Images by John 'K'

Has it really been over 2 months since I last updated this – where the heck has the time gone?

 

So – what’s happened in my life since the last update – well we had our first Christmas without the whole family being able to get together – that was a rather strange/subdued affair. We had our first new-year away from family and friends, and that too was a rather subdued affair, but we did at least manage to get a few neighbours around for that.

 

My youngest daughter has continued to play basketball for the highschool girls freshman team, and they’ve still not lost a game (in fact I believe they are now guaranteed first place for the championship). My elder daughter here looks like she  is coming to terms with the fact that she starts college in the fall (autumn). My wife continues to be a ‘lady of leasure’, which is fine so long as she remains happy with the idea of us renting the place where we live. Mind you, we’re not going to buy anything unless we know we can stay in the US for a reasonable period of time, and that won’t happen until we have our green cards.

 

January passed way too quickly, the SuperBowl wasn’t that super, and it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow…. and… it’s a long weekend this coming weekend (yipee)…

 

I’m also contemplating my US tax return and feeling more than a bit thankful that this year I can use the services of a tax consultant and have them paid for by the company I work for.

 

My Mum back in England has been very unwell for the past month – she spent some time in hospital with a multitude of problems, but has now been discharged. She’s also moved from the house she’d lived in for ages (I was born there and I’m 42 so gives you some idea!) into a smaller place in a sheltered complex for the elderly about a mile from where she was living. My sister spent a lot of time over the past month helping my Mum through all of this, and was supported by my brother, and other members of their families – thanks to all who helped there – I felt so useless being stuck this side of the Atlantic!

 

The weather here has been lovely – last few days have been warm and sunny (warmer than is typical for this time of year). Today is a bit more ‘normal’, but much nicer than what I would have had were I still in the UK.

 

Oh well – work is still keeping me busy, so I’d better get back to it.

 

I’ll try and do another update soon!

 

 

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last update, so what’s been happening in my life…..

 

Had my first American Thanksgiving, but without my wife here as she was back in the UK for a week. Did turkey, stuffing (the only real disaster of the meal – American stuffing is notling like English stuffing [give me a box of Paxo any day]), mashed and roasted potatoes, and a mix of carrot, broccoli and cauliflower as veg, with gravy. We were to have had Danish apple pie and custard for dessert, but we were so stuffed that we postponed that for the following day!

 

I took Thanksgiving week off to be at home with the kids while my wife was back in England (seemed a good deal as I only had to use 3 days of vacation) and during the time I was off, my youngest daughter played in her first proper high school basketball game (and they won), we got a pool/air-hockey table (early Christmas present for the family), I put a load of furniture together (Ikea getting yet more of my hard earned money), and moved a load of stuff into storage. Also kept the local recycling center busy with all the packaging from all of the Ikea stuff we’ve had since we moved in (2 full loads of my SUV, just of cardboard).

 

My wife passed her California driving test last week (and did it with less errors than me, but I got less questions wrong in the written part of the test), so she’s now fully documented and in the system. As expected she was a bit of a wreck before the test (she hates exams – something she’s going to have to work on – can’t keep using it as an excuse), and having an unexpected extra delay before the test as a result of one of the examiners dropping out at the last minute didn’t help, but she kept it together enough to pass, so well done to her!

 

Work is busy as ever – as the company I work for continues to do well and expand, we are seeing a slow but steady trickle of people who have been in from the early days leaving because they prefer the small company/start-up environment that we are steadily loosing as a result of our size and success, and of course the new people, while being good at what they do, have to be brought up-to-speed on all sorts of things unique to our way of doing things.

 

We’ve decorated the house for Christmas – got a nice tree arrangement and some lights and other stuff in the front room, and we’ve been slowly but surely affected by the brainwashing over here and as with at least half of the rest of the street, we now have an array of lights up outside the house. We’ve not gone over the top like some though!

 

We’ve finished all of the medical stuff we needed to get done for our greencard application, and I’ve found out that as well as having a natural immunity to TB (I knew that anyway), I also have it against measles, mumps and rubella, and my prostrate is normal (ouch). So all that is now holding us up with the application is signing off on some corrected paperwork, and getting some photos done.

