Almost American

World citizen

2012-01-26T20:30:00.000-05:00

My children have two passports - British and American. DD is quite impressed with that and feels very special because of it. Recently, she made friends with someone who has more passports than her. Her friend has three passports! American and two different European passports. DD is jealous. She now wants a third passport, and has decided that she would like a Chinese one.

The cost of BBC America

2012-01-10T21:29:00.000-05:00

Years ago, when the kids were very little, I was trying to cut down on our expenses and I decided that one bill we could easily slash was for the cable TV. I called and canceled all but the most basic of cable service, which brought our bill down to something like $5/month. Years later when we finally decided to go with cable internet access instead of dial-up, the sales rep tried to talk me into a more expensive TV package. I said I really wasn't interested in paying so much more for so many channels I had no interest in watching when the only channels we didn't have that I knew we were interested in watching were the History Channel and BBC America. I was glad I'd mentioned the specific stations I was interested in as the rep immediately informed me that we didn't need to spend much more money to get a package that would include BBC America. The deal she offered was quite reasonable and that's the package we've had ever since.

A couple of years ago we got a message from the cable company that the package we subscribe to was no longer being offered, but we were 'grandfathered' in. In other words, we can keep the package we've got so long as we don't make any changes to it. Unfortunately, they didn't guarantee that they wouldn't make any changes from their end! Last month we got a letter informing us that BBC America would be being moved from the 'Digital Preferred' level of service to 'Digital Starter'. Of course I have no idea what channels are included with which packages so I had to look it up.

The way the packages are listed, it looks as though they are listed in order of expense:

Limited Basic (that's the super cheap package we had for years - it's still only $7.28/month for 30 channels, though you won't find it listed on the cable company's website of course!)
Expanded Basic (48 channels)
Digital Economy (35 channels)
Digital Starter (64 channels)
Digital Preferred (90 channels)
Digital Premium (46 channels - HBO, Starz, Cinema and the like)

So we have Limited Basic+Digital Preferred and I'm thinking having fewer channels doesn't bother me because we mostly just watch PBS and BBC America anyway. Limited Basic+Digital Starter will obviously be cheaper, and we'll still get BBC America. But of course (and I know you're way ahead of me here) - it doesn't work out like that. To get Digital Starter (the only package that includes BBCAmerica) you not only have to get Limited Basic but Expanded Basic too.

On looking closely at the list, I discovered that the Expanded Basic channels are, for the most part, the same ones you get with Digital Starter except they are not digital. So Expanded Basic+Digital Starter is not 48+64, but more like 7+64. To switch from the package we have to the one that has BBC America will mean going from 120 channels (124 of which I rarely if ever watch) to 101 channels (96 of which I will rarely if ever watch). I will lose Nat. Geo., BBCWorld, and a couple of other channels I like to watch occasionally, but I'll gain some other channels that don't currently have that I'm sure will prove entertaining from time to time. So why I am still wittering on about this as though it's a huge issue? It's because the only change that the cable company has made that has even made me think about changing my subscription is to move BBC America to another tier. Had they moved almost any other channel I couldn't have cared less. And if there was no change in cost, or even a savings, I wouldn't be wittering, but there is a change in cost.

My current bill (including internet service) is just over $75/month. I know plenty of people who choose to pay more, but I don't. If I switch packages just to keep BBC America my monthly subscription will change to $120. That's a HUGE percentage increase. Is Graham Norton really worth $45/month?

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T11:52:00.000-05:00

No snow on the ground here, but there were just a few flakes in the air this morning - very pretty. The temperature is perfect for using the 'fridge' in the basement. In the summertime it would be nice to have a real fridge down there, but at this time of year the hatchway stairs work just fine!

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T12:31:00.000-05:00

In the words of one of my friends:

It's just such a great holiday. It really is. It's four days long, you have enough time for family and friends. There is a huge meal, some drinking, some laughing, time with the kids, time without the kids, football, thoughtfulness, thankfulness, but not too serious. It's just such a great holiday.

Well, no football here, but I agree with the rest of it!

Toast!

2011-11-16T20:17:00.001-05:00

Toast seems to be more popular in the UK than here in the US. I remember Saturday lunches when I was growing up, or any lunches when I was at uni., would often be something on toast. Baked beans on toast. Poached egg on toast. Sardines on toast. Cheese on toast. This song about toast even did quite well in the charts!

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;My DH&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

My DH turns his nose up at 'something on toast' as a meal, as do the children. It was a nice quick, and cheap lunch and I still enjoy it from time to time - though usually when I'm on my own!

Still, I was never so cheap as to make a toast sandwich - something Mrs Beeton apparently included in her famous cookbook! I'm not quite sure why the Royal Society of Chemistry decided to revive the toast sandwich and tout it as the UK's cheapest meal. A slice of toast between two slices of bread - never mind if it's cheap, it hardly sounds nutritious, does it? If I'm going to have an unhealthy meal of carbs with my carbs, a chip butty or a crisp sarnie (or maybe even a conny onny sarnie) would be much more to my taste!

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;(SOccer anthem &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>
(Sheffield United anthem - "You fill up my senses like . . . a greasy chip butty")

Halloween Take 2

2011-11-05T17:10:00.000-04:00

I can't imagine Guy Fawkes' night being postponed. The whole point is that it's on the 5th of November. The same with the 4th of July - the whole point is the date. But Halloween - apparently that can easily be rescheduled to a more convenient date.

We had a grand total of 3 trick-or-treaters last Monday after the snow storm. Our neighborhood was dark, but there were no power lines down as where we live they are actually all underground. We thought it might be fun to go trick-or-treating when it was so dark outside! However, it seemed that most people in our neighborhood had fled to places that still had heat and light and trick-or-treating was delayed townwide to November 5th. So here we are ready for Halloween all over again. After all, there is SOME candy left from last week - I haven't eaten it all yet (only the good stuff) and I might as well give the last of it away (as it's all the candies I don't like anyway) ;-) Note to self: next year only buy candy you DON'T like!!

The Halloween snowmen have all melted, but the pumpkins and other decorations are still looking good.

Snowstorm shopping

2011-11-01T09:26:00.000-04:00

I still haven't figured out why every time there's a big snowstorm, this happens in the supermarket:

We joke about all the people who are going to make French toast because bread, milk and eggs seem to sell well before a storm, but chips and salsa?

Oh, and for Mother Hen, who has never seen a pumpkin covered in snow, here's a snowman with a pumpkin for a head!

Happy snow-olleen!

2011-10-31T22:27:00.001-04:00

WOW - they really weren't kidding when they predicted widespread power outages! We got about 12 inches of heavy wet snow. The branches in the first photo aren't usually that low - they were weighed down by the snow. (Everything below the word Trick would normally not be there!)

Note the tree that's lying down on the left in the photo above - here it is again a few hours later:

We got off pretty lightly. The power was only out for 49 hours - there are thousands of homes that still don't have their power back yet - and the temperature in the house only dipped to 52˚F. We have city water rather than a well, so we did not lose our water too. We have a camping stove so we had hot food and drink. We have a chainsaw, so we did not have to wait for the city to come and remove the trees that had fallen and blocked the end of our road. About the only thing we don't have that would have been nice is smartphones. The reporting on the radio was useless in terms of letting us know what the situation was in the wider world and some internet access would have been nice!

I spent most of Sunday hand sewing DS's Halloween costume that I had been planning on finishing on the sewing machine. Then tonight we found out that trick-or-treating is postponed until next Saturday! In many neighborhoods it would not have been safe to go out trick-or-treating tonight because there are still downed powerlines. Even where there aren't, there are tree branches down all over the place. Most people seem to have cleared their driveways, but not necessarily the sidewalk.

It certainly has been a memorable Halloween!

Happy Snow-tober

2011-10-29T18:00:00.000-04:00

Never mind a White Christmas - we're having a White Halloween this year! We're used to snow in the northeastern USA, but not this much this early!

With so many leaves still on the trees, this heavy wet snow is going to bring a lot of trees and therefore power lines down. At least it's the weekend, so we don't have to use a school 'snow day' so early in the year!

Score one for the US medical system

2011-10-15T17:16:00.001-04:00

UK expats often have a lot to say about the differences between the National Health Service and the lack of a national health service here in the US. Although there are many criticisms to make of the NHS, at least you know you won't go bankrupt in the UK because you need medical treatment. I'm lucky in that my husband's employers are Europeans and they have made it a priority to make sure their employees have decent health insurance.

I discovered recently that the American system has a small advantage over the NHS, that I have never heard anyone mention before. It is the idea that a patient's medical records belong to the patient and that the patient is entitled to copies of them. I've had a couple of MRIs done recently (actually four) and the staff at the MRI center are quite happy to give me a copy of the MRI CD as soon as the notes regarding the findings have been transcribed - so I can actually know what was found (or not) BEFORE my appointment with my doctor to discuss the results. My sister commented in a recent email to me "in the UK doctors are really secretive about results of tests - they seem to think that a little knowledge can be very dangerous."

I recently asked for a referral to a specialist, and he asked for copies of my records from the other doctors I had already seen, including my opthalmologist, to be faxed or fedexed to him before he would even make an appointmnt with me. I assumed the other doctors would send the notes directly to the specialist, but in almost every case their office staff told me I could pick the records up myself. One of the doctors I've seen recently said that he always writes his patient notes with the expectation that at some point the patient will see them. One specialist sent me a copy of the report that he sent to my primary care physician/GP without me even asking for it. Another dictated the notes before I left the room "so you'll know what I'm telling your primary care doc. and you have a chance to correct me if I make a mistake."

It was interesting to see what gets included in the reports.There were entertaining comments such as:

"Denies recent illness. Denies sore throat, cough or nasal congestion."
"well developed and nourished; appropriately groomed; in no apparent distress."
"Communicates appropriately for age"

Then there's all the detail about my health of course, most of it understandable, but I did have to look some words up: apparently I have no diploplia, dysdiadochokinesia, ataxia or dysmetria - and that's a good thing! If it sounds like I've had a lot of doctor's appointments recently, yes, I have and there are more to come. Despite the way it may sound, I do not have a life-threatening condition and am not even feeling ill. I do have an immense gratitude to my husband's employer for not going with a high deductible health insurance plan, and I have a cool new photo I can use for my Facebook profile for Halloween!

Mixed Britannia

2011-10-02T20:20:00.000-04:00

I had never heard of this before - British subjects, living in Britain, required to give up their nationality simply because they married a foreigner. Nor did I know that in the 1940s, the children born to white women and black GIs stationed in Britain were described as "war casualties" in the UK and, in America, one congressman called them "the offspring of the scum of the British Isles". There's a series about Britain's mixed-race communities going to be broadcast on BBC2 starting on Thursday 6 October that I'd watch if I could, but iPlayer won't work here in the US :-( There's a clip from it here and an article from the presenter of the series here.

Britain vs the rest of the world

2011-09-27T21:44:00.000-04:00

My DH forwarded this image to me recently. I think he remembered me telling him about NFAH's comments on the topic!

What time is lunch?

2011-09-01T19:59:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to remember what time lunch (dinner) was served when I was in school. I'm pretty sure it was 12 noon. My secondary school had 4 different dining rooms, so there were no separate sittings - everyone had the same lunch period/dinner time, though sometimes it did feel as though we spent much of it queuing! I'm pretty sure we had at least an hour for lunch too, maybe a little longer. Some kids went home to eat, and others to the local chippy. When I was in 6th form we persuaded one of the PE teachers to give up some of his lunch break one day a week to open the swimming pool for us. We must have had at least 20 minutes in the pool to make it worthwhile.

School lunch hours over here are much shorter - certainly nowhere near an hour. Both my kids complain that they don't have enough time to eat all their lunch, though I know part of that is because they spend too much time talking! Still, I was shocked to look at DD's schedule today and realize that her lunch hour is only 24 minutes long. Not only that, but she has 'first lunch' - which starts at 10:48 a.m. Not even time for elevenses and she's having lunch?!

They put WHAT in the chocolate chip cookies?

2011-07-30T15:05:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the local asparagus ice cream.This week I had another interesting culinary experience. Chocolate chip cookies laced with . . . no, nothing illegal, but definitely strange. Take a look at the photo below and see if you can figure out what it is. I'm still trying to think why anyone ever thought this was a good idea. They weren't bad, but I don't think I'd order them again. Looking online, I was surprised to find quite a few recipes for chocolate chip cookies that include this extra ingredient.

Not an English garden

2011-07-09T11:25:00.001-04:00

DH just got home from the local Farmers' Market. The kind, sweet, man that he is, he brought me a couple of gifts. Well, they are to share really, but I will still think of them as gifts. The first was a bottle of wine from our local winery, which just this year has got permission to sell at the Farmers' Market. The second was a beautiful plant for the garden.

How pretty!

What's that you say?
It looks like a weed? It's a thistle?
Well, yes, it is a thistle.

DH is hoping that the deer will find it inedible. I'm thinking I may have to change my policy on weeds in the garden. If it grows well and flowers and the deer don't eat it, it's not a weed! I wonder if we can find some purple thistles too?

