"It's strange how quickly you can miss people"

It has been a busy fortnight; sorry I've been so quiet. On Wednesday we drove to pick {{Plexq}} up from the airport, and on the Saturday we went to another airport to pick up {{Ghoti}} and Benedict who were coming over from England to stay with us while Colin was doing something important Ubuntu-related. {{Ghoti}} is someone I've known longer than almost anyone else who isn't a blood relative; I first met her through Monochrome about ten years ago, and then we were in Poohsoc together, but like most UK friends of mine I hadn't seen her in real life since I moved out here five years ago. B is around Rio's age and all she previously remembered of him was that he poured a bucket of water over her head when they were playing together in a pool at the age of two, so they had a lot of catching up to do. It's been lovely having multiple children in the house running round after one another.

On the Sunday {{Ghoti}} and {{Plexq}} took us to a Catholic mass, which was a first for me, although liturgically it really isn't all that different from an Anglican one. I took the Tuesday and Wednesday off, and on the Tuesday we went and fed horses, and then we went into Philly and looked at books and ate cheesesteak. We ate Taco Bell for dinner, which became quite a recurring theme of the week (fast food that you don't have at home has novelty value, and besides I took the free plastic glasses and gave them to the Buddha; I'll post photos if you like). At Dairy Queen there was a sign showing orange soup, green soup, and red soup; {{Ghoti}} claims that these are the soup forms of me, {{Firinel}}, and {{Plexq}} respectively, and that the headline "Fresh! Hot! Delicious!" must therefore apply to all of us!
On the Wednesday there was going to be a Halloween parade but it was cancelled due to persistent drizzle, I think (no, doesn't happen where I come from). Instead we went to Chuck E Cheese where the others won ridiculous amounts of tickets and I played air hockey with {{Ghoti}}. Before that we had been to the craft shop where we bizarrely ran into Jadegirl and Holzman who I thought were in a different state, and have never even met before. They said, "Oh, we knew you must be {{Marnanel}} because you were tall, wearing orange, and speaking Welsh."

On the Thursday, {{Ghoti}} and {{Firinel}} picked me up from work and took me to the KoP mall where we wandered around looking at things for a while. When we got home we ate chilli that Fin had made (which was lovely-- thank you, love), and played board games after the kids were (allegedly) asleep (I think all kids stay up until 2am talking, really): there was some kind of word game, and the game that a lot of Cambridge people seem to call "cards", and Mao, which I had never played before (although I knew about it) and was consequently very bad at, because as a programmer when I figure out a rule I try to break it to test boundary conditions.

On the Friday, everyone went to New York except me, because I didn't take the time off and there wasn't room in the car, so I came back to an empty house for three hours; I ran a hot bath (it is rare that I have enough time and alone-ness to take a long hot bath) and read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance until they returned. The later happiness of being with them for the evening far outweighed the temporary loneliness of the empty house, though.

And then it was Saturday and they had to leave. We took them to the airport and discussed spodding. After we came back, Rio said, "It's strange how quickly you can miss people."

{{Floatyfish}} and Onib dropped in for a couple of hours this evening; it was excellent to see them.

The signed and completed application form for a chiark account has been sitting on my desk for over a year, and I need to get on with sending it off.

Someone has been putting political signs in my garden for a candidate I've never heard of...

Plexq has decided to help in shortening the alarmingly large metacity bug queue, and has submitted his first patches and had them accepted. Hurrah! I shall buy him a pint or something.

Does anyone know anything about ACEN Welsh courses, good or bad? Would you recommend them? Would you recommend some other distance-learning type thing? Is it better or worse than getting up to speed on your own?