"The Craig and Kylie Files"

Introducing Little Miss Maia....

2012-02-13T20:24:00.003-05:00

We've been absent from the blogging world for well over a year now - there's so much to catch up on... "Travel wise" we have been to Canada 3 times, the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Las Vegas, Denver (Kylie), New York (Craig), Niagara Falls and Craig's parents visited us here in the Summer. His Mum has been back again just recently because "Life wise", we made us a baby!!!

Maia Lee Homer was born on December 28th, 2011 at 1943h. She was 8 days overdue and decided to enter the world with her bungee cord around her neck, so was born by emergency C-section. She weighed in at 8 lb 15 oz (4040 g) and was 21.5 inches long (54.5 cm). And, she's the apple of our collective eye ;-)

Here are some pics.....

Lots of people thought this was a doctor holding her when they saw this pic - that is actually Craig with the baby...

These next pics were taken the morning after she was born by a photographer (yes, we have the rights to re-post).

I woke up for this next pic and then promptly went back to sleep....

I'm sorry about that annoying "print me" graphic - it's really pissing me off too - but it's easier just to re-post from the site I'm using to order pics from.

Our little Jedi - my friend Aleta knitted her Yoda hat and she bursts into tears EVERY time we put it on her! Wimp!

One week old....

What's the point of all this hair if I can't play? Better this than the headbands and hair clips I make her wear ;-O

In her snow suit (3 weeks old)

The reason I shouldn't be allowed to shop on Etsy......

Jazzercise anyone?

All sweaty after a work out (feed)...

Five weeks old and hamming it up for the camera....

Washington DC - Novemeber 2010

2011-01-22T23:08:00.016-05:00

Back at the beginning of November I went to the American Society of Human Genetics conference in Washington DC. I know these photos are a little late, but better late than never. Craig came to Washington DC too and did some sightseeing on his own, I haven't included any of those photos, he can get off his own butt and share them with you at a later date if he feels that way inclined.
The first place we visited was the mall - with the Capitol at one end and Lincoln's memorial at the other, it was one heck of a lot longer than I have ever envisaged it being. I would definitely have taken better shoes with me if I had realised how far apart some of the sites were.
The capitol building with the Ulysses Grant statue in the foreground:
The White House - I thought this was actually on the mall, but it's separated from teh main strip by a couple of parks and is actually quite a walk from the mall.
The squirrels along the mall are pretty tame. This one scabbed food off of Craig and I for quite a while, he was a real cutie pie. We had stopped at a McD's food cart to grab some fries and this guy was walking up to people's tables and practically helping himself. We love rodents!
The Washington Monument. Funny story behind this one. There is an elevator in the monument that takes people up to the top viewing platform - you have to get tickets to go up. We had tickets, hopped in the elevator and got trapped in it. At the bottom of the elevator shaft thankfully. We did get out, but we never got up the monument, they don't let people up the stairs anymore.Pictures from the Air and Space museum. A replica of the lunar module:The Bell XP - the plane Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound in.The Red Vega - does anyone know why Amelia Earhart was flying the Vega when she disappeared? I guess by that stage she must've upgraded.
This one speaks for itself! I knew all these planes were at the Air and Space museum, actually seeing all this history was amazing.It's a shame our pictures of teh Wright Flyer aren't so great - it's kept in low light conditions to preserve the wood and canvas (the canvas isn't the original though).Sputnik!!!We went to the Natural History museum too. We're a bit spoiled though, we only checked out the dinosaurs and the Hope Diamond - the rest? We've seen it all before! LOL.We did a night tour as well - so we could see everything all lit up without having to walk too far. LOL.
The WWII monument.The Jefferson memorial:
The monument from the Lincoln memorial.The Lincoln Memorial:
The Iwa Jima memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.The back of the White House. You know, just in case you wanted to see it ;-)
We went back to Arlington Cemetery the next day, I wanted to see the Kennedy memorial, the memorial to the Challenger crew and the Tomb of the Unknown soldier......
We went back to the Lincoln Memorial because I hadn't seen it yet in the daylight and I needed the stamp for my National Parks Passport.
The view from down near the WWII memorial looking towards the Lincoln Memorial.
And, just to end the trip, our mate Albert Einstein.....
Of course, we also managed to meet up with my old college roommate and his wife and he and I got trashed, well, probably just me - but we never took any photos. We also had lunch with my friend Bonnie who worked in DC (worked!). The conference was very good, better than I was expecting it to be and I think Craig had a good time while he was exploring on his own. Sorry all the pictures were so long in coming Mum's, but they're here now and better late than never right?
Leave us some love......

Christmas Day Sledding.......

2010-12-25T20:42:00.001-05:00

During our post-present unwrapping hangover we all decided we'd rather go sledding than cook ourselves our Christmas Dinner. Afterall, we had the whole afternoon and evening to cook and eat that. Something that would NEVER happen at home. So, we went sledding....

Here is a video:

Fall 2010

2010-12-05T12:58:00.006-05:00

It seems I've been rather tardy with my blog posts lately.....

So, here's a post that represents our Fall (Autumn):

Early in October (the 16th to be precise) Craig and I hopped in our car and went looking for an orchard in which to go apple picking. The thing was, we had such amazing weather this autumn, that the apples were ready early and we were a little late...... We EVETUALLY found an orchard that still had apples to be picked and pick 'em we did....

Homer had a wonderful time - as you can see. You'd think the guy had never seen an apple before, because he ate and ate and ate them off the tree. He had a rather sore stomach afterwards, but the man won't listen............
I picked some too - but mostly I frolicked among the trees singing and dancing :-)
And yes, there were worms and spiders in those trees. As this photo suggests........ We only ended up getting about 20lbs of apples and they were delicious. We made apple chips out of a lot of them.
It seems so funny to be writing about such a beautiful day in Autumn when it's snowing outside at the moment - but I am trying to catch up..... So onwards we shall go.

We didn't get to a pumpkin patch to pick our pumpkins for Halloween this year. We actually picked them up at a fundraiser at the local school and they sat in the boot (trunk) of our car rolling around for days before we finally carried them up our three flights of stairs to our apartment. But they did get here in the end and this is what we did with them........
We wanted to inject a little bit of Kiwiana into our very American Halloween celebrations..... Craig's is the Kiwi Made Kiwi and mine is the Silver Fern.
And then it was Halloween - we had a Halloween lunch and costume competition at work. Last year you may recall that my friend Toni came up with what we thought was the geekiest Halloween costume ever and we went as Real-time PCR, this year we surprised ourselves by coming up with something even geekier: Mendelian Genetics.

Hadley was Mendel and the rest of us were his peas. We had green & yellow, smooth & wrinkled, tall & short and white flowers & purple flowers. Mendel would be proud. Although, Hadley did look a lot more like Jesus than a monk.......
So I was a pea on the Friday before Halloween and then on Halloween, the Sunday, I was a carrot. For the past few Halloweens I have let my friend Meredith choose my cosstume for me. In 2007 she was Tinkerbell and I was a girl pirate (because I refused to be Tiger Lily). In 2008 she was Horton from Horton hears a Who and I was The Cat in the Hat. In 2009 she was a butterfly and I was a flower. This year, I was the carrot to Mer's bunny rabbit......
Apparently I was pretty tasty. We had tried to spike my hair straight up, but in spite of all the hair product in the world it wouldn't stay up. Oh well, it was still VERY green. I had to wash it 4 times to get all teh gunk out of it.

And that was it, Autumn here in Cleveland..... well, not quite. We went to Washington on November 2nd and those photos should follow presently.....

Thanks for looking and leave us some love.

Cedar Point

2010-10-18T19:20:00.007-04:00

On Labor Day (the Monday of Labor weekend funnily enough) we all headed off to Cedar POint, which is a rollercoaster park about an hour West of Cleveland in Sandusky. Craig and I had been there before and although my husband is not a HUGE fan of rollercoasters, in the interests of bromance he decided we'd taken Andrew there. So we went and you know what, it wasn't THAT bad. Mind you, we left the big, kick arse coasters to Andrew while we did other things.......

This is a view from the road to the park. I think Andrew was wetting himself with excitement when he saw these coasters looming in the distance. You see that really tall one in the middle? That's the Top Thrill Dragster....

Andrew in front of that coaster. Just before he rode it. It's a 20-odd second ride. Straight up. And the straight down. Craig and I waited patiently.........
Sorry these pictures are sideways, I always have trouble when using Blogger - I can never figure out how to turn the pictures that are sideways. Anyway, that thing is 9 stories high.....

That's Andrew there on the end in the white shirt. Smiling. Yeah, stupid adrenaline junky. Keep smiling........ Even the "simplest" people can smile. LOL.

Video footage recorded by my husband. The commentary is priceless. Yes, I married that man ;-)

So the Top Thrill Dragster wasn't the only ride Andrew did by himself. We made him do one other. The Millenium Force which is the next biggest rollercoaster in that picture at the top. Or the rollercoaster in the picture of the sunset below. While Andrew rode the Millenium Force, we went off and got this picture taken.......

Look how silly my smiley face looks - with my eyes all closed like that. This was my serious face too. It was the best of the bunch. We had a great time and I'd like to get another shot like this some time, because it was cool. I haven't scrapped this picture yet, but I look forward to doing so.

I swear that Craig and I did ride some rollercoasters with Andrew. The Maverick was awesome and we highly reccommend it to anyone visiting Cedar Point. Andrew even managed to get one of our rides stopped halfway up the climb because he was trying to record the ride. It was funny....but not so funny at the time ;-) And then.....it was home time.......

Niagara Falls..... the video

2010-10-17T18:57:00.003-04:00

So, I'm not claiming this is anywhere near as good as the video Andrew uploaded to Facebook which featured our trip to Niagara Falls, but it's much shorter and all the footage is from my camera.... Besides which, I'm really just trying to give the folks back home some idea of what the wind and driving mist at the falls was like ;-)

Excuse the red tinge on the videos from under the falls, there must've been water on the lens.

Niagara Falls.....

2010-10-17T17:50:00.013-04:00

My mother-in-law just kindly reminded us that we haven't updated the blog in a while. I was going to upload photos from yesterday when we went apple picking, but my husband wouldn't go down and get my camera out of the car. How rude!!!

Anyway, there is plenty to update you all on, so I thought I'd start where I left off: Labour Weekend. Although I'm sure that's actually Labor here in America.

On the Tuesday following Labor Day Craig and I took our first (and only) day off all year (to date - oh god I need a Holiday) and took my cousin Andrew to Niagara Falls. It's only a 3.5 hour car ride, so we were there before lunch.....

We first went to Maid of the Mist to take a boat ride under the falls - even before we'd seen them. Because I was in charge and that's what I decided I was doing. Now. Thank you very much.

So.......there is a viewing platform before you go down to the boat and it was absolutely stunning! We could hear the falls long before we saw them, but the three of us were suitably amazed:

The wind created by the falls when you are alongside them is unbelieveable. Somehow, from the other side of the falls it's nowhere near as windy. These are the American falls, or the Bridal Veil Falls.
And that over there is Canada and the Canadian Falls, the Horseshoe Falls. Craig and I have a wee visa problem (as in we don't have a valid re-entry visa right now) so we all stayed firmly on American soil. Well......the boat might have crossed the border.......
So, we donned these sexy blue raincoats and hopped on a boat like the ones you can see in the pictures above and went for a wee look-see under the falls. The mist is so strong it's like being caught in the rain, so we were glad for the raincoats!
This is the walkways for the Cave of the Winds, as seen from the boat - we went there next!
The Canadian Falls!
A little water never hurt anyone! I am going to get some video footage from the falls uploaded so that you all can see what it is like in person!
See that down there --------> Beside the falls. Horrendous wind, driving mist, slippery footing. My husband and Andrew went there - but not me! Someone had to photograph them!
Can you see the striped shirt under the blue raincoat in the middle of the photograph below? That's my husband and his Guinness rugby shirt. Better him than me! They were soaked and not for the first time that day!
These next pictures are taken from Cave of the Winds - a walking platform that actually takes you "into" and "over" the American falls. They have to rebuild it every year, because when the falls freeze they knock the platforms off the cliff face. Not so much wind and mist on this side of the falls, so it was quite "pleasurable". LOL.
Rainbows, rainbows, everywhere. The mist and the sunny day made for lots of post of gold!
They give you these cheap sandals for this walk - you can see why in this picture. Next up......The Hurricane Deck. Lots of fun - once again, someone had to photograph it! Actually, I kept tripping up in those nasty sandals and we decided it was safer for me not to fall up any more stairs ;-)
But Andrew and Craig were brave enough! This is the before picture........