Righteous mold month

2011-07-06T07:53:00.000-04:00

I get more spam comments than real ones at this blog. That's OK - Blogger filters them out very effectively and it takes no time to hit the delete button. Some of them are quite entertaining though because the English is so bad. I'm not sure if they are the result of someone using machine translation or not using a bi-lingual dictionary very well. Either way, they are very funny. They still don't get me to click on the link though!

"Righteous mold month I was stuck in a jammed elevator and boy was I tickled pink to beget my trusty LED flashlight so I didn't bleed for so scared."

Personalized license plates

2011-07-05T21:36:00.000-04:00

Personalized license plates are more of a big deal here in the USA than in the UK I think. Years ago, when I was in grad school, I had a Turkish friend who had the license plate "NAME". Everyone thought it was very funny - him included. He had chosen that word for his license plate because that was his wife's name. Yes, her name was Name - pronounced Nah-may.

I sometimes wonder what people are thinking when they choose a vanity plate though. There's one I used to see regularly that reads "AIRHED". I suppose maybe she is, if she chooses to advertise it that way! On the other hand, if this one wasn't already taken, I might actually consider it given that DD says I'm the meanest mom in the world because I asked her to tidy her room:

(Source: Great Vanity License Plates.)

This morning DH saw a personalized plate that you would never see in the UK though. At least I hope not. He wasn't quick enough with his camera to get a photo of it: "SHAG 1"

John and Björn

2011-06-28T15:25:00.000-04:00

Advertising seems to be getting more and more subtle. Can you guess what this ad is for?

Memorial Day attire

2011-05-30T17:56:00.000-04:00

Long weekend

2011-05-30T08:10:00.000-04:00

Long weekend = trip to IKEA + lots of gardening. Good thing we have a large(ish) vehicle. Most of our neighbors have their mulch delivered in bulk, but we discovered it was cheaper to buy it bagged.

The kids are watching the Memorial Day parade in NYC on TV. We'll head off to see the local parade later and then on to a BBQ with friends.

Rain, more rain, and . . .

2011-05-20T20:27:00.001-04:00

People have been whining here about how it's been raining all week. The lawn has grown several inches longer than DH likes it to get, but it hasn't been dry enough to mow. The weeds have been sprouting like crazy, and the rabbits haven't been eating fast enough. (Well, except for the pansies DD planted - unfortunately, they've been rather enjoying those!) So when I got home this evening, and not only had the rain stopped but the sun was out, I decided I'd take advantage of the break in the rain and get some weeding done while DH mowed the lawn. I didn't get as much done as I'd planned though. Not only have the lawn and the weeds been growing, but the mosquitoes have been growing too, and it wasn't long before I decided I'd given quite enough blood for tonight thank you very much and I scurried back indoors.

I decided to check the weather forecast for the rest of the weekend, and now I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, there'll be no point in finishing the weeding. But then again, you know how inaccurate weather forecasts can be! :-D

Barely British

2011-05-14T10:03:00.001-04:00

I failed - but I'm in good company as the American Girl in England's English friends and family who took the test failed too. I think the American citizenship test was easier. (Though some of my Massachusetts friends answered "A boat in the harbor" in response to the question "What is the Constitution?"!) Although people joke about the tests and how silly they are, I do think it's good that people are required to make some effort to know something about the country whose nationality they want to adopt.

Try the (official!) practice UK citizenship test for yourself.

Where have I gone?

2011-05-04T21:41:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not away on some exciting vacation . . . Just very busy with work and family, and not inspired to blog. No, not even about the Royal Wedding although it was such an obvious topic - everyone else seems to have covered it very thoroughly.

A seasonal thing?

2011-04-19T08:10:00.000-04:00

In the last week I've had almost 300 people land here from their Google search. Over 25% of them were looking for information about "black wasps." Usually the most 'popular' searches have something to do with driver's licenses or smarties vs. m&ms. It must have something to do with it being spring here in the northern hemisphere! And it is finally spring here - we saw a wild rabbit in the backyard yesterday (running form a neighborhood dog!) The trees are beginning to show signs of green and there are some flowers out. I haven't seen any black wasps yet though.

Science fairs

2011-03-14T21:53:00.003-04:00

We didn't do science fairs at school when I was growing up in the UK. I think they're a cool idea - though the quality of the projects can be extremely variable. I would have been incredibly stressed if I'd had to do one, thinking that I had to come up with something original. Nowadays there are books and, of course, websites where you can get all kinds of ideas for your project. It seems rather like cheating to me to start by Googling "Science Fair project ideas", but having seen some of the same experiments year after year ("A comparison of the relative strengths of different brands of paper towels") I would guess science teachers and science fair judges welcome anything that seems a little more interesting.

Of course, there are also the kids whose parents do the entire project for them. I remember one that involved hamsters, light sensors, and a computer program that tracked which side of the cage the hamsters spent most of their time. At least the kid was honest enough to tell us that he didn't really understand how it worked because his dad had put it together! I'm sure a kid following the directions for a published science fair project would have learned more!

Google has now taken the science fair one step further and has set up a global science fair "looking for the brightest, best young scientists from around the world to submit interesting, creative projects that are relevant to the world today." The submissions must be in the form of a 2 minute video or 20 slide presentation and include the following elements:

About me/the Team: Initial introduction to the Entrant/Team and explanation of what winning would mean to them.
Project question: The scientific question about their hypothesis.
Hypothesis: Leading on from the question.
Research and Works cited: The research conducted to help them shape their question and hypothesis and to put their work into a relevant, real-world context.
Experiment: Demonstration, using good experimental techniques, including a detailed description of the experiment.
Data: Collected during the experiment to support a conclusion, recorded accurately and precisely, and presented clearly.
Observations: Description of the patterns or trends supported by the data.
Conclusion: An explanation of how the experiment answers the question or why it fails to do so and whether or not it supports the hypothesis.
Bibliography, References and Acknowledgements: References for sources of information that they have consulted and/or referenced and acknowledge any assistance received

Wow! That's a lot to pack into 2 minutes! I do wonder how they are going to figure out which projects were really put together by the parents? There are some pretty cool prizes, like a trip to the Galapagos - my kids are too young, otherwise I might be tempted to push them to put an entry together ;-) If you're interested, you'd better get cracking as the application deadline is April 4th!

Helping in a practical way

2011-03-14T20:01:00.000-04:00

The whole world has been shocked by the devastation wreaked by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. A little girl I know has decided she wants to help in a practical way.

Can you help too?

ShelterBox's HQ is in Cornwall in the UK. There are 18 international affiliates. Each box that they send out supplies an extended family of up to 10 people with a tent and lifesaving equipment to use while they are displaced or homeless.

It's a small world

2011-03-06T21:49:00.000-05:00

I live in a small New England town - the kind of place where you have to be careful what you say about anyone because there are days when it seems like everyone knows everyone else. All kinds of people that you wouldn't think would know each other, do. They went to school together, or they are related by marriage, or they work(ed) together. It's actually one of the reasons I like living here. I wouldn't want to live in a city where, I'm told, people often don't even know who their neighbors are.

The world can be small like this New England town too. I was once working at a school where we had an exchange teacher from Europe for a year. She had a friend from the UK come to visit, and somehow we figured out that the friend had been my parents' neighbor 30 years earlier when they were working in Turkey and I was a baby!

Last week, Danielle of brit abroad in USA and I figured out that not only did we grow up in the same corner of the UK, but in the same town and a few houses apart on the same street! Given the efforts most bloggers make to preserve their anonymity, it's really pretty amazing that our conversation got that far. Once we had made that connection, I am sure Danielle suddenly worried if I knew her older sister who has been so unpleasant to her. Fortunately, I don't - in fact, given that Danielle is younger than me, and her sister is older, I didn't know either of them when we lived on the same street.

It's a good lesson in how, although we may try to hide behind a blog name, in the end we are not as anonymous as we would like to think. We give things away about ourselves with every post. Some bloggers, in addition to using a pen name and being careful about what they say, choose not to make their email address public or use a special email address for their blog. DO NOT assume that your 'real' email address will stay private though. If you have associated it with your blog by having copies of comments sent to it rather than the one on your blog, you run the risk of having that email address exposed. I am assuming that if you have created an email address to go with your blog (as I have) then that's the one you would prefer the world of strangers out there to know.

In the last week, pretty much all the Blogger blogs I have posted on have 'bounced' my comments back to me. I say 'bounced' because that's the email message I got, even though my comment appeared just fine on the blog. I've been getting messages from blogger.bounces.google.com with the subject line Delivery Status Notification (Failure), and the message

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

followed by the email address. In many cases, that address is NOT the email address that is posted publicly on the blogger's website, but one that is clearly a more personal one. (i.e. 'Smithfamily@isp.com' or 'yourname@placeofemployment.com' instead of 'bloggername@yahoo.com') So, if you want to keep that more personal email address private, don't have comments forwarded to it! Otherwise you may find the world becoming smaller than you would like as people figure out more about you than you had intended!

On the buses

2011-02-27T20:01:00.000-05:00

I entered a giveaway on the Pond Parleys website at the beginning of the month for a set of pictures from Miniature Picture Cards and was delighted when I actually won! That's the third prize I've won online in the last six months out of five contests I've entered. If only I had that kind of success rate in buying lottery tickets!

The Miniature Picture Cards site is based in the US, but owned by an expat Brit, Roger Penycate who brought his business trading in miniature pictures and reproductions with him when he immigrated to the US in 2002. Roger has large collection of cards portraying many different subjects, not all British. I said that if I won I would like a set of pictures of British buses. One of my grandfathers was a tram driver, and then a bus driver when the trams were replaced by buses, so although there are no Birkenhead Corporation buses in the selection Roger sent me, the set is still meaningful to me.

It's spring somewhere

2011-02-21T16:12:00.000-05:00

That white stuff outside the window? 18" of snow and ice :-( Thank you Trader Joe's - $3 was cheap for a little bit of spring!

Images of winter

2011-02-20T19:52:00.000-05:00

Stop the snow! This is the end of our street. There's a road under there somewhere! (More snow forecast for Feb 21st - at least it's a holiday anyway, so we don't have to have a 'snow day' from school!)

Waiting for the bus. Climbing the snow pile is a necessity so the school bus driver knows you are there and doesn't drive on by . . .

My neighbor is not going gray. She walked her son to the school bus stop with damp hair and her hair froze!

A sign of spring on its way - signups for Little League baseball have started! Summer camps are advertising too.

Got summer?

Shoveling snow off a school roof - why they put up so many buildings with flat roofs in the northeast of the US is beyond me!

Ice sculpture downtown

What else can I tell you about Britain?

2011-02-15T20:28:00.001-05:00

Every year thousands of American students spend some time studying in the UK. Most are participating in exchange programs, but a select few are participating in elite programs such as the Rhodes Scholars program or the Marshall scholarships.

Dominick Chilcott, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy, Washington said to Marshall scholars leaving the USA last fall to study in the UK:

“What else can I tell you about Britain? There is beautiful countryside to explore and places of historical interest on every corner. Even our food is winning plaudits these days. In comparison to the United States, we have (pretty) efficient public transport, and you won’t have to worry about health care. I am confident that if you can navigate the classic British characteristics of self-deprecation, ironic understatement, and traditional reserve you will form some lifelong friendships. And if you like soccer, public sector broadcasting, damp weather and warm beer, there really is nowhere better to be.”

Loooking at my blog stats . . .

2011-02-14T19:59:00.001-05:00

. . . I noticed this entry for last night:

Maybe someone at the Department of Homeland Security was just bored at work on a Sunday evening? No returning visits (yet!) and they didn't stop around for long!

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-13T18:46:00.000-05:00

Ice sculpture downtown this weekend

Not everyone in the world celebrates St Valentine's Day, although Hallmark is working hard at changing that. Despite the word Saint in its name, it's yet another holiday with pagan origins. I had heard the story of a man called Valentine who was put to death in Roman times, but didn't know some of the other details. Women lining up so that men can hit them, believing that would make them fertile?? I'll take the Hallmark version of the holiday, thank you very much!

Such a thoughtful child!

2011-02-10T20:41:00.001-05:00

DS suggested this evening that we might like to celebrate Valentine's Day on Sunday because it's not a school day and we won't be so rushed in the morning. He shared with me that he is giving his sister $2 as a present, and is giving his father $5 "because sometimes you and Daddy are a little short of money." I've already got my present - a piece of artwork he did at school this week.

What's that beep?

2011-02-06T19:20:00.000-05:00

There's nothing quite like being woken up by an insistent beeping, realizing it's not your alarm clock and then figuring out it is some kind of alarm. My first thought was that it was the carbon monoxide detector. We've had that go off a couple of times in the past - although that was at the last house where we had a wood stove. One time I arrived home from work and could hear the alarm going off before I even got in the house. I called DH at work, who said it was probably a malfunction and I should ignore it. Instead, I called the fire department who arrived promptly and headed into the house wearing their full respirator gear. They didn't come out until they had opened every window in the house and the basement hatchway - in the middle of January, mind you - because the carbon monoxide levels in the house were lethal, even on the top floor of the house!!

