You may have heard that it rained here a little yesterday. We had about 3 inches in just a couple hours in the morning. The sound of rain on the window had stirred me a little, but I didn't know what a mess things were till my roommate texted us to say that the subway was all shut down. I didn't have a horrendous trip to work, I only had to walk to Canal St (about a mile) and got on the one subway line that was still running up and down the island.

I couldn't understand why the rain had caused so much havoc until this afternoon when I was listening to an Wisconsin NPR programme. Apparently, even on a sunny day, the transit authority has to deal with 13 million gallons of ground water in the subway. There are over 800 pumps working to keep the water out of the tunnels. No wonder a deluge like we saw yesterday very quickly puts them over the edge.

I was listening to a programme where they were discussing a book called The World Without Us about what would happen if humans hastily exited the planet and how nature would reclaim everything. There's a whole chapter devoted to New York City. Without the pumps, the subway would be completely flooded within a couple days, and the city would soon begin to rust, rot and eventually crumble from beneath. It was fascinating.

Gap year

I'm coping with a boring patch at work by listening to back to back episodes of Excess Baggage, a BBC radio programme about travel. In the last 24 hours I've heard dozens of tales of people's adventures across the globe, bringing into painful focus the fact that the last time I ventured to a new country was 2003! Ideas are swirling around my brain, slowly taking shape as escape plans. I think perhaps it's time I took a gap year! I could renew the lease on my apartment, thereby securing a home for myself, then sublease my spot for a couple months, quit my job (it's about time anyway), and disappear on a hair raising adventure. Ok, so you would never find me paddling up the Amazon or hitchhiking across the Sahara, but there are some once in a lifetime adventure destinations I'd love to hit up...
Peru Georgian Republic









Vietnam Samarkand












China

I also want to go to Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town and Zanzibar, and travel the length of the Trans Siberian Railway. I wonder if I could actually get away with it!

Something I can do is put a ball in the back of the net. We played five-a-side football on Saturday morning over in Battery Park City. Three goals were scored on each side, and I scored two for my team. Not bad for my first ever match. It was a glorious morning and we had ridiculous amounts of fun. My skills don't extend to passing, dribbling, or tackling opposing players but there's the rest of the summer for that.

I can't cook!

I can do a few things that no one could mess up and occassionally I get lucky if I follow a recipe exactly. But on the whole, I'm a dead loss in the kitchen. Every time I try a baking recipe I come up with something different. Same recipe, same ingredients, never the same result! I tried making curry a couple months ago. Even spent $50 dollars on a small food processor I was so excited. It cooked for over two hours and I still didn't have a proper curry in front of me, finally ended up taking suggestions from the floor, adding flour, cream, and whatever else my roommates shouted out. They all said it was delicious. They're good people, aren't they!

But I'm not one to give up easily (ask me about the last bloke in my life...) and having seen the film Ratatouille twice in the last two weeks, I figured if the rat could cook so could I. I hurried to our posh supermarket, the infamous Jubilee, and collected up all the ingredients for, you guessed it, ratatouille, a dish I love so much I used to eat it cold out of a tin. I laboured for ages over thinly sliced tomatoes, squash and eggplant, I even made my own special sauce to go with it. The anticipation could have been measured on the Richter scale, and the result was utterly deflating. It didn't taste unpleasant, but it was nowhere near anything special.

Dad can go to a restaurant in Thailand, come home and collect up all the revolting looking ingredients and reproduce the dish he had in Thailand for our own dinner table. Clearly this is not something that is passed genetically. I got all his quirky stuff, but not his talent in the kitchen. The only consolation is that I live in places like London and New York where there's never a shortage of delicious food to be found. Oh and if I ever invite you to dinner... think about it carefully before you say yes.

If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree!

Alumni reunion weekend

No, I didn't schlepp out to Colorado Springs to hobnob with former classmates from boarding school. I did, however, drop by a party this Saturday given by fellow Fountain Valley School graduate Heather Rees. I really liked Heather. We haven't kept in touch (I haven't kept in touch with anyone from school except my roommate Meredith), but she emailed me out of the blue along with a couple other FVS people in NYC and invited us over. It was such a great evening, catching up with her and two other classmates, Alison Perry and Cameron Stanford. I took Jason along in case it was a bit stilted, but I had a jolly time chatting to all three and was really pleased to see that they're all doing well. And we have plans to get together again soon. I

For those who don't know, I spent two years at Fountain Valley School of Colorado. There's no high school in Saudi Arabia, so I had to come stateside to finish up. It's all mountains and adobe buidings, very outdoorsy, which isn't me at all, but I liked the school and the people and I did well. Found my own little niche. But I've never had any inclination to go back and take part in the whole alumni love-in thing, so this little get together was the perfect way to reconnect with a bit of my past.