 

So on the whole, things going well over here.

Not moaning for a change….. 🙂

 

The house is all repaired, we’re getting unpacked and straightening things out, and it’s feeling more like a lived in home than just a place to stay. The commute to work is starting to get easier, especially as now I can ride-share with a colleague who lives about 1/2 mile from where we are, and being able to use the carpool lane takes about 15-20 minutes off the journey! The little Civic is costing me about half of what the Mitsubishi cost to run for the commute (so a month’s travel to/from work will now set me back about $100 before I factor in any contributions from the guy I’m riding in with), work is keeping me busy and, and in 2 weeks time I go to see U2 in Oakland.

 

In addition, we have started making steps towards getting green-carded so we can stay here in America long term, and my wife now has her work permit and her SSN and driving license are in the works.

 

All starting to settle down and become a bit more ‘normal’……

On the home front things are slowly getting back to normal. The bathroom where the problem all began is now fully restored. The carpetting has now been fully replaced and upstairs now just needs a small lick of paint and then it can be put back to normal. Downstairs the wooden flooring still needs to be completed, but that is scheduled to happen tomorrow. As such, we expect the house to be back to normal next week, and at that time we can start unpacking the stuff that’s been left in boxes for the past 2 months and finish settling in.

 

We have also become a 2-car family again. Even though my wife has yet to take her California driving test (nag nag ), the commute between Pleasanton and Sunnyvale every day in a 3.8 litre gas-guzzling SUV somehow doesn’t make sense, so at the weekend we got a pre-owned (Honda certified) 2004 Civic coupe at a price less than the blue book recommended. It’s in superb condition, runs really well, and only had 21,500 miles on the clock. This should half my monthly fuel costs for the commute .

Anyone who has been following my occasional postings will be aware that 6 weeks after moving into the house we are currently renting, we still don’t have all of our stuff unpacked and set up as a result of an event with an overflowing toilet.

 

We’ve renectly had the construction people in as part of the clean-up/repair process, and all the ceilings and walls have been put back and painted (although the paint job is less than perfect), and now we are waiting on the people who do the flooring.

 

To complicate things, the flooring people can’t get carpet to match the original stuff (which was removed from part of upstairs but 3 of the bedrooms are still fully capteted), and the closest they can get is lighter in colour than the old stuff. The owners of the house have seen this and would prefer to have everything carpeted the same, however the insurance company won’t pay for this. Also, if the whole lot is replaced, it means that the 3 usable (and in use) bedrooms will need to be cleared, re-carpeted, and then re-set-up.

 

Add to this the fact that the workmen in last week also managed to damage the wood flooring downstairs where it wasn’t planned for there to be any work done, so there’s more work involved with the downstairs flooring, and we’re likely to be in an unfinished state for a while yet.

 

Even once the flooring is done, theres some final work needed to finish off the house and have it back how it was before the flood (fittings, sockets, lights and the like).

 

Then…… once all of that is out of the way, we’ve found out that the current owners want to sell the house, and they must sell by the middle of 2007. Because of various factors, it’s unlikely we’d be in a position to afford the property in that timeframe, and so the property agent who is managing the lease is seeing if she can work with the owners to have the house sold to a property investor who could then continue to lease the house. As it stands right now however, this is all up in the air, so we are facing a possible prospect that we may have to move out some time in the next 2 years.

 

I’ll be happier once I know what’s happening one way or the other. Even if it’s to know that we should start thinking about moving elsewhere by a certain time. The problem right now is that it’s all up in the air and no-one knows what the final outcome will be, and that is the part I’m not confortable with.

 

If we do have to move, I’d look to stay in the same area if at all possible. We like it here, and my girls seem to be settling in well at school and making new friends, so it’d be a shame to have to uproot them to another area. I also dread the thought of moving everything we have to another yet house. There’s something to be said for living a ‘minimalist’ life.

 

Just popping back to the workmen for a bit, they also managed to get permanent marker on a 3-seater sofa that we’d only had in the house for about 3 weeks, so that needs replacing. Fortunetely it’s something they’ve taken full responsibility for and they’re doing it without arguement, but it’s something else we’d rather not have had happen.

 

<SIGH>