So when I realized it wasn't the alarm I was hearing, my first thought was that it was the carbon monoxide detector. I sent DH off to investigate. He returned looking confused and said it was the house alarm. Something electrical had tripped and thus set off the alarm. (The house alarm has a battery backup - when the power to the alarm goes off the battery backup kicks in and the alarm beeps until you unplug it or the power comes back on. Very annoying when the power goes off in a thunderstorm, which it often does.) Anyway, DH unplugged a few things and then tried resetting the breaker, but nothing seemed to work - every time he plugged the alarm system back in, it eventually started beeping again.

We had a feeling it probably had something to do with the ice dams on the roof, especially when mid-morning we found water pouring down the front of the house from the porch roof - water was clearly coming through the roof.

It wasn't until this evening that we finally figured out what had actually tripped the breaker. I wanted to take a photo for this blog of our Christmas lights, which are still on the bushes outside the front door because with all the snow and ice we haven't been able to remove them yet. DH had finally unplugged them this morning. I plugged them back in, but no matter how I fiddled with the timer they would not switch on. We unplugged them from the timer and plugged them directly into the outlet. Still no lights.

We think the voles that killed one of our trees last year by chewing off the bark all the way around have chewed their way through one of the wires for the lights. It will be some time before we are able to remove the lights from the bushes though to find out.

At least now that the lights are unplugged DH has been able to reset the breaker and the alarm is plugged back in! And if we make it through this winter with nothing damaged other than one set of Christmas lights, we'll be doing better than our next door neighbor who has over $1,000 worth of damage to his garage walls because of the ice dams on his garage roof.

2 to 4 more inches of snow forecast for tomorrow night.

Now where did that compost bin go?

2011-02-06T12:03:00.000-05:00

Following up to the last post . . .

I went out to the compost bin yesterday. I followed the path that DH had snowblowed across the lawn and into the woods.

Where I found this:

There are three compost bins under there somewhere. Yes, what's in the bins does stay frozen for much of the year, but we keep adding to it anyway. The currently 'active' bin is the one in the middle and I couldn't (be bothered to) get to it yesterday. I picked the one closest to me and cleared just enough snow to be able to open it. Amazingly, it wasn't frozen shut.

Serious about recycling

2011-02-02T16:36:00.000-05:00

We try to be good about recycling as much as we can - we have several containers in the garage for paper, plastic glass and so on and most of the 'trash' that I take to the dump n a Saturday morning is actually recycling. The town requires it, we are perhaps more conscientious about it than many, everyone here is supposed to recycle. Recently they started a composting program, which they charge an additional fee for. You can take compostable food scraps to the dump and they use them to make . . . compost. We haven't signed up for that program because we do our composting at home.

We have a shoebox-sized tupperware-type box on the kitchen counter and all the food scraps get put in there. (Not meat or stuff that is greasy - just things like fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and tea bags.) It usually takes about a week to fill the box, and then it gets dumped into the compost bin at the far end of the garden, just on the edge of the woods. It's not huge chore - though the children hate to do it because they are scared to go out to the compost bin by themselves in case there are bears around. We haven't seen any bears, or any evidence of them being around in a long time though. It can also be difficult in the winter to open the compost bin as the lid often freezes shut.

More of a problem this coming weekend, when the box will fill up again, was going to be the fact that there is a layer of snow over three feet deep on the ground. So DH decided to make sure we could get to the compost bin. As usual, once the snow stopped, he had to clear a path from the front to the back of the house so that we can get heating oil delivered. (The oil guy will leave without delivering rather than trek through snow and we definitely don't want to run out!) He decided to keep going with the snow blower and headed all the way out to the compost bin and back around the house!

Raking the roof

2011-02-01T20:25:00.000-05:00

One of the things my husband was hoping to avoid when we moved house was having to do too much raking in the fall. Our old house was surrounded by trees and the raking took forever. This house has plenty of trees close by, but because of the prevailing winds and a lack of fences or hedges, most of the leaves just blow away.

This year is the first year ever though that he has had to rake the roof! Not for leaves, obviously, but snow. Usually there's enough of a break between storms, and the temperatures are warm enough that the snow melts. This year the snow has been building up. Looking at our neighbor's house, I would guess they have 18 inches of snow on the roof right now. Getting the snow off the roof is important for two reasons. 1) If there's enough of it, it can actually cause the roof to collapse. 2) Heat from the house causes snow on the roof to melt. The snow and ice in the gutters does not melt as fast, so the water coming off the roof has nowhere to go and it can end up backing up under the shingles and into your house.

I was surprised to find that there is actually a blog that is about nothing but roof rakes! I have to say, having tried to use ours this afternoon, I'd rather rake leaves. For one thing, the weather's usually a lot pleasanter when I'm out raking leaves!

Six Nations

2011-01-27T19:39:00.000-05:00

Six Nations rugby is coming to BBC America again this year :-) Hmm - it conflicts with DS's basketball . . . What to do, what to do? (And no, we don't have a DVR!)

I have to say, BBC America's Trivia Quiz on rugby is a bit pathetic. The correct answers are blindingly obvious, even if you know nothing about rugby. I suspect the goal is to make Americans feel confident that they know enough about the sport to be able to watch it.

The good news this morning

2011-01-24T07:44:00.000-05:00

Although the temperature is minus 28˚C this morning, it doesn't feel any colder than that because there is currently no wind chill.
The insulated window shades seem to be working - because otherwise the heat from the house would have prevented the ice building up on the (double-glazed) windows, right?
I tried the throwing boiling water into the freezing air experiment (see previous post) and it worked!

I'm beginning to hate winter

2011-01-23T19:20:00.002-05:00

I spent 2 hours on Saturday morning outside our local supermarket helping my daughter's Girl Scout troop sell ~~crack~~ cookies. I thought I was never going to warm up again! I suppose it was worth it as they sold a box a minute. We then spent an hour and a half in the afternoon walking from door to door trying to get our neighbors to buy cookies too. Our rate of boxes sold per minute was much lower :-( Ah well, it was all in a good cause even if I do lose my toes!

We had yet another snow day last Friday (that makes 3 so far this year.) I was just looking at the weather forecast for this week, and with snow forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday I am doubtful that we'll get a full work week in. I wouldn't mind except for the fact that we have to make the time up in June anyway.

Of more pressing concern is how to dress for the wait for the school bus tomorrow. The bus arrives at the end of our street sometime between 7:12 and 7:25, so there is really no avoiding having to stand out in the cold and wait. But look at the temperatures for Monday morning at 7 a.m.:

The only day I wasn't cold at the bus stop last week was the day I wore my snowpants, so I think that's what will be called for tomorrow.

The kids will be off the wall tomorrow though as it will be indoor recess because of the temperatures. I think this calls for an after-school trip to the YMCA!

Ooh - maybe it will be cold enough for DH to try doing this - he really wants to try it!

Working up a sweat in the cold

2011-01-17T14:06:00.000-05:00

As it's MLK Day, there is no school today. I was determined not to have the children stay inside watching TV all day (as they would if I gave them the choice of what to do) so we headed off to one of the local schools that has a great hill for sledding. DD spent 2 hours there yesterday with her Girl Scout troop. We got there a little later than I had planned, but that's OK as it was a holiday after all. We were very surprised to find few other people there - some of the time the hill looked like this:

This photo makes the hill look less steep than it really is. Plus, the section on the left that you see DD climbing was well packed down from the weekend's sledding, so it was icy and very fast.

I had (for once) planned ahead and brought a flask of hot chocolate and some snacks, so we had those after an hour. At that point I took the outer layer of my winter coat off as I was just too hot. The kids and I all worked up quite a sweat trekking up the hill, and even standing around in the sunshine at the bottom of the hill was quite pleasant so long as you weren't sitting on the snow. It wasn't until we were on our way home that I noticed what the temperature was on this glorious, too nice to stay inside, day: 17˚F (that's minus 8˚C!) You see, the cold is just fine if you're doing the right things and are appropriately dressed for it!

A bit parky

2011-01-15T11:39:00.001-05:00

A few days ago Sarah was commenting that it was a bit parky in Oklahoma. I was feeling quite happy that it was warmer here up north. Not any more. It was -10 degrees Fahrenheit at 9 a.m. this morning. Brrrr! And just look at the forecast for the next week - ooh, look, it's going to be much warmer on Tuesday :-)

In Fahrenheit

In Celsius

I'm very glad I don't live somewhere that gets REALLY cold in the winter - the kind of place where you have to plug an engine block heater in to make sure your car's engine will start in the morning!

P.S. Did you notice the inconsistency in those screen shots - the temp. was minus 10, but the weather forecast was still for a low for the day of 17. My maths is bad, but isn't that a 27 degree difference? Quite an error margin!

What's on your fridge?

2011-01-12T14:04:00.001-05:00

The fridge was just a fridge when I was growing up. Nowadays, we decorate our fridges with magnets, kids' artwork, postcards, calendars, phone lists . . . and the fridge has become more than just an appliance. It says a lot about the people who live in the house. I'd been meaning to do a blog post on this for a while now, but Crankymonkeys beat me to it. So, in answer to her question "What's on your fridge?", here's my fridge. We seem to have rather more magnets than anything else! (The images are clickable for larger versions.)

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T11:21:00.000-05:00

No snow here, but it still feels like Christmas.

Thanks again to LJB at Crankymonkeys for some new ornaments for the tree! Santa brought a couple of new ones too - the red and white baubles with writing on them.

I like Crankymonkeys in London

2010-12-07T20:49:00.001-05:00

LBJ at Crankymonkeys in London had a giveaway of some Christmas ornaments and I won! It made my day - thanks LBJ!

If you haven't visited her blog, check it out - she's an expat who grew up in Estonia and then the USA. She moved to Australia as an adult, but now lives in London with her husband and two children. I only found her blog fairly recently, but I've added it to my list of must-reads.

Stripping with the Stars

2010-12-03T20:29:00.000-05:00

Colleagues at work are obsessed with TV programs like Dancing with the Stars and get into protracted conversations at lunchtime over who they think should be voted off the show next. Personally, I couldn't care less about shows like that. I found this spoof quite funny though:

Tagged

2010-11-21T19:27:00.001-05:00

Kathryn at Marmite and Fluff tagged me.
The rules are:
1. Link to the person who tagged you. Done.
2. Paste these rules on your blog post. Done.
3. Respond to the following prompts (in bold). Done.
4. Add a prompt of your own and answer it. Hmm - in the interest of getting this post completed this year, I'm going to skip this step.
5. Tag a few other bloggers at the bottom of the post. Done (kind of).
6. Leave "Tagged You" notices on their blog/Facebook.
7. Let the person who tagged you know when you've written the post. Done

1) The best investment you ever made:
The time spent getting to know my husband when we were dating. Because of my work schedule, it was often difficult to get to see each other, but we spent a lot of time on the phone, chatting online and emailing each other. Next best investment - travelling as much as I could while I was young and single, even though the list of places I want to see is still very long.

2) If you could’ve written any book, directed any movie, and composed any song, which three would you pick:
Simply because of the money it generated and the change it made in JK Rowling's lifestyle, I wish I had written the Harry Potter series. From the impact his work has had over the generations, I wish I had written anything by Shakespeare. Which movie and song do I wish I had written? Hmm - that's harder as movies and songs are not as important in my life as books. Maybe Picnic at Hanging Rock, for a movie (though I haven't seen it in years and it may not be what I remember!) and something by the Beatles for a song.

3) Weirdest quirk:
DH says that would be my . . . SQUIRREL!! . . . tendency to get easily distracted. I don't think that's weird - I know lots of people with ADD! I'm sure there are plenty of other people who would take 10 days or more to answer the questions in this meme!

4) One wish immediately granted:
Decent, affordable, health care coverage for everyone.

5) Most expensive hobby
Jewelry making or knitting. Jewelry making - obvious - even making your own jewelry is not cheap if you have expensive tastes. No silver-colored or gold-colored beads and findings thank you, I want the real thing! Yarn is stupidly expensive nowadays, though thanks to Ravelry and growing confidence in my own design abilities, I haven't had to buy any patterns in a while.

6) An inexhaustible gift card at which store
The Apple store or my local yarn store.

7) In another lifetime, you'd be:
More athletic.

8) The most famous/interesting member of your family tree:
No one particularly famous in our family tree that I know of, but my mother has some interesting stories about her great-grandmother, Hettie:

"her sons would bring their best clothes to my grandma’s house … if they left them at home, Hettie took them to the pawn shop to get cash for drink.
On one occasion she was badly burnt when she tipped a pan of boiling porridge on her lap… she was sitting by the fire brewing the stuff, when she tipped it down herself. There was an implication that she was the worse for drink when it happened, because despite extensive damage to lower abdomen and thighs, she was reported to feel no great pain."

9) The most famous person you've ever met:
King Hussein of Jordan. He died too young.

If you're looking for blog fodder and feel like answering these questions, consider yourself tagged, but don't forget to let me know when your post is up!