Stake Family History Center Director

Errr... that's me. Just received my first stake calling this weekend. I'm afraid it might be a fairly big deal. We used to have a family history center in NY that was open to the public but it closed when they added the temple into the Lincoln Square building. They've been talking about reopening a smaller scale center since last year and I was very excited as this would mean I could ordered much needed microfilm from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. I even remember approaching Linda Cameron, the previous stake family history chairperson, and telling her I would be willing to help out with getting the center up and running. Well, looks like I got my wish. So I shall be not only the center's director, but it's first and most eager patron. I'll be helping people outside the Church with their family history research which is very exciting. I wouldn't mind being a professional genealogy researcher. It's not something I could support myself on at this point, but it would be a great job to have if I were married and not the sole income in the family.

Arcade Fire

Monday night Mike and I went to see Arcade Fire at the United Palace Theatre. I dont' want to sound all soppy, but, honestly, it was a dream come true. I have been desparate to see them for two years since I discovered "Funeral" back in March 2005. I remember playing tracks for Ian on my iPod between sets at an Aqualung concert at Bowery Ballroom. I so wanted him to love it as much as I did.

By the way, if anyone who reads this is not listening to Arcade Fire then I seriously recommend, nay insist, that you remedy the situation.

We got there just as the show was starting, the opening strains of "Black Mirror" echoing/booming in the corridors and we scrabbled up the stairs to our seats in the balcony. The show was chaos, you never knew who would be playing what instrument from one song to the next (Regine went from singing to accordion to drums to organ and back again).

I don't have any pictures and I could only find one video on YouTube from the show, "No Cars Go" and it was there literally five minutes ago and now I can't find. So instead here's David Bowie playing live on "Wake Up" - David Bowie loves them, what does that tell you!

I don't normally keep note of these, but the set list was: Black Mirror, No Cars Go, Neighborhood #2, Haiti, Black Wave/Bad Vibrations, Neon Bible, Windowstill, the WEll & The Lighthouse, Ocean of Noise, Keep the Car Running, (Antichrist Television Blues), N #3, Rebellion (Lies), with an encore of N #1 and Intervention (now and forever enshrined as a playlist in my iTunes).

We usually leave the show with one song strain in our heads, sung wholeheartedly and without shame on the streets as we make our way to the subway. For Kaiser Chiefs the other week it was "we are the angry mob...". This time it was "you have your reasons, and me, I have mine, but all the reasons I gave, were just lies to buy myself some time..."

New do

Well they said Michael was doing well at hair school, and they weren't exagerating! It was time for me to get my hair sorted out and I wanted to give him a chance to experiment on a friendly head... So on Thursday he came over and gave me a much needed haircut. I wanted shorter... I got very short. But it turned out marvelously. I love it! And everyone at work and the temple yesterday was gushing about how terrific it looked.

How's this for a celebrity sighting... only in this case, they spotted me...

I walked out of my office building last night, talking to myself and pulling faces as usual. I noticed two people walking towards me, pointing and laughing to each other. I thought what are they laughing at and then became aware of the ridiculous look on my face. And then I noticed that they looked a bit familiar. It was Will Arnett (Gob in Arrested Development) and Amy Poehler (SNL). I made the comedians laugh... at me, yes, but still...

INFLAMMATION, n. swelling and soreness caused by the accidental ingestion of a flamingo.

Lucy's wedding

We've been busy in England - even busier than I thought we would be - so there hasn't been much time to post pictures and whatnot. So here's very quick recap of our adventures so far...

Thursday we arrived in London...

we did a bit of shopping, went to see the birds in Trafalgar Square, ate kebabs for lunch in Leicester Square and walked through Covent Garden and over to St Pauls Cathedral and the Millenium Bridge.

After a long night on the plane and running around London, we were pretty tired

Friday we ran went shopping in Luton and then headed over to St Albans to pick up some clothes for the wedding. On the way home, we stopped at St Albans Abbey.
Saturday my little sister Lucy got married. I was the maid of honour.

Mr and Mrs King
Lucy looked lovely and they were both glowing. It was a lovely wedding.

I got to participate in something rather special last night. I went to the temple to do the 6pm session. And as I was coming out, the shift coordinator asked if I would like to participate in some sealings. I assumed that it was just some proxy sealings. Turned out however, that there was a couple there, who were sealed together on behalf of her parents. And once that was done, the wife and her sister were sealed to their parents. This was the first living ordinance sealing that I've attended. And it made me think of my grandfather Tom and grandmother Doris, and Mum and little Molly and their little eternal family. It was a lovely evening.

