Saturday and Sunday

Pinted nails at the school barbeque.

Andrea got back yesterday from a week in Boston where she hung out with her sister and her family and attended meetings at MIT.  Perhaps the most useful information to come out of the meeting had to do with the electron scattering screening machines at the airport (or whatever they are).  Consensus among the physicists was NOT to go in the machines.  I can't remember the reason, but I remember bottom line.  Sure, you have to go through the pat-down, but... 

On the way home from the airport we got a call from the real estate agent - showing at 11:30.  Nice.  That meant that we had to go home and give the place a clean.  Well, we didn't have to clean it, but it would be nice if the place rented sooner as opposed to later.  The cleaning bit is a bear.  We got it pretty clean in a short amount of time.  They haven't shown the house for a while and with 40 days to go, I suppose they figured it was about time to start it up again.  I was stashing a milk bottle in the cabinet where the water heater is located and noticed a pool of water in there.  Yikes!  Leak in the heating system.

Photo from last week of us picking blueberries.

In the afternoon we spent a glorious time up at the Cloud hiking and picking blueberries.  We went up there last weekend with Paul and figured we would do it again and get the mother lode.  We rounded up a bunch of containers, fashioned picking buckets out of large yogurt containers (string attached so they could hang from one's neck) and hit the road.  The weather was beautiful and while we didn't get as many berries as we had originally thought we did collect enough to have oatmeal blueberry pancakes this morning.

In the evening we went over to Ben and Julie's house for a barbeque.  They also had their neighbors over and it was a wonderful time.  There was tons of food and the culinary highlight was the 5 or 6 desserts that came out: pavlova, lemon custard, chocolate meringue and others.  Wonderful.

Fancy dress at Chatsworth Hall.

This morning, after eating the above-mentioned pancakes we headed off to Chatsworth Hall in Derbyshire.  The current residence of the Duke and Duchess of Derbyshire, the place is Lyme Park on Steroids.  The house, built in the 1600's is massive and is choc full of crazy sculpture, paintings and furnishings.  Most of the art pieces are old while some have been collected by the current Duke, number 12.  Bet he was at the wedding.  Among the collection are Caravaggios, a Rembrandt, Hals and strange (some nice some not nice) contemporary stuff.

The fountain.  Way back there is a pool and house.

Sculpture hall at Chatsworth.

Our time there started with a picnic along the river with a bunch of other folks and then we toured the house, walked in the massive stair-like fountain (best of show!), took in the maze (bailed on that after a few tries), got ice cream and then spent time at the adventure playground.   The place is really popular, something I didn't understand until our time there was over.  Seemed like most people on the grounds just paid their pounds to park and then they did what they wanted - barbeques, walks, games, letting your dog chase sheep.  Actually, the latter activity drew groans and nasty comments from the peanut gallery. 


Great day over in Derbyshire - back home, dinner, blog, bed.