Alien Spouse

Skirt and Boots.

I bloody love Autumn. Today I wore my brown DM boots, with a skirt from H&M. 

Not just any skirt mind you, this is an olive green heavy cotton skirt, with a black lace print design.  I really like the slightly flared shape, and all in all it's just a great skirt.

Truthfully I haven't been able to wear it for about 5 years, because I've just been too fat for it.  You know how you are supposed to go through your wardrobe and edit out anything you haven't worn for a year or more?  I have a similar method, which simply involves moving house, or even continents, every few years, and see what I can be bothered to pack.  Anything I still really like usually makes the selection.

Which is why I brought a skirt I couldn't actually zip up to America with me.  It's got nothing to do with this being the skirt I wore on my first date with Doc C.  That's just a total coincidence.

Fresh Blood.

Today was Move-In day for the freshman students.

Based on my research, conducted whilst assisting carrying loads of stuff to dorm rooms, I would estimate that the campus levels of yoga mats has been increased by 25%, flat screen TVs by 65%, well loved childhood bunnies by 15% and really short shorts exponentially. 

It's also at least five times louder, and our studies indicate most of that is really terrible music.

Smiley Face, New Bike.

Doc announced this morning that he was going to look at bikes today, with a view to purchasing one. When he moved to London he brought his trusty bike, The Beast, with him and I remember sitting on the grass outside the National Portrait Gallery when we first started dating and seeing him come cycling up and thinking what a handsome devil he was, so I was all for him getting another bike.  For the past year or more I have been trying my best to persuade him that it would be a good investment in his health, both physical and mental, because the man needs to burn off energy some how!

There are some really good bike shops in town so Doc didn't have to travel far for his fix.  He was gone for about three hours, I didn't go because I would just have been in the way really and I wanted to watch more episodes of "Fantasy Island", then I got a text announcing Doc C was a very happy man.  The smiley face I super-imposed on this picture looks positively dour in comparison to the expression he had on his face when he got home with his new friend.

It's a Tarmac made by Specialized, with an all carbon fiber frame, so it weighs a whole 17 pounds.  That's slightly less than the cats weigh, and you definitely can't get anywhere at all on them.

Ngaio Marsh 34: Black Beech and Honeydew.

Here is the last book in our series.  This is Ngaio Marsh's autobiography and I have to say I think they did her proud with this cover.  I love that the white band in the middle, with the same typeface and layout has been used to integrate it with her novels; whilst the image in the oval is the only photograph in the range which I think subtly indicates that this is not a murder mystery.  I also think they chose a nice picture of her, and that it all works together really well.

I read the autobiography, which I like very much, after I read an incredibly boring biography.  I forget who wrote the biography now, all I remember is that it was a woman, but she was very scathing of "Black Beech and Honey Dew" as a source of hard facts whilst committing two unpardonable sins of her own which made me dispose of the book before I moved here.  First the biography is really boring (and that is definitly the fault of the author and not the subject) and long winded, secondly she gave away spoilers without any warning whatsoever!  By way of contrast the autobiography Miss Marsh writes about her own life is very interesting and has some great colourful stories, even though it's true she doesn't address all of the questions one would want answered.

Bookcases As Far As The Eye Can See. Beautiful.

Today we went to the D.I.Y. superstore to see if they had another two of the white bookcases in stock, which, very fortunately, they did.  So we bought those and then I played with all the Halloween stuff that they already had in stock.  I'm pretty keen on getting the small fog machine and tiny strobe light, but I also very much liked the polystyrene gravestones and string of skull lanterns that played the theme from "Halloween" whilst flickering on and off.  I am already getting very excited about the prospect of Halloween, and I really want to have a party this year.

Back to the bookshelves, I put them together this afternoon, and immediately put my books on them.  I have to say this is the first time in my life that I can remember having more shelves than books, and I am very excited to have all that space to fill.  Doc couldn't believe that I didn't have more books here, but as I pointed out I had to get rid of several box-fulls before I moved from Brighton to London, and even more when we moved from the UK to the US.  Plus I've left some in storage with my parents, Thanks Mum!

As you can see our bedroom is quite a rich shade of blue, and all of the bedroom furniture is dark wood (That's the foot of the bed you can see in the foreground of the photo).  When we first moved in we were worried about that blue, because it does seem really dark when you first see it, and I don't think we would have chosen it ourselves, but, hey we're renting, so we've just got used to it.  Still I didn't want to try and match the dark wood furniture with the bookcases, because I wanted to lighten the room up by echoing the white of the skirting boards and ceiling.  I really like how it looks, so I'm pleased we went with that idea.

Finally, yes I did put the photo through Picnik, that's an effect they've just added called Panography-ish.  I really like it!

Clockwork Ants.

Move in went really well as far as I saw, it was really well organised and there were just so many people helping out that it ran very smoothly.

