Thanksgiving

Our second thanksgiving was again a fairly downbeat and quiet affair as most travel round the country to visit parents or grandparents. There was however the lingering smell of a few turkeys being slowly basted through the day. We ignored the coverage of the Macy’s parade, learning after last years sickly stage school performances. Myself and Em were truly thankful that Kevin Costner wasn’t playing catch with his dad on his field of dreams. That film broke us last year.

Sorry no pictures this time round, waiting for our new camera to be delivered. Got a great deal in the Thanksgiving sale. Today is known as ‘Black Friday’ the biggest shopping day of the year, and is named so because it brings all stores back into the black for the year, apparently. Stores opened at 5 this morning and off course people queued to get in.

We’ve not really been anywhere or done much apart from work this November, Em’s working through a batch of nightshifts and I have been busy working on some illustrations for a company I met in Portland last month. Nice little job which should allow me to treat us to some jam with our bread. Only joking. Just great to get some work in which will hopefully lead to more.

It’s our anniversary next month and we’ve a few plans on the agenda. A romantic trip to the Science museum to have a look at Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds which is an exhibition of real human bodies. Nice. Em’s interested in the medical side I’m going for the anatomical perspective. Boston Ballet are performing ‘The Nutcracker’ which should be fun, I think. Em says it will be and who am I to disagree. Finally of course, go out for something to eat. Original plans to go to the north end and spend a fortune in a nice posh Italian restaurant have slowly but surely been pounded on by the idea of just going to our local and favourite place to eat in Boston. Woody’s. Hopefully we will have a camera to take some pictures by then.

Cheers.

Portland pictures

Our battered and bruised camera has come through for us. Managed to download the pictures we took in Portland, below is a collection of the best from the weekend.


Cheers.

It's just round the corner...

...are the words my dad used to, and probably still says when out walking and trying to find someplace. Well like father like son I found myself muttering those fatal words as me and Em tried walking back to the Portland train station and the nearby Denny's. I've never been to a Denny's and Em was raving about her childhood experiences of the classic American breakfast. Fueled by those thoughts we found ourselves crossing a bridge which slowly turned into a freeway. Things should have clicked when a car on the other side stopped to offer us a lift. 'No we're good' we replied. Five minutes later we would be making our way back towards the B&B to get a taxi. Denny's will have to wait.

An interesting weekend full of the good the bad and the kooky. The good being Portland in general, quite a nice place and a little English. Reminded us of various places back home including Bingley and Whitby. Loads of art & craft shops, pottery and interesting souvenir shops selling local produce, jams, mustards, maple syrups and salt water taffy.

The bad would be me, being a butter fingers and dropping my camera, then seeing a car run over it. It's not looking too good. Will have a go at download the pictures soon. I'll post up the best if I can get anything from the slightly crumpled piece of metal and plastic that is our digital camera. May it rest in peace. Also bad was the weather. 50 mile an hour winds and torrential rain on the Saturday. The wind hung around for the rest of the weekend, thankfully the rain moved on.

The Kooky would be the B&B, the oldest running bed and breakfast in Portland. 4 foot high bed and loads of old fashioned European fixtures and fittings added to its charm and character. A little different from your typical Holiday Inn.

Cheers.

Hopefully post some pictures up soon.

2 hours 13 minutes

That was Em's time to cover the 13.1 miles of the Boston Half Marathon at the weekend. A respectable time indeed. She was fairly nervous at the start, fearing she'd be the last home. Not a chance. While Em ran to the zoo and back along the Emerald Necklace. I was left to wander round our neighborhood and take a few pictures. Not done that for a while.


The trees are getting pretty colourful round here and we're planning to go up to Maine in a couple of weeks to see a little more of the New England Fall. We saw Jon Stewart last Friday and laughed along as he ripped into America, their foreign policies and kiddy fiddling politicians. He also talked a little about Americas gun culture and the recent school shootings. It's certainly been a little crazy and constantly on the news. They don't know how to handle it because they won't give up their right to bare arms.

Gig wise we should have seen Keane but they cancelled due to a boozy lead singer. But all is not lost we've the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the horizon which should be good. So I've waffled on enough. Until the next time, take it easy.

Cheers.

A week and a half back

and we're settling back into Boston life. Still missing family and friends of course but getting back to being a 'gang of two'. Em's back on the night shifts this week and easing herself back into work. The day after we got back I spoke to the art director of 'Boston's Weekly Dig' and sold him the rights to publish an illustration. More of which you can find on the sketchblog. The fall TV season has started so we're finding it hard to pull ourselves away from the TV between 8 and 11 most nights. ER, Studio 60, Heroes, Standoff, Smith, Bones, Jerico, CSI, My Name Is Earl and The Office. Not to mention Lost starts next week.


