Take me to the core of The Big Apple - I want to check out the pips

It's been a while since my last proper post. How've you been? I've been well thanks. We've been busy.

We went to the states for ten days, first to New York with our friend Tony from Uni. We went to visit another friend, Pete, who's working out there. He has an apartment in Manhattan, just south of Central Park. Skill-o!

We arrived late on the Saturday night, and endured the taxi ride from hell (well, Newark airport) to Pete's apartment. Then we went out to Greenwich Village for some drinks. Anne, Tony and me faded fast after midnight (especially me!) and had to go back to Pete's to sleep.

Sunday we spent in Central Park, mainly. Central Park is fantastic! I've been to NYC a couple of times, briefly, but have never had a chance to walk around it in a leisurely manner - I've always been there on a short stop-over. It was good to be able to relax and see the park. Despite that fact that walking down NY streets feels like walking through a deep valley, with buildings towering above you, it can be very picturesque, especially in the background of the views around the park.

We also took a walk to a diner which fans of Seinfeld might recognise. We tried to go in there for a chocolate milk, but they wanted to order food or pay a cover charge. Grrr.

A couple of nights we went out with friends of Pete to eat, and one night we stayed in and watched The Stepford Wives (remake) on DVD. The latter is an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone. I won't review it here - that can wait for the next film post - but I warn you it's awful and confused. Avoid.

We walked and walk. Walked for miles. Pete had previously posted on his blog about a piece of cake he'd eaten in Brooklyn. We all demanded he took us there. "Take us there Pete", we demanded. He did. We got the subway to Brooklyn and visited CakeMan Raven's shop (yes, Pete called it Mr Cake but he was mistaken). We ate the biggest bits of (red) cake in the whole world. Only Tony finished his piece and I got quite upset, having been convinced I could eat more than Tony. The cake was lovely and light, but the icing was too sweet. My cake had nuts on, and I think Tony's may not have, so that probably explains it.

Good to know that of all the photos we got, most of them were of us eating cake. It was good cake. We walked back to Manhattan, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and got some pretty spectacular views of the city.

I'm sure we did more. We did do more. We saw Ground Zero (a big sad building site) and did a bit of shopping for clothes (I got in a bad mood as I hate clothes shopping - I threw a small paddy). We ate lots of treats and went to Grand Central Station (an amazing place - worth a look).

After five days we said our goodbyes, and Anne and I hopped on a plane to Atlanta. We went there to meet up with some more friends and go to the wedding of a friend of mine from school, Lee. And his fiance (now wife) Mel.

Lots of photos from there, but I won't bore you with lots of pictures of people most of you don't know. Oh, OK then here are a few:

The wedding itself was in Clemson, a small town in South Carolina. It was very different to New York City. Obviously.

Well that's it for the moment. I think that's enough photos to keep you quiet. My thanks to Ian and Tony for the photos of theirs I've used without their permission.

Take a walk!

Anne and I are doing a sponsored walk in a few weeks. It's 13 miles for Oxfam. For your convenience Anne's set up a website so you can sponsort us online. Here's the link.

Throwing money at a good cause has never been so easy.

Finding Nematode

Our new wormery arrived yesterday. There were some raised eyebows at "Goods In" at my office when a package arrived for me containing live worms. My office closed at lunchtime, it being Good Thursday, so I popped home to set up our new garden feature.

The wormery is a compost bin, which turns organic waste into liquid fetilizer and compost using lots of special worms.

It was fun to set up, and though I was initially a little squemish about handling the little funny fellows (the worms) I soon overcame that.

Aren't they adorable? After they've had time to settle down they should be able to eat all our kitchen waste, and help us feed the garden. Job Done!

Today, Easter Friday, we spent in the garden. We did loads of digging and got exhausted. We sowed some grass seed on the large area of wasteland we've been preparing. I think we put too much down, but we'll see. The birds are already eating it so maybe it's a good thing that we've put too much down. A few weeks ago we planted some strawberry plants, some blackcurrants, raspberries and rhubarb. Today we planted the first of our veggies: carrots and parsnips. We're on our way to becoming Tom and Barbara. Anne's even begining to look like Felicity Kendall!

We then went out to Homebase and bought some garden furniture. Now all we need is some nice weather (like last weekend which was glorious!) We sat out in cloudy weather and had some hot cross buns.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

We often miss movies at the cinema, and don’t get to the video library regularly. So, in the new year we decided to start a DVD rental contract. We plumped for Amazon: £9.99 a month for a maximum of six discs per month, three at a time. Not bad!

As a consequence, we’ve seen some good movies lately. And a few not-so-good ones. Here are the verdicts:

The Station Agent: a good little American indie film. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Day After Tomorrow: I got this mainly to test out my new subwoofer, and it certainly did that. I didn’t have high expectations, but I actually quite enjoyed it. I will say though that when NY is flooded and frozen and our heroes are trying to save their friend’s life by fetching medicine and also having to run away from a killer freeze, I didn’t really need the bizarre added threat of some bad-CG wolves.