The basic idea was that a car would pull into one of the designated car parks and disgorge it's load of student belongings onto the grass next to that car park.  Everything would then be labeled with a piece of tape and the room number written on it.  The helpers (all wearing special T-shirts and name tags) would descend on the pile and carry it into the dorms, leaving it outside the dorm room, whilst the car was moved to a more out-of-the-way car park.  There were people co-ordinating all of this, insisting cars be moved promptly and telling the helpers which pile of stuff's turn it was to be moved.  It was like watching clockwork ants or something.

For most of the day I was in my office working, but I did carry two loads of stuff and snapped a load of photos to be used on our department's web-page.  It was really fun!

Organised Chaos.

Today is Moving In day on campus.

There will be thousands of students descending on us, and all with at least a car load of stuff with them.  None of the staff or faculty are expecting to find a parking space, or to get much work done today.

It was predicted that it would rain heavily today as well, it hasn't started yet, but the sky does look very grey so it may happen yet.

If I survive, I shall report back to you later.

Things We Left Behind in the Move: Part 1700.

I checked the post this morning and all there was in our lovely little pre-WWII post box was a letter to Doc C from the guy we sub-let from last year.  Naturally my first reaction was "What Now?!?! Another stamp?"

When Doc opened it inside the envelope were an old set of passport photos of Doc C and...

One of our two official copies of our wedding certificate.

How on earth did we leave that behind in the move?  I thought all of that sort of stuff was extremely carefully put away in my Folder of Important Paperwork.  How did this one escape?  And where was it that it's taken over a month for it to turn up?

Most peculiar.

The Ongoing Credit Card Saga.

So you know how I've been here since October right?  And I've got everything pretty much sorted out (apart from that whole full time employment thing, but that is a subject for a whole other post!), with the exception of my last remaining UK credit card.

The problem was that two months ago my credit card company refused to accept my US debit card as a means of payment.  All of the alternative methods of paying the bill that they suggested (after much badgering from me, I may add) automatically incurred the ridiculously high banking fees that are applied to international banking, and would actually more than double my monthly payments.  As a short term solution that might be fine if you are rolling in cash, but if you are a mere mortal it's completely unacceptable.  I contacted their special elite branch of customer services for a better solution.

Last night I got two letters from my credit card company.

One (addressed to my married name) was my latest bill, which categorically stated it had to be paid by the seventh of July, or there would be Consequences because I would then have missed three payment dates.

The other (addressed to my maiden name) was from customer services. The letter said they apologised for how long this was taking, that they appreciated my patience and that they would get back to me by the seventh of July with an answer.

Hmmm.

Do you see the problem there?  I hate to be paranoid, but that's just such a convenient coincidence of dates, isn't it?  It almost seems like they want me to not be able to pay them on time.

It's a damn good thing that I'd already paid my bill really.

It turns out we hadn't closed our joint bank account when we left the UK, which I honestly thought we had, so that meant I could go on-line to use Paypal to transfer money into that account, and then pay the credit card bill with my UK debit card.  Yes Paypal do charge a fee, but it's nowhere near as high and it's not the banks getting it, which has become a point of principle to me.  I'll pay what I owe, and no more!

You know when I was getting ready to move over here, it simply never occurred to me that one of the most enduringly frustrating aspects of the whole thing would be trying to pay my credit card bills.

Bleeding Ears.

One of the things that really bugged us at the old flat was that the girl downstairs would blast music unexpectedly at all hours of the day or night.  She seemed to only own three CD singles, and we could never decipher what songs they were because all we could hear through the floor would be a thumping bass and the highest notes of the vocals.  I know I've mentioned this before, and now we've moved out you would think I could move on but I seem to be suffering from post traumatic stress. 

To get some idea of what it was like I'd suggest that you clamp a stereo speaker to the ceiling of the room directly under your bed.  Make sure that the stereo is turned up as high as it will go, and it needs to make the bed literally shake to be truly effective.  Then set the stereo to play music at random, but preferably very early in the morning or really late at night.  Extra points if you work out an algorithm that ensures that although the music doesn't play every night, but it will always play on nights when it is particularly important that you get a good nights sleep, say the night before a job interview or an international flight.  Now live with that for eight months.

It's actually only today that I've realised that one of the songs was "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis.  I rooted for Leona when she was on "X Factor" and I was delighted when she won, but the negative associations that I now have with her career making international hit are very strong.  It now sets off a Pavlovian reaction, which finds me automatically reaching for my ear plugs.

Moving Offices.

Not content with having moved house, today Doc C is moving offices.  He's going all the way across the hall from his last office, a distance of about 10 feet door-to-door.

The new office does has three distinct advantages

1. It was not formerly been a broom closet (not a joke, it was the actual former use for the Doc's current office)
2. It does not have thin doors leading directly to the classrooms on either side.  This was the set up in the current office, meaning the Doc could hear every word from those classrooms, and has therefore been attending a lot more lectures than he'd intended to.
3. It has it's very own blackboard on one wall.  I fully intend to write graffiti on it regularly.

