HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA

The Man took me out for a meal tonight and I'm now feeling a little woozy after a glass of wine (gosh, I'm a cheap date) so I'll save the other details of today for tomorrow. But I had a happy birthday, thank you to those who sent gifts or cards or good wishes, and thank you Exile for babysitting.

Thompson's travel

Another day hanging out with the Boy. We went to Altamont. I visited the wool shop and the Boy explored the little-used railway track (have I mentioned that he likes railways?).

Then we tried somewhere new - Thompson's Lake, just up the road from Altamont. There's a tiny beach and lots of camping provision - not that the 'campers', in their well-appointed Winnebagos, seemed to need much providing for.

We also checked out a nearby nature centre, and due to being possibly the first visitors they'd had all day were given a personal guided tour including meet-and-greet with a salamander and a garter snake. The Boy was very impressed by bees in a glass hive.

Back to Altamont then for ice-cream at the Home Front Cafe, before returning home in time to pick up the Girl from craft camp. She came out clutching a beautifully wrapped parcel which she has hidden in her room until tomorrow - that couldn't be for me now, could it?

Slide, Charlie Brown, slide!

What little I know about baseball has been learnt almost exclusively from Peanuts cartoons. This still holds true tonight after my first actual experience of a 'ball game' at the Joe (the Joseph L. Bruno stadium near Troy).

What a weird experience. Every ten minutes a rabbit in a car would drive round the stadium throwing t-shirts into the crowd, or Uncle Sam would start a Mexican wave, or three hotdogs would race each other on mopeds. A glee club led us in a chorus of 'God Bless America', followed by 'Take me Out to the Ball Game'. The tannoy blasted out clapping chants and multiple references to a 'famous' Christopher Walken/cow bells sketch and odd snatches of the theme from Zorba the Greek. There was snack food a-plenty, including Santa-sized sacks of popcorn. Oh, and there was a game being played out on the field, but no-one paid much attention to that. Nice knickerbockers, though.

In the very-nearly-a-year we've been here I have never felt so foreign. Not unpleasantly so, but I don't think I've been in an environment here before where absolutely none of the cultural references had any resonance for me at all. Especially the cow bell related ones.

The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly 'Li'l Anthony', a kid about the size of our Boy who stood up and belted out 'New York, New York', note perfect, and left the stadium slack-jawed with admiration. America's got talent!

There were fireworks at the end, and I must admit it was very enjoyable to be watching them on a balmy night for a change instead of in winter woollies and a persistent November drizzle. That's a cultural shift I am prepared to make.

Cold comfort, farm

The Girl is back at camp this week - 'Eco-crafts'. Today they were making masks out of plastic milk bottles and tomorrow they will be melting down old wax crayons and turning them into candles.

Anyway, that left me hanging out with the Boy. We did a bit of shopping in town, then went up to Indian Ladder Farms hoping to pick raspberries, though apparently they're a bit thin at the moment so we need to come back in a couple of weeks. Still, we bought a few things from the farm shop and admired some of the livestock, so it didn't feel like a wasted journey.

This afternoon the Boy got busy on his own eco-craft project - turning a load of old packing boxes into WALL-E and WALL-E's 'house'. When I say he got busy, what I really mean is I was roped into wielding the scissors and tape while the Boy project-managed.

The boxes had most recently been employed as an 'eco-fridge', though we are now proud to introduce our rather more functional refrigerator. It even dispenses ice and water as designed, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of a handy-Man.

Soggy froggy

'No new breakdowns in the house' - ha! What kind of a fool writes something like that?

This kind of a fool! Today we found evidence of damp in one of our ceilings, due to an odd roof arrangement. What larks!

It has been another day of rain and thunderstorms, though the kids managed to get out in the pool by early evening. The Girl spends much of her swimming sessions rescuing beetles and grasshoppers which have fallen into the water. She scoops spiders out, too, though with care since one bit her.

Today we had the excitement of fishing out a frog. No, not this one - a tiny little thing. It hopped away into the soggy yard as soon as it had recovered.

The grass is greener...

...on the under side of the tracks.

The Boy's railway was scenically improved today, to everyone's satisfaction.

Other than that, not much news. As far as I know there were no new breakdowns in the house, so that's definitely a plus.

Zen and the Art of Waste Management

At the supermarket pharmacy today I was trying to pick up a prescription for fluoride tablets for the kids (no fluoride in the water in these parts). A simple matter you'd have thought, but of course it turned out not to be and I had to wait forever while they untangled my health insurance details.

I believe Buddhism teaches that the cause of suffering is wrong expectation. Certainly my expectation of things going smoothly in this country causes me much frustration, an admittedly mild version of suffering, on an almost daily basis. So henceforth I am adjusting my expectations to a very low setting in order to avoid future disappointment.

In this spirit I am not going to be upset that we have recently diagnosed yet another water-related problem in our basement. If anyone is planning on sending me a birthday gift via Amazon, this would be very appropriate. Though naturally, in my new Zen-like state, I will try not to be too disappointed if I don't receive one.

Rhyme stoppers

It rained all night and much of the day, including some torrential stuff, and then it suddenly cleared up completely and we had blue skies again.

The children had a friend over to play, and I had a friend come for lunch, so we were all happy. Later we went over to our pool supply shop to spend some more dollars (definition of a home pool: a big sink in the yard into which one throws money).

I have replaced the gasket on the pump basket. 'Basket gasket' is probably easy to say if you are American or from the North of England, but not if you speak RP. Try it: bahsket gasket. Sounds daft (dahft), doesn't it?

...and then a bit more water

The whole region is on a flood watch. I set out to a meeting tonight around six thirty and our street was like a river. It's set to continue raining until Friday morning, mostly into our basement amusingly enough.

The meeting was to plan the next Five Rivers Fall Festival. It's quite an established event and the team all know each other well, but they made me very welcome and I'm looking forward to being involved. I've volunteered to organise a rock painting stall. Rockin' role!

Also today I took the Boy and his friend Exile #3 to the cinema to see WALL-E. It's an excellent animation, with some quite dark and complex themes alongside the flash-bang-whizz stuff. The Boy ended up on my lap again, but this time not from fear. As the robot hero WALL-E left planet Earth, clinging to the side of a space-ship and leaving behind his little insect friend, I realised the Boy was sobbing: 'It's too sad, it reminds me of England.'

I wonder if he'll ever truly settle into his American life.

Water, water everywhere...

Some people buy a plane ticket, catch their flight without mishap or delay and arrive at their destination to find that their luggage has conveniently travelled with them.

Some people (apparently) are able to apply for a New York driver's licence without also having to sign up for membership of a discount supermarket.

Some people choose a new fridge at a store and have it delivered by a couple of blokes who install it with ease, leaving behind a fully functioning refrigerator.

And then there's us.

We've bought a very nice fridge. It fits neatly into the space that has been just waiting for it since we moved in. It's one of those with a chilled water/ice dispenser thing in the door. And that's where the problem lies - or at least, the problem is with the existing water supply pipe which is merrily leaking and needs replacing before the fridge can make any ice or dispense any water. And, by the way, the blokes who delivered the fridge have for some reason welded it to the old supply pipe so that we can't even begin the process of fitting a new pipe.

There are those who relish nothing more than than chance to muck around with spanners and wrenches, saddle valves and ferrules. But not us. We are more for sighing and wondering why, oh why nothing is ever straightforward in this 'easy-living' land we have chosen to move to.

Up a lazy river

And when you've tired of swimming in your own pool every day? Well of course, you go swimming somewhere else!

Friends invited us along to a leisure centre they belong to. The pool area was fancy enough to elicit a 'WOW!' from the Boy - slides, fountains, tipping buckets etc. Also a lazy river, which the kids went round and round and round. Excellent fun.

We went back to the friends' house for a late lunch. We met their dog, a lively animal which has eaten (among other things) a pair of glasses, a car windscreen wiper knob and a cellphone. I'd have taken its photo, but I decided I'd better not risk getting the camera out.

The Man says he's finished with his desk job.

What d'you think?

Sleepless in Albany

Friends rang and invited us to join them at the cinema today, so the kids and I went to see 'Space Chimps'. It was pretty silly. I enjoyed it more than I expected and the Girl seemed to like it, but the Boy spent most of the movie curled up on my lap and peeping at the screen through his fingers.

Not much else to report. It is hot and muggy again, with another thunderstorm tonight. No-one can sleep, or at least everyone who should be asleep by now keeps reappearing with quite annoying regularity... The Boy tells me he's still half on English time - in which case he really should be asleep, as I have just (at 10pm here, 3am in the UK) pointed out to him. Ho hum.