Christmas shopping

2010-11-17T19:06:00.000-05:00

I am one of those mothers who likes to take her kids to museums for fun and buy her kids educational toys. Fortunately, most of the time my kids seem to like this! Our trip to the UK this summer had a Roman theme - Bath, Chedworth Roman Villa, Roman tour of Chester, Wroxeter Roman city . . . So when I saw that the British Museum shop has a free shipping offer on right now - including to overseas addresses - I had to take a look. Oh dear! I could spent quite a lot of money there, and not just on the children! Well, I'm sure I could get some of those things here in the US, but some of the things I like are British Museum exclusives. Hmm - may have to browse some more and put a wish list together!

By the way, if you click on my link to the shop and end up buying something there, you could help defray my expenses shopping there as I do get a commission on purchases made in the next ten days through my link.

Sorry? What did you say?

2010-11-13T18:03:00.000-05:00

English teachers in non-English-speaking countries face the dilemma of which English to teach. Often their school will have a preference for English English or American English, usually based on the textbooks they are using. I remember when I was at university in France one of the lecturers telling me that the way I pronounced 'bath' was wrong because I had a northern accent rather than the 'BBC accent' he wanted his students to learn. Equally, my lecturers back in the UK were a little taken aback when I returned from my year in France with a very strong southern French accent. Given that most people will retain something of a 'foreign' accent when they learn a second language, the most important thing to my mind is to be able to make yourself understood.

My accent has changed since I first came to the United States 25 years ago. It happened partly because as a language teacher I find myself naturally mimicking the accents of those around me. (That sometimes gets me into trouble as people think I'm taking the mickey!) Mostly though it has been a conscious choice to try to change my accent. I got thoroughly fed up of people asking me to repeat myself when I thought I was being perfectly clear. It was just faster and less frustrating to say it the American way. It also didn't hurt to sound more, rather than less, American when I was looking for employment as an English as a Second Language teacher here in the United States. My colleagues occasionally comment on my accent, and on rare occasions I hear my students say something with an English accent (and I then 'correct' them!) One of my colleagues though has a strong accent from the south of the USA, which is just as alien to the northeast as my accent is - and I hear her students picking up her accent!

I suppose schools and universities in some countries may prefer Australian English. I can't think of any that would prefer Scottish English though ;-)

Fun with a sharp knife

2010-10-30T21:28:00.002-04:00

Every Halloween we decorate our front step with carved pumpkins. When I say 'we', I really mean DH. I buy the pumpkins, but he's always the one that carves them. He does such a good job it has never occurred to me to help other than by helping to remove the guts from the pumpkins. I rarely even make suggestions about what the pumpkin face should look like, for fear of asking for something too difficult to execute.

Something got into me tonight though - guilt perhaps, that DH always does all the work carving the pumpkins? Or simply some enthusiasm for attacking something with a sharp knife? (It's been a long, busy, and stressful week!) DH was asking the children what kind of designs they would like on their pumpkins this year, and I decided to look for some inspiration online. I found lots of pictures of spectacular pumpkins, but decided that for my first attempt at pumpkin carving perhaps I'd better stick to something simple.

After looking at some simpler designs though, I came to the conclusion that they were really rather boring. We have a neighbor across the street who puts out a dozen or so very nicely carved pumpkins every year, and I don't want to lower the standards in the neighborhood! Thinking I'd probably bitten off more than I could chew, I finally got started. DD gave me a felt pen, and I drew a rough outline of what I wanted. I'm really not a very artistic person, and I knew that the contours of the pumpkin were going to distort my image somewhat, so I really thought as I got started that the pumpkin was more likely to end up in the compost pile than back out on the front step.

After I got done, and went on to carve the design DD had drawn on her pumpkin, DH decided that the carving will be my job from now on. I'm thinking maybe we should have more pumpkins next year . . .

My owl

DD's spider

DH's ghost

DS's pumpkin

Top 5 Genius Ways to Improve the UK

2010-09-29T22:11:00.000-04:00

Logical child

2010-09-28T22:32:00.001-04:00

I let DS play some games on my iPod Touch one time when we were waiting at the doctor's office and ever since then he begs me on a regular basis to be allowed to borrow my iPod. After a playdate with a classmate, he told me that he wants Santa to bring him a Nintendo DS this year but then he started asking about their relative costs and changed his mind. Now his plan is to buy a Nintendo DS with his own money - presumably money he hopes to get as presents for birthday or Christmas, seeing as I don't give him regular pocket money. The reason why he'd rather buy one himself? Well, he found out that iPods are a lot more expensive, so he wants Santa to bring him an iPod instead! I'm very torn because the games he likes to play on the iPod are things like Numbl and Shift - games that make you think! However, given that I've already cracked the screen on my iPod, I think he's going to have to wait a while before he gets one of his own - and his thinking skills are clearly already well developed anyway, aren't they?

The geography of prejudice . . .

2010-09-26T11:21:00.001-04:00

. . . or the mapping of stereotypes, from visual artist, graphic designer and illustrator Yanko Tsvetkov's blog. (Go to his blog to see other maps he's created.)
.

Europe according to Britain

Europe according to the USA

Disabled access

2010-09-04T19:53:00.002-04:00

When we were at Chessington, I saw this sign at the top of a flight of stairs. I couldn't read it at first, so went a little closer.

Hmm - is it just me, or is it unusual to have handicapped access via a flight of stairs?

Actually, one of the things I was impressed by at Chessington was that in addition to specifying the minimum height required for each ride, there was information about the degree of mobility required. Although to get on many of the rides, you clearly needed to be able to walk or at least get yourself into your seat, for others there was simply a requirement that once seated you be able to hold yourself upright unaided. It's years since I've been to a theme park in the USA, but I would hope that the ADA laws would ensure the same kind of clarity over here.

To feed or not to feed the ducks?

2010-09-01T20:53:00.006-04:00

Blue Planet Aquarium was selling food for visitors to feed to the ducks.

But right next to the vending machine full of duck food was this sign:

Poor kitties!

2010-08-29T20:44:00.000-04:00

The children were so stunned by these signs at the side of the road in the UK that they took pictures of them.

Disoriented

2010-08-28T22:03:00.000-04:00

It was a strange feeling to be back in the UK after so long (over 4 years) away. It didn't exactly feel like home any more but it wasn't exactly foreign either. It was more like coming home to your own house to find that someone had redecorated and changed some of the furniture while you were away.

The holiday that nearly wasn't

2010-08-26T18:42:00.004-04:00

Our vacation to the UK was almost over before it began. On the flight over, British Airways had assigned me a seat in a different row to DH and the children. We agreed that this was not a bad thing as I really needed to sleep because I would be the one driving when we got to the UK and would need to have my wits about me as it was so long since I 'd driven there.

Sadly, I got no sleep. The children were right behind me and VERY excited to be on a plane. The last time we flew to the UK it was via Reykjavik on IcelandAir and DS howled because he did not have the seatback TV his sister had promised him. This time they had the seatback TVs and what seemed like a gazillion choices of things to watch - not all of them appropriate for kids, but with no way to switch off the inappropriate stuff. I had told them there would be "a" kids' movie, but they had so much choice they decided to try to watch everything! So no sleeping children, lots of commenting on the movies, telling mommy to look out of the window, and a fair amount of kicking mommy's seat. Oh, and during the brief moment that DH actually got to nap, the flight attendant came by and gave my daughter coffee! Add to that, the fact that I was sitting next to two very nice, very chatty, Scottish girls who were determined to drink the plane dry (and stock up with wine bottles for their flight to Glasgow on which they knew the drinks would not be free) and I was knackered by the time we got to Heathrow.

The kids and I, with our British passports, breezed through UK immigration, but DH got stuck in a enormously long queue as several flights appeared to have arrived at the same time. He was not amused when, after half an hour, he finally got to the front of the queue to find out that he could have walked through with us! (He still has suspicions that if he had tried that, they would have sent him back to the foreigners' queue anyway!)

As we exited into the airport, we believed the signs that told us to head to the far end of Terminal 5 for car rental buses. Once we were outside the building we found we had to walk all the way back to the end of the building where we'd started. Grr.

We took the shuttle bus over to Avis car rental and it was here that things really started to go pear-shaped. I went in to deal with the paperwork, while DH stayed outside with the children. Over-tired children. Weasel children. Apparently deaf children because they listened to not a word their father said.

The staff inside the Avis office and their computer system were amazingly inefficient. It ended up taking over 45 minutes for me to get the paperwork sorted for a car that I had already booked and paid for. Admittedly, not all of the delay was their fault - the bloke in front of me spent twenty minutes going around and around with them over the fact that he wanted to pay cash for his rental and just couldn't fathom why they refused to let him leave with a car without giving them a credit card number. I don't know what planet he came from, but clearly no car rental company is going to let you leave without giving them a valid credit card number.

Fortunately, I had my receipt from British Airways because Avis claimed to have no record of the booking in their computer, and the staff member behind the desk commented that this 'always' happened with BA rentals! No record of the booking meant no record of my credit card, which meant they wanted the number again. I explained I had already paid, and although I understood that they needed to have the number on file, I did not expect them to charge my card. "Of course not", she said, and promptly asked if I would give her my card again as it "hadn't gone through" the first time!

When I've rented cars at Heathrow in the past (with another company, that my sister used to work for), they would get done with the paperwork and then tell me to go out and pick any car from a particular row. I don't think this was special treatment for a 'staff' rental. I suddenly realized when the Avis staff member disappeared for 5 minutes to go and look at the cars in the car park that this was not going to happen at Avis - she was about to assign me a specific car, so when she returned and asked if a BMW 1 series would be OK, I asked, "Is that going to have a boot big enough for all our luggage?" and "Can I have a diesel please?" (Diesel=better mpg) "I'll be right back" she said, and then disappeared off into the car park again. Why on earth did her computer system not have that information available? She returned and asked if a BMW 3 series would be OK. Suspicious that she was trying to upgrade me to a more expensive car, I said fine so long as it has a similar boot size to the Vectra, (which was the class of car I had booked), and isn't going to cost me any more money. I had no idea what a BMW 1 or BMW 3 series was, but 3 sounded more expensive than 1!

By the time I finally got the bay number for the car DH, had had it up to here with the children and demanded that the first place I drive should be Terminal 5 so he could figure out how to get a flight home again. We headed out and found the car she'd assigned us, children still being little weasels all the way. The bags fit in the boot. The kids' booster seats fit, sort of, on the back seat. I found where to put the key in, and decided to spend a minute familiarizing myself with the controls. I found the 'Start' button. Oh, no, a car designed by Microsoft - I bet the 'Start' button stops it too. (OK, it did say "Start/Stop".) But the Start button didn't seem to start the engine. With the children getting even more irritating (if that's at all possible) DH was still grumping about wanting to head for Terminal 5. I finally had to ask one of the Avis staff how to start the car. (Depress the clutch while pushing the Start button.) Fortunately, unlike Nappy Valley Mum and her husband, I had kept my ID in the car with me (American habit!) rather than in the boot , so we got out of the Avis car park OK. Well, we bunny-hopped out onto the main road - it was 4+ years since I'd had to change gear after all! Seeing as I was driving, I made the executive decision not to head for Terminal 5, but to go straight to my brother's house instead. (Actually, if only I could have persuaded DH to take the children with him, I might have dropped all 3 of them off at Terminal 5 by then!)

I breathed a sigh of relief once we got onto the empty-at-8-o'clock-on-a-Sunday-morning M25. Now the vacation would begin. Except I made the mistake once we got my brother's house of checking my email and found that Avis had charged my credit card $900 ($300 more than the cost of our rental!), not once but twice :-( Avis' slogan may be "We try harder" but in my experience all that means is "We try harder to piss you off!"

36 hour day

2010-08-26T09:37:00.001-04:00

(Image from Matt Kursmark.)

My DH blogged over here about the 36 hour day that started our vacation in the UK. Apparently the madness of the first 36 hours worked as we all adapted relatively quickly, waking at a reasonable 7 a.m. most days.

As we left on vacation, DS was apparently unclear as to exactly where we were going and how. After we picked up the rental car to get to the airport, he looked at the cars on our driveway and asked which one we were going in! On seeing Boston he shouted in delight, "I can see New York!" He then wanted to know how we were going to get the rental car to the UK. As we got out of the car at the airport he squealed, "Look Momma, there's a plane!"

He liked the rental cars we had - a BMW 3 series in the UK, and a Cadillac on our return to the US to get back home - and compared my RAV 4 to them very unfavorably. I liked the BMW too, but given that a BMW 3 series vehicle could cost twice as much as my RAV 4, I won't be buying one any time soon.

What's wrong . . .

2010-08-25T20:38:00.000-04:00

with this picture from my recent vacation?

Never mind the London buses . . .

2010-08-23T20:18:00.002-04:00

. . . check out this ambulance!

I believe bikes are used in a few towns as rapid response vehicles because they can get through the traffic faster than a car.

Bugs and meds

2010-08-22T16:29:00.000-04:00

I didn't miss the US on our recent trip to the UK, except when we needed an open pharmacy at 8 on a Sunday evening when my son had a strong allergic reaction to the local biting insects and began to look very puffy. My mother was sure the 24 hour Tescos would be open, but '24 hours' means 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. on Sundays. Should you ever be in a similar situation, do not bother trying to find out which is the 'duty chemist' in town. They won't be open either, as their hours are likely to be something like 11 a.m. till 1 p.m. According to Late Night Chemist, Boots claims that they now have a 24 hour pharmacy within a thirty mile drive of most of the UK population, but we had a hospital much closer than that which was a better bet. We were lucky enough that we knew all we needed for DS was over-the-counter antihistamines. The hospital has a truly 24 hour pharmacy which sells OTC meds, and we got in and out fast enough that we weren't even charged the 2 pound parking fee and didn't have to deal with anyone asking us for either NHS cards or (worse) credit cards!

