Friday again

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

It's a week since my last blog posting and I'm pleased to say that Kelly is at last making some progress and has been able to move around a little. She and Chris are even planning to head down to the coast this weekend to see Chris' parents - hope all goes well. Here's a couple of snaps of little Miller:

I'm working from home this morning - we're heading off to Edinburgh at lunchtime for a weekend of Fringe-ing. Last weekend, we paid a quick trip to Elderslie for me to play in Brian's Invitational tournament and next weekend, he and Mary are coming up here. The weekend after that is Boat of Garten, so my first weekend at home since June is likely to be 7/8 September - Ross' 30th birthday weekend.

It's 22 years ago today that Jo's Dad passed. Here's a wee memory of he and Lottie sunning themselves in our back garden in Broxbourne back in 1975:

Terrible events in Egypt - don't know how that's going to work out - can't see an easy solution. This could create a huge ripple effect. Really disappointed to see that Belfast seems to be heading in the wrong direction again as well - and we're heading there in just a few weeks' time. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't go to any of Graham Parker's UK mainland shows, but I'm in Tenerife that week. Those gigs he is playing with his reformed band (The Rumour) from 30 years ago, but the other European gigs he is playing solo, which is a little disappointing - but, hey ho.

Friday already

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yes, it's been a strange week - I don't know whether I'm coming or going - but the weekend is almost here already. I think I would like a 3 day week every week.

Still not got a settled sleep pattern - usually waking about 3 am every morning, although it was 6:30 am yesterday - the very day I did want to be up early as I had to go to Fraserburgh. I experienced some severe pain in my foot yesterday and it got so bad that I couldn't put any weight on my left foot at all. It was a struggle to get from my office to the car and then to drive home with a manual clutch.

Jo got me a bag of frozen peas to put on it last night as we caught up with some of our Sky box recordings (mostly old Corries) and that helped a bit, and today it seems a little better. I had no idea how it happened - the foot was fine when I went to bed on Wednesday night after golf, but it was suggested to me that it might be caused by fallen arches. After all, I had been waddling around for a month on flip-flops ("thongs" to those Down Under) and suddenly on Wednesday night I was wearing my golf shoes again with the orthotic wedges in them, which raise the arch, then it was back to work shoes on Thursday.

I've taken the precaution of putting the wedges in my work shoes this morning and it definitely seems to have helped. Fingers crossed.

I received the online link to our digital photos that were taken at the Venetian, Las Vegas - try http://store.cashmanphoto.com/create/image-creation-gs.aspx?a=AlwdrCOtoRdQZf3R9jlE to view them with the code VEGD-7RQ5-UH6R.

That's about it for today. Jo and I are making a very quick trip down to Elderslie and back tomorrow, as I promised to play in Brian's team at his club's Men's Invitational Day. Brian himself is up in Banchory the weekend of 24th/25th August to play in the same thing at my club.

Another future event is my annual trip to see my cardiologist on Thursday 22nd August.

Ross

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

OK - change of plan - here's Ross with his shorter haircut - courtesy of Gary, who seems to be getting a bit of a wigging here from Ross:

Back at work

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

We stayed up till 10 pm last night, watching the semi-final and the final of The Apprentice, which was aired in the UK just after we left to go to USA. Amazingly, we managed to avoid finding out who won, so it was fun to watch it "as live".

Ross came over with fish suppers for our tea. He looks very smart with his hair shorter - but we didn't ask him to pose for a photo.

So, after not sleeping on the plane on Monday night and then staying up until 10 pm last night, you would have thought I would sleep for 10 hours last night, wouldn't you? You would be wrong - I woke at 2:45 am, but refused to get up then. I rolled around until 5:30 am and eventually got up and came in to the office.

I wonder how long I will last here? It's Wednesday and, after tonight, there's only 3 weeks left of our midweek golf - how sad. I'll see how I'm feeling later on, but I'd like to play tonight - if I can stay awake.

Fraserburgh tomorrow - and I've got some organising to do, after the tragic accident a couple of weeks ago when Ken's (my right hand man) 14 year old son was knocked down and killed on his bike. I spoke to Ken on the phone when we were away and told him to stay away from work as long as he needed. Hope he's coping OK.

It's all happening a bit too soon, but we're travelling down to Elderslie on Saturday - it's the annual Invitational tournament at Brian's club. Ideally I would have preferred our first weekend back to be spent at home, but hey ho. The weekend after that we're off to the Fringe, so no rest for the party-goers.

