A new life; same as the old life?

On Saturday night, we were singing our hearts out at a bar down in the city. A friend of ours, Steve, has been telling us about this bar for a while now, and it always sounded like a great place, so when another friend decided this was the place for her birthday, I think we were about the first people to sign up. If you read Lorraine's blog, you will note that so far, we have been less than impressed with the night life here. Due to the fact that they live so far away from each other, people quite often go home at around 9pm, no matter what night of the week it is, although the couple of house parties we have had have been much later attended. Additionally, when the Sox were in the World Series, we were both very surprised by how quiet the local bars here were, especially given that it had been almost a century since their last world series! Well, Howl At The Moon was the atmosphere we have been missing from home. We arrived around 7pm, and the place was already jumping. We felt a...

The gifts have started to come in, and we will of course, send thank you cards to everyone, but I felt this particular gift worthy of special mention on my blog, because it came from a completely unexpected source. Over the months I have been blogging I have visited many blogs. Although I will be the first to admit that over the last couple of months this has not been very often, what with wedding planning, etc. One of those bloggers is a wonderful lady from the East coast, Massachusetts, to be precise, by the handle of Motherdear . She writes incredibly long blog entries, and always has an insightful and supportive comment to make on my posts. She has a hankering after visiting my homeland, and as a result is always interested in reading posts on that subject. Anyhoo, it seems that she had the idea to solicit for a gift from my fellow bloggers, and got together with another, clearly wonderful, lady from just up the road in Wis"cow"son (as she calls it) by the handle of Bozet...

I have been working with a guy in the office, to get this thing going (although really he is the technical whizz on this). The long and short of it, is that it looks fantastic. We tried it last night. The picture quality is a little jerky, but the sound is great, and it's not like we will be running around. We still need to go to the venue and test it there, then set up all the connections and stuff, but barring some major failure..it's on! It will be broadcast here .

or as my British friends would know it, the stag party. It was a quiet elegant affair, filled with fine dining, trips to the art galleries and delicate port wine with Cuban cigars in the smoking room at the Bellagio , Yeah Right!!! Of course what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, it's the law, and being a totally law abiding citizen, I would never break it! However, I do have some stuff I can share. We were only a small group, Marcus, a very old friend from the UK, Steve (Ive learned everything I know about about women from Steve) and Travis, a couple of great guys I met over the last 9 months that I have been here. The trip started well with everyone getting in on time, although we were three weeks too early, with the Hooters casino and hotel opening scheduled for the 3rd February. Marcus set the bar pretty high by producing a drinks (optics) dispenser for the hard liquor that Steve brought. Steve had put quite a lot of effort into the weekend, including buying some great tshirts,...

I know we didn't invite everyone we knew to the wedding, and a number of those we did invite were not able to come, due to varying reasons, not least of which were cost and timing. We really wish we could have had everyone we know come, fly you all here in a private jet, put you all up in a top hotel, etc, but it wasn't to be..maybe for our 25th anniversary! So we have the next best thing (yeah right)! The 21st century has truly arrived, and we actually feel like celebrities. A friend of Lorraine's who was unable to come to the wedding suggested that we should broadcast it on the internet. I could kick myself for not thinking of it before, especially being the gadget head that I am..however here's the skinny. Live on the web (address to follow) we will be broadcasting both video and audio. If for any reason this site address needs to changed between now and the actual broadcast, check back here at the blog for an update. The camera should be live before the actual cerem...

Some of you may know that I am a big fan of hockey, and here in the Chicagoland area, I have two teams to choose from, the NHL Blackhawks, who quite honestly don't seem to be doing very well, and the AHL Wolves, who quite regularly win. Personally I prefer the Wolves anyway, as they are closer to home, and they seem to have a much better attitude. Watching their games is always great fun, even when they do lose. I was hoping to be able to boast about a great weekend of Chicago sports, with the Wolves playing the Toronto Marlies , going 2 goals up in the first period, with one of the best net minders in the AHL, I was confident. I didn't, however, legislate for the referee giving way more penalties against the Wolves than I have seen in a while, and most of those in the second period where we let in 5 goals unanswered. We came back in the dying seconds to within one goal, and actually had one disallowed, right after that, which looked to all of the crowd like it was in, but ulti...

As a Scotsman, I am inordinately proud of my heritage. I have always regarded myself as Scottish first followed by British and a poor third of European. We have long felt the oppressed underdogs of the conquering English and spent years fighting with them , whilst aligning ourselves with some of the Scandanavian countries, particularly the Norwegians. Generally though, we liked a good scrap, and if we couldn't find any English to fight with, then we fought amogst ourslves too, one such battle was that of Killikrankie . For those of you who don't know, and I think really that includes most Scotsmen too, there are quoted anything from 5-300 clans or clan associations. I was unable to find any definitive answer to the question of how many there were. Some say that all Scottish and Irish clans come from 5 original families. This list here seems to indicate 873 familiy name associations with 90 clans, and my name isn't even on there! This list shows 262 so who knows for sure....

WARNING - apparently both Bed Bath & Beyond and Crate & Barrel do not accept credit cards on-line from International customers. They will accept them over the telephone with additional security questions. Sorry, but there is nothing we can do about that. I have included the numbers to call below, should you wish to purchase from those stores. The registry is still available to view on-line. As most of our friends will know, by the time you get to our age, are already living together, etc, it gets pretty tough to choose gifts that you might need as opposed to those you might want, just cos you can. The registry for our forthcoming nuptials is split across 5 stores, as we couldn't find everything we wanted in any one place, although I suppose if we had gone to Macy's or Marshall Fields then that might have been a different story. If you would like to buy us a gift please feel free, of course! Pretty much everything should be available on-line to cater for our internation...

We had already booked the venue for both the wedding and the party here in the US; a restaurant in Grayslake run by a Greek family. The wedding planner there, George, is a bit intense. Several times we have had to remind him that we are planning a modest event for 40 people not the usual American event of over 300! They have a really nice garden, with lights, gazebos, etc for the pictures, and we have booked a 4 hour inclusive bar, so if you are coming, make sure you maximise it. We went there a couple of weeks ago to try out the food and it was fabulous, that alone pretty much sold it for us. This week, we have bought the license, a very simple process, especially when compared to the UK and Lorraine's experiences back in September, we have chosen a cake (not telling what it is yet), been to see the florist, booked the minister, one Reverend Patty, who used to be a bar tender, and chosen gifts for our registry! According to the Crate & Barrel Gift Registry website, we only h...