Thursday, 24 November:

Happy Thanksgiving! It certainly is a day for the two of us to be thankful. With my getting a job offer and our stuff all arriving from the United States today, we have had quite the wonderful day. The day porter looked on in amazement as the truck showed up and the movers started unloading boxes. He verified our flat number and with eyes the size of dinner plates asked "Where are you going to put all of this?" It's a great question. As it is, we will need to do some serious re-arranging before we are going to be able to go to bed tonight. But with snow on the radar for this weekend, we are going to love having all of our winter gear here.

Wednesday, 23 November:

You know how when you are watching a soccer game, and the player scores, the announcer yells GOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLL!!!! and the player takes off their shirt and runs around waving it like a flag? Well, JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJOOOOOBBBBBBBBB!!!! I was made an offer today with the company I really want to work for, and ran out of the tube station tearing off my tie and shirt and running down the street waving them like a flag. The laughter of onlookers must have been sheer mirth at my own personal joy. I know I haven't updated here recently, but have been a bit down about the fact that I haven't been working. I have never been out of work for more than two weeks, so going two months with no offers was driving me absolutely batty. I know that I am not defined by my job, but I have to say, not having one was beginning to cause my definition of self to include the letters l o s e and r perhaps even in that order.

I won't post any information about the company, as I do not know their blog policy and don't want to jinx a good thing just yet, but I am very happy! Nothing like positive income to relieve stress.

Monday, 7 November:

Yesterday, Suzanne and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. This year, we will finally be married for longer than we dated, so we are looking forward to that little tidbit. To celebrate, we went to the Tate and saw an exhibit on Degas, Latrec, and Sickert. The exhibit was very impressive and it was interesting to see all these paintings we have seen in text books in real life. I was amazed at the debauchery of late century Paris and to an extent London. Degas and Latrec were known to frequent the Moulin Rouge and both painted a number of prostitutes. I doubt their interest ended with paintings... I guess we always think of our own times as the height of debauchery, but there have been great monuments to debauchery in the past, we just miss the queues. On the way back, instead of hopping the closest subway, we enjoyed a wonderful walk in the rain as we headed towards parliament, which is a breathtaking building and walked over to the Victoria station before getting on the subway. We finished the day by going out for Thai food at a nearby restaurant. We were originally going to go to The Standard Indian, but it appears that they are not open on Sundays. So we decided to try a place called Khan's (more Indian food) but the "wine list" included fruit smoothies fruit juice and sparkling water. As we wanted to toast with something a bit more fermented, we left and settled on Thai food. The Panaeng was absolutely wonderful, though not very spicy, but the Krathong Tong was not very tasty, so that won't be a repeat order. We also had asparagus that was fantastic! (Oh and we (me) also enjoyed the fact that the Chargers finally got a win on a defensive last stand, rather than a loss like the rest of this season's close ones.)

Foam Feelings: The foam matress topper is absolutely life changing. I wish we had bought one sooner! My sister has an entire bed made out of memory foam, and we have slept on it a couple of times, but with close to a week on this topper after terrible mattresses for weeks, I am more than sold. Buy it from Overstock, as they are far cheaper than anything I have found here or in the U.S. Our memory foam pillows arrived today, so we are dying to try those out as well. They don't smell nearly as strong as the mattress topper did, so I think we will be able to use them tonight.

It is finally starting to get cold here. The temperatures are generally under 64 degrees farenheit. But I think all of our neighbors are determined to use their heat, because our apartment is usually pretty warm, despite windows being left open and the hallway is almost stifling. Even yesterday's walk in the rain was very cool, and I was glad to have a warm jacket.

Thursday, 3 November:

Christmas!!! Ok, not really but it felt like Christmas this morning. We received three packages today, two from my parents and one from Wanadoo. The internet hardware arrived first, as it was here yesterday and signed for by the day porter. The cleaning man (A really nice guy named Pat) brought it up first thing this morning. (Unfortunately, the line has not been activated, so no internet, but at least the stuff is here and in two days no less.) The wireless router/modem is by far the best designed modem router I have ever seen. The modem appears to be a book sitting on its opening edge in all white. When it is plugged in, the Wanadoo lights up in white through the plastic and looks really cool. This is even better looking than the glowing apple on the back of powerbooks. If design and timeliness of delivery are any indication of service, I am going to be very happy with Wanadoo.

A little later the mail came and we had two more boxes. We got our memory foam mattress topper from Overstock.com (It needs to air out for two days, so a review will be forthcoming but not right away) and our care package from my parents. More peppers! Yay! And vodka sauce from Trader Joes!!! Did I mention Christmas!!! The tomato based sauces here are very chunky and runny, so they are a bit different than we are used to. But Trader Joe's (or Trader Giottis as they call the Italian food) Vodka sauce is the perfect red pasta sauce in my opinion. OK, so it gets some spice from crushed peppers, and other treatments when we are making it, but it is the perfect base. Other items included most of the conspiracy participants in other posts, namely: Ziplocs, food storage, and pesto filled pasta (again from Trader Joes. If you are going to buy dried pasta, they have the best, cheapest filled pasta.) Here, you can buy pesto, but it comes by itself in jars, not in pasta. I suppose if we were inclined, we could hand make our own pesto filled pasta, but neither of us is willing to pretend to be gourmets until our cookware arrives.