Fahrenheit 9/11: It’s quite sad seeing this after Bush’s re-election (or, rather, first election – let’s not forget he cheated the first time). Michael Moore can be interesting, but he’s a bit base at times. A bit of balance would help. And annoyingly this film was on Channel 4 two weeks after we hired it. One word: Grah!

28 Days Later: Been wanting to see this for ages, and I liked it. Good, clean zombie fun. (NB: They’re not actually zombies, technically.)

House Of Sand And Fog: Oscar winners like this are often quite dull, or at least that’s the impression I get. This was enjoyable though, mainly thanks to Ben Kingsley. It’s funny that I can watch horror films with no problems, but it took me a while to recover after seeing Jennifer Connelley step on a nail. Yuck!

Pitch Black: Another one I’ve wanted to see for ages. This is a really good little sci-fi/horror. I have no interest in seeing the sequel.

Anchorman: Absolutely hilarious. I kept thinking “I shouldn’t be laughing. This is puerile and silly.” It was brilliantly done puerile and silly though, and that’s what matters.

City Of God: A Brazillian Goodfellas. Great stuff!

The Terminal: After Catch Me If You Can I was looking forward to this. However, I found it dull. Avoid.

Super Size Me: I was wary of this documentary as I figured it wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t know (“Fast food is bad for you and if you eat nothing but McDonalds for a month you won’t be well”) but I enjoyed it a lot. The film-maker is likable and engaging, and there’s plenty of variety in there.

Belleville Rendez-Vous: Technically good I suppose, but I wasn’t impressed with this French cartoon. Avoid this and go for Spirited Away. Anne’s sister Kerry says I didn’t like it because I’m “not very French”. That’s criticism I can happily accept.

The 25th Hour: I enjoyed this Spike Lee “Joint”. Not great, but Edward Norton is good as usual.

Cube: I got this because the new films I’d wanted were out of stock. It’s a decent little puzzle sci-fi film, though I’ve been warned to avoid the sequel.

Layer Cake: The latest Brit gangster film. Pretty good. Not too “Lock Stock”, and with some really good scenes. Good to see Chief O’Brien from Star Trek back on the screen!

So that’s what we’ve seen so far (fortunately Amazon keeps track for me, so you won’t miss out on any we’ve seen!) However, all these were eclipsed by a film we saw on Friday night: The Incredibles. I loved it. All superhero movies should be made like this! It was almost too fast for me to follow (though I admit that may be thanks to the wine). See it (unless you already have).

What would Buffy do in this situation?

We've had a busy few weekends, visiting Anne's sisters up north (see first photo) and having friends visiting us in Cambridge. Showing friends around Cambridge, we realised there are still lots of things here we've not seen, having spent (it seems) most of our weekends last summer searching for a house.

I've also been building a PC. Anne begged me not to. Anne wanted me to buy a new ready-built one. I enjoy tinkering though, even if something inevitably goes wrong and it ends up taking me ages.

Something went wrong. I kept getting the Blue Screen of Death. It took me a while to figure out why. Anne had the patience of a saint.

It was the memory I was using (see memtest results below). The memory was cheap stuff, and wasn't compatible with my kit. That'll learn me. I ended up getting better memory, and it then worked (barring a few issues between Windows XP SP2 and the Athlon 64 processor, but you'd probably fall asleep if I went into that). Anne smiled, and nodded lovingly as I gave her a commentary on my progress. That girl is an angel. Pity her.

We don't give each other Valentine's gifts, but to thank her for her tolerance (and to apologise) I popped into Waitrose on my way home from work on the day after Valentine's Day and picked up a bunch of roses. They were £45 the day before, but had been reduced to a tenner by the 15th. Result! I left the price on so Anne could see her worth in pounds sterling.

This weekend, we had to ourselves. We spent Saturday morning in the garden, pulling out roots, pulling out weeds, turning soil and generally tidying up. The garden's much less of a mess than when we bought the place.

We're gradually getting it to a state where we can put grass seed where we want grass, and other seeds where we want veggies.

On Saturday afternoon we popped to the garden centre and came back with rhubarb, blackcurrant and rasberry plants. Yay! We'd planned to put them in the ground on Sunday morning, biut it snowed and snowed, so we left them in the shed.

So, instead, we had a lazy Sunday morning. In the afternoon we went to The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It's a great building:

The musuem was quite good in places, but a lot of it was closed. There was a lot of Roman and Egyptian stuff, which is interesting but I'd sometimes rather see some British stuff than stuff stolen from other countries. Cambridge has a wealth of history, so we'll look out for a place that will show us some of that.

The day had started well when I woke Anne with fresh coffee and Green and Blacks almond chocolate. Anne told me she'd been dreaming that she was Sarah Michelle Geller (Buffy) and was trying to sort out an objected-oriented database she's dealing with at work. Of course she had.

Funny that: I've had many dreams in which Anne is Sarah Michelle Gellar.