Em's training for the Boston half marathon is going well. I think. The run takes place a week on Sunday. She ran twice round part of the Charles River today, about six miles and plans to go out another 2 or 3 times before next Sunday. Em's hoping to complete it in around 2 hours, so check back in a couple of weeks to see how she got on.

Not been to Harvard for a while so that's our plan for the weekend, well Saturday afternoon, evening. Get some food at Grafton Street and a few drinks on the way back at Bukowskis. Probably just going to chill on Sunday and watch the leaves change and fall to the ground or maybe Spurs v Portsmouth.

Cheers.

Back to Boston

We have arrived back in Boston safe and sound after our little jaunt across the pond. It was really good to see and catch up with everybody again. Don't be afraid to send us e-mails, postcards, letters or Double Deckers. Keep in touch.

Cheers.

One year later...

It’s one year one week since we arrived in Boston and endured the first week where we thought we had made the biggest mistake possible. Leaving good jobs, a nice little house, cars and more heartbreaking, our familys and friends. Once that first week was out of the way and we were free from our misguided guide things quickly picked up for the better.

Today I’m sat on the sofa writing this and watching Watership Down of all things. It’s raining, showers from hurricane 'Ernesto'. Em’s working, doing an extra shift, which leaves me with this and the housework to do. Last Thursday we finally managed to go see the Red Sox. Tickets for the games are hard to come by. Em won a raffle at work which gave us a chance to buy a few. So down to the ball park we went, meeting up with some of Em’s work friends. We had seats in the right field with a pretty good view of the bases. The game finished 6-4 to the Sox and ended their loosing streak, which has hit their chances of making the play-offs. Still the atmosphere was great, the crowd was up for it and Em didn’t get hit by the ball as she had feared. Or flying peanuts, coke bottles and crackerjacks. We did our bit handing down money from other people to the vendors and singing during the 7th inning stretch.

Friday 1st September.
We took the fast ferry to Provincetown, or P-Town as it’s affectionately known. Not the greatest trip over Em was a little sea sick so we were relieved to reach dry land. P-Towns a strange little place you might say queer. It is known as the gay resort town at the end of Cape Cod. There’s a lot of love here, beautiful beach side houses and quirky little shops. We walked along the main street and sat on the beach with an ice cream and a bag of salt water taffy. Great to see a little town that’s holding onto it’s character, not a McDonalds or Starbucks in sight which was kinda nice.


Anyway thanks for reading, I’ll write some more soon, but I better do the ironing.

Cheers.

Nice shirt, will you be my friend...

September is round the corner and a new batch of students are arriving to the city. The Berkeley School of Music students are standing out the most. Groups of them being led round the streets, guitars on their backs or drumsticks in hand. All wearing t-shirts with their favorite bands logos adorning their chests. No doubt an attempt to communicate their musical taste and attract like minded souls.

Trains, Whales & Poisoning

Don't panic, neither of us has been poisoned. We took a little trip down to Mansfield, Rhode Island on the train. A double decker train too which was a little different from our usual. We were heading down to Rhode Island because Em had tickets to see 80's spandex cock glam rockers 'Poison'. I was just tagging along for the trip. Em was going to the concert with some friends from work, bit of a girls night out. So while Em was re-living her teenage years. I was in the hotel watching Chelsea get beat by the MLS All-stars.


The next day we took the train to Providence to go look round the Rhode Island School of Designs Museum which was pretty cool and featured an exhibition on the changing face of art and what defines something as Art. The exhibition featured works by some of my favourites, 'Pollock', 'Riley', 'Rothko', 'Lichenstein', and 'Jasper Johns'. Really great to see one of his American Flag paintings.

Finally took a trip out to sea on the 1st August and luckily for us it wasn't a wasted trip. The Humpback whales were out in numbers. The boat takes you about an hour out to sea, 40 miles or so. To a well known area the whales populate to feed through the summer. We could have stayed and watched them all day. The sea was calm and the sun wasn't too hot, to say it was one of the hottest days of the year. Really felt the heat when we returned to Boston and we both had a lovely red lobster glow to our faces.


Cheers.

Gravestones

From the 'Old Granary Burying Ground'. I just love the look, feel and design of them.

Trying to enjoy the sun...

... but it's not easy for us fair haired, pale skin coloured folk. It's been humid as hell lately, pretty unbearable. Bring back the snow and freezing winter. Things are going okay this side of the pond, saw Madonna last week which was great and after 21 years of waiting Emma was well pleased. Especially when we were able to swap our tickets at the back for some near the front. Madonna doesn't want to see empty seats at the front, so we gladly obliged and help fill the gaps. Speaking of gaps we were so close we could see the gap between here front two teeth.

