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I think we have been very very lucky with the weather, there's been a blizzard across the entire North East and most flights after ours were cancelled. 30 inches of snow predicted for Rhode Island!

Now the good thing about being an insomniac with erratic sleeping patterns is that when you're jetlagged it works out perfectly. So with the B&B having a very respectable breakfast time of 9am I had time before breakfast to get out and see the snow!







This area is beautiful and the people are all very friendly, add in the pristineness that the snow adds and it's just gorgeous.

For good measure here are some additional pictures of the hotel parlour, the whole place is beautiful and filled with antiques, artworks and a bibliophile's dream of a library.





http://www.mountmorrishouse.com/ is the inn and is just beautiful!

 
( Not Safe For Catholics )

 
John Darnielle--Autoclave
http://vimeo.com/3886998


Dedicated to all the Vegan Straightedge Genderqueer Buddhist Emogeek Labelhaters out there. I wish you all a Very Merry Xmas, no matter how very far away you might be. May your dawn be gentle.

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http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/football-stadium-pod-best09.html

This Month in Photo of the Day: Most Popular Photos From 2009

An amazing view of the sun setting behind the Flatirons of the Rocky Mountain front range in Boulder CO. I caught this spectacular fireshow on the roof of the stadium, using five different exposures in a tone mapping technique similar to the one Ansel Adams developed to capture scenes with high dynamic range.

This photo and caption were submitted to the 2008 International Photography Contest. See photo galleries, play jigsaw puzzles, and download wallpaper of images from more than 105,000 submissions.

US General decrees that for female American troops in Iraq, pregnancy is a prison-worthy offence.


So he'll finally be doing something about the endemic rape of female troops by their own comrades, then? Well, OK.

Cause, otherwise, his talk of punishing male troops involved in pregnancies as well, honest, sounds like just so much hypocritical bullshit.

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Lets start with a quick picture of the fabulous holiday nails I had done yesterday at the Sparkle Nail Salon at the bottom of World's Square. In the end it took 4 people to do them, with one girl tugging at me for gel layers while another did the 3D acrylic application.



Sadly the search for coffee at Sydney airport was a bit of a failure, even the Starbucks seems to have gone so I couldn't even have shameful Christmas drinks. Sadly despite being promised it would open on Thursday the new airport Danks Street Depot was not yet open for business.



The plane ride to LAX was mostly uneventful; the food was tolerable but not great, the drinks selection is a bit awful on Qantas so I settled on Scotch and Dry which is a rarity indeed. I finally got around to watching District 9 which while gory was *amazing* and left me breathless in parts. To recover I watched Up! again and then plenty of Stephen Fry in America which I thought was awfully fitting. The rest of the time I slept which was quite useful really.

On arrival at LAX I was a little weirded out at the lack of grating American accents, and then I realised why. Every service staff member in the entire airport was either African American or Hispanic and the standard accent of LAX appears to be Mexican. On the other hand I was also delighted at the ease at which we cleared customs and immigration, the line was fast and quick and the man checking our paperwork very polite. I suspect that being white and middle class may have helped in this regard.



I also had my first run in in ... a very very very long time with American fast food, coffee that was entirely undrinkable and meat that I could not recognise the supposed source animal. I'm not sure I shall be attempting either again.

I had intended to watch more movies on the flight from LA to New York however my body had other ideas and I fell asleep before take off. I did wake up to an announcement from the pilot that we were flying over the grand canyon so I got some lovely shots out the window.





After another mediocre Qantas in flight meal my body put me back down again for the rest of the flight; meaning what with my standard insomniac sleeping patterns I had slept much like normal and landed in New York refreshed as any day. At the end of it all Qantas people did not bring me cake or sing as promised, however really, any 36 hour birthday where you get to wake up in another country is pretty fine.



We were informed towards the end of the flight that it was snowing in New York and would be until Christmas (yay!!) but that this likely meant we would be delayed in landing (boo!!). However on landing we had no problems whatsoever, landing on time and smoothly; amazing travel luck continued as I had no wait for my luggage and no wait for a cab.





On arrival the Mount Morris House B&B is even more beautiful than the website gave in. My 'room' is really a suite including a walk in dressing room about the same size as my Newtown apartment sized bedroom. The whole house is a classic brownstone filled to the brim with beautiful antiques and artworks, with a delightful owner. There were already rave reviews online I will be adding to them. At $250 a night for a 4 room suite on a picturesque edge of Harlem, this sure beats staying at a chain hotel, and for NYC? Much much cheaper too.



The owner recommended some local restaurants so we rugged up and went for a walk in the neighbourhood, laughing and stomping in the snow which was now several inches deep all around us and giving everything a clean white and festive feel.

Eventually we tumbled into the Soul Food restaurant we were looking for and by god it was everything I needed. Warm fried food, birthday cake and decent strong coffee, good enough to waddle home in the snow satisfied.



All in all I've been very lucky with my travel today and stepped out into a fluffy white winter wonderland. It's everything I wanted for my birthday, hoorays.

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yunyu has released her new track Walking in a Zombie Wonderland as a free download, and is now soliciting for funds towards hiring a Red Camera to film a wonderful video clip for her new album.  

Here's her last one. See? She's a Worthy. Enjoy!  

Yunyu--Lenore's Song  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIEpIE8Zo3g

 
Oceansize
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzPHbSYfPAQ (via Propnomicon)

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Many not for profit and charity groups have got a lot smarter over the years in tapping into some of the large amounts of money that get spent over Christmas.  Christmas catalogues full of gifts for good cause groups have become widespread. In recent times, that has extended to bypassing a present all together, and giving someone a donation which actually goes direct to the good cause.

This form of fundraising is now also tapping into social media, so much so that even my humble blog gets occasional requests to promote a cause from people who specifically target the avenues of social media to widen their reach.

Here’s one example I recently received on behalf of World Vision.  Their Smiles gift campaign enables you to pay to provide assistance to a project in a developing country, such as clean water or better medicine, and a person who would otherwise have get a Christmas gift from you instead gets a card telling them what project has been supported in stead of the money being spent on a present.

http://andrewbartlett.com/?p=7382

I’ve posted a piece over at The Stump about the links between global hunger and climate change, and the unfortunate parallels between the less than successful climate change summit in Copenhagen and an even more dismal outcome at the recent Hunger Summit in Rome, which received far less attention.

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/humpback-whales-pod-best09.html

This Month in Photo of the Day: Most Popular Photos From 2009

When you swim with humpback whales it's not their size that overwhelms you but their beauty. You want to stay in that moment forever. These three humpbacks came over to me to check me out. They put on a beautiful dancing display that makes your heart stop and you wish for the moment to never end. When they were done ten minutes later they took off but left me with amazing memories. Tahiti, French Polynesia.

This photo and caption were submitted to the 2008 International Photography Contest. See photo galleries, play jigsaw puzzles, and download wallpaper of images from more than 105,000 submissions.

Regarding the bit in Scots-Gaelic: Càite or "Càit" is not "Kate", as I've seen a few guess so far.

The line is repeated in English when Jeremy's on the beach. There's no important information in Scots-Gaelic that isn't delivered in English, we promise.