That's it for now - although, I may have a couple of travel-related rants on My Pet Hates blog later on - if I have time.

Home again

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

We're home again now. We managed to get an earlier flight back to Aberdeen and were back in Banchory not long after 2 pm today. Nice to come back to some sunshine and a nicely warm 20 C.

Jo's watering her plants now - a few of them suffered a bit in the heatwave.

We're all delighted to hear Kelly's news - it was obviously a stressful birth - for both Kelly and little Miller - but hopefully both will recover soon. The time differences had made things a bit awkward as we were travelling home and we were getting a little concerned at the apparent lack of any news. Every time we jumped off a plane we checked for text messages - but there were none for a while, until we finally received the news when we landed at Gatwick this morning. Looking forward to FaceTiming when she gets home later in the week.

In other news, Ross has had his hair cut! We popped in to Tease this afternoon and had to do a double take. I'll try and post a photo - if he lets me.

So, back to work tomorrow. Hope I get some sleep tonight - I certainly didn't last night.

USA 2013 (10)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

We're sitting here in the lounge at McCarran Airport, Las Vegas waiting for our big flight across the Atlantic. But let me tell you first of all about our initial problems getting from Medford, Oregon to here yesterday.

Lucy drove us down to Medford and we were early enough to have to wait for the check-in staff for Alaska Airlines to show up. When they did, it was with bad news - the first flight from Medford to Portland was delayed - by anywhere between an hour and a half and two hours. This would mean we would miss our connection to Vegas. It was now approaching 6pm in the evening and we began to panic a little about how we would get to Vegas in time to pick up the BA flight this afternoon (Monday).

Options were to go back to Lucy's and sleep for a couple of hours (if we could) then head back to Medford and catch a 5 am plane to Portland this morning to link with a 7 am flight from Portland to Vegas. Possible, but not really desirable. Also, we had already paid for our room at the Trump Hotel, Las Vegas and that would be lost.

We initially thought about just waiting for the Alaska flight to Portland and staying there overnight, but apparently that would have negated our through tickets with them - they wouldn't let us split the journey like this.

Eventually, we spied a better solution - there was a flight with Allegiant scheduled to go directly to Las Vegas in a couple of hours. Could we swap? Alaska Airlines agreed and arranged for us to get tickets (which we had to pay for) and promised they would refund what we had paid Alaska, on the basis that they couldn't get us to Vegas that night. Result!

So we made it to Vegas in good time and spent the night and this morning in a large suite at Trump International Hotel, which, almost uniquely in Vegas, doesn't have a casino. Our bathroom was bigger than many of the hotel rooms we have stayed in in the past:

WC on the door to the left and large double shower room to the right.

Now we're here at the airport just counting the minutes. We thought we might have heard from Kelly and Chris this morning - Kelly went in to labour yesterday, but no messages yet. The time differences don't help, of course. Soon, we hope.

To finish, here's me posing in our trailer in the t-shirt that Scott gave me as a present yesterday:

USA 2013 (9)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Final day here in Grants Pass. Our flight leaves Medford at 6:50 pm tonight, but, before that, Scott's Mum, Dad & Sister arrive over here for a birthday lunch.

On Friday we hung around here - the skies were blue again, although there is still the smell of smoke and the ever-present threat of the wind changing and smoke smothering Grants Pass again. They say these fires could burn for months yet. When we first arrived in Vegas, the flames we saw in the mountains had apparently been burning for 4 months and still they couldn't control or contain them.

Cade's new laptop was acquired on Friday evening. We were dropped off at Southern Oregon Brewery whilst they shopped and then we were picked up and we all went for dinner to Red Lobster:

When we got up on Saturday morning, the living room was appropriately decorated for Cade's birthday:

We - or, rather, Cade - decided that a day in Eugene would be nice, so we got up and loaded the truck and hit the road, but, first of all, we took the opportunity to pose for the traditional holiday family photo:

Cade then suggested they do a silly face version of this - Scott and I declined:

When we got to the University town of Eugene, we walked round the Saturday market and Cade spotted a bonsai tree that he wanted to buy for his birthday, so thank-you Uncle Gary and Aunt Carole for this:

Braeden bought some berries. I thought at first that the type was mock-Scottish, but apparently Lockness is a real type of berry:

We had lunch at the Eugene City Brewery, and Cade and Braeden had root beers - not stout!:

Then we walked round the campus and took some photos:

The "Cas" deliberately obliterated

Next stop was the home of the Ducks:

Cade's request for dinner was Chinese at PF Chang's and here he is scoffing his birthday dessert:

So that's about it then for another year - although we will see them all again at Christmas in Scotland.

