Thomas sets off for College!

Today our nest got a great deal emptier, because our firstborn set out for college!  (Specifically this one.)  Well, Jami and he set out, Jami grumbling because she had to drive the Prius (normally "my" car) because she reluctantly had to admit that all Thomas's stuff would never squeeze into her car, the smallest that Toyota makes.  Here is the car half-packed last night:

(The Keurig he won in a graduation bowling party at his high school.  I imagine it will soon go unused, because the coffee is crap and super-expensive.)  And here he is conspicuously not helping to pack:

Now this morning I finally shoehorned in the things he'd finally packed in the wee small hours after his parents had retired:

...and they were off!

(What the video does not show is that they came back five minutes later because Thomas forgot his phone.  No doubt we will discover over the next week or so what other vital things he forgot.)
It hasn't sunk in yet, but the house will seem very empty.  Martha will be inconsolable.  Little did Pretzel know that the tangy taste of Thomas's calf-flesh that Thomas allowed him to get this morning will be all he'll get until Thanksgiving...

A new structure in For Mar

I had not realized how long it had been since Frederick and I had last been in For Mar (or, rather, the main entrance, because we have been round the back a few times recently).  When we went there today we saw that an ENTIRE NEW BUILDING had gone up.  And it is a rather splendid tree-housey affair:

Thomas turns 18!!!

We no longer have two children!  Now we have one child and one hulking adult.  Here he is surveying his heaping mound of presents:

"Is that all?" he was too polite to say.

Face Recognition Test

I (Simon) have always fancied myself good at recognizing faces.  So I was curious, on reading this New Yorker article on "super-recognizers", to take the Face Recognition Test it refers to.  Turns out, I am good with faces - I scored 96.  What's your score?  (Good thing there's not a "name-remembering" test, because I would totally flunk that.)

Steamy weather!

It's been incredibly humid (and in the 90s hot).  Two days ago we were speculating how bad it would be if the air conditioning went out, as it often does at the height of summer because of power outages.  Well, yesterday, what do you know?  The air conditioning broke.  Fortunately (a) it wasn't a power outage, and (b) someone was available to come and fix it, and (c) it just required a replacement part.  Actually, most of the time the workman was here was spend hosing down the A/C unit (the one just outside our side door) because it had got SUPER hot because of whatever part it was failing.  But now we have blissful air conditioning again.  And maybe it's because the A/C is now running properly or the weather is just even more ridiculously humid even than it's been, but this is what our (double-glazed, mind you) windows all look like:

Grandma tells the world how it is

Here she is.
After seeing this, Thomas lamented, "When will the world leave Flint alone?"

Part III: Back in Yorkshire, July 2 - 13

 The glasshouse at the Botanic Garden

 Arbor Low.

 The Nine Ladies

 The Kelham Island Industrial Museum.

 Granny: "the Year Knife: originally made by a Sheffield firm (of course) Peter thinks for the 1851 Exhibition, it has a blade for every year, starting with 1851 blades, but he thinks the firm adds another each year. Not very practical."

 York Minster

Granny: "the Castle Museum (where there was a good exhibition on WW1, and reconstructed Victorian city streets)"

 The Clifford Tower, all that remains of the actual York Castle.

 The Derwent and Howden Reservoirs (Dambusters).

 From walks in the Porter Valley.

Yorkshire Wildlife park.

 Leeds Town Hall.

 Royal Armouries in Leeds.

 Ditto.

  Ditto.

 Ditto.

  Ditto.

  Ditto.  Granny: "the only extant complete set of elephant armour, apparently - I can't remember date, but not that old."

 That's finally it for the Armouries.

Entering the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

 "The Last Supper"

 "Molecule Man"

 Feeding ducks at Forge Dam (descendants of ducks he fed when he was about 7.)  From Thomas's last walk before his return home.