Becca Jane St Clair

In March 2010, I blogged about Barlings Abbey, an abbey ruin located not far from Tim’s grandad’s house. In April 2010, we were to find another random abbey ruin while driving with my mom.

We had discovered the remains of Tupholme Abbey.

Tupholme Abbey was founded between 1155 and 1165. The area was picked primarily for it’s location to the River Witham, and was expected to do well. However, this was not to be the case at all. While it was operational, the abbey suffered many debts. In 1347, an abbot was accused of “forgery and counterfeiting of the coin of the realm”. In 1482, the canons were forbidden to leave the abbey due to unruly behavior, and in 1497, an abbot was banished to Leicester for having a child with a local woman.

Tupholme Abbey was dissolved in 1536 under King Henry VIII.

The land and abbey changed hands many times, becoming part of a mansion and later a manor house. In the 1970s, the site was even used for a music festival. Finally, in 1988, the National Trust took over the property.

You can visit the ruins for free – but you might want to make sure you have your Wellies when you go! We had to walk through sheep grazing to get to the ruins. The pasture was rather squishy with what I hoped was mud, but I fear wasn’t!

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With my mom’s December visit less than a month away, I thought it was time to finally blog about a place we took her while she had her “extended” visit (thanks to volcanic ash) in April. My friend Lynne had invited us over to her house, and so we decided to go to Tattershall Castle in the morning.

Tattershall Castle has six floors to explore, and you can go out on the roof to look at the spectacular views of the area. Tattershall Castle was built between 1430 and 1450, and despite there being plenty of stone available, the owner decided he wanted to build his castle out of brick, making it look more modern than being built in the 15th century!

We enjoyed a walk around the grounds, and then explored the lower levels. Tattershall Castle has 150 steps up to the battlements, so Mom decided to sit on a bench and enjoy the sunshine while I bravely accompanied Tim up the steps….and then he bravely went out on to the roof with me!

The walls and stairwells of Tattershall Castle are littered with etchings of people’s names and dates – going back as far as the 1800s!

Tattershall Castle is open from 15 March to 31 October Saturday – Wednesday, and on Saturday and Sunday only the rest of the year. Admission is £5.30 for adults, and members of the National Trust get in for free with their membership card.

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Apparently, there is going to be a speech made today (or maybe it has been made already) about more changes to the UK immigration system. My reliable source told me not to worry, and it looks like by “cutting family visas”, they mean more restrictions on people who come over as dependants of people here on work visas. Not family visas where you’ve moved to the UK to live with your family. Whew. My friend also pointed out to me that they already did put restrictions on the family based visa, based on the new English test, which isn’t aimed at people from English speaking countries anyway. The government scrapped the “Earned Citizenship” route as well, which affects my permanent residency, because it now looks like I am back to applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain in December 2011 instead of the new Probationary Citizenship that was to go into effect in July 2011.

But all the talk lately about immigration rules changing, caps being made, and fees raising reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend Erin a few weeks back. It was right around US election day and I mentioned to her that I hadn’t registered for an absentee ballot. My reasoning behind this was that I felt since I no longer lived in Lancaster/Pennsylvania/the United States, I really shouldn’t be making decisions on how things are run. I’m not there every day to experience life under [insert name of politician], and being in the UK means I only get exposed to print media, which as we all know, can be biased. I don’t think not voting made me a “bad American”, either.

I can’t vote in the UK, either. I am an immigrant, and even with permanent residency, I still can’t vote. In order to vote in the UK, you need to have citizenship. I have every intention on gaining UK citizenship when I am eligible (should be January 2013, if my calculations are right) because I feel that since I plan on spending the rest of my life here, I should be able to state my views on the government and be able to vote. It killed me not being able to vote in the May election.

I was discussing things over with Erin, and I proposed to her my idea — You should be able to vote where you live, regardless of immigration status. Obviously, some rules would need to be made to keep people from moving just for an election, but why shouldn’t you be able to vote where you live and vote for the candidates that you support?