USA 2013 (8)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yesterday (Thursday), Jo and I took the boys on a drive to try and escape the smoke. First stop was Medford to buy some stuff for Cade's birthday, and we then drove on to pretty Ashland to enjoy a walk in Lithia Park, where the smoke was a little less intense.

The boys enjoyed playing on what they called the Eiffel Tower:

We walked up one of the trails but got to a spot where there were 2 warning notices:

We'd heard about the cougar sighting on the news but we didn't realise there was a bear sighting a few days earlier. This was more than enough to freak out Braeden but we managed to force him on the trail a bit further, where we came across 3 deers.

We stopped at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre and I took this photo:

We wandered around the town centre and came across a wishing well in one of the precincts:

Next stop was beside the river at Bluebell Park:

Lunch at the Standing Stones brewpub then back to Lithia Park for some climbing and the by now traditional dunk in the creek:

On the way home, we stopped off at Harry & David's in Medford for some of their famous Moose Munch. Jo posed at the entrance:

A bit more sunshine today (Friday) so maybe we won't have to run for cover after all.

As an aside, one of Jo's favourite adverts on local TV is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2UUcXCo9g

USA 2013 (7)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Day 3 of our indoor confinement and things aren't improving. The smoke is getting denser and covering most of Southern Oregon and Northern California now and there doesn't seem to be anything in the forecast for the next few days - wind or rain - that could change that. The air quality is now officially hazardous to health and Grants Pass is beginning to look like Hong Kong, with all its citizens running around with little face masks on.

There is talk of which type of face mask is best - how many microns required to keep out the small particulates of ash. Thankfully, no talk yet of any flight problems - hopefully all will be well for our scheduled departure on Sunday evening - Medford-Portland-Las Vegas, then overnight in Sin City before catching the big bird on Monday afternoon. We fly in to Gatwick, so have to get ourselves from there to Heathrow for the flight north.

For those that didn't see the photo on FaceBook, this was the view from Lucy's front room this morning as the sun tried to peer through the smoke:

I drove Lucy's car in to town twice today - once to buy some clothes and the second time to pick her up from work - and I noticed the veneer of ash on her car, which was sitting outside, instead of in the garage:

Yesterday, we broke the tedium by taking the boys to see the relatively newly released RIPD - like a cross between Ghostbusters and some kind of kid-friendly Alien - it was 2 hours out of my life that I will never get back. Star cast - Kevin Bacon and Jeff Bridges, to name but two - and big budget too, much of it probably CGI. I must be getting old .........

We've ordered Cade's birthday cake this afternoon and are starting to draw up Plans A, B & C for Saturday's party. Depending on the weather, we may stay here and have a pool party, or perhaps go indoor karting down at Medford, or, if it's still really bad here, perhaps head to the coast and hold the party in Crescent City.

In any event, we're heading out of here tomorrow morning and heading towards Ashland, where we believe there may be a pocket where the air quality is good.

USA 2013 (6)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

We're temporarily confined to quarters today (Monday) as the smoke from the mountain fires descends on Grants Pass. Our plans to head for a short hike yesterday had to be altered at the last minute, also because of the fires, which have closed the Illinois Valley Road. Instead we headed up Applegate Valley instead and went a short hike along the Collings Mountain Trail, in search of Bigfoot's cabin. We found it eventually. Amazing really that somebody went to all the bother of building this cabin, off the beaten track, complete with trapdoor to capture the Yeti:

After that, we went for a swim in the Applegate Lake - or, at least, Cade and Braeden did:

The day before, we went to the Farmer's Market in GP and I filled our "Growler" with beer from the little local microbrewery that had just started when we were here last year. Unfortunately, he hasn't made as much progress as he thought he would, mostly because his partner got engaged and went to Portland.

We had lunch at our favourite pizza spot - Kaleidoscope. Their Mozarella bread sticks are to die for.

So that's about it. Must go and check outside for the smoke.

USA 2013 (5)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yesterday (Friday), Scott drove us up the Applegate Valley and we sampled a couple of wineries - Troon, where we'd been before, and then Red Lily's, which was very nice and sat adjacent to the Applegate River, where we played for a while:

Prior to that, the boys had enjoyed a game of giant Checkers at Troon:

We drove through to the historic old town of Jacksonville where the old schoolhouse has recently been converted in to a German Brewhaus. We had dinner there - which was excellent - and enjoyed practicing our German sounding words - mostly beginning with Sch....

