Need more room? Hobble, hobble.

Wotcha! Pete says that's an English way of saying hello. Hello from Warrington, UK!

Here's a sign near Pete's house:



He bought me a lottery ticket and it won 2 pounds. Yes!


Pete's airport sign:


Flowers Pete bought for me; his bike is hanging out in the background.


Mom has wanted an all access pass (well, photo tour) of Pete's house for years. So here's the first in a week-long series. Here's his kitchen--he made dinner. Yes, that is his entire kitchen (galley style).


Here's one nemesis in Pete's house: His stairs are incredibly steep and there's no handrail so best of luck, knees and ankle! I'll blog about the other nemesis some other time.


My journey was pretty uneventful overall. I'm well enough to sit in the exit row again, aisle seat, and no one was between me and the person in the window seat. Nice!

I watched 500 Days of Summer (generally, ugh) and some other tv. I didn't sleep very much during the overnight flight. My back did really, really well. No patches (cold or hot), no Aleeve, and it was really good. Very light pain that switched sides frequently. Really, not a problem. I lifted all my own luggage within the airport and it was overall relatively easy.

At the Manchester airport, the flight arrived super early and I waited for Pete to arrive (he took the bus to meet me). This was after an entertaining conversation with the customs official who asked why Pete is coming to the US instead of me going there, and I sort of blinked and he said, "You won that battle?" and I said, "you could put it that way." and he said, "that's fine."

On our way to the bus depot to take the bus back to Pete's house, my right ankle started hurting. Really, I don't know why my body parts have decided that 2009 is the year they're all going to wear out, and my left tendon in my ankle/heal was the issue in the past few weeks; the right one was totally fine. I didn't twist my right ankle, I think it may just be strained, but I really don't know how. I brought my knee ice packs with me and used them tonight on the ankle. It's not swollen, it doesn't hurt if I'm not walking on it. I am hobbling around.

We'll see how it is tomorrow--that is when we are heading to Manchester for 2 nights to stay at a swanky place that we could never afford in-season. I have taken some Aleeve tonight in case it is swollen internally, and we'll see how it goes. I have sprained my ankle in the past where it swells and turns colors and hurts all the time--this is definitely not that. Knees are hurting a bit to get up the stairs.

Pete's cold is in full swing and he is coughing quite a lot.

Tonight we watched some tv Pete had DVR'd, including a show called "Stephen Fry's America". Stephen is a comedian here and is host of a show called QI that Pete and I watch a lot. As Stephen said, he was almost born in America. His father was offered a job at Princeton but he turned it down. So Stephen decided to visit every state in the US to check out the place. In this first episode, he visited every state in New England, plus New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. And Pennsylvania. For NJ he didn't visit Princeton but instead went to Atlantic City. In Maine he hung out with some deer hunters (but asked them to not shoot the deer). I learned that deer hunters (or maybe just these fellows) find deer poo and rub it on their shirts so the deer think they are deer? Maybe these guys were just putting that on for the Brit, I don't know. In Pennsylvania, he met with a Abraham Lincoln impersonator. And gosh, there was a lot of American Revolution/Civil War background music. I enjoyed Stephen's observations of Americans and American living.

Good night!