His waters broke! He's having a boy in case anyone is interested. LMAO!

The force of the water was actually so strong that the boys could only walk a foot or two under the falls before they were driven back by the force of the water. It's incredible how much force that water has behind it. The noise is unbelieveable as well!!!

But they survived......

The after photos. Very, very, very wet! Nice!
The rest of these pictures were taken from the overlooks above the falls on Goat Island.
We were just done there!!! And it was awesome! This is definitely a must do if you ever get the chance.

And that was that - time to hop in the car and drive another 3.5 hours home again. Except it was a lot longer coming home because we had to drive through thunderstorms where there was literally zero visibility. But we made it - in time for work the very next day.................

Cleveland National Airshow - Labor weekend 2010

2010-09-11T21:46:00.018-04:00

We had a long and varied Labor Day weekend and in order to cover it all, I'm going to break in down into a couple of posts. My cousin Andrew is with us at the moment and he is working on editing all the video footage that he and I took with our cameras, so I'll post some movies when they're done. But to start things off, here are photos taken with Craig's camera at the airshow. As per usual, I had hundreds to choose from, so I hope I got the best of them. I'm posting them in the order that they were taken.

So, there are lots of static displays at the airshow, but realistically, we were there to see these babies. The Blue Angels....and how majestic they looked all lined up like this on the tarmac:

This is a corsair, a WWII fighter that was the American workhorse - well, that and the B17, but you'll see that a little later.Andrew and Craig were quite enamoured with this Coast Guard Helicopter - interesetingly, it was teh only aircraft at the airshow that wasn't made in America - no wonder they call in a "national" airshow......

And yup, my husband lined up with all the "little" kids to get his turn to climb inside and pose for a picture. All the kids were staring at him, but what the heck - you only live once!

A F18 Super Hornet, fighter jet.... Or at least that's what I was just told. Andrew, Craig and I, as well as my friend Isaac were all joking about how we'd all like one of these:

Of course, I wouldn't fly mine upside down, wouldn't wanna show off or anything........
The Hornet did a heritage flight with the Corsair - it was really cool to see the two Navy planes together in the sky and see how far flight has come. Can you imagine what the Wright brothers would think if they could see this?
And that B-17 bomber I mentioned earlier. It reminds me of the Memphis Belle - I love that movie. It was the REAL American workhorse in WWII. And of course, they put it in the air with the corsair.
An F15E Strike Eagle - according to Craigles. I have 4 of these in my garage at home. LOL.
Crop dusters - now there's something I know a little bit about. I love seeing actobatic aerial displays like these two planes put on - they really are a treat and because they have such maneuverability, they're almost as impressive as the jets they perform alongside. Almost.
There's a lady doing aerial acrobatics on top of this plane.....
See her? I want her job!!!!
Now, here's a plane the New Zealander's at the airshow could relate to. He has a name: fat Albert and he's the support plane for the Blue Angels. Given that C130 Hercules is about all the RNZAF can field nowadays, they look a little familiar. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised in teh US Navy sends their planes to NZ for refurbishment - LMAO!

And then, they were off........ And they were awesome! We'd all been watching them practice in the skies over Cleveland all week, but there's nothing like being right at the airfield viewing the show from EXACTLY where they intend you to watch it from.

The Blue Angels......

There are six planes, four that fly in formation and two that fly individually.
They even take off in formation.....
There are plenty of pictures. Here they all are in order. I'll just leave you all to enjoy them at your leisure...............

And there you go......hope that was enough photos for you. Make sure you cheack back soon-ish as I hope to have the video up in the next couple of days. And I have pictures from our trip to Niagara Falls to post too......

Leave us some love!

Kylie

Death Star: Yup, more Star Wars Lego....

2010-08-02T20:26:00.009-04:00

Edited to say: I (Kylie) uploaded these photos for Craig and he wrote the post - not me! I would have been much more scathing had I written the post. I would have told you that it had sat on our table for nearly two months annoying the shit out of me until Craig finally took these photos and got the damned thing out of the way. It has truly got to be the ugliest Lego model ever!!!!!

So I was a very lucky boy for my birthday and I received the Lego Death Star and so we took some photos for you all to enjoy...

Only now do you realise the power of the dark side? Poor fool.
Does dear old Dad rush to save him?
Leia - are you wearing pink knickers?????
The Imperial Guard rises again???
Die Rebel Scum! Die!
Only I can look like such a dork....
The bad guys are plotting their revenge
Chewie - save yourself!!!!!!

Its too late Chewie ugghhhhh sqwish........

As you can see it is too much fun - now if only I married a Star Wars geek....

Great Lakes Medieval Festival....

2010-08-01T19:08:00.003-04:00

Last weekend we went to the Great Lakes Medieval Festival with the Pope's and the Washlock's. When we went to the Ohio Renaissance Faire with them all last October, we had a great time, but they were all dressed up and the we weren't :-( So.......when we decided to go with them, we thought we'd surprise them all and turn up in costume. I am lucky enough to have a friend at work who had some costumes we could borrow. So, we went the whole nine yards and dressed up........ And had a great time. I think I'm going to try to make us each our own costume before the Ohio Faire in October - because I can........

On our way to Geneva to the festival, our trusty stead needed some air in the front right tyre....... So my knight got out of the car to pump it up..... He was only laughed at a couple of times ;-)OK, I can't stand these next two photos, but I said we dressed up, so I guess I had better show you all how we looked...... Yup, Craig had a sword!Clark and I - a mirror image! Not......

It wasn't a particularly fine day and so we don't have many photos, but let me introduce you to The Washing Wenches - there are lots of live shows at these things and they had one, we had caught the end of them last October, but I wanted to see a whole show, so I dragged everyone along and it was hilarious.

This is Pearl.... And this is her cousin Esther.....
Esther and Pearl are romantics at heart, so this is Esther and Pearl making Clark work for a flower for his lovely wife........

Sorry about my cackling and whooping ;-)

Amish Country outing

2010-07-17T18:18:00.009-04:00

Shock horror, it's me, Craig. Ky-ky says I have to do the next 150 posts on the blog because she's done the previous 150. And because I haven't installed parallels on her Mac so she can run Windows LiveWriter to blog with.

So our latest trip that we have done is to travel the country highways in search of the Amish who are quite numerous in parts of Ohio. Having seen the Eastern Amish country around Mayfield , we went South to Holmes County where the Amish abound - how do you find them you ask - follow the signs (and the horse shit).......

For the Kiwi's reading this blog - Ohio has a lot of cornfields - and I mean lots (compared to home at least). We were left wondering what Nebraska is like ......

Plenty of barns too.....

So I hear you say where are the Amish? Again, follow the signs

And lo and behold....

We must have passed at least twenty or thirty horse and carts/buggies/sulkies on the road

We saw this guy in the field, but Ky was driving too fast and he's blurry

And later on saw all these hay stacks - stooks actually all done by hand. It must have taken them hours. Ky and I were rather relieved that we didn't have to stook that hay. Ky is relieved any time she doesn't have to have anything to do with hay. Stooking hay and haymaking are not particularly enjoyable tasks.

They were really impressive - note that they appear hollow (these photos are really for my farming family you know, don't laugh at the country folk).

So we've shown you the Amish at work but where do they live? It was harder to spot Amish houses than we first thought although the lack of powerlines was a big clue

Weird things we saw on our trip - barns with smiley faces -not normal !!!!!!

And I know this is a golf cart but Kylie says that this is one person on top of another, kickboxing, go fig!!!

We had a great time - quite the eye opener. Come back again y'all next week for the latest exploration. Why did we wait 3 years before buying a car? "We love public transport here in Cleveland, it's so easy, we get to go all the places we want". Yeah, right!

The covered bridges of Ashtabula County......

2010-07-10T22:29:00.018-04:00

Ok, so many of you know we bought a Toyota Prius last weekend. Yes, we are/were shocked too. I like to think I'm "green", but a zero emissions, fuel efficient car when the price of gas in America is so ridiculously cheap anyway.......quite frankly, I was surprised. So here is my pretty new toy (yes, toy - it's flasher than anything Craig and I have ever driven) sitting in the bush yesterday morning. We decided we needed to take it out of the city for a real drive - and a "real drive" does not mean the freeway to either Craig or I, so the car is now in need of a wash. But let me tell you in handles very well on a metal road at 65 miles an hour and it can overtake a horse and buggy in Amish country with the best of them ;-) I even drove it into a ditch (stupid Harley Davidson's driving me off the road) and the car dealer was right, the front wheel drive is pretty good at pulling it out of tight spots. Of course, I told Craig I meant to end up in the ditch........

So, we actually set out to drive the covered bridges of Ashtabula County yesterday afternoon. Google maps had told us it would take us 3.5 hours and we'd cover about 95 miles of country roads. What Google maps didn't account for was the number of roads that were closed in Ashtabula County yesterday, the heat, a motorcycle rally and the fact we had to get out and take lots of photos at each one of the 17 covered bridges of Ashtabula. Interestingly, Ashtabula has the largest number of covered bridges of any county in the US. Although I think some of the bridges in New england might be a little more spectacular than the bridges in Ashtabula that were built in the last few years so they could claim the title ;-)

Anyway, this is bridge #1, Windsor Mills Covered Bridge. It is/was my favourite. But that might have something to do with it being the very first covered bridge we saw and the only one that we could really explore to our hearts content. It's the furthest East. We went East to West and it's dab smack in the middle of a group of Amish farms.
So, being Craig and I we had to get in the water and take some pictures and we found a perfect log to pose on.
This is what your photo looks like after your $1500 DSLR camera falls off the log because you set the timer to take a shot of the two of you, but when Craig sat down he jolted the log......
You know what, the camera got water and mud and slime on it, but it was OK. It has a big scratch on it, but it's OK. Take a look at Craig's expression in this next shot - I convinced him we should try again.....nervous Nelly!
In an ideal world, we'd take Craig from this next shot and me from the shot below it and have a great picture of the two of us. LOL.
You know, that's the second time that we have dropped the camera and it has been fine afterwards. I was more worried for the lens than anything, but as it snapped another 300 odd pictures yesterday, I guess it's fine.
Back to the bridge.......
This is bridge #2, when we finally found it (road closures). The Riverdale Road Covered Bridge.
It was built in 1874 - I think you can tell! LOL. This one was probably in the most disrepair. But it wasn't the oldest. The honour goes to Windsor Mills, the previous bridge, built in 1867.
A view from the window.......

Ok, next was Harpersfield Bridge, which has it's own park where we stopped for a snack and to pose for more pictures......
I'm sure my husband would like me to tell you all these pictures are straight out of the camera with no post-processing and that if he had his way he'd fix up the light balance, but quite frankly, I don't have the patience to wait on him!
The bridge. It has a wooden span and a metal span, because a flood changed the course of the river and it had to be added onto in 1913.
This one had a walkway that was added to it when the park opened up. There are lots of vineyards in the area (some of which we went to when we first arrived in Ohio) and it gets lots of tourists. And I saw a snake!
This is one of those WTF photos - I saw it and thought I'd share. I'm like that you know ;-)
The Mechanicsville Road Bridge, also built in 1867.
This bridge was where I drove the car into the ditch to escape the bikers! There were so many of them and they weren't really "sharing" the road. I couldn't keep tabs on all of them at one time, so I was like "Stuff this, I'm getting off this road. Now!" And I did....
See.....
Except they were parked everywhere and kept coming and going in packs like swarms of bees. Noisy bees.

Doyle Road covered bridge:
This one was real pretty on the inside - there were a couple exactly like this....

I really, really liked this next bridge. This is what it looked like as we drove up to it. It's the Giddings Road Bridge. Doesn't it just look like you're about to drive into someone's shed? Craig and I both laughed at it.

