Washington D.C (Delayed Critique)

Before Christmas Gator Girl and myself managed to get up to Washington, DC for a long weekend. However with the house move and Christmas, I didn't get around to posting some pictures from the trip - hence the title above.

We'd heard a rumour that Gator Girl's bridesmaid, Aussie Bruce, would be passing through her parents place in Washington on a world wide rock star tour. So we thought we'd take the opportunity to check out the monuments on the Saturday and Sunday, and spend the Monday with Bruce and her family

Gator Girl left it up to me to organise the hotel, which is either an excellent or terrible idea depending on whether I'm feeling lavish on the day I book. Luckily for her, I was feeling rich and booked a beautiful hotel in downtown Washington, right near the White House.

We arrived late Friday night into the Reagan airport, flying just past the Pentagon and directly at the white house..... By the time we got to our hotel, we only had a short period of time to check out the skyline. We took lots of pictures of the impressively lit city, but the only one which came out well was the cheese stick (also known as the Washington monument).


Washington is very pretty, very clean city. It's also the first city which seems to be designed for people, rather than cars. There's actually crosswalks with pedestrian lights, which would be a massive step forward for most of the southern cities we've been in so far. It's also set out very well, with wide streets designed so that you can see monuments in the distance. For example, from the white house you can see the capitol (basically parliament) building and the washington monument, from the monument you can see the capitol, white house and the reflecting pool leading up to the giant Abe (picture of that lower down). And between all of these areas were large expanses of grass where people seem free to just hang out. I haven't seen so much public space since I came to the US, and the city is much the better for it.

Standing betweent the Washington monument with the capitol building in the background. To the right is one of the funkier looking buildings that makes up the Smithsonian museum. The Smithsonian is not, as I thought, just a single building, but an entire neighbourhood of museums, each building dedicated to a different historical aspect. More on that later.


This picture is taken from the same spot, looking back the other way towards the cheese stick. By the way, although the day looks very sunny, the massive thick coat that Gator Girl is wearing should give you a good hint that it was pretty chilly out there. However given it was the middle of winter, this is probably to be expected.


This is taken from the opposite side of the stick, looking across the reflecting pool back towards the stick. Directly at our back is the giant Abe. These three pics are all in a direct line, I think showing pretty well the wide, grassy nature of the city. Purty.

Pretty much every US president seems to have some kind of monument, and how good they were as a president appears to be related to how big the monument is. So you can see Washington's from everywhere, Lincoln's & Jefferson's from a lot of the city, whereas I didn't see Bush's or Reagan's anywhere. Probably the most impressive was Lincoln's, which was made up of a giant Abe statue with his famous speeches on either wall. I think the three pics above give it the right epic scale.

The final thing we did at the end of the Saturday was go up the cheese stick and take some shots of the city, which are worth sharing. They told us lots of reasons why the cheese stick is the largest something something of it's type, but I wasn't really interested so stuck to taking photos of the scenery. I mean, come on, if it's not the largest building around, just get over it and stop trying to make it the 'biggest' something.

The first picture looks south towards the Potomac river. The big white building on the side of the lake is the Jefferson memorial (I think, I lose track of all the memorials occasionally).







The second picture is looking east towards the Capitol. Pretty much all the buildings on either side of the grassed area are part of the Smithsonian.






The picture on the left shows the view to the west, looking across the reflecting pool to the giant Abe statue. The fountains in the foreground are for the WW2 memorial.





The picture on the right is the view to the north, towards the White House. Again, check out all those cool large lawns.






On the Sunday we explored the Smithsonian. We spent a while at the national archives, which was a fairly patchy affair. The exhibit didn't really seem to have a theme, there were just bits of history scattered everywhere. However it was salvaged by the final exhibit, which was the declaration of independance, the constitution and the bill of rights. I was unable to get close enough to see if there was a hidden map on the declaration unfortuantely. The one thing that did strike me was the massive size of John Hancocks signature on all of there documents. He has signed his name about 3 times the size of anyone else. Obviously a man with some issues.

We then spent pretty much of the rest of the day in the air and space museum, and could have spent longer. They had exhibits and planes from the very beginning of flight, through to live feeds from the space station. Very cool......especially for a geek like myself.

