Imperial War Museum

John and I visited the Imperial War Museum today. We took a train to Cambridge and then a bus to Duxford. We walked through a couple of hangers with airplanes and other machines from various wars. We also got to see the display of American aircraft which, fortunately, just reopened after renovations today! That was the best part because you could get a lot closer to those airplanes. I think John was really excited just to spend a day at a war museum, and I enjoyed seeing the WWII airplanes I've been reading about in person. I now have a much better concept of how much larger bombers are than fighters.

People watching:

When we arrived at the Cambridge rail station I waited in a very long queue for the bathroom. It was out the door. When I got to the point in the line where I was the one holding the door open, someone pushed against it from the other side. I moved over to let a woman out from behind the door! I looked around and saw that there was no other entrance back there. She had just gotten stuck behind the door somehow and had been back there for at least as long as I had been in the queue.

On the train back to Norwich a drunk and rowdy bunch of young men were standing in the aisle, singing, teasing each other, and hitting on the single women in the train car. They were more amusing than anoying.

All over Norwich we saw young women in pink tutus, furry leggings, and...not much else. Some event at UEA?

Breaking News

I moved my office back downstairs!

Now that we have a space heater the lower floor is much warmer. And it is pretty easy to move the space heater from the living room into my office if I need a little extra warmth.

I claimed the floral bowl chair because no one used it in the living room and it is comfy.

And I have lots of desk space to eat yogurt and look at my reference book while working on the website.

Yes, those are more working links!

No, the site won't always be black and white!

Pasta Sauce

I like to make my own pasta sauce by cooking down cherry tomatoes. It is good, but a little bitter. Over Christmas I asked my dad how he makes his sauce. He recommended adding tomato paste to thicken it and sugar to cut the bitterness.

I decided to work on my sauce tonight. I tried adding some more vegetables. That was good. I wanted to try the tomato paste, but the co-op didn't have any. And I don't tend to have sugar in the house because I don't use it for anything. But, I do have honey because I put honey in tea.

Honey in pasta sauce makes it not at all bitter and kind of delicious!

Crumbs

Low v-cut shirts seem to be in fashion in Britain right now. All the tops I have bought since I have been here are cut so low that I wear another shirt underneath. Aside from the fact that this fashion requires you to dirty twice as many clothes, what is the big deal?

Cookie crumbs. There is nothing to stop them from going down the front of your shirt.

1960s

What I learned today about demonstrations in Britain during the Sixties:

There were three protests held at Grosvenor Square in '67 and '68. During the last one, protesters broke into the American Embassy. One of the men who was behind the protests, Ali Jordan, said he wanted the Embassy occupied “for just as long as the Vietcong held the American Embassy in Saigon.”

Although the people involved were more interested in having a "weekend revolution" than in peace, these protests were considerably more tame than in other parts of Europe.

In June of 1968 the London School of Economics and the BBC hosted an international debate called "Students in Revolt." Several of the speakers were stopped by immigration, but were ultimately allowed to enter the country.

There is a Pinky and the Brain episode in which the Brain uses a circle of hippies as some sort of transmitter, maybe for a radio signal. Anyway, he reveals that his plan has worked because all hippies have braces. They have rich parents.

It is kind of funny to think about all these college kids discussing Marx at the pub and trying to change the world with their idealism and half-formed philosophies. Not that different from what college kids do now, actually. Well, with more debates and less breaking into Embassies.

Penguins

I went to the library today to find some books on the 1960's (doing research for an upcoming Ancient House event) and saw penguins. Now you have seen them, too.

Making a Website

So, I spent some hours today working on the website. You can see the under construction version of it here. I still need to make the rest of the pages and make a style sheet for the whole site.

Not only did I learn how to do things like line up text on opposite sides of the page and how to embed the YouTube video (you can't just use the code YouTube gives you, apparently), but I also learned that John is really intense when he plays World of Warcraft by himself.

I actually did the website construction on my own with support from John when I had specific questions. But, so that I could have him nearby, he let me use the spare desk in his room. (The one I use when we play WoW together.) I guess I had never been in the same room with him before when he was playing by himself and really getting into it.

Kind of scary.