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If you want to go straight to Vol 14, you may do so now.
...
There was less work for Kajsa in her third week of work so she was able to strike a better balance between work and home time. Tim's first week was busy, he was still getting the computers at work together and trying to do everything else. He had a couple of interesting visits though.
The first was to the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock. This is a place not far from here that has the longest towing pool in the world. Most will ask what a towing pool is, basically a towing pool is for ships what a wind tunnel is for airplanes. There are a few other things there like a cavitation tank (a water tunnel) that allows engineers to check the action of propellors and underwater fittings and there is a big wave pool that is used to see how stable ship designs are in rough weather. Facinating stuff. (Possibly the best bit was seeing all the gosslings, Carderock is a bit of sanctuary for Canadian Geese, and it was just the right time to see all the little ones!)
The second was from a group at Lockheed Martin who wanted to discuss the release of some information on a new project to Australia and take Tim out to lunch.
The third was to another area of Lockheed Martin in Manassas to discuss some issues about submarines. They also wanted to take Tim out to eat, this time for dinner. Because Tim was only an add on and the briefing was really for two Commodores and a Commander, the dinner was at a spectacularly good restaurant set in an idyllic village not far from Manassas. He came home well fed with a big grin on his face. He and Kajsa would never be able to afford to eat a full meal there but there are some embryonic plans to visit it and have just the lobster brisque and one of the deserts. We might do it after we've saved up for a while.
During the week we got a phone call from Jill and David next door. There was a message on the answering machine but Taltarni has a bad habit of playing with buttons, including those on the video and the answering machine. Julia heard the message and Taltarni erased it. Kajsa called up later in the evening and came to Tim and said "We're invited to dinner on Sunday. I'm not sure but it sounded like Jill said that it is going to be at the White House and we are going there in a limo." Wow. A little while later David got home and gave us a call. We found out that we would see the White House but the plan was actually to get a big limo and drive around the monuments while sipping champagne and nibbling on hors d'ouvres. Just as good and requiring much less panic about what to wear etc! On Saturday we wandered over with an esky filled with beer (for the guys), cider (for Tim) and champagne (for all) and waited for the limo. It was a mid sized one with seating for eight, a big bar and a TV and stereo. We all piled in and set off.
During the evening we saw (with decreasing clarity) the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Washington Monument (also known as the Big Pencil), the Lincoln Memorial (which is so much better at night), the Viet Nam War Memorial (ditto), the Capitol Building (as we stopped at Jill's mother's house which is a stone's throw from it), the Jefferson Memorial (at a distance across the Tidal Basin) and the Franklin Delaware Roosevelt Memorial. We also stopped at the Washington Hotel which has a balcony bar on the top floor from which you can look down on the White House and across the Mall to the Washington Monument and Lincon Memorial. If you can, this is one of the best ways to see Washington.
Kajsa did suffer as a result, she worked 8-4:30 on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday was a bit of a trial!
The following week saw the beginning of the visitations and the storms. Alex arrived from Sweden so Julia took some time off to spend some time with him. They went up to New York to see what there was to see and came back raving about how great it was. Certainly a different opinion to ones that Tim and Kajsa developed from their first visits to the place. The Wevel-Pyatts just had a very quiet weekend, Tim looked after the kids and Kajsa worked. The most exciting things that happened were getting Baldrick the Black Car serviced and watching the lightning.
Weather wise, this weekend was also the start of the heat. When Alex arrived earlier in the week it got cold enough that Tim had to revert to wearing jeans on the way to work (as opposed to shorts). By the weekend it had got into the high 20s, shorts were in again and it hasn't got below that point since. Some days have been in the high 30s and most have had thunderstorms. There was a "Free Tibet"concert during the weekend ar which some of the audience were struck by the lightning and lots of the local area lost power due to relay damage. When Tim going to pick up Baldrick after getting a coolant problem fixed on Friday, he and Ed Lawler were caught in a torrential downpour and hailstorm. It was quite phenomenal. One thought that crossed Tim's mind was that the natives used to believe that weather was the expression of the moods of the gods. The Indians who lived around Washington must have thought that their gods were very, very cranky!
In the next week, after another warm rainshower, Tim and Kajsa were greeted with a fabulous sight in the backyard. We saw the first fireflies for the year. Because everything was wet and glistening and the fireflies were out it was truly beautiful, almost like someone had strung lights, very parsimoniously, in the trees.
