Whew – What a busy month!

So much has happened in the last couple of weeks, it's almost impossible to keep up.

New floor at work

At work we completed the rebuild of another floor, what fantastic views.  The business folks really don't appreciate how much goes into this, over 1000 individual phone and network connections.

Trip to North of England

London Hotel - Evening with Mark - First class trip back with Shia LaBeouf

Dan was back in England again for a couple of days, just long enough to attend a meeting up north near Crewe and then an evening out with Mark in the capital before flying back.

Editorial on Trains

I want to talk about the service level on Metro-North .v. Virgin Trains in the UK.  The pictures probably speak for themselves – yes car 6353 belongs to Metro-North and this wasn’t people getting on/off just riding the train during a normal commute.  However, the pictures don't tell the whole story.

Trip	Distance	Time	Avg. Speed	Best Fare	Cost per Mile	Age of train
London - Crewe	170 miles	90 mins	113 MPH	$72	42c	9 years
New York - Poughkeepsie	80 miles	89 mins	54 MPH	$21	26c	Loco 20 years, cars a lot older

Metro North is clearly, too cheap, too slow and too crowded.  They should double their fares and start seriously upgrading infrastructure.

First Class across the Atlantic

For the first and probably the last time, Dan crossed the Atlantic in FIRST class.  He got three windows all to himself and Shia LaBeouf (SLB), the Transformers movie star, as a neighbor.  The bizarre coincidence is that the last time Dan was in London he went to see a movie, for the first time in years and it is Wall Street 2 - starring of all people Shia LaBeouf.  So that was pretty cool.

Yankees Game

Dan also got to go to his first ever Yankees Game against the Milwaukee Brewers.  Predictably the Yankees won!  It was the most beautiful evening for a game and the corporate H&R Block boxes were a great place to enjoy in from, open bar, snacks, comfortable seats and a/c.  Not bad for a $65 ticket.

Street fair and Gay Marriage

We also made it along to a street fair in NYC in support of gay marriage, which New York state legalized shortly thereafter being by far the largest state to do so and beating out California (hah).  One of the people who changed his mind during the campaign was the Republican senator for Buffalo Mark Grisanti, he said “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”  I thought he summed it up rather well. 

Next stop Polygamy :-) it will be interesting to see how Human Resource departments and software deal with that.

Back home

Veggies from our yard garden – Rain - Deck and awnings

Our veggie garden continued to produce crops, check out our fresh carrots!  The bumper rain has certainly helped; we get some almost tropical downpours here in the summer.  The weather forecast is not kidding when they talk about flash-flooding.  Fortunately the latest addition to the house is a pair of motorized awnings from Sunsetter that almost cover the whole deck.  We can't say enough about how wonderful these are.  In the sun they cut the temperature underneath them by 20F, stop Dan burning and save money on our air conditioning.  In the rain they are lovely to sit under and watch the birds while having dinner or lying in the hot tub.

Odds and Ends

Party in Old Saybrook - Smart car - News of the World

We also got over to a friend’s party in Old Saybrook at the other end of Connecticut (it's a small state!), had a Smart Car (like mum has, park up next to us, so you can see the difference) and finally...

I was terribly sad this week to see the passing of the News of the World.  Probably Britain's best loved tabloid newspaper, I won't go into the whole scandal surrounding its downfall, but I did want to end on an 'over the fence' paparazzi shot for which they are famous.  See anything new?

All content (c) judyanddan.com 2011 - last updated July 9^th 2011