Great Parking!

I've discovered that it can be quite difficult to find parking in the Westville Hospital precinct, especially during the holiday season and with seven births in a single day (and all the associated family members and friends wanting to view the new arrival from 7:15pm to 8pm).

One way to ensure you beat the masses and get yourself a parking is to take a left at the end of the road as you enter, just before the entrance. There are a bunch of covered parkings reserved for doctors and such, but right at the end there's a little gem for those that find it... Covered parkings reserved exclusively for "visiting anaesthetist" and "visiting doctors" - so as long as you intend to visit a doctor or anaesthetist you have your very own covered parking! I haven't been able to find any "visiting patient" spots but I guess they consider that to be any other parking since it's usually fairly obvious that's what you're doing at the hospital.

Use this pearl of knowledge only for good and especially if you're planning to visit our little one!

Christmas giving ... And Christmas taking

Amongst all the highs and lows of the past few days (details to follow), tonight I returned home around 9pm with Megan and Phil. Megan let herself into the flat while I was receiving a consoling hug and offer for coffee from Bruce. A few moments later Megan popped out of the front door and asked me if I had moved my new TV. A bit flummoxed by the question I gave a cautious "no?" back...

"Then I'm sorry to say this but I think you've been robbed..."

And sure enough; our home has been ransacked!!

I came in to find the lounge a bit sparser than usual and our bedroom completely ransacked with everything out of cupboards and junk piled onto our bed.

My friends mobilised quickly and soon I was supported by around ten buddies (thanks to Greg for phoning the police and Brian for reaching the in-laws). A special response unit comprising of three vehicles and about ten cops were here within ten minutes of reporting the crime. Thereafter another unit showed up to take my statement.

It looks like they gained entry via a well-levered pitch fork on the lounge window (after climbing up the wall to get onto the balcony - no lean feat). Later on that evening Steve and I did a reconaissance around the perimeter and find two strategically placed logs on the electric fence which no doubt has been causing it to short circuit (which no doubt has been causing the random power trips over the weekend). The prime suspect is now a plumbing service because of the location of the intrusion on the property and the apparent inside knowledge.

Megan must have interrupted the crooks because she came into the flat to hear a loud bang (but obliviously went to the 'loo). Amongst the losses are Kat's designed engagement ring (I'm most disappointed about this and ...), Kat's varsity purse with mementos of our relationship from first date to engagement, Kat's digital camera, Kat's work laptop, my XBOX 360, my controllers for said XBOX 360, bizarrely - some of my XBOX games (it's like they picked which ones they wanted), my electric razor and our new FHD 40" LCD TV.

Phil discovered the TV wrapped up on the balcony, as well as a single "Scene it: Box Office Smash" XBOX 360 buzzer.

Kat and Hope's departure clothes from hospital were emptied out of a bag and the bag was missing too. However, I later discovered the bag wedged behind the front door with a netbook inside (a customer's).

What further suggests we busted their party is the presence of my laptop, the MP3 CD player, my digital photo screen (stuck in a menu mode), and the 22" HD LCD monitor.

I'm relieved to see my memory tapes (of past life moments, including wedding and honeymoon) were intact, as well as Kat's wedding band and our ID documents. It appears whomever did the deed knew exactly where to go. They even took some junk food we were given as a gift for Christmas as well as some fruit (I think)!

Luck also favored me because that day I took my laptop, my camcorder, and Wes Martin's camera to hospital for conenience / safe-keeping and it's darn good I did that or else our captured memories of Hope would be lost (not to mention the fancy Kit).

Still, not nice timing to have to deal with this or go through it :(

Awesome times!

I've just had Kat's lunch. It was beef and gravy stew with rice. Not too bad actually. With beetroot salad. I feel quite well looked after so so far I'd recommend this place to any couple having a baby.

In fact, this hospital is so big - I've been exploring new corners I didn't even know existed and getting lost for hours down the dark deep corridors. It's totally whack.

I think maybe I should head back soon. I may have missed the action. But the lunch was worth it '-)

JUST KIDDING - nothing happening right now apart from hoping that we don't need to do a caesar. Kat is channel hopping on the TV and I'm trying to get some Zzzz's.

Congrats to Simon & Bronwyn Clur on the safe arrival of baby Jake - the latest Springbok rugby player!

