MoviePass & Zumba

Now that the dreaded time of exams and unemployment is gone (that everyone kept telling me to enjoy but I just couldn’t!) there’s more time and funds to focus on free time. Kim and I got MoviePass cards recently after reading about them in a BBC article. Basically you pay just under $11 a month and you can go and see one movie a day for no extra cost. It works at any cinema in the USA so we tried it out last week, the tickets were slightly over $11 so we already made our money back, you park up at the cinema, check in to the movie you want to see then use your card to pay for the ticket like a debit card. I have no idea how they’re making money out of this, I read something about the company wanting to sell the data it gets but I don’t see how it could be worth that much.

So until the company goes bust or hikes their prices back up I intend to enjoy my bargain movie going experience, enter in my new invention. The ‘popbag’ (patent not pending), because Kim’s mum bought her an air popcorn maker so I just pop my popcorn first, take it with me in the ‘popbag’ (my handbag filled with popcorn) and then it is both free and I get to avoid the disgusting american melted butter they put on their popcorn (ew).

I went to see Battle of the Sexes a few days ago and all I spent was for petrol – I love a bargain.

I also tried out a Zumba class by our house, I got a new work out top that cost me a whole $2.

And the class is held at Patriots Park so we get a lovely view of the sunset over Coventry Lake.

Mum’s Visit & Line Dancing

Autumn (or fall) is truly upon on us now and we are still being plagued by bloody leaves everywhere but my Mum enjoyed getting some good photos of the colours and the lake by our house. I think my plan of action will be to wait until more of the leaves have fallen off the trees until I rake again because last time I raked the next day they were all back!

Also in other news my green card FINALLY turned up which is good because the stamp visa in my passport expired and I couldn’t leave the country because I wouldn’t be allowed back in. I mean we haven’t planned to go abroad anywhere yet but it’s nice to have the freedom!

So that was a relief. My Mum was still visiting so we took a couple of trips out and about to hibachi (where I got more delicious tuna) and the four story mall in Providence. We also finally went to the Nathan Hale State Forest in Coventry which we live right by but we hadn’t got round to walking in because there are no trail maps! It was very pretty though there were signs up that said hunting allowed so I don’t know if that means you might get shot at during a nice leisurely walk?

One night we went to Cadillac Ranch for some line dancing which was so funny. None of us were that good at it but we soldiered on.

My favourite thing to do was watch this guy dance, he seemed to know all the steps but he just wanted to do his own thing and the lady showing everyone how to do the dances seemed annoyed.

 

My job is still going good. I was pretty confused the other day when the nice ladies upstairs brought me a cake… mainly because it wasn’t my birthday. Somehow they’d gotten confused and thought it was my birthday.

So one of the ladies made a quick adjustment and now we have some tasty cake at work for a few days. Also that night Kim’s parents threw a party for us at a nice Italian restaurant to celebrate our wedding so we have extra cake!

The last day of my mum’s visit Kim had to go back to work so my mum and I took a trip to Lighthouse Point Park in East Haven. We weren’t really sure what it was going to be like but it was a lovely area and there was a little walk we went on, we got some nice snaps and we found a ladies handbag in the sand so we handed that in. Someone had a wedding on so people were arriving dressed up to a large glass building that had a carousel in it.

After our nice beachy walk we got coffee and drove back.

But not before stopping at Buckland Hills Mall in Manchester for some Taco Bell. Taco Bell is like Mexican food McDonalds and none of Kim’s family likes it but my Mum and I are obsessed.

My mum’s flight back to London the next day wasn’t until the evening so we had brunch at IHOP and we were all so stuffed.

And then it was back to Boston for my Mum’s flight home.

Salem & Mum’s Visit

The last couple weeks have been fairly chilled, I did a bit of baking.

The kitties have been enjoying the last of the good weather before it goes and we received the kind gifts of a dead mouse and shrew from Mr Barcle.

Our bed from IKEA finally came… it’s absolutely huge but it just about fits so no more of Kim’s pointy knees in my back. Also we got some lights installed in our upstairs bedroom because there weren’t any so it’s all come along nicely.

Lucky the bed did actually get delivered on time because the very next day we were off out to Logan airport in Boston to pick up my mum who came for a little visit.

She wanted a sign so I made a bohemian rhapsody themed sign to collect her with at the arrivals gate.