And then we were a little surprised at how long it was. Not long, long, but not as short as we had expected either.
And completely deserted. So we took the opportunity to fool around and take some more photos....
You can often tell when I have the camera, because the pictures aren't "square", I always have the damn thing on an angle....
But I think it looks more "interesting".
The Netcher Road bridge....
Yeah um.....this one had a rail along the outside of it. Have rail, will climb!
It was a pretty wee thing....
South Denmark Rd Bridge...... it was cute.
I wanted to include this photo to show that a lot of the older bridges weren't put together with bolts, they were put together with these great big wooden pegs (dowels). The workmanship to build these must've been incredible. Although, this has hallmarks of Amish building with no nails, bolts or screws, so I'm not sure whether it's unique to this area or not. Some of the bridges had been repaired with newer planking and bolts, but you can't beat this sort of workmanship.
Cain Road - this bridge was funny. There was a fisherman there at a little lagoon who wanted to tell us about every fish he had ever caught. It reminded me of visiting relatives up North ;-)
Some of the bridges aren't as old as others.....
The lagoon through the window:
The Graham Road bridge isn't even a bridge anymore ;-( Twas' a bit of a let down.
And this is what I liked the most about the bridges - the fact that you didn't even HAVE to imagine a day when people dragged there horse and carts over them.....
Seeing an Amish horse and buggy going over this bridge looks a lot better than seeing them at a traffic light or tied up outside Walmart. Believe me!

Benetka Road Bridge

This is where I saw snake #2 for the day - this is getting a bit worrying!

And then we were at this montrosity. The Smolen-Gulf Bridge. Built to be the longest covered bridge in America and to bring Ashtabula's total to 17. It's was fugly.
State Road. I was hungry and hot and well, I didn't even get out of the car. Craig did......see.....
I drove through instead!

The last two bridges were Millers Rd and Creek Rd. I think there are pictures of both of them here, I'm just not sure which is which, although they are in order.....

Actually, I don't think any of those pictures are Creek Rd. Craig is gonna sort that out. Because honestly, I'm all bridged out!!! We did 220 miles in total on 48.6 miles per gallon. That's 352 kilometres on a third a tank of gas - the tank holds 44 litres and cost us $30 to fill up. Don't shoot me, I don't set the gas prices New Zealand ;-)

Leave us some love y'all!

Icky, yucky, terrible, no good, horrible snake!!!

2010-07-07T21:20:00.003-04:00

There are only two things I ask for in life - the first is to live in a spider free environment and the second is to live in a snake free environment. I don't think these are particularly selfish or unreasonable requirements. I realise that both of these critters have their own roles to play in the great big web of life - I just ask that they don't intersect with my life....too often at least. Both of these requirements are based on phobias - I had two awful experiences in Australia when we lived there while I was a child. The first was when friends of my cousins who had a pet huntsman spider put it on me while I stood there and cried and shook and wept - apparently it was very entertaining.
Never seen a huntsman? Well, this is all you need to know:

The other experience? Well, a snake crawled under my foot. A poisonous snake slithered under my bare foot. It was only about a metre long, but my whole family was standing on a picnic table and my Daddy was saying "Don't move Kylie, don't move Kylie, stay still Kylie, just stay still" and I was absolutely petrified!!!!!

So, when we decided to come to the US, I didn't wanna live anywhere where I was gonna see any snakes and icky yucky spiders. Well, this past weekend I saw lots of spiders in the bush and they weren't too bad, but this icky yucky snake was.....

Check this out Darrian!

Happy Birthday Paige!!!!

2010-06-04T17:21:00.002-04:00

Paige, we made this video for you in case we don't get to sing Happy Birthday to you on Skype today. Happy 2nd Birthday cutie pie!

Aunty Kylie forgot the party hats, but we got the balloons!

Happy Birthday to you too Brent!

The video from our swamp boat tour....

2010-05-23T09:41:00.001-04:00

New Orleans

2010-05-22T22:39:00.001-04:00

As many of you are aware, Craig and I went to New Orleans last weekend. The premise was that I was attending the American Thoracic Society International Conference – and I was – but Craig came so we could go ‘gator hunting. I was talking at the conference on Tuesday (the 18th) and most of the sessions of interest for me were on the 17th, 18th and 19th, so we decided to head down on the Friday night together and Craig headed back on the Monday without me.

Of course, our plans to get to New Orleans on the Friday night were thwarted by a kickarse storm that hit Houston that evening. We were flying Continental, so had to transit through Houston. Of course, the whole Houston thing is an issue in this household as we have never successfully transited there before ;-) We missed our flight back to Cleveland last February when we came back from Mexico and ended up in customs for hours and hours….. That however will be a fond memory of the distant past compared to the debacle we experienced/witnessed last Friday night. We left CLE at 6pm EST for a 2 1/2 hour flight and it was 11.30pm CST (6 1/2 hours later) when we finally landed at Bush in Houston. At first, we tried to wait out the thunderstorm in the air and circled Houston for about an hour and a half, then we were diverted to a nearby airfield when we were low on fuel (Beaumont). And then our poor frazzled pilot came on the intercom and informed us we had landed at an airport that did not have the equipment to de-plane us. We would be staying on the plane, re-fuelling and returning to Houston. Well, when we finally got back in the air we hit a tonne of turbulence and it was really rather freaky…….until the vomiting started. Then it was just funny, it was laugh or cry and as long as we were laughing we weren’t puking! We’ve taken to calling that the vomit comet, but it was not the worst experience of our evening. Nope, the worse experience occurred at about 1.30am when we were sitting on the tarmac in our fully loaded plane headed for New Orleans and the pilot of that flight came on the intercom to tell us our flight had been cancelled because our crew had walked out! Yay!!!!

Well behind the large number of Continental flights that were cancelled going out of Bush that night, the line at the Continental desk was a good 500 people long and at 2am I was pissed. Especially as there were only two people working the desk and I had already got online and seen that Craig and I had had our flights rescheduled – he was to depart Houston for New Orleans on Sunday afternoon at 4.35pm and I was on standby for a 2.30pm departure on Sunday. Yay Continental!!!!!

To cut a rather long story short, we got about 4 hours sleep and ended up buying tickets on Southwest to get the hell out of Texas on the Saturday – this photo is of a very tired Craig waiting at the airport on standby on Southwest to get to New Orleans…..

But at least when we got to New Orleans late on Saturday afternoon we hit the ground running. After a quick shower we hit Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. Here’s a picture of me getting my first set of Mardi Gras beads – I didn’t even have to flash my tits for them ;-)We wandered the shops in the French Quarter but were too tired to really appreciate Bourbin Street too much and the rain that had hit Houston the night before had followed us, so we headed down to Cafe’ du Monde to get some Beignets. Beignets are a Creole fried doughnut that are covered in icing (confectioner’s) sugar and they had come highly recommended. And they were awesome!!!! Sitting in the Cafe’ listening to live jazz from the street outside and just soaking in the laid back Big Easy attitude was exactly what we needed, but I’m going to admit we were back in our hotel and asleep before 9pm on a Saturday night……..On the Sunday morning our first stop was a Plantation Tour. The first plantation we visited was Oak Alley and it was magnificent. An ex-sugar plantation some of you might recognise it from the movie Interview with a Vampire, it’s where the little girl vampire (Kirsten Dunst) lives and it burns to the ground. The row of 28 oak trees actually pre-date the plantation home by about 100 years, but they are magnificent! I can just imagine the days when people sat on those verandah's and watched life go by down on the Mississippi River – which you can’t quite see in this picture below as the levies are now built so high you can only just see over them way down there at the end of the alley. OK, this wouldn’t be our blog without pictures of the wildlife. There were dragonfly’s everywhere, so Craig and I went dragonfly hunting ;-) The next plantation we visited was Laura Plantation, which is a Creole Plantation – you can tell by the colour scheme apparently……..

The tour through the Laura Plantation has been called the Best History Tour in North America by the Lonely Planet guidebooks and I would highly recommend it. The cool thing about the tour is that Laura Decour who grew up at the plantation and was her families’ head honcho wrote her own memoirs of growing up in Louisiana after she read Gone With the Wind because she was appalled that that was the way the old South was portrayed. So, with all her stories, the tour is awesome and in stark contrast to Oak Alley which was run by the English. And there are a lot more “historic” plantation buildings at Laura.

These are some of the slave cabins…… Two families would share the cabin and Laura have something like 80 cabins – all of the slaves on Laura were related – Laura’s great-grandmother was an astute business woman and she bred her slaves rather than bought them ;-( Descendants of the original slaves lived and worked on the plantation until 1986.

Once we were back in the city, we decided it was time for lunch and the most important requirement was that there was Alligator on the menu. Many of you are aware that I don’t eat seafood (no comments from the peanut gallery please), so I wasn’t looking for the normal shrimp, crawfish, crab etc etc that you can get in New Orleans, I was looking for ‘gator. And here it is……. In fact, we tried ‘gator two ways. The dish on the left is Alligator battered and fried and dripping in a cajun sauce. The dish on the right that you can just see are filo parcels filled with alligator and spices and yicky-ness. The dish on the left won my vote – Craig ate the yicky-ness. The ‘gator was actually really nice – it tastes like chicken, maybe a little bit oilier and it is white and has the texture of fish (not that “I” would know).

Craig had redfish as a main and he had Jumbalaya and Gumbo at another meal (because he obviously eats those shrimpy, fishy things). I had chicken salad ;-) I bet my father is so proud……..

And then, we hit the French Quarter again and went in search of Hurricane’s at Pat O’Briens’ because I’d heard all about them. And they were tasty. The mint julep’s…….not so tasty. And I love me a mint mojito, so I’m not sure what went wrong, but the face says it all.

And yes, we finally went ‘gator hunting. We have the best trip through the Louisiana swamp with our tour guide Steve. We were on a small airboat that had 6 people on board. It was absolutely amazing and such beautiful country. Here we are – this is obviosuly BEFORE I got sunburnt ;-)This is a much bigger boat from the same company that went flying past us while we were travelling down one of the canals. We were in 20,000 hectares of private swamp – which funnily enough, is owned by an oil company. There are small wells throughout the swamp and the company that took us on the tour have the rights to take tourists through – most of the swamp is untouched by the oilmen so far – but many of you now know that the oil from Deep Horizon has now reached this swamp ;-) And when you scroll down, think of what has been lost……….This is a buzzard in a tree at the each of the swamp – it really has nothing to do with the ‘gator hunting, but my Mum saw it on Skype earlier in the day and asked whether it was there waiting to eat my remains after the alligators got me – so I decided to share.This was the first Alligator we got up close and personal with, but certainly not the first gator we saw. I’m currently fighting with YouTube, but I hope to have video of him and his mates up here in the next wee while. This ‘gator was about 6 feet long and about 10 years old according to Steve the ‘gator guide who is also a shrimp boat captain in season.There’s a turtle on the log in this picture and if you’re wondering why it’s relevant, I have niece’s and a nephew to entertain!!! We don’t got no turtles where I come from (well, except the tank in my brother’s living room).We quickly became experts at spotting alligators. Most of the ‘gators we saw were about the size of this one 6-10 feet in length and sunning themselves………. In some areas there were 10 or 20 within a 100 metre radius of each other. It’s alligator mating season too, so some of the males had been fighting and had chunks out of their tails.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks that marshmallows are the food of the Gods (not the stinky American ones though –sadly), alligators like marshmallows too. So Steve had a bag to feed his friends. They feed them marshmallows because 1. they float 2. they’re white and alligators can only see black and white 3. they’re sweet and the ‘gators like the sugar. I guess 4. would be that the tourists go crazy at this stage, especially those two idiots from New Zealand.

Isn’t this beautiful country? That’s Spanish moss hanging from the trees. Because the water is so shallow, it immediately calmed and glassed over after we passed through it, so Craig got some great shots of the reflections off the water (as you’ll see if you stick with me).