Jo enjoyed the accordionist music - everything remotely Germanic, Swiss etc - and sat beside him afterwards:

The boys played for a while at the stream:

Today it's the Farmer's Market in GP, and also Back to the 50's Weekend.

USA 2013 (4)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yesterday was Scott and Lucy's 12th Anniversary and we bought them some flowers and chocolates:

Cade had some friends around, staying the night. Here's the boys in the pool:

The boys had pizza but Scott did steaks for us four:

Today (Friday) Scott and Lucy are off work so I think the plan is to go to one of the local wineries for lunch. May manage a visit to Kaleidoscope for lunch this weekend too.

USA 2013 (3)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Just a quick one today - and no more photos.

After a very lazy day on Monday, we escaped the confines of Delsie Drive briefly yesterday when I drove Lucy's car down to Medford and we all bought books at our favourite store - Barnes & Noble (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/).

Scott and I took part in the Weekly Scramble at Applegate Golf Club (http://www.applegategolf.com/) last night - and came 2nd again - same as last year - mostly through the fine play of Scott's work colleague, Troy, but Scott himself helped us towards an eagle at the par-4 fourth hole, when he drove the green, and Rudy, our 4th team member, holed a long putt.

This morning, I took Cade to his Doctor's appointment to have them look at his ears, which have been causing him some discomfort. All's well, however - suspect the teeth braces are pulling a bit and affecting him.

We've got some clouds today, which is nice - a little respite from the blazing sun - although it's still in the mid-90's. Think I'll go take another dip in the pool to cool down. I've got a number of bites bothering me - I don't usually suffer from mosquitoes over here, but something's got me this year.

Oh - and we're all still on Kelly watch. We FaceTimed her on Saturday and are monitoring developments daily. George Alexander Louis Stewart-Steele anyone?

That's about it for now.

USA 2013 (2)

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

That's the "holiday" part of our holiday over now - we're in Grants Pass, babysitting for Cade and Braeden as their parents return to work. Not that there's much to do - the boys pretty much take care of themselves, which suits us, especially today, as we want to have a "do nothing" day after yesterday's drive back from Tahoe, with all 6 of us in Scott's truck. Scott, as usual, did all the hard work - driving for 7 hours straight - with just one coffee stop, plus a Braeden "huey" - doesn't seem to faze him. When he gets back home, it's straight down to chores for him and Lucy - the grass needs cut, the pool needs treated, cocktails need to be made and ribs have to be barbequed. The latter parts we love - we always look forward to evenings at the Delsie Drive Grill.

You want to see some photos of last week? I'll try to keep it to ones that haven't appeared on Facebook or one of my other blogs - here goes:

Outside the gate to the pool and the quadrangle of apartments we stayed at.

The giant bikes were everywhere in Heavenly Village.

Jo really liked the giant wild daisies just under the Gondola.

You've already seen the looks of fear on the faces of a couple on the other side of our Gondola up the mountain, but here's the more relaxed trio trying to cheer up Jo & Braeden.

The Lesinas on the observation deck at the first Gondola stop.

Panoramic view from the top, showing Lake Tahoe to the left and the northern Nevada plains to the right.

When we got as far up the mountain as the Gondolas would take us, we went walking up further on some of the trails - or, at least, Jo and I did. We made it to the top - over 10,000 feet - and were about to start taking photos when one of the staff drove up in the ambulance buggy and said we had to get off the mountain now as the Gondolas were closing. She offered us a lift down and this was our view as we clambered on board:

Glad I didn't take the seat at the back - I would have had a face full of dirt at the end of the ride.

The following morning, we went along to listen to a presentation of the new Marriott Points system - they no longer sell weeks and we wanted to find out more about how it would now work. Inevitably, we ended up buying more - we had bought our initial week on our 25th Anniversary trip, and now, here we were not long after our 40th, upgrading.

Immediately after the presentation, we took a walk over the State Line to Nevada and came across a statue commemorating the famous Pony Express, which used to run this route:

The climate at altitude is wonderful, but sometimes the sun can get a bit much so we come in to cool off and read:

Why the hat's still on, I'll never know.

Lastly, a view of Mount Shasta on the drive home yesterday, as we stopped to clean up after Braeden's little sickie: