a post from 30,000 feet

In typical fashion you wait 3 months for an update...


and now for one from 30,000 feet as I fly home from Utah. I realise not everyone is a fan of technology and I share the view, that we never seem to get the chance to disconnect. However in-flight wifi is a really wonderful advancement, particularly when flying on a work trip and often dreading the 200+ emails that will hit your respective device when you land and are able to get service...


Utah itself is a beautiful state, from the Valley of Salt Lake City where you can see the mountain ranges flanking you on either side, to the mountain ranges of Snowbird and Alta, which are quite simply stunning.


It is a long way here from the East Coast (of the good ol' USA) but its well worth it. Suffice to say I fully intend to return with the girls.


I'll update the Flickr feed when I get home, somethings still cannot be done inflight, now back to the day job.


Safe travels
Muswell 

We have moved.....

So as most will probably know we have moved, after a year, Wow time really does fly fast! we moved out of the apartment and into a house. 


When we first decided to rent the apartment, the location was key. In so far as it was only 5 minutes walk to the office, allowing me too spend more time with the family. In addition the aim was to gain a better understanding of Providence and Rhode Island in general. We discovered we preferred the 'East Side" not to be confused with East Providence, so luckily enough we have managed to find a house on the East Side! confused you will be!


Apart from the ridiculous number of rooms and space in general, its about three times bigger than the apartment and has a very big garden, probably even bigger than in the house in South Croydon. 


Once the temperature rises, minus 13 last night I intend to begin cycling to work, were now about 2 miles from the office, which is just that little bit too far to walk. As an aside I do miss walking past the ice rink and zamboni twice a day. 


Photo of the rear of the house and garden below.

Muswell

Turning into my father.....

As the title would suggest, this could be of great concern! Actually its ok I still have my hair, in addition to my wife's great relief, I don't actually class Norfolk as one of the worlds seven wonders!!!


In all seriousness, I have updated the flickr site, for those who have spoken to me recently you will be aware, work is overtaking my little world again. As Laura has commented there seem to be an ever increasing number of wildlife photos! I can only begin to explain that the feathered friends seem to sit still longer than my daughter!


Hopefully another blog post and some more photos to follow soon.


Muswell

A few technical issues

So this is attempt two to get the Flickr stream working, if you checked earlier this week on the basis that I asked you to, you may not have seen the link in the blog header to the photo stream. 


Apologies, sometimes I am a muppet!


Muswell

did the ground move for you?

Just as we have all begun to settle back into normality and enjoying family life back in Rhode Island, along comes the first significant earthquake tremor to hit the area since 1976!


From limited research it would appear such tremors have been reported in New England, five times in the last 50 years, 1976, 1967, 1966, 1965 and 1963. Now a note of confession here, nether Laura or I felt the tremor. 


I was out buying a sandwich for my lunch, apparently when your stood on the ground, in the street your less likely to feel the ground shake. So you can understand my surprise when I returned to my office to discover all my colleagues asking each other if they had felt it, apparently the building swayed for a good 30 seconds.  


Laura who was is in the apartment, was also unaware when I emailed her to see if she had felt anything, I guess if nothing its pleasing to know that a quake which measures 5.8 and has its epicenter a mere 558 miles away, has no impact on the building we live in.


This is not the first the earthquake we have experienced as a family. In April 2009 we were visiting  Laura's parents in Rome when the Perugia earthquake occurred, this measured 6.1 on the richter scale* and we were only 113 miles from the epicenter. 


Now I have to confess at first I didn't think it was an earthquake, the previous night Aila (15 months old at the time) had fallen out of our bed, on the night of the quake, I merely thought she had climbed in again, only to fall out for the second night on the trot!




Muswell








* I was intrigued as to whom the scales name had been named, after all, these always are! It dates from Charles Richter who developed the scale in 1935 in partnership with Beno Gutenberg. Further explanation below.

The expression Richter magnitude scale refers to a number of ways to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake.

In all cases, the magnitude is a base-10 logarithmic scale obtained by calculating the logarithm of the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph. An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger than one that measures 4.0.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

Photos and updates

It goes without saying that I haven't been able to update here for a whilst, partly due to work and partly as I have been renewing my enthusiasm in photography....




Having come to the conclusion that i'm not going to get sufficient time to blog every time I take a photo, instead I have opened a flickr feed which I have linked back to the blog..


This way, hopefully you'll have the chance to see what we have been unto, even if the commentary will have to follow later! 


The first batch were taken over the weekend, either on the East Side of Providence or at Galilee, RI.


Muswell

when does west end?

A thought struck me sat here in the  lounge at LAX. When does West end and East begin, i'm about  to not see Saturday as i'll be in the air and land at 7.30 am HT time, having departed LA at 1o'clock on Saturday morning. Does that mean I'm still going west, and how do you arrive in the east when your flying west?


I realize the pedants among yourselves will point out to GMT and long standing time calculations, I think your missing the point though....


I had one of those only in California moments yesterday. I had to have a car take me from the office to a local best buy (US PC shop/chain).  My driver (Jimmy), a native Californian, in only 5 minutes had shared his life story with me, very similar to a cabbie in London at this stag.


its when he proclaims, he is actually a Jazz musician that I had to smile. On the return journey we listened to his latest album, ok so its not actually been pressed yet, he won't release it until he's happy with the quality. 


To be fair the jazz was very relaxing, his singing though oh dear! fortunately he didn't ask me to buy his latest offering. The ride though certainly blew away the office stress....


Muswell