On the day that Alex and Julia came back from New York, Tim took them up to near the area where he had always seen deer (actually he had been there a couple of days earlier and seen about half a dozen deer). Unfortunately his run of luck ran out. They stood there for a while but saw nothing more than a woodpecker and lots of chippymunks on the way home. Ah well. The wild life has been getting better and better again actually. Tim has been seeing lots on his travels to and from work. In the last two weeks of the month he has seen groundhogs, a raccoon (two days running in the same spot so he assumes it is the same one), quite a few deer, a really big frog (not that big, Paul and Helena) and a few rabbits. This is in addition to the normal squirrels and chipmunks. Earlier in the month he took Taltarni for a walk down to the lake and they saw the evidence of huge snapping turtles. The turtles don't actually break surface but they come so close that they do disturb the surface. From the disturbances observed, Tim would say that the turtles would be in the order of 60-70 in width.
Also during this week, Kalle was introduced to the concept of summer camp. School was over but he attended for one more week in which he had Fit Kids Camp. There are lots of camps and they all have concepts, like Space Camp, Cowboy Camp, Soccer Camp, Camp Camp (not for homosexuals, more for the outdoorsy type who actually wants to pitch a tent and sleep amongst the mosquitos) and Survivalist Camp (very popular in Michigan and booked out until the Year 2000 after which there doesn't seem to be any more planned for some reason). Kalle has been going to Fit Kids for a while doing the gymnastics section and the camp is oriented towards encouraging the kids to get more physical (I don't think that there is a Computer Nerds Camp or a Sit in Front of the TV All Day Camp, but you never know). He had a good time it seems.
An old work colleague of Kajsa's, Michelle, and her family arrived on the day before Midsommardagen (midsummer's day). This caused a bit of ruckus because Kajsa was working that day and Tim had to get back home early. Unfortunately, Friday was a normal Friday and he didn't get home as early as he wanted. By the time he got home the Family Hood was camped on the front lawn. Actually it wasn't that bad because Kajsa had talked Alex into cutting the lawn and he and Julia were still at home. Tim did a very good impersonation of a dutiful househusband, making dinner, tidying up, ensuring everyone had what they wanted, putting the kids to bed, entertaining the guests, sorting out the washing before Kajsa got home about 11:15pm. Then Tim collapsed exhausted and went to bed!
The next day was a big day for all, it started reasonably early with Kajsa heading off to work again. The kids (Michelle and Stuart have a three year old son) played around outside and at one point Michelle and Stuart noticed something on the road. It was another turtle, a little one, making its way purposefully towards Route 7. By this time Tim was up and about, Jill and her kids were out and another set of neighbours diagonally across the road were out for a walk. Tim grabbed the turtle with the intention of taking it back down to the creek. First the kids had to have a look at it. He also showed it to Jill, who thought it was a rock and was horrified when she found out that it was a real live turtle. She has a thing about turtles and the germs they carry. Eventually we set off on a trek down to the creek. Most fell by the wayside when it became apparent that the old path had been covered by trees cut down for the new houses in the area. Still, Tim, Kalle, Kyle, Patrick and Mimi, the girl from across the road, kept going. Kalle had a moment of pure panic when it was pointed out that there was a spider on him (in reality it was a daddy-long-legs but try telling that to a panicking almost five year old). They finally made it to the creek and set the turtle free. It was a touching moment, sort of like one of the scenes from Free Willy, except there weren't any whales and there was a lot less water.
Later that day there was a lot of rushing around sorting out everything for the Mid Summer party that we were holding. Finally we had far too much food, not quite enough chairs, nor enough space on the balcony (deck) but we did have the best weather. Warm enough to encourage the copious drinking of beer and cider and champagne, not too hot to sit outside and no rain. We had invited the neighbours (Jill, David, Kyle and Patrick), Petra, Hans, Max and Hanna, Cecilia, Duncan, Sofia and Maja, plus those we had already in the house, Michelle, Stuart and Ben and Julia and Alex. We also had Felicia arrive as a special guest. She had been in the States looking for jobs and trying to see if she'd like to live here. She was staying in Philadelphia and came down for the night. With Felicia we had a total of ten in the house! With a little rearrangement we now believe that we can fit twelve comfortably and fourteen at a squeeze. If we ever get that many we may take up the offer of a room next door! Anyway, it was great to catch up with Felicia and hear all the latest.
