Images by John 'K'
Life as seen through my lens…
It’s all on its way…
Posted by on June 23, 2005
Half of our house, lots of our memories, and all the stuff that’ll help us make a home, have all been packed and crammed into a 20ft container over the past 2 days. It’s now on its long journey to California, where we’ll be reunited with all of it in about 7 weeks time.
It’s been a struggle getting to this point. A struggle I feel bad that I didn’t contribute more towards, but even had I done more during my time in the UK, the bulk of the work would still have been in the hands of those I love.
Now of course, payback time comes when it’s all at the new house and it’ll be me who has to deal with all of the unpacking under the watchful eyes of those who helped pack it all up, but do I care – NO. I’ll have my family with me. OK, so I know Gemma’s not stopping with us (but who knows – she may change her mind about that), but for a short time we’ll all be together, and after Gemma goes back to the UK to the extended family and friends who will all help her, Jan Sarah Paula and I can start on this new phase in our lives.
So to all of you back in the UK, thanks for pulling together when it was needed and getting us to this point. Remember it’s all leading towards something you all wanted to do. The decision to move wasn’t mine; I just gave the opportunity. You wanted this new life and you’ve helped make it happen!
So take some time to recover from the past few days, and then try and have some fun while you can. Also, take some time to make peace and heal some of the wounds that were inflicted and suffered during the last few days. It was a stressful time, and stressful times tend to bring out things that should ideally not see the light of day. Lets not let them spoil what we have as a family.
I’ll be back there at the end of July, and then we can take the next big step on our journey together.
Love you all.
John/Dad
The team rocks!
Posted by on June 22, 2005
So back in the UK we’re half way through getting our belongings packed up, and apart from a couple of stressed out arguements that I’ve heard or heard about, things seem to be going pretty well (despite some issues totally out of our control with the removal company).
The star of the team is my wife, who, as always, manages to pull of amazing things when the odds are stacked against her, and she’s been supported by Sarah, Paula, and Gemma. Sarah especially deserves thanks for the extra effort she’s put in over the past few days, especially as it comes after a somewhat disappointing 16th birthday last week (as a result of all of the activity around the move).
They’ve another day of packing to go, then as far as the move is concerned they can wind down for a bit.
Jan, Sarah, Paula and Gemma, you’re all amazing and I’m proud of you all.
The Move (One Team)…..
Posted by on June 15, 2005
This is to Sarah, Paula, Gemma and Jan…….
I realise a lot of stuff is going on right now. Moving home is never easy. Moving between countries imposes extra things that need to be worked through and that HAVE to happen to a certain timeline for this to happen smoothly (if at all). Two of those important points are coming up. We need to get all the stuff that’s going to be moved catalogued before it gets packed up, and we need to be in a position that it can be packed up by the middle of next week. This date was set a while back and was done this way so the stuff arrives at the house in the US a week after we do. We chose to do it that way as we didn’t want the extra hassle of dealing with the arrival of the stuff in the first week are there (as we’ll all be recovering form the journey and also finding our feet in the new place), but we also didn’t want to be waiting too long before it arrives.
Now I know there’s more I could have done to have help prepare for this time when I was last back in the UK, however keep in mind that that was 4 months before when the packing exercise was to happen and as such there was a limit to what we could have done at that stage. I was only there for the week, and it would be the last time I would be in the UK before we move, so I also wanted to be able to spend some quality time with Jan, and it was a shame I couldn’t do so with the rest of you, but we were stuck with the timings of various things (the skiing trip for example).
Things have been very stressful for Mum recently. There have been issues at work with people going seriously sick, she’s had loads of stuff coming up with rainbows/guides and youthgroup. She’s had all the preparation for the move to contend with (and the closer we’ve got, the more stuff has come up that we find we have to deal with), and she’s been struggling to stand still – let alone move forward with this stuff. As such, she’s been working late into the night to get things done. I know you all have been to a greater or lesser extent been doing some stuff to help, but I ask you all now to have a long hard think and see if there’s more you feel you could do to help in this critical phase.