Taking the wrap

There was a brief but wild storm last night. A large willow tree uprooted and fell onto a house just around the corner from us. I'm always a little nervous whenever there are strong winds as the trees in our backyard are so tall. Luckily we were ok this time.

The Girl spent much of the day on a playdate, and the rest of us went out for lunch then shopping. Later I tried to Christo the yard. Points if you can suggest what I was really up to.

Take that, Dr Beeching

Well, here's your daily update from Much Giggling in the Pool. The Girl had one of her best friends round today, and my they did get silly, but a good time was had by all.

It has been a hot and sticky day again. I think we are entering another mini-heatwave. The kids ended up playing down in the basement this afternoon - the coolest place to be by quite a margin.

Here is a sample of one of the Boy's latest layouts - all his own work. You may be able to pick out Linton, with restored railway line.

If only, eh?

The root of all evil...

...was removed from my aching tooth today. The backdrop to all the happy vacation time of the last few days has, for me, been mild to acute pain, so in many ways I was looking forward to today's root canal appointment. The lengthy procedure went well. I've been left with just a dull ache which I'm told will be gone in a couple of days. I was also completely knocked out by the sedative which the dentist insisted I took, so I've spend much of the afternoon asleep while the children have amused themselves on the computer and watching a DVD.

Funny place, the dentist's surgery. Did they consciously design it to look like it's built out of extracted teeth?






And what's with all the tooth-shaped furniture? It doesn't stop in the waiting room - the treatment rooms are full of tooth-shaped hand-mirrors and coffee cups and the like. Do dentists have this kind of stuff in their homes? I need to know - the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.

Marine Boy

Unexpectedly the Boy started swimming today, independently and rather well. The only thing is, it's all under water. I suppose we could just buy him a snorkel and let him get on with it.

Changing the subject, we ate our own home-grown lettuce for tea! And some other food, obviously. It was good.

Apart from that, what else can I report? Well, we're (three of us at least) truly on vacation - hanging out, swimming, sitting in the sun. Friends call round and we do the same with them. Everyone is pretty happy with life.

But what have you been up to? Haven't heard from you in ages...

The Real World

The Man writes...if you're thinking Albaniana seems to be short of blog material these days, well - no need to feel too much sympathy there.

At my place of work we were visited today by the Governor of New York State, David Paterson and other leading figures in State politics. By all accounts matters had reached bitter gridlock under Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace last March, but Paterson embarked on a much more collaborative approach. It was refreshing - particularly to British eyes - to see the most senior Republicans and Democratics in the State talking of their respect - and even without irony love - for each other.

In fictional politics our "West Wing" DVD fix last night included one of my favourite scenes, when the (presumably fictional) "Cartographers for Social Equality" visited the White House. They wanted the Peters Projection of the Earth to become the norm in every school - it reflects area accurately so Africa looks much bigger than on the usual Mercator Projection. They also wanted World maps to show the Southern Hemisphere at the top rather than the bottom.

I'm pleased to report that the World maps at the kids' school already do this, and that we recently hung the "conventional" map in our office upside-down.

Hairy headbanger

A loud hammering noise took me out into the backyard this morning and I spotted a hairy woodpecker way up high. That's a strange way to live a life, slamming your face into the side of a tree all day long.

We've had an easy day. A trip to the library, dips in the pool, that kind of thing. No complaints. But it doesn't make for very interesting blog material, so we'd better try and do something more exciting tomorrow.

Junkyards

I've just been putting the Boy to bed and fallen fast asleep myself for a while - so sorry if this is a bit blurry.

We've mainly been at home today, with a quick trip to Lowes DIY store for paint. Yesterday we bought a small desk and a bookcase for the Girl at a local yard sale, and we're turning them lilac. The paint costs rather more than the furniture. I could easily become addicted to yard sales - nothing like prodding through other people's junk and making some of it your own!

The Girl made a new friend at camp last week, and she came to play for the afternoon. This evening the little kids from next door trotted round to try out the pool, much to the Boy's delight - he'd been waiting all day for them to come.

And tonight it is tipping down with rain, with likely disastrous consequences for our basement in which we once again have 'damp issues'...

