Law, Partially

These days, it's all about vehicles, especially planes and trains. Whereas our adventures in Islington and further afield used to be focused on finding parkland, increasingly we are looking for trains. Much of Bobby's summer outdoors was spent down the road from our apartment (i.e., flat) at a gate to some light industrial sites through which one can see trains passing on their way to King's Cross. Much of his summer indoors was spent playing with his toy trains on the carpet or looking through the window to spot planes in the sky. Growing up is a process of observing more and more phenomenon and then recognizing similar phenomena that fit with patterns seen before. Bobby is fascinated by his urban environment, especially vehicles. He loves observing and exclaiming his observations -- for vehicles including, bicycles, motorcycles, garbage trucks, rescue vehicles, trucks, cars, taxis, boats, buses, airplanes, helicopters, and trains. His ability to recognize different type...

While our little boy had taken ill on his long weekend in the Cotswolds, a healthy bouncing baby boy across the Atlantic was clamoring to meet him. Three best buddies hanging out at Rachel House. The London Linges have spent a good amount of time in DC over the years, making it our most visited city outside of the ancestral homeland in Cedar Rapids. Our last days in the US before moving to London were spent as guests of Gugu in DC. See last year's blog entry  and  the other . The year before, DC was the last trip of Mum and Baba before Bob was born. August is vacation time in Europe, more so on the Continent than in the UK, but August in a UK office is slow, and many London restaurants close for the month. So fourteen months after our most recent, very enjoyable stay in DC, we were packing up in London for a two week trip to DC. There we expected to find the 2018 Catalina Wine Mixer, with Linges from far and wide coming to adore the new babe, Lincoln Kevin. But ...

The Cotswolds are an "Area of Outstanding National Beauty." Under England's (and Wale's) AONB scheme, changes to the landscape are limited by law. So in the Cotswolds we end up with these rolling, grassy hills dotted with medieval stone villages of golden limestone, looking just how you would expect the English countryside to look. Bobby dashing through the village common in  Kingham , a small Cotswolds village where we had dinner at the Kingham Plough, an upmarket pub (many, or most, of the pubs in the Cotswolds seemed to be upmarket). We had occasion to pass this fine weekend in the Cotswolds because I had a Thursday meeting in Birmingham. Birmingham is about a one and half hour train ride from London, so on Wednesday I loaded the family on the train with me. We spent two nights in Birmingham, famed for its early entrepreneurial role in the Industrial Revolution, now laced with old canals and warehouses and more recent waves of redevelopment. On Friday we...

Living in a tourist city, you may well find yourself someday a tour guide to scattered friends and family showing up for a visit. Having passed our one year London residency milestone late this Spring, our organised tour is becoming increasingly standardized but with a few different loops. Dai Meng Guo, a white guy from Erie, Pennsylvania, with a Chinese name, stopped by London recently. He, along with his girlfriend, plus Christine and Bobby, went on my Westminster Tour. New friends, plus old friends from undergraduate Chinese class at University of Pittsburgh. Notice Big Ben all bandaged up while he gets a face lift -- same for Parliament. Westminster circuit For the Westminster Tour, we started at Trafalgar Square, saw that old one-armed admiral on a pole (Horatio Nelson), walked down Whitehall, past 10 Downing Street (of course barely visible behind the security establishment holding back Theresa May's thronging fans), to Westminster Bridge (from where one can ca...

If you were to exit our apartment building, the first business you would find would be Ley Ley's , a hamburger restaurant that serves beer from the local microbrewery, Hammerton . Bobby is a fan of their french fries and cheeseburgers. Were money and calories no concern, we would go to Ley Ley's every day. In addition to the delicious food, we've been having fun watching the World Cup there this summer. Bobby, cheering on England, in their 6-1 win against Panama. Bobby likes cheering when everyone else was cheering, but he was also cheering when no one else was cheering. I think he gets excited when he sees any team kick the ball far. He often points to the TV and exclaims, "Ball!" Soccer, as you may know, is very popular in Europe and the U.K., and England is competing in this summer's World Cup, Russia 2018. Bobby hasn't had much screen time since he was born. Now he's older, and we've been together watching sports on TV, especially so...