Alien Spouse

The Things We Left Behind.

We got a phone call from today from the guy we had previously been subletting from.  He had noticed that there were a few things we had forgotten to take with us.

The Doc popped over to pick them up, and the list includes:

• A single one penny British stamp.
• A handful of small change found under the sofa.  To be totally precise there were five one cent coins.
• A stove-top kettle (which, fair enough, we had forgotten accidentally on purpose).
• A frying pan, which wasn't ours, but he absolutely insists was not his.
• One of those blue ice-pack thingies for keeping coolers cold in summer.  We do not have a cooler to keep cool, so again this isn't ours.
• All of the cleaning products we had left there, to replace the ones we had used.  Including half a bottle of washing-up liquid.
• Charcoal lighter fluid.  We have burnt no charcoal since leaving London.
• Insect repellent.
• A shopping list we had left on the fridge.

Umm, Thanks?

Care Package.

As a housewarming present Mum sent us some essentials, and she timed it pretty well perfectly because it actually arrived on Thursday and we collected it from the post office on Friday.

Inside the parcel were digestive biscuits, Marmite in a squeezy jar, a fridge magnet that miaows, some Thai spices, a Dr Who adventure on CD, alphabet cookie cutters and a small selection of M&S finest knickers and nightwear. The shorts from the pyjama set go with our pink satin quilt rather well, as you can see. I gave them the Cinema-scope treatment, because you really can't get much more glamorous than holding up your PJs with a big pink satin bow!  They look like something Sandra Dee would have worn whilst having a pillow fight!

We had tea and the dark chocolate digestives, sitting by the windows again, as soon as I got home this evening.  After that we rushed out to buy the ingredients for Thai fried rice with pineapple, coconut and prawns; this is cooked by the Doc to a recipe for which those Thai spices Mum sent were an elusive and vital ingredient.

So my Mum basically arranged for us to have one of our favourite meals, that we've been missing for months now, on our second night in our new home. 

My Mum ROCKS!

Birdies and Bunnies and Golfers! Oh My!

I promise I will stop talking about the new house.

Just not today.

We love it!  It's so peaceful, but yet not boring because of all The Nature.  When you look out of the window you see grass, ponds and streams, trees, birds, bunnies, golfers and occasionally a Siamese no-tail cat we are choosing to call "Stumpy", who stares at us whenever we are out on the deck.  Add to that, that whilst driving to and from the house in the past 24 hours, we have seen chipmunks, frogs and even more bunnies. 

This is as opposed to the view from our old place of a car park of beaten-up cars, and then a five lane highway, before your eye could land gratefully on the greenery of the nearest mountain ridge.  And driving to and from we never saw any animals whatsoever; unless you count monster trucks, which I do not.

Imagine this:  When you stand on the deck you do not hear wanna-be frat boys wrestling, and singing along to appallingly misogynistic rap; in fact what you hear is the gentle sound of water running in a stream, and birds singing.

It is ridiculously pleasant.

Oh, and our new bed arrived yesterday and I am here to say that I love memory foam mattresses and pillows.  Particularly when you can smugly say that you didn't pay for the hyper expensive swiss type, but in fact went with a local company at a fraction of the price.

I give the new house Two Thumbs Up, and I look forward to our first weekend there.

A House Warming for Two.

I can highly recommend celebrating your first night in a new house by drinking Chardonnay Champagne from Sailor Jerry pint glasses (recently purchased from Newberry Comics, Boston, MA).

It induces a pleasant feeling of squiffiness.

California: Now Slightly Less Unconstitutional!

Yay for California's Supreme Court for ruling that the state law banning Gay marriages was unconstitutional!  I can't believe that law was passed in 2000, it seems so draconian to me.

And let me take this opportunity to clearly state that Alien Spouse supports Gay Spouses everywhere!

Welcome to Our New Home!

We were already up and putting stuff in the car at eight thirty this morning, and we stopped off at Panera Breads for pastries, so we could have breakfast in our new home.

That's our view!  And those are our new floor cushions!  And on the plain white plate are our delicious pastries!

Hoorah!

We Have Keys!

So Doc C picked me up from work yesterday (actually he showed up at four because he was bouncing off the walls with excitement.  I made him go to his office until I'd finished for the day), then we went to our new house to meet up with our lovely landlady and get the keys.

I don't know if it's because the house has been re-carpeted, or if we are both true pessimists at heart, but we had both remembered the house being an awful lot smaller than it really is.  It was a pleasant surprise to find the kitchen isn't post-it size, it's actually at least A4.

