30th Birthday: Surprise number one: Mom and Dad!

For my birthday, Mark planned three surprises - one for each decade. I was totally blown away by them all - I didn't expect anything for any of them, except for maybe right at the last minute. It was an unparallelled feat of logistics and secrecy, and I can't believe how well everyone kept all of the secrets, because it seems that absolutely everyone knew everything about what was going on!

As everyone knows, for the first surprise, Mom and Dad flew to England. They flew into Heathrow on Monday and it worked out really well because Mark managed to finagle a meeting in London, so he could pick them up from the airport. He took them to the Moon and Sixpence, in Clevedon, which is a pub with rooms, on the seafront. They've just redone their rooms, and it sounded like they did a good job. Here's a sneaky photograph taken when Mark dropped them off - at this point, I'm at home at the flat, unaware of anything going on!


On Tuesday, Mom and Dad hung out and slept out their jet lag, confined to their room, because I was working from home most of the day, and Dad was afraid that if they went out in public, I might spot them and the jig would be up. But in the evening, I had a clue waiting for me, which kicked off a sort of treasure hunt all around the flat - and car. The last clue took me to the Blue Ocean, which is a Thai restaurant in Weston-Super-Mare, which is one of our favorites.

Because of the wording of the final clue, and a couple of other things, I had a sneaking suspicion about what might be there, but I didn't think that Mom and Dad would actually have flown over. And when I entered the restaurant, only Mark was waiting there. But then, Mom and Dad came out, which Mark captured on video (most of it is of me, talking, but what else is new....let me know if this video doesn't work - it's my first time including one on the blog):





Then we had really yummy Thai food!



At this point, I knew I had two more surprises coming, but Mark assured me that this was the biggest one, so I relaxed, thinking that not much else was going to happen...so I was totally unprepared for the next surprise!

Getting ready for Christmas! Group Activities

Mark and I dropped Mom and Dad off at Heathrow a few hours ago, and it looks like their flight took off about half an hour late, but otherwise, everything seems to be ok. I'll post separately about their visit here, but I wanted to get this post up, so everyone can start commenting on it.

While Mom and Dad were here, we discussed the "Group Activity" ideas for the Christmas visit that Julie kicked off on Spark. We thought that it may be helpful if we listed them in one place, so I offered my blog (since I haven't been using it much!). I've added a list over on the side with some of the ideas we came up with, and I'll add the ones that have been discussed on Spark. Let me know if there are others and I can add them to the list! The name at the end is the person who suggested the original idea, or who is particularly interested in it, so is the person, I'm assuming, who has taken "ownership" of that idea.

I'm not quite sure how we want to decide what to do, or track who wants to do what, but I thought the first step might be to put them all in one place!

Catching up...part two...Westonbirt.

A couple of weekends ago, we visited Westonbirt, the National Arboretum. It's located outside of Cirencester, about 45 minutes away from us. A friend of mine is a member because she lives not too far from it and she visits it a lot. She and her husband were going to be away for the weekend, so she gave us their membership cards to get in for free. I think the last time I had been to an arboretum was for Jenny & Jeff's wedding, so I was interested to see if there was anything new happening with arboretums (arboreta?) these days. Plus, it's a good time of year to look at trees, of course.

It's a pretty big place, and we spent most of our time in the new bit. They allow dogs in that section, and it really was Dog City. All you needed were little name tags on each of the dogs like the trees had and you would pretty much have a Dogeretum.

Anyway, here are some nice pictures of trees (and people - no dogs, sorry!):



This is a beech:



I think you all know this one:




(This is the only picture we have of me, so I'm throwing it in - I'm actually standing with one of the redwoods):



A Japanese maple:



A really impressive cedar tree (hold your nose, Mom):


A 2,000 year old lime coppice:



A festive holly:




And speaking of festive, we thought this one looks like it's straight out of Who-ville!:

Holy counted sheep, Batman!

Normally I seem to dream a lot, but I don't remember them much beyond when I first wake up. I've been generally disappointed with my dream life, because I don't seem to experience them very clearly - it's always through a haze, or I can't see well in them or something similar. Occasionally, I'll have a fairly vibrant dream, and there are a few that are still with me (a couple good, a couple bad), but normally it's all pretty boring stuff, and pretty easily connected to whatever I was doing the day before.

Mark, on the other hand, seems to have really cool dreams - he's a spy, he's being chased, he's traveling interesting places, he's single-handedly saving school buses full of children (ok, I made that last one up, but the rest I know he's mentioned at some point). I've heard interviews with film directors that actually have the whole lucid dreaming thing going on, and I have a friend that has dreamt entire short story. I've actually dreamt a full film once, but I only remembered the end when I woke up. It was really annoying.