Work wise it's a little slow if I'm honest, Em's working nights most of the time. I've had a couple of enquiries but nothings developed yet. So I've been sending out cards and samples to some more magazines. I've also signed up to the portfolios.com network. Hopefully this should get my work out to a wider audience. Time will tell. Feel free to have a look and let me know what you think.

Also opened a little store at cafepress.com to sell some prints of my illustrations. The plan is to sell each design for a limited time of three months to keep it fresh and ticking over. Only got the one print available at the moment, but it's a little cracker even if I do say so myself. So please have a look, hope to have a couple more available soon. I guess that's my little sales pitch. Buy one, your walls will thank you for it. As will I.

That's all for now, so thanks for reading.

4th July

The celebrations were a little crazy, over half a million people on the banks of the Charles River. We couldn't get anywhere near the 'hatch' shell to see the concert by the Boston Symphony. People had been queing the night before to get the good spots. The fireworks went on for about 25 minutes, hard to believe but they were better than New Years.


Over in the North End they were celebrating for a different reason. The Italian quarter went nuts after they beat Germany in the World Cup Semis. We're off to the pub later to watch the France, Portugal match. Should be good.

Hair today...

...gone tomorrow. Well actually last Thursday I think. I'm referring to my loosing battle on the receding hairline front. So it's all gone, well apart from a little bit.


Need to buckle down with this blogging lark, not written again for ages. I guess the excuse is we've been home to England and seen you all anyway so no need to write. Not that anybody's reading it. Well apart from Jackie. Thanks for your support Jackie. Returned to Boston safely, watched England play better but still get knocked out of the World Cup. Think we're going to the pub to watch the French run all over and stamp on the knackers of the Portuguese. Only joking if your from Portugal and have stumbled across my ramblings on the world wide web.

Well after what she says is 21 years of waiting Em's going to go see Madonna on Thursday, I'm going too but wont be buying a t-shirt. Hope she lives up to Em's expectations. Surely she'll be better than Take That, which at the moment stands as the best concert she's been to. Shouldn't be too difficult Madge.

Nothing more to say at the moment than it's the 4th July so lots going on today leading to a 25 minutes fireworks spectacular and Aerosmith playing a couple of tunes with the Boston Symphony. So we'll try and take some pictures, but don't be surprised if there just of the backs of peoples heads. They started queuing to get to the 'hatch' yesterday. There expecting about 700,000 people to attend. Anyway until then here's some pictures of some cows which are part of the cow parade.


More you say, okay then here you go.

Cheers.

It’s been a while...

... well a week or so. We’re counting down the days to our trip back to the home land of England and looking forward to seeing everybody. Not much going down this side of the pond, the weathers been good and bad. Been raining all weekend so far but we had a few days of sun through the week. watched England beat Jamaica yesterday and can’t wait for the World Cup to start. Emma says she's going to support America and Holland, but also wants to fly the St George from our apartment window. Not sure how that will go down in the neighbourhood. A few more footballs are being kicked around the parks, along with the Frisbees and baseballs. Not sure what the coverage on TV is going to be like. ABC and ESPN are advertising it as is the Fox Soccer Channel. I mean we saw more Premiership games out here. So we should be okay.

Last weekend we took a walk down by the river to the ‘Hatch’ to watch James Blunt perform at the ‘Earthfest’ festival. We hung around and listened to the posh English bloke warble for a bit. I’ve heard that a radio station back home has got so tired of him, they now refuse to play his songs at all. Poor James and his over exposed middle of the road tunes. A band called ‘The Fray’ also played a few songs before him and ‘Miss Rhode Island’ gave a speech about saving the planet, recycling and stuff. Which was nice of her. There was apparently 100,000 people there and loads of other tents and stands promoting ways to save and conserve energy. No doubt some of them may then have drove home in their big, cheap gas guzzling SUV’s. But there’s interest in Environment issues here. The price of petrol has been rising and according to the news it’s making people consider smaller more economical cars and even scooters. I’d like a scooter.

I’ve updated my website with some new work, there’s also some stuff on the other blog, 'Sketchblog' so please feel free to have a look if you haven’t lately. It’s all good. Well I think so.

Not been out with the camera much lately but here some of our latest shots of life over here.


Cheers and thanks for reading.

State of Emergency

It's rained constantly for the past few days, according to the news it's the heaviest rainfall in a decade. We've had about 8 inches in Boston so far, nearly 12 inches has fallen in Salem and other parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. More rain is expected over the next few days, maybe for the rest of the week. Great.