Of course as the part-time, temporary, assistant departmental secretary there is absolutely nothing in my job description about shifting furniture around, and, as I may have mentioned, Doc C is the only member of staff specifically barred from giving me work to do; yet somehow I have a premonition that I'll be moving bookcases around at some point this afternoon.

Golf: No, We Are Not Intending To Take It Up.

As I may have mentioned we really like our new home, and we enjoy our view looking out over the golf course, but this also brings us to our only slight problem.  It's something we perhaps should have foreseen, but it honestly didn't occur to me as a potential source of aggravation.

The issue is that now we live on a golf course people keep telling us that we have to start playing golf, and we do not want to.

Neither of us are remotely interested in playing golf, it does not strike me as the type of game that I will be any good at, and, whilst Doc can hit the ball if forced to, he doesn't really like it either.  Still Doc's family in particular have decided golf will be our new hobby, with his Dad actually saying this week that "Golf is a good game for married couples". Which I'm sure it can be, just not this married couple.

I have a very real concern that at Christmas we will find ourselves unwrapping matching argyle sweaters and quite possibly golf club cosies, with a comedy British theme to them. 

I think I fear the matching jumpers most of all.  shiver.

Kinetic Phase Two Week Seven: Umm...

Quite honestly this week I've been enjoying luxuriating in all this space and quiet in an aesthetically pleasing environment.  I did switch on Kinetic to check that I had enough space and light, but that has really been it.

Ok, I know I am being most remiss about my work out schedule this month, but we have just moved house and it takes a bit of time to get everything organised properly. 

And I also knew writing about this on my blog would make me feel guilty; so, knowing me, that will probably be the impetus get back into the routine next week.  I don't want to have to write another post explaining myself next Sunday, two in a row is quite enough.

I have finished reading the nutrition bookthough, and it was very interesting (Jayne at Barfoot Kitchen Witch posted something similar today.  It's a good-food-prepared-lovingly conspiracy!)  I didn't know what to expect from it when I bought it, but rather delightfully it preaches almost exactly the type of diet I've been trying to follow for years, which I based on the sensible advice of my Mother combined with additional bits of information gathered from here and there.  It's nice to have that synthesised into an actual medically sound argument though.  It sort of bolsters my belief in my own nutritional common sense.

Essentially it all boils down to:  I could stand to eat a lot more fruit and vegetables, and no I don't really need that biscuit.

The Sofa Has Landed!

Two picture posts in one day?  I know, Crazy!

This second shot is celebrating the fact that the sofa arrived today.  A mere twenty four hours late, which I believe is what they call "Mountain Time".

Last night Doc C was furious about this, having waited in all afternoon for the sofa to arrive; but when the delivery guys arrived today and immediately started apologising profusely, all he said to them was "That's Ok, shit happens!"

That is one thing I love about The Doc, he picks his moments to have a rant very wisely and will otherwise simply opt to be very chilled out about things (People at The Booth are probably reading this and saying "Whatever!", but it's totally true... outside of ticket sales).

Finally having a sofa is great but, even better, the multi-region DVD player arrived today; so I think we might be going shopping for a flat screen TV after work.  Eeeeeehhhhh!!!!

Coffee Table

This is our new coffee table doing what it does best - Holding an entirely random selection of our stuff about a foot above the floor.

If you go to the Flickr image (I've set it so when you click on this photo it'll take you straight there!  The wonders of the new Typepad compose page are manifold!), I may have gone mad with the labels function.  But that is what it's there for after all.

Shiny-and-Dead Plus Sweet-and-Pink

I put these two little figurines on our new dressing table, and thought they make quite a good visual representation of my split personality.

On the one hand, I love that sweet little Momiji doll; and her dress and parasol are both so pretty and pink! Plus she's called Sunshine, and she was my very mysterious Secret Santa gift from the last Christmas Do I attended at The Booth. 

On the other hand, can you really get much more fabulous than a Mexican-Day-of-the-Dead-Cabaret-Singer figurine?  She's wearing full-length black-glitter dress!  She could easily be a Drag Queen!  And I bought her on my first trip to Boston with The Doc, at a great shop called Buckaroos' Mercantile where the shop owner stepped in eventually to stop me buying stuff.

I also think that together (if they were real live people), they would make a fabulous Eurovision entry... sigh...

Wait, Let Me Check My Blog...

When a resident alien, such as myself, moves house they have to let USCIS know within ten days; failure to report a change of address is "...punishable by fine or imprisonment and/or removal."  So I did that yesterday, and all it really requires is filling in a form on-line.  Easy.

It's not a complicated form, I was fine with the past and present addresses, and even my alien ID number; but when asked the date of my last entry into the US and my port of entry I had one of those moments.  I knew the answers to those questions, I really did, but for a few seconds I doubted myself and I certainly did not want to make a mistake on a form required by the US Government on pain of fine or imprisonment and/or removal.  It might not look good.

