Good Morning from the Polar Vortex!

Hello Folks!

I am delighted to announce that all the snow has gone and I am starting to thaw out nicely now after the temperature dropped to a horrible -26 degres celsius last week! As a result I thought it was high time to bring my blog back from it's winter hibernation! yay! A little bird has told me that I have woken up the blog several months early, as it tends to stay cold till March or April but I figured it cant get as bad as last week and so much has happened recently I have decided it is worth risking the blog to the cold :)

A frigid and frozen lake Erie, I am not sure if it is frozen right the way across, but certainly it is frozen as far as the eye can see!

First of all I should say that I am still annoyingly awaiting my work permit (it can take up to 90 days!!!) I am getting such itchy feet and so to save my sanity I have started volunteering at the Cleveland Metroparks where the above pictures were taken. Cleveland is known as the forest city and has huge areas of mainly wooded parkland that needs to be managed and I am going to be helping out with the watershed stewardship program which means lots of planting and educating as to the best ways to keep water clean and trying to prevent flooding which can prove quite a difficult thing to do when rain comes down on top of 15 inches of snow! But I don't need to speak to you Brits about flooding..... I'm very glad I have missed the English weather this winter, it sounds like it has horrific!!!! I may have managed to successfully miss the English weather but I wish I could have managed to miss my bicycle yesterday - it is currently hanging up in the dry for the winter and while carrying logs inside for the fire I somehow managed to bang my head on the handlebar causing me to drop the heavy logs plum on my dodgy knee!!!! Luckily no damage has been reported back to my brain so its all good :)

Here are some nice pictures I took just the other day on a lovely warm and foggy morning, It was so good to be able to go outside without having to put on about a thousand layers! Can you spot the Coyote? :)

Greg the Coyote, Can you also spot his new doc Marties? My feet have been in a almost constant frozen state since I arrived here so I figured it was high time I got a pair of decent boots... I figured I should fly the flag for Great Britain too, even though my British designed doc Martens are now made in China :(

In some more exciting news me and Amanda shall soon be hitting  the big apple! We are going to spend a weekend in New York City to watch the Arctic Monkeys play in Madison Square garden! We originally wanted to see them play here in Cleveland but all of the tickets to all of the shows had sold out except for in New York. It is very similar to London as in everything is more expensive in NYC, the concert ticket was twice as much and sporting events are incredibly expensive also, in Cleveland I have had a lot of fun watching the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball NBA team play for $7 a ticket, yet when I looked into watching the New York Knicks (also a NBA team) play when we were in New York the cheapest available seat to see them play against the extremely average Denver Nuggets is $85! Although it is expensive I am really excited for our trip, there is so much to see and do in New York that I don't think 4 days will be enough but so long as we make it to the Brooklyn brewery and have a snowy romantic walk around central park I think I will be happy :)

While I was looking for brewery's to visit in New York I came across this incredibly cool map (Link Below), it lists every single brewery in the United States and by looking at it I was most surprised to see that the largest collection of breweries is not in Los Angeles, New York or Chicago but seems to be in San Diego, California and Portland, Oregon! here is the map, you should have a peep if you are interested. I wonder if anybody has ever managed to visit every brewery in the USA?Here is the brewery map... http://popchartlab.com/collections/prints/products/the-bountiful-breweries-of-the-united-states-of-america

The boys at the Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland before the wedding!

Well that is all but I shall update you all soon with an exciting story about the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Richfield Coliseum. I shall leave you all with a nice picture of my Cousin Angus and me (in a basketball jersey that Amanda got me for Christmas! very cool! :). Angus braved an ice storm and 14 hours of driving in the snow to come down to stay with us for Christmas all the way from North Bay in Northern Ontario, Canada. It was great to spend Christmas with a member of my family, and I cannot wait for the summer, when we are going to spend a few days camping and canoeing through Ontario :)

Yes I know I need a haircut!

P.S I know it is a little belated but I hope that you all had a great christmas and that you all have a very happy new year :)

P.P.S I have just received a lovely Christmas card (on the 16th nJanuary) from my Aunty Mandy, the address on the front is perfect but the card was delivered with a big sticker underneath the address saying 'missent to Australia' I am pretty sure this card has almost travelled around the world, as it would have gone from the UK to Australia via Asia, and would have gone from Australia to the USA over the Pacific, not bad for 88 pence!

A cool shot of a suit of Armour at the Cleveland art gallery

A cute little cardinal bird in the garden :)