This is SPINAL TAP!

Well, no, not quite. It's supposed to be spinal block, but even then that's not quite right anyway, but "this is epidural!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

What an experience! This baby birthing thing isn't like in the movies! There's hours of waiting around, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, needing to haul up to 1st floor to use the 'loo and being asked to leave the room all the time! True, they served breakfast, but still - this isn't the Ritz. Two slices of toast, some jam and yoghurt, and a muffin. And to be asked to keep an eye on the drip bag! Such nerves! I think I should suggest more comfortable pillows and perhaps another bed for me to rest in next time.

Oh hang on, you want to know about Kat? Well, she's hanging in there just great. They've done the epidural, but they kind of forced it on her. I did the right husbandly thing and dug my heels in between the 6'6" Czeckoslovakian and Kat and made sure after several mini discussions to-and-fro that it was the best option at the time. The nursing staff kind of tried to defuse the tension but in the end after making absolutely sure that Kat was okay with it I let it proceed. I admit I was becoming a bit protective but I think they also realised without our consent they couldn't do anything.

Prior to the epidural they gave Kat an enema. Quite a simple procedure but it was obviously a unique experience. When they inserted a catheter (she's like a human pin-cushion - I haven't even mentioned the IV drip! Ok, so now I have...) it ruptured the waters so we are all good to go now.

ETA is now 4pm to 6pm. Dr. Czarnocki is still happy with everything so all systems are go!

Allow me to make In(tro)ductions

It's even more official now. Despite early concerns that our baby's heart rate was relatively low and that there was a lot more protein in Kat's urine sample, and the added implications towards a C-section, the doctor arrived all bright and cheery, checked out the readings and decided we are still good to go.

Turns out Hope's sleeping patterns were as Kat predicted and she started giving more favorable readings.

Dr. Czarnocki is a really great doctor - very smooth and friendly and always jovial. Really nice doctor to have available. He says in around 2 hours things should start to happen now that he's inserted The Gel.

The nursing staff says it's the right time to evict the passenger because bloods and vitals are showing signs for concern. The doc also made an observation to the nursing staff about our expecting chromosomal abnormalities but don't know if that had any relevance to the heart rate.

T-minus two hours...

The Long Walk to "Freedom"

That certainly is a misnomer this morning, by all accounts of experienced parents :)

Sadly, we weren't told to get pre-authorisation so now we have a slight pickle. Not a big pickle; more like a cocktail onion pickle rather than a spicy gherkin pickle. At any rate, I've secured Kat a private ward at extra cost (R1030 extra!!) but it's worth it, especially if we need some time together to adjust to any potential complications.

This is where it all happens!

This is going to be our home, for a while. May as well get comfortable I guess ;)

Less than twelve hours to go!

Yes! I know! So much so soon! So fast! So crazy!

Kat is at risk of pre-eclampsia, so we are moved forward to 4am Monday morning to induce labour! I feel so freaked out! We certainly aren't prepared but with all the friends and family supporting us at least we'll be somewhat ready!

Will keep you all posted as soon as there's something worth commenting on...

Kat and I are just trying to enjoy our final countdown now until life changes for us and our little family forever!

NINE WEEKS TO GO!!

The old adage "time flies" certainly is frighteningly true! I can't wait to meet my little girl, but at the same time I don't feel anywhere near ready to be an awesome dad (look at the pictures on the left to get my drift)!

63 more days until Friday, 31 December 2010.

Also, I noticed last week I made a funny - "final stretch". Haha, funny for me, not funny for Kat :(

TEN WEEKS TO GO!!

As of today there are officially TEN WEEKS to go until the Expected Due Date (EDD) of our little baby.

In other words; 70 days until Friday, 31 December 2010.

I suppose one could say the final stretch has commenced!

We can see clearly now...

... The trees are gone!

It's been a while since we've made any updates to this blog, and it's mostly because we've just been so busy!

Kat and I woke up early to the noise of chainsaws across the road. The school has decided to cut the loose (and shady) branches down, so now we have more sun, more heat, and more light. I did wonder this AM if perhaps Steve was on his bike again but luckily for him, it wasn't his fault I was woken up so early - this time :)

I suspect soon we will open our blog up again (ie. PUBLIC) and then we'll enjoy more activity. I suspect the idiots we were being harassed by have now moved on to greater exploits and other poor souls, so hopefully we've seen (and heard) the last of them... That is, apart from my dealings with them on the property front, where one hopes we can get all the disastrous heartache resolved, one way or the other, through the court-appointed administrator (next Friday is the appearance date)!

