| Vol 1 | Vol 2 | Vol 3 | Vol 4 | Vol 5 | Vol 6 | Vol 7 | Vol 8 | Vol 9 | Vol 10 | Vol 11 | Vol 12 | Vol 13 | Second Year | Main Page |
If you want to go straight to Vol 3, you may do so!
...
We really came a long way towards being settled in August. It was probably one of the shortest and longest months of our lives. While it seems that the month flew by it also seemed like it was years between moving into the house and celebrating Tim's birthday (yes, most of you missed it, again). Despite all our hard work at the end of the month, the bookshelves were still a mess and many things in the kitchen were still migrating from cupboard to cupboard.
The move into the house went reasonably well. They were two exhausting days and we didn't even carry any of the furniture or removalist boxes. There were some highlights though, on the first day in the house Tim and Kalle walked down the back of the garden, through the gate and wandered towards the creek. While there, they startled a deer that was within a few metres of them. In that one short walk they also saw a ground squirrel and a few tree squirrels and met the backdoor neighbour. Since then we have seen heaps of wildlife but not so much of the neighbours. We've seen a few deer, a couple more groundhogs, heaps of squirrels, rabbits and, at the end of the month, we saw a beaver. (Admittedly we saw it a long way away from the house, in another county in fact.)
One of the first things that happened at the beginning of the month was that Tim went away (just in time to avoid some unpacking - leaving on 4 Aug for a night in New Jersey).
Soon after that we celebrated Taltarni's birthday (yes most of you missed that one too!) Taltarni celebrated in fine form by being very ill and making us wonder if she had something very serious like brain inflammation (encephalitis, for those who want to be picky, is actually of the lining of the brain but you get what we mean). Anyway she was drowsy and just not herself and had some weird bumps at the back of her head. She has since made a full recovery.
The next day the Swedish contingent arrived, Eva, Else and Berit came down from New York on a bus. If anyone is considering travelling from NY to DC on a bus - don't. They had a terrible trip and should be sensible enough to take the train the next time they venture down. Tim was dispatched to pick them up and was late. First because he was still having coffee when they rang and asked "Where is Tim?" but also because, when he did get going, he got lost. Don't if you can help it visit South East Washington past sunset (if indeed you have any desire to visit South East at all). Needless to say that Tim thought that going through South East was a good idea. When he got there he realised that there was a reason that people advised avoiding the area! Even the Marine base has to be heavily guarded! Anyway, he survived experience and both he and the car made it out safely.
The non age-challenged double X chromosone humanoid guests who have Swedish citizenship (our friends, as Kajsa prefers, or girlies or chickybabes, as Tim wasn't allowed to type) had a good time in DC, complete with a pleasant little stop on the road just outside the rustic village of Great Falls. They happily sat in the car with Kajsa and the kids while Tim thumbed a lift in to get some "gas". Embarrassing. Rusty the Buick has a swag of idiot proof features, a little chime goes off if you don't have your seatbelt on, a chime goes off if you leave the keys in the ignition and open the driver's door, a chime goes off if you leave the lights on (a really insistent and loud one). There is absolutely nothing if the petrol (gas) is running out. No light and no chime, just a wavering tank level pointer on the dash but no warning except when the car starts stalling and finally comes to an abrupt halt. Bugger.
Anyway, we eventually dropped them off in DC to wander around while we went on to have a wonderful time at the Swiss Embassy, lazing around the ice pool, guaranteed to be no more that five degrees above freezing.
The girls left the next day (on another bus, ha ha ha) and soon after Tim took another junket, this time for five days (to Kentucky and Indiana). Kajsa was left to welcome our next set of visitors, Ingela and Rikard, alone. They arrived very late into Washington after problems with the flight into Newark (just outside New York City) and subsequent missing of the train.
Kajsa took them up to Leesburg the next day to look at antiques and so on. This was apparently interesting for them, which was lucky in retrospect, given the state of complete exhaustion they must have been in. They had a wander aound DC (the safe bit) the following day and saw all the important things such as the Capitol Building, the White House, the Washington Memorial and a whole bunch of museums and art galleries. They didn't necessarily get to see what was in the museums but they did at least get to see what they looked like from the outside.
Then Tim came home and the pace of tourism slowed. We took Ingela and Rickard to visit a local park (Great Falls National Park) and wandered around, looking for frogs and ducks. After that we visited Great Falls Village where we had lunch at a nice deli. In the later afternoon, we visited another park where Kalle got all panicky because he thought that Kajsa had left him behind when he had stopped with Tim to look at some fish.
Finally, exhausted, we went home and had coffee. Due to our state, we decided to ordered pizza. That was a major mistake. We weren't just tired, we were also hungry and the pizza took ages to arrive. When it eventually arrived, the pizza was delicious but not delicious enough to make up for the wait!
Oh, and all this happened on the hottest day in Washington in recorded history!
