Right, UK. Listen up there at the back, and try and man up a bit will you?:
Minus 33 degrees C last night - it was the talk of the school coffee morning. There was some confusion about whether we were discussing the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit - I had to explain that, being English, minus temperatures are always discussed in Centigrade, and hot weather in Fahrenheit.
When we woke up there was ice on the inside of the windows, and a thick crust of frost around the edges of the front-door.
Not having TV (we're soooo hippy-dippy), we're never too sure of the weather, and went out last weekend to go tubing at Elm Creek. It was excellent fun, although bitterly cold. Sensible Minnesotan mothers had tucked their kids in front of improving Mandarin Chinese DVDs; we decided to fling ourselves down icy mountains in rubber dinghies. It was excellent fun though - more so as no-one else was there.
The cat fell in the bath last night. She had a bit of a swim about and didn't seem at all put out. She also likes sitting in the sink playing with the drips, so she's trying very hard to be the Turkish Van I wanted, but couldn't afford (although a quarter of the size). She seemed slightly bothered that we laughed at her so long about it, however.
21 January 2011
05 January 2011
New Year Cheer
Minus 16 degrees fahrenheit wind chill. Yep, we're back in Minnesota. Or still in Stoke, not quite sure yet.
We managed to return to the US without mishap. Quite boring. T wasn't even sick, and all flights were on-time and the luggage was awaiting us patiently on the carousel. Weird.
The only thing that jarred, which surely shows my age, was getting to Schipol airport, trying to get something to eat and finding that out of the 300 tables they have in the food-court, 10 were populated, and the rest were covered in food, beer, pots, pans, plates, etc. I set to work with my Wet Ones and got quite irate. Obviously, I had to send a strongly worded e-mail to Schipol Group, who just snorted and murmured to themselves, "Well, you should have seen it two weeks ago".
We had a great break in Stoke and Whitby. I have got used to the manic in-yer-face rabid friendliness of the Minnesotans, and found, in comparison, the Yorkshire people to be quite dour (this quite definately excludes close friends and relatives of course). We went to play dominoes one night, which involves changing tables each game. The first time I changed I said Hi to the oldish lady sitting here and said "I'm Rachel". To which she replied (not looking up from her spinners), "'Appen". And one evening we went to a pub in which there were 3 people, and the bar-maid served us WITHOUT ASKING US OUR FAMILY HISTORY!!!
But at least we were offered a lift by someone (unfortunately 2 foot from the house) when the weather changed suddenly to a snow-storm and we had to abandon the car at The Stiddy (pub, naturally) and walk two hours back to Sleights. Luckily we were in our Minnesotan clothes ("T! Just put two pairs of snow-pants on will you?") and we managed just fine.
We were very put out that we couldn't get a kipper breakfast at Botham's - each time we went, the last pair had just been sold, and even on the day we ordered in advance, they couldn't get the van through. A sad day, indeed.
We picked Bean up the day after we came back. I was hoping that two weeks at the Cat Nap Inn would act as a finishing school for her, as up until then she had been quite vicious. And, yes, it seems to have worked. Nancy told her she was a delight and that she had fallen in love with the resident cat, Ziggy, so much that they spent the entire 2 weeks together fighting and sleeping together.
Nancy has fallen in love with Bean so much, in fact, that she had a going-away Catnip Party for her. When we arrived, all the other cats were lying around, wearily raising their heads, as if still completely stoned. Since she's been back, she hasn't leapt, biting, at my face once (progress) and seems much better behaved. She needed a massive Main Coon to sit on her head a couple of times and give her what-for. One down-side was that she suddenly decided she didn't want the 38 tins of kitten food we had supplied, and instead quite happily hoe'd into everybody else's Tuna and Shrimp (with Gravy). So today I had to go back and exchange it all. Fussy little madam.
We managed to return to the US without mishap. Quite boring. T wasn't even sick, and all flights were on-time and the luggage was awaiting us patiently on the carousel. Weird.
We had a great break in Stoke and Whitby. I have got used to the manic in-yer-face rabid friendliness of the Minnesotans, and found, in comparison, the Yorkshire people to be quite dour (this quite definately excludes close friends and relatives of course). We went to play dominoes one night, which involves changing tables each game. The first time I changed I said Hi to the oldish lady sitting here and said "I'm Rachel". To which she replied (not looking up from her spinners), "'Appen". And one evening we went to a pub in which there were 3 people, and the bar-maid served us WITHOUT ASKING US OUR FAMILY HISTORY!!!
But at least we were offered a lift by someone (unfortunately 2 foot from the house) when the weather changed suddenly to a snow-storm and we had to abandon the car at The Stiddy (pub, naturally) and walk two hours back to Sleights. Luckily we were in our Minnesotan clothes ("T! Just put two pairs of snow-pants on will you?") and we managed just fine.
We were very put out that we couldn't get a kipper breakfast at Botham's - each time we went, the last pair had just been sold, and even on the day we ordered in advance, they couldn't get the van through. A sad day, indeed.
We picked Bean up the day after we came back. I was hoping that two weeks at the Cat Nap Inn would act as a finishing school for her, as up until then she had been quite vicious. And, yes, it seems to have worked. Nancy told her she was a delight and that she had fallen in love with the resident cat, Ziggy, so much that they spent the entire 2 weeks together fighting and sleeping together.
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