WHAT were we thinking??

Often there are moments in life that at the time seem so naturally innocent and hold no potential for problems or misunderstandings, but when looking back on those moments (usually with the benefit not only of hindsight but additional or alternative perspectives) we can see just how crazy we were and how close we actually came to being in some sort of trouble.

While revisiting some of our USA holiday pictures, I came across a couple that immediately upon first glance made me think of something a little deviant from the original "momentary context" of the pictures. 

When you look at these pictures, keep in mind our momentary context - it was freezing cold (like below zero), we were tired and excited tourists, and we were in the USA's capitol. What we forgot at the time was that fewer than two weeks earlier an attempted Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist tried to destroy a commercial passenger aircraft and subsequently the nation's DHS was on high alert. 

I'm quite surprised that we didn't land up in any trouble at the time, or at the very least, get some strange enquiries from the security forces around the capitol, but the pictures below reveal how suspicious we must have looked at the time...

Infiltrating Washington DC with our "gear".

Bryan-balah and Kat-zbalah in front of one of their targets, the Washington Monument.

(note the backpack with "gear" strapped over my right shoulder)

We saved the rabbit

Big news all ("new") Johnston fans! If we were living in the 1920's or 1930's and I proclaimed the words "The Rabbit Died", everyone would almost certainly understand what is going on in our lives. You see, back in those days there was a "Rabbit test" to test for certain conditions - take the lady's urine, inject it in some poor unsuspecting rabbit, and then cut the rabbit open and see what happened inside. The results would either indicate a positive or a negative result. 

Thankfully, our conscience is clear: modern medicine and advances in technology have empowered us to perform this test another, far less murderous way. In other words, we have still found out the same information, but we saved the rabbit. 

Oh yes: the result is positive.

Truth be told, we knew this information back around 17 April 2010, but Kat didn't want to spread the word until we had more clarity on things (apparently it's quite common amongst ladies). Well, when we finally obtained confirmation (and made it "out of the woods") a whole lot of extra stuff happened, and we've only slowly managed to recover from all of that - I'll certainly be posting more information as time goes on, but for now this post should actually have landed around 17 April 2010, so it's very late. Sorry!

Midlands getaway

We're here! Bacon Vleis, or as they call it, Beacons Vlei.

Really nice. We're in the cheaper B&B room, but no-one else is here so it's pretty much our house :)

We score cheaper rooms WITH breakfast so we can now use the savings to buy dinner :)

New blog layout

Bryan here. I've just made a template update to the blog; hopefully the new blogger template editor will inspire Kat to finally get more hands-on with the blog, but for now, I've been doodling. What do you think? :)

The old blog looked like this:

Which do you prefer?

Fifa World Cup, Westville Baptist Style

Lots of noise - vuvuzela's etc. and a few flags and face paintings and shirts the wrong way, but all in all - good effort :)

Music in the Hills 2010

It strikes me as quite strange that the first time I've actually really come to appreciate our beautiful South African (specifically, Durban) winters is when I've lived here for more than three decades. Wow they're wonderful! Nice clear skies, sunny, but not sweltering - just warm and crisp. Really wonderful! Maybe my stint in sub zero temperatures over Christmas have helped me to appreciate home more - who knows!

This Sunday past, Kat and I decided to take my mom out for a special picnic and art exhibition in Makaranga Gardens - the event was called MUSIC IN THE HILLS, and yes, there was music too!

At R80 per person it wasn't cheap, but we had a grand time (nice and sunny) and were treated to quality Philharmonics including James Bond medleys, Pirates of the Caribbean medleys, and the obligatory Superman and Pink Panther themes. I even managed to squeeze in a nap :)

Happy birthday PACMAN!!

[UPDATE: go to http://www.google.com/pacman/ to continue the madness]

Wow. What a neat surprise!
www.google.com is celebrating Pacman's 30th birthday and what better way to celebrate it than to play two player Pacman & Pacgirl with my favorite gal?
Thanks Al for the tip :)

The luxuries of location!