The next day Tim and Kajsa went off the have tea and cucumber sandwiches with the Commodore (a farewell for one of Tim's colleague). During the time a huge storm developed and dumped heaps of rain on the city and surrounding area. There was also a fair amount of damage to trees in the region and we lost power in the house for couple of hours just after we got home. As dusk fell, we went out and watched a fantastic display of lightning (lightning in the darkening).
Monday was spent looking at some of the remaining important bits in Washington (the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and the outside of the White House again).
On Wednesday 20 Aug, we drove Ingela and Rikard up to Newark, New Jersey. It rained down very heavily all day. This made the trip up interesting, not only did we have to contend with trucks that don't indicate or stay in their lanes - we also had great difficulty seeing them! A very tiring day.
The weekend was spent trapped in the house by our rabid, do-it-yourself landlord. (Seriously, he went to a lot of effort to fix up our bathroom sinktops for us and while he's keen about DIY [at least the money saving part of DIY], he's not so keen on plumbing - the sinktops, which are very, very heavy, look great and don't leak anymore). We did get away Saturday evening to a couple of parties and Kajsa went off to a baby shower on Sunday while Tim had the kids. What a social whirl!
Kalle started school at the Vienna Town and Country on Monday 25 Aug. He was very keen to start for the entire fortnight leading up to it. Everytime we passed it in the car we'd hear "There's my school, look mamma, look pappa. That's my school."
Given that such a life changing event was happening for Kalle, Tim took the opportunity to disappear for couple of days, this time to St Louis, Missouri. While there he saw the famous arch thingy of St Louis (Gateway to the West) and a ball game (St Louis Cardinals versus the "some city in Canada?" Expos). Oh, and he visited a contractor's plant to discuss some important Free World defending stuff. Unfortunately a side trip to the world famous Potosi, Illinois was not on the agenda.
He was back in time for his birthday (did we mention that most people missed it?) As usual Kalle was very keen to make sure that the event did not pass without the obligatory chocolate cake.
That about brings everyone up to date with what we have been doing. Maybe a bit boring and travelogue-ish but we hope it is extensive. We are going through a bit of a phase at the moment and are a little more cynical about Americans than we hope we will be during the remainder of the posting. But while we are really cynical we should take advantage of it ...
We were amazed to see just how many commercials there are about plastic surgery, the Health supplement to the Washington Post is full of them. If your chin isn't quite right, we can fix that. Hair loss? There are twenty different solutions (including something like a texta that you use to paint the bald bits with [we're not joking].) Breasts too small? We can fix that. Breasts too big? Silly question, of course we can make them even bigger. Eat too much, no problem, take these pills to settle the stomach, these to knock out your intestinal tract and we'll wheel in the turbo charged vacuum cleaner and get those nasty little fat cells out in a jiffy. What I want to know is, do ex-fatties who have had liposuction die more quickly if they are starved to death. A morbid thought but I wonder, are they still doing experiments like that on poor people? Of course not, not here. Not in the US.
A teenager was recently convicted with fornication a couple of weeks prior to giving birth. Sort of puts a big hole in the defence case. Did you have sex underage? (Teenager looks at swollen belly.) Would believe that I am a big time underage beer drinker? I mean what sort of good does it do anyone to charge the girl with fornication - even if she chose to have sex?
It's good though, that the courts can understand that sometimes - very rarely though of course - underage people have sex. It's also good that these poor lost souls from poor families are rescued from themselves and caused to suffer greatly.
Strangely enough, while in some states the Government, via the courts, is coming down hard on those who succumb to their primal urges (out, out I say), the schools in our region are forcing children to read pornography in English classes (graphic borderline material such as 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and Isabella Allende's 'In the House of the Spirits'). Fortunately, there are some fine upstanding people with better morals than the rest of us who are willing burn books in order to save our children from exposure to this filth.
Tim has to make a guilty admission that he has wanted to read One Hundred Years of Solitude for a while (it is one of Tim's most guilty secrets). He is a bit sad that can't remember the really juicy bits of In the House of the Spirits very clearly and may need to read it again, more carefully. (In fact he may pop down to Al's Particularly Raunchy and Explicit Adult Bookshop and pick up a copy. Al: "I think you'll find 'Spirits' next to 'Girls loving girls with large latex implements' and 'One Hundred Years' is there between 'Randy Roger - Gerbophile' and 'War and Peace'." Al then mutters to himself, while perusing 'Hardcore Horny Housewives', "I don't know how anyone can stomach that Latin filth.")
Just part of closing we will relate a story we read in the paper. In LA, a pizza delivery service is being sued for denying some people of their constitutional right of receiving pizza. It seems that Dominos decided not to make deliveries to an area in which a few of their delivery people had been murdered. In one instance, the delivery person lay dying on the sidewalk while those he was delivering to enjoyed their pizza.
This seems not to a sufficient reason for denying pizza delivery to residents of the area. Anyway, these residents have now banded together to sue Dominos because they believe that they have a right under the constitution to enjoy life (well...), liberty (loosely defined), freedom (to enjoy what the Moral Majority regard as wholesome) and pursuit of pizza. What a country! (PS We discovered early in the month that it is not obligatory to tip, perhaps in some areas it's not even obligatory to pay!)