I’m also in favour of “world citizenship” and having it not matter where you wish to live. Ever notice on a sci-fi show how they almost always refer to the government as “earth” or “world”? Why can’t we have that now*? Yes, I know. Overpopulation. If we had world citizenship, then everyone might move towards the “desirable” places to live, and places that were “undesirable”, like deserts where you can’t grow anything, would soon become abandoned. But it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

I never thought I would become an immigrant. Immigrants were my dad’s parents, and my mom’s great-great-grandparents. Not me. But, here we are. I am an immigrant. And I’m happy.

*Okay, so it’s been pointed out that a government controlling the world isn’t such a hot idea…but that’s not really what I meant. I’m more for the “world citizenship”, not world government!

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I don’t want to shirk on my NaBloPoMo commitment, but today I’m not feeling very well. So, this will have to do for a post. If I’m feeling better later, I will post a regular entry. But right now? I just want to curl up on the sofa with my snuggie and a book.

It’s funny how social you become when you have a Wii. Last night, we hosted our second Wii Party. I love it. Tim and I scored a great deal on the Wii. For those of you who didn’t see me gush about it on facebook or LJ, we paid one of his co-workers £165 for a Wii, 2 motion plus controllers w/nunchucks, Wii Fit Plus, the balance board, an old school controller, Mario Kart (with wheel), Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, Ledgend of Zelda, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and one other game we haven’t looked at yet. Amazon prices say we should have paid nearly £400 for everything, and a trip to a local gaming store gave us a price of over £500. Wooo.

Tim and I wanted a Wii for Christmas last year, but we just couldn’t swing it financially, so when his co-worker was talking about getting rid of his, Tim jumped on it. We both want to use the Wii Fit. We set it up and played for about 20 minutes each on Tuesday, but then we haven’t had time to get on it at all since then. We also love the bowling, swordfighting, and frisbee. Tim’s rather attached to Mario Kart, but I discovered watching it gives me motion sickness!

I don’t want to give out our Wii number publicly, but if you’d like to be Wii friends, let me know and I’ll give you the number. We still don’t really know how it works, other than how to send messages to other people, but we’re learning!

I love how the Wii has made video gaming a social thing. And an active thing. No more couch potatoes!

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Yesterday, I met up with two of my friends and we went and saw the new Harry Potter film. Loved it! I won’t spoil it for anyone, but despite it being a dark film, I found myself laughing a lot. What I didn’t like was the film was set to start at 1, but at 1 they started the commercials and previews and the actual film didn’t start until 1:30. But, I found the Odeon staff very friendly, and they even offered to put my big bag behind the box office so I didn’t have to find a place to put it in the theatre.

After the film, I met some of my friends from chorus for Tea and we headed over to the Drill Hall for our concert last night. Our concert was a 70s and 80s theme, so it was lots of fun dressing up. We had several people dressed up like Olivia Newton-John from her Physical video, punk rockers, hippie chicks, and several ladies wore their own clothing they still had hanging in their wardrobes! We had loads of wigs, too. I didn’t wear a wig. After wearing my hair piece for the first half (a ponytail on a clip), I put my hair into two pigtails for the second half, since that’s how I wore my hair in the 80s! I didn’t wear clothing I still owned. I probably DO still have some of the clothing I wore in the 80s at my mom’s house, but it would all be too small as I was a child in the 80s.

Our show was a great success. We shared the stage with the Foss Dyke Band, and at the end had a sing-a-long. The band director picked war-time songs, so we sang “White Cliffs of Dover”, “We’ll Meet Again”, and “The Army and the Navy and the Air Force”…..songs I had never heard before, but many of the chorus members and audience members recognized them. I think it would have been like ending a concert in the US with “Grand old Flag” or “Yankee Doodle”.

And I’m off again today! Seeing Harry Potter for the second time, this time with my husband, brother-in-law, and BIL’s girlfriend.

Pictures and hopefully video to follow!

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Bonfire Night was a few weeks back, and it also happens to be our wedding anniversary. We decided that every year we are able to (it’s always subject to Tim’s work schedule), we will attend a local bonfire to celebrate. We had several options – some were on Bonfire Night (the 5th), others on Saturday or Sunday. We picked the Lincolnshire Show Grounds because it was only about 3 miles down the road from where we live.