Good clean fun

In this environmentally aware age, being a swimming pool owner is not something you really want to brag about. But I can't deny it any longer, we have a great big pool in our back yard.

How we came to buy a house with a pool is anyone's guess. I put it down to the fact that we bought in the winter when the pool was covered up and didn't seem quite real. Anyway, there it is.

About a week before we left for the UK we had a man come round and 'open' it for us. It looked like this. Inviting, eh?





Weeks of effort and gallons of chemicals later, it now looks like this. And on a hot day like today, it genuinely is inviting.

Today has featured other water-related fun: a birthday party with a sprinkler, and a charity pool-party at a neighbour's house. But mainly we've been splashing around at home. We'd like to implicate more people in our environmental crime, and hope many friends will join us in the water over the next couple of months.

Smashed and trashed

It took the Boy two days at camp to sculpt and paint a clay model of a narrow-boat-on-the-canal-at-Watford. And it took his mother a mere fraction of a second to smash his masterpiece to smithereens. I dropped it. There were tears, oh yes - and the Boy shed a few, too. I have patched the bits of clay together again as best I can with glue.

A fair portion of the rest of the day was devoted to tidying up the garage. At some point (specifically, this point) our lives became overwhelmed by boxes. You'd have thought we'd have got a handle on it all by this time - or perhaps you know us quite well? Anyway, I have finished the job of flattening the empty packing boxes, and also the other myriad boxes that seem to come with any item we ever purchase. A whole carboot/trunkful of cardboard and paper has gone to be recycled. There are about a dozen unpacked boxes still, but they are mostly books and just waiting on us buying some bookcases (which will no doubt come in yet more boxes - just what we need!).

Camp follower

The Boy has stuck to his guns about hating summer camp, making a big fuss every morning when it's time to set off. So today I had a little word on the side with one of the camp leaders.

She confirmed my suspicions. She opened with 'Your son is one of the best actors I've seen, for his age,' and went on to list all the children he'd played with, the activities he'd been enjoying and the fact that more than once he'd been giggling so much he didn't know what he was supposed to be doing. 'So,' she summed up with a smile, 'I'd say he's having quite a good time, really.'

Little what-not.

Pick of Pics

The Man writes... The Girl, who is not what you would normally call a "morning person", was up at 5am again today, full of anticipation for Day 3 of her Outdoor Adventure Detective Summer Camp.

The rest of us are still getting used to being back here after the intensity of our holiday in England, although it is already a week since we returned. Wonderful memories, but we mustn't hark on. So one last time, here is my choice of photos from our trip that Albaniana couldn't fit in before...


And by way of a contrast, here are some more images of the "new" St Pancras - a visually arresting but curiously deserted destination.

2:30 appointment

Today saw me back at my second home in America – the dentist’s surgery. I was having a crown fitted, and another little filling done while I was about it, because why not? I also had the chance to report the excruciating toothache I’ve been suffering lately (it started coming on during our UK trip and has been getting progressively worse). I am now medicated up to the eyeballs, which dulls the pain of knowing I’ll be paying through the nose for root canal work very soon.

The dentist’s assistant today was a young woman from an agency. She’d been hired because the surgery is overwhelmed with patients this month. My dentist’s theory is that in the current economic climate people aren’t taking summer vacations. So they’re going to the dentist instead? How is that supposed to save them money?

Anyway, I was chatting to the assistant and asked why she’d decided on a career in dentistry. She was way too candid: ‘I always liked going to the dentist when I was a kid,’ she said (sorry, that’s just weird), ‘And also this friend of mine became a dental hygienist and he’s making stacks of money!’

Well that’s reassuring – it's nice to know my life savings are all going to a good cause.

Doing the dirty

The Boy made a tactical error this morning. I dropped the children off at a local day-camp (what in England I think we'd call a summer play-scheme) and he chose to leave his smelly old blankie in the car. So I took it home. And I washed it. Hallelujah.

The Girl enjoyed her novelty value at camp: once they learnt that she's British the other kids all wanted her to say things 'in her accent'. The Boy also seemed to have a good time, though before it started he had adopted a 'camp stinks' stance which he is loathe to drop. We'll see how he goes on through the rest of the week.

It has been uncomfortably hot again today, though some rain fell after dark. Tonight I babysat for the Exiles while they went out for a rather exclusive meal and driving home steam was rolling up at me from the road - quite spooky.

