Dec 31st, 2009 by Stace
Even though it’s flippin freezing, it’s really beautiful in Aberdeen. Y’all should come visit! Happy days! Here’s to a rocking 2010 everyone.
We popped out this arvo to nab a couple more geocaches, and it was a gorgeous sunset.
Dec 6th, 2009 by Stace
Wes and I popped out to Kirkhill Forest today to select our tree. Last year, I chose a lovely bushy pine tree, so this year was Wes’ choice. Quite the drama, they are all so different, but in the end he decided on a cute little spruce called Bruce.
Dec 1st, 2009 by Stace
When Wes and I read about geocaching in February’s Ramblers magazine, we knew we’d love this spicy addition to our regular country walks. However, not having the technology, we put all thoughts of exciting treasure hunting aside. Enter gerrod.com, tech geek extraordinnaire! Reading about G&K’s geocaching adventures on gerrod.com for the past couple of months, we weren’t able to resist the lure of this new activity for any longer.
We still don’t have the GPS tech, but we were able to cheat a little, by starting with a city cache, and memorising the google map location and the hint before we left the house. The only downside is that city caches are usually nanos (tiny caches), so no chance for moving on any trackable items. In fact, the first cache we found was about the size of the middle joint on my pinky (or smaller than a 3D 5p coin, whichever you can picture easier!), it was a magnetic dot stuck on a well in the street. Seriously we were giggling like schoolkids when we eventually found it. This well is part of a series of well caches around Aberdeen (The Wells of Bon-Accord), and we will start to try and find them all.
Who knows, we may even get ourselves a GPS for Christmas, if we can wait that long! And yes it’s cold, maybe 6-8 degrees that day, Wes only took his gloves off to unscrew the tiny cap of the magnetic nano cache.
Nov 24th, 2009 by Stace
USA: Sorry for missing your call. We had a fire drill here and I don’t think you would appreciate the noise…
me: oh dear. we had ours yesterday morning at 9.30, they made us all go outside on the coldest day so far this season…. brrrr….
USA: at least you get to go outside… they make us stay here and listen to 10 mins of these loud drill and flashing lights. it makes you want to tear your eyes out!
me: so you don’t practice the evacuation at all? how do they know that you know how to get out of the building if there was a real fire?
USA: we don’t! we just walk to the exit doors and stand there until the end of the drill. our office here is on the 37th floor and there are a total of 54 floors! they shut down all the elevators during the drill so the only way down is the stairs…
Nov 22nd, 2009 by Stace
Scotland, along with England, celebrate Guy Fawkes Day each November 5th. Basically a man called Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Westminster in 1605. He was unsuccessful, but every year, Brits burn a likeness of him on a bonfire to celebrate his foiled terror attack. I saw on a History of Scotland (gotta love Neil Oliver’s voice!) that Guy was a mercenary hired to eliminate high ranking Scots in London after King James I (son of Mary, Queen of Scots) was made King of England as well. Apparently James had quickly promoted his Scottish friends to prominent positions in England, which the English noblemen weren’t too impressed by, so they tried to get rid of them all.
Anyway, the bonfires are usually coupled with fireworks, or in city areas just the fireworks. Thursday night November 5th we watched the fancy fireworks set to music at Aberdeen Beach. But Saturday we wanted to experience the ‘proper’ burning of the Guy. Scott from work suggested Banchory so we took the mini for another spin down the B9077 (she does love that road!). We ate stovies, a traditional Scottish dish, then elbowed our way through the munchkins and kiddlywinks to front row position by the warmth of the massive burning pile of trash (mainly broken pallets, garden waste, a few wooden planks and doors). The fireworks at Banchory were much more impressive than the city ones, even if they didn’t bother with music.
I still have mixed feelings about fireworks in general, after Mum and I visited Gerrod and Kristy in New York. While we were there, we took a tour of the UN Headquarters building, and there was a poster declaring that if we all gave up fireworks for just one New Years Eve, we could use the money to get all the third world countries out of debt. I’m not sure if I got the statistic exactly correct, but it was something like that. So whenever I’m enjoying the spectacle, I think about that poster, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it.
