Bloody Amazing !
I was surfing the ol’ ‘tin-ternet and came across this article on the BBC’s website. A competition was started, the winners photograph would become a world record. To recreate that image with over 100,000 photos, this webpage lets you explore the photo mosaic and read about the world-record attempt.
It’s incredible !
http://mosaic.inthebigpicture.co.uk/
I’m a Lumberjack…
… I was browsing my website the other day and noticed that I haven’t added anything to the ol’ blog since Independence Day! Well we’re buying a house so that might explain alot. Between trying to learn a whole new house buying process, hemoragging cash out of every pocket, packing boxes, organising things like trash collection, snow ploughing and an oil contract (oil heating) we’ve been on the go quite a bit. Fortunately I managed to save us some money on our legal fee’s after I ended up optimising all the attorney’s computers after she’d explained that they were always running slow. Nice !
Weather is still absolutely amazing but, in typical English fashion, “bloody hot!” Fortunately though this has been tempered on occassion by some freak thunderstorms on a scale that often makes you think that Thor the Thunder God is extremely annoyed at something. We even had a tornado touch down in Southern Connecticut which was quite exciting, hail stones the size of golf balls. Thunder and lightening like I’ve never seen. A constant rolling rumble rippling like a drummer at a kettle drum as it draws to a crescendo. Forked lightening carving the sky in two. Air cracking as it drives towards the ground. A bright flare in an angry sky. Pretty cool stuff !
Yeah! so the house. Well we’re now what they term as “Under Contract” we’ve signed all the papers, dispensed with another wad’ of cash and providing all goes well we’ll be in on August the 29th ! … and permanently broke !
In case you’re wondering it’s the same house I wrote about in my previous entry. I should be able to dig out some more pictures now as I’ve managed to successfully retrieve all our lost data from my external hard drive after it decided to blow up with all of our pictures on spanning the entire course of our relationship. $100 and some Data Salvage software later I’ve now managed to transfer all of the missing photos onto a nice new 0.5TB (Terra Byte… Bloody Big!) hard drive.
Unfortunately… well fortunately actually because I quite like him too, on purchase of the house I had to come through on a promise I’d made my wife along time ago, OK another promise ! Ever since I’ve known Jen she’s had a thing for chihuahua’s, yes those little toy dogs you see the likes of Paris Hilton carrying around. Well, I promised once we had a house I’d buy her one, so … we now have a new addition to the family. “Basil” the long-haired chihuahua ! I have to admit, as chihuahua’s go he’s kinda’ cute and smart too ! He’s already learnt sit, paw and lay-down in just over two weeks, the dog’s a genius… only he needs to stop waking up at 5am to want to go outside for a toilet break ! Inevitiably future postings will mostly likely include pictures of the ‘Baz’!
We were a bit worried at first how Basil would cope with playing with my wife’s parent’s dog, Brody, but as this photo show’s he seems to do quite well !
So what else did we get upto this weekend. Well in preparation for the new house I’ve bought myself a new toy. A Husqvarna petrol chainsaw, and feeling a little like Tim Allen from Home Improvement I had needed to try it out to get some tree-felling practice in ! (We have alot of trees at our new place which I want to thin out). I knew Jen’s mum was keen to clear out a few trees from the back of her garden so I spent the day tackling vines and the undergrowth sawing down trees. Damn ! that was fun, managed to take down a couple of 60 - 70ft trees and avoided taking the house out with them, needless to say they now have enough fire wood to see them through the winter.
I added a quick addition to the shed with some scrap wood I found lying around and a couple of nice straight sections of trunk and managed to make a nice little storage area for the wood. Definately looking forward to getting started on our place !
Anyway I best sign-off, it’s getting late and work tommorrow.
Independence Day and House Buying
Well today was July 4th, a rare day of cherished vacation in America and an opportunity to let rip with some fireworks. I learn’t quite quickly that fireworks are actually illegal in most states here in America but, with the most exciting fireworks being nothing more than giant sparklers, an alternative source of fireworks needed to be found !
That location resulted in a 160-mile round trip drive to Pennsylvania one afternoon and the comparative feeling of someone running moonshine across the state line during prohibition !
Needless to say we found some proper “these look dangerous” style fireworks, the type that you are more accustomed to finding in the UK. It was a fairly relaxed event. Originally we intended to visit Philadelphia, the origins of the declaration of independence from British rule in 1776. However with a house purchase imminent we decided to avoid the long weekend expense of going to Philadelphia and instead spent it with Jen’s parents and sister Emily.
The fireworks were met with a round of applause from all, including some of the neighbours as several mortar style affairs rocketed to over 100ft before exploding into a beautiful cascade of colour and crackling as illuminations fell from the sky like neon stars.
The firepit was cranking and with steak on the grill it turned out to be a nice evening all round.
Some of you may be wondering where we’ve gotten too recently. Lately it’s been incredibly hectic around here. Our evenings have been spent looking for houses, and the weekends are always packed. Originally planning on moving in late 2008 we figured we may as well start looking and see if anything ‘pops’. Well it has, and we’re currently bidding for it so fingers crossed. When my brother Jon comes over in November we could very well be celebrating Thanksgiving in a new house !
Anyway, here’s a few pictures. It’s a 1930’s cape located on the Newtown/Monroe/Redding borders. It’s seconds away from Huntington State Park, and sits on a hill amongst 2 acres of land. After we’ve cleared a few trees it will have an awesome view over a valley carpeted with trees which should look amazing during the fall. My only concern is the driveway ! Time to buy a snow plough !
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