Speaking of cookware, our shipment should be here in about three weeks, I received a notification today, so this is the day for pleasant surprises! Now if I could get a job offer... Ok, I won't push it, I have enough to lift my spirits today. The rain is more frequent of late, which is wonderfully refreshing, especially since my anitbiotics appear to have kicked the last of my upper respiratory infection to the curb.

Christmas is starting to show up in the stores. I guess not having a Thanksgiving holiday means that there is no reason to wait once Hallowe'en has passed. Starbucks is now using their red Christmas cups for the poor sods that don't have the time to enjoy coffee in house in mugs. They also have a literacy program going on here where you can donate books to help with literacy in the UK. I think Suzanne and I will have some serious purging to do when our stuff arrives, so this is a great way to send books to new homes. I have always had book issues, and have a hard time getting rid of them. Even harder is the thought of just throwing books away. I only have done this out of anger at school bookstores that made me pay $80+ for a text book then offered to buy it back for $1.50 because they were using a new edition now. Funny, but the old editions are still for sale in the bookstore for $25... Never mind, I am not likely to see the inside of a classroom as anything other than a teacher or parent any time soon.

I am not usually caught up in the Christmas spirit until about two days before Christmas, so it is still strange to see the decorations up so soon, but it is a happy thought that we may get a white Christmas. Local weather people keep predicting the coldest winter in more than a decade and none other than weather guru Aunt Linda predicts that a warm October means a REALLY cold winter. This could mean that my families San Diego tradition of eating Christmas breakfast outside in sunglasses and shorts is out this year. Who knows, maybe I will do it just for traditions sake. Especially if there is snow on the ground, it would make a great picture. And keeping up the family traditions is so important when you are far from home. I don't think I will get Suzanne to participate in this one though.

All in all, we are in great spirits today! And the day isn't even over, so we shall see what else shall come.

Tuesday, 1 November:

All Saints day. And a happy one to any Catholics out there. To all the Mexicans, a happy dia de los muertos. And happy Tuesday to everyone else. Well, yesterday's comments about minimum time spans was accurate. I called BT 25 hours after the phone was to be set up to inform them that I still was not able to use my phone and I was told that it would be fixed and ready to go by five pm. The good news is that is worked about thirty minutes later. Still after the 24 hour deadline, but early in the day. One nice surprise was the free voicemail service. Instead of needing an answering machine, voicemail is stored on their servers, like on mobile phones. If you want to access it remotely, you need to pay, but the free service is fine by me, now I don't need to get an answering machine.

I called the Council Tax number this morning, as I have not heard back from the email I sent two weeks ago. I am getting worried and don't want to get dinged for a whole year at once because I was "late" by their standards. Fortunately, they didn't seem to care and told me that I would get a monthly bill starting in "ten working days". I am curious to see if this is true, or if it will be like everything else where I shouldn't start looking until ten working days have passed. I should probably follow up on the TV license as well, considering that I called and gave them my information three weeks ago and have yet to get my license or charged for it.

Monday, 31 October:

Ahh... The day of Bureaucrats, Monday. I called BT again, and they finally received my deposit. So I was told that I would have phone service within 24 hours. Finally! In all my excitement, I called up Wanadoo immediately so that I can get my internet up and running. And after getting it all taken care of, I was told that I should be ready to go in ten days… Oh goody, another wait. I asked if there was any way I could rush shipping on the equipment, as my month’s subscription is about to run out at Starbucks, and was told no, just wait ten days and if it doesn’t show up call back. This is quite a change from U.S. business practices, where you can almost always get a rush if you are willing to pay for it. Here, everything has a wait and see attitude. And when someone tells you a time frame, they don’t mean at a maximum, they mean at a minimum. Ten days for my phone service really took almost 14. And after being told I would be contacted when everything was set up, I had to call and wait for someone to contact accounting to see if the deposit had arrived. (I am guessing that by contact, they mean leave their desk, go to the tube, take a train to the other side of town, get lunch, check in with accounting, go to their mail room, sort the mail, find the post notes, take them to the bank, deposit them, get a receipt, stop for coffee, go back to accounting and verify the funds then take the train back across town and come back to the desk to take me off hold and tell me everything was great, expect service in 24 hours.)

In other news… Today is Hallowe’en as it is called here. I guess the contraction really stresses the religious importance of the day as it is short for All Hallows Eve. Of course this means that small hoodlums (or Yobs as they are called here) get to dress up as the monsters they idolize and try to blackmail anyone who bothers to stay at home into giving them candy. Actually we had no trick or treaters (good thing because we didn’t have any candy either) and I think this is because the building is a secure entry building and I haven’t seen too many children in the neighborhood. Though we did witness some children lighting off firecrackers in the street that is behind our building. The youngest couldn’t have been more than about ten years old, the eldest not more than 15.

Finaly, I am getting over my upper respiratory infection thanks to the antibiotics. I guess the doctor was right.