Then the other night, I dreamt I was Spiderman. I don't remember a lot of it, but I do remember distinctly BEING Spiderman, in that way that dreams have, where you know something is absolutely true, even though it's wholly inconsistent with reality or history or logic or anything else. I definitely was Spiderman. There was a villain, and at one point, my spidey senses tingled. I woke up really pleased with myself, finally having an interesting dream, but then I was replaying it, and I realized that actually I didn't do any wall walking. I didn't do any swinging. What I did do, was a lot of talking. I remember talking with the villain, talking with other people hanging about. It was like if you took all three Spiderman movies, cut out all the exciting action scenes and then spliced it together. I had no swinging chases. I had all dialogue. I was so disappointed - my one shot at a superhero dream and all I do is yak.

Catching up...part one...home.

I have been receiving some reminders to update the blog, so here are some photos from the past few months. Nothing special, just in and around the home kinds of things. Canny readers will realize that a "part one" in the title implies that there will be more to come...I will endeavor to post more frequently than I have been doing of late - there are a couple of events with photos attached - Mark's birthday and a recent trip to the arboretum, so those are easy ones to do. Those to come!

After uploading all the photos I realized I didn't have so many of Mark, so here's a random one to get us started. This is actually a little bit old, since it's with the older camera, not his nice new one that we got on the cruise.



Here's a photo of me working from home. I don't normally wear a headset - I just happened to be testing a new bit of online collaborative software (Webex if anyone has used it) with a colleague (Roger), so we were testing out the audio side.



Here is a sunset from our living room window:



Here I'm talking on the phone with Mom and Dad. Again, this one is a little bit older--you can tell because I have my old glasses on. (Sorry to be dredging up photos from the archive, but they're the only "domestic" ones we have...):



Here's a more recent one that Mark took while I was shortening some jeans. I'm getting to be not so bad at it, I've had so much practice lately. I even measure properly now!



The next photos are from the normal walk we do around Clevedon. These sights should look familiar to Dad and Jenny! We took these on an actual sunny day in September - I think it was sunny day number 3 out of 7 so far for the year. In one of the photos you can see a big bank of clouds coming in...lately even when we get sun it doesn't seem to last!








And finally, we bought a new TV a couple of months ago, so of course, somebody needed to get into the box and Mark won the toss. I know, it's weird because it makes him look like he doesn't have any legs. But it's a great box:

On board.

And finally, some pictures on and around the ship, our home away from home that week.

This is what it looked like on the outside:







On our first night we have the requesite safety briefing. We had to sit on the stage because they were short on seats in our muster area:



We soon found our way around:



We found a favorite spot, which just so happened to be close to the buffet. It was also high up with nice windows, so we tended to meet up there quite a lot.





And, of course, eat there a lot:







(And it was good place for Dad to do his milk mixing experiments in a quest to get something close to 1% milk)



We also liked the area at the back of the ship (the "stern" I guess you nautical types call it):








We played games of cards there:











Dad even tried out the pool:



We also liked hanging out on the various decks:









The rest of the ship was pretty nice, too:











And of course there were the dining rooms:









Mark and I saw The Golden Compass in one of the theatres on board:





Mom and Dad saw a show there one evening:



There was other stuff going on, only a small fraction of which we ever saw. Mom and Dad found a guy doing a towel folding demonstration:





The morning we arrived in San Juan, we had to sit around waiting for our chance to disembark - first on the decks:




Then in our muster point:


We ended up just leaving - there was some confusion and delay and eventually we just kind of wandered off the boat.

Once we disembarked, we had half a day to see more of San Juan. We headed to Fort San Felipe del Morro in Old San Juan. It is set in a kind of park area, and it was perfect day for flying kites:









The fort was nice, with nice views out to sea. Now would be a good time for me to tell you the historical background, but I can't remember much of it, so I'll just let you read about it online.















From the fort we actually got a really good view of our ship leaving San Juan, heading to Ft Lauderdale where it was going to pick up passengers for a transatlantic voyage. It was a pretty quick turnaround - we were only on shore for a couple of hours before it was on its way again. It's funny because the four of us where in different parts of the fort when it sailed away, and we each took multiple pictures of it.

Here's one from me:



One from Dad:



One from Mark (check out that zoom!):



And one from Mom:


(And we have lots more if you want any more angles of the ship!)

We also walked around Old San Juan:



We stopped for lunch and to swap cameras:



There was a slightly out-of-sorts pudge of a dog also in the restaurant:



After lunch, before leaving for the airport, we tried to find a geocache that was meant to be nearby. We got close but couldn't find the actual container. We did look hard, though:



















We eventually gave up and got a taxi to the airport. After an uneventful flight home, our grand journey was over. All in all, I'd say it was a very successful trip - and I'm ready for the next one!