This afternoon, we visited Wolds Way Lavender and strolled through their gardens.

In the gift shop, we each bought a little tub of ice cream: lavender flavour, and lavender honey flavour. The honey one was nice, but Ploes and I both liked the lavender one the best.

I also got to see the LARGEST BEEHIVE IN THE WORLD (probably)!

The photos didn’t turn out so well, but they prove that I went inside!

It doesn’t show up very well in this pic, but they’ve spelled out ‘Lavande’ with different varieties of lavender plant.

Ploes snagged this shot of a butterfly taking a little rest:

Lavender in the Matrix?

More lavender:

Not lavender:

The lavender fields didn’t smell as strongly as I’d have thought they would, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very tempted to just lie down and take a little nap amongst the flowers.

This morning, we visited Bondville Model Village in Sewerby.

Today we spent a few hours at the National Railway Museum, the largest railway museum in the world.

I don’t really know much about trains, but I think they’re cool to look at — especially this one!

Train arriving at York train station, taken from the balcony of the rail museum:

After that, we walked along the Roman Walls:

Spotted some Apostrophe Abuse:

That’s Ploes’ shoulder you see on the right there. I asked him to pretend to pose for a pic so the people at the ice cream stand wouldn’t notice that I was taking a photo of their sign because I planned on making fun of it on the intertubes when I got back home.

I even submit it to Apostrophe Abuse (a fantastically cringe-worthy website I check on an almost-daily basis!), and they published it!

After that, we had a lovely dinner at Toto’s Restaurant Pizzeria. (The website is hard to read, but their food is fantastic!) I had the Penne ai Broccoli and would have it again every day for a week if I could.

Later on in the evening, we went on The Ghost Hunt of York walking tour. As soon as our guide appeared, making his way to the bottom of Shambles with slow, measured steps, I knew we were in for a treat. Hilariously morbid and bitingly sarcastic, our guide was either the creepiest man I have ever met, or very, very good at his job.

Many thanks to Happy Hounds pet sitting for looking after our kitties while we’re away down south! It’s so nice to be able to leave the kitties at home, and know that someone will be stopping by to feed and water them every day. Poor little Kismet gets an upset tummy when he’s away from home, so it’s fantastic that we were able to spare them the stress of having to go to a boarding cattery.

We were in Crawley for the day today, and made sure to stop in and visit the Tilgate Park and Nature Centre. It’s one of my favorite places to go! (Pics will be added as soon as I get ‘em off the digicam!) After that, we headed up to York.

This past Monday, I received a parcel in the mail. I sign up for lots of freebies and contests, so it’s not unusual that I receive things with no return address. Plus, people in the UK don’t seem to believe in putting a return label on things they send through the post. I think this implies a level of confidence in the Royal Mail postal service well above what they really deserve. Or perhaps it’s just optimism? Oh-ho, if I don’t tell them where to send it back to if they can’t deliver it, they have no choice BUT to deliver it! – and lettercarriers everywhere shake their fists in frustration because that little Return To Sender stamp won’t get them off work early today!

Err, back to the parcel. Inside was a gift-wrapped box, but no card, or letter or indication of who it might be from. Since I haven’t upset anyone too much lately, and the box wasn’t ticking or anything, I decided to open it. Besides, it sounded harmless when I shook it. Normal people shake gift-wrapped things before opening them, right?

Inside was a copy of Munchkin, but still no card or letter or anything. The label with my address has been stuck on top of a label with a car dealership address, which only tells me that whoever sent this reused an enveloped or that if whoever sent me this bought it off of eBay or equivalent, that the seller reused an envelope.. *adjusts detective hat and chews on pipe*

The front of the game box reads Kill the Monsters - Steal the Treasure - Stab your Buddy. If I didn’t know that I’d be too lazy to do so (and wouldn’t know what to pack anyway) I’d have thought that I’d somehow traveled to the future and sent MYSELF the game, because that little 9-word description pretty much sums up my general approach to gaming.

Ploes and I played Munchkin a few nights ago. He caught me cheating and holding more weapons than I had hands for. *shrugs* Next time I need to sit further away from him so he can’t peek at my treasure!

I’ve been trying to think who might have sent me the game, so I can thank them. There are a few people I suspect, most of whom don’t have my mailing address. The folks who have my address haven’t mentioned sending me anything, so I’m at a loss, here. It’s not even close to Christmas or my birthday, and while today was Clean Sheet Day, I realize that not everybody celebrates this weekly holiday as enthusiastically as I do..

Do I have a secret admirer? Have I got a non-creepy stalker that just really, really knows how to pick the right gift? Either way, thank you Mr. or Ms. Anonymous person who sent me such a great present! I hope all the gazebos you encounter in life are friendly ones!

Update: August 11 2008: I found out who sent me this awesome game! Thank you, L!

I visit The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks on an almost-daily basis.

I sent in a submission a few weeks ago, and got an email back last night letting me know that my photo had been published. Check it out!

I made Karma into a LOLcat!

moar funny pictures

So, I finally took the leap and decided to host my own blog. Wish me luck!

I’ve imported most of the posts from my old Wordpress blog. If you came here looking for something specific, it should still be here. The only posts I didn’t import were links to other sites and silly things like posts about what colour socks I was wearing on any given day.