That is when keeping a blog came into it's own.  I opened up another window, went to Alien Spouse and was confidently filling out those official boxes within moments.

Thanks Alien Spouse!  It's like having an actual memory!

Blue Glitter Skull Badge.

Today got off to an excellent start when I was putting some of my things away, and found my blue glitter skull badge.

This was a present from the ever gorgeous Ginger Jen, and it was my "something blue" for my wedding to The Doc (he had skulls on his tie and socks too.  Which makes it sound like a goth wedding, it really wasn't.)  I had the badge pinned onto the strap of my little black satin handbag, but I took it off when we went out to our anniversary dinner a few months ago and have been looking for it ever since.

I have no idea how it got into my pink-with-brown-polka-dots satin weekend bag, but I was delighted to see it there.

We Could Have Gone Tasteful, But Where Is The Fun In That?

Rich and Kev were shown the local sights whilst I was at work yesterday, and very much liked our small town and the university campus.  In fact they are planning to come again, and stay long enough to fit in a round of golf.

Rich was slightly disappointed that they hadn't been able to fit the sofa on the truck, but as it happens we found one that we like in a thrift shop today.  It's a three-seater sofa bed, which is upholstered in a beige, green, orange and brown plaid.  It's as if they'd rounded up a bunch of golfers in the seventies and skinned them for their sports coats to make our new sofa.  It's so tacky it has come back around to being really fun, it's very comfortable and it's being delivered on Thursday afternoon.

Plus it was $70 (With another $20 knocked off that, but then delivery was $20.  So let's call it full price, with free delivery.)  In the same thrift shop we also found a little square coffee table that could do with a polish, but that is otherwise in good condition.

So we are almost fully furnished!  It's very exciting!

The Story of Our Bedroom Furniture.

We spent most of yesterday waiting for The Doc's brother Rich, and his buddy Kev, to arrive with some furniture that Rich was giving to us.  He was driving it down from Boston, and we were told to expect him on Sunday morning.  At about mid-day we got a phone call to say they were in Pennsylvania, so we knew it was going to be awhile.

Through out the afternoon we were anxiously watching the weather, because the furniture was being moved in an open-bed truck, with a tarp tied over the top of it.  When it started to rain, we were concerned. When it started to rain really hard, we made detailed plans for how best to protect the brand-new cream carpets from the wet furniture.  We were particularly worried about the sofa.  How would we save a water logged sofa?  Would there be any point in trying?  How much Febreeze would it require to really get rid of that mildew smell?  Which local thrift shops did furniture collection?

We got a couple of progress reports through out the afternoon that did nothing to assuage our concerns; the tarp had been ripped to shreds by the storm and they were stopping to buy a new one; they'd been the front car in a triple rear-ending, but it was ok and they were back on the road now.

In the end they arrived at about midnight, and immediately unloaded all of the furniture, which was surprisingly dry.  Rich and Kev even lugged a chest of drawers, a dressing table and various bits of bed frame upstairs to our bedroom.  Clearly to Bostonians driving for 17 hours is no obstacle to completing a job properly.

We needn't have worried about the sofa; it hadn't fitted on the truck, so they brought a small desk instead.

Kinetic Phase Two Week Six: Yes, About That...

I knew I probably would find this week difficult to fit exercise into, what with the whole moving house thing, but as it turned out I didn't do any!  The living room was filled with boxes all week, and I packed all of my exercise clothes on Tuesday, so it was pretty much over and done with then.

No doubt Matt would have a few things to say about commitment, and having to put in a sustained effort to get results, but I've decided not to beat myself up about it.  We've had a very busy week, and I haven't had the time or the resources.

I did however buy a set of scales for the bathroom, which is unheard of for me.  I have never owned scales before, but as I have a specific weight loss goal I think they are necessary.  That doesn't mean I'll be adding my weight to each week's Kinetic round-up, it's just an additional tool in my personal weight loss project.

At the same time we bought a blender (Black and Decker, 20% off at Lowes!), to make smoothies with.  Sometimes I just do not want salad, and a smoothie would be a nice change of pace.  When I say smoothie I mean a drink made with fresh fruit and some vegetables (like spinach or avocado) with yoghurt and/or tofu.  I'm not planning on adding ice cream and calling it health-food, or anything daft like that.

I also bought another book on nutrition, so stand by for my discovering some fantastic new food that will change my life forever.  Actually I doubt that will happen, but I like the author's approach so far, and I may drop the odd tip-bit in here if I find out about some nutritional gold mine.

So in summary, a bad week for exercise, but a good week for overall intentions for my future health.

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.

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...

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.

Moving in May Rocks!

