UK Letter Home July 2004

Welcome to the July Edition of UKBound.

After rereading this letter, it seems a little lighter than some of my other chapters. I think July was a month of just keeping the status quo. Nothing adventurous or exceptional other than Sethiepooh.

Seth is now standing - he started one day when I was going to pickup Kim, when I plunked him in the drivers seat. He grabbed the steering wheel, and stood. Through the week that's followed, he's been standing up with the assistance of almost any object including us. He is actually able to pet Jack, but Solo is still staying way clear. Solo is allowing himself to be in the same room as Seth now, so we are getting somewhere.

We haven't done any travelling this month as Kim works weekends, and I work weekdays, even a little trip is hard to plan.

We finally had our living room painted. If you remember it was covered in this gaudy textured wallpaper straight out of the 70's. OK, it wasn't velvet or anything, but more of an off white leaf pattern. Hard to describe, but glad it's gone. So, on the major project list for inside, that is pretty much it. We want to paint the hallway, but that's a no brainer compared to the rest of the work that we have accomplished in the last couple of years.

I took a business trip to London. Our hotel was right on the Themes, next to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. It was a good trip - I was able to meet a quite a few people that I work with. The only problem was on the way home, all the flights were cancelled due to supposed bad weather. I was lucky enough to finally get a flight 4 hours later to Edinburgh (which is clear across the other side of the country). I guess I really did "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" (plus subways, and the Heathrow express) just like the John Candy movie. I actually lucked out -- Stuart, my co-worker, didn't get a flight until 3.00am. If I didn't get on my flight, our other option was to rent a car and drive from London to Glasgow. It would have been almost as quick, without the stress of wondering if you were going to make it home or not.

Some of my free web hosting sites have been eaten by the cyber-spiders and as a result some of the links no longer exist. I'm saddened by the unthoughtful pruning of my site, and, page by page, have been restoring the links... So, if there's a page you haven't read and it goes to cyber-nowhere, click on another page -- there is a lot to look at, and hopefully the missing links will be corrected when I get a chance.

The car is still running. I had to get the car MOT'd, taxed, insured, tuned, RAC renewal, and a new car seat for Seth, so it wasn't a cheap month. As a result, we have now no money for petrol, so we've just had to leave it parked in the street. OK, not quite, but close.

I guess that's about it for this issue.

Brian, Kim, wee Seth and the moggies.