We started lugging stuff over from the old place straight away, pausing only to pick up take-away pizza and buy shower curtains, so we actually got most of it done by about 10.30.  We were seriously considering sleeping on the floor there, but Doc C thought that might screw up his back, so we went back to the old place for one last night.  sigh.

So tomorrow we'll probably need to do two or three more runs, and that'll be it.  One thing you can say for having moved internationally is that it certainly hones your packing skills.  We are almost frighteningly efficient now.

It's Not All Sunshine and Flowers - Just Mostly!

As I've mentioned we are very excited about the new house, but there are a couple of negative points about the move that I should mention. 

For one thing the kitchen is tiny, I'd estimate it's about the size of a large post-it note.  Fortunately for me that is The Doc's domain for the most part; and he was so hypnotised by the wood-burning fire in the living room, that he decided he could live with having to back out of the kitchen, because there is no space to turn around.

Secondly we checked up on cable and internet charges, and, Wow, it is expensive.  it's fine for the first six months but then the price more than triples, and we're not falling for that old trick.  Not till I'm employed in a full time capacity that is.

So I'll now be mainly blogging from work; which is sort of what I'm doing right now, ahem, so it shouldn't effect your regular Alien Spouse transmission adversely during the week.  However if I do get a bit sporadic on weekends, you'll know the reason why.

Reasons to Move.

We are ready to move!  Let's do this!  Everything we own in the Mini, right now!

Ok, so actually we don't get the key until after five this evening, and we have to sleep in the old place tonight because our new bed isn't being delivered until tomorrow.  Other than that we are all systems go, Go, GO!!!

I thought I'd post a couple of pictures to illustrate what we definitely won't be missing.

This first shot is a delightful portrait of the en-suite bathroom toilet's cistern, are you with me so far?  Do you see the little pink valve?  Do you see the white thing attaching the chain to the valve?  It looks a bit like a freezer bag twist, doesn't it?  Mainly because that is exactly what it is.

I doubt that's a job done by a professional plumber, my money would be on a DIY cheap fix by the owners.  The problem is that occasionally it will get stuck and prop the valve wide open, and the toilet is left running.  Or, even sneakier, it will prop it open just a little bit, so there is a slow trickle and then the cistern will flush itself every so often, it especially loves to do this late at night.  So after flushing you are required to stand next to the damned thing and check if it all sounds right before you can walk away. 

I will not miss that!

The second picture, which is a bit fuzzy, is of the power sockets behind our bed.  That beige thing is the box spring, and usually you can't see this socket because our mattress is flush with this wall.  I only noticed this last week, whilst looking for a power source to charge my phone from, but I felt uncomfortable using it.  As The Doc said "How has our bed not caught on fire?"

I will not miss that either!

Couple that with the lack of sound proofing, and the vertical blinds that are slightly too short, meaning there is a light shining in my eyes all night and I think you start to get the picture.

In short our flat is an annoying death trap, bring on moving day!

Packed and Ready to Go!

We are getting the keys to our new house tomorrow evening, and officially moving in on Thursday.  We are both very happy and excited about this.

The Doc has been packing for the past couple of days, been even more impressively somehow managed to get me to pack most of my belongings this evening.

I know for a fact my Mother probably needed to sit down for a moment when she read that.  She's had to move me more times then anyone else, and how she's remained sane is beyond me; I say that mainly because I am legendarily bad at being packed on time.  At the end of my first year of University Mum came to pick me up, only to find I'd left all of my posters and postcards up on the walls to show her because I was so proud of the artistic arrangement.  She was visibly dismayed by all of the work there was still left to do.

I don't know what's changed, maybe as I've grown older I've simply learnt that moving is less painful if you just get all the preparation done in a timely fashion; or possibly Doc C used some sort of Jedi Mind Trick on me.  He's always doing that.

Either way, I am ready for Thursday now and I am delighted at the prospect of getting out of here.

The Boys-Next-Door

The Boys-Next-Door left for the summer at the weekend, it's been lovely and quiet ever since.  They are clearly coming back though because the fishing tableau is still there, and impressively survived the not-a-tornado the other night.

They've also left a light on in their apartment.

I was considering telling the letting agents, so they could go in and switch it off, but The Doc is against that idea.  He thinks that it's not our business to police their lighting bills, and they wouldn't thank us if we did. Which is true. 

Anyway, they're probably growing, um, something in there and I really don't want to get involved. 

Once again, I cannot wait until we move...

Ugly Group of Statues Reading.

Outside the University Library and Bookshop is a walled flower bed, and on one corner of that flower bed is arranged a particularly ugly set of statues:

From this angle you can't really tell that the boy's neck looks dislocated, but trust me it looks painful.  I decided to award the lomo-ish close-up to the cat, because I find the longer you look at it the more you start to think it's actually a dog, and eventually it starts to look oddly human.