We have purchased (or got a binding quote on) the following items for our new house:

1. Cutlery (Reduced in the sale at the kitchen place)
2. Mattress and box spring (Reduced in the sale at the Mattress place)
3. Memory foam pillows (Reduced in the sale at JC Penney)
4. Full set of sheets and pillow cases (Reduced in the sale at JC Penney)
5. New towels (Reduced in the sale at JC Penney)
6. A vacuum cleaner (Reduced in the sale at Kmart)

Do you notice a trend here? 

So far we have not paid the full retail price for anything.  The April sales are our friends.

Mattresses - The Final Showdown.

We went back and re-tested the mattresses on our short list.  It was another really tough afternoon of being extremely comfortable.

We had to lie on them for fifteen minutes each, and on the first one this seemed like a really long time.  I think we knew we'd found a winner with the second mattress, when the Doc had to make a real effort to wake himself up and ask me how long we'd been testing that mattress.  That's when I checked the time, and found that we'd been happily dozing there for 25 minutes.  In the middle of the shop showroom.

So we are going with the locally-made faux-tempurpedic, so that means it's helping the local economy and hasn't been shipped a ridiculous distance so it's also an enviromentall sound choice. Of course it doesn't hurt that this was also the cheapest of our top two, and is mysteriously $50 cheaper if we buy the box spring with it, rather than if we just buy the mattress.  Well, ok then, we'll take the box spring too I suppose.

It's a lot cheaper than buying a bed back in England, but it's still pretty expensive considering our current budget.  With this in mind, I'm fairly certain that the furniture in our new place is going to be a luxuriously comfortable bed in our room, and a charming selection of floor cushions everywhere else.

Yellow Chair.

I thought I'd show you more of our neighbours' yellow reclining chair, in all it's natural glory, and the tableau in which it is a centre piece.

Let me explain what you are looking at here.  This is the balcony porch of our building, and this is the view from our front door facing the neighbours' section of the porch.

Here you can see the chair.  The red and black thing is a monster flag celebrating the University's sporting prowess (I have no idea why the flag is red and black, those are not the University team colours).  You may also be able to see a handle sticking out over the balcony railing.  The railing also has blue fairy lights wrapped round it and plugged into the exterior lightbulb socket.

If we switch now to the front shot of the balcony, you will see the nautical theme.  This is simply created by a life belt and a fish rod lashed to the railing.

And at the end of the rod?  Is a fish, of course. 

I think they butchered one of those hideous animatronic singing fish wall plaques to get it.  I think this mainly because you can still see all the cogs and wires hanging out of the side of it.

Once again let me reiterate that we cannot wait to move.

Waiting for Godot. The Guy Who's Delivering the Mattress.

We spent Saturday in mattress showrooms, thrift shops and antique shops seeing what sort of stuff we could find to furnish our new house with.

Mattress shopping is surprisingly tiring.  It's all "Lie down on this, and see how you like the firmness.  Ok, now try this one that's recommended by NASA."  Then you have to really think about which was more comfortable, and you can't be sure so then you have to lie on them again.  After much exhausting lounging in comfort we narrowed it down to two, but before we make a final decision we are actually going to have to go back and lie on each of them for a full fifteen minutes as recommended by all the mattress shopping guides.  It's not going to be easy, but we have to do it.

We also found loads of cheap furniture in the thrift stores, but the antique shop we went to was imported English antiques and it was super expensive.  I thought it was exhorbitant given what they were selling was really only in decent condition and none of it was that special.  Mum, I am telling you now that you would make an absolute killing over here.

Oddly my favourite thing in the Antique place was actually a window:

Yes, that is indeed the disembodied head of the playwright Samuel Beckett in the middle of it. 

Because, after all, what home is complete without a stained glass image of your favourite minimalist proponent of the Theatre of the Absurd?

It did lead The Doc and I to decide that if we ever commission a window featuring a disembodied head, it will be Patrick McGoohan as Number 6. Probably doing that eyebrow thing.

Meet The Neighbours (Or At Least Their Coors Light Boxes)

On my way to work yesterday I actually did a double take, paused to consider the information my eyes had given my brain and then got out my trusty camera.

Our neighbours had put their rubbish outside their door, and apart from the usual white plastic rubbish bag, there was a large selection of boxes neatly duct taped together, as you can see it's mainly Coors Light boxes with a pizza box and another unidentifiable carton.

So on the one hand, this might have actually been an efficient way to throw away cardboard, without using up loads of plastic.  But if they were trying to environmentally friendly then really the boxes should have been flattened, or, even better, recycled.

On the other hand, maybe it's an art installation.  I've certainly seen weirder pieces than this before now.

But wait, I hear you cry, what's that yellow upholstered thing with the brown handle?  Well, that would be the reclining chair that has sat outside their front door come sun, rain or snow.

The Doc and I have a new mantra now which basically goes "we'removingin4weeks - Deep Breath - we'removingin4weeks - Deep Breath - we'removingin4weeks" 

Hey, Did I mention We're Moving Soon?