By Jiminy!

What a cracking day out! We were invited to join some of the Girl's friends at Jiminy Peak, just over the Massachusetts border. It's a ski resort all winter, but in summer transforms into a mountainside amusement park.

Rather a good one at that - not too many attractions, but all of them challenging in one way or another. There's the spiderweb - cimb up through layers of mesh and descend by an inflatable slide; a rope-walk obstacle course; climbing wall; harnessed trampoline bouncing; an alpine slide - a sort of bobsled run reached via a chairlift; and the only mountain-rollercoaster in the eastern United States.

I was concerned that my kids, who had found some of the rides at Hoffman's Playland daunting, wouldn't get much out of the whole experience. How wrong I was! The real wuss of the family was well and truly exposed today - but I did manage the alpine slide once, and the mountain-coaster twice (at the Boy's insistence - he was whooping all the way down and shouting 'This is GREAT!!!!' as I grimaced behind him in our shared 'sled'). Girl and Boy were up and down the spiderweb and bombing down the mountainside as often as we would let them.

Also in Jiminy Peak's favour: the setting is lovely, it's very uncommercial, there were hardly any queues, and all the rides are powered by wind-turbine - so it's eco-friendly too.

Berry blues

Today was a bit hit and miss. We went to the Boy's favourite model train shop, but it was shut. Then we went to pick strawberries, only to find that the strawberry season is over already. We managed to pick blueberries instead, though the children refuse to eat them (silly children, they are very tasty).

We had a happy hour or so with the kids from next door - first we invited ourselves to their yard, then they came over to our house. There was a riotous game of miniature table football.

Top marks of the day go to the sweetcorn we had for dinner - fresh and delicious, served with melted butter and hot spices.

So on and so 4th

One good thing about jet-lag this way round is that you can get a whole lot of weeding done long before the day heats up. Other than that there's not much to recommend being wide awake from 4am.

Today is a holiday, Independence Day. We celebrated by drinking cups of tea with the Exiles, our most local fellow Britons. The children had fun on a water slide. The Man had fun on a bouncy-bounce (bouncy castle).

Tonight there are big firework displays, but our kids are already in bed so we're missing those. However there's a fine display of fireflies to enjoy in our own yard.

Bags of time

Although it involved a painfully early start (we set the alarm for 4:30am to be absolutely sure of being on time), the first part of our journey home went smoothly enough. There was just one 'Come again?' moment when the gate announcer wished us all a safe flight to Newark ('Newark? But I thought we were going to JFK..?').

JFK is a messy, unfriendly airport. It took ages to arrange to get our main luggage onto the conveyor belt allegedly bound for our onward flight. But we got through to the departure lounge in plenty of time, only to find the Albany flight was delayed by an hour. Once finally aboard the plane we then sat on the runway for another hour before take-off - we could comfortably have driven home, and stopped for a pizza on the way, in the time we had waited. Ah well.

And then it was no surprise at all when our luggage failed to emerge on the carousel in Albany. It was just so inevitable that I could barely raise any interest, let alone disappointment. But the bags did at least catch up with us first thing this morning.

I'd been feeling no sense of anticipation about returning to Albany, yet as we banked over the city and surrounds during our descent I felt my spirits rise at the sight of all the now-familiar landmarks, the open spaces and the trees, the trees, the trees. It really is a lovely looking place this time of year.

Sofa so good

We're home, safe and sound, though I've had so little sleep since writing the last blog entry that I'm having trouble remembering my own name, never mind what continent we're on or how we managed to get here. So I'll save the details of our trip until tomorrow, when with luck I might also be able to report on the whereabouts of our luggage...

So long, farewell

We said goodbye to our Devon friends this morning and set out back to Watford. We stopped off on the way at the Yeovilton Fleet Air Arm Museum - just for the cafe and naval-themed play-park, mind you. A blurb for the museum claims cheerfully 'You can even see an atomic bomb!' It should continue, 'Have fun explaining that one to your sensitive six year-old!'

There was no-one to greet us this time in Watford as my parents are away on a long-planned holiday on the Danube. We're just using their house as a hopping off point to Heathrow very early tomorrow morning. With that in mind I'll finish here, but not without a final huge thank you to all our friends and family who have made this a really wonderful holiday for us. We'll miss you all over again now - keep in touch!