Wish I'd paid the $25

That's how much the FA Cup final was on pay per view. But you know how it goes, pay and it's a dull, un-eventful 90 minutes you'll never get back. So instead I was going to listen to the coverage on Radio 5 over the internet but no luck there because of contract shenanigans or something. Which left me reading the BBC's and Guardians coverage over the internet, updating every 5 minutes or so. The Guardians coverage was pretty funny with a few other people e-mailing in stories of why they couldn't watch the final. Anyway the final is been shown again on Tuesday, I may watch it then, with it being one of the best cup finals ever. Apparently.

It's May

and we're all alone again, sorry we haven't written anything for the past few weeks, but we just didn't have time with our parents visiting. So other than a couple of visits from the olds nothing much has been happening. Things are just plodding along and we're counting down the days to coming home for a week or so in June. I've finished my nightschool course in illustration which went pretty well, received some copies of the World Watch magazine which published a piece of my work. The art director contacted me about doing more work in the future, which was great and a step in the right direction. Em's being on a shopping splurge. (nothing new there) her training for the New York marathon is going well. She did quite a big run round the Charles River last Saturday. Hopefully she'll get in through the lottery selection. I would have done it too but I've come down with some sort of hayfever/flu bug. Maybe next time. Of course she's also been working at the hospital, she's really settled in now, has the odd crap night but you get those anywhere. We went to see the film 'United 93' which I'm going to struggle to put into words what we thought about it. Lets just say everybody should see this film and it's a very emotional experience. I think it opens in June over in England. We've had some good weather the last few days which has sadly left us and we're set for a few days of rain, probably going through to the weekend. Anyway here's some nice pictures when the weather was good.


Cheers and thanks for reading.

Springtime in Boston!!

Hello,
I hardly every get the chance to post things up here as Mark always gets in there first, but when you read this and see the typing and spelling mistakes you know why!!. So now its springtime in Boston, people are out in their summer clothes(but you still see people in their winter coast scarfs and all!), the birds are singing and all is well!!. Its so nice not to have to bundle up in at least five layers before you go out, then you still get windchill on any part of skin exposed. So now we can walk to the Charles river with a brew and watch the world go by. The leaves are beining to appear on the trees, tree pollen is high (yipee!) and they have filled the ponds up again in the common!, oh and the Ducks are running again.

We have been on a ticket buying frenzy lately, Pearl Jam, Snow Patrol and MADONNA!!, its fab being able to walk to a venue rather than driving into Leeds or Manchester, and we had forgotten how loud the Americans are especially at the arenas, When we saw Coldpaly last week the noise really added to it and made it memorable, even though Chirs Martin hit a few iffy notes, its' still in the top five!. New Hampshires fun, very different to Boston, quiet and parts close on Saturday lunchtime until Monday!. Yep and the Pancake sweats, ugh, well worth it, you should see the photos!.

Work is going well, I work with some lovely people and I am learning a lot, but I do miss the NHS!. Most peole think I'm Irish, must be the hair and my charm!. The Drs are very young looking and they all wear white coats. But they have all the same problems as home, nursing shortage and MRSA so nothing new there. They use abbreviations a lot, which is funny, they all laugh at my careplans and comment on the Englsih spellings and the correct grammor!.

We are both trying to get fit in two ways, one as you may know I have entered the lottery to do the NYC marathon in November, (will find out in June) so we have been running a bit, I can run around in my Man U shirt without fear of attack!. Marks bought a basket ball and shoots hoops in the mornings when I go to work and I have started doing Yoga. The other training is drinking!, we need our drinking legs for June, as at the moment after a pint we're giddy and after two we're in our PJs watching telly!, do'nt worry we will put the time in!.

Well I have finished my Grande non fat latte from Starbucks, ( I am now on first name terms with some of the staff in our local one, well just one young man who Marks now called my fancy man!) so I will be off. We are getting giddy as mums and dads are coming soon, more eating and drinking to be done!.

See you all soon xxx


Top left: Pancake sweats! Top Right:-Mark drawing by the river, Middle left:-This is what happens when we drink now!, Middle Right:- Me with a brew by the river, Bottom left:-Us in NH on a windy day and finally Men on bikes without helmets.

Red Sox opening day

was actually yesterday but here's some pics.


They won the opening home game against the Toronto Blue Jays 5-3. Actually getting into this baseball lark and hope to get to a game soon.

Cheers.

More from Manchester

I know I was going to post these the day after the first entry last week, but you know how it is. Just busy with other stuff but here I am back to finish what I started.


So what we have here going clockwise is: top left the high street of the quiet little town of Concord. A tombstone in the Manchester cemetery and a little pic of the stars and stripes. Sunset over Manchester. Shirley D's Dinner, we went there Monday morning for some pancakes and French toast, not forgetting the bacon either. Em got the pancake sweats after. Needless to say we didn't need to eat much for the rest of the day. Final shot is Em wandering around the cemetery.