I’ve been up for twenty four hours now and I’m still not home, I wasn’t expecting to, but it’d be pleasant! Last night at 8:30pm I got onto the Icelandair flight from JFK, New York bound for Reykjavik, Iceland. Why Iceland? Who knows, ask bunac. It was a nice enough flight, beside a very tall Swedish man and his tiny wife, and right after dinner I was able to fall asleep only to be awoken by the pilot’s twenty minute warning.

From Keflavík Airport on to Glasgow was a shorter affair with about 5 people on the plane (that was a joke, it was less than half full. Boeing 757) so I had a whole seat to myself and got a whole 10 minute of sleep. How ironic.

So the lady at JFK was meant to charge me $85 for having a heavy bag… She told me to go and see if I couldn’t remove 3.5 Kg or so to bring it into line… So I tried, but found that there was nothing that was fiscally worth throwing out for the sake of the price of excess fee. So I discarded my sunscreen and bug spray (not very useful at home) and went back, having somehow lessened the load by a full Kilo. The lady was busy so I went to the next desk; told the girl the next lady had my passport and so she grabbed it, slapped on my tags, gave me the boarding card and then I walked… Which was nice.

Landing in Glasgow I was praying that my guitar hadn’t received a North-Atlantic battering and all was well. She’s fine. Just needs a new set of strings put on and plugged in…

So back to air planes. I hate easyJet. Not because of their service it’s great and cheap and usually prompt other things depending. No, what I detest is this: that over the 20Kg weight limit you pay SIX POUNDS STERLING per KILOGRAM that you are overweight. So today with case and guitar at 37Kg I had to pay £78 to get my stuff home. At this point I stopped caring, threw my Maestro at her and went and sat down.

Guitar strings are on and she sounds lovely. Still needs a name.

I hate the way airport floors shake and vibrate whenever anyone walks by, it’s utterly disconcerting.

Home, dad’s car is nice (Golf Plus) I get to drive it if I pay £300 (hmm) for the year beginning October. I don’t think I’ll have enough opportunity to drive it to go for that.

I’m going to try out Command and Conquer 3 now. Hmm mac games are making a come back. Shine Radeon, Shine.

Leaving Mechanicville, NY this morning for New York City. Will be spending two nights in the Belnord Hotel (will review) and then playing with the Subway system to get myself to JFK Airport, from there on to the joys of dealing with easyJet after a night in AirIceland’s care.

Click to see my photographs from Washington DC (mostly).

So after leaving Jo’s place got on the bus, to ‘Friendship Heights’ (which is nice) to the Metro station. This picture is from the escalators. I like the light :) I wish this had come out right.

Emerging into the light at Union Station after going to the National Community Church – the one in the cinema – I walked across to Capitol Hill, (whatever Capitol means cf. Capital) and took a few pictures of a building which has had too many pictures taken of it in the past.

The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian was very interesting. Lots of exhibits and wordy stuff which I didn’t really read. Let’s be honest, I was there for the food. Lots on offer, their café is a lot more than that: six or so different ‘fronts’ onto the cafe area where you could chose from the same number of authentic styles. I didn’t understand what any of the words meant, so I went for a buffalo beef cheese burger. I’m sorry. But it was very good.

Next door is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It was also pretty cool. Lots of things to look at. Like a Messerschmitt (I think it was a Me262) and a few other big bits of planes hanging from the roof which was cool.

Next was the White House. George was in Massachusetts somewhere, at one of their many not-Washington houses/ranches/whatever.

Along the Mall were the WWII Memorial, the Washington Memorial and Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial which was very impressive. All the verbage on the WWII and inside the Lincoln are very impressive and moving.

On Monday night (after all that) I met Jo at DuPont Circle Metro station and we went out to the Bistrot Du Coin restaurant. It was absolutely wonderful, very french, not too expensive, and the waiter recognised my wonderful red currant shirt for what it was. (mmmm Steak).

And yes (Peter) I have noticed that nearly all of the above photos are slightly slanted to the left. I believe that is because my new camera is so much smaller and lighter than my old one I’m over-compensating with my right hand when clicking. Going to have to work on that. Never mind the lighting either, I had one 32 meg SD card to play with, and it was getting dark (sob).

Am going to go find the “National Community Church”:http://theaterchurch.com/ which is quite exciting, partially because it’s in a cinema, partially because it’s an underground cinema and altogether because it’s an underground cinema at a train station.

I’ve heard it’s good, with sound teaching and contemporary worship; so…

Next question, after I get a bus and a metro into the city and go to church where _do_ I go… So little to see :-)

Going to exercise the camera today I think.

Starbucks Strawberries and Cream Frappé delightful. Free wireless great, but T-mobile wireless access not really working for me today. No good.

Met Jo, had lunch at some expensive place (we ate starters) and proceeded to the supermarket to get dinner. Paella is not an easy thing to prepare in America. For Paella Rice read Sushi Rice; for Chicken stock read dry white wine, oil and water with extra ‘erbs’ whatever those are; but it turned out pretty good. The staff were extra especially unhelpful, particularly when it came to where is the chorizo, where is the paella rice, where are the prawns, where is your paella mix. No good answers to the above (in fact three of the answers were wrong – we found chorizo, prawns and rice in the end).

Paella turned out good, hail Jo. Had guests over – Lenora, Noel and Brendan, the latter pair heading back to Dublin tomorrow. Good fun, good time, good sleep ahead.

