Today, we were tourists. We rode the Underground to the Tower of London which, in spite of its name, is really more like a small city itself — an impression reinforced by the fact that it closes up its walls completely at night, cutting itself off from the rest of London. (There’s even a physician on staff in case any of the overnighters is taken ill.) It’s a spectacular place, having grown in various stages over the better part of a thousand years — a startling thing for those of us who have grown up in a country that is itself barely a fifth that span in age.

We enjoyed lunch at Southern Fried Chicken near the Tower, which aside from the inexplicably small beverages and the vague sense of guilt caused by having travelled a fourth of the way around the world to eat fried chicken, was pretty palatable. After getting chased out of the Tower at closing time, we proceeded to ride the top deck of the #15 bus — a worthy adventure, though not the one we had intended, since we chose the bus going the wrong direction and ended up at the end of the line before we quite knew what was going on. We then rode the Underground back to the house, and enjoyed grilled cheese, cereal, and other assorted comestibles for dinner. Notable among these was ginger beer, which has a much stronger ginger taste than does American ginger ale. It reminds me of ginger Altoids; I like it very much. The bets surprise during dinner came when two of our three renegade bags came home to roost, courtesy of the man from the airport.

A few observations about London so far: it’s very entertaining just people-watching here. Since the culture is several steps removed from that of the US, it’s amusing to try to figure out who seems eccentric simply because one isn’t used to the way things are done here, and who actually is eccentric. While the young man who looks like an escapee from a failed 70’s band with a severe soap allergy probably falls into the former category, I’m pretty sure the man on the subway who kept trying to drink from his water bottle through his cheek, rather than the more common mouth-based method, landed squarely in the latter.

London is also, at least to this Texan, surprisingly vertical. The buildings nearly all seem to go up at least three stories, layering apartments above the street level stores to make the most of the meagre square footage the building has been able to eke out. Towering above those are a startling mixture of classical and modern buildings, ranging from delightfully rococo to smooth shimmery glass eggs that dwarf everything around them. Then the Underground extends many stories below ground, and there are innumerable pedestrian underpasses to make traversing busy streets more manageable. Even a passing dump truck seemed like it was compressed, like a movie shown with the wrong aspect ratio, to accommodate the narrow lanes. Speaking of vehicles, it’s an interesting change of pace to be constantly dealing with traffic, but to see no pickup trucks or SUV’s.

Tomorrow we take to the rails again and ride to Exeter to meet up with some of the extended family and start the official pre-wedding merry-making. Hopefully our remaining vagaband suitcase will follow the example of Abigail’s passport and show up in the nick of time.

I’ll replace this with a more complete update once I work out some technical issues. Here, however, is the short version:

Today we were tourists, saw the Tower of London, rode the Double Decker Bus and the Underground, and generally wore ourselves out. Two of our three bags have now arrived, so I’ve just had my first shower in days. Aaaahhh…

Hello all! We’ve made it to London safely, met up with with Mom McMains, and are waiting for the rest of the extended family to show up! London’s overwhelming…more to come once we’re settled a bit more.

Today we traveled from San Antonio to London by way of Atlanta. This was the first time several of the kids had been on a plane, so the fear and nerves quickly gave way to novel excitement, which kept the young ones entertained for the first leg of our flight. The trip to Atlanta took about two hours, the trip from their to London about eight. Unfortunately, none of us did a particularly good job sleeping on the plane, the effects of which we felt rather strongly the next day.

We arrived about 6:00am GMT, loitered around the terminal for a few minutes until Mom McMains arrived, and then made our way through customs, etc. (The big bit of drama at this point was that of our three checked bags, exactly none of them had made it to the airport.) We loaded into the Gatwick Express — our first genuine English rail trip! The kids weren’t as immediately impressed with the mode of travel as I’d hoped, but enjoyed peering out the window, seeing some farmland, factories, other trains, and lots of row houses. We took a few short naps, went to a nearby park, the notable feature of which was one of the longest slides I’ve ever laid eyes on, met up with Dad McMains, Lana, and Meara a few hours later, rummaged through the stuff that Gordon had kindly left us in the fridge, and rustled up some dinner.

By the end of our meal, I was fading quickly due to the fact that I hadn’t napped earlier nor slept on the plane, and ended up drifting off in my chair a few times, much to the amusement of the assembled audience. I later moved to the couch in front of Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, nearly all of which I missed, to continue my snooze.

Abigail’s passport arrived on schedule yesterday, so we’re all going to England together today. We’ll be leaving the house in about an hour, and should arrive in London at about 6:00am tomorrow morning (what would be midnight for our biological set-to-San-Marcos clocks).

Kathy has done a tremendous job getting the kids ready and packed, and Christina and Linda, her visiting mom, have been an enormous help with various organizational, cooking, and chauffering chores. Thanks tremendously, ladies!

