Best Signpost in Washington

One of the differences between the US and UK is obviously the supermarkets. We're lucky in that we have one of the nicest supermarkets really nearby. The supermarket hierarchy here goes

• Lunds/Byerley's (top tier)
  
• Rainbow
• Cub

The best thing about Byerley's is that you always get your bags packed for you and you don't even have to put them in the car, after you've paid you just collect some big plastic tags and then drive round the corner where your shopping is placed into your car for you. This is a little disconcerting the first time; as you pay for your shopping then you're busy working out how to get a legible signature on the electronic signature capture pad and wondering if it will it get accepted as it looks nothing at all like your normal signature, then you look round and your shopping has been swiped. No-one tells you that its been taken to load into your car, its all a bit weird, then you get used to it and you quite enjoy it and forget that it means everything costs you more than it would do otherwise.

They also have the best toffee apples probably in the known universe, really thick soft creamy toffee around a nice crisp apple. I don't even like toffee apples but it was 'awesome'. You have to say 'awesome' a lot if you are from Minnesota.

They are also just about the only place you can buy Heinz Baked Beans ($2.00/tin) and digestive biscuits. American biscuits are pretty bad really so it is a treat to get proper ones. Anyway, Andy was in Byerley's last week and she was paying for her shopping with a cashier she'd never had before when the woman asked her' are you the bean lady?'. So it seems we have a bit of a reputation here already.

Winter Approaches

The trees have almost given up their leaves now, here is a picture of one of the trees in our front garden about a week ago, it is pretty much bare now.
And here is a picture taken from our living room across the lake, you can now see one of the main road through the trees.

The next few months are allegedly white and brown only. In anticipation of the white part we're taking Dan for his first ice-skating lesson tomorrow, and either Andy or I will also take an adult class. I'm thinking that we'll get Dan into Ice-Hockey. Andy is worried about the fighting aspect of it but they're actually not allowed to fight in a game until they are 15 so I don't see what the big deal is.

We've got a lot of trees around and in our garden so I ended up getting a leaf blower and vacuum, Dan and I spent a fun-packed couple of hours last weekend getting rid of as many leaves from the garden as we could.

We also went for a lovely walk round a small lake about a mile from our house that we never even knew was there before.



This week I had to go to Washington DC on business where I was shown 'the best sign in DC'.

Here is another fine sight, the Ronald Reagan museum

And finally the awful car I got as my hire car, the funny thing is is that it is worse on the inside but you wouldn't believe it was possible from the outside.