This next alligator is Hercules. Steve knew where he might be and we literally turned a corner and he was swimming straight towards us. It was easy to see that he was much, much bigger than all the ‘gators we’d seen previously. He was about 25 feet in length. The photo above is a little deceptive because of the angle at which Craig took it, I assure you that Steve had a lot more respect for Hercules than this photo implies – he was not getting THAT close. You’ll be able to see it on the video if I can get YouTube to behave, but Hercules has a bad right eye. Nonetheless, we were fascinated by him. We were actually a little disappointed when we left Hercules behind. But only for a little while. Steve took us to visit one of the oil wells in the swamp and while we were there Vicky came swimming towards us and if I’m honest, she made Hercules look puny!!!Isn’t she magnificent? She even started pushing our boat along at one stage and then Steve frightened the living daylights out of me – he grabbed her attention with a marshmallow while she was less than two feet from me and she was following his hand and then….he threw the freakin’ marshmallow at me!!!! And I have my screaming and my few choice words all on that video I promised you ;-0 And here’s my friend Vicky pushing us along – it was funny, but in a scary, oh my goodness get me out of here, sort of way!The marshes where the alligators lay their eggs. The eggs have a less than 10% survival rate in the wild, so alligator hatcheries and farms collect them up and take them back to the farms – they keep most of them for meat, but release a large percentage back into the wild.These next few pictures are of the Cyprus swamps on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico – these stretch for 20 miles to the sea (and that giant oil slick). This picture below is our boat driving straight over the marsh. Cool!!! I want me a boat just like it. I have no idea what the heck I’d do with it, but I want me one!And, last but not least, a picture of a Bald Eagle on a power pylon. Now I can say I’ve seen one in real life ;-) Like all good things, it had to come to an end, we’re back in Cleveland now ;-( Because I know someone will ask, our next trip will probably be later in the summer – we’re planning to go to Alaska for a week or more, depending on how long I can get way from the lab for. But we might go out to Maine to visit my cousin who is doing Camp America at some stage before then.

Thanks for visiting us and if you’re still with me, leave us some love. That means you Deanna!!! Oh and check back for the video’s once YouTube has let me reset my password in 24 hours ;-)

Spring in Cleveland

2010-04-24T10:04:00.001-04:00

For the past couple of years Craig and I have always intended to get out and about when Spring arrives and take some pictures, explore, "smell the roses" (daffodils perhaps), but Spring hits here rather quickly, everything blooms suddenly and the very next week the trees are green! It's amazing how fast everything comes back to life. This year things were spurred along by 3 magnificent days of weather in the high 20's, followed by rain and then some nice cool crisp days. And......although it took a concerted effort to get out of bed early on a Saturday morning, we did in fact go and find ourselves some flowers to smell this year.
These pics were taken two weekends ago at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens and Wade Park/Lagoon.

Have I ever told you all how much I hate Craig's transitions lenses? Well I do. They totally freak me out. I hate looking at him when they're dark. so I make him take them off. And he obliges. He loves me ;-)

If sunflowers are my favourite flower, they are followed a very close second by magnolia flowers. I ***love*** them. I guess I miss this time of year at Otago - when the magnolia trees in the quad flower. There is a magnificent big magnolia tree in front of Severance Hall (where the Cleveland Philharmonic plays) but Craig wouldn't let me climb it because it's at a rather busy intersection and he embarrasses easily, so we settled for climbing this tree in the corner of Wade Park, tucked away where no one could see me......

Craig didn't want to climb trees, he's really no fun now that he's getting REALLY bald. But he did pose for pictures in the cherry blossoms. However, he looks like a porn star in about 99.67% of the pictures he let me take. Here's a nicer one......

Here's a porn star picture....

I know you all think I'm cruel to him, but I'm really not. I just get my own back where and when I can. LOL.

And, because no trip to the botanical gardens would be complete without some pictures of the local wildlife, here are some critters we saw along the way......

There were 3 or 4 other tortoises coveting that food bowl, but this guy had it covered.....

And now, all the flowers and blossoms are gone and it's rainy. But summer is just around the corner and it is deliciously wonderful not to have to wear 50 million layers at the moment!

Chicago……….. and. all. that. jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

2010-02-24T19:45:00.001-05:00

How’s that for show tune-ish! I love that musical. Cellophane, Mr. Cellophane, won’t you say my name Mr. Cellophane……..LOL.

So, here are the rest of our pictures from our trip to Chicago. And some video!

On Saturday evening we were going to go ice skating before going to see the Blue Man Group, but in the end, the line for ice skating at Millennium Park (or is it Grant Park?) was too long and so we spent some time in the park before walking. And walking. And walking.

Here are some pictures of The Cloud Gate in Millennium Park: I assure you that I was having a better time than this picture makes it look. LOL. We went back the next day and took some photos in the daylight, but I like these ones because you can see the Chicago skyline all lit up at night.In the picture below, you can see the reflection of the ice rink in the cloud gate. I don’t know who made this statue, but it’s awesome. I love interactive art and this was so much fun – at night time and when we returned the next day! And then we went to see Blue Man Group at the Briar St Theatre. Oh my goodness, we had such an amazing time! It was an absolutely hilarious show. Those three guys were awesome. I got singled out, by name, at one stage though (I won’t elaborate because I don’t want to ruin the show) and I’m still laughing about it. Imagine your headache is a cow. Now butcher the cow.

On the Sunday, the weather was clear first thing in the morning and so we decided to head up the Sears Tower (and fast) before the weather closed in. A blizzard was forecast.OK, I want you to take note of something – you see those four “protrusions” from the building up there on the 103rd floor? Well…..we’ll revisit them and the fact we could see them from the ground in just a wee bit! See them?Well, by the time we made it to the top of the building – through the ticket line and security and through the video in the second floor of the basement (what’s with that?) – this was all we could see – from one box to another!!!! And what could we see below the boxes? That’s right, nothing!!! We were in the clouds. But we decided to enjoy ourselves anyway – we make our own fun!!! Craig promises he’ll fix these pictures up (lighting wise), but here they are…….Craig was sooooooo funny! Jumping up and down. He was doing it and this woman walked around the corner and screamed! She was honestly scared for his life! LOL. And then we went ice skating! I have always (ALWAYS) wanted to skate on an outdoor rink. So this was lots of fun for me. Craig had never been ice skating before (he later decided he did once on a school trip), so it was a lot of fun. He only fell over twice though. I thought he was doing really well – especially if you remember our trip to Philadelphia where Craig hurt his ankle – I was sure he’d be coming home in a cast! Wanna see some video? Of our ice skating???????

Here’s Craig……

And here’s my skills……

And some more pictures from the Cloud Gate Well, that’s the end of our photographs. Thanks for coming on our trip to Chicago with us! Leave us some love. Please!

And Darrian, hello sweetie!!! Hope you had a good day at school and you’re enjoying seeing Nana and Pa.

Chicago……… and all that jazz

2010-02-23T22:00:00.001-05:00

Was that title a little over the top? Too show tune-ish? Well, I convinced Craig that because he took me to Mexico last year for my birthday that he had to live up to the life I had become accustomed to and take me away for my birthday this year. So, I booked us tickets to go to Chicago….

We got in late Friday night and went for a walk around the theatre district, but retired early (well, went back to our hotel room to watch some ice skating actually – I love me some Winter Olympics….). Anyway, Saturday morning it was sleeting, so we decided not to go up the Sears Tower as originally planned, but to head to the Field Museum to see Sue instead.

Who is Sue?She’s the largest, most complete, Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the world. And the thing I like the most is that her whole skeleton is actually on display. The head is a cast, but the real head is on display. We’ve been to so many museums where the dinosaur skeletons were casts, so it was awesome to see a real one. Isn’t she gorgeous? Craig’s thinking of divorcing me to be with her. What is with guys and dinosaurs anyway. It’s like Lego, I don’t think he’ll ever grow out of it! And you know what……. maybe I don’t want him to!So, we spent a few hours in the Field Museum and I have lots more dinosaur photos, but these are the only other pictures I’m going to share… It’s a dinosaur femur! The funny thing was, there were these young boys of about 7 or 8 watching Craig here and they thought he was just too cool lying on the bone like this and as we walked away they were both taking turns to pose for pictures. He’s in the shower, otherwise I’d be able to tell you all EXACTLY what type of dinosaur it belongs to. It’s a big one, let’s leave it at that! LOL. After the Field Museum, I wanted to go shopping! So we headed up to the Magnificent Mile. I did far more window shopping and people watching than anything else, but it WAS fun. We could hardly afford to look in the shop windows, let alone walk in the door of some of those boutique stores. Is it me, or is Michigan Ave even more “cool” than 5th Avenue?We didn’t visit the Art Institute, so this is as close as we got to American Gothic – I think I prefer the statue to the painting anyway…. Yo Scrapbooking buddies, did you see the American Gothic layout in the January issue of Scrapbooks Etc? Can anyone say scraplift? No pictures of the shops, not even the Lego store, but we did stop for lunch at Pizzeria Uno, which is the original home of Chicago deep dish pizza. Well, according to them (and my guidebook). I’m a little on the fence about this whole deep dish pizza thing. It’s certainly not as good as my pepperoni from Captain Tony’s, but it was an “experience”. And we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. Do you know it takes them an hour to cook the thing? Well my growling stomach counted down every second of it!!!!!

These pictures are from our iPhones……

Waiting for my damn pizza man! Now I know why they call it a “pie”. Man has beer. Is happy.And our pizza/pie when it was delivered to our table. It was really THICK. You know, they call it “deep dish”, but somehow that hadn’t actually registered in my mind, so I was rather surprised at just how “deep” it was. Yeah, I know, I’m cracked! And the leftovers, which I had packaged up for us in a doggie bag. I had already decided that if we had leftovers I would give it to this kid who was begging up the street. Now I say “kid” lightly, he was probably my age, but I’m not used to seeing homeless people this young. So I have a little advice for homeless people (oh my goodness, I’m about to do a Sue Sylvester…from Glee): if you’re begging with a sign that says “I’m hungry and cold” and you are saying to people “Please help me, I’m hungry and cold”, then when I offer you a bag with hot pizza in it from the most expensive pizza place in town, take the freakin’ pizza already or change your sign to “I need money for drugs, don’t give me your hot leftover pizza in that doggy bag you got especially for me”. For the record, homeless people in Cleveland aren’t so freakin’ picky!!!!! Take the food kid, take the food! Off my pedestal now……….. Wanna see something funny? We couldn’t get over these signs. When there’s falling ice in Cleveland, they just cordon the sidewalks off, no cool signs…..

Arghhhhhhhh!!!! Why am I so tired? I’m going to have to go to bed – I’m sorry that I couldn’t last the distance!!! Come back tomorrow and hopefully I will finish things off…………………

Our trip home to New Zealand – Part IV

2010-02-22T20:08:00.001-05:00

Here are the last of our pictures from our trip home to New Zealand over Christmas. We didn’t take many by this time because Craig’s camera was broken and he’s the one who takes 99.9% of our pictures, but here’s what we do have…………

Craig and I think we’re awesome, because we got to have two Christmas Days….oh yeah!!! These pictures were taken on New Years Day at my parents house. Amy bought everyone a rubber band gun for Christmas – so the tears and fighting began………………………………

Please notice how fast the Drake children go from nicely dressed, cool, calm and collected on Christmas to FERAL when the guns come out! Yup, that’s my family and damn right I’m proud! Le Bron would be proud of this little boogier!!! Make sure you check out the video of his cool dance moves below! And then it was all downhill…………..let the wrestling begin……………… I’m just keeping it real man. Keeping it real!!! LOL.

Here’s that video I told you about……………

And unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures of everyone together, but this is two thirds of us…… And here I am playing Chubby Bunny with my niece and nephew – to play Chubby Bunny you put a marshmallow in your mouth and say “Chubby Bunny” and then you put another one in and say “Chubby Bunny” and repeat for as long as you can stuff no more marshmallows in your mouth. And because I’m keeping it real…..my siblings……. And me……… Thanks for travelling to New Zealand with us……… Come back tomorrow, I hope to have pictures of our trip to Chicago posted.

Happy Birthday to me…..