Once the rushing had died down, it was a pleasant evening. The kids had a great time, especially at dusk when the fireflies came out. Kyle managed to catch one and wanted a jar to put it in. That led to all the kids racing around the garden trying to catch as many fireflies as they could, some with parents in tow ("There's one, get it, get it!"). Eventually there were two jars with about a dozen fireflies in them. One got emptied and the other went next door with Kyle and Patrick. You certainly couldn't plan more absorbing entertainment.
The next day we finally managed to make it to Tony and Shosh's for a barbeque. We have been trying to make it over since we had them for dinner ages ago. They have a great house in Alexandria, with a minor forest for a backyard (no lawn, no lawnmowing) which Tasha had a great time running around in with their dog Set (aka Seti). They also have a slide and swing set, but no kids, so Taltarni, Kalle and another boy called Sean had a good time making sure that it got some use. Kalle and Sean also spent about two hours playing some game with action figures. There were two good guys (muscle man and wheel man) and a bad guy (two headed guy). The game consisted of putting two headed guy in the fork of a tree, climing onto the swing set, and throwing the good guys at him. Naturally this led to a number of emergencies in which the good guys got stuck in the fork of the tree and parents had to go down and retreive them. Boys' games.
Later Kalle was able to introduce Sean to the pleasures of firefly hunting and Tim was able to teach Kalle how to catch a firefly without crushing it. A few fireflies paid the ultimate price before this lesson was truly learned.
The following week was Kalle's first free week of summer. There were a few visits to the water park and lots of playing with Ben. Michelle and Stuart did a lot of sightseeing, including a day by themselves when Kajsa looked after Ben for them. Alex also went home during the week, leaving Julia to her own devices. On the night before he went, Alex and Julia borrowed The Devil's Advocate - a very engrossing movie, very clever.
Tim tried to get his hair cut a couple of times, the first time he couldn't get to where he wanted to go because there was a big bomb scare, some car was parked illegally near the Pentagon and was regarded as suspicious. As he tried to get to the PX store he was funnelled into an HOV lane and ended up about ten mile south of where he wanted to go so he gave up in disgust and went home. The second time he was successful. He got there, got an appointment, got in the chair and the guy giving the cut said "You from Australia, you know it's terrrible what they doing in Australia, taking their guns away!" Hm, thought Tim, you are talking to the wrong guy, pal. Instead he said that it was due to the massacre that we had. "But you know, they take away the guns and it's only going to get worse." Obvious disconnect from reality, Tim thought but said that if you look at the difference in murder rate you might think that absence of guns is a good thing. "But how do you defend yourself without a gun?" At this point Tim decided that it is not sensible to get into an argument with someone who is cutting your hair and just said, "Good point, I didn't think of that." The rest of the conversation was largely extreme right rantings with the occasional non-committal grunt.
Earlier Tim had noted in one paper that there was two articles vying for most horrible. The first was about a child who had been killed by his parents. He was 18 months old and had refused to sleep or some such. One of the parents strangled or suffocated the child. Now the reason that the paper couldn't tie down whether suffocation or strangulation was the cause of death was because the parents decided to hide the body. Well, if you just hide it it can be found so first they put it in a pot and stirred in some battery acid to dissolve as much as possible. The bits that didn't dissolve we hidden around the house. The other story was about the sweeping success by One Nation in the Queensland elections. Kajsa first thought was that the first was most horrible but when it was clarified that the child was actually dead before being put in the battery acid she changed her mind - many people kill their children because they won't sleep, that's normal. Trying to hide the body is normal. That many people voting for Hanson, now that's not normal. Later the end of the week we noticed that Australia was important enough to have quite a few articles in the paper (the Washington Times and LA Times). Unfortunately all of them were about Hanson.
On Friday the kids had all their water stuff on the front lawn (the big green plastic turtle full of water and all the toys). It was definitely needed because it was the hottest day this year and it was even 30 degrees indoors. The toys were left out so in the evening, after it had cooled down a bit, Tim went out to bring them in. He was dragging the toys to the garage when he noticed something. There was a big toad sitting on the driveway! It seemed totally unafraid so he got a container (actually he yelled at Kajsa until she brought one) and captured it. It was a big success the next morning when Kalle and Taltarni got to see it. After he came back from tumbling, Kalle insisted that he take the toad next door and show it to the boys.
He did so with Tim and, after the boys had tortured the poor thing for a while, they let it go in their back garden. While Tim, Kalle and Taltarni were there, David and Jill were frantically stuffing the car in preparation for their journey up to their beach house. David asked if we wanted to look after their hermit crab while they were away, so we managed to get rid of the toad and picked up a crab for the week.
