Thursday we drove down to Longwood Gardens where we met up with a few friends of mine. Actually, we started out by going to pick up a rental car at the airport which turned out to be much more difficult than we though. It turns out that we had booked the car with an international company and could only have an international driver as the primary driver (ie I could not be the primary driver). Fortunately, Kim has a drivers license from the UK and even more fortunately I was allowed to be an additional driver. Since I'm the only one who can actually drive we (or at least I) were quite relieved to discover this. We had to call the car rental company that we originally booked with so that they could send a new reservation in Kim's name and either the man on the phone or the woman at the desk were not quite sure what they where doing because we stood their for nearly half an hour waiting for the fax to come through before we finally got it sent via email. Once we fgot the car we had a smooth trip down to the gardens and we were able to find my friends in the Children's Garden which was full of fountains and by the time we got there several wet children as well.

After the park we had a quiet, romantic, child free dinner at a fondue restaurant which was fun and relaxing and right across the parking lot from the hotel so we didn't even have to drive.

Friday we woke up bright and cheerful in the morning and went to the mall for a few hours before setting off for NY. Kim tried on most of the men's jackets in the mall and finally picked one after much discussion of inside and outside pockets and their proper opening direction and closure mechanisms. (Inside pockets are required and should have the opening at the top whereas side pockets should open on the side and be comfortable for putting your hands in, either for comfort or to improve the line if you silhouette, I'm not sure which. Neither requires zippers.)

Before I continue on with my story I think it is important to point out that tolls in the US are getting out of control. Especially the bridges.

After shopping we headed up to a wedding at the Frost Valley YMCA in the Catskills. That trip was also smooth although slightly wet. We did make one or two wrong turns but we didn't go too far out of our way. Next time we travel via car I will buy a map and not just rely on google for directions; the $20 you spend on a map only seems wasted until the google instructions are wrong :)

We traveled to NYC on a Virgin flight from Heathrow to JFK which was uneventful and surprisingly comfortable despite being packed with small children. Kim and I had two seats next to the window to ourselves with even a bit of space next to the window for stashing stuff. We took a cab from the airport to the city to avoid dealing with all our luggage on the subway and although the cab driver seemed to prefer straddling lanes or driving on the shoulder to actually driving in a single lane we arrived unscathed. Wednesday we met up with some friends for breakfast (proper American pancakes - yum!) and then strolled through Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It was rather warm there so between admiring the flora we had a few quick showers in some of the sprinklers scattered about near the entrance.

We also made a quick stop for a few pints at a lovely little bar (although I have no idea where we were and thus could probably never find it again) and then hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge. Actually we ended up under the bridge at the water which was picturesque but then we had to hike back up a looong hill to find a place where we could actually get on the bridge.

We also had steak at a restaurant in Manhattan that Kim has been raving about since he ate there 5 years ago but sadly it wasn't quite as good as he remembered.

Kim and I spent most of the week relaxing, reading our books, laying in bed chatting, killing French people (on my computer), knitting, eating, and of course drinking. I took several knitting projects with me and although I made good progress on the cable and wine sweater and the cold mountain stole I didn't actually finish any projects. We did have a Big Lebowski party one evening although I failed to take any photos of Kim and I in our bowling shirts (fortunately someone else took a few so you can see how fantastic we looked).

We also had a mask party where Kim made a robot mask and I made a mask that was in the style of those masks with all the little feathers but which was actually made out of colored card.

We spent most of our days relaxing in the reading room which felt very castly with plush red couches, windows looking out onto the loch, and a fire place. The weather was mostly wet although warm so as not to be completely miserable. It was nice to listen to the rain outside during the day and to be able to have fires in the evening.

Our room was on the top floor of the castle, up a twisting, narrow stairway to a bathroom and bedroom complete with furry carpet and a 4 poster bed.