So that was all good, we had planned to go out the next day but our heating (which we hadn’t really used until now) decided to play up so we had to have a nice heating chap come out because there was an air bubble in the tank or something but we’d just had it serviced so everything was sorted quickly. So because we had to be back to see the heating engineer that day we planned a shorter trip to the butterfly conservatory we went to last year. They had some quail chicks there to buy because in the conservatory they have little quails darting about and they are just gorgeous.

The Yankee Candle Factory is right next door so we went there too which we all enjoyed, I was especially excited for the snow machine. We had a tasty lunch there and we all bought a few things. I got a nice smelling beeswax candle.

When we got back Kim pointed out that the naughty neighbourhood squirrels have been eating my indian corn… I assume it’s revenge for us buying a squirrel proof bird feeder because they kept opening ours and eating all the seeds. They worked out how to open the old bird feeder faster than I did.

Last Sunday we went for a trip to Salem which was great because it was near Halloween so a lot of people were dressed up, it was very busy.

There was a motorbike event and the police closed large sections of the road for a kind of parade which was pretty funny because lots of the bikers were dressed in costumes like clowns and snow white and skeletons etc and some threw candy out to the kids watching.

We went to see a witch trial.

Which was good but some genius decided to bring their toddler along who made noise pretty much continually… almost as if a toddler didn’t find historical puritan witch trials interesting… ha.

We browsed a lot of the shops and market stalls, as you’d expect it was very geared towards tourists and the day before we had gone to Walmart with my mum to buy Halloween stuff. We had bought some witches hats to wear for Halloween and we saw the exact same ones for sale on a market stall for almost triple the price. They had psychic readings in one shop for $60+ so they must have been raking it in. We found a cool retro store that had old comics and old toys still in their boxes and records so we browsed that for a while.

And of course we browsed the old grave yard.

And that was our weekend!

Nathan Hale & The Week

The Saturday before last we went for a historical talk and walk at the Nathan Hale Homestead, we live right by the homestead in Coventry and it’s where they hold the Farmers Market each Sunday so we thought we’d check it out. The Nathan Hale Homestead is where the Connecticut state hero’s family had a big farm house and grew up and there’s the Nathan Hale State Forest on site.

Now I didn’t know much about Nathan Hale apart from that he was a spy for the revolution and he was captured by the British and hung. Turns out that’s not exactly true… our guide told us on his first ‘spy trip’ to New York his ‘disguise’ was that he told people he was Dutch (despite not knowing any Dutch when pressed… not very smart for a place originally called New Amsterdam) and that he went into a tavern, bumped into the head of British intelligence there who suspected something wasn’t quite right, he then bought Nathan drinks for at least 5 hours (yet no alarm bells were ringing?) and tricked Nathan into revealing he was a spy by pretending to be a spy himself (OMG me too!).

He then convinced Nathan to come to where he was staying (which was coincidentally full of English officers – still no alarm bells) because they were throwing a party in his honour. Then Hale preceded to tell all of the officers he was a spy whilst circulating round the party, our guide said the records say the English officers thought it was a shame they had to hang him the next day because he was so nice. And then the building was surrounded and they ‘captured’ him and hung him the next day. Sad yes… but what an idiot (despite going to Yale) and he never even passed one bit of information to the revolution. Why on earth he’s the state hero I have no idea. Someone on the tour asked before this story if Nathan Hale was a good spy and the guide looked awkward and said “errrrrrr….” so there you have it, the story of the state hero. It was a great tour though.

Later in the week we went to the Big E which I had to put in a separate post because I had so many photos. Then last Friday we went to see Swan Lake at the Bushnell in Hartford which was very good, there were lots of people leaping about with feathers etc.

So that was good, then we spent the weekend doing ‘yard work’, mooching about the garden center buying wheelbarrows and other boring things like that. I raked so many leaves up although I don’t know why I bothered because they’re all already back.

We tested out the heating too because it’s starting to get a little more chilly, luckily Kim’s mum bought us matching fleece PJs last Christmas so we were all set. In other exciting Christmas related news Santa has agreed to buy me a fish this year, only I said I didn’t want to clean the fish so Santa said that Santa would also clean the fish. Huzzah!

We just finished up a bit more gardening and Kim succeeded in locking us out of the house so I had to jimmy open a window with the garden spade (our windows need replacing anyway…) so I’ve also ordered a keysafe online… domestic bliss.