While driving along a road pretty much adjacent to the one we're staying on (or rather, within close proximity to it), we discovered this little convenience whose usefulness has probably been lost to most of the current generation - the little marvel of a day mostly gone by; a posting box!

No sooner had we discovered this luxury of our location, that I put it to good use. Shamefully I confess I am not sure if I included the correct postage stamps, but I am hopeful it all worked out!

Update on our lives

It appears that some people may not know the entirely current status of our lives, so here's a brief update to get people "up to some level of speed" with the (new) Johnstons:

• We own a flat (well, we own about 25% of it, and ABSA the other 75%)* in Westville
• I am presently the re-elected chairman of the trustees for this mixed commercial / residential complex
• Some guy from Israel and a few other wallies have made life in the complex a veritable hell for the other (and only honest) owners
• Amongst other things, property has essentially been taken and sold without our permission, rules have been broken (not minor things either, but rather serious things that are causing the residential units to lose real estate value or any potential rental income they may derive because no-one wants to live in the flats any more thanks to the unhappy climate and conditions), electricity has been illegally tapped off for the Thai restaurant (I better not mention the name... what's the capital of Thailand and what do you thwow at a wabbit?), our communal water supply is being used to drive the commercial ventures (and laundromats and restaurants use a lot of water, let's be honest), people ram gates when they refuse to sign for a remote control, and I've been threatened several times and assaulted because I am the chairman representing the Body Corporate in a High Court battle against the transgressors. 
• * The Thai restaurant and the Israeli oke own a portion now too, since they took some of it :-/

Blogs gone private

Well it's been a long time since our last post to this blog: sadly, it's been two months of silence and the main reason for this has been that a very sorry group of people have found it worth their while and  (apparently limitless time) to scour through our blogs and extract any tidbits of information that they can use to harass us and generally just cause headaches. Yes, these people are connected to our High Court case, so it's no surprise that they've resorted to this nefarious (and based on the logs indicating their time spent on the site and their browsing habits, also desperately sad) approach in order to somehow "gain the upper hand". In order to err on the side of caution, we've had to take our blogs "off the grid" for the time being, but rather than keep you all in the dark, and because of popular demand, we've opened it up to a select list of readers (you should feel honoured that you made the cut!).

Don't expect much coming from us at the moment anyway, because we've been so used to NOT posting news that it's going to require some changes of habit, and also Kat and I are both presently desperately sick, so we're not really in the mood right now :)

A lot has happened in the past two months, and hopefully over the course of the next several weeks we'll be able to catch those that care back up to speed!

Life :)

Aaah. What bliss! A peaceful trip down the coast and a welcome break from all the muck of the past week+ ...

Good friends, good rest, good food, good times!

And of course, I got to enjoy pretty much all of the Super 14 rugby action, and Kat / Steve had their fair share of RomCom's, and we indulged in a good night out (dinner & a movie) - The Book of Eli is as how I predicted it would be; Mad Max with a biblical twist (I'd give it a 6 out of 10... But that's a story for another time).

The verse for the weekend; Rom 12:1-4 ... Do not conform to the pattern of this world... renew your mind!!

What temptation it is to sell our flat and buy a beach house...

Peace out!

Twelve minutes means mighty fine

What started off as a lovely sunny day out together at Umhlanga beach has turned into a rather expensive excursion for us!
For the record, this is Kat's responsibility, not mine :) ... This had better not be coming out of my birthday budget!

Back into the swing of life in sunny RSA

Highly recommended! Woodrose in Hillcrest Heritage Market!

Final posts of holiday are up

The final posts (with more photo's than text) from our holiday blog are up:

Day 18 is up: http://bratandkat.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-18-san-francisco-penultimate-day-of.html
Day 19 is up: http://bratandkat.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-19-final-day-san-francisco-new-york.html

Hello World... I mean, South Africa!

A few milestones today!

First, it happens to be the FIRST day of 2010 that we have spent on African soil!

Second, I just realised... When we woke up earlier "this day" we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and now here we are back home in South Africa! How insane!!!

You see, our day started at around 10am on Thursday morning (that's about 8pm Thursday your time) and did a lot of sightseeing and exploring for the day.

The highlight was undoubtedly walking across the Golden Gate Bridge and watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean (around 5pm our time... 3am your time). After that we headed to our hotel where we shuttled to SFO International Airport.