2010-02-16T20:45:00.001-05:00

First – yes, I realise I haven’t finished posting pictures from our New Zealand trip – I absolutely promise I will post my last pics before we go to Chicago this weekend and have a new trip to blog about!

Second – thanks for all the Birthday wishes yesterday. I had a good day – the highlight was when Imogen and Darrian’s parents called me. It was 6.53am when I spoke to Imogen, Amy handed over the phone and Immy said “Hello?”, I replied “Hello Immy” and then there was silence as she waited for me to say something and I waited for her to wish Happy Birthday. And then I heard her mother yell “Say Happy Birthday you witch” and my 10 year old niece didn’t skip a beat as she said “Happy Birthday, you witch”. Lovely. Darrian was a little bit funnier. She’d wanted to call me when she got home from school on the 15th in NZ (bedtime Sunday here) and so when she was finally allowed to call me on Tuesday morning her time before school she said to me “I’m not going to say Happy Birthday to you, because it’s not your birthday anymore”. Gotta love the reasoning of a 5 year old.

Anyway, on the bus on the way home yesterday Craig was talking about cooking me meatballs for dinner (my favourite) and I was trying to convince him we should have pizza. Well, as it was MY birthday he agreed to pizza. So we stepped off the bus in the snow and it was like a white out and through the snow I spotted $20 on the sidewalk and I looked left and right and in front of me and behind me and I couldn’t see who the $20 belonged to and so we stimulated the American economy at Captain Tony’s.

Now, Captain Tony (Scott) is our bestest friend in the Square. He’s the Captain Tony’s Pizzeria owner and really is a delight – he and I send notes to each other through Craig (when it’s too cold for me to go get the pizza) and Scott is always yelling at us through the door of the pizza shop when we pass in the summertime and he has always been lovely to us. His wife is just gorgeous too – they’re Korean and she is THE BOSS. It’s so funny watching him scrambling to do her bidding. Scott was shot about a year ago during a robbery and the bullet was still lodged in his shoulder and he even let me feel it – choice!

Anyway, this is what Captain Tony gave me for my birthday:

A video for Immy, Darrian, Alice, Paige and Dillan....

2010-02-13T10:41:00.006-05:00

We made a video for our niece's and nephew this morning on our way to the lab (yes, I know it's Saturday, we have no life...). Here goes:

My apologies that the video is sideways (blame Uncle Craig!!!)

Our trip home to New Zealand – Part III

2010-02-01T21:57:00.001-05:00

So, Craig’s camera broke on Christmas morning and I never took any photos with mine, but I can tell you how the rest of the day went. Craig’s Mum fed 18 people. We blew bubbles, we blew some more bubbles and Craig, his brothers and his cousin got trashed – they also set a land-speed record for demolishing a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Much to their mothers disgust and their wives chagrin!

So, December 26th, Boxing Day. It was drizzling, so we didn’t play golf :-( Am I the only one who missed the golf? Instead, Craig’s Dad decided to take his new boat for a spin on Lake Mahinerangi. Afterall, he’d had it for a whole week and hadn’t taken it out yet! Well, Paige was tired and needed a sleep and I’m scared of Lake Mahinerangi, so we stayed at the farm – I read my book, I read Paige her books, Paige slept, Gizzy and I slept. Meanwhile, the rest of the family had FINALLY got the boat started and her are some photos of their miserale rainy trip on the lake where they caught nadda, zip, zilch, nothing!

Did I mention that I was at home with my cuddly niece and nice and dry? Well, I was :-)

The very next day, the sun came out again, so we went down to Waitahuna to ride bikes around the school and play on the playground. We were trying to get Alice to build up some confidence on her “big girl bike”. Paige came to ride her bike too – but she was a little more interested in the snacks her Mum had packed. Don’t you think this farmer should have had some daughters?

This next photo cracks me up! Alice was having a little trouble adjusting to her new bike – specifically the brakes! She rode into the fence around the tennis courts a couple of times and boy did we laugh. She threw a bit of a tanty – one of the tantrums I even got on video camera – for her 21st!

So her Mum and Uncle Craig decided that if Alice wouldn’t ride her bike, they would!

The best part of Waitahuna Primary School is that political correctness – or maybe OSH (Occupational Health and Safety) haven’t caught up with them yet. They still have all the original playground equipment that was at the school some 30 years ago when Craig started there. So Ab and I helped Craig re-live his youth by playing on the playground with him……. And then we went home and blew some more bubbles and played on the slip ‘n slide. Ellen (that’s my other sister-in-law who is in none of the photos because she was trimming her hedge while the rest of us were enjoying our Christmas Holiday) had her family visiting for Christmas and her Dad turned up with a BIG bubble blower. So we blew some big bubbles……..And then by some fluke we figured out that we could take photos through the bubbles and then it was all on…… You would have thought Alice and CRaig were acrobats the way they jumped all over the place to get their faces behind those bubbles!

And when Paige woke up….. slip ‘n slide time! Uncle Craig had to show the girls how it was done though! Sorry I couldn’t figure out how to rotate the video…..

And then the very next day, we were off – up to Central Otago. I took this photo of the girls at the playground in Alexandra while everyone else was shopping.

And if you thought the pictures of the farm were picturesque. This is Lake Hawea. This is where the Homer’s go camping every New Years……. These pictures were taken at about 7.30am from Craig’s Dad’s boat. And no, we still didn’t catch any fish – in fact, the boat is still fish-less…….. That’s Craig’s other brother, Marc……. These photos are of Lake Wanaka, which is just around the corner – Craig and I got married right over there on the other side of the lake…. And then, it was our very last day with the Homer’s…… :-(

But we had just enough time for an ice cream and to take some more pictures……. This is us hiding out with Paige in the caravan….

And hiding behind the ute from Alice eating ice cream……

And some family pics…….

I find it rather amusing that Marc is wearing the t-shirt advertising everyone’s favourite beer, Brent is wearing a John Deere t-shirt advertising everyone’s favourite tractor and their big brother is wearing an obscure t-shirt from a sci fi programme featuring the evil Cyber men…… LOL Come back tomorrow! I should have pictures from our trip to the Far North, when we flew back up to my family…… There’s more video…….

Our trip home to New Zealand – Part II

2010-01-31T21:00:00.001-05:00

We’re REALLY having some computer problems at our place today, so I’m hoping that I won’t be writing this for naught – because I have lost it several times. And yes, I saved! Needless to say, we’re ordering a new MAC this week. Down with PC’s!!!

So, I left you on the 22nd. We went into Dunedin that day with Craig’s Mum. That’s our hometown, but we didn’t even go and see our house – I couldn’t. I’m happy somebody else is paying my mortgage, but I can’t handle the fact that someone else lives in my house. We didn’t even go visiting – because to be honest, we were only there for a few hours while we finished the Christmas shopping and got groceries and well, in the end, we decided we’d rather spend time with our families and at the farm….

So the 23rd – we spent the whole day in a tither, waiting for Brent and Abby to arrive with the girls. They arrived just in time for dinner, so Craig and I drove up to Roxburgh to get fresh fruit (apricots, cherries and strawberries), did some shopping in Lawrence and here’s the part that makes me laugh – had lunch in Lawrence with Craig’s parents. Can anyone believe the resurgence Lawrence is having? Cafe’s and boutique stores everywhere, an art gallery? a wine bar? in Lawrence? And all the locals in their gumboots shopping at the Four Square.

Anyway, here’s the only picture taken that day – it’s Craig’s lunch. And yes, he says it tasted as nice as it looked. Mine was very pretty too, but not as “tall” as Homer’s. And then……..Alice and Paige arrived! Oh and Brent and Abby were with them, but, you know……. I think that the way Darrian, and then Alice, flew out of their parents’ cars when we first saw them, were two of the happiest moments of my life! It was so wonderful to see Alice again – she was just about to turn 2 when we left NZ and it was great to meet Paige. She’s such a little character!

Here’s Paigey…..

And here’s Miss Alice. Oh my goodness, what a talker! And she has a bit of a lisp. So it’s Kywie and Cwaig – so, so cute! You want to know how to excite a 4 year old? Let her put the presents under the Christmas tree! After two Christmases on our own, it was sooooo much fun to spend Christmas with children again. Paige and Dillan didn’t really “get” it, but Immy, Darrian and Alice are were gorgeous!

It was so nice doing normal every day things that we don’t get to do here in America. I never thought I would miss hanging washing on the line as much as I do, but I do! Crazy huh! We live in a city that has a bylaw that doesn’t allow you to have a clothesline in your backyard – crazy! So Craig made sure to capture even the simplest moments with his camera… So, before we knew it it was almost time for Santa to arrive. Just a few finishing touches…… Brent had to top the paddock next to the house so we could play golf on Boxing Day. Topping is literally just cutting the tops of the grass – if you were doing it with a lawnmower, not a tractor, you’d be mowing the lawns….

And…this is the funniest picture of the lot – the girls had a couple of big days, so this is them, just before dinner on Christmas Eve – they were in bed and asleep before 7pm – that Abby has them well trained! And of course, they were exhausted……. And then it was Christmas!!! I was up and showered before the girls were even awake, you better believe that I was just as exited as they were!

Look at the mess the reindeer left on the front porch. We left their carrots outside because Alice thought Santa might be too tired to take them out to the reindeer. It’s a good thing too, because they are messy!

So, Craig’s camera died on Christmas Day, but not before he managed to snap these last pics…….

This was Alice, waiting to unwrap the Christmas presents. Waiting ever so patiently for everyone to get ready so we could open our gifts!You see, there was this great big whooping present in front of the tree and Alice could read her name on it. I was convinced it was a Tyrannosaurus head, Craig thought it was a small elephant, but Alice was convinced it was a bike. Because that’s what she asked Santa for! That, and a trumpet!Well, Santa came through on the bike….. But not the trumpet! The funny thing was, the very next day I witnessed a phone call between Alice and Mrs Claus, who then put her on to Santa (Paige got a toy cellphone for Christmas). It sees Santa had been out to the Boxing Day sales and had picked up a brand new sleigh, a BIGGER sleigh. Which means next year he will have room on his sleigh for none other than Alice’s trumpet! And then…..it was all on! Present after present and then sill more presents……..

And then we got to play! Paige didn’t get a bike for Christmas, but her Mother is one smart cookie and Paige’s bike was there, ready for her to ride when Alice hoped on hers: But Alice didn’t want to be followed around because she had a new, big girl bike now! So, Mum got the bubble blowers out for Paige – each of the girls got one from Santa. And that was just eh start of “Bubble-mania” – boy do I have some bubble photos to share! And then that’s it! These are the last pics that were taken that are in focus. The shutter was probably going from the day before – when we look back a lot of the photographs CRaig took were blurred. I’m not sure whether we could have done anything about it, even if we had realised. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because it’s fixed now – we got the camera back on Friday night. Yay!!! And………I still had my camera! I’ll start off again on another post tomorrow after work……….

Our trip home to New Zealand

2010-01-31T11:22:00.001-05:00

***An apology*** To everyone who has waited ever so patiently (ahem!!) for me to update the blog. And I’m gonna tell you all unabashedly that this WILL be a long post – because I have LOTS of pictures of my nieces and nephew to share with you.

We arrived in NZ on December 19th at about 5am and we were at the supermarket buying junk food by about 6.30am. Ha ha! We also bought food for breakfast. But I had eaten my first marshmallows within an hour and a half of getting off the plane. Ha ha!

I won’t embarrass Imogen by posting any of the pictures that we took on the very first day we were in NZ, but I will tell you that my 10 year old niece can pick her nose with her big toe and scratch her ear with it. Needless to say I am VERY proud of her!

Sunday January 20th, 2009

Darrian’s birthday is December 21st, so we went to Warkworth that day to meet my brother and his family and my mother to celebrate Darry’s birthday. And more importantly, we finally got to meet this heartbreaker:

Yup, that’s our Dillan and he was soooooo big!!!! Which had quite a lot to do with the fact that I hadn’t seen a picture of him in over a year (are you reading this Deanna??). He is really such a delight and his Uncle Craig and I are smitten. You know, quite honestly, I could have spent my entire holiday with Dillan, Darrian, Immy, Paige and Alice and seen nobody else and wouldn’t have regretted a moment!