On the Sunday night we went into Virginia and caught up with Aussie Bruce's parents. We had a great dinner, and the next morning we went to the riverside old suburb of Alexandria, which was very impressive. Again it was very pedestrian friendly, with lots of cobbled old streets and old shotgun houses.


Aussie Bruce with her temporarily borrowed dog (8 years and still counting). Check out the wonderful weather again, considering it was winter we couldn't ask for better.


Bruce's Mum, Bruce and Gator Girl on the streets on Alexandria. All the streets looked a lot like this - wide footpaths and old buildings.

And then unfortunately it was time to head back to Reagan airport and back down to Louisiana again. Overall we had a great weekend, and I recommend checking out Washington if you ever get the chance.

Christmas - Festival of the stretching stomach

This post is dedicated to our families who spent so much effort sending us gifts for Christmas. Thank you all!

In a fit of excitement Gator Girl and I decided to host Christmas in our new swamp. Luckily we've got some family over here, so invited the Aggie & Longhorn elements of our family across for the weekend. This seemed like a great idea a few weeks out from Christmas when we'd received word our furniture had arrived in the port of New Orleans, and would be released from customs shortly. It didn't seem like such a good idea the weekend before Christmas when the government still hadn't released our shipment, and hence we were without any significant furniture! In the end it arrived 2 days before the weekend, just in time.......

Incidentally the US government charged us $42 for the pleasure of the time it took to inspect our shipment. Seems a little cheap, what did they do?

The few weeks before Christmas we'd had a steady stream of parcels arriving addressed to our puppy, which we proceeded to keep for ourselves. As a result, combined that with the large amount of stocking stuffer presents that the Texan side of the family brought, we had a huuuuge pile of things to open on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day.

Add to that our Longhorn family brought their two dogs, as well as the Aggies bringing their dog, and it was a 4 dog present fest. The pic to the left is about as calm as it ever got with the four of them around......as soon as three of them got settled down the fourth would fire up and start pestering the others. It was very entertaining, even if the house smelt a bit doggy by the end.

Gator Girl was particularly excited by her present - she got a giant ~2kg tin of Milo! That's one of the comforts of Australia that's pretty much impossible to get over here. For some reason Tim Tams are everywhere, but Milo is still a difficult purchase. I promised Santa that I'd post a picture of her crying in happiness, so here it is.










I scored a very cool pair of baseball gloves and a baseball - looks like it's time for me to start a new sport! It's probably easier to find a baseball or softball team than a cricket team anyway.

And finally to the eating - we had a 26 pound (that's about 11 kilos or 4.88e-30 solar masses for those using more sensible units) turkey, roast lamb, stuffing, roast spuds & potatoes, pumpkin soup and a biryani that was provided by our Australian-Assyrian-Croatian ex-neighbours.*

For dessert we had plum pudding, lemon tart and an apricot pie made with much wailing and screaming by Gator Girl from an ancient family recipe that was obviously designed specifically to torment me.





Gator Girl would like everyone to note how impressive the table looks with the new chairs sitting around it. In fact, I'll add another shot of the undressed table just for full effect. This table is a handmade wedding present from some close friends of ours, and it just looks sensational! Thanks guys! We love our table!

Anyway, after dinner was finished we pretty much sat around watching movies and holding our over-stretched stomachs, before going back for leftovers a few hours later. What a great tradition.


Being the nice people that we are we didn't keep all the presents to ourselves. Here Lance shows off his Christmas gift to the camera. Moments after this shot was taken, his head spun around three times and he made a deep roaring sound. Don't know what that was about.


Merry Christmas all, and again a very big thank-you to those people who went to all the trouble of mailing us gifts - we really appreciate it.


* My father is sure to pick on me for writing that sentence...terrible use of brackets and commas (not that it's my strong point at the best, of times); along with confusing use of the accusative.

We've moved swamps!

First of all, apologies for the delay in updating our epistle. We spent a hectic couple of weeks moving house, our crate of furniture arrived from the wide brown pancake and we hosted Christmas for the American side of our family. None of which are particularly good excuses on their own, but put together made our life a little hectic.