I don't think I've ever posted a picture of the front drive way of our apartment complex. 

Probably because it's, err, ugly.  Yep, that's the word. Ugly!

Wait, what's that hanging out of the door of the red car?  This being student housing, it's probably text book cover.  Right?

Six Weeks to Moving Date. Squeeeeeeal!

This week the Doc and I signed a lease on a house, and we will be moving in about six weeks.  I didn't want to even mention it until we had the paperwork in our hot little paws, because of the jinxing possibility.

The house we are moving into is the one I posted about back in February.

At the time I wrote that we couldn't afford it, because I still hadn't found a job.  The woman who owns the house very kindly said she would be happy to wait for a while to see how things worked out, and just when we thought she would have to rent it to someone else that's when this job came up.  Lucky is not the word.

How pleased are we to be moving away from the student housing complex?  Well, I don't think it's possible to measure that with the technology currently available.  Even better we're going to move in a fortnight earlier than we were anticipating, because the man we're subleasing from is coming back slightly sooner. 

Finally one of Doc's brothers has been hoarding furniture ever since he heard we were moving to the States.  Doc suspects that it will probably be ugly, but beggars can not be choosers and I don't intend to turn my nose up at a free sofa just at the moment.  Particularly a sofa that is being driven down from Boston for us, accompanied by a bed and, even though we said we didn't want it, probably a dining set.

I am very very excited about all of it.  Even the potentially hideous furniture.

The Chocolate Issue.

Hello.  I'm here today to talk to you about an extremely important subject, one which I am sure is close to many of our hearts.

Chocolate.

I have very strong views on the matter of chocolate, in particular I cannot find a rational explanation why Hershey's chocolate should taste and smell (to me at least) as though it has a generous amount of parmesan cheese in it.  I find it virtually inedible, why would you do that to chocolate?  Why?

One of the major issues of my moving from the UK to America was whether I would be able to get decent (in every sense of the word) chocolate here.  I am not even remotely joking about this.

I eat a strip of chocolate after my evening meal, I don't go crazy but I like to know I'm "allowed" some chocolate and I have a very clear idea on what I want from the chocolate. Specifically I want it to be very good quality with a fairly high cocoa count, but also I require it to have some ethics.  My very favourite chocolate is Montezuma's and if I can't have that, I'll go with Green and Blacks.  Both of these companies have sections of their websites devoted to discussions of fair trade, and I believe they both favour organic ingredients as well.

It was a happy happy day when we discovered Green and Blacks was available from two of the supermarkets here, however it is expensive.

So I'm trying Chocolove, because it was a whole dollar cheaper, and is clearly aiming at the artisan end of the chocolate market.   The packaging is designed to look like a letter with stamps, and inside each wrapper there is a love poem.  I was worried about that at first, was the poem in physical contact with the chocolate?  Would it contaminate the taste?  Fortunately there is a layer of foiled paper in between, so the chocolate is protected from becoming too flowery. 

Now to the important questions.  The packaging says nothing at all about the company's ethical stance, but the website is fairly reassuring on the matter.  The chocolate itself is nice (although I've only tried the raspberries in dark chocolate so far.), and each piece is a generous size with a little heart molded onto it. 

I am also very pleased that Chocolove does not have even a whiff of parmesan, but I'll be on the alert just in case it sneaks in.

P.S. Naturally when writing about fine chocolates, one should probably also mention Thorntons, especially if say your bezza mezza works there...

I Heart Marks and Spencer. sigh.

I am missing Marks and Spencer much more than I expected to, in retrospect I seem remember to reading that other Brits who emigrate often report they feel the same way.  Naturally I thought that was silly, but now I realise that Marks and Sparks has always been there for me, and I hadn't fully appreciated how great they are, until now when I've been cut off cold turkey.  For one thing where am I supposed to buy my undercrackers?  I'm British, I need to know my knickers are from M&S to feel properly dressed.

I also really miss M&S food halls, because they are always such a reassuring place to be, and you know everything is going to be both good quality and delicious.  In particular I really miss their wide range of fruit juices, spicy red lentil soup and my default lunch choice of wholemeal pitta bread, red pepper hummous, raw carrots and falafel.  The night before my visa interview at the American Embassy, I went to the M&S at Marble Arch and bought that for my dinner, as a form of bizarrely healthy comfort food I suppose.

It's coming up to Easter and I know they'll be selling the quirkily traditional and delicious Simnal Cake soon, and there will be another fantastically blatant TV tie-in theme to their Easter Eggs.

Last year was Doctor Who, which was dizzying.  I bought these two Dalek Egg Cups for a pound each about a week after Easter. 

We haven't used them yet and they are kept on display in the living room, safely cocooned in their original packaging but obviously minus the actual easter egg they originally came with.  The egg itself was organic milk chocolate.  You have got to love M&S for that alone.

Myrna!

When you move house, or in my case continents, some times you misplace things. 

A few days ago I was delighted to find my original 1934 MGM publicity postcard for Myrna Loy as Nora in "The Thin Man".  My favourite actress in one of my favourite films.

Quite understandably, I'd tucked the postcard into my copy of "They Had Faces Then.  Annabella to Zorina:  The Superstars, Stars and Starlets of the 1930's".  I love this book, it doesn't just give details of the actresses careers but also includes catty comments about their acting abilities and the odd snippet of gossip.  Many thanks to the BFI library, and their incredible overstocks sales, for bringing it into my life. 

I don't really remember how long I've had the Myrna postcard, as I've only a very vague memory of originally finding her in a box full of postcards in a junk shop, but it's definately well over fifteen years now and the pencilled price on the back indicates I paid a whole £1.50 at the time.

I really must get her a suitably gorgeous art deco-esque frame.

Salad, Carbs and A Whole Barbequed Pig.

In other shopping news, I found spinach, rocket and watercress at the supermarket!  Yay! 

It was far more exciting then it should have been, frankly, and I may have done a little dance in the fresh produce section.  It was even better when we got home and I actually got to put together a spinach, rocket and watercress salad, with a home-made honey-mustard balsamic vinaigrette, a hard-boiled egg and a tin of tuna on top.  It was delicious.

The salad-every-other-day thing seems to be working out quite well for me, because I'm happy that I get to eat what I feel like on other nights of the week (but that does not mean I'm going crazy on non-salad nights).  To put it simply, I cannot live without the promise of some carbs in my life.  I am aware that the quickest way to lose weight is to ditch the carbs, mainly because that's how my gorgeous friend Wayne got his body bikini-ready last summer. 

However, I love my carbs and I cannot lie (I was going to try for a homage to Sir Mix-a-Lot with that, but I could only get one line to scan properly).  Specifically I adore bread, pastry and pasta.  If we had to do some sort of bizarre carb trading deal, then you could probably take rice and potatoes away from me, and I wouldn't mind too much, but please leave the bread alone.  Just step away from the bread.

The Doc is also enjoying my salad nights, because that's when he gets to cook himself a meat-fest.  So far he's been quite restrained, but I know as soon as we move somewhere with an appropriate outdoor space Doc C will be cooking whole pigs on the barbeque. 

So, as you can see, alternate salad night is in fact a friend to everyone.

Bad FedEx. Go to Your Basket.

My shopping horizons have considerably diminished since I left my last job and moved away from London, so I'm aware that I'm getting excited by what I would otherwise regard as fairly mundane purchases.

Having said that, my Lush order arrived at the weekend, and I believe the noise I made was something along the lines of "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!". I love getting stuff from Lush, they send you their latest catalogue with your order and the box always smells nice, because they've popped in a couple of free samples of their lovely soap.

This month I only bought shampoo (Big) and conditioner (Veganese), but that was still pretty expensive once you'd factored in postage and everything.  I worried about the cost, but the Doc (who's paying the credit card bills at the moment, let's not forget) was very sweet about it, he said he knows not only how much I love Lush products, but also that being able to get them over here helps me to not feel quite so isolated from my old life.  So he was very supportive of my purchasing them, and he didn't complain about the cost at all, which was so sweet of him.

When the much anticipated parcel arrived I happened to be in the living room, so I saw the FedEx guy walk past the front window.  He then put the parcel on the door mat, rapped on the door and left.  Now obviously I was at home, but if I hadn't been my brown paper package would have been left sitting outside all by itself.  I'm not so worried about it being stolen, but I could have been away and it could have snowed, or rained, or something.  In which case the integrity of my lovely Lush stuff, particularly the recycled paper catalogue, could have been compromised.

This, people, is precisely why we got a PO box, I only wish we could get Lush to deliver to it.

The List of Future Purchases

With the prospect of me being gainfully employed at some point in the foreseeable future, the Doc and I have started a list of things we want to buy.  It's mainly joint purchases for our prospective new home, like cutlery, bedside lamps and copper-bottomed saucepans. 

However we're also adding in items we want individually, so the Doc has put an external hard drive, a bicycle and an indoor bicycle training stand.

I have put hiking boots and exercise clothes.  After a great deal of thought I also added glasses, because I've had my current pair for over ten years and the lens prescription is totally wrong now.

I can't believe that my first thought was "Ooh, I know!  I really want hiking boots!".  Who am I, and what have I done with myself?

House Hunting - First House We Both Liked.

We've just got back from looking at a house that's available to rent.

It was really nice, you know, if you like wood burning fires and tasteful light fixtures.  The living room had a cathedral ceiling and one wall was pretty much all window, with a view over an immaculately kept golf course.  Admittedly I wouldn't have chosen that shade of peacock blue for the bedroom, but the walk-in wardrobe?  I could definitely live with the blue for that wardrobe space.  There was also an enormous spare bedroom, that we would probably use as a study.