Clearly I'm not alone in disliking these figures, because someone has defaced the books with a silver marker pen.  The boy's book now says "Boy...Learn how to read", which seems a little unfair as he is depicted as reading the very page that has been defaced.  The girl's book on the other hand says "ANARCY", which I particularly love because either the misspelling of anarchy in graffiti is a deliberately anarchic action in itself, or the graffiti-artist is particularly stupid.  One or the other, either way makes me happy really.

 

What Would John Stuart Mill Say?

Having moved to the sofa last night, so we could sleep without wind noise, we simply heaped the covers and pillows back on the bed today.

The problem is that now neither of us wants to re-make the bed, because it will be a hassle.  A subtle war of wills has ensued.

However one of us, naming no names, has resorted to lightly batting the other with a copy of "The Subjection of Women" in an attempt to compel their wife into doing this domestic duty.

Oh, the irony.

Boxing Day.

I'm at work this afternoon, but The Doc has no office based commitments today, so he is at home.  He's starting to pack ready for our move on Thursday.

Before he dropped me off at work today (I usually do walk, but because of the high winds I was driven in for a change) Doc C told me of his intent to pack up the whole of the living room, with the exception of the playstation, and maybe start on his stuff.

I'm not concerned about what I'll find when I get home.  I'm sure he'll do a very thorough job.  Eep.

Gusts of Up To Sixty Miles an Hour.

On the coast of North Carolina there was a tornado yesterday.  It was only a small one, compared to the ones in Georgia, Missouri and Oklahoma.  However, Tornado?  Like the one in "Wizard of Oz"?  Ooh!

Living up in the mountains, we don't get actual tornadoes because the mountains break them up, but that does mean you get very high winds.

Last night we could hear the whole house creaking and ended up sleeping on the sofa, because our bed is right next to a window, which is right next to a tree, and the whole thing was unsettling.  I'm convinced I felt the bed move, but Doc C doubts me on that.

When we woke up this morning, our window hadn't blown in, or anything dramatic like that; but the house across the way had lost some panelling.

As you can see from this photo, we live in a house made of Styrofoam.

Graduation Cupcakes

Yesterday was Graduation, which meant lots of parents filling up all the parking spaces in town; but equally that one of the local supermarkets (April, I'm sure you can guess exactly which one!) jumped on the speciality cupcake wagon with abandon.

This stand is merely my favourite display of those on offer.

I used the lomo button on Picnik because a) it is my favourite effect at the moment, and b) ohmygod that wall is GREEN. I thought maybe lomoing it might help a bit.

Oh, and I don't think the power cord has anything to do with the cupcakes, which is sort of a pity because I think it would be even better if those little plastic mortar boards lit up.

Kinetic Phase Two Week Five: Complete

1. A+ - It was SO nice to do some exercise after the road trip.  I had Two Cardio and Three Combat games, so it was straight back in at the deep end.  Lovely!  I felt really lethargic, so it was just brilliant to be stretching, punching, kicking, ducking and jumping. 
2. A+
3. A+
4. E
5. A+

I thought this might happen, I've been in such a rush this week to try and fit the work-outs in that I didn't make notes about what I did on which days.

I know exactly where the E came from though!  I couldn't work-out on Friday, and the next time I logged in Matt had a few things to say about that.  So, if I miss a whole week I simply get asked if I want to start again, or continue from where I last played; but if I miss one day I get a sorrowful little speech about how I need to commit to the program to achieve anything?  Hmmm!  That seems a little bit silly to me, especially after a full 17 weeks of commitment on my part.

What with one thing and another I've decided to stop using the personal trainer mode, because it's not giving me enough flexibility with the days and I think a program of six work-outs a week is too much (my knees are killing me!).  Instead I'm going to use the routine builder to set up my own work-outs every other day, and start doing yoga again on the days in-between.  I really want to get back into doing yoga regularly, and I also think that would be a better balance of cardio and toning for me.

The measurements for this week are:

• Bust - 38.5 Inches (Down by 0.25 Inches from last week)
• Bicep - 11.75 Inches (No change from last week)
• Waist - 35.00 Inches (Down by 0.25 Inches from last week)
• Hips - 42.00 Inches (Down by 0.25 Inches from last week)
• Thigh - 22.25 Inches (Down by 0.25 Inches from last week)

I'm pleased to see I'm back to losing quarter inches after last week's road-trip plateau.  I'll still be measuring myself every week now that Kinetic is being scaled back to three or four times a week, and if the inch loss stops or, worse, starts to become inch gain then I'll go back to personal trainer mode.  Whatever it takes to lose those twenty pounds!