Apologies for the huge delay in blogging - too busy seeing people back in England and then too busy melting in a sweaty pool back in Minnesota.
Being back in England was great, saw loads of friends, all too briefly in most cases and enjoyed some rare English sunshine - it was even sunny during Wimbledon which just isn't cricket (thought I'd use that expression to confuse any Americans accidentally reading this).
Had a trip up to Loughborough (obviously there had to be a good reason for this) to visit the people doing our website for the US and took them out to the poshest restaurant in Loughborough, which is (multiple choice time)
a) McDonalds
b) Not in Loughborough
c) A pub
d) Fictional
e) An oxymoron
Not quite sure about Loughborough but had a good evening - certainly better than the 5 hours I spent at the American embassy for a 2 minute interview earlier in the day, and certainly better than the 3 hours it took me to get there - I hate British traffic. However I was also able to appreciate some of the finer points of our splendid isle.
5 things that are great in England (apart from friends and family - aah)
- Cars you can steer
- Good food - Sausages, Butter, Bread, Cereal, Bacon, Curry
- Ability to get a cup of tea anywhere
- Buildings that are more than 100 years old
- The BBC (you don't realise how much you miss it until its gone)
5 Poor, but typical British experiences
- Having to wait 2.5 hours to get a rental car at Heathrow having just been awake all night flying home
- Staying in a expensive London hotel where the air con was broken on the one hot day of the summer and having to get a bucket of ice from the lobby at 4am so that I could lie in an ice-bath to get cool enough to sleep as they had no spare rooms or fans
- Litter everywhere
- Being stuck in traffic
- Being stuck in traffic (I would have gone on to another point but I was STUCK IN TRAFFIC)
Since we got back the weather in Minnesota has been scorching, we've had 3 days in where it has hit 35C (95F) and the air-con in our one half of our house has not been working which has made it unbearable in that part, thankfully not the bedrooms. We've spent as much time as possible swimming in the local lake which has been really good -certainly one of the great things about being here is the ability to go to a beach on a sunny day and it isn't too crowded.
Air-con finally fixed today so I can type this without dripping into the keyboard - stupid weather, too cold for 5 months of the year and too hot for 5. The ideal temperature is on May 14th between 11:32am and 11:38am - really good then.
Anyway here are some pictures, I'll sort them out when I get a chance.
Here we are on their boat, they took us on a tour of the Lake which is several miles long.
And here is the view from their back garden, in the background is their water trampoline, complete with slide and other appendages for watery fun - jumping off of the water trampoline into the lake is loads of fun. You can also see their boat and aforementioned jet-ski. Nothing witty to write about all this, it was just really good fun and on a perfect summer's day I really couldn't think of anywhere I would rather have been.
The house is now nearing completion, the kitchen floor was refinished last week, which meant another week out of the kitchen, but the good news is that some of the other rooms are fully functional such as the art room (bit of a posh term for a tiny room with a bare floor).
