Dublin.
I wished him the best of luck and few over to Dublin.
Monday, August 18, 2003
I am planning to buy a car in September, so I was cruising the web looking at car. I went over to the Vaxhall site and saw the VX220 Turbo. Oh boy, speed racer material! While drooling over the specs of the car I saw the link for a free test drive. Now I am SPEED RACER! I filled out the form hit the send button and a day later I was told to call the local Vaxhall dealer to arrange a test drive. Maybe if I tell the salesman that I will buy him a pint and lunch, he would let me take a VX220 turbo on the A-6 to Manchester. Wheeee!!
Saturday, August 16, 2003
I may be an old fart in some people’s eyes, but I still like to rock, so I am planning to see the Deftones at Rock City. I can’t wait to hear BBC Radio 1 paly "Elite" or "Hexagram." Maybe the girls from S-club will open!
Friday, August 15, 2003
As an American living in England driving down the M-1 motorway to High Wycombe for work, I could not believe what the BBC was broadcasting on the 8:00 am news this morning. They made the blackout area to resemble Monrovia, Liberia. They say it was “chaos” and “mayhem.” When I got to work I check out a few different news web sites. To me it look live another summer power outage caused by too many air conditioning units on an old grid system. Another fine reason to ignore the BBC.
Thursday, August 14, 2003
This is an excellent article. The rest of the information needed at the end of the article is:
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC 20500
Phone number: (202) 456-2121
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC 20500
Phone number: (202) 456-2121
Another reason I dislike the BBC. Now they are screwing with American security and lives.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Last week we were in Ireland visiting friends and family while celebrating Pumpkin Girl’s second birthday. All had a good time. Pumpkin was thrilled to receive a tea set and legos. Dad is back at work while mum and Pumpkin will be traveling around Ireland and will join them in a two weeks and head over to Kilkenny or Kerry.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
We will traveling to Ireland celebrating Pumpkin Girl’s second birthday with Granny. Might be able to blog on the road, will be back on Monday.
Can you believe that they are bringing an American in to fix a school here in Nottingham? I hope that things work out.
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
What types of drugs is this guy smoking? Did he read his history books? How long did America stay in Germany and Japan after WWII? Korea? All the Americans I know want to do the job right and are willing to stay there to do it. The UN and America differed on why and how to take care of Iraq and the US shouldered main effort, so America will set the policy. Nobody can replace collation forces.
The Times say only America can save the world's economy. Time to buy American stock.
Monday, August 04, 2003
Why I hate those yellow speeding camera boxes. They won’t stop speeders, they finance Orwell’s big brother.
I will be buying a new car during the month of September and I know a bit about some of the cars that are sold here in England. Vauxhall is General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes and all the Korean and Japanese car makers are basically the same in the US, but there are a few that I have never seen before. One is Skoda. I have heard of them because they made tanks during WWII. When I asked an older gentleman about Skoda, he said there was a saying about them: Have a whiskey with a Skoda. They had crap quality when it was a state run company under the communist. Since the Iron Curtain has fallen, Skoda has hired engineers from Volkswagen and improved the quality and styling of the vehicles. The engine is same on from the VW Golf. For the money, Skoda looks like a good deal.
Sunday, August 03, 2003
Pumpkin update- She is turning two next week and we will be at Granny’s in Ireland for her birthday party. It will be a Telebubbies extravaganza! There will be a Telebubbie cake, invites, and balloons. I bet all the little ones there will have a good time.
Also Pumpkin loves trains. Since we saw Thomas, she goes around the house making the “choo-choo” sound and moving her arms like the arms on the side of the steam train that moves the wheels.
Also Mummy is with child! We will be meeting the mid-wife this week. Since we are in England, we will try the NHS. Most of the local residents have good things to say about Queen’s Medical Center or City Hospital in Nottingham. Pumpkin was born at Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston with a HMO plan, so we can compare the two different systems. Mummy went to meet the doctor and her opinion of him, he thought that the US did too many tests and there was no need for bed rest, even if she had a few medical complications. I thought our doctor in the US did an outstanding job to ensure that Mummy and Pumpkin had the best medical care. I hope our new doctor here in England is not cutting corners.
Also Pumpkin loves trains. Since we saw Thomas, she goes around the house making the “choo-choo” sound and moving her arms like the arms on the side of the steam train that moves the wheels.
