Great Britain Journey, part 5

The West Country and the South Coast | Part 4 | Part 3 | Part 2 | Part 1



Day 29

- depart Glastonbury
- West on A39
- Exmoor National Park

Day 30

- Tintagel
- Padstow
- Newquay

Day 31

- Penzance
- Land's End

Day 32

- eden project in St. Austell
- Dartmoor National Park

Day 33

- A30 to A35 to A31 along the South Coast
- The New Forest

Day 34

- M27 to Brighton

Day 35

- Seven Sisters
- Hastings
- Sissinghurst Garden

Day 36

- Dover
- Canterbury

Day 37

Pip pip, cheerio and all that sentimental rot. Fare thee well, England. Back to the Colonies with me.

Unless I take the train to Paris from here.

Moment of Fleeting Brilliance

Some weeks ago, I replied to Dawn's situation upon waking up in tropical humidity and the power gone out. I'm still impressed how this little tidbit came out:

What would Shakespeare say?

"Whence in times of lack of coolness,

Get thee to a place of shops

Wherefore there art backup generators

To cool thy moist skin."

Maybe I should make this a series, or an advice column and write a short sonnet as a Shakespearean response and throw in some anachronisms and errant spellings to make it just goofy enough.

Monday Video to Start Your Week Off Right: Lake Groton 2008

Since I started last Monday off with a video, I thought I'd do another one for this Monday.

Here is a collection of the photos we took while we were in Groton, and a few at the end of Sand Bar State Park on Lake Champlain at the end where we went after coming home from Groton to escape the heat.

Pet Therapy and Get Your Wellies On

Click to enlarge, of course.

The flooded Winooski River.

The not-so-famous Vermont Hiking Cows. Look at them get way up this steep hill!

Camel's Hump shrouded in clouds.

Subtitle: Stay clear or he could rip your arm off.

Our illustrious maintenance facility manager is nowhere to be found most of the time. Most likely he's enjoying himself at our Florida facility. Or parked next to the fire station stealing wifi.

When my co-worker wore her wellies to work, I had to take a picture of them for Jayne as I know she is wont to wear her wellies all day, even when it's not rainy. And these are fancy heart wellies.

So the little beast that could rip your arm off made an appearance.

She was not shy at all to ripping my arm off licking me to death.

Outside, the rain came pissiting down.

The Mad River was also running up on its banks and this narrow rock filled area was creating some severe rapids.

To conclude, possibly 2 of the cutest houses in Vermont, directly across from each other in Moretown, VT.

Have a good weekend!

Love's not a competition, but I'm winning...

...at least I thought I was, but there's no way of knowing. -Kaiser Chiefs

Ok, so I've been sitting at a mediocre 65 friends on Facebook. For a LOOOONG time. Probably the better part of a month or so. About a month ago, The Girl was sitting pretty at about 30 friends.

Then IT happened.

She added her maiden name to her last name on her profile. How unfair and selfish!

She's steadily increased friends since then and caught up to me yesterday!

So what did I do?

I went out and sent out a shit ton of friend requests to people I knew, but didn't really know too well. I've already got 5 adds since yesterday.

Sometimes it pays to be shallow.

(I'm not usually this shallow, but it makes for a fun blog post! Please take this as tongue-in-cheek as a sign of our times!)

The Redbeard and Sierra Show, episode 1

First, read Jayne's post and her comments section. (Apologies to those who previously got a dead link before. The programmer has been sacked. Oh wait, I can't fire myself. --edited 7/24/08)

Second, watch this.

The After-Party

The stage in the daylight over a sea of automobiles.

Well, thank you McDonalds. We will try not to throw trash at your employees while sweeping.


The cheap seats. Reeeaaaallll cheap.


Nighttime lights of the stage.

Some more links to follow for more coverage:

Story by WCAX CBS channel 3. - Do NOT miss the link to the video coverage. Reporter Jack Thurston is super duper excited to be in the presence of Sir Elton. Most likely the best story of his young career to date.

Slide show - Champlain Valley Expo

We couldn't stay for the whole thing, Sierra was getting tired. But he did some favorites before we left:

The Bitch is Back
Tiny Dancer
Levon
Believe
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Daniel

and a couple of others we didn't know.

Monday Dance Video? & Elton John Day!!

Since I haven't really embarrassed myself yet here on this blog, I thought it was about high time that I did. Ok so I was bored today and saw Erika's vlog entries and her link to the news people doing dances, and I've been thinking about doing this one for some time, so here it is! If only I could dance as crazy as Aaron Behrens of Ghostland Observatory.

Also today is Elton John Day. We don't have tickets. Sold Out. But it's an outdoor concert at the fairgrounds, sometimes we can hear the concerts from our house a mile away. We need to do laundry anyway. Laundry place is right in front of the fairgrounds. So is McDonald's. So we walk from the laundromat over to McDonald's picnic tables and hear it for free.

