Al(l) Gore in Washington

I'm away in Washington with work at the moment. I flew out last Tuesday, and won't be home until next Saturday.

I'm sad to be away from Anne and ThingOne, especially as I hear today that ThingOne's not well. I hate to be away from her when she's like this. I hope Anne manages to get some rest and that ThingOne's better soon.

Anyway, what can I do while I'm away on my own except watch movies in my (little) free time. However, I don't want to watch movies that Anne would want to see. This doesn't leave me with a lot of choice, since Anne likes movies too, hence why I married her.

Anne doesn't like horrors though, so I've watched a few of those. On Wednesday morning I woke at 2.30am local time and couldn't get back to sleep. By 4am I was working in my room. At 6am I was ironing in just my pants watching torture-horror Hostel on my laptop. It was an odd experience in my hazy jet-lagged state. I watched the rest of it that evening, and I have to say I was sickened. I actually felt ill watching it. Unlike a lot of horrors I enjoy it didn't seem particularly entertaining, but was just extremely nasty. And yet I watched it to the end. And am curious about the sequel.

On Friday evening I got a cab to the mall near my hotel. I'd been told this was a great mall, and the one to go to in the area. I got there and was instantly struck by how little I like shopping.

I wasn't there for the shops though. I was there for the cinema. I queued up unsure if I was going to see Spider Man 3 or zombie movie 28 Weeks Later. When I got to the counter I plumped for the latter. I had 90 minutes to kill in the mall before the film so I had some food and went to Pottery Barn Kids and bought some presents for ThingOne. I guess it's hard not to want to spoil your child when you're away from home.

The zombie film was certainly more entertaining than Hostel, but I was still a little sickened. Why do I watch these things when I'm squeamish?

Bank holiday Meldrew

Today Anne saw a car parked outside our house with three people in and vaguely wondered what the people were up to. They'd been there for some time, and after a while the car drove a few metres forward and stopped again.

All curiosity was obliterated and rage took over when the person in the back seat threw a cigarette butt out of the window and on to the grass.

Not wanting to embarrass Anne unduly, I asked if she'd mind if I went out and gave it back to them. Usually she'd rather I didn't make a scene, but was up for a laugh today (and quite annoyed) so she told me to go for it.

I went out, picked up the fag end (and another that was there that the woman in the back seat had clearly thrown out) and passed them through the window, asking them to take their litter with them. They were quite shocked. The woman in the back apologised, but the woman in the front just kept saying that she'd not done anything wrong (I never said she had - it was the woman in the back who'd chucked the butts).

I saw the woman in the front put the butts into their ashtray. I noticed the ashtray was PACKED with fag ends. They'd clearly been parking outside a lot of people's houses. I suppose, in their defence, at least the only litter when their car is full of crap. Some defence!

Feeling I had the upper hand I then asked what they were up to. They quickly showed me some papers and told me it was a marketing exercise (I didn't really care - I just wanted to embarrass them further). I stood behind the car for a bit, pretending to be memorising their number plate (I couldn't even tell you what type of car they were in). As I went back into the house they drove off.

One-nil to me (until we find our windows smashed).

I can feel some of my friends cringing as they read this.

Bank-holiday fun

Tomorrow I'm going to the US on business for a couple of weeks, which makes me sad. Partly this is because it'll be hard work for me, but largely it's because I've not left ThingOne for that long before, and to leave her at this stage when she's so lovely and learning so much will be hard. It'll be hard for Anne too who won't get a break for almost a fortnight.

This weekend though we had Anne's sister Kerry and her man Mark down for a visit. They liked seeing their niece, who was on good form, and ThingOne enjoyed seeing them and getting so much attention. I got to spend a lot of time watching ThingOne learning new things and playing, to get my fix to see me through while I'm away.

ThingOne did a lot of showing off and being purposefully cute, and watered our patio with her little watering can. She had a great time in a local park on the swings and slide, and being swung around by us.



Kerry has taught ThingOne to pull up our shirts so she can poke us in the belly-button. Quite fun, but it could get annoying - especially in public. I'm going to have to start doing sit ups again!

Her first word was "murder"

Sounds like a twisted Agatha Christie novel title doesn't it? It's not true that ThingOne's forst word was "murder". She's been saying simple words for a while, but she's not really said clear two-syllable words before (other than "dada", which isn't a real word). Before this week ThingOne has called both me and Anne (and most other people) Dada. Only this week has she started to realise that one of us is Dada and one is Mama. However, she's often not sure which is which.

She'll sit and point at one of us and say Mama and Dada until she gets it right and gets a reaction from us (we clap when she calls us the right name). But she gets a bit tied up and called us Mada, which comes out just like Murder (or rather, like Taggart saying Murder in a thick Scotch accent).

Let's hope this isn't a portent.

May tricks: reloaded

Having moved the blog onto a new server (and finally properly using our stephenkt.co.uk domain, rather than just redirecting it to our web site) I've tidied up the blog a bit. Links down the side have been tidied up, and I've changed colours just for the hell of it. I'm not particularly good with colours, so I suspect once Anne sees it she'll want me to rework it.

I resisted the urge to fully widgetize the site, but there are a few things I'm interested in trying out. We'll see if I have the time.

And I got through a whole post without mentioning ThingOne once.

(Damn.)