We had a great time. It was cold if you weren’t near the bonfire though, and we had to queue for food for about a half hour! The food stands were the same ones at the Sausage Festival the week before, including the Hog Roast stand, so Tim got to have Hog Roast again. We didn’t get anything to drink and once we had our food, made our way towards the bonfire. The fireworks were pretty, and lasted around 25 minutes. Most of the crowd started to leave once the fireworks were done, so we were able to get closer to the fence around the bonfire. We were nice and toasty warm, but thirsty, so we wandered off in search of some Hot Chocolate. After trying two stands that were out, we found one that still had some hot chocolate and I decided that next year, I’m bringing along a flask of it! £3 for two small styrofoam cups of instant hot chocolate is a rip off!

Since the parking lot had started to empty, we decided to head back to the car…which we couldn’t find. After about 15 minutes, we finally found it surrounded by cars trying to leave – everyone had decided to make their own lane.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I9rRAQqp84

Can’t wait til next year!

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A few weeks back, Tim and I attended the Lincolnshire Sausage Festival, held on the castle grounds, sponsored by Tastes of Lincolnshire. I get a lot of comments from my friends living in other parts of the UK about how jealous they are that we have all these food festivals and they don’t, but well….that’s what Lincolnshire exports! We’ve got loads of farmland and lots of farm animals, so having lots of festivals makes sense.

Anyway. We didn’t really know what to expect at the Sausage Festival, other than some sausages, and we were really surprised at the number of stands, including our friends at Lymn Bank Farm and many of the other stalls I usually see on market day. In addition, there were many food stalls selling all sorts of local fare – sausage (naturally), Lincolnshire beef burgers, Lincolnshire lamb burgers, locally made candy and beverages…if it got made in Lincolnshire, I’m sure there was a stand for it!

We had a great time. There also was a cooking demonstration set up, where I met a fellow American volunteering. She has been in Lincoln for 5 years and tells me there are more of us around. And even funnier? This month’s Good Taste features Whoopie Pies, a PA Dutch treat! How ironic!

We tried several sausages and Tim wanted to try the Hog Roast – they had an entire pig on a spit. Tim said it was good, but I think he liked the Guinness sausage more.

I’m hoping we can make it to the Christmas Food and Drink Show at the end of the month.

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I had to share this.

I set up some heavy filters for commenting on my blog because I had a rash of spam comments last year and I spent 5 hours deleting something insane like 1000 spam comments. most were for porn websites, so I added to the black list most of the ruder words for parts of the human body.

Yesterday, my friend M, tried to leave me a comment on my blog post. In her post, she used the word “glass”.

Can you guess why she couldn’t post her comment?

Yep. “Glass” contains “ass” and it got picked up by the bad word filter!!

So be careful what you block. I remember my friend’s maiden name used to give her grief because it had the word “cock” in it and some websites wouldn’t let her use it, and Tim was telling me about the town of Scunthorpe that sometimes gets picked up by filters (I won’t tell you why. Look at the word and figure it out!)

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I seem to have a knack for attracting wildlife into our house.

Remember the frog in the house when I was a visitor? Back in August, we had another frog in the entry way. That one I accidentally shut the front door on! But don’t worry, he was okay. I just opened the door, and he hopped away.

Then, there are the slugs. I think we’ve had 3 or 4 slugs wander in through the crack under the front door this Autumn. Again, no harm done. Just scoop them up into a bin and toss them back outside.

But recently, I had two different wildlife visitors….

It was towards the end of September, and we started closing some of the windows. I was headed up the stairs with a load full of clean clothing when I saw something red flapping in the guest room. Our guest room is right at the top of the steps, and you can see out of the guest room window as you get closer to the top, so I just thought I saw a bird fly too close to the window. I put the laundry in our bedroom and went to go back downstairs, when I saw the flap again. On further inspection, it turned out to be a butterfly!