We hit the flight from SFO to JFK around 11pm our time (9am your time on Friday) and landed in JFK 8am their time (3pm your time). From there we flew to JHB, and then DBN.

In other words, our body clocks started flying 1130pm Thursday, and landed 36 hours later on Saturday 1130am. In reality we were up since 10am so add on another 13 hours or so, and we've been awake for almost 40 hours with 6 hours' worth of naps (they were never long or good enough to be termed "sleeps").

What amazes me - and maybe it's just the tiredness talking - is that earlier in our "woken day", we were in San Francisco, checking out Golden Gate Bridge, before flying to JFK, and then off to JHB and finally, DBN.

How small this world has become!!

Final Day

Goodbye USA!

We are presently sitting at JFK awaiting the boarding call for SA flight 204 to JHB. The time here is 7 hours before the time on this post (US Eastern time). We took off from San Francisco around 10:20pm Western Time (is it Pacific Western time?), and landed here 6am'ish in JFK. It was about 6 hours of flying, but it was actually very comfortable - the Boeing 757-3 cabin flight we were on had ample leg room (even for under-seat storage AND legs), and the arm rests folded all the way back. It was very pleasant! Best flight I've ever had. Congratulations to United Airlines!

Day 19 (Final Day) - San Francisco - New York

Well everyone, it is with great sadness that I type this final post and bring an end (almost) to our USA 2009/2010 holiday. It's been a wonderful experience and made even moreso by my trusty travel companion, my sweet BlackBerry Katherine. Since this is going to be a long "day" (wake up 10am on Thursday morning, land in Durban 11:30am Saturday), we will do our best to keep the post as close to a picture-story (with captions) as possible, for your reading pleasure. For those that have endured my lengthy accounts of our holiday, thank you for taking the time - it was a joy feeling like people that we value were sharing in our day-to-day adventures. Thanks too for your comments!

Day 18 - San Francisco (Penultimate day of our holiday)

Stayed up late last night to get ideas about camcorders, but got up 8:50am to escort Kat to work. I have to say, it's quite a romantic experience for me to know that we don't have to rely on our own transport to/from work, and that it's actually safe enough for Kat to go to/from work on her own too. Nonetheless, it's awesome to just get up, go with her on the bus, and then come home, and know she's going to be fine. The proximity to the bus stop from our hotel also helps immensely.

San Francisco has all sorts of funky people.

Check this girl with her devil's ears and tank goggles...

TRAVEL TIP: it's a good idea to book hotels near to metro stations (if you intend to use the metro a lot) and to buy a muni-pass; it saves you a lot of time! Prime reason to discriminate about choice of hotels!

Days updated to day 15

All days are updated to day 15 - check them out!

Day 13: http://bratandkat.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-13-la-lost-africanos.html
Day 14: http://bratandkat.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-14-driving-up-pacific-coast.html
Day 15: http://bratandkat.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-15-pacific-coast-to-san-francisco.html

I'll try to get the rest up to date ASAP, but it's more difficult without a laptop during the day (while Kat is working).

Day 17 - San Francisco (Kat's first day of work)

Woke up 8am to get Kat ready on time for her first official day of work (and the wonderful reason why we have had this holiday at all).

We missed the bus by half a block so we had to take the next one, but made it to her work in CHINA BASIN about ten or fifteen minutes late (ie. 9:45am'ish). Work seems to start at around 9am or 9:30am in SFO.

Day 16 - San Francisco

Woke up 8:45am and was ready and out by 9:15am to pick up and return car. The hotel doesn't offer breakfast but does do complimentary cookies all day, as well as tea / coffee in the reception hall. I suppose there's pro's and con's to this method.

Not dressed properly for the weather in SFO though, because it was still rather chilly and we were in T-shirts (no jackets), so we hot-footed it back to the hotel.

Kat needed a nap because she was still exhausted from the long and stressful drive, so I put her to bed and then hit the wifi internet (freaking fast ... Must be 20mbps again but I haven't tested it here) to plan our day and also update the blogs. Kat managed about forty minutes before she was woken up.

Days 8 and 9 posted (and now 10)

Hello from brisk San Francisco!

We've updated posts for Day 8 and Day 9 (and now Day 10) - check them out - more to come as we find time!

