May the force be with you.

Hello all,

I'll start with something many may find a little sad and not the feeling blue kind of sad. Basically one of the highlights of my week was to find an R2-D2 post box, out on the streets to mark the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. There are supposed to be about 400 across America, we've now seen 2 in Boston, the one pictured above is at the bottom of our street outside the Boston Symphony. The postal service also plan to release a set of stamps, not sure if I'm going to be sad enough to buy the set however just yet.

Wednesday night we saw Snow Patrol at the Boston University Arena which was pretty good and Em enjoyed singing along to all the songs, cause she can't do that in the apartment. Well actually she could, everybody else does. We've got a few singers on our floor including a couple of tenors who may work at the Symphony. They're pretty good too, better than the bloke who has started playing saxophone on the corner of the street, who makes the most irritating noise imaginable. Makes you wish for some crap weather to make him go home and bother somebody else.

We managed to have a bit of a tourist day today, breakfast by the Charles river followed by a walk downtown to look for some summer clothes. Had a dodgy sandwich near Faneuil Hall, well mine was okay, Em's was a little rubbery. We spent the rest of the afternoon sat at the other side of the harbour, looking back at the city, watching the ships coming in and going out again.

Boston's gone a little crazy of late, shootings, stabbing's and kids taking guns to school. Usual happenings but on a more escalated scale at present. All in the usual areas, so we're kind of used to it I guess. We know not to head that way and obviously don't plan to, unlike the Guardian Angels who've ventured up from New York to try and help stop the violence. We feel safe, like I say we know where not to go, that's one thing we do thank Roland, the O'Grady Peyton meet and greeter for. Remember him. He took us through those areas in our first week nearly making us change our minds and head straight home. Maybe he was educating us.

Have a good weekend, hopefully the dodgy sandwich won't ruin ours.

Cheers.

Last Friday

It snowed.

Sorry nothing much to talk about, we'll think of something for next week. Hope you like the pictures Em took. 'The film we saw last week 'The Zodiac' was really good by the way.

Cheers.

Good Morning, Afternoon, Evening.

So we've sprung forward into Spring this week, 3 weeks ahead of the rest of the world. Last week we walked to work at 6:30 in the morning sunshine. This week it was like going back to the beginning of winter, a return to the cold and darkness. Sure it's not getting dark until 7pm now but we want our sunny mornings back. I guess in another couple of weeks they will be, which will obviously brighten our moods for the day ahead. Not to mention we should have recovered from the hour of sleep we missed at the weekend.

It's getting a little complicated for Em at the moment, it's hard to explain but she's basically having to work an extra shift a week to fulfil her contract. It's a bit of a shitter. Anyway today's a day off, a day to relax and chill and watch a film about the notoriously never found 70's serial killer of San Francisco. 'The Zodiac'. Which should be good, or so I've read. Tomorrow is of course St Patrick's Day and we've been invited out for a pint of the black stuff which will be well deserved. Not sure if we're going to take in any of the parade on Sunday yet, need to find the route. We know it's in South Boston so may learn more tomorrow and arrange to check it out.

Speaking of St Patrick's Day the home page illustration on the website has been picked up and printed in this weeks edition of Boston's Weekly Dig. Which was obviously very nice and another piece of work printed and out on the streets for the good people of Boston and for my CV.

Happy St Patrick's to all, have a good weekend.

Cheers.

Batteries would help!

It was cold, but not too cold last Sunday as we took a walk down to the harbour to have a look at the USS JFK. A 1,050 feet long aircraft carrier which was making it's last visit to Boston before being decommissioned. "Big John" as it's affectionately known was open to the public for the weekend, and people started queuing at about 3 am Saturday morning for the one hour guided tour. Apparently the queue was almost 2 miles long when they started turning people away. We didn't bother to join the queue, although we would have liked to have had a look around. Standing in the cold for a couple of hours before getting near the ship just wasn't that appealing. We walked down the side with others in an attempt to get a closer look but obviously security was tighter than spandex. We got as close as we could, took the camera out to take a picture only to find the batteries were flat. Nice. I usually always have spare batteries with me, but not this time. Lucky we didn't join the queue and discover this after hours stood waiting in the cold. The USS Kennedy drew around 50,000 visitors over the weekend and set sail to Florida later in the week were it will sit and grow old along with all the other retired Americans.

Our summer west coast tour is all booked, we fly to Seattle on the 18th June taking in San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles, Palm Springs (Joshua Tree National Park) and finally Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon before returning to Boston for the 4th July. It's back to good old Blighty then on the 5th via Dublin to swap planes. Better make sure I take plenty of batteries and the charger for this trip.

So sorry no picture at the top of the USS JFK for the blog as I had planned, a nice sunset to warm us up from our window instead.

Cheers.

New York

We took a trip on the 'Lucky Bus' to NYC last weekend just to get away and have a break. Em had seven days off in her shift rotation so thought it would be good to get out and go some place. Why New York, why not New York. The Lucky Bus only costs $30 each for the round trip so it's pretty cheap to get there. I've also wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art for a while, and then there's all the shops for Em, so we both get a little of what we want. Also took in a trip to the Natural History Museum which is a great place, just too much to take in. Loved the dinosaurs and learned about life and rituals of tribes in the Amazon. Too many kids running around though. The Museum of Modern Art was kinda hit and miss, some great works by some of my favourite artists like Jasper Johns, Kandinsky, Miro and Pollock. Also some very modern art which are based more around concepts such as an empty white gallery room with a light, which turns on and off every 5 seconds which was part of an exhibition on time. I think the episode of The Simpsons when Homer gets a new electronic bed covers the same idea, well at least that's what came to my mind. "Bed goes up, bed goes down. Bed goes up, bed goes down. Light comes on, light goes off. I think I understood it, maybe I miss the point, but it's not 'Art' to me. I can’t really write what Em thought of it. Highlight had to be the Bradford regeneration video. To be stood in a huge New York gallery watching a presentation video about updating our home city thousand of miles away was a little surreal. We had to watch it twice, pointing out the landmarks, Town Hall, Cathedral, Jacobs Well, and The Library.

We had a good few days, French toast and pancakes for breakfast at a diner across from the hotel. A proper New York pizza at a place called ‘Big Nicks’ which I’m guessing refers to the size of Nick because the place was small, you nearly had to stand up to let other people out. When we walked in we thought we’d entered the kitchen, the pizza though was superb. A true New York experience, just as the guide in our hotel room described.

Watched the Oscars on the Sunday while the snow fell in New York, glad to see ‘The Departed’ win best film, probably my favourite film of last year. Although ‘Little Miss Sunshine's’ really good too, so if you haven’t seen either we recommend both. Not that our opinion really counts for anything.

The Baseball season is about a month away and all the teams are in spring training. The Red Sox have a camp down in Florida because it's too cold to be training up in Boston. All the players return heavy and over weight from their winter hibernation. Lots of attention on the Red Sox because of the new Japanese pitcher they’ve bought, cost them just over $100 million. He's starting an exhibition game tonight so may have a look myself, cause I like baseball. Didn't think I would, but I got really into it last year. We've bought tickets for a game in June which should be great, enjoyed the game we saw last year against the Toronto Blue Jays. So looking forward to that.

Well I think that’s enough of my waffle. The summer west coast tour is coming together so maybe more details on that next week.

Cheers for reading.