Make sure you know the generic name for any OTC meds you may need when travelling. We wanted Claritin - and found Clarityn was the same thing - loratadine. I would be wary however that similar brand names might not always mean similar products, and sometimes the names are so different that telling the pharmacist what you want will not immediately get you what you need.

Of course, we should have had some loratadine with us. I had my asthma inhaler and never needed it, though had I forgotten it I would have certainly needed it! I was glad I'd remembered the imodium when I was not well on our return flight - especially as we ended up sitting in the plane on the ground at Heathrow for 2 hours after our scheduled departure time! Although I've had a flight attendant offer me meds for an upset stomach in the past, I learned from that experience that the imodium pills are so tiny it's always worth having some with you when you travel. Loratadine now gets added to my packing list, but who knew that bug repellent with DEET would have been a good idea for a trip to the UK? Aiee - not that it would have done anything to ward off the wasps that were everywhere this year . . .

Time warp?

2010-08-18T20:33:00.003-04:00

We left the USA on July 31st for a 2 week vacation in the UK. We returned yesterday to find that it is apparently almost Halloween already as the supermarket had a whole aisle dedicated to Halloween candy and decorations and there was an aisle of pumpkin ales at the liquor store. Apparently we missed the whole 'back-to-school' season!

Great ad!

2010-07-20T09:07:00.004-04:00

Another viral ad doing the rounds . . . Can you guess what it's for before it's over? (This is not a sponsored post.)

He's making a list and checking it twice

2010-07-18T19:52:00.005-04:00

We are going on vacation later this summer and DH, being the organized one in the family, is already planning. He's been making a list of things we need to make sure not to forget. I find it interesting that the very first list he wanted me to sit down and go over with him was the following:

cell phone
car charger for cell phone
iPod
car charger for iPod
USB charger for iPod
Battery-operated USB charger
Adaptor to charge iPod from wall outlet
cameras (x3)
wall charger for one camera
car charger for other cameras

Sense a theme here? So I was very surprised, given DH's obvious love of gadgets to hear him say a Luddite "No thanks!" to the offer of the loan of a satnav/GPS. His comment, "I hear people have driven into canals relying on those things! I can read a map just fine." OK, but you should see the size of the pile of maps we're planning on taking!

This is really quite good

2010-07-14T21:04:00.000-04:00

(Photo borrowed from Miss Chicago.)

When I was training as a language teacher we were told that, very often, students have more difficulty not with a feature of a language that is very different from their own but with one that is only a little different. The words that don't sound anything like English ones are easier to get right than the ones that sound somewhat like English but actually have a different meaning. English and American English are just different enough to cause problems in that way.

NFAH commented recently on the phrase "Every little helps" and how she feels it really should have the word "bit" added to the phrase - "Every little bit helps." After reading on another blog how the German phrase "jedes bisschen hilft" translates as "Every little helps", I wonder if this is a phrase that has lingered on in our language since the days of the Vikings. These kinds of phrases can stop you in your tracks a moment, but when push comes to shove they are still comprehensible.

Miss Chicago, on the other hand, just commented on British understatement, specifically in regard to Marks & Spencers Rich Tea Cream Fingers (whatever they are!) which are advertised as "Really rather good." No missing words here. However, the statement "really rather good" sounds far less enthusiastic to an American than to a Brit.

When I was applying to graduate school in the United States, I went back to my alma mater and asked my tutor if she would mind writing me a reference, (knowing full well that she would NEVER have written me a recommendation for a place on a Master's degree course in the UK.) I explained where I wanted to go and why, and she assured me that she would write me a good reference. In fact, she explained, she had learned through bitter experience exactly how to write references for American universities.

She had once been asked to write a reference for someone for a position at an Ivy League college. The candidate was over qualified for the position, but wanted the opportunity to work at an American university for a while, and particularly an Ivy League one. She not only did not get the post but discovered that the man who was hired had vastly inferior qualifications and experience. So she did the American thing and sued. She won her case and was awarded compensation, but not the job. It turned out that the American hiring committee had interpreted what would have been considered a glowing reference in the UK as somewhat cool and not very enthusiastic. So my tutor assured me that she knew exactly what to write to get me accepted, hinting that by her standards it would be not exactly a work of fiction but certainly one-sided.

There are people like Lynneguist who base their profession on the fact that English and American are not really the same language. Most of the time the differences are insignificant, or easily understood. Occasionally however, phrases like "Every little helps", remind me that even though I've been here 25 years and feel very American I did not grow up here

Nothing that you write will be read?

2010-07-11T10:48:00.003-04:00

I had to fill out (fill in) a form last night. When I got to the end I wondered why I'd bothered:

I do wonder though, how will they know to notify me if they are not going to read the form?

A reason to live in the USA?

2010-07-08T15:25:00.002-04:00

Forget wanting to live in the USA being about freedom and the pursuit of happiness - apparently it's all about the doughnuts!

I only found the blog BritishSpeak today - looks like it'll be one I go back to!

Wordless Wednesday

2010-07-07T08:05:00.000-04:00

Independence Day Parade

2010-07-05T21:23:00.004-04:00

As always on the 4th of July, we headed off to our local parade. There were all kinds of groups in the parade - police, firefighters, farmers, Scouts - and, as always, many antique cars. Can you spot what is 'wrong' about this picture though?

Football commentary

2010-06-12T15:08:00.005-04:00

We are not a sports-loving family. We don't go out to play or watch team games of any sort, and although the kids occasionally watch (American) football on TV they don't really have much clue about it. So they don't have much experience watching sports on TV. As it was a rainy day, I turned the television on this afternoon so we could watch at least part of the World Cup game between England and the US because DD had asked at lunch "What's the World Cup for and when's it happening?" The commentary was hilarious, but we did have to alternate between watching the game and playing games on the wii because DS really wasn't interested in the game.

DD: What time is it in England now? (Umm - 5 hours ahead of here, but the game's not happening there - it's in South Africa.) Why is it happening in South Africa? (Because that's where FIFA decided to have the World Cup this year.) What's FIFA? (The organization that organizes the World Cup.) Why are they playing soccer at this time of year? (Because this is when FIFA decided the World Cup would be.)

DS: What team is the guy in the yellow shirt on? (That would be the referee.)

DD: The guy in the yellow shirt seems to be on the England team. (Again, that would be the referee, and he wasn't on England's side!)

DS: Who's the guy in the orange shirt? (One of the goalies.)

DD: Why isn't the goalie staying in the goal?

DS: Why did they move the goal? (They changed the camera angle!)

DS: I think his chest is broken. Someone else is going to have to take his place. (He's probably just fine - they usually are.)

DS: I hope the England player gets another yellow card or a red one, then America will win.

DD: Why aren't there any girls playing? (They have their own teams.) Because the boys think they're better than girls?

DS: This is boring! (Repeated loudly every five minutes.)

DD: There's more tomorrow? I thought it was just today! Does it go on for days? (Yes, and no we won't be watching much more of it - probably just the highlights on the news!)

DH: What, they don't play until there's a winner?

DD: England would've won if Mia Hamm had been on their team!

The World Cup

2010-06-11T14:30:00.001-04:00

This cartoon is by Dave Walker and is used with permission.

Chocolate delivery system

2010-06-04T20:31:00.002-04:00

I wrote this post back in February and apparently I forgot to hit 'Post'!

I recently recommended that Kelly, in her search for the best cookies ever, try this recipe for chocolate cookies with chunks of Maya Gold chocolate in them. I hadn't actually tried the recipe myself, but it looked yummy. Kelly took the bait, made the cookies and wrote a wonderfully detailed post about the making of the cookies. She concluded that, good as they are, the Rolo cookie recipe we got from In the Left Lane is still better.

So I decided I should do my own comparison. I'd made the Rolo cookies for DS to take to school for his birthday and had THREE adults want the recipe, so you know they are good. DH had given me some Green & Black's Maya Gold for Valentine's Day but on looking more closely at the recipe I realized that one 3.5 ounce bar wasn't going to go very far when the recipe called for a POUND of chocolate! That's $12.50 worth of Maya Gold, when it's on sale. $15 when it's not. I was thinking these had better be some freakingly awesome cookies!

I decided I had to try them anyway. Kelly had warned that the dough got hard to mix at the end, and boy was she right! Getting the last of the flour incorporated took a lot of effort - and then I still had to mix in the chocolate chunks. I'd decided to go with four bars of the Maya gold and it turned out to be plenty. I wasn't sure that I had the right kind of chili powder so I only added 1/8 of a teaspoon.

For all the effort, they were worth it! The kids love them. I love them too, but can actually eat just one at a time. (I really didn't believe Kelly when she said one at a time was enough!) The kids were eating them for a treat this morning when we were out and someone walking by commented on how good the cookies smelled! And although the recipe said "makes 24 cookies", I made up the whole batch and got not 24 but 44 perfectly sized cookies. Again, I should have listened when Kelly said she put half the dough in the freezer, or perhaps the sheer quantity of ingredients should have clued me in!

Our conclusion - yes, they were great, but for 'everyday' cookies we liked the Rolo cookies better!

Definitely not British!

2010-06-02T21:40:00.002-04:00

I had to renew DD's British passport last week. When we went to get her photo taken they asked in the store if this was going to be her first passport. We both hesitated for a moment, and then we agreed that, no this was not going to be her first passport but her sixth. You'd have thought we had six heads the way they looked at us! They are, however, quite used in that particular store to people of various nationalities wanting photos for passports, and they didn't quite believe me when I said I just wanted "passport photos, just like for an American passport." They seemed convinced that the photos must need to be different in some way. When I renewed both of DS's passports we had one set of photos taken and I used the same photos for both passports, so I really don't think there are different requirements! (Though if you apply for a British passport in the UK, the background for your photo has to be cream or light grey, but when applying from overseas it can be white.)

The passport application still has that section where you have to find someone other than a working-class person who's known you for at least two years and get them to sign the application to vouch that you are who you say you are:

At least you don't have to find someone British to do it, or I'd be in trouble! I asked a neighbor if she'd be willing to do it. We chatted briefly about the luxury of having two passports and the implications for future employment possibilities. I commented that simply having British passports doesn't really make my kids British, and she responded that she doesn't think of me as being British either. A few years ago I'd have been quite taken aback by that. The reality is that for some time now, the US is where I've lived the longest, and I'm actually more surprised when someone comments on my accent and asks me where I'm from. My answer to that is usually , "Well, I've lived right here for most of my life . . ." which really throws them for a loop!

Later, chatting with DD we were talking about the fact that should anything ever 'happen' to DH and I, she and her brother would probably go and live with my sister in the UK. She was OK with that and said she knows that's why we keep her British passport current, but then asked, "But what if there's World War 3? Britain and America would be on opposite sides so we wouldn't be able to get there!" I started to say something about the US and Britain usually being on the same side in a war, and then I remembered what she's been studying in history class this month! She grinned when she realized what I'd forgotten, and then followed it up with "Britain should never have fought the Americans. They wanted to be free and Britain should have let them be free." No, despite the passport, she's definitely not British!

Where in the USA is . . .

2010-05-29T19:01:00.010-04:00

Massachusetrts?

More to the point, where in Massachusetts is Massachusetrts? You see, unlike in the UK, where we put the name of the county followed by a postcode that includes the abbreviation for the county (Cheshire, CH . . .), here in the US, there is no need to write the name of the state out in full. Assuming the zip code is correct (checks on Google, yes it is), the beer label should read "Ashland, MA 01721".

Actually, I am sure there are many, many, Americans, even in Massachusetts, who could not spell Massachusetts if their life depended on it. So I really shouldn't expect someone in the UK, where it is extremely unlikely to be included in the spell-checker, to get it right!

Remote control for kids

2010-05-28T20:32:00.009-04:00

Available from Think Geek. If only they worked!

Spring pollen

2010-05-27T17:45:00.006-04:00

I remember my dad and brother getting really bad hayfever when I was a kid but I don't remember ever seeing as much pollen in the UK as I have done here. I specifically remember the first time I saw clouds of pollen blowing off some pine trees, the first spring that I was living in the US, and I know I hadn't seen anything like it before because the memory has stuck with me. After so many years here, it still surprises me when I go out in the morning and find the ground is yellow with pollen.

Things I've learned about gardening

2010-05-23T21:01:00.000-04:00

When I first arrived in the US as a graduate student I didn't think about gardening in the USA. It never occurred to me that I was going to stay long enough to have a garden here. I spent my very first Christmas in the US with the family of one of my undergraduate students in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her aunt and uncle had spent the previous Christmas in the UK as their daughter was studying abroad there. My conversations with them were the first that I'd had with Americans in the US who'd spent much time in the UK. I remember very specifically that they commented "And the grass stays green all winter in England." Having not yet lived through an entire winter in the US, I thought they were a little strange. Isn't that what grass does - stay green? Nope, not here. It goes brown in the winter, and then again in the summer if it doesn't get vast amounts of water!

