In case you hadn’t gathered, Heather and I are moving house. In fact, we are really moving country – we don’t yet have a house to move to. Nevertheless, this means that a lot of our possessions need to go into boxes, where they will be stored for two years, and re-opened when we return. This is, therefore, not your average move.

Firstly, we have to decide if it is ours – Heather has lived in this house for 5 years, and had 5 years worth of roomates who have kindly left her a lot of their possessions. Secondly, we have to decide whether it is coming to England or going to Purgatory. Then, we have to decide if it is worth keeping in a box for two years, or given away / sold / burned. Finally, we have to decide if it is a precious item – and, therefore, must live inside the in-laws house – or, if it is suitable for their garage. So, effectively, there are several moves taking place.

In less than a week’s time we will be in England wondering why we ever got so worried about the move… maybe!

Relating to a post I made about the WHOIS information on various SSG websites, the anonymous commenter writes:

“Another interesting question is who exactly owns the online bookselling arm of the SPCK, particularly as they are now happy to offer books by such important religious writers as Aleister Crowley, let alone a wide range
of ‘adult’ material. spckonline.com is still registered to the SPCK although they of course say that they’ve passed the domain over to SSG. When you go on to spckonline though you are in reality on a twinned site ‘Third Space Books’. You’d have expected to find that to be registered to one of the Brewer brothers’ myriad enterprises, but it’s hard to tell. The whois for thirdspacebooks.com shows up thus:

Registrant Contact

Name: Carey A McDonald
Address: 202 N Curry St.
Carson City, NV 89703
US

Note that Andy McDonald is not listed as the registrant, merely as the contact. Andy himself has a site http://www.juland.com (correctly registered), which appears to have nothing whatever to do with bookselling, let alone the Orthodox faith. How do I know that he’s actually known as Andy? Well, I rung him up (his office number’s on the whois, and his answaphone gives out his mobile number). It would have been nice to establish what and who exactly lay behind an Orthodox Christian online bookseller prepared to use the name of a long-established and respected UK charity to flog such distinctly un-Christian literature, but alas I fear that Andy was not able to give me any assistance whatever.”

I live only 15 miles from Carson City (the capital of Nevada, and also the cheapest petrol around). However, a quick Google search does reveal that the address is an Antiques Store. Confused? I am.

EDIT: Although I think the information is quite bizarre and interesting, I also think it is important that we respect the privacy of some of these people. They are probably innocent of the SPCK/SSG incident, and probably unaware of its existence – so we should be a little careful before contacting them / accusing them of anything.

Next week, Heather and I go to Burning Man – a psychadelic, unhibited celebration of… well… anything! Every year, during the last week of August, part of the Black Rock Desert is taken over by tens of thousands of campers, artists, and miscellaneous to form Black Rock City. This year, that city will form on August 25th, and for a week it will be the 5th largest settlement in Nevada before disappearing without a trace. Heather and I have our tent, cooking materials and water (1.5 gallons per person per day) ready. We have also started to get our ‘gifts’ ready.

There is no commerce at Black Rock City. Nobody owes anybody anything, and you are positively encouraged to be an anti-capitalist and give out as many free objects / services / milk and cookies as you can. Heather and I decided to give out seeds. The picture above is of 200 bags of 5 sunflower seeds that we have spent the afternoon collating. These bags will go into envelopes that explain how to grow them. Those envelopes will be given to as many people as possible. We plan to give out 1000 seeds during the weeks that we are there – otherwise you can all guess what you will get for Christmas from us!

We also have another plan involving some glow-in-the-dark paints – but I might leave that as a surprise.

However, yesterday, two things happened that I think are worth writing about. Firstly, it rained. This is significant. This is the desert. Rain is rare. It was quite refresh

Rain and Marching Bands were here

ing. Secondly, while it rained, I was stood outside Reno City Hall, getting wet, and watching a production from Reno High School called "Edge" that was very good.

"Edge" is a group of High School Students from a variety of different performing arts backgrounds – dance, music, and marching band – who have combined to create a show that is a mixture of Stomp, Blue Man Group, and Marching Band. Two things were impressive about the show – firstly, the school term ended well over a month ago, so these children had been rehearsing during their summer holidays; secondly, the talent on display far exceeded anything that I have ever seen from similarly aged people in UK – particularly from those in the Marching Band.

Marching Bands are a big thing over here. Every high school will have a marching band that performs during half time at football matches. They’ll play famous, and infamous, tunes while simultaneously moving around the field in a strictly choreographed routine. It is quite a visual and aural spectacle, and something that many people feel very proud of being involved in.