Time to explore San Francisco!

Day 15 - A picture story of San Francisco

I know I blog a lot. I find my blog posts to be more of a diary account for our benefit than a reading experience for those that actually are brave enough to read this blog. I apologise for being long-winded, so to update on our first day (evening, actually) in San Francisco, I intend only to post pictures with little captions! Perhaps I should have attempted this method a lot earlier? Sorry for the inconvenience!

Day 15 - Pacific Coast to San Francisco!

This Masterpiece motel continues to impress! Fresh orange juice, hot chocolate, and even hard-boiled eggs and cinnamon chelsea bread for breakfast!

When we were packed and done, we left +-9:30am (that's pretty early based on our track record) and topped up on gasoline at the AM/PM. It cost $2.99 a gallon, and it's all self-service. When I asked for help in the station shop the lady almost fell over!

Fuel-drenched and summarily humbled by how much we take for granted in South Africa, I proceeded to use the change from the gas cash deposit (no credit here!) to purchase my next big American delicacy, a corn dog. On special for 79c, I enjoyed a cheesy jalapeno corn dog on a stick. I have to admit it was pleasantly good, but again I fear the oily snack would reduce my lifespan by several decades! As a rare novelty, it's a bargain at 79c!

Day 14 - Driving up the Pacific Coast

We woke up about ten minutes before the complimentary continental breakfast at the Best Western Inn at Oxnard. They had little tubs of peanut butter like we'd have jam at home, as well as sachets of honey! Score! The most interesting thing available was, wait for it, ROOIBOS tea, and it was even labelled ROOIBOS! Apparently the founder of the hotel (or the chain) is South African, so I guess his influence has rubbed off on their facilities!

I took my first stint at driving on the "right" side (not right as in NOT WRONG, but right as in NOT LEFT). My very first absolutest first ever moment on the road was driving out of the motel and into a funky FIVE-WAY intersection with a railway track down the centre. Yeah. Go figure.

Day 13 - LA (Lost Africanos)

EEEEK! Today is Friday the THIRTEENTH of our holiday!!

Enjoyed a continental breakfast sans the majority of Texan / Alabaman folk that were abounding the hotel the day before, and then printed out our wad of prepared google maps directions and checked out.

(TRAVEL TIP: some hotels, such as LA QUINTA LAX, gives free wifi internet as well as providing a complimentary desktop PC at reception. We used the wifi in our room to plan our directions using google maps [remember to include a displayed map when using this method] and then printed them at the front desk for free)

Day 12 - LA (dee dah)

(NOTE: Day 7 has been posted, finally!)

Woke up 7:30, grabbed complimentary breakfast (was okay, but at least it's free, so that automatically qualifies it as good).

The building is loaded with Texans coming for some college championship game called the Rose Bowl (football; it's Alabama vs. Texas but the final is played every year in LA). Since boarding the Milwaukee flight yesterday we could spot them a mile away with their CRIMSON TIDE Alabama outfits, and they were all over the place. It felt like there was a Southern invasion going down (get it? Down?)!

On the way down to breakfast we waited for ages for the elevator, and when we got it, so did everyone else, since it appeared to be the only one working. From floor 9 we went down to almost each floor for someone else to hop on (by floor seven this became "cram" on). By floor five the doors opened and the Texans waiting outside just gave up trying to get on, and said "we hope you get stuck" and left it at that. It was all in good jest - these Texans are a real hoot!

Day 11.5 - Los Angeles

'Allo LA! The Johnstons have landed! It's now 1am here, having woken up at 7:30am on the DC side. I believe we are now 10 hours behind the rest of South Africa so we are really feeling the disconnect and also the tiredness.

We've checked into La Quinta LAX and immediately Kat's missing our old "luxury" line of hotels, even though this one has breakfast included! I'm too tired to post pictures right now, so I'll do it ASAP. The airports along the way all had free wifi internet which was awesome, as did the planes! This hotel is probably the worst of the lot we've had so far, but it's still not BAD for the price!

LA is a lot warmer than we've been used to, and I'm actually quite sad to be seeing the end of the cold weather, because the snow was a novelty for me! Clint's black jacket has been immeasurably valuable to me, and I owe him big time (Clint; let me know what you want from USA). I have to say so far, I'm least impressed with LA, but again that may just have to do with my reluctance to return to warmer climates because it feels less like we're on holiday now and more like we're migrating back to SA (which I have mixed feelings about, since this holiday has been so awesome).