My first garden in the United States was a rooftop one. Sounds posh, like I had a penthouse or something, but sadly not so. I was working at a boarding school, and the fire escape that led out through my apartment went out onto a flat porch roof, about 4 stories up. It wasn't quite as private as it felt, but it was my little oasis. As soon as I moved in I decided I wanted to have a garden. I bought a lot of large plastic pots and saucers, and lugged tons of bags of pebbles (for the bottom of the pots) and potting soil up to the roof. I did check first with the maintenance department if it was OK to put several hundred extra pounds of weight on the roof and they okayed it.

I learned very quickly that the wide, flattish, bowl-like, pots needed to be watered too often. Ditto the smaller pots. Once a day watering just didn't cut it in the summer heat, and twice a day became too much like work, given that I did also have to work. The best ones were the largest ones I'd been able to find, and which were just about too heavy for me to move once they were full. Second discovery - ignore what the planting guidelines said in terms of spacing. When you put plants in a pot, you want to cram as many in as possible. Over-stuffed pots look far more impressive than sparsely planted ones. This also helps ensure that you don't have to do any weeding!

Pots that have water reservoirs underneath are wonderful. We have four out on the front porch right now. Two have peas planted in them, one has lettuce, and the other has flowers. No tomatoes this year. I ignored all the warnings about the tomato blight last year and planted tomatoes anyway. I don't think we got to eat a single one. The plants were prolific, but every single tomato went rotten well before it was ready to be picked. Don't think your garden will be immune from local diseases and bugs just because you love it and look after it!

Since we've had a real garden and not just one in containers, I've learned a few more things.

The landscaping put in by the builder was intended to look good for the first 4 or 5 years. After that, most of what was put in grows too big for its location. We have some beautiful shrubs and trees that we will probably have to cut down because they were planted too close to the house or each other.
Deer eat tulips as though they're candy. It's worth paying attention to which plants at the garden center are labelled "deer-resistant."
Rabbits will eat all kinds of things, but they especially seem to love liatris shoots.
Pay attention to the hardiness zones for plants. Buy plants that are guaranteed hardy for your area, unless you want them to die over the winter. Some plants that are too sensitive for New England winters can be grown here if you dig them up and move them into the house every winter, but that's too much work as far as I'm concerned. (See the exception below.)
If you really like it, and it's not hardy in New England, it might be worth buying anyway because the south-facing flower bed at the front of the house is in a hardiness zone all of its own and stuff often survives there that you wouldn't expect. Last year we had dozens of wallflowers that had self-seeded there from the annuals I had planted the year before, and this year we had some pansies that survived the winter (only to get nibbled back to the ground by the rabbits!)
Sometimes plants will survive multiple winters and then succumb unpredictably. Too bad. Plants are only temporary! Buy more!
Sometimes it is worth digging plants up for the winter. I've overwintered geraniums in the basement for the last 2 winters, and it really wasn't difficult at all. Dig them out of the pot, wrap them in newspaper, put them in the basement and forget about them till March. The survival rate would be higher if I remembered to spray them with water occasionally over the winter, but that would mean remembering to do so and I have a hard enough time remembering to bring them out of storage in March in time to get them started growing again for the summer.
If the 'soil' in your garden is mostly sand, you will need a sprinkler system for anything to grow.
There is actually a point to the strip of mulch between the woods behind the house and the lawn, beyond separating the cultivated lawn from the wild plants in the woods - apparently it also helps reduce the number of ticks we might otherwise find in the lawn. Supposedly, they don't survive the trek from the woods across the strip of mulch to the lawn. Given that ticks can carry Lyme disease, anything that reduces our potential exposure to them is a good thing.
No matter how many plants I think I need, and how much money I spend each year, I never have enough. Clearly this garden is going to be a very long-term project!

Another sign of spring

2010-05-01T20:15:00.006-04:00

I've never actually eaten fiddleheads - fern sprouts. The season for them is very short - only three weeks or so. They do have them in the supermarket, but I've been told they're much better fresh. Fiddleheads aren't just any old ferns though and, just like with mushrooms, if you don't know what you're doing and pick the wrong kind you can make yourself sick. (Oh, and in case you're wondering - I don't think putting them on pizza is a common way to eat fiddleheads!)

All About Springtime

2010-04-19T12:42:00.000-04:00

Karen tagged me what feels like weeks ago for a meme about springtime that originated here. I've finally got around to it, mostly because it involved asking DS (age 7) some questions, so he really did half the work on this post!

1. How does the world change in the Spring?

Well, 'cos in the spring there are like plants and in the winter there’s like nothing.

2. Lots of babies are born in the spring. Where do you think baby animals are born?

Wherever they live. Wherever their mother or father chooses. (The look on his face implied he thought this was a stupid question!)

3. What did mummy do before you were born?

I don’t know. You went to England before I came! (He's referring to the the fact that when I was 7 months pregnant with him I went to England for 3 weeks.)

4. Spring is a good time to play outside. If you and mummy could spend a whole day playing outside, doing anything you want, what would it be?

Badmitten. Badminton.(The Easter bunny just brought him badminton equipment.)

5. Did you know we moved the clocks forward? Why do you think we do this?

No. Don’t know. (At this point he clearly thought the questioning had gone on far too long and all he wanted to do was get back to the wii!)

6. How long is it until summer?

I don’t know. Like, a few months. (Final effort - he knew I wanted him to say more than "I don't know", so he tried to come up with something!)

Hmm - I'd never noticed before how often he says 'like'!

Visiting Michelle

2010-04-09T15:53:00.007-04:00

My latest post is over here, at Michelle's blog, A Mid-Atlantic English. Go read that post and then come back!

In many ways, Michelle's my counterpart in the UK. She's been over there about as long as I've been over here, and we often seem to have similar opinions, issues and interests. (Before I ever visited her blog, I would sometimes refer to my accent as 'mid-Atlantic' - not entirely English, not entirely American. Of course that confused Americans who think mid-Atlantic refers to somewhere on the east coast of the US. Anyway, I was glad when I saw her blog to see that someone else describes their English the same way!) We're both having a bit of a think about gardening right now. Well, it's that time of year isn't it?

When I wrote my post, I didn't have any photos to send her of my wonderfully boring 'garden' as nothing is really growing yet. Here's what the perennial border looked like last week:

This flower bed contains hostas, daylilies and daisies, but as you can see, there's little sign of anything yet.

After a couple of days of 90˚F weather, there are finally some real signs of spring around:

This is a star magnolia. We have another magnolia but it's not due to bloom for another month. My parents bought us a gift certificate to the local garden center when they visited almost three years ago, and it took us until last September before DH and I could finally agree on exactly what kind of magnolias to buy, and more importantly where they would be planted so they wouldn't make his job of mowing the lawn more difficult (!)

Las Malvinas

2010-04-03T18:19:00.005-04:00

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at university in the UK, I dated an Argentinian for a short time. I remember him asking me about the Malvinas, which at the time I knew nothing about. He commented that was about what he expected. The Malvinas are also known as the Falkland Islands - and the British went to war in 1982, about a year after I had that conversation with Jorge, to keep the islands British rather than Argentinean. I was living in France at the time the war started, studying at a university there.

It's hard to believe nowadays, but there was just a single incoming phone in the hall of residence where I lived! I had given my parents the phone number in case of an emergency, but never expected to hear from them. So I was amazed one day when someone knocked on my door and told me I had a phone call. It was my mother calling to let me know that a friend of mine in the British Navy, someone I'd known since I was eleven years old, my first ever boyfriend, had been killed on his ship, the HMS Coventry, in the Falklands.

In those pre-internet days, and living in a place that had no TV, I hadn't really been keeping up with the news, so although I obviously knew the war was happening, I didn't really know that much about it. It was short as wars go, lasting only 74 days. I knew that sovereignty was the issue, but was gobsmacked to read this report on the BBC website today that reveals how incredibly easily the war could have been avoided. I have no doubt that many other conflicts over the centuries could have been avoided, but were entered into because they were seen as being politically advantageous.

My response to Jorge back in 1981 about the Malvinas , was that it seemed to me that it would make more sense in many ways for the islands to be allied with Argentina - BUT the islanders would have to see an advantage in becoming Argentinian. At the time, Argentina's human rights record was appalling, and had I been a Falkland Islander at the time, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to have anything to do with Argentina! If governments are correct in their belief that their system is wonderful, then surely their mere example will encourage others to join them. Unfortunately, all it takes is a single powerful person to pervert the course of democracy and all is ruined. Some claim that the Falklands War was a war that neither government wanted, but both the dictator Galtieri in Argentina and Maggie Thatcher in the UK certainly gained from it.

I like to think that if Ian had not died in the Falklands we would still be in touch, probably on Facebook by now, but sadly he's long gone. Rest in peace Ian.

Expectations

2010-03-28T20:15:00.005-04:00

When I was in primary (elementary) school I had school dinner (lunch) every day. My mum counted on us having a good meal, to the point where our evening meal at home until I was at secondary school (6th grade) was a sandwich and a bag of crisps. I think we probably did have pretty good lunches, though I remember not liking the liver very much. I actually liked the flavour and the texture, but I didn't like the 'rubber bands' you had to cut out of it. I remember getting told off by the dinner ladies for 'playing' with our food when we stirred the dollop of jam into the semolina to make the semolina pink. I liked semolina, but we never had it at home. We sometimes had pink custard too, which I'd forgotten about completely until another blogger mentioned it recently.

School lunches definitely weren't so good once we got to secondary school. I remember being served battered and deep-fried spam fritters and loving them. I actually added more salt! One day I was at the very end of the line and they had literally run out of food. My lunch that day was white rice and chips. That was the day I discovered that plain white rice could be made more interesting with the addition of malt vinegar. By the time I was in the 6th form I was too lazy to walk to the other side of the school to get my lunch so I stopped having school lunches. In fact I think I stopped eating much of anything for lunch because I was too lazy to make a lunch to bring to school with me. I survived on coffee and Lipton's Cup-a-Soup because we had a water heater in the 6th form common room and everyone had their own jar of instant coffee and CoffeeMate. I had coffee when I arrived at school, one at mid-morning break, one at lunch after my Cup-a-Soup, and another if I had a study hall in the afternoon. A cup of tea when I got home from school, and a coffee after dinner, and it's a miracle I ever slept!

After I moved on to university, they changed to a cafeteria system at school so that instead of paying a set price for a (supposedly) balanced meal, kids could choose what they wanted. I have no doubt chips outsold everything else.

I was pleased when I heard of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's campaign to improve school meals in the UK, though I don't know how successful it was. Certainly, there were stories in the press of parents circumventing his plan for no junk food by delivering fish'n'chips to their poor children who couldn't stomach the thought of a healthy meal.

Jamie has now made a new series for American TV about food – how families eat, what kids get at school and why, like the UK, the diet of processed food and snacks is causing so many health and obesity problems. I choose to send my kids to school with a lunch from home, as I have not been impressed with the lunch menus. The series was filmed in Huntington, West Virginia and from what I've seen, the school lunches there seem very similar to school lunches here, several states away. I've watched the first two hours of the series and I have to say some of it seems to be a setup. One of the 'lunch ladies' (who seems confused by that title) seems convinced that nothing he does will succeed. Given that the entire series has probably been filmed already, I am guessing that she eventually will see the light and become one of his greatest supporters.

The first meal Jamie served was in competition with the 'regular' school meal, and of course most of the kids chose the meal they were familiar with. The next meal, all the kids were served Jamie's menu. The administrators complained that Jamie had not provided nutritional analyses of the meals, and had not provided two starches 'as required'. Why was he not told in advance his meals had to meet certain nutritional requirements? Well, it does make for more dramatic television . . .

He was 'allowed' to serve a third meal, which initially was no more successful than the first two. Part of the problem was that in order to eat his food, the kids needed a knife and fork. Why is that a problem you ask? American public schools (at least none that I've been in) do not provide knives for their students to use. Well, I can see their point - they use plastic cutlery, and a plastic knife is usually pretty useless. I did lunch duty in one school for two years, and there was one meal (some kind of meat patty served with gravy) that the kids really needed a knife for. Most kids would pick the patty up with the fork and then nibble around the patty, never taking it off the fork. Practical, but hardly good table manners. There were two of us on lunch duty and every time this meal was served, we would go into the kitchen and ask for real knives, and then would go around the room asking the kids if they wanted us to cut their lunch up for them.

Eventually, we managed to persuade the woman running the kitchen that for that one meal in the menu cycle the kids could be trusted with plastic knives. Yes, I said trusted. Her reasoning for not providing knives was the kids couldn't be trusted. Excuse me? Like they couldn't poke each other's eyes out equally effectively (if not more so) with a plastic fork? Actually, I think she was following policy set by higher ups, as she's really a very reasonable lady. Once the kids were given the plastic knives, I realized we had another problem. Most of the kids (and I kid you not) DID NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THEM! Now instead of going round the room cutting the kids' meals up for them, I had to go around the room teaching them how to use their knife and fork effectively.

