A Brit in the US

Yes, it's true. I did get to go to Washington DC. I'd never really considered going as it had never been on my list of priorities, strangely enough. It was, however, an interesting experience. It all started when my phone rang late one evening as I was midway through a rather nice bottle of Chardonnay. It was Andrew. Apparently he'd booked some tickets to fly to DC for a few days and had managed to snag some hotel rooms for a song. He and his ladyfriend were due to go but apparently his ladyfriend had just been nabbed by the police for driving under the influence and was now incarcerated awaiting trial. Obviously she wasn't going to go with him and he'd already asked about refunds but that wasn't apparently possible due to the bargain nature of the tickets. Thus, I got called and was reassured that yes, the hotels would switch the rooms from a single king bed to a pair of twin beds. It was on! The trip was on to DC. What with my work schedule I found I had 3 d

"I am going on holiday to Key West next week. The rooms are booked and I have nobody to go with". With an invitation like that, who am I to refuse? Quickly rearranging my schedules I found two things. First that I could incorporate a week in Key West easily into my schedule as it fell quite nicely between courses I am taking (the last course gained me 91% overall) and that it also slipped nicely into a quiet spot at work. The second thing was that my schedule on my phone was screwed up. Now that never used to happen when I used a Blackberry. Sadly with Android, it happens too often - I feel I spend more time fighting Android than anything else though it does afford me the opportunity to put this blog entry in. I departed from Lexington in my SUV and parked in my friend's garage from where we took her car - largely because her car gets 30mpg while mine gets just 19mpg. With fuel prices like those in Key West which are a good 15% higher than I am used to paying, this was

Fred rang me one crisp early morning. Let's go down to the beach. It was bitterly cold but undaunted I hopped into my SUV and he hopped into his pose-mobile and off we zoomed from our respective domiciles. A few short hours later we arrived at the beach and what a blooming cold day it was too. I think we spent all of about 10 minutes on the beach, at severe risk of frostbite. See how well wrapped-up other beachgoers were! The sky was pretty clear and made the biting cold of the day even more penetrating than normal.  The cold didn't seem to be affecting the flowers though had I been a flower I assure you I would have been withered, wrinkly and dried-up by the intensity of the cold. Global warming is nonsense - we're in the middle of the new Ice Age. Needless to say, this wasn't the longest day trip ever. I think the drive was far longer than the time spent at the beach. Now the drive back was quite interesting... On the way back I paused for fu

For a long time I wanted to visit Edisto Gardens and had been waiting for an excuse. I just woke one morning with no particular plan in mind and decided to find Edisto Gardens - even though there would be precious little in bloom at this time of year. I jumped into my SUV alone this time and roared off following my GPS to a vague address that I had pulled off the internet for the gardens. Anybody that knows me and my GPS will realize that when I say vague, I'm lucky to end up on the correct side of the state let alone the right address. I have an elderly TomTom unit that takes forever to lock onto satallites - I'm talking about ten minutes at times. Then it gets me to the general area before becoming somewhat of a muddle on the specifics, frequently misplacing my location by a few streets. It's pretty awful for accuracy but I own it, I paid for it and I've been using it for several years. I shall continue to use it until it ceases to function despite the inaccurate maps