Back to the Birthday girl! Darrian was turning 5! She starts school on Wednesday (NZ time) and she’s not half excited! It must be really hard to turn 5 and then have to wait the entire summer holidays before finally going to school! Have you ever seen a child so delighted to get underwear for their birthday? Oh my goodness, Littlest Pet Shop Knickers!

Here are lots more pics from that one short lunch – we have 100’s! And we’d have 1000’s from our trip, but out DSLR broke on Christmas Day.

Gotta love those facial expressions from our Imogen! She’s pulling facing in approximately 99.9% of the pictures that we took of her. I’d post the pictures for you all to see, but I’m saving them for her 21st!

And what about the cake? After Dillan had finished feeding me his leftover Birthday cake from a spoon he proceeded to stick his hands in my mouth so I could eat the cake off them. I expect that the child might have tried this tactic with other people in the past, unsuccessfully. However, he didn’t count on his Aunty Kylie being such a goober!

And after lunch? We chased ducks…………….. And Craig and I ***DID NOT*** let Dillan fall in the river – he was simply dabbling his feet! OK, now I feel like we might finally be getting somewhere. I told you all this would be a long post. We still have 3 more weeks to get through! And you haven’t even seen pictures of my dog yet!

The next day, Monday the 21st (Darrian’s birthday), we flew to Dunedin to spend Christmas with Craig’s family. His Mum and Dad came through to pick us up and within about 30 minutes, they had us eating lollies too (Pineapple Lumps this time). We’ve obviously done A LOT of complaining about American candy in the past two and a half years. When we got to the farm, we finally got to see Gizmo! I was so excited, but the little bastard didn’t even recognise us. Talk about gutted! The first couple of days with him were pretty rough, but I had him eating out of the palm of my hand by the time we left.

Here he is:

He’d had a bath and a haircut by the time this picture was taken. Craig’s Mum had been waiting for us to arrive so we could groom him. I tried to convince her we should take him through to Dunedin and pay somebody else to groom him (because he’s a pain in the ass when it comes to bathing), but she thought it was unreasonable for me to want to drive 90 minutes just to get my dog a haircut! So, he looks uneven and mottled and he still has a couple of dags we never got, but he’s cute enough that we’ll forget that. And then of course, the very next day, Craig’ Mum announces she’s going to Dunedin! That poor dog! LOL.

When we started counting down the days until we went home to NZ, Craig and I started making a list of all teh foods we wanted to eat while we were home. Being the farm boy he is, Craig wanted MEAT. Tope of the list were Savs. Saveloys (which we called Polonies where I grew up) are a sausage made from mutton (old sheep) that is cured – in case any of you were wondering. Craig likes his with his Mum’s homemade Apricot sauce, but I like mine with some Wattie’s (ketchup) and so, before we’d even been for a tour around the farm, we were eating savs for lunch. And they were mighty fine! I love the way the steam from the Savs has fogged up his glasses in this photo! Apparently the are living up to his expectations. I even have a song he composed, about saveloys, saved on my iPhone. It’s a shame he’s already turned 21, or I could get it out and embarrass him when I duct of the pictures of Imogen with her big toe up her nose! So, no rest for the wicked and all that, we were put straight to work after lunch. Bathing Gizmo was top of the list, but then we had to decorate the Christmas tree and move some sheep! I’m going to come right out and tell you that I enjoyed bathing my dog (my previous complaints aside) and I enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree (I always do), but what I enjoyed the most was the wind in my hair, rounding up sheep and then stare at their rear ends while we moved them into a new paddock! And yes, it was me doing the work, because someone else had his camera in his hands…….. That is not me smiling, that is me telling Craig to pull his finger out of his butt and help! But I might have be smiling when said it!

Meanwhile, Craig’s Daddy was sowing grass seed…..

And his Uncle Wayne was plowing a field on his farm next door……

And the very next day? Well, we were out moving some sheepies again……. Except, I think these pictures are taken at about 5am. Craig and I were suffering from a little bit of jet lag and were anxious to be in the great outdoors…….

And some freshly shorn sheep…… BTW, absence did not make the heart grow stronger, sheep are still the dumbest animals on the face of the earth! These pics are taken from halfway up the farm – the photo of the sheep was taken looking towards the highest point on the farm and these were taken on our way back down. In the picture below you can see the cattle yards and shearing sheds in the middle of the pic towards the left – the house is hidden behind the hill to the right of that.I think you can definitely tell these pictures were taken very early in the day by the light. And my man. Duke is the golden Labrador on back of the bike and Fern is the black Lab running alongside. Duke, and Gizzy and me! That’s a Captain Cook Babies rugby jersey (for those of you who care), LOL.

OK, I’m giving up for a little while. I promise I’ll post more of our trip later, but I have laundry to do and this is taking forever and well….I’m bored. But I’ll come back, promise, afterall, we haven’t even met Paige yet and you’re gonna love her, she’s too cute for words!

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

2010-01-31T11:20:00.001-05:00

Freakin’ Windows Live let me post to my blog!

Happy Halloween!!!

2009-11-01T11:54:00.002-05:00

Well, Halloween started a couple of weeks ago for me….and my labmates….with the planning of our Halloween costume. I shouldn’t really say “labmates”, because in truth, they all just did what Toni (the Post Doc in the lab next door) and I told them to do and they’re from 3 labs – although I’m not sure whether the Serre lab counts as a “lab” because Hadley bailed on our costume to dissect mice and Jim has probably never worn a lab coat in his life…….

We DID have one of the world’s geekiest costumes – it’s a molecular biology joke and I don’t expect too many of you to “get” it. All you really need to know is that yes, it was funny and yes, I was VERY excited about it!!! As were a couple of other members of our “team” – Jim???……well I suspect he was just doing as he was told.

We were PCR! That’s “polymerase chain reaction” to those of you who don’t know – it’s how we amplify DNA (or RNA) to manipulate it (clone it, sequence it, mutate it, I’m running out of ideas…..but you get the picture). People used to say that E.coli was the workhorse of molecular biology. I’m here to tell you PCR is the workhorse of molecular biology!!!! And it is!!!

So, we were real-time PCR and there are 5 components to the reaction – the enzyme, Taq (said tack), dNTPs (which are the nucleotides used to synthesise the PCR product – which is just lots of copies of the DNA/RNA of interest), oligonucleotides or primers (the sequences that determine which bit/gene you are targeting for amplification), the DNA or RNA (RNA would be in the form of cDNA – which makes in double stranded) and because this is real-time, we need a means of “seeing” our PCR product, which is where the enzyme SYBR green comes in (I’m not sure whether it’s technically an enzyme though (????) – it binds to the double-stranded PCR product and fluoresces at a certain wavelength). Technically, you need salt, normally MgCl2, but in most reactions, it’s in a mastermix with the Taq.

So here we are:

From left to right: Phyllis is the Taq (with the picture of the thumb “tack” pinning the DNA down), Toni and Jeannie are double-stranded DNA and their shirtsleeves velcro together (the hydrogen bonds), Debbie is our dNTPs, I’m SYBR green, with my flashing LED lights (my fluorescence) and Jim, who is at least smiling in this picture, is our primers.

Those of you who know the department we work in will get a kick out of knowing that we “embraced the complexity” and Jim’s primers are indeed real-time primers I designed to span the Exon5-6 boundary of none other than our favourite gene…..PTEN. And if you didn’t get that, don’t worry, 1000’s wouldn’t!!!

So, we had a pot-luck lunch at work on Friday and everyone bought a dish to share. I bought jalapeno poppers:

But, the piece-de-resistance in my humble opinion was Phyllis’ Kitty Litter cake………..

And if you’re gagging right now, let me assure you that the kitty litter tray and the scoop had only been lightly used prior to this and the cake was delicious – especially those tootsie roll poops!!!!!

So……on to cuter things. This is Meredith, all dressed up as Thumbelina for trick-or-treating:

You’ll notice that Thumbelina has practical shoes on and not the sandals her mother suggested she wear and oh……about 10 layers of clothes. It was cold!!!!!!!!

And some more cuteness, while Thumbelina and I waited rather impatiently for 6pm and the start of trick-or-treating:

I didn’t go trick-or-treating this year! I hung out eating candy, and giving it out, instead. We counted and guesstimate that I gave out well over 800 pieces of candy last night.

I hope you had a Happy, Spooky, Halloween!!!!!

Off for a Sunday stroll….

2009-10-18T14:31:00.001-04:00

Craig and I went for a walk this morning to the local lakes, Shaker Lakes and the nature centre. We took the camera because we were hoping to capture all the fall foliage…..but the trees really haven’t turned that much up there. Maybe we’ll go back next weekend. That’s OK though. We wandered around for nearly two hours, got really muddy (Craig never fell but had mud right up his back) and had a blast taking pictures of each other. Oh……..and Craig was attacked by an albino spider…..pictures to follow.

This is the big lake – we took off in brilliant sunshine, but by the time we had walked to the lake the clouds had rolled in. Oh well….we still had fun.

See the black splotches on the leaves of that tree? All the maple trees in our area have been affected by something, a fungus perhaps (????), that is doing that to the leaves – it looks even worse on a tree with green leaves. There’s something else I want to show you……this shot of Craig doesn’t quite show you it, but this next one does……..

Check out that bald spot!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! He’s decided he has big ears in all these photos too. I’ve honestly never noticed, but once he pointed it out…..they’re huge ;-)

Here’s some of the rest of the shots we took – in no particular order and for no particular reason – I just like them!

I chose this scarf to match the leaves – if only I’d known – I would’ve worn green! Why is it so dang cold and why are they predicting snow if the leaves haven’t all turned?

And we saw lots and lots of chipmunks – which is always VERY exciting for Craig and I. Hey, squirrels are still exciting for us!

And there were other scary creatures:

And there was a troll on the bridge:

And a troll under the bridge:

And then just after this picture was taken – literally seconds later a spider climbed down from the roof of this tunnel right in Craig’s face – the spider was see-through!!! And this is Craig’s reaction:

And not to be outdone by a spider….I went for a little hop into the stream for some photos:

And this cute little boy walks past and says “Mum look! That lady’s swimming”. Now, that was obviously my cue to fall over……sorry folks, not today. But I like these shots – because you can see my reflection in the water….

Oh well, the fall colour’s weren’t as spectacular as they could have been, but we still had a great time!!! Maybe next weekend we’ll actually photograph some leaves instead of each other!

Have a good one y’all!!!

Ohio Renaissance Festival – Sunday October 4

2009-10-11T16:33:00.001-04:00

Wow!! I’m finally updating this blog!!!! Let’s not dwell on that though, let’s get on with the action!!!

Last weekend we went down to Wilmington, Ohio to the Ohio Renaissance Festival with our friends Clark & Sarah and their daughter Meredith and Mike & Steph. I know that there were altogether too many “and’s” in that sentence, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

So, our friends like to dress up to go to these things, but there was NO WAY Craig was dressing up, he wore jeans. But here’s a shot of everyone on our way into the fair…

I assure you that Meredith was all dressed up under that shawl – you’ll have to forgive her though because it was bloody cold!!!

And here’s my husband and “The Other Woman”……you can read all about that here.

OK, so we had never been to a renaissance festival before – it was an absolute blast! I think we’ll definitely go again – and yes, Craig thinks so too! And not just because of the giant turkey legs!!!!

Did you see his scarlet letter pinned to his chest??? That “L” stands for “lecherous cad”. LOL.

No, we’ll be going back because they have pickle on a stick!!!!
And jousting…….all the animals are rescue animals and they really seem to enjoy themselves! And yes, the jousting is real!!!!

And mud wrestling!!!!

Actually, it wasn’t actually technically mud wrestling – it was Beowulf being re-enacted in the mud – that charming fellow is Grendel. Oh my goodness was this show funny! I actually laughed so hard I nearly peed myself – which had nothing to do with the fact that I tried to go the whole day without using a port-a-loo. American’s call them port-a-potty’s………..weird!

There was sword fighting too, but I can’t find any pictures – so Craig mustn’t have taken any! The thing I was most impressed with were the rides – they were only people powered – there were some HUGE guys, who look just like you imagine Thor would look, very “viking like”, if such a description exists, that used man-power to power the rides. Lots of fun!!!

