Pancake Saturday

Last Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday if you're from the UK. Well we didn't have any eggs for the pancake recipe on Tuesday so we had to wait until today. As you can see, Jen made some great looking pancakes. They were tasty too.

Just a quick post to say that my green card was approved today. For the last ten years, since Jen and I met, I have had to apply for visas and work permits on many occasions to allow me to live and work in the USA. Finally I'm free of the red tape. My official green card should arrive in a few weeks.

Valentine's Snowboarding

We wanted to get away for the weekend and discovered that many places were fully booked. We found an inn that had a couple of rooms left so we booked one and headed north to Jaffrey, New Hampshire. It was our first, and probably our last, chance to go snowboarding this season so we brought our boards with us.
Crotched mountain is about 20 minutes north of Jaffrey and we knew they had night skiing. This is where Jen started her snowboarding adventures last year. It's a great mountain to learn on because if you rent equipment you can switch between skis and snowboard as many times as you like. We got there around 7pm and bought tickets that would let us stay on the mountain until 3am - we had no intention of being there that late.After just a couple of runs on the bunny slope Jen was back to carving turns and so we headed up the mountain.There were a couple of hard spills but overall it was pretty smooth going. We spent about 4 hours on the slopes and that was plenty for us.

Snow in Ireland

Yes, occasionally it snows in Ireland and I was sent this photo. It doesn't stay long but Niall managed to build a very rotund snowman in our garden. Lynsie just loves the cold, I can see it in her face.

Correction

Slight correction to the previous post: Make that four tiger barbs, four tetras and only three green barbs. We had a casualty last night. He wasn't looking too good when I was leaving for work and I thought he'd be a goner by the time I got home. But nope, he dragged it out until about midnight, writhing and gasping and generally making me feel terrible. I think there was something wrong with him from the moment we brought him home from the pet store. He finally gave up the fight, putting both of us out of our misery, and he was sent off to the big fishy graveyard in the ocean (aka I flushed him down the loo). The others seem fine for now so keep your fingers crossed this one was "just a dud" as Rodney so eloquently put it.

New Fish

We've had a few additions to the aquarium. There's a total of 12 fish and one snail living in the tank. Four tiger barbs, four green barbs and four tetras. Somehow they all seem to know what type of fish they are and tend to hang around in their own little gangs.

Superbowl XLIII

The Pittsburgh Steelers win in what was a pretty decent game which apparently had the longest play in superbowl history - a 100 yard touchdownby James Harrison just before the fist half ended.
It's not an alien abduction. Maybe it's Stevie Wonder. Nope, Lee is sporting some 3D glasses for the half time ads.Less than impressed by the 3D ads.