Day 2.323: Rivers angle

My parents celebrated their Golden (50th) Wedding Anniversary today. Their anniversary was yesterday, but today they celebrated with friends and family at my sister's house. We joined the party briefly by Skype video call - although only with limited success due to background noise and camera lighting issues.

After that, we went for a walk at Five Rivers, our semi-regular Sunday morning swimming trip being a bit much for a still slightly off-colour Exile #2.

We took our classic group shot:

E5N1 stole my hat:
and we were excited to see a lot of evidence of beaver activity (more than we have seen in the last couple of years at least) including these:
and this impressive felled tree.
We also enjoyed the new view which has been opened up from this recently-replaced view-point. We used to worry about one of the kids falling between the railings here (admittedly not exactly dangerously) but now it is safe and lovely!

When we got home we talked to friends (also in the UK) on Skype and after lunch we managed a slightly more intelligible conversation with the remnant of the party at my sister's.

So, happy anniversary Mum and Dad! Thanks to the kids craft project for you, our house is sprinkled with gold glitter throughout. I think I'll take a picture of it for you rather than attempting to send it to you - otherwise you might be bemused by a large blank sheet of paper in an envelope full of gold-dust!

Day 2.322: Quiet day at home

OK - the title doesn't suggest a lot of excitement, and you're not going to get much - but I can give you this view of Exile #3 as a 19th century schoolgirl learning needlework by the window. I actually found her like this - I didn't disturb her at all - I just took two pictures and left her to her sewing.

Also, the weather report. It has been a very windy day after an amazingly windy night. I'm beginning to doubt my confidence about raking being done for the season. Also, I spent some time looking suspiciously at a large branch now hanging from a tree at the corner of the back yard - however, it is further away from the lawn and the swing-set than I initially thought.

And, as if that wasn't enough, a little video of...an empty room - or is it?



My one household achievement was splitting some of our firewood and making a very satisfying fire - the girls had their bedtime story sitting by it when it was at its peak. E5N1 repeatedly asked "What is it doing?" By the end he was answering himself, "Burning wood!". Lesson learned.

Day 2.321: Slightly surreal

We had a slow start to the day - in contrast to yesterday's rushing about. Mid-morning, Exile #2 went to her skating lesson and the rest of us went to the playground in a local park. We had a good time and managed to leave while that was still the case.

At lunchtime, Exile #3 was teaching us the dance moves to the Macarena and Cotton-Eyed Joe. She had learned them at school in music lessons - one of our friends suggested to Exile #2 at a recent event at school that the new music teacher was 'Glee'ing them up - referring to the current TV program called Glee - which follows a group of high school kids and their glee club teacher and includes a lot of pop song-and-dance numbers. We haven't really been watching it, but have caught the odd episode because it comes on after SYTYCD. The last time we saw it was episode 10 but, although we loved it, we still haven't succumbed to setting the DVR to record it. Anyway, it was Rock Band night tonight and we got another glimpse into Exile #3's pop ambitions as she sang along and did some cute dance moves during the upbeat songs.

Meanwhile, E5N1's new words for the day (he's going through a major language explosion at the moment) were "Iggy Pop" thanks to the LEGO Rock Band playlist. Exile #4 was also having a good time enjoying music, food and company until she finally fell asleep on the floor during a particularly loud song. We called a halt to the evening for her at that point - and for everyone soon after.

Day 2.320: A major operation

No - not any medical treatment. We decided that this year we should, since we are strangers to this particular holiday, take the opportunity to offer something to our neighbours without any great sacrifice on our part. In the end, we settled on delivering some of the 8500 meals to people in need in the area with the Equinox organisation. We did not really know what to expect, but armed with some good advice and some contingency plans this is how the day went.

At 5.20 am, I got up and headed over to the Empire State Plaza with the kids' red wagon, some breakfast, a book and an iPod.

At 6.00 am, the State Trooper at the parking lot checked my photo ID carefully - as usual, then thanked me for coming out. This was no normal day at the Plaza.

At 6.05 am or so, I arrived in the concourse and found my way to the back of the line. There were well over a hundred people ahead of me - I later found out I was the 74th driver in line.


At 7.00 am, I walked to the back of the line to see how long it was - this was still an hour before anyone was going to move from the front of the line. I estimate that there were probably between 400 and 500 drivers at this stage.

At 8.20 am, we still had not moved (except several line-compression operations). Just then the Governor of New York came down the line greeting the volunteers.


That was as far as he got. The guy behind me in line quipped that he you had to be in the first 70 to meet him. He also told me that his friend who was second in line had arrived at 4.15 am!

The line started moving soon after that, and I took my turn to collect a set of names and addresses with details of how many meals they needed.


Because I had arrived early, I managed to get a set near to our home - which made the next major stage of the operation significantly simpler.

This was the view looking back from about where I started my walk in the time-lapse above. That's quite a line - and no complaining (as far as I heard anyway).


I picked up the food (a total of nine meals to be delivered to five different addresses) from an amazing assembly line in the food court where we had sat on a previous visit - near the sign commemorating a previous mass-feeding event.

At around 9 am, I packed the food into the car and drove home to pick up the rest of the family - other plans had included meeting up in various large parking lots around the outskirts of the city if I ended up with a round in another area.


One of the recipients of the meals was an 89-year-old veteran of the Battle of Guam. He told us a couple of stories while E5N1 played on his mobility aid. We had a great time, only making one mistake - turning up a elderly care-home instead of the assisted living apartments next door - with some resulting confusion.

We were home before 11 am - fairly early, if quite a long time after the day had started. Exile #2 cooked us our own Thanksgiving dinner - not turkey, but we did have sweet potato!


Afterwards, to fight off the desire to collapse and fall asleep, we went to Five Rivers and saw this very relieved-looking turkey wandering around. We also had a nice walk and bumped into Albaniana and family there.


All in all we had a very good day indeed.

Day 2.319: Bowling forsooth

Since the girls were out of school and most of my team were taking time off to travel to or prepare for family gatherings for Thanksgiving, I decided to take the day off too. Exile #4 opted for a play-date, but the rest of us managed to fit in bowling, lunch, a walk and a visit to a playground before returning to pick her up.

Here is E5N1 concentrating (click or rollover to see how much) on his attempt to reprogram the scores. Check out the cute bowling shoes! You can also see a little film of one of his shots (using the ramp) below. Exile #3 did very well at the start with some actual bowling - but later shifted over to using the ramp too.

Despite using one of two free-game vouchers we had lying around, we ended the day with three similar ones, so it's likely that we'll be back during the long hard-to-get-out winter months.



The title is a pop pun of sorts - not a song lyric or title though. Feel free to show me how clever you are in the comments!