I haven't been writing because I've been too busy working and playing Guitar Hero in my off time. Dave Almond lent me his playstation while he works on some bloody awful take-home test for PhD school. Me and the girls have been playing until our eyes bleed. I've got Mike hooked as well. He's rocking out on "Carry On My Wayward Son" while I write. He played for the first time last Sunday and it truly was love at first sight.

So check out these really cool chocolates Dad sent me for Valentine's.

They're called Telluride Truffles. I'm no chocolate eater, but these were amazing. Each one has a mountain-themed name and my favourite was the Bunny Hill banana flavoured one.

Oh and I've decided maybe it's about time I did my PhD. In history of course. So I've started reading books again. I'm working on "Life In a Medieval Village" and I just two more books, one about the Cathars and one about politics and culture in Vienna in the last days before the First World War. They were having a sale at the secondhand bookshop in SoHo so I got both for under a tenner. I'm feeling smarter already!

Jonathan Frost

It's not often they get enough snow in southern England to build a snowman. I love his celery hair and the arms that are bigger than the snowman himself. I wonder if he comes to life at night and flies to the North Pole to dance with all the other snowman.

It's almost here!

I just saw this on Amazon.com's front page. I had no idea it was coming so soon. I'm so excited I can hardly breathe! Only 169 days, 11 hours and 48 mintues to go...

Duceys make money, not babies

I think my grandmother Rosalba Ducie O'Brien came from one of the least fertile families in America. Her grandfather John Ducie, my great-great grandpa, has just five descendents in my generation. The average family would have dozens and dozens. And if this were a family from Utah they'd have like 200! More on this later.

I've been investigating Duceys/Ducys/Ducies the last couple weeks, inspired by my trip to eastern Ohio. After just five days back from my Christmas hols I felt like I needed to get away. So I flew to Cleveland over the three-day weekend to do some research onsite into this branch of my family. My Dad and us kids are the only Mormons in this part of the family, so it's fun to be the only people looking into their history and doing their temple work. My main goal was to find out what happened to John's mother, Mary Ducey. Her husband died in 1876 (just 14 years after they came to Ohio from Ireland via England) and her four surviving children all went far west to make their fortunes: in the case of John Ducie about $40-50 million. I couldn't understand why they just abandoned her. Well, it turns out she was more than capable of looking after herself. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

First of all, I can't believe they let me have a rental car, with my British driving license and pathetic little credit card. But drive away with a nice little four-door I did. Inspite of how much I dislike cars and am horrified at the thought of being dependant on one, I had this overwhelming feeling of freedom. I could drive anywhere and explore any place I liked! The drive south to Wayne County was very pretty despite it being winter. It was rolling hills with huge white farmhouses and red barns dotted everywhere. I spent Saturday afternoon in the country public library, looking through all their vital records, cemetery and land information. I found birth and burial records for some of John Ducie's nieces and nephews. I knew Patrick Ducey (John's father) had owned a small parcel of land in an area called Peacock or Rogue's Hollow so I looked up the land sale. The description gave the well at Peacock's Hollow as the starting reference point. The librarian and I were trying to find this on old maps of the area. She brought over a map from a book on the history of Rogues Hollow:

I spotted the well in the center (where the roads converge) and then noticed just above it Mrs Ducey's Saloon. This is not a common name! It had to be my great-great-great grandmother. And just then some of the pages of the book fell back to another page where my eyes immediately alighted on the name "Ducey". I quickly scanned through the book and found that Mary Ducey is mentioned several times. I think she was a bit of a local celebrity. Here's a brief extract from what is a rather gossipy history of the Hollow:

The story is told by an old timer about how Sarah [Chidester, a local saintly young woman] nursed a Mrs. Ducey from certain death to health. Mrs. Mary Ducey ran one of the six saloons in the Hollow.

One day she became seriously ill. A doctor was sent for at Doylestown. He said after several calls that there was nothing he could do to help Mrs. Ducey to get well and left her to die in bed. Sarah had been helping Mrs. Ducey several days. She had learned about Mrs. Ducey being ill. She had walked down the muddy road with her familiar basket to help out. She knew that Mrs. Ducey did not go to church. She knew that Mrs. Ducey kept her saloon open on Sundays. It was closed now. She never approved the use of liquor and never approved of anyone serving the fiery stuff which kept so many wage earners poor. But Mrs. Ducey was ill and needed nursing. Because Mrs. Ducey was not the church-going type of woman or ran a saloon made no difference to Sarah. She had the evangelistic spirit in trying to win souls to heaven. Here was a sick woman who was alone and forlorn, and hope for her recovery was lost. After finding that Mrs. Ducey could not keep water on her stomach, Sarah tried an old remedy. She went back home to get some whey and fed it to the patient. For three nights Sarah nursed her,
prayed with her, cooled her brow with cold cloths and massaged her aching back and neck.