Therefore, I was well aware before Jamie's new show that American kids as old as 10 years old may not actually know how to use a knife and fork. In the UK, on the other hand, I remember my mother saying that when she taught the reception class the parents were told that when their child started school at age 4 or 5 they needed to be able to use a knife and fork by themselves because the staff did not have time to help them. So I also understand why Jamie expected the kids in the US to be able to use a knife and fork, and his reaction when he found they couldn't. What completely threw me for a loop was the oppositional lunch lady's reaction when he said that in the UK kids as young as 4 and 5 are expected to be able to (and can) use a knife and fork. She said, in all seriousness, "Can you document that?" She honestly did not expect kids to be able to use a knife and fork!

Jamie asked if some of the kids could be made to stay at the lunch tables for a little longer and he started going around showing the kids how to use a knife and fork. The principal then started doing the same thing. Lo and behold, once the kids were EXPECTED to eat, and TAUGHT how to use a knife and fork so that they could eat the food, many more of them ate up and did in fact enjoy the food.

If we don’t expect our kids to be able to use a knife and fork, then they will never learn. If we don’t set expectations for our kids, they will have nothing to rise to. And quite frankly, I don’t think learning to use a knife and fork is a very high expectation, even for a kindergartner! Or is the US-UK cultural divide greater than I thought?

(Oh, and go read Expat Mum's post on this topic if you haven't already!)

Pysanky

2010-03-27T17:05:00.005-04:00

Our family traditions regarding Easter when I was growing up were simple - lamb for lunch and a large chocolate Easter egg each. One year for breakfast on Easter Sunday, my mother gave us eggs that looked like real eggs, but in fact they were made of some kind of hard candy with chocolate yolks. She gave them to us in egg cups as though they were soft-boiled. We spotted immediately that there was something 'not right' about them as they were cold. She tried to blame that on us having taken too long to get downstairs for breakfast. I think she finally had to tell us that they were a joke when we started banging them on the table - they were VERY hard! Those were the longest lasting Easter eggs we ever got - it took us weeks to lick our way through to the chocolate yolks! (We did get regular chocolate eggs that year too - I'm sure those disappeared very quickly!)

DH's family likes to decorate real hens' eggs, which usually means simply dipping them in some kind of dye to color them. This year, DS and I had the chance to take a class in creating pysanky - Ukranian Easter eggs. I wasn't sure if DS would have the dexterity to do a good job, but I needn't have worried. The teacher knew what she was doing when she said "first grade and up" and he was quite capable of handling the class, open flames and all! He realized immediately that the traditional pysanky were beyond his skills and simply created his own style. After some complaints as we got started, he really enjoyed himself. He not only asked if we can take the class again next year, but wanted to go out right away and buy the tools so that we can teach his sister next weekend.

We'd been warned to wear old clothes as the dye we used is a permanent one. I hadn't realized that the eggs we would be using would be regular, raw, eggs. I'd assumed they would have to be hard-boiled or blown, but apparently it is actually easier to work with raw eggs. In the end, although we both ended up with multi-colored hands, I was the one who dropped a couple of eggs, not DS, and neither of us ruined our clothes.

I think we've just found ourselves a new tradition :-)

Blame it on Mommy

2010-03-17T21:34:00.004-04:00

DS came home from school today and tore his bed apart. Not literally - one of his classmates told him that the leprechauns left gold coins under his pillow last night, so DS figured he must have some too. DH explained to him that the leprechauns don't visit our house "Because Mommy's English." Why blame it on me? It's not like DH is Irish either! (Some of his ancestors did come to the US from Ireland - but they were French Huguenots who stopped off in Ireland for just a couple of generations in the late 17th century on their way to America.) Still, they do say "Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day!" Except Mommy apparently :-)

The wearing of the green

2010-03-16T21:28:00.007-04:00

Last weekend we went to visit friends for a St. Patrick's Day party. This is not a 'holiday' I have ever really celebrated before - though I did go to the St. Patrick's Day parade in South Boston the year that I was dating a bloke who grew up there. True to stereotype, there was much drinking involved before, during, and after the parade - to the point where I was the one who drove us home at the end of the day even though he had promised he would stay sober.

Americans love to decorate for the holidays and even people who have no ties to Ireland at all will often decorate their house for St. Patrick's Day. Our friends however, are of Irish descent so we were not surprised to find the house well and truly decorated. Many Americans don't realize that St Patrick's Day has long been a much bigger deal in the US than in Ireland itself. It was only in the 1990's that it began to be celebrated in Ireland the way it is here with parades and so on because the Irish realized it was a great tourist attraction. St Patrick's Day was of course originally a religious holiday and up until the 1970s, Irish laws mandated that pubs be closed on March 17th!

At our friends' house, there was a holiday wreath of leprechauns on the front door, and an Irish flag on the front of the house:

As we entered the house, everyone was given a "Kiss me, I'm Irish" necklace to wear:

I realized I had probably committed a major social faux-pas as I had neglected to wear anything green. Our host was wearing an Ireland rugby shirt - very appropriate as Ireland won on Saturday - and his children had really dressed for the occasion:

There were shamrocks and leprechauns all over the place:

There were even holiday-themed craft projects for the children to complete. There were green beads and safety pins to make brooches, and stickers to decorate these shamrock shapes. It might be difficult to see in this photo, but that's a pot of gold at the end of each rainbow.

The beer menu included Guinness and Harp, and there was Jamieson's Irish Whisky on hand too. Just about every stereotypically 'Irish' item you could think of for St Patrick's Day - with the exception (thankfully) of green beer! I'm looking forward to celebrating St Patrick's Day again next year!

Planning a trip to the UK

2010-03-11T14:57:00.004-05:00

It's been too long since we were last in the UK and it's time to start thinking about another trip there. We used to go a lot more often, but now that we have four plane tickets to buy, it's got significantly more expensive. Still, by planning ahead, there are some ways we can save money.

Direct flights from the east coast of the US are more expensive than a flight with one or more change of planes. For example, we flew IcelandAir via Reykjavik the last time we flew to the UK. You have to weigh the hidden costs of a 'cheaper' flight though. When you're travelling with kids or have a limited amount of vacation time, it's not just a question of money. Is it worth it to spend significantly longer en route? Spending several hours in the middle of the night in an airport that was basically shut down for the night was not particularly entertaining. Nor was it fun to have a three year old screaming for the first several hundred miles because his sister had promised him his own seat-back TV that never materialized because we were on a 'short-haul' flight with TVs that dropped down from the ceiling of the plane. Next time we're paying the extra and flying direct!

In the past, we've had the good fortune to have a family member working for a car rental company in the UK, so we've been able to hire a car at a staff discount. Not so now, but I discovered that if you book a car at the same time as you book your flight with British Airways it is significantly cheaper than booking it separately. I think a manual Vectra for 15 days, including unlimited mileage and all the optional insurance works out at under $300. If you sign up for the BA frequent flyer program you can add a second driver at no charge, which is another savings. (Not that DH ever drives in the UK, but it would be nice to know that he was insured to do so if he had to for some reason.)

Given that we're visiting family when we go to the UK, we are able to save money by staying with them for at least part of the time. On our last few trips, we've made a point of spending a few nights in hotels to visit parts of the country where we don't happen to have any relatives. The first time we did it was for the sheer delight of spending only $9 a night TOTAL for a family of four! The Travelodge chain was having a "Fiver Frenzy" sale - rooms available for five pounds a night! I admit it was close to ten years ago and we've never hit a sale quite that good again, but their regular rates are excellent if you book ahead. The rooms are basic. There are no toiletries provided. (Towels are though.) Breakfast is not included, but there's instant coffee and tea bags in the room along with a kettle, and your room key gets you a discount at the restaurant next door for breakfast. WiFi is available for a fee. Given that we're not there to do anything other than sleep in the hotel room, it suits our purpose fine. If Travelodge is not your style, try checking out vouchercodes.co.uk's voucher codes for hotels.com.

We like to visit pubs when we're in the UK. There are so many though, and it's really easy to pick a bad one, so we rely on the latest edition of the Good Pub Guide. I have too many American friends who have never heard of it and ended up having a bad pub experience and thinking that all pubs in the UK serve naff food. If you're only there for a few days on vacation you don't want to waste your money on a bad meal! Nowadays, we look not just for pubs that have good beer and good food, but also that are child-friendly.

On our last trip we used the Good Pub Guide to find The Mole and Chicken in Buckinghamshire. There was a similarly highly recommended pub not very far away, but the Guide warned us that it was NOT child-friendly. At The Mole and Chicken we had an outstanding evening, and the children had as good a meal as we did. This time we may not even have to buy the Guide if we plan well as it is now online! In fact, the last time I checked, the 2010 guide is not available in the US yet, so we'll be doing our planning using the website! I may buy DH the book for his birthday though as he does like just browsing through it, and it could come in handy if our carefully made plans fall apart once we're in the UK!

If you're going to visit historic sites, don't forget to work out whether it's worth buying a pass rather than single tickets. There's the London Pass for 55 sites in London, CADW has passes for Welsh sites and the British Heritage Pass covers over 500 sites, some of them National Trust sites. The National Trust has both short-term passes and an annual membership that covers over 300 historic sites. Depending on which sites you want to visit, the National Trust annual membership may actually be a better deal than the British Heritage Pass for a limited number of days! An even better deal for Americans is to plan ahead and join the Royal Oak Foundation which is for American members of the National Trust. A family membership is just US$90, as opposed to the 82 pounds it would cost for National Trust membership - and it's 100% deductible as a charitable donation on your US tax return! Oh - and if you have a membership to a local science museum in the US it is often valid at other museums including a few in the UK.

You can also check sites like VoucherCodes.co.uk to find their latest money saving voucher codes and offers, including Hotels.com Discount Codes and Expedia Voucher Codes. While the site is not necessarily geared towards international tourists visiting the UK, there might be some useful offers there. I've seen printable coupons for meal deals at a Covent Garden restaurant for example. If we were going to such a touristy location where the prices are inevitably going to be high, I'd definitely rather have a coupon in hand! I'll be looking to see if they have coupons for some of the chain restaurants we might stop at with the kids as they seem to have a lot of BOGOF deals, which would certainly make it more affordable. (I do hate the acronym BOGOF - looks too much like 'bog off!')

There are lots of things that seem to be more expensive in the UK than in the US, but I suppose I could 'save' some money by stocking up on a few of the things that aren't, like Indian spices. I remember returning to the US in the past with a large quantity of Patak's curry sauce jars in my suitcase! If I didn't already have more than enough knitting needles, I could stock up on the highly desirable Addi needles as they are generally 1/2 to 2/3 the price in the UK that they are in the USA. Tea bags. Custard creams. What else?

Does anyone else have any suggestions for how to save money on a trip to the UK?

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My desk

2010-03-03T17:24:00.004-05:00

This cartoon is by Dave Walker and is used with permission.

Actually, my desk doesn't look quite like this - it's not as organized as this, and one of the mugs is often not a mug but a wine glass.

Cadbury's Creme Eggs

2010-02-25T15:13:00.004-05:00

I LOVE Cadbury's Creme Eggs and am very happy that they can be found year-round nowadays. The regular Creme Eggs are my favorite, but the orange ones (which I've never found in the US) are good too. I like Cadbury's Mini Eggs as well and am hoping that the recent takeover of Cadbury's doesn't mean a change in recipe for either of them. It shouldn't, seeing as both are already produced in the USA under licence from Cadbury's, but you never know.

My favorite Cadbury's Creme Egg ads were the ones where every year the shopkeeper bought more eggs than the previous year, and each year a kid turned up with a bigger and bigger bag to buy all of them at once.

Here's a new one: Goo Got Talent

I think I like the older ads better . . .

Don't drink the water!

2010-02-23T07:46:00.004-05:00

Where in the world would you see a notice like this?

Yes, it is in the United States. In the 'restroom' of the customer services department at a large restaurant chain! I suppose it is a good thing that whoever decided the sign needed to be posted didn't also need to warn people not to use the toilets/urinals for handwashing, but seriously - who on earth in such an environment needs to be told not to drink the toilet water?!!!!

Couldn't care less about the Superbowl, but . . .

2010-02-05T17:33:00.005-05:00

. . . there is another sporting event that I will be watching this weekend. BBC America is broadcasting the Six Nations Cup live this year! Woohoo! (That's rugby, in case you didn't know and in the past I've complained about how difficult it has been to find live rugby on TV over here.) Guess what I'll be doing at noon East coast time on Saturday?! The kids, DH and I have been invited to a party on Saturday afternoon, but depending on how the game is going, I may send DH off on his own with the kids to join them later. He will understand ;-)

The first time I ever visited the UK with DH, we left Heathrow sometime around 8:30 on a Saturday morning to head north to my parents' house. There was a rugby game on that afternoon that I would have liked to watch. Wales versus somebody - I don't remember who. Unfortunately, the length of the drive to my parents' house meant that we would arrive there in the middle of the game and I didn't have a key to my parents' house. My mother had warned me that if we arrived while the game was going on no one would answer the door. So, we killed some time en route with a leisurely pub lunch and DH didn't complain. I tried to find the game on the radio, figuring at least I could listen to it, but the only station I could find it on was in Welsh :-(

It's been years since I've seen a game, and I've long since given up following the reports of the games, but I am looking forward to seeing a game or two again after so long. At the very least, it's going to make it easier to know when NOT to call my parents as they don't answer the phone when the rugby's on. Or if they do, it's to hurriedly say, "Can you call back later?" We have ties to England, Scotland and Wales in my family, so I don't really care who wins, but the Welsh do have the best songs.