Getting the butterfly out was pretty easy, I just reached around it and opened the window and watched it fly away.

Our most recent visitor….well, it took a little bit of effort.

A few days ago I heard flapping coming from inside the wall. I told Tim, and he said that sometimes a bird will put it’s nest in the chimney or fly down and not to worry about it, because it would get itself out eventually.

We have an Esse stove (currently not in use). It’s a solid-fuel stove from the 1950s and I know I’ll have more to say about it after I start using it, but it has it’s own chimney and a little flue box on the top of the stove. Yesterday, I swore I saw a wing in there, but when Tim looked, he didn’t see anything.

This morning, the flapping became worse and I heard a metallic sound. I’m not sure how to describe it, only that I thought the neighbour was out cleaning his gutters because it sort of sounded like a ladder. Again, we ignored it….until I walked into the kitchen to make Lunch.

What did I see?

Yes, that’s a bird, and he’s inside my stove. My stove looks a little like this:
*
only it’s not blue and has the boxy thing all the way over on the right. Inside that boxy thing? Was where the bird was!

Fortunately, Tim was able to open it up and catch the bird to release it outside, and we watched it fly up to the top of our apple tree.

[*Stove photo from Kernow Coal Fires]

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We’re halfway through the month for NaBloPoMo, and so far I’m actually reaching my goal of one post/day, and I still have plenty to blog about!

After the month is up, I will probably scale back my posting, but in the new year, I’m hoping for a few goals regarding my blog:

1. Blogging at least three times/week. It could mean M-W-F, it could mean F-Sa-Su, but I want to blog at least three times each week. Four, five, six, or seven times will be a bonus! I’ll also try not to post twice in one day like I sometimes have to spread out the posts. I can’t always guarantee brilliant posts, but I will try!

2. More vlogs, even if it’s of mundane things. You guys seem to really like the vlogs (especially if Tim talks!), so I want to give you what you want! I still don’t feel comfortable in front of the camera, so I’ll still be talking from behind the scenes most likely. Also, a house tour at some point in 2011.

3. Regular recipe posts. I want to try to post recipes once every fortnight (that’s 14 days/two weeks). I’d go for more often, but I don’t want my blog to turn into a recipe blog….even if my friend Lynne thinks I should write a cookbook. (I wouldn’t know where to start)

4. On time posts! No more “I was here back in March”. I am going to try to get blog posts up the same month the event happens. Preferably within a week of it happening, but I will give myself a goal of within the month. Maybe a better goal is “within four weeks”, so if I do something on the 29th of the month I’m not left scrambling to get an entry up before the end of the month!

I’m really enjoying writing daily, and even though some of the things I’m blogging about are past events, I’m still having a great time doing it. If I don’t get all caught up on previous events, I will get them all finished by the end of 2010. Save for anything I do while my mom is visiting, because I probably will want to spend time with her and not blog!

At the end of NabloPoMo, I will revisit my list of things I wanted to blog about, and I will make another list and make sure I get them all done.

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Michelle from A Mid-Atlantic English (as well as The American Resident) asks, “Why are you here?” and asks her readers to post their stories on their blogs.

“Why are you here?” is a question I get asked countless times…at least once/week when I’m at my volunteer job, sometimes in the shops as well, but since I tend to frequent the same shops, people are getting used to me.

I suppose my story goes something like this….

-Visits the UK as part of a whirlwind European tour senior year of HS (1997)
-Decides then and there that she wants to live in the UK someday
-Goes to Penn State, puts dream aside for a few years while she dates and studies
-Breaks up with boyfriend, considers International Business
-Gives up on International Business
-Starts working in a day care, UK dream having been given up
-Gets laid off, gets job at bank. Starts thinking about the UK again and sets a 10-year move to UK goal
-Dates some more
-Goes to Seattle for a convention of webcomic fans. Meets English bloke.
-They hit it off well and stay in touch via email and IMs. They exchange Christmas presents, etc.
-English bloke upgrades his internet to broadband, starts talking on Skype.
-Tells English bloke about dream of living in UK, English bloke suggests an extended visit to see if the UK is really what she wants
-Agrees, and schedules visit for October 2008.
-Decides she likes English bloke as more than a friend, and surprisingly, he likes her too.
-Start dating English bloke
-visit English bloke. Decided after 2 months that they don’t want to be apart, so visit gets extended to full 6 months
-Goes back to US, 4 months later, English bloke comes to visit.
-5 weeks later, takes mom to the UK to sightsee and meet English bloke’s parents
-English bloke has an epiphany while riding Welsh Highland Railway and proposes
-Returns to the US, plans wedding in 5 weeks
-Are wed on 5 November 2009
-Apply for passport in new name, apply for spousal visa, pack up all belongings
-Moved to the UK 21 January 2010 (interestingly, about 2 years before my “goal” year)