One odd question was asked by Patrick to Tim - "Did you cut your hair?" Yes. "Did you do it yourself?" What exactly did he mean by that?
Later in the day Tim took Kalle and Taltarni to the water park (Kajsa was working again). It wasn't nearly as hot as the previous day, in fact at one point it even felt a little chilly with the breeze, but being able to splash around in the pool was good fun.
On Sunday was the Embassy Social Club picnic. It was a big event with pony rides, a bouncing castle, a clown/magic show and dogs from the National Capital Air Canines. You see the fact that some dogs chase frisbees is counted as a sport in America and there is a big fuss made over these admittedly very agile dogs. On top of that there was free food and drinks for all the members plus had some face painting for the kids. The day was not the best, in fact it was the least pleasant day to be outside that we have had for some time, jeans weather by late afternoon. On the way there it was drizzling heavily and looked like it could get unpleasant but soon after we got there it stopped raining and the only thing we had to worry about was the general swampiness of the area (Washington is built on a swamp so there were no surprises there).
We left the picnic a little earlier than most because we had been invited to Petra and Hans' for a barbeque and tried to get home in time to get Kalle, Taltarni and Ben to sleep for a while.. We also brought the Hoods along and we all had a very pleasant evening. Some of the neighbous were testing out the fireworks for the next weekend which enthralled the kids for a while and there was the obligatory firefly catching session as dusk fell. Late in the evening we managed to drag our kids away from the Jungle Book on the huge tv screen so we could go home and get some well earned sleep! (Actually Hans was able to talk Stuart into having a Cuban cigar and he was getting a little frisky. They are reputed to have that effect.)
Stuart, Michelle and Ben left on Monday. This meant that for the first time in a long time there is only us in the house. Seems a little empty. The kids will slowly get stir crazy because there is no-one to play with, the boys next door have gone away to their summer house for the week and won't be back until the Fourth of July. Kajsa worked in the evening so Tim had to race home to play Soccer Mom. Unfortunately the traffic was terrible so he Kalle there for the last few minutes of the session after which he burst into tears "I didn't get to play soccer, boo hoo." Tim's brave admission of guilt didn't seem to have any noticeable effect. To finish off the month we talked Julia into staying at home while we went off to see the X-Files movie. Much better than Godzilla which we saw last month with about half a dozen people (we went by ourselves and because the movie had been in the cinemas for almost a whole week, the audiences were pretty small).
Even after a year here in the US there are events that strike us as being particularly sick. Recently they had a little situation down in Jasper, Texas. A couple of local lads (three, white) had been drinking and were off driving. They saw a hitch-hiker that one of them recognised (one, black, crippled) and gave him a lift. After a short while one of the local lads got into an argument with one of his buddies about being nice to the hitch-hiker and they stopped the truck (of course it was a truck, silly). They strapped the black man to the back of the truck and dragged him down the road for a couple of miles at high speed. If you don't get queasy easily select the following text so you can read it. The car was going so fast that there was a trail of blood in the order of a mile long and not only did the hitch-hiker die but his head and one of his arms was ripped from his body in the process. Bottom line, he died horribly and the perpetrators were found to have links to white supremecist groups. About a week or so later, the Ku Klux Klan, supposedly appalled by this (perhaps because they hadn't thought of it first), applied for permission to rally outside the Jasper town hall to renounce the crime. A comment made by the leader - "Make no mistake about it, this is Klan country!" while noting that Jasper is part of the "Invisible Empire", whatever that is. A morbid little tale. A piece of trivia to finish this with. Does anyone remember scenes from the old silent movies in which there is a man in a black outfit, the bad guy, who ties a screaming maiden across the railway tracks with a train on the way? Anyone know the name of that fellow? That's right, Jasper.
Another article in the paper caught our eye. It wasn't on the first page, or indeed in the first section. It wasn't even on the first page of the fourth section, it was on the fifth page of the fourth section. Apparently the driver of a car had argued with two men in the same car (his passengers). The car slammed into a utility pole and shots were fired. When the police arrived the driver had mutiple wounds in the upper body, he died in surgery about three or so hours later. The passengers, obviously unimpressed by the driver's driving, left the scene and are now the subjects of a police search. An interesting story, mostly because it appears no more than a brief note in the crime and justice section. Any city in Australia and this would be front page news. Amazing. (Still I suppose we have been here a whole year and none of us have been shot at - yet.)
Reflections on a year in the United States of America