Several of Kim's friends, Kim, and I went to Scotland for a week to stay in Craigrownie Castle. We got there by train and mostly our trip was uneventful. We took a Virgin train from Euston to Glasgow and although it did not have enough room for luggage we were fairly comfortable and we even had a table so that some of us could play games while traveling. I didn't participate in the card games but instead opted for a game of Civ IV on my laptop - nothing beats killing the French for starting a vacation off right. When we got to Glasgow we needed to switch trains to a local station closer to the castle and we stood staring blankly at the departure board for several minutes before Tiff finally went to ask someone where out train was. Good thing she asked because it turns out the local train didn't even leave from Glasgow Central but instead departed from another station several blocks away. We started out rushing for the train we'd been originally scheduled for but it soon became clear that a 7 minute layover was ridiculous given the required trek across town and we eventually caught a later train. Here are some photos of the castle. It was built not as a military fortification but as the home of a wealthy man in 1852. It is currently split into several parts, we had our run of the top three floors.

Directly across from the castle is Loch Long which was rather large. Kim and I tried to look up the difference between a lock and a lake but after getting tangled up on the wikipedia website with a zillion intertwined terms like lake, estuary, loch, fjord, sound, bay, etc that use each other in their definitions in such a way as to prevent you from ever getting a precise definition for any of them we eventually gave up.

There was ferry from near the castle to the other shore which Kim and I considered taking but we never got around to it. We did however drink a can of red bull and eat some British candy which had different names from the candy that I used to eat as a kid but contained the same soury powdered sugar stuff we had in those dip packet things and the same cheep, sweet chocolate that comes in a Hershey's bar.

I missed lunch today and I worked late and when I finally left having accomplished not as much as I'd hoped I was tired and hungry and when I saw a bus that looked like the 21 I started running. I made it just in time and I was quite pleased with myself as I stepped on and sat down to read my book. I don't usually take the bus but since I was leaving so late and since Kim doesn't get home until late on Tuesdays anyway I felt I deserved it. You may have asked yourself "how exactly does a bus 'look' like the 21?" Well, it is red and double decker and has a number shaped like 21, 76 for example. I was reading my book and enjoying the un-crowdedness of the bus when suddenly we went around a sharp corner. There are no sharp corners between work and home. Unless you go via waterloo. On the 76. By the time I realized what had gone wrong there wasn't much I could do but get off and walk an even further distance than if I had just walked from work, which of course I wasn't about to do. So, I stayed on the bus and conveniently enough got off near my local yarn shop which happens to be open late on Tuesdays. I interrupted a scary book club but fortunately I got there just as it was breaking up and I only had to listen to a few minutes of some woman describing how she hates weddings so much that she broke up with her fianc? because they couldn't agree on which weddings to go to, including possibly their own. Then I managed to hop on a bus actually going the correct direction and when I got home I was feeling so pleased with myself that I accidentally gave away my iron. Well not accidentally really, but a child from next door knocked on the door and without really thinking I answered and I couldn't really deny having an iron (given how fabulously well dressed and wrinkle free I am) so I let her "borrow" it. We'll see how that turns out.

Roger & Me is a documentary by Michael Moore (who has become famous more recently for his documentaries Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11). Roger & Me is about the city of Flint Michigan after GM closed several of its plants in there. I was surprised at how watchable this film was and although Mr Moore was perhaps a bit overly keen on trying to get Roger Smith (the CEO of GM at the time) to come on camera to defend his choice to close the plants, I thought he did a good job of putting a human face on a situation that is often only depicted as a series of statistics and large numbers. I don't really know how much loyalty a company should be required to have towards its employees but given the current discussions of moving the US a bit more in the socialist direction with public health care for everyone it does seem like a good time to discuss how much loyalty we as a society should have to our workers. GM might not be able to stay afloat paying significantly higher costs building cars in the US compared to its competitors, especially when its most profitable models are gas guzzlers but there are a few steps between moving plants to Mexico and people being evicted from their homes on Christmas eve that we could perhaps do something about.

Of course when Kim and I were watching this a few days ago I was not feeling nearly so compassionate, and if any of those homeless people got in my way when I was trying to walk to work I would probably be more inclined to kick them than to vote for higher taxes to pay for unemployment relief but what can I say? Anything, I like actually since this is my blog and I say if you're looking for a movie to prompt some good conversation and perhaps a few arguments than watch Roger & Me.

I've been working on spinning this stuff for a while now and I've finally gotten through one whole bag. I started with two full bags so you know what that means: one more bag to go. I've been trying to spin it quite fine so I'm thinking of three plying it but we'll see how it looks when I finally get it all spun. I'm really hoping to have enough to make a proper jumper when I'm done.