So I’m somewhere in Virginia, near Washington, DC but outside the magical Beltway. I’m meeting Jo Black (yes, ok) somewhere on the otherside of DC, but still in Virginia, tomorrow. Then we’re doing something somewhere. You get it? I don’t really but by the joys of GPS and Starbucks wireless internet I should be back on here tomorrow at 2, US time.

Got a new camera, aim is to get a dSLR, but in the mean-time (and while I’m in the cost-effective States, I decided to get a point and shoot. Mainly because I saw just how good the Samsung NV10 looked:

After looking at the specs and the reviews I thought it might be best to go for a more proven name and so on, so went for a Canon PowerShot SD750. One of the newer ones, it’s real nice.

Should do great in New York City for the random snaps necessary (to keep the parents happy … unlike after last summer when I forgot to show them my photos until Christmas, when they saw about 20).

(pics lifted from dpreview.com – excellent site)

One of the camper activities in the final week of camp was Skilled Video; i.e. they meet every day to work on a video.The kidsdidn’t know FCP, nor had they the time, so it was down to me to edit and produce. From about 7 PM then until 2 AM I worked on and came out with this as my eyes drooped.

*Part 1*

*Part 2*

No titles or credits so here you go:

*Starring*
Tricia Boynton
as Velma McDougal

Joe Taylor
as Patches Firehawk

Aisling Sive
as April Showers

*Reporters*
Chris Steckline
Clark Dickson
Gabrielle Henry
Sarah Copeland

*With*
Andrew Higgins
Katie Love
Trevor Owens
Donald Walton
Alli Wareham
Andrew Kaminsky

*Produced by*
Liz Griffin
Steve Stewart

*Shot, Chopped
and Directed by*
David Lowry
Joseph Taylor

So that was a busy seven weeks. Any time on the net became a frantic dash to get a few e-mails out if in the evening and some phone calls made due to the *actual_ wonder that is Skype. Any time off was time to get the kids out of the hair and try and make yourself feel like a human for a little while. i.e. between 10PM and midnight try and find a balance between relaxing, catching up and sleeping in time to be up and fresh by 7 the next morning.

Got quite a few photos up on “FaceBook which you can look at”:http://qub.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33986&id=872320306 … A bit of commentary on them there as well. Meant to use flickr; might do that later.

Anyone who tells you middle schoolers (that is Junior High/1st through 3rd-4th form) are a nightmare has never spent a week in the company of elementary school kids. The high school weeks were a dream, no entertainment necessary – we were able to concentrate on facilitating program, doing out jobs and getting things done, hopefully they had the best time and were able to enjoy it despite the teenager’s inbuilt mechanisms which tells them they shouldn’t.

It’ll never depart my mind just how unbelievably unbelievable elementary school kids are.

David: “Wee Jimmy, we have to go to dinner, please go and put your shoes on.”
Response: “Ok!” [Runs into bunk room...]

Five minutes later

David: “Wee Jimmy, what are you doing hanging from the fire sprinkler pipe (which runs at 1000psi) ?”
Response: “Emm… what’s a fire sprinkler pipe?”
Amused: “That thing above your head which we told you not to go anywhere near!”
Response: ;Okay.”

Twenty seconds of silence before kid realises I told him to do something

David: “So…”
Response: “What?”
David: “Shoes.”
Response: “Where are they? I’ve lost them”
David: “Three inches from your feet.”
Response: “Oh…”

Again…

Exasperated: “Okay Jimmy let’s go…”
Response: “Where?”
David: [Notices child is wearing swim shorts and flip flops] “Dinner!?”
Response: “Why?”….

Yeah you get the picture, then there was
-the kid that was scared of the ceiling fan two feet from his face (understandable).
-the kid that ran about on all fours (very impressively Gollum-like) if he was in any way intimidated or stressed. The same kid whose answer to all and any question in his second week was “Chicken Nuggets”.
i.e. Questioner: “Wee Frank, who is God?”
Response: “Emm… Chi-ck-en Nu-gg-ets?”

You know I forget some more, but there probably will be more.

Other significant things that happened over the last few weeks…

I got a little bug called “Lyme Disease…”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease so after a night in the camp infirmary with high fevers, massive aches and pains I was sent to the doctor to get checked out. Their first expectation was Lymes so I got bloods done, costing about $350, which came back negative – later got told that you’re not meant to check for Lymes for at least a few weeks… So after a few days at “Tim’s house”:http://www.myspace.com/monkeymann2 in “Walton, NY”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Walton,+NY&ie=UTF8&z=14&iwloc=addr resting and recuperating (three cheers to Momma and Mister Cole)

Today we went to “The Delaware County Fair”:http://www.delawarecountyfair.org/ in Walton which was nice. Adam bought me a “Funnel Cake”:http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/superbowl/uploaded_images/Funnel_cake-781149.jpg which is a crazy contraption like Fried Dough, but piped as opposed to thrown into the hot fat… :) saw lots of cows, pigs, goats, rabbits and something called a Skinny Pig. Which looked horrid.

So yeah, I have a friend called “Sarah”:http://flickr.com/photos/davidlowry/851476850/, and I like her a lot.

Two weeks today ’til I get on a jet plane from NYC, fly to Iceland for a hot bath, and onward to Glasgow for a shower (ref. to the rain, not some form of public amenity)… then fight with easyJet to get my stuff onto their plane without charging me too much to bring Gibson on gently.

Time to go sleep, because I’m supposed to be relaxing after hard two months… Whatever :-) Maybe more later.

Dave