So there you have it. And we’ve just celebrated our one year anniversary and soon it will be my one year anniversary of living in the UK.

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Back in August, I complained about Swagbucks Amazon UK vouchers being twice as much as US vouchers. I had decided that I would collect US vouchers with my points since the points would go farther. Well, I discovered that since my Swagbucks account is a UK account, I can’t get the US vouchers. Poo. So, I kept collecting my points, and a few weeks ago, I was able to swap in 849 points for £5 at Amazon.

And I’m already back up to over 200 Swagbucks, well on my way to earning another £5. It might not seem like much, but it’s better than nothing, eh? And it was free to sign up for and free to use, so why not?

So if you haven’t yet, join up! Swagbucks uses Google for it’s search results, so it’s no different than using Google, you just can win points. The points are given out randomly. Sometimes you score with 15 or more points, sometimes you get 5, other times none. But it’s still great fun. Swagbucks also offers swagcodes on their facebook page, and you can even earn points for using their firefox toolbar.

Or click here: http://swagbucks.com/refer/BeccaJaneStClair

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We have a garden railway. Or, I should say, my husband has a garden railway. For many years he had a short lower circuit that went around the perimeter of the garden below the driveway, but he had always wanted to expand, and he set a goal of getting it done by his 40th…and he did! He, along with Ben (his brother), Mark, and a few other people managed to build the upper circuit in what boils down to about 7 days – just all spread out over the course of several months. I helped too, though my main “job” was supplying cups of tea and making lunch. Still, it helped!

We celebrated Tim’s 40th and my 31st by having a party on the 29th of August, and we also used this date as the official opening date of our completed railway, though we still have a few platforms to put in this coming Summer.

I don’t have much else to say about it, so I’ll just post a whole slew of photos:

When Tim and I were travelling by rail a few months back, our train was delayed. When we got to the station, we saw that another train had been delayed by quite a bit more than ours had, and when we saw the train, Tim knew the reason.

The electricity had gone out on part of the train, so they were using a signaller’s lantern as a train headlight.

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In July, Tim was scheduled for his annual work physical in York and I decided to tag along for the day to wander the city during his appointment. Of course, we took the train up to York, and since we had time before Tim’s appointment, we had a wander around the National Rail Museum. We visit it alot, but you always see things you didn’t see before – either because you hadn’t noticed it or because they rotated something new in. The NRM has the same problem a lot of museums have – too much stuff and not enough places to show it off – so they let visitors take a walk through their store rooms where you almost always notice something you hadn’t before because there’s just THAT MUCH stuff in it. Tim and I saw loads of things that we wished we had!

After the NRM, Tim was off to his appointment, and I headed off into the city. The NRM is across the street from the train station, and train station isn’t quite in the center of town, so it is a bit of a walk. Fortunately, a nice man selling newspapers outside the train station pointed me in the right direction and I began my wander…..to get lost.