Oh, and the land lady wouldn't mind us getting a couple of cats.

However, we really can't afford the place on the Doc's salary alone, and as we are still waiting for my Social Security number before I can look for a job, we decided it would be best to hang fire.  We've expressed our interest, and said we can't say yes right now but we will get back in touch once I'm gainfully employed.  That way we're not messing the landlady around, but we're not over-stretching our finances either.

It was the first house we've seen that we both liked, so atleast that's encouraging.

This is My Blog, Sometimes I Will Need to Vent!

I have to be honest, and say that I hate living next to students.  Really, I don't think hate is too strong a word here. 

I know I have complained about this before, but the absence of our rowdy neighbours over Christmas did not make the heart grow fonder, it just made me fully appreciate when they came back exactly how annoying it is to be surrounded by people living away from home for the first time and with no concept of volume control. 

This morning the kid downstairs clearly had an early class, I know this because I was woken up by them turning their stereo on just loud enough for the bass line to make the springs in my bed vibrate.  That meant that my first thought of the day was to condemn their taste in music as utterly appalling again.  They seriously appear to own only two songs, both of which are awful and have no discernible rhythm.  From what I can gather it's some sort of hybrid of country music and hip-hop, which is wrong on so many many levels.  It's the music I imagine they play in the long lift ride to hell.

Now?  Well downstairs is quiet, they must be at college.  However, the boys next door are home and apparently practising their wrestling moves in the kitchen and just randomly yelling again.

Every single day there is someone making a lot of noise for no apparent reason other than, hey, they can really crank it!  Their parents aren't here to tell them to turn it down!  That is so cool, Dude!  It's just so repetitive and inconsiderate, but it's hard to complain about it when I feel like this is really a student housing  development which is where they are supposed to be behaving like that, and frankly I should be living somewhere else.

The Doc recently had an e-mail from the guy we are sub-letting from and he said that we can stay here for an extra couple of months if we want to.  That would mean moving out at the end of July instead of the end of May.  The local housing market is geared around everyone moving in August, which is clearly only really convenient for the estate agents, so I know that staying here for an extra two months would really make more sense logistically but at the same time I just want to move away from here to somewhere quiet that I can feel relaxed in, and appreciate the bloody sereneness of the sodding mountains!  Damn it!

Slight Head Cold

I have a slight head cold.  You know how, sometimes, a couple of days before you get the actual cold you can just tell it's coming because you feel a bit blah?  Well, I had that feeling of blah and now the foreseen cold is here, last night my voice started going a bit husky then my nose got in on the act.  Honestly it's not a bad cold really, the main symptom is my head feeling like it's been poorly stuffed with kapok (which is what used to be used to fill life jackets and teddy bears), and my nose hurts, which makes me breathe through my mouth.

The Doc is very good at looking after me when I'm ill.  He had to attend a meeting at the University this morning, but he left me a wide range of cold and flu medicines to choose from and he's on his way home now.  Hopefully he'll be bringing chocolate with him.

To cheer myself up I called the Student Loans Company Ltd to give them my new address.  I want to make sure I get the deferment request form.

Individual Cupcake Tupperware (Pre-Posted...)

When we saw these individual cup cake holders we immediately realised they were actually the perfect size for Doc's delicious home-made muffins, so we bought two. 

We used to use empty Munchy Seed plastic pods for the transporting of individual muffins, but we haven't seen Munchy Seeds here (more is the pity) and there is apparently nothing else that is packaged in a comparable receptacle.

Anyway I am a secret fan of all things Tupperware, because it's more environmentally friendly to have a re-usable container instead of cling-film or foil, and it offers the security of a robust protective casing as well.  An excellent example was my Banana Guard which may have caused prolonged ribald hilarity in all who saw it, but must be said to have fulfilled it's design spec admirably and I never had the annoyance of banana mush all over the inside of my bag.

Running Errands

This morning we were obliged to wrestle with the intricacies of having bank accounts on different continents and the best means of moving money between them, which led us to a new and deeper appreciation for PayPal.  It turns out to be not just convenient for buying stuff on eBay, it's also by far the cheapest way of doing international wire transfers.  Our respective banks would have charged handling and/or conversion fees amounting to about twenty five pounds, where as PayPal cost a mere fiver to achieve the same end result. 

After we had finally sorted all that out, and as I was feeling much better today, we went out for lunch.  On the way we noticed the registration sticker on the car had expired on December 31st.  Essentially this is the same as an MOT sticker, and it's as important to keep up to date so on our way home (The Doc now being happily full of burger, and myself full of salmon) we stopped off at one of the local garages to find out when they could fit us in.  It being 5.30, we fully expected to have to come back tomorrow but they said they could do it straight away.

It took roughly ten minutes and cost $9.50.  As far as we could tell all they did was check that all the lights were working.