On the third night, the fever broke. Mrs. Ducey went into a deep sleep. When she awoke Sarah again spooned hot whey into her mouth. Hourly her strength returned. Quickly her eyes brightened and she began to talk hopefully. Soon she was raising herself on her elbow and then she began to sit up, and before long she was walking haltingly. Sarah went back to her family with a heart singing thankfulness to God. Mary Ducey went back to setting up drinks for her miners and lived until 1901. Many miners were lonely and tired from working bent over digging coal in the mines. They came to Mrs. Ducey’s saloon for relaxation. Deborah Chidester says she remembers when she was about eight or ten years old, Mrs. Ducey gave her a beautiful cup and saucer. This was one way of showing gratitude to the Chidester family. The year was about 1890.

I also read that she owned several parcels of land and that some had been probated in 1901. So I knew I needed to head back to the library the next day to look up those land sales and the probate packet for Mary. Sunday morning I drove down to the village of Doylestown and Chippewa Township where the Duceys had settled in 1862. First stop was the Sts Peter and Paul Catholic Cemetery to visit the grave of my great-great-great grandfather Patrick Ducey:

Patrick and Mary fled the Irish famine in the 1840s, settling first in England where he mined coal and eventually they came to Ohio, where he continued to work in the coal mines. As you can see from the map above, the steep hills around Rogues Hollow contained dozens of mines. Also buried in this cemetery is Patrick's brother Anthony, his wife Mariah and their son Edward, along with James Schoenberger, son of Patrick's eldest daughter Mary.

Then I drove down the hills into the Hollow to find the land which Patrick and Mary had owned. It was pretty easy to spot, across the road from the well and to the left of the road. Somebody with a red truck lives there now:

There are just a handful of houses in the area. It's a very peaceful spot, but in Patrick and Mary's time it was a rambunctious community of miners and, according to the History, all sorts of criminals and ne'er-do-wells. I had a little wander around and then headed back to the library in Wooster to look for Mary Ducey's will. And here it is:

I knew she had been re-married to a William Collier, who owned much of the land on the other side of the highway. But the will gave me the identity of one of Mary's daughters, Bridget, who I had not been able to trace past the age of 17. It appears she is in fact the infamous Lizzie Chadwick of San Francisco. Her mother named her Bridget, but she had other ideas it seems. So all in all, it was a very successful trip in terms of information found. But most importantly, I don't just now have the bare bones information about Mary, I feel like I have some sense of her character and personality. She was most definitely a gutsy lady. Although she herself was never able to read and write, she and her children went on to become successful business people. As Dad put it, "She may not have been able to read, but she could certainly count!"

Inspired by the success of my trip, I've been doing some further work on the descendents of Patrick and Mary Ducey. They had four of eight children who survived to adulthood: Mary, Bridget/Elizabeth, John and Margaret. Mary and Elizabeth each had six children, my John had two, and Margaret just one. Most of them married but I was surprised to discover that only one each of Mary and Bridget's children had children themselves. John, as I said, has just a handful of descendents and although Margaret had one son, I don't think he think he had any children either. We Ducies are a rare breed. It's a shame... there were some good genes in the family. Thank goodness for Jonathan!

Oh, and I spent the Monday of my trip in Kirtland...

It was a dismal day so I was the only person there and I got a personal tour of the place.

SIZE 2 !!!

Or perhaps I should say size 2. My favourite trousers, the beige ones (fourth picture down), are literally falling off me. I tried rolling them over around the waist... that worked for a couple weeks, but now even that doesn't keep them up. On Saturday I flashed half of JFK and all the people renting cars at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. It was time to face facts and go buy them again in the smaller size. Only the 4 was a little baggy as well. So the 2 it just had to be.

I think I'm "The Incredible Shrinking Woman". We watched that film in the hotel in Hong Kong when I was a 5. It had Lily Tomlin in it. Does anyone remember it? It would probably be just awful if I tried to sit through it again, but at the time I thought it was amazing.

The unseasonably warm weather seems to be continuing. I haven't come out the house with a scarf or gloves since I returned last Tuesday. Saturday was the best day of all. My roommates Juleen and Sara and I went to SoHo to browse in the wool shops. As we walked up West Broadway, all the restaurants had their glass doors opened to the elements - they're usually bolted shut til May with a canvas awning covering the door to keep out the chill. People were dining at sidewalk tables, laughing and enjoying the weather and especially the atmosphere. Brazilian music and delicious smells wafted out on to the street. In every way it was springtime.

Let's hope this keeps up!

Platform 9 3/4

We were changing trains at Kings Cross the other day and nearly ended up at Hogwarts!