I had wanted to do some shopping in some specific stores I knew were in York but not Lincoln, and I couldn’t find any of them. Even the little souvenir shop I was positive I knew where it was….couldn’t find it. I think I probably walked in a circle at least twice. I did see things that looked familiar and that I remembered from previous visits to York, though, so I don’t think I was honestly lost. Plus, I could nearly always see the Minster, and if you can find your way to the Minster, you’re definitely not lost! I did discover a few shops I hadn’t seen before though, so that’s always a treat. Then, I was in the “square” and just about to leave when I turned around and saw a church was having a used book sale! Books for only 50p! It was about this time that Tim called to tell me he was done, so he met me there and between the two of us, we spent over £10. For a good cause and used, but this meant that our packs were full and HEAVY, so we decided to call it a day. While walking back to the station, we spotted a street artist who had painted himself purple, so naturally I had to get my picture taken with him.

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One sunny day back in May, I asked Tim if we could go to the seaside. Growing up, I used to love going to the (New) Jersey Shore, and I had been looking forward to once again, living close to the seaside. From where we are in Dunholme, it’s only about a 45 minute drive to Cleethorpes, about the same as it was from where I grew up in East Windsor to get to the New Jersey coast. We picked a Friday, figuring it wouldn’t be as crowded and packed up a lunch, grabbed a blanket, and headed out.

We parked down by the Cleethorpes railway station and planned on walking down to the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway, about a mile down the promenade (what we would call a boardwalk in the US, though it isn’t on boards).

I noticed a few differences between trips to the shore in the US and a trip to the shore in the UK. The first one has to be the lack of a boardwalk. Like I mentioned above, they call the strip of shops and food counters and restaurants a promenade. While it might be raised up from the actual beach, it’s not on planks of wood like it would be in the US. It is made of brick and concrete. It was also interesting to find out that Cleethorpes is called the “seaside”, but the “seaside” is actually the mouth of the River Humber. You can even see across to the Spurn Head Lighthouse if the weather is good! This also explains why there is such a wide tide. When the tide was out, you could barely even see the water from the promenade.

We walked across the beach, and I was surprised to see donkey rides offered every few yards. Tim explained that it was a big thing for kids to get to have a donkey ride down the beach. I have never ridden on a donkey, and had never seen it offered on a beach before. Looking out to “sea”, you could see ferries, container ships, cruise ships, and oil rigs. Definitely not something you would have seen going to the Jersey Shore!

We picked out a patch of sand far enough away from the shoreline to not get wet, but close enough to a set of access steps so we could easily get back up to the promenade, and settled ourselves down to have some Lunch. After Lunch and basking in the sun for a bit, we walked down the promenade to the railway and had a ride.

The Cleethorpes Light Railway isn’t quite narrow gauge (even though I called it that in my vlog), but is what gets referred to as “miniature”. The track is 15 inches wide, so it’s not quite two-foot gauge, but it’s also larger than the 5 and 7 inch “garden railways” we have previously been to. The trip is about a mile long, and you can even stop at the midway point to have a drink in the smallest pub on the planet, at only 2.4m x 2.4m.

Cleethorpes is also home to a castle, believe it or not! The castle is called Ross Castle*, and it’s not actually a castle at all. Ross castle is a mock-up of castle ruins, built by the railway in 1863 to attract more holidaymakers to Cleethorpes. It looks very artificial, but as it is a “castle”, we had to visit it. From the top you could see all the way down the promenade and pretty far out to sea.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvjiAi8p1g

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It’s no secret, my husband is a big transport nut. And surprisingly, I’m starting to turn into one, too. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, one of Tim’s job benefits is rail passes. We get a certain amount per year, but each time we use it, it’s valid for 48 hours. We try to plan overnight trips or back-to-back daytrips to make the most of our passes. I put in a request to go to London, as London is in my top 5 places to visit in the UK, and I hadn’t been to London since I moved. Tim agreed, and I’m sure I shocked him when I told him where I wanted to spend the day – The London Transport Museum and the Imperial War Museum.

The London Transport Museum is in Covent Gardens. If you’re approaching the market from the underground station, walk around the left side and you should see the entrance straight ahead. Admission to the museum is £13.50 for adults, but this includes an annual pass to return at any time in the following 12 months.

The museum has everything and anything related to transport in London, including old underground cars from the ages complete with models dressed in the fashion of that era. When you walk into the museum, they have the walls decorated with maps of transit systems all over the world, and imagine my surprise to see a corner of a New Jersey Transit map!