And, there were handcrafts……..and we all know I’m a good sucked for handcrafts and besides that, I like to spend money. This is a nose goblin…

And this particular nose goblin’s name is “Dobby” and he now lives at my house! And I love him. And he’s mine! And “No”, if we ever have children I will not be sharing! And what’s a nose goblin? Well, I have that covered too!

OK, off to scrap some more and then work on my journal club presentation for next week! Have a good one y’all!!!!

Obama Wan Kenobi

2009-09-17T15:45:00.003-04:00

The force is strong with this one.

Hello from our world

2009-08-24T18:16:00.001-04:00

We’ve had a lovely slow, relaxing weekend here. Well, at least I have. I wouldn’t be able to tell you about Craig’s weekend – because he slept through the whole bloomin thing!!! I shouldn’t complain….he had his reasons…..he had his wisdom teeth removed under general anaesthetic on Friday morning. Wanna see what he looked like just after he woke up? I know, I know. It’s hideous!!! And I’m a hideous wife for posting it. But quite frankly, if he’s dumb enough to pose for a picture, then I’m gonna put it on our blog. It looks like a really, really bad mug shot! But wait, this one is even better….. You can really appreciate the glazed eyes and the effects of the anaesthetic in this one!!! That’s gauze in his mouth in case you’re wondering. He was still bleeding hours later, so he got to chew on gauze all day.

Craig actually looks a lot better now – well, he did, he’s currently joed out on the bed. He went to work thinking he’d work half a day but stayed the entire day, so he’s exhausted. Mind you, that might have something to do with the fact his diet consists of nothing but jelly (Jello) at the moment!!! I’ve had to make him jelly about 4 times now and I’m making 3 or 4 packets at a time. I don’t get it, the stuff has absolutely no flavour and no nutritional value!!!

So, this is what he looked like on Saturday evening when I dragged his butt out of the house and we went for ice cream at Dewey’s in Shaker Square.

And because I told him he looked like a chipmunk with that swollen jaw and those jowls….

And….because it wouldn’t be a blog post unless I snuck a picture of my own beautiful self in there as well……I had all my hair lopped off on Thursday night. I asked Craig to take pictures on Saturday and there weren’t very many in focus, but here you go….

I hope everyone’s having a great life! Leave us some love!

I’d update this blog…..

2009-08-10T19:43:00.001-04:00

…..it’s just that I feel I’m so FAR BEHIND!!! And Craig is no help, because he never helps. If you’ve seen my scrapping blog, you’ll know that hot weather=crotchety wife=Craig is no help. It’s pretty darn logical to me!!!

Anyway, for those of you who have asked. The Millenium Falcon is finished and I did blog about it here. If I recall correctly it was finished a week or two after we got back from New York.

Now, I know I haven’t blogged about our trip to San Antonio in June, but I promise those posts will come. I have to finish our trip to New York too. Good things take time and we’re not going anywhere, so we have all the time in the world!

We haven’t been up to anything too exciting lately. I had my tooth removed and a filling done the other week. See – I told you we weren’t exciting. Wanna see pictures? Good, because I wanna show you them too!

This is me getting my filling done. Hey!! Have iPhone will travel – I love taking dumb pictures and sharing them with people.

And this is my tooth – it still has all the blood and guts attached to it. See you know, the thing is I know I’ve grossed some of you out, but you’ll still come back for more. LOL. See you next time!!!!!

Faces of the American Museum of Natural History

2009-06-11T19:30:00.001-04:00

OK, I’ll admit it, Craig and I are not exactly “cultured”. What does this mean?? Well it means that in Florence in 2003, we COULD have stood in line with 20 million other people and queued to get into the Uffizi art museum where there are literally 100’s of paintings by Italian artists, Michelangelo, Raffaello, Boticelli, all the classical Florentine painters, words by Leonardo and Donatello and you name it, they have it. But we didn’t. Instead, we snuck around the corner to a little known place, a place that only we would be interested in. The Institute and Museum of the History of Science. And we had a blast!!!! They have the actual apparatus that Galileo Galilei and Leonardo da Vinci used in their experiments, there’s a huge anatomy collection, scientific and medical instruments from the last 2000 years of history and did I mention Galileo yet????? I felt a little guilty at the time, like we weren’t broadening our horizons, but great artwork in Italy is a dime a dozen (we saw more Michelangelo than we can remember – it all pales in comparison to David, The Sistine Chapel and the outfits the Swiss Guard wears), but we had an absolute blast at the Science museum!!! So………….you might be able to imagine that we not only missed MoMA in New York, we skipped the Met too!!! And I felt a little guilty, but only for an instant, because we spent an entire day (from 10am to closing at 5.45pm) here:

That’s right folks, the geeks spent the whole day at the American Museum of Natural History and we even have the t-shirts to prove it!!! Oh my goodness, we had such a blast, what a great museum – you could spend days there and still not see it all!!! But as we only had a single day, it was the dinosaurs and the planetarium that we concentrated on. Oh and we went to the Extreme Mammals exhibit, but only because the world’s latest “missing link” was unveiled the week before we went and I’m a geneticist, I had to see what the furore was about!!!

So here they are, the faces of the American Museum of Natural History as seen through Craig’s camera lens:

Count those chins!!!! LOL!

But these are my personal favourites – especially after all those chins you saw in that previous picture!!!! LOL!

New York city – from the boat!

2009-06-10T19:19:00.001-04:00

It turns out that 4 days in NYC wasn’t nearly as long as we thought it was and we had a lot we wanted to do. We wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, but didn’t necessarily want to wait in lines with hundreds of other tourists on Memorial Day weekend, so we decided not to actually visit the island. I know, I know, it’s blasphemy, but you can only currently climb to the level of her skirt, so we decided not to go. Her crown has been closed since 9/11, but reopens this July 4th weekend. And, while I’m admitting that we didn’t go into the Statue or onto the island, I’m going to go right ahead and admit we didn’t go to Ellis island either!!! We just didn’t have the time, this time. I don’t know about Craig, but “I” am definitely going back to New York one day!!!!!

Here are some pictures we took on our quick boat tour on the Hudson. This first picture is the financial district downtown. Um, to the left of the picture, you can see the gap between the skyscrapers, that’s the gap left by the world trade centre. Craig and I went down to Ground Zero, but there’s not a lot to see, there is a lot of construction for the memorial, but not a lot else. I guess it’s good to see progress, but we had sort of, kind of expected that there’d be somewhere we could visit, you know, a temporary memorial. Oh well. Anyhow, back to the boat trip! This following picture is Craig in front of the Empire State Building – it’s the only picture of him on the boat trip.

And this is me, in front of Lady Liberty.

And here is the lady herself.

You can see the people in the bottom of this picture – the same people that Craig and I refused to line up with – they look like ants and there are some more on the ledge just below her feet, but I was honestly expecting she would be bigger. I know that sounds like I wasn’t awed by her, I was, it’s just that I expected she’d be a little bigger!!

This is the Brooklyn bridge, it was quite cool to sail under it. It’s funny, I never think of bridges as being terribly exciting, but this bridge was beautiful! This picture is a merge of several that Craig took.

And here’s a tug boat that Craig was quite enamoured with just to finish this post off ;-)

The Empire State Building - NYC

2009-06-08T19:40:00.001-04:00

The place/thing I was looking forward to the most in New York city was seeing the Empire State Building. How many movies have visited the observation deck, how many Gorilla’s have climbed the outside of the building??? “The Empire State Building" is another of those buildings/places you’ve known about all your life it seems – places you one day hope to visit. I tried to explain how I felt to Craig like this: Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Pyramids, The Colloseum, The Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Stonehenge, The Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, The Great Wall of China, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Empire State Building!!! It’s just one of those icons of human architecture and I have ALWAYS wanted to go. I have been lucky to knock a lot of those buildings on my list off and now I’ve done one more. Besides which, my Gran went up the Empire State Building in the 90’s and I have been jealous ever since – especially as it was probably with my Gran, or at her house, that I watched all those aforementioned movies!

We’d been told that the place to see the Empire State Building from was the Top of the Rock, the observation deck at the top of the Rockefeller Centre (I’ll blog about the Top of the Rock and the Rockefeller Centre another time) so that was the VERY FIRST place we headed on Saturday morning and although I had been looking up at the Empire State Building from our hotel (we were a block away) since the night before, it was truly magical to see it from this aspect (for me at least).

It was impossible (without a wide angle lens) to get the whole Empire State Building in a single frame from the Top of the Rock (if you wanted to see it in it’s entirety according to Craig, although I’m about to disprove that statement with the next picture, so I’m not sure what he’s on), so this is a merge of several photos that Craig took.

See!!! It’s all in one frame in this next picture – oh well, I like the merged photo too!! I’m going to crop it and print it in a 12x4 inch format for scrapping.

You can tell when I pick the camera up, because things are NEVER straight. We have some pictures of us together in front of the Empire State building too, but Craig doesn’t have them on his computer which I am using to write this, so you’ll have to make do with a picture of me taken on my iPhone. On our last night in New York, we went up the Empire State Building. We’d been told the line was about 3 hours long earlier in the weekend and as we wanted to see New York at night, we were happy to wait. The line was only about an hour long when we went up on the Monday night, but the observation deck was packed!!!

This is a picture looking towards Downtown and the financial district. You can see the Brooklyn bridge in the distance and the Manhattan bridge in the middle distance.

Do you see the “glow” in the photograph above??? That’s Times Square. The glow is from the electronic billboards and all the Broadway lights. It’s just like daylight down there at night time. Well, almost. Ahhh, the Chrysler building – what an amazing example of art deco architecture. This building is lovely during the day, but spectacular to observe at night.

This next photo is something I dared Craig to do. He managed to wedge himself between two glass panels and lean right out over the edge of the building with his beloved camera and take a picture pointing straight down. It’s freaky cool! And yes, I made sure he had the camera strap around his neck first.

We had someone take a picture of us together with the lights in the background, but it’s blurry ;-( so you’ll have to be content with these pictures that I got Craig to take – they are reflections off of the glass at the observation deck. There are several of them. All we had to do was lighten them up a little. Cool huh?

Neo and a trip to Fao Schwartz

2009-06-04T18:36:00.001-04:00

While we were at the top of the Rockefeller building (Top of the Rock) in New York city we got an email from my sister, Amy, telling us not to forget to go to Fao Schwartz the toy store and play on the on floor piano. You know, the one Tom Hanks plays on in the movie Big. We were aware of the fact Fao Schwartz was in NYC, but we’d been told to go to Toys ‘R Us in Times Square instead, so it wasn’t in our itinerary. But as it turns out, later in the day we went to visit the Apple store (yes, hello, we’re geeks, Steve Jobs is our Messiah, what more can we say???) and Fao Schwartz is right next door!!! So in we went….

Someone doesn't listen to his “inner child” unless it involves the word Lego and so he refused to line up with me and play on the piano, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there was no way I was missing out!!!

The only problem with the giant piano on the floor at Fao Schwartz was all the children who wanted to play on it while I was having my turn who ruined my songs and well………..there’s the $250,000 price tag if you want to take one home!!!! Craig said “No”. How rude!!!!

The other thing that Fao Schwartz had – besides lots of toys that I desperately NEED (note that’s “need”, not “want”) – was a Muppet What Not Workshop.

What is a Muppet What Not???? Well, they are the “extras” in all the muppet shows and movies and guess what………..we now have one of our very own!!! His name, is Neo. Why Neo? Well, that’s what Craig calls him. Hey, it’s better than our Paddington bear bought at Paddington Station whose name is……Paddington. Craig also has a Harrod’s bear called, you guessed it….Harrod!!!!

Meet Neo: Neo has a black belt from the Aikikyu Academy of karate (come on folks, he’s a muppet, of course there’s a pun intended).

So this is how you decide what sort of muppet you want….

You have these images of the clothing and eyes and noses and outfits and bodies and hair dos and you basically swap them all around on a sticky sheet until you come across the combination you like. This took Craig and I quite a long time and the staff at Fao Schwartz must get paid well, because they were VERY patient.