Our next update should be from London!

We’re engulfed in a pile of stressful last minute stuff as we finalize our preparations to leave for England this Saturday. Most interesting bits:

• We still don’t have Abigail’s passport. The Passport Agency said that Kathy hadn’t signed one of the documents, but didn’t bother to tell us until several days after everybody else’s passports had been delivered. Kathy signed and FedExed the document back as soon as she got it, and the Passport Agency signed for it on Monday, where it has evidently sat in their mail room since. Today they finally decided to process it, but only after extorting another $60 for expedited service, even though we’re now outside of the six week window we were supposed to allow for their regular service. (We submitted Abigail’s application on May 27.) We should have it tomorrow if all goes well, at which point we’ll rest secure in the knowledge that the State Department is protecting the world from virulent eight-year-old-girl terror cells.
• Saskatchewan, our injured dove, seems fairly happy munching birdseed in the cage we’ve set aside for him. Unfortunately, his wing doesn’t seem to be improving. There’s an animal rescue organization in Austin that one of our friends tipped us off to, but there’s no way we’re going to have a chance to deliver the critter up there before we leave. Anybody want to act as a bird chauffer?
• Our front door was falling off the house, and several other outside doors had cracks that went all the way through — not the most energy efficient portal in 100 degree Texas summers. Kathy put her amazing bargain-shopping skills to use, and found some lovely doors with nice big glass elements, priced amazingly cheaply, at the Habitat for Humanity store in Austin. Our friend RJ came up from San Antonio yesterday to give us a hand installing them, and was amazed to see once he pulled off all the trim that the front door frame had only been secured with a single nail. “All I can figure is that somebody had put it in place temporarily, stabilized it with the nail, and forgot about it.” Thanks to Kathy and RJ’s efforts, the new doors are now in place, secured with many more nails than their predecessors, and look great. (The back door has such a big pane of glass in it that I keep walking into the living room and thinking someone’s left the door standing open.)

After all this, I’m rather looking forward to being on the plane, and not being able to do a dang thing about my to-do list for eight hours straight. We’ll be dragging an iBook along on the journey, so I’ll be updating the weblog whenever we have connectivity and can squeeze in the time.

Many thanks to Christina, Lori, and the other folks who have been extremely helpful as we’re getting these last things squared away!

Ok, Windows users, I’ve reencoded Laser Boy & Dog Girl vs. The Tooth Fairy for your viewing pleasure. While I was at it, I fixed the aspect ratio so that our children are no longer squished into oddly emaciated versions of themselves.

So, if you missed it the first time, you can grab the kids Magnum Opus right here.

The kids and I decided on Sunday night that we were going to make a movie. It started out as an Indiana Jones thing, but for lack of props morphed into something else entirely. After about 3 hours of filming and 5 hours of post-production work, we have more-or-less finished our premiere production:

Enjoy, and be sure to send fan mail to the actors.

Update: It would appear that the Windows version of Quicktime doesn’t yet support the codec I used to encode this. Sorry, Windows guys. I’ll see if I can’t get an updated file online before we split town this weekend.

Update 2: This should now work for Windows users as well.

Christina wrote up a very nice post on a little mini-adventure our family had last night. (Lions and lightning and fire, oh my!) Thanks for the look at the experience through another set of eyes, Christina!

Also, when I got home from work on Tuesday, I found a mourning dove with a broken wing hopping around our backyard. It was apparently fairly traumatized, as it wasn’t making particularly enthusiastic attempts to get away from me, only hopping slowly in the other direction when I’d get within 5 feet or so.

I grabbed a laundry basket and, after chasing it under an overturned canoe, was able to catch it, bring it inside, and give it some food and water. Later than evening, we cleaned out a cage we had around and moved it from the laundry basket into the more suitable home. The kids were very excited, and decided to christen it “Saskatchewan”, though none of them actually knew what the word meant.

Saskatchewan has gradually been getting stronger, and is considerably more fiesty now than when he arrived. We tried to devise a sling for the wing, but it kept slipping off, and we finally gave up. We hope to be able to let him go again in a week or two. (I am reluctant to bring him to the vet and spend money on an animal that has good odds of becoming kitty chow in our neighborhood anyway.)

My cousin Mary is very involved with student exchange programs up in Massachusetts where she lives. The organization she works with is trying hard to find some suitable host families for a passel of soviet honors students who are coming over to the states. With seven people already under our roof, we’re not ready to add more people here, but perhaps some of you folks might be.

Here’s Mary’s message:

I have just been told we are getting more scholarship students from the former Soviet Republics – know any other families who might be good candidates for hosting? Pacific Intercultural Exchange has people all over the country, so that’s why I ask for advice…We are desperate to place a bunch of kids within the next 3 weeks.

If you’re interested, you can reply to this message or email Mary directly at armstrong [dot] mary [at] comcast [dot] net.