This is not the Welsh national anthem, but it might as well be. I remember my elementary school principal teaching it to us, telling us that we should know it! It was a church school, and the song is a hymn, but he did make it clear when he taught it to us that this was a rugby song! I don't remember which version of the lyrics he taught us - probably the more traditional one that begins "Guide me, O Thou great Redeemer" - but most people only know the chorus anyway!

Bread of heaven
Bread of heaven
Feed me 'til I want no more
Feed me 'til I want no more

Wales forever
Wales forever

Can you hear, the voices calling
Singing proud and singing clear
All around the sound is rising
One by one they join the cheer

gwlad fy nhadau {land of my fathers}
gwlad fy nhadau
cymru, cymru am byth {Wales, Wales forever}

Can you hear the valleys ring
Can you hear the dragon's roar
Heart and soul, with pride are singing
Land of Wales forever more

Wales forever
Wales forever
Hear us now and ever more
Hear us now and ever more

Oh can you hear the roar of voices
Join together, side by side
Well now's the hour, the hour of glory
Raise the roof, and sing with pride

Wales forever
Wales forever
Hear us now and ever more
Hear us now and ever more

gwlad fy nhadau
gwald fy nhadau
cymru, cymru am byth
cymru, cymru am byth

What does Barbie drink?

2010-01-24T09:27:00.006-05:00

Last weekend we had some very good friends over for dinner who we hadn't seen since before Christmas and we finally got to exchange Christmas presents. Although they often buy things I wouldn't for the kids, they are extremely thoughtful and always hit the nail on the head in terms of choosing something the kids love. This year they got DD a Barbie.

This is her first Barbie doll ever and she was very excited about it. It came with a kitchen, so she is a very domestic Barbie. Hmm . . . Oh well. That's OK. DD knows that in our house the kitchen is really Dad's and Mom only gets to use it on school nights to make sure we eat early enough to get everyone to bed on time. Anyway, DD was delighted and has played with it a lot in the last week.

I had to laugh when I saw the 'instructions' that came with the kitchen though. Not instructions on how to assemble it - no, it came pre-assembled. Look:

I guess they think Barbie users are really dumb if they need to have explained to them how to put the lid on a saucepan, or how to open a cupboard door! About the only 'instruction' there that might actually have been needed was showing that the hook above the oven was to hang the chandelier from. There was also an image of all the (very tiny!) parts that came with it.
Can you spot the item that surprised me? (Think about this blog post title.)

You see, there's a tea kettle, and even some honey for the tea, but no tea cups. However, Barbie does have champagne glasses!

A little bit of snow

2010-01-07T20:35:00.006-05:00

Americans who live in the snow belt always laugh when the UK grinds to a halt because of an inch or so of snow. I was ready to do the same thing this week, but then I saw this satellite photo of the UK today:

There are a few places where you can still see green - part of Anglesey, and on the south coast in Devon - but not many! I grew up on the Wirral and we rarely if ever got any snow there, though we could often see it on the Welsh hills. It looks just as white as the rest of the UK today! I have no doubt that they really don't have enough ploughs, sanders and gritters to deal with this, even it is only a few inches.

My old secondary school is closed and will not open again until next Monday at the earliest. I don't EVER remember school being closed for bad weather when I was a kid, though my primary school closed once for a day because the boiler broke and there was no heat. I was intrigued to see this on the high school website though:

It looks as though they are trying to avoid the issue of having to make up the snow days by asking kids to login from home and complete work that's been assigned. (VLE = Virtual Learning Environment) I've never seen that done over here. Boy, I wish we could have done that last year when we had 9 snow days and ended up losing 3 days from our April vacation so that we could still complete 180 days of school as required by the end of June. (State schools in the UK have to put in 190 days I believe.) We have a VLE (Moodle) in my district, but relatively few teachers use it, and some of the towns in the district still only have dial-up internet access so it's not practical to require kids to use it anyway!

Only a few miles away from my hometown, the independent school my father used to work at also closed yesterday and today (in common with all Wirral, North Wales, Wrexham schools and most Cheshire schools) but will be open tomorrow:

The school will be open for all pupils on Friday 8 January.

Notes for parents
The car parks will still be very icy and potentially hazardous, especially after an overnight frost, so extreme care will be needed; please do not stay on site any longer than it takes to drop your children off. Staff will be on hand in the car parks to assist. For safety reasons and because of extremely limited parking, we are not allowing sixth formers to drive to school.

Buses should be running as normal tomorrow, though buses will not be driving through the villages and so will drop pupils off on the way home on the main roads at the points where they were picked up in the morning.

I guess it's a good thing schools all seem to have websites nowadays to make these announcements! Here in New England, snow days and delayed starts because of bad weather are so common that most schools districts now have automated calling systems in addition to posting cancellations and delays on local radio and TV. I remember once driving most of my 60+ mile commute to work before hearing on the radio that school was cancelled for the day. At that point we didn't have an automatic calling system, and where I lived I couldn't get the TV or radio stations that the school posted its cancellations on. Where I lived the weather was fine so I set out for work! After that, I learned to log on to the school email system or website every morning in the winter just in case!

British qualities

2010-01-07T07:35:00.002-05:00

Yael pointed me in the direction of this article on differences between the British and Americans.
The opening line ("The first thing I ever heard about Americans was that they all carried guns. ") reminded me of the kids I was teaching when I decided to leave for the US for a couple of years - in every class there was at least one kid who responded to my announcement with a comment along the lines of, "Ooh miss, you'll get mugged!"

The author of this article, Geoff Dyer, would clearly like to be American.

It turns out that the qualities that make us indubitably British — that is, the ones that we don’t share with or have not imported from America — are no longer conducive to Greatness. They actually add up to a kind of ostrich stoicism that, though it can be traced back to our finest hour (the blitz, the Battle of Britain), manifests itself in a peculiar compromise: a highly stylized willingness to muddle on, to put up with poor quality and high prices (restaurants, trains), to proffer (and accept) apologies not as a prelude to but as a substitute for improvement. We may not enjoy the way things are, but we endure them in a way that seems either quaint or quasi-Soviet to American visitors.

Sadly, it's too long since I spent any significant time in the UK to really be able to comment on this, either to agree with it or refute it! Of course, Geoff Dyer's audience for this article is primarily Americans as the article was written for the New York Times and that may have something to do with the slant of the article.

Birthday parties

2010-01-05T21:52:00.000-05:00

mom/Mum and Nappy Valley Mum both blogged about kids' birthday parties recently. I blogged about food at birthday parties, but they had both actually given birthday parties for their kids. You see, we haven't actually done a party in a couple of years now because we hit upon the idea of asking the kids if they'd like a party or a family trip instead. Both children, very wisely, have chosen the family trip. Nothing huge or expensive, you understand. Trips down to Maryland to visit their great-aunt and uncle, and the kids get to choose which activities we do when we're down there. Things like the Baltimore Aquarium or the Smithsonian Museum. My favorite memory is of watching them looking through the fence at the White House and DS turning around and saying quite scornfully "I could climb this fence really easily!"

I think in 2010 we may have to have parties for them and I'm thinking I need to start planning now - especially as to what will go in the goody bags! On the other hand, if we do a trip to the UK to visit family, I could avoid the whole goody bag issue that Mom/Mum talked about, by telling them that's their birthday 'party' this year.

On Being Foreign

2010-01-04T15:56:00.000-05:00

A commenter on another expat blog, pointed out this article from a couple of weeks ago in The Economist:

The funny thing is, with the passage of time, something does happen to long-term foreigners which makes them more like real exiles, and they do not like it at all. The homeland which they left behind changes. The culture, the politics and their old friends all change, die, forget them. They come to feel that they are foreigners even when visiting “home”.

I know I feel like a foreigner now visiting the UK :-(

Years ago

2010-01-03T18:57:00.006-05:00

I'm copying the idea for this blogpost from NFAH. She wrote about changes in her life in the last 10 years. I went a little further back than that.

20 years ago . . .

10 years ago . . .

Now . . .

I couldn't imagine being a parent, even though many of my contemporaries were already
I was a mother of a four-month old and was just beginning to sink into post-natal depression that was partially resolved by returning to work
I am the mother of two highly articulate, demanding, and gorgeous children

I commuted 10 miles a day
I commuted 130+ miles a day
I commute 40 miles a day

I was in the best shape of my life and had my cholesterol under control without the help of medication
I was overweight and had high cholesterol
I am still overweight but my cholesterol is back under control with the help of medication

I wore contact lenses most of the time, and rarely wore my glasses
I wore contact lenses much of the time, and sometimes wore my glasses
I wear glasses most of the time because even when I wear my contact lenses I still need to wear reading glasses

I had no grey hair
I was beginning to go grey but could hide it with the right hairstyle
I am most definitely grey-haired!

I was a UK citizen working in the US on a J-1 (exchange-visitor) visa and had no idea whether I'd still be in the US by the end of the year
I was a UK citizen waiting for my US citizenship interview with the INS, unable to vote either in the US or the UK.
I am a dual-national, citizen of both the US and the UK, able to vote here in the US but not in the UK

I was looking forward to a busy year of travelling - a trip to Canada in February and Florida in March, the UK in early summer, followed a trip to Taiwan
I was looking forward to a trip to the UK once I had my new US passport
I am again waiting for a new US passport and hoping to get to the UK for the first time in several years within the next year

I lived in a work-provided 1 bedroom apartment
I lived in a 2 bedroom house with my husband, with only his name on the mortgage as he bought it just before we got married
I live in a 4 bedroom house with both my name and my husband's on the mortgage

I had colleagues who used Apple IIe computers and Macs
I had a Mac and dial-up access via (I think) a 4800 baud modem to the internet at home (but by August of 2000 we had 52k dial-up with wireless access - ooh!) and broadband access from the Mac on my desk at work. Some sites were too slow to load from home so I only ever visited them at work, or I surfed at home with images off
I have a work-provided Mac laptop, and wireless broadband access to the internet at work and at home, but my access at work is filtered, so there are some sites I can only access from home

I didn't know anyone who had a cell-phone
I couldn't imagine a time when I wouldn't want a telephone land-line as we had such bad cell-phone coverage at home
Would love to cancel the telephone landline but we still have terrible cell-phone service at home

I was teaching the main subject I had trained for years to teach and loving it
I was teaching a subject I had no formal qualifications to teach and loving it
I teach the second subject I'm qualified to teach and finding it harder than the one I had no qualifications for!

I had never been online (although a year later we had an email system at work that only a few of us used - access was via a 300 baud modem!)
I had some online friends who I'd never met in person
I still have some of those same online friends and have still never met them, and have made the acquaintance of many more in the meantime

I didn't know that the man I was destined to marry only lived a few miles away but I wouldn't meet him for another five years, after I had moved to a different part of the state
I thought I was married to the most wonderful man ever
I know I am married to the most wonderful man ever

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T16:09:00.002-05:00

Having a wonderfully perfect day thanks to my darling DH!

Christmas traditions

2009-12-24T16:43:00.004-05:00

For many years after I first came to the United States, I was often a guest in someone else's home at Christmas. When I eventually got married it was really nice to finally be able to celebrate Christmas in my own home and start creating some of our own traditions as a family.

Some things we do a little differently to when I was growing up. We leave the stockings downstairs, but Santa always delivers one present upstairs to each of the kids. Breakfast on Christmas morning is cinnamon rolls. (Although this year it may be banana blueberry muffins as they are already made!) Lunch is never turkey, as we have turkey at Thanksgiving and for some reason DH thinks it's too soon only a month later to have another turkey. Not really - we just choose to have something different. As DH had to work until the end of the day this Christmas Eve, he is not making beef Wellington as he did last year. There will still be beef though, and salmon for those of us who don't like beef very much. No Christmas pudding or Christmas cake. After my recent attempt at making mince pies, I'm thinking I should try making a real English Christmas cake next year and am hoping my mother still has the recipe she used when we were little. I do make a 'kid's trifle' - with jelly/jello instead of sherry, but mostly I'm the only one who eats it. (Trifle makes for a yummy breakfast on Boxing Day!) DH surprised me this evening by producing a box of English Christmas crackers - the kind that go bang and have silly paper hats in them.

I got the following via email from friends a couple of days ago:

1st Annual Christmas Day Open House
Friday December 25th, 12:00 noon -10PM

For Kids & Childish Adults ▪ Dress Exceedingly Casual ▪ Light Fare Served All-Day
Leave your present-opening mess at home & come mess up our house, instead!

Although we've always considered Christmas Day a family day, I think we will take them up on their invitation. There's room in the routine for a new tradition!