So yes, we've moved. First of all let me point out that finding houses over here since Katrina is fairly difficult. Lots of people are willing to sell us their house, but seeing as we're evil foreigners no bank is willing to lend us any money. Without that magic credit rating sitting on some central computer somewhere, we're terrible risks and can't be trusted with money. So our only choice was to find somewhere to rent. The second issue was that there were very few houses available to rent, and most of those that were available didn't really want animals, or if there had to be animals, then a single small dog only was acceptable. No-one wanted an 80 pound somewhat excitable blonde bombshell in their precious house. And the third problem was that no-one really wanted a long term tenant. Most people only wanted to rent out their house for 6 months until they could sell it, and we weren't particularly keen to move again in 6 months.

So please bear this in mind when you check out the pictures - we actually didn't have much choice about where to live. So here it is, the great southern mansion of the swamp dwellers.............


Mmmmmm....mansiony......

Renovated by people with extremely bold tastes in colour




Note also the extreme lack of furniture - we spent about two weeks in the house sitting on two folding chairs looking at a disconnected TV....

And especially for Marty & Mike - check out the view from our backyard. Yes, that's a golf course.And finally, looking back towards the house, and at a very distressed puppy who doesn't understand why she was shut inside the house when I was allowed outside. Life is so cruel.

And I was going to finish there, but I found a few more good shots of the kitchen, Gator Girl's office, the view from the balcony and the terrible life our dog leads. Enjoy! Merry Christmas all, or Happy Holidays to those sad types who need their hit of political correctness.

College Football Madness

Football is big here. I mean, it's big in Australia as well, but it really reaches new levels over here. And a lot of interest isn't necessarily in the major leagues like the NFL - a lot of people are crazy about their College football team. Can you imagine in Oz the local university team having a dedicated TV station? Or a 100,000 seat stadium, regularly sold out? Or even the half-hour daily news reporting school football results.

Gator Girl's brother lives in Texas and managed to get us tickets for a Texas A & M (Aggies!) college football game. We arrived at about 10pm on the Friday night before the game, only to be told that we were 'just in time'. "Just in time for what?" we naturally asked. Answer: For the midnight yell practice, which apparently occurs before every game. So at midnight before every home game, several thousand people turn out at the stadium to practice the yells and cheers that will be performed the next day. Check out the scenes:

Midnight at Kyle field

The crowd and the court

Hard to tell the crowd size from these shots, but two levels of the size of stand you can see in the background were full of aggies. And what's that on the field - yes, it's a basketball court specially put down. Apparently the Saturday was the first day that the basketball teams were allowed to train, so they held a post-midnight training session for both the mens and womens basketball teams.

The guy in the bottom picture is one of the yell leaders. There's a series of these people who's job it is to lead everyone in the chants. I'm not totally sure what the other hundred or so people standing on the field are for.

Basketball practice on a football field after midnight.

We are all listening to a guy in blue overalls with a stick.

Day of madness arrives, we turn up to find a real festival kind of feel to the day. Thousands of people are buying maroon coloured merchandise, taking pictures with cut-outs of football players, or more likely tailgating. Tailgating doesn't have the same meaning over here. Here it refers to the fantastic gameday tradition of turning up at 6 am on the morning of the game (or for the really keen, the night before), setting up a cooler (esky) of drinks, a portable barbeque and sitting behind the tailgate of your pick-up drinking and eating to warm up for the game. And if that's not enough for you, you can put on a show for the passing traffic......

And they did.

Tourists.

Maroon madness outside the stadium.

American football is an odd kind of game. For a start, each team has three teams. That is: each team consists of an attacking, a defensive and a special plays team, all of which have a full complement of players and reserves. So when you look at the sideline there can by 60-80 players standing by, ready to play. I can't help but feel sorry for the poor guy who's only job in life is to run 2 feet directly ahead and stop his opposite number from getting past. I mean, he'll never score a touchdown, kick the winning goal in a grand final, or even get noticed by most people. I know it's an important job, but I think I'd struggle if that was my only role in a sporting team.

The game itself doesn't really resemble a sport so much as a game of chess with people as the pieces. There's a lot of standing around, planning tactics, swapping teams, interspersed with occasional pieces of play. Luckily the crowd and (Gator Girl's favourite) the marching band is there to keep you entertained while you're waiting for the actual play to start.

The crowd itself is worthy of another comment. The Aggies are big on their traditions, and one of the most famous is that the entire stand in the picture below 'stands ready' to join the team should they need help. Hence the entire stand stands up the whole game. Luckily we were sitting in the opposite stand and could enjoy the comforts of the metal bench seat.