There’s a week left before the house gets packed, and it’s unfair on Mum to expect her to do everything herself. Everyone should be doing what they can to help now – even Gemma. If I were there I’d be at the stage of working through the night to help out, but I’m stuck nearly 6000 miles away. I’ll have my own challenges in July as I move into the house in Pleasanton and get the stuff in that we need before you lot come over, and look to deal with the fact that some of the stuff we need won’t be with us for at least a week.
If you can all pull together over the next week, and especially if you can do so without having to be asked/chased/threatened (ask what you can be doing to help), things will get better once this hard deadline passes. I know the timing sucks, especially from Sarah’s perspective, but if we can all do what needs to be done as a team (here where I work we have a theme of ‘One Team’ – we should apply that here also), we’ll come out the other end in a much better position than we will be if Mum has to do all the stuff in the UK on her own.
So, I ask that everyone thinks about what needs to be done and does what they can to make it happen, and while I know it’s going to impact some stuff you might want to do, it’s a short term necessity that will be achieved a lot easier if everyone pulls together.
I apologise for not doing more when I was in the UK in February – I know that has also put more on you ‘guys’ than you would otherwise have to deal with. Unfortunately, as much as I feel bad about that now, there’s little I can do to overcome that. I’ll have my own stuff to deal with soon enough that you can’t help me with, so if you can do what you can to help Mum, that would be greatly appreciated by me (and also by Mum).
Specifically to Sarah, I know this has had an impact on your birthday, and for that I am truly sorry, but I ask that you look at the wider picture here, and realise that if you can be understanding and accommodating here, we’ll do what we can to make things up to you. If however you go all negative and confrontational and don’t help out in this time of need, I’ll be much less understanding. Sorry to have to give that sort of message, but there’s a lot at stake here, and it needs everyone to do what they can to help.
Love you all, missing you all, and looking forward very much to the end of July. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s not so close yet that we can afford to slow down/rely solely on others to get there.
Dad/John
We’re definately taking over! :-)
Posted by on June 2, 2005
Just found out (through her leaving a comment here) that another of my daughters (the one whos computer is now in a state of non-cooperation) has set a space up.
She can be found at http://spaces.msn.com/members/evilmonkeygemmak/
I can’t think of a more appropriate name for her space though! 
Jinxed?
Posted by on June 2, 2005
Random rant number 5: Why do bad things happen when you’re in a position to do nothing about them?
If you’ve been reading any of my postings so far, you’ll know that there’s most of the landmass of Northern America plus the Atlantic Ocean currently separating me from my family….
So why does my daughter’s computer wait until I’m 2 months away from my next visit to the UK to die?
… and why does it die in such a way that it’s the most painful problem to deal with (a fault on the hard disk that’s stopping it from booting)?
A couple of days ago it apparently started booting so far into Windows then it’d simply reboot. The crew back in the UK tried various recovery options that did absolutely nothing, then eventually we decided that the Windows installation must be screwed and so opted to re-install Windows.
So it goes through the boot from CD, runs the initial setup, copies the Windows setup files to the hard disk and then reboots, then gives a disk error on reboot, and it’s now stuck there. We can boot it from CD, we can load the recovery console, we can see files on the hard disk, but we can’t convince it to boot from the hard disk now.
If I were physically at the computer I could probably work this one out, but trying to diagnose it remotely and work with someone else’s hands and eyes is just not doing it.
So we’re stuck. There’s no one particularly computer literate in the family back in the UK (not computer literate enough to sort this out anyway) and I can’t get back there for 2 months. They could spend a load of money and have some computer ‘specialist’ look at it and try and sort it out. They could ask around to see if someone close there thinks they have the requisite skills to deal with this as a favour. They could whip the disk out and ship it to me and I could try and recover it here (or copy what’s accessable to a new one and ship that back). They could ship the whole computer over and I could deal with it and ship it back. Or they could wait 2 months.
And in the meantime, my daughter can’t get to the files she needs that are on the computer to do her college work.
It never rains,………..
AUGH
Images by John 'K' 