Many children will go to a school specifically because of its marching band. The skills they develop on the drum and brass instruments during that time, are really impressive – in particular, the drummers I saw yesterday were incredibly fast, precise, and had the enviable ability to make it all seem very easy.

Not surprisingly, those people who are in Marching Band in High School will also look to go to a University that has a Marching Band – so it is quite surprising that that UNR (the University of Nevada, Reno) has to decided to cancel their Marching Band program indefinitely.

Nobody is really sure why this has happened. There were about 180 people in the band, and they were well appreciated at the football games – the human pyramid made from the Tuba players was apparently legendary (I should know, my wife was at the top of it). So, it is sad to think that it might just be cancelled because the principal of university would like to save a little bit of money somewhere.

There have been Town Hall meetings to try and reverse the decision, and it has been regularly featured on TV and in Newspapers – but it might not be until UNR realise that their admissions are down that anything will be done about it.

Over here, in Reno, we get sunned in. For the past week the temperatures have been creeping into the 40s. This is too hot. It’s too hot get into the car. It’s too hot to chase after the ice cream van. And, due to the state-wide water shortage, it’s too illegal to spray yourself with the garden hose.

Obviously, the heat doesn’t stop everybody. Heather and I have just been in Quincy (where it has been hot and smokey – refer to my previous post), and there is a steady stream of the cars going down the road which suggests that some people are trying to brave the weather. However, any form of strenuous excercise is just too difficult and sweaty to perform.

So, Heather and I have done the most logical thing. We bought a Nintendo Wii. We will be spending the summer indoors.

I followed Heather along to one of these concerts (the free one, not the one that cost $55 a ticket). It was being held in a town called Genoa – allegedly the first settlement in Nevada. The event reminded me a lot of some of the village events I had been to back in Suffolk – except that, in Genoa, the BBQs were bigger, there was a full orchestra playing, and everyone was wearing red, white, and/or blue (on quite an extreme level).

The concert was brilliant. Not because of the music that was being played, but because of the atmosphere. The orchestra was wearing t-shirts and jeans, there were people eating picnics pretty much anywhere they could find a space, and everyone appeared to appreciate everything that was going on (in particular, the lady next to me was quite overjoyed at the cannons during the 1812 Overture).

So, I’ve decided that I like Independence Day. Nobody seems to care about its history (thank goodness), and instead they just spend a day being thankful for being where they are. For this reason, I now fully support Sufolk declaring independence from the UK (think of the hog roasts we could have!).

We also get mail addressed to previous occupants of the house. We often put those envelopes into a mail-purgatory pile lest those people should ever show up at the door. We rarely open their post because it rarely interests us. However, today we got a piece of post for a previous occupant that implied it contained one of the greatest coupons ever – so i hope you can forgive me for opening it:

The curiosity was just too much. This morning I was excited about a coupon I received for a free avacado – but this trumped that several times over. This coupon seemed too good to be true.

It was.

When I opened the envelope, it went from being a brilliant coupon to being a weird competition:

This must be the only competition in the world where the winner will never experience the prize.

Now H and I are on honeymoon. This is likely to be the only blog about the honeymoon that will be written during our honeymoon. This is because it is incredibly rude of me to be writing a blog while my wife is around, and also because I think this will be the only time I have access to a computer in the next two weeks.

H and I are currently staying in a trailer. In Britain and American Trailer would be considered a static caravan – and, on the whole, they are looked down on by society. However, this one has a little bit of a difference. For starters, it is advertised as a Bed and Fix-Your-Own-Breakfast – but the pancakes that were in the freezer turned out to be quite delicious. The other reason why this trailer is so special is because of this:

Notcie anything? No? Precisely. This B&B is in the middle of abolutely bloomin’ nowhere – so much so that it is advertised as the End Of The Trail…er! We have un-hindered views of the Great Basin National Park all around us, and, quite frankly, I’m quite chuffed I found it. The inside of the trailer is exactly as you would expect a B&B to be like – there’s all the amenities one could want, and a lot of really good, local, art on the walls to keep us entertained.

Today, H and I went on a tour of Lehman caves – one of the most spectacular caves in the world, and I have no reason to doubt that. Our 90 minute tour was interesting, enjoyable, and cold (it is quite hot outside, so I consider the temperature in the caves to be a bonus). Naturally, we weren’t the only people on the tour. One particular couple could only be described as stereotypical American tourists. For example, and to link it back to our accomodation, they were explaining to the guide that they used to live in a trailer in his home state of Kentucky. ‘Were you there for a long time?’ the guide asked. ‘Oh yes’, said she, ‘about 6 months’.