The Maroon stand with people.......well.....standing.

The small army of players on the sideline. And the back of someone's head.

Another shot of the subs. I think this many subs is worth two photos.

So they're all crazy. But a very entertaining form of crazy. And they think we're crazy for playing AFL without padding.*

* Swamp Boy has never played AFL. Just like he has never really wrestled a crocodile or ridden a kangaroo to school. But he doesn't admit any of that to the locals.

The Gator Girl & Swamp Boy Big Shindig

By popular request from a number of our Aussie 'South of the Border' friends who missed the big day - I am posting some snapshots.

To rehash the story, Swamp Boy took me at sunset to the highest point in our former Western desert thriving metropolis and poped the question complete with stunning diamond. We had of course gone shopping for this on the previous day when we had booked the reception centre.

The day before the wedding was wet and very miserable. We had planned a big pre-wedding get together with all of our family and friends from 'South of the Border' and beyond. This meant 50 people jammed into our lilypad. At least everyone had to chat and meet the people that they pressed up against. Swamp Boy and I had a great time and both agree it meant that come the end of the shindig we felt we had actually managed to talk one-on-one with all of those that had travelled vast distances to come to our day.

The big day arrived. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and Gator Girl had 4 hours of preparation time ahead of her for the big day. This is way more that I have patience for, but it all worked a treat - if I do say so myself! My Bridesmaids - Aussie Bruce and Cousin Bec looked sensational!

We gals arrived in spectacular fashion - in Swamp Boy's Cousins boat! Then the rest of the day is fairly self explanatory - a ceremony (where both SB and I forgot our vows - should really have practiced them in advance....), photos, drinks, food, drinks, dancing and then more drinks back at our lilypad.

So anyway - to the photos!




The boat!








The Brideslaves (o:






The Kiss

Don't it make your red eyes blue?

You may have heard that the confederates lost control of the house of representatives today, and are very close to losing the senate as well. Regardless of your political leanings this is a significant shift in US politics. So what is the most viewed story on CNN?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/11/08/spears.divorce.ap/index.html

The most emailed story on the new york times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=a25918d1aead20f6&ex=1163134800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1163033319-ABnBct0AgLiELTcE3oqTFA

Well, that's interesting.

The forgotten Katrina devastation

Apologies in advance for the poor formatting - still getting the hang of picture posting.

Over in Australia we heard a lot about the damage that Hurricane Katrina caused to New Orleans, and the terrible conditions the newly homeless were forced to endure. What I didn't realise until I arrived in Louisiana was that the hurricane did not directly cause the damage in New Orleans. The flooding in New Orleans was caused when the levees failed, which happened after the hurricane had already gone through & the wind changed direction.

Other parts of Louisiana and Mississippi felt the full force of the hurricane. The city of Slidell, to the east of where we're currently living had the eye of the hurricane pass across it. And further to the east in Mississippi the coastal towns of Gulfport and Biloxi had effectively a 10 ft high wall of water swamp the sea front.

Last weekend Gator Girl & I drove down to the casinos on the Mississippi coast. About half-way to Gulfport we came across the sign on the left. This is on a major highway. I don't know what happened to the bridge during the storm, all I know is the only evidence that there was a bridge at all is the cranes currently rebuilding one.



What I like most about the second picture is the woman in the foreground picking up rubbish. Doesn't matter how devastated the local area might be, people have a real sense of pride in their local area.






And finally, if you turn around from the road closed sign, this house is what you see. The entire street contains houses that are in similar, if not worse, conditions.










And then further down the road where we filled up with gas we found.....


















The fast food strip along the coast didn't survive the wave. For some reasons the pylons holding the signs held up better than some of the buildings.














Not that the buildings that survived did so in any usable fashion. I imagine the only solution with the entire beachfront will be to bulldoze and start again.


To be honest, that's enough depressing photos for one post. But I think it makes my point: New Orleans wasn't the only place that was devastated by Katrina. These people have lost everything they owned, and are the victims that a lot of the world doesn't really know about. Yet despite everything they've gone through, the general feeling by talking to the locals is that they are upbeat, keen to come back and rebuild. They've developed a real sense of community which means that they are friendly to neighbours and strangers, and that's something we could probably all stand to learn from them.

The other important lesson is not to build on a swamp in a hurricane zone.