Well, we’re now in Providence (RI) ready for Karen & Miguel’s wedding tomorrow.

We spent the morning riding the trolley tour around Boston and seeing the landmarks.  We visited USS Constitution, which is the oldest commisioned navy ship in the US.  Its a square rigger that was used in the battle of independence, and got the nickname of “Old Ironsides” as during a battle with HMS Guerriere in 1812 someone reportedly saw british shot bouncing off the sides and exclaimed “Her sides are made of Iron.”

We also went past the new Computer Science building at MIT, which was mostly funded by Bill Gates, and much as I dislike Gates, I have to say that it is certainly an impressive building.

We got the train from Boston to Providence, which took about 40 minutes, and we’re now in the hotel chilling out for a while before we go to the Karen & Miguel’s rehearsal dinner.

After a very long day of travelling we finally arrived in Boston at about midnight last night.

Alice managed to read the latest Potter book cover to cover yesterday, which is impressive, and now its my turn, I hope that it lives up to expectations.

We’re hoping to go Whale Watching today, then on a Duck Tour, before we leave for Providence, RI tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll post a bit more when we’ve been out and about in Boston.

Just got back to Salt Lake City after spending the last 4 days in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone was fantastic, we saw most of the major sights, but could have done with a couple more days as we were driving pretty much non-stop.

We did manage to see a couple of Black Bears, many Bison and a White Pelican, which was really cool.

Its gonna take me months to sort through the photographs though :o(

Its been another long day today, as we had to make an early start to get a flight to Salt Lake City.

We had to pick up the bus to the airport from Haarlem of all places, but we managed to find the stop ok, and got onto a very packed bus for the airport.

Passed an arrest on the way there, 5 big police officers to arrest one teenage kid by the look of it, and what a huge crowd it drew, but then again I giess thats par for the course in NYC.

Flight left on time, and we made the connection from Chicago to Salt Lake, thankfully we weren’t delayed as we only had a 40 minute transfer window.

We’ve got a great car, I can’t believe its a budget car as its a massive saloon, about the size of a Peugeot 307, not a Corsa, like our budget cars back home.

First stop is Idaho Falls, it was about a 4 hour drive from Salt Lake, and we passed thru some fantastic scenery, but as I was driving, I couldn’t take any shots.  Passed some signs for Butte, and like Alice, I can’t believe its not butter ;o)

Just about to go and get some dinner after watching Bones on Sky.

Well, after a really bad morning weather wise, the situationimproved somewhat. We went back downtown at about 13:30 and could see the top of the Empire State Building, so we decided to go up. 

We had reasonable views of the buildings that were relatively close, but it was very hazy, so the visibility wasn’t great.  We did manage to get some good photos of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings from the road though, so that was good.

Later on, we headed to the Apple shop, which at road level is simply a glass cube with a spiral staircase, then a huge shop under street level.  I looked at getting an ipod nano, but the difference in price between here and Amazon was only about 10 GBP, so it wasn’t worth the hassle.  Alice had a play with the iphone, which I have to confess looks fantastic.

After dinner, we found out that there was a large explosion on Lexington not far from the Chrysler Building.  Apparently a steam vent exploded, they don’t think that it was terrorist activity, which is good.  It was a massive explosion though, and killed on person.

Thankfully we weren’t in the area, but it happened not long after we left.

Well, I’m absolutely knackered, so I’m gonna call it a night now.

Well, we’ve got the Plus.Net connection active, and after updating the router firmware the speed tests that I’ve run show that we’re getting a 4meg connection.

Not quite the 8meg I was hoping for, but still 4 times better than what we had.

Alice tells me that the engineer came out early this morning, and had a look at the boiler.  He’s apparently tightened everything up, and has stopped the joint from leaking.

He doesn’t understand where all of the water came from, so its possible that a lot of this was spilt when the system was installed,  but the pipe was definitely leaking last night, and the towel and cardboard were certainly damp this morning.

Lets hope that its all now sorted and that the leak is fixed.

Well, its Saturday morning, and the gas installers have just turned up (09:00), so the day has started well so far.

So far they’ve drilled a big hole in the wall for the boiler flue, drained the central heating system, hot water cylinder and header tank, and are now draining the radiatiors and fitting the new thermostatic valves.

Alice has her driving theory test this morning, so I hope that it goes well, and she passes.

The engineers are hoping to get the boiler installed and working by the end of today, and will leave it plugged into a wall socket so that we can at least have hot water :oD

Lets see how it goes.

Alice had arranged to work from home today, which is when the engineers were supposed to finish.

Apparently the electricians turned up at about 10:00 expecting to see the engineers, but they weren’t there :o( so the electricians did what they could (which I think consisted of earthing the gas meter and mains water supply) before they left at about 11:30.

Alice chased up British Gas and was told that the area manager phone back in about half an hour (which apparently never happened).

Eventually Alice got though to to lady I had spoken to to arrange the installation date (who was very helpful), she explained that there had been a big problem on the previous job, but that the guys would be there this afternoon.

They eventually turned up at about 16:00 I believe, took one look at what needed to be done, and decided that they didn’t have time to get it started today, and would work Saturday and Sunday if necessary to get it installed.

Needless to say, Alice was NOT amused, and neither am I. :o(

Well, I arranged to work from home today, as british gas were coming to deliver the boiler and parts in the morning, and then start installing in the afternoon.

Well, firstly it took ages for me to dial into the work network over my broadband connection, but I did manage it eventually. Then because I only have a 1meg connection, it was taking about 5 minutes every time I saved a file :o(

Well, the boiler stuff was delivered at about 09:30, so all went well to start with, but then it got to about 15:30 and nobody had turned up to install, I’d received no phonecalls, except from the electricians wanting to know when the gas engineers wanted them to wire the boiler up.

I called BG, only to be told that nobody was going to come today because of a problem on a previous job, but that they’d be here first thing tomorrow morning.

Not so bothered that they had a problem on a previous job, just a bit pissed off that nobody bothered to tell me, and that I had to call in to find out what was going on.