The stage where Sir Reginald Dwight will be playing. (Actually, probably not, this is the second stage they have set up today for a country music festival.)



Local music store displaying Elton John's Red Yamaha Piano, valued at $80,000.



The store was closed so I took a picture from outside the window. I'll take a better one when the shop is open. It was a foggy rainy day Sunday when these were taken. It appears Elton brought the English weather with him.

Doodle Week: Body Doodle

For awhile now I've been thinking about getting some ink work done on my arm in a tattoo sleeve and I think I've decided this is what I'd get: a drawing of one of my medieval Welsh ancestors (Rhys ap Gruffudd) with a Celtic cross/dragon, hopefully it will look something like this.



Enjoy the rest of your weekend! One more day until EJ-day in EJ! That's Elton John Day in Essex Junction.

Doodle Week: Pet Doodle

Pets by Porno for Pyros

Maybe another race could
Come down and take o-ver for us
Maybe Martians could do
Better than we've done, We'd make great pets

Doodle Week: Evil Doodle

Need I say more??



Yes, Yankee Stadium, aka the Toilet. More evil there than anywhere on earth, so long as the Steinbrenners are running the organisation. I was originally going to do Doctor Evil, but wouldn't you know it Yankee Fan Jeter Harris had already done it. So something needed to be done, since this IS a Red Sox Fan's blog. Notice A-Rod and his purple lips took over SS.

Doodle Week: Vacation Doodle

Today's doodle takes us to the seashore where Redbeard is bold enough to swim in shark infested waters. And what's this? The slugs who were incensed by the last post are chasing Redbeard whilst surfing on this Great White. Spongebob Squarepants joins along for the ride and hangs 10 and seagulls play target practise with Redbeard's head. True Story.

Doodle Week: Garden Doodle, and Slugs

Beware: Gross Factor = 7.5 out of 10

Why did the slug cross the road??



To get to Sparkle Plenty's garden!

Honestly, this was the largest, longest slug I've ever seen, must've been about 3 inches or so - it was crazy huge!

But if you're having slug problems in the garden, Redbeard's advice column is open and ready to dispense with the knowledge. Just please don't compare me to John Tesh. *blech*

Dear Redbeard,

My vegetable garden has been plagued by slugs all summer, this must be some kind of record year. What can I do?

-Sluggish in Saugus, MA

Dear Sluggish,

I hope you have a strong stomach. Or perhaps a weak one, depends on how you look at it. By accident, we made a discovery while on a camping trip. We first got to the campsite and for whatever reason, most likely car motion sickness, The Girl got sick at the edge of the campsite. Much to my chagrin, about an hour later after setting up the tent, I found her vomitous on the wipes she used to clean her mouth off also around the perimeter of the campsite.

What does this have to do with slugs, you ask? Well, when I picked up the sick wipes, there were about 2 or 3 slugs that had raced to the play up to get a tasty morsel.

I got to thinking, if one had some extra play up around, perhaps after a night of infrastructure *drinks* or if a pet randomly heaves on your favourite pillows, one with a vegetable garden infested with slugs could strategically place the play up around the perimeter of the garden to draw out the slugs!

In honour of Sir Elton John coming to my town on Monday!

Read here ---> http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2291076,00.html#article_continue

Mmmmm.... Eating Elton John....

Doodle Week: Space Doodle

I thought I'd give Claire's Doodle Week a go. Feel free to have a laugh at my pathetic sophomoric attempt at using microsoft paint. Cheers.

Reflections on 32 years

-I'm almost halfway through my 30s now. *sigh*

-40 really scares me. 40 says I'm really old now, and definitely not young by any stretch.

-Chocolate cake has never tasted so good. Even when it's cheesecake.

-Can I trade my 32 years in for two 16 year olds?

-No, I'm not having a mid-life crisis.

-If I knew then what I know now...

-You're only as young (or old) as you feel. Somedays I feel 22, some days I feel 52.

-It's just another day (day 11,688), but now that I've recently discovered I'm also part French, it makes me just a little bit more bonded to Bastille Day.

-The Girl says the above piccy of my shadow looks like a dildo.

Silent Sunday: NEK photos around Lake Groton

For more photos see The Girl's blog.

Pass the Deep Woods Off

Lake Groton Boat Parade

"Now do you want to ride the jetboat, or cruise the lake in comfort?"-The Great Outdoors

I'm off to brave the wildlife in the Northeast Kingdom for a week.

Also to self-medicate and to wander aimlessly in the wilderness with several open containers.

Send a rescue team if I'm not back by the 14th to give you more self-indulgent history lectures, er... I mean perspectives.

Happy 4th! I'm about to get drunk up in this motherf.... oops, sorry if there's kids around.