And this is Neo being made…..

I think that I was beginning to piss the muppet makers off, because I was issuing instructions, but he’s mine, I think I should be able to say what angle his eyes go on and whether he should have a receding hairline or not!!! And there he is, Craig’s best friend. Now, I know that you all think we are a little weird, so I’m going to come right out and tell you that we have had hours of fun with Neo. Craig has mastered the movement of his arms and face far better than I have. But then again, he’s had more practice! They’re just so good together!!! You know what, there have been a couple of mornings lately when I haven’t wanted to get out of bed and have covered my head with the sheets and tried to ignore Craig when he tells me to move my fat butt. Well, this muppet has managed to climb under the covers and entice me out of bed. It’s so funny, that I have no choice but to get up, because the laughter wakes me up.

I hope we have many more hours of fun!!!

And yes, we’re ready to get another one – perhaps a girl next time so that she can kick Neo’s butt!!!!

Millennium Falcon – The Final Edition

2009-06-03T20:38:00.001-04:00

It’s done! Finished! Finito!

And you know what? I don’t have the staying power, the fortitude that Craig has. You see, I have about 14 more hours of pictures to post and I just can’t be bothered! It got really boring towards the end there anyway!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, we have the pictures, I just can’t be bothered. If I was a parent I’d ask “What does that say about my parenting skills?”, but because I’m just the mans wife, I’m not really sure that I feel all that guilty. I have however decided to scrap the epic that was the Millennium Falcon and will share my creation on my scrapbooking blog.

So here are the Statistics:

Time to completion – 35 hours, 53 minutes (not counting my time and the time I spent towards the end on my hands and knees looking for “missing bits” and the time I spent in the kitchen because Craig wouldn’t get up and make me lunch/dinner - LOL).

Missing pieces – 9! Except I found two of them last night while I was on the phone and he replaced them this evening. It’s a good thing I haven’t vaccumed since he started. And yes darling mother-in-law, I knew you’d laugh at that!! (But at least we haven’t had any sets of keys go missing lately). There were lots of spare bits too!!!

Tantrums – 1 (which was one too many as far as I was concerned, if he’d thrown any more, ‘Mummy’ would have put his Lego out of reach).

Lego on the floor – Too much to count!!!!!

The price of happiness - 17.37 cents/minute of entertainment. Which is still twice as costly as a movie, but I know that he’ll spend hours playing with it and even more contemplating the time he spent making it, or the things he could do if he could fit inside it and go and fight The Empire!

And here it is, in all it’s glory:

These last two pictures really cracked me up when I saw them – I think Craig may have been trying to shoot me!

I hope you all had as much fun as we had. I have been informed that Craig has found a Lego website where people have the instructions to make life sized Storm Troopers (the pieces cost about $5000 though – so it’ll be a cold, cold, cold, icy day in you know where before that EVER happens). But here are some pictures of Craig and his Lego ‘friends’ in the Fao Schwartz store in New York Memorial Day weekend. Stay tuned for more New York pictures – I’m hoping to get them up in the next day or two!!!

Millennium Falcon – Part 10

2009-05-31T10:39:00.000-04:00

I haven’t posted any Millennium Falcon updates as I haven’t really had time lately – or rather, I haven’t made time. Last weekend we were in New York City and I will post about that in a bit, but until Friday night (the 29th), he really hadn’t worked on the MF since the 17th.

This was the MF as we last saw it – lying prone in the middle of my dining room table.

And after 14 hours. Craig was happily making the beginnings of his gun turrets at this stage. Funny how weapons manufacture makes him such a happy boy!!!!The goober!!!! But this is where the real last hour has been invested…….Look Mum, a drawbridge – although it probably has some technical term. It goes up, it goes down, it’s a drawbridge. OK, I have just been informed it’s a ramp. Sorry to lead you all astray!! I just had a REALLY disturbing thought – he’s going to want me to scrap all these pictures isn’t he? Oh dear…..what have I got myself into????

15 hours of construction and back to those gun turrets we go – they took a lot of time, they’re kinda nifty if I do say so myself – I’m just not nearly as excited by them as Craig was!!!

I know somebody will ask “What’s the fork for?”, so I’ll be honest and tell you I have no idea!!! I ***think*** Craig was using it as a lever to split blocks apart that he had accidentally joined together, but he also has his Leatherman out, so it’s anyone’s guess!!!

And in another hour, they were finished and installed. Well, the bottom one was. The top gun turret is the VERY LAST thing you add to the MF, so it’s just sitting in place at the moment (and yes, it is still “at the moment” two weeks later!!!), he’s still going strong behind me!

OK, I’ll admit it! I should have posted these pictures two weeks ago while they were still fresh!!! I have 9 more pictures left from Sunday the 17th and I am going to rely on the time and date stamp on the pictures – because I have lost track!!!! Arghhhh!!!!!

This is 7.01pm:This is the next picture at 8.58pm. I’ve either lost a couple of hours (which is highly likely) or we had dinner at some stage. I will admit that the season finale of Survivor was on that evening and yes, I am addicted to that show. Just that one and The Amazing Race though, so I think that isn’t ****TOO**** bad as far as reality TV goes. Or perhaps it is?

9.58pm – you see, I must have had my timer set to go off – this was right as JT was winning Survivor!! I knew he would!

And just to prove he’s still awake and with it: And then this, which you may have already seen is 11.14pm and time for bed – after someone cleans up that mess!!! And it wasn’t him!!!! And I’m almost up to date!!!! At this stage, Craig was putting a piece on the MF that he informed me had taken him 2 hours to assemble. He pushed too hard, bits came off, he threw one on the table in a little huffy and wifey told him that that was enough and it was time for bed. It was 23 hours in total to this stage!!!!

In bed he said to me “Do you think people get more angry as they get older?” I laughed, that was Craig’s way of admitting he had lost his cool with an inanimate object (although bits of it move – so is it really inanimate???). The MF sat on my scrapbooking desk until Friday night (the 29th) and then he slowly started to fix what he had undone.

Millennium Falcon - an interlude

2009-05-18T21:06:00.001-04:00

I haven't had the opportunity this evening to upload the pictures of Craig's continuing construction yesterday (Sunday). Sometimes life throws you lemons, sometimes you make lemonade and at other times you scream and shout and throw the lemons back - I have had one of those evenings. Anyway, enough about me, Craig has now put in 22 hours and 23 minutes on the Millennium Falcon. That's 27.9 cents/minute so far - that's bargain entertainment!!! Anyway, he's on page 163 of 307 and he hasn't worked on the MF tonight - partly due to my lemons and partly because there is the 2hr season finale of the world's crappiest TV show, 24, this evening, which he is watching. How unbelievable is that show anyway???? So, these pictures were taken yesterday. And they are a glimpse into how the MF progressed throughout Sunday evening........

Can you see the gun turret in this picture below? There is another one on the base and they are kinda cool - they almost have a full 360 degree range and they're kinda fun to play with. This is where the top turret will end up, but it is actually not attached to the model - attaching it is the VERY last step on page 306. Crazy, but he built the top and bottom turrets at the same time because that's what the Lego manual said to do and you all should know that THE LEGO MANUAL IS GOSPEL (well, in Craig's little world anyway!).

This happened at about 10.30 last night - I just laughed!!! But Craig was in the middle of something VERY important, so in the end, it was me who got down on hands and knees and picked everything up. How rude. I told you all it was bound to happen, didn't I??????

Not long after this picture was taken, Craig threw a bit of a temper tantrum, so Mummy took his toys off of him and told him it was time for bed. He was a little less than impressed, but throwing your Lego is something 3 year olds do, not 33 year olds!!!!!!!! I have my kitchen table back for the moment, but I suspect Craig will be racing home from work tomorrow to play.

Now to answer some questions. Bobbie - we have no idea what we will do with the MF when it is finished. Craig is seriously considering mounting it on string/wire from the roof, and I think it'd stay put in the roof here in our apartment, but I think ultimately, he will have our sister-in-law who is a cabinet maker build him a Lego display case to display all of his Lego as this is not the only collector's edition model he has, only the largest. Ewok - the instructions are complicated, but as long as you work through them slowly and keep your pieces organised, it's all relatively straightforward. Martha - of course it's not finished - ha, I laugh in your face!!!! LOL!!!! To those emails that have asked about his back - he went to Physio today and the physiotherapist was impressed with his progress and Yes, I have been making him get up and do his back exercises.

Millenium Falcon - Part 4

2009-05-17T13:52:00.003-04:00

These posts about the Millenium Falcon might get boring VERY fast, but I promised Craig I'd chronicle it for him and what's more, I promised myself!!! So here goes....
This is the Millenium Falcon after 2 hours of construction. Notice that Craig is still smiling - the look on his face gets funnier as the day progresses.....

And after 3 hours of construction. I need to tell you all that he was yet to have a shower, so that's why his hair was sticking up. Not to be confused with later in the day when his hair was sticking up, but due to frustration? tiredness? you'll have to decide for yourself.... And the yawning in the second photo? Well, that's just to prove that I am not above embarrassing my husband by posting silly pictures of him online. LOL.

OK, this must be after 4 hours of construction and a shower. I can't even begin to explain that look, but you'll see that things were progressing well.

I have several pictures uploaded and ready to post, so I'll alter the time stamp and post them after this post, like I did yesterday, so if you get to here, keep reading below!

Millenium Falcon - Part 5

2009-05-17T13:51:00.000-04:00

I guess that with anything, sometimes progress seems much faster than it really should be. I either missed an hour of photo's, or this really is the next hours progress. I'm pretty sure I didn't miss any though, so Craig's fingers must've been flying at this point!

This next photo is HILARIOUS!!! When I pointed it out to Craig he was like "So???", does anyone else see a problem here? I almost wish the container had fallen, because being where it is, pieces would have flown into the bedroom, the lounge and the kitchen and I would have laughed (after I stopped crying). Luckily, Craig moved the container and know I should probably have moved it myself instead of photographing it, but the moment was too good an opportunity to miss ;-)

6 hours into the construction phase and the Millenium Falcon is getting legs. Actually, I have just been informed that they are "landing gear". Same diff in my opinion!!!!

Millenium Falcon - Part 6

2009-05-17T13:50:00.001-04:00

If by now you have the impression that Craig did nothing with his Saturday than play with his Lego, then you are almost right. I say almost, because I know that he stopped to eat and I'm sure he must've gone to the bathroom......but yes, he did play most of the day and looked at me like I was the Wicked Witch of the West every time I suggested a walk, or he do his back exercises or he cook the steak for dinner.
This is 7 hours into construction and that's one cheesy grin in the second picture!

Eight hours in and he got to play with the tail lights. This was actually a really cool piece to play with as it had these hinges that allowed the whole piece to bend as it will eventually be curved when it's attached to the arse end of the Millenium Falcon.

What a geek!!!! I wish these pictures were a little better, because those blue tiles actually are iridescent, they glow in the light, like the lights on a bicycle or paint on the road. After all that grey, it was nice to see a little colour!!!!

Millenium Falcon - Part 7

2009-05-17T13:49:00.000-04:00

After 9 hours I want you to notice that Craig has begun to consult with his friend Corona. I'm not sure whether Corona helped much, but I'm sure it numbed the pain. One thing I'm sure Craig's friend Corona didn't do was aid his fine motor skills!!!!

And here's a picture of the butt complete with those pretty blue tiles. Purty!

In the past, I have been known to "acquire" pieces of Lego as Craig is constructing things in order to hear the furore when he realises bits are missing, but so far, I have actually restrained myself and haven't taken anything. But there have been moments when Millennium Falcon that Craig has been unable to find the EXACT bit he needs and he's asked me to come look for it with "fresh eyes". One such moment occurred last night, which is why after 10 hours of building it is me that is in control!!! He he he he he he he he he he. I got sucked in, and was allowed to build a pointy thing for the front of the space ship. LOVER-LY photo isn't it????

So the front (prow?, bow? what is the correct terminology? I'm sure it'll be in one of the first 3 Star Wars movies somewhere) of the Millenium Falcon has one pointy bit and I have the other one in my hot little hands!!! This is progress folks!!!