We did a stop off in Wisconsin / Milwaukee (the cow-tipping county) where it was -5C and there were spans of farmer-types. Quite entertaining :) We've been surroudned by Alabama fans - I think there's some NFL game going down... it's made it a little more entertaining!

Chat later - going to sleep now and off on a 1 hour+ metro excursion to Universal Studios tomorrow (today, rather)!

Day 11 - DC to LA

Hello people!

I know this post is presently out of sync, but we'll only be able to update the missing days when we have had a chance to sit down (which at this rate seems very unlikely) and go through the notes and photographs.

For now, I figured any update is better than no update!

We're waiting at Ronald Reagan International Airport ready to board at 5:59pm for our flight (stop off in Milwaukee). I'm enjoying the free high speed wifi in the airport (google's got boingo, and the airport's also got one but you have to pay for it unless you're with at&t) so while I wait for Kat's 'loo break, I can post an update!

Missing home a little bit, but admittedly I'm enjoying our trip a LOT. 8 more days to go, and it's so sad, but also good ;)

Chat later! Oh, and our Virgin Mobile number here is 202 607 1080 but we have to pay for any calls or smses we receive, so be gentle :)

God bless for now!

First stop, Milwaukee... And we've got our in-flight food (Kat's preferred cherry coke, and two slices of one topping pizza) for $5.74.

Bon appetite!

Day 10 - DC

As much as our intentions were good and we wanted to wake up early enough to get to the museums when they opened, we couldn't seem to get ourselves out of bed!

Our 7:30am wake-up snoozed until 9:30am, when we slowly rose and geared ourselves up for the day. It would seem that an entire day of walking can be rather tiring!!

Day 9 - DC

Lazy start to the day; I think all this running about is finally catching up with us now! We eventually got up and out of bed and braved the anticipated 11F cold (that's -12C for those that can't make the conversion). Our first stop was a CVS (it's kind of like a chainstore pharmacy / Spar) for some health water and a breakfast muffin to supplement our oats. That cost us a mere $3, thanks to the handy coupons lying around the shop. I've been pondering buying a simcard / cellphone for our stay so we can avoid the excessive phone bills in the hotel, as well as have some way of being reached (which will be especially helpful in SFO when I'm on my own while Kat's working). It's $11 for a cellphone and simcard ... And then airtime will be $20.

From there we took a metro ride into the Smithsonian area. We started at the NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, but had to detour because they won't allow food into the museum. This next bit is a vital piece of information:

DC TRAVEL TIP: if you're going to be bounced for stuff in your bag, find an isolated bushy area and stuff your goodies into a hedge! We did this rather successfully despite the surveillance cameras around us - without going into detail we managed to shield our suspicious activities and stow our stash. Just remember to find an isolated spot!

Day 8 - Charlottesville to Washington DC

A beautiful morning but alas again no sign of a deer.

We enjoyed another heart Virginian-style continental breakfast, only this time we tried to play our part to be good guests and tried to neaten up our rooms and prepare the breakfast.

When we departed the lovely Locust Lane (if I recall the name), we spotted a woodpecker. Woohoo! The real Woodie Woodpecker in Virginia!

Day 7 - Charlottesville

Charlottesville - a home away from home! We woke up this morning to a beautiful view. We kept an eye out for deer that sometimes graze in the woods outside, but alas, we never saw any. We were treated to a lovely homestyle breakfast of cereal and toast (and rooibos tea for me!). Midday, Jeni took us to Monticello (home of Thomas Jefferson). We tried to do a Priceline for $50 for four star deluxe lodging in DC, but it didn't work out, so we stuck with our original booking. I discovered that Kat thought Thomas Jefferson was the dude sitting on the big throne in the DC monument, so I knew this was certainly going to be an educational experience for Kat!

Day 6 - New York to Charlottesville

Today marks the sad day of departing from New York City. It also marks the exciting moment of grand new adventures in the rest of the USA.

From my perspective, I really loved New York City, and I'm sad to see it go - I know Kat found the masses of people overwhelming, but we both agree that the experience of being in New York City is something we really enjoyed, especially New Year's Eve and the fireworks in Central Park!