In addition to underground cars, there are plenty of busses, trollys, trolly busses and trams on display – even some horse-drawn vehicles from the 1800s! They have over 80 assorted transportation vehicles in their collection, 20 of which can be seen at the museum daily. If you want to see the other vehicles, you have to pay a visit to the depot Acton Town. Many of the vehicles are open so you can climb aboard and see the interiors.

There is so much to see at the Transport Museum, if I went into detail you would feel as though you were reading a novel, so I’ll let you go down and explore it on your own.

Our second stop for the day was the Imperial War Museum. The IWM is surrounded by the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, a perfect spot to have a picnic lunch before entering the museum. This museum is free, however if you want to see one of the special exhibits there might be a charge.

I wanted to go because they were having a Ministry of Food special exhibit showcasing life during World War I and II, including the “Dig for Victory” campaign and the Women’s Land Army, two topics that interest me.

By the time we got to the IWM, I was very tired and I was starting to not feel too good, so I skipped out on parts of the museum in order to make it to the MoF exhibit. The MoF is running until 3 January 2011 and there is a small fee (less than a fiver). To be honest, the exhibit didn’t have anything “new” in it. Everything that was on display was something I had either seen elsewhere or read about, but I think that was to be expected since this is a major interest of mine. I even have been trying to decorate my kitchen in the post-war style. But if you are unfamiliar with the MoF, this would be a great exhibit to take a look at, and you don’t have much time left to do so!

After the IWM, we wandered over to the Thames, and I debated getting a ticket for the London Eye. Tim doesn’t want to go on it, so I would have gone up on my own. I decided not to, and hope that I can ride on it when my mom visits in December.

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Way back in March (yes, I know….I’m horrible at posting!) Tim and I went to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life

The Museum of Lincolnshire Life is FREE and is absolutely fantastic. Lincs Life has exhibits showing the county’s culture and people from 1750 to present day, with a large exhibition of the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment, where I found an interesting US connection.

Those of us who grew up in the US and studied US history have all heard about the “shot heard round the world” – The first shot that signified the start of the American Revolution (or if you’re in the UK, you call it the “American War of Independence“). As it turns out, the first shot was fired at a Lincolnshire man!

They also have a tank called Flirt. Flirt was the first tank (a Mark IV) built for World War I, and she just happened to be built in Lincolnshire. The museum also houses a Ruston engine, and other assorted bits of transportation related to Lincolnshire.

They even have a section of mock store-fronts and a section to play “dress up” with clothing from the different eras.

A friend of mine who used to work for Lincs Life told me they occasionally rotate the displays, and that they have loads more items to exhibit than they have room for, which means I’ll be sure to visit again! I loved learning a little bit more about the county I moved to. Paired with some of the other museums, attractions, and community events I’ve attended, I’m starting to feel like I fit in here.

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Well, this was going to be a video post. I spent three hours on Tuesday morning editing video from the Wales trip to upload to YouTube, and then spent about the same amount of time dealing with a slow internet connection while the files were uploaded to YouTube.

Twice now YouTube has “failed to upload” my first video. When I go to the video page, all it says is “upload aborted”, which it wasn’t. YouTube gives no further information, other than telling you to make sure the file us smaller than 100MB (the file it keeps rejecting is 97MB) and to run it through video editing software to convert it from raw video (which I had. I was trying to upload wmv files).

YouTube gave me the same error for my second video which was 95MB. My third video of 90MB also failed. I finally managed to compress the first video down to 45MB, and got that one uploaded, but the quality is so bad I don’t want to share it.

I don’t know if this is a YouTube problem or if there is a problem with my files. I suppose the only thing to do is to try to upload again, but it took so long on Tuesday trying to upload things multiple times that I don’t know if I have the patience to try again.

Google Video no longer allows uploads, so as far as I know, I’m out of options. I tried sharing the video on facebook, but the upload just hangs.

*edit* On a whim, I tried YouTube again. And it posted the first video, finally.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ucUJ5yMEfY

The other two still aren’t uploading, but at least I got one up!

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