Also Mummy is with child! We will be meeting the mid-wife this week. Since we are in England, we will try the NHS. Most of the local residents have good things to say about Queen’s Medical Center or City Hospital in Nottingham. Pumpkin was born at Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston with a HMO plan, so we can compare the two different systems. Mummy went to meet the doctor and her opinion of him, he thought that the US did too many tests and there was no need for bed rest, even if she had a few medical complications. I thought our doctor in the US did an outstanding job to ensure that Mummy and Pumpkin had the best medical care. I hope our new doctor here in England is not cutting corners.
Friday, August 01, 2003
It was 73 degrees with sun and rain today. So what should I do? Go SNOWBOARDING! Yep, I was jonesing to ride my board, so I went to the Snowdome in Tamworth. Actually if I wanted to I could have gone swimming, ice skating and snowboarding; it is a big sports complex.
Right now they have two hours for the price of one right now. One hour cost 15 pounds or 24 dollars for the special. It is pretty good set up. When you pay they ask you when you want to start, give you a bar coded card that will let you through a turnstile and then you are on the snow! There is a conveyor belt that will take you to the top of the hill. It has vertical drop of 25 meters and length of 150 meters. One nice thing about is that it is not in a straight line, but curved a bit. Also there is a tow rope that takes you up half way. The snow was of good quality, not new fallen freshies, but on the lower part good old New England cement or ice showed up, I was trying to carve, but my board flew out under me. Oh well, I can’t whine too much. There is a grayish/silver reflective sheet that they bounce lights off to give that cloudy sunrise effect.
When you are done, you got to swipe your card to get pass the turnstile. If you over stay your purchased amount of time, you will pay an extra five pounds per 15 minutes
I started riding my Mistral 174/Bomber trench digger/Raichle hard boot combo for the first hour. A few people asked me if I could go fast on it. After going top to bottom in a few seconds, I anwser that question few runs. Also a few people asked it is hard to ride plates and such a long board. I find riding indoors with limiting space and snow depth to carve is a challenge.
After an hour, I switched to my soft boot set up and I even nailed a fakie 180. Oh I am so rad! It was fun ride up the side of the wall of the snow dome. There was a small sheet metal transition to the foam padded walls to ride off. The staff was cool and Chris at the hire table gave me the inside scoop on Jam or Jib night on Fridays. He said it was mad and they have a rig to set up a quarter pipe. It seems that jibbing is the big thing in England. I swore off jibbing after f$##@#ing up my knee many years ago. I might fall off the wagon and become a jibaholic again.
The only thing that sucked was the ride home on the M-1 motorway.
Right now they have two hours for the price of one right now. One hour cost 15 pounds or 24 dollars for the special. It is pretty good set up. When you pay they ask you when you want to start, give you a bar coded card that will let you through a turnstile and then you are on the snow! There is a conveyor belt that will take you to the top of the hill. It has vertical drop of 25 meters and length of 150 meters. One nice thing about is that it is not in a straight line, but curved a bit. Also there is a tow rope that takes you up half way. The snow was of good quality, not new fallen freshies, but on the lower part good old New England cement or ice showed up, I was trying to carve, but my board flew out under me. Oh well, I can’t whine too much. There is a grayish/silver reflective sheet that they bounce lights off to give that cloudy sunrise effect.
When you are done, you got to swipe your card to get pass the turnstile. If you over stay your purchased amount of time, you will pay an extra five pounds per 15 minutes
I started riding my Mistral 174/Bomber trench digger/Raichle hard boot combo for the first hour. A few people asked me if I could go fast on it. After going top to bottom in a few seconds, I anwser that question few runs. Also a few people asked it is hard to ride plates and such a long board. I find riding indoors with limiting space and snow depth to carve is a challenge.
After an hour, I switched to my soft boot set up and I even nailed a fakie 180. Oh I am so rad! It was fun ride up the side of the wall of the snow dome. There was a small sheet metal transition to the foam padded walls to ride off. The staff was cool and Chris at the hire table gave me the inside scoop on Jam or Jib night on Fridays. He said it was mad and they have a rig to set up a quarter pipe. It seems that jibbing is the big thing in England. I swore off jibbing after f$##@#ing up my knee many years ago. I might fall off the wagon and become a jibaholic again.
The only thing that sucked was the ride home on the M-1 motorway.
