thirtysomething...

Well, the saying must be true. You can take a boy outta The South, but you can't take The South outta the boy.

One of the constants of living in The South is warmth. Heat. Humidity. Even more so for the Coastal South.

You don't really have to worry with buying snow tires every winter. Ice Scraper? What's that? Salt is something you put on french fries & green beans (w/ a pat of butter), not something that's spread out on roads. Snow means school is closed. If "They" even think it's going to snow or have a millimeter of ice, schools are closed. Once that decision has been made or the reactionary weathermen predict cold, inclement weather the grocery stores have a run on bread and milk. You can apparently survive on milk and bread in the winter. I wouldn't know. I grew up in upstate South Carolina, so I'm familiar with schools closing cause they thought it might snow, sometime. I've driven in snow once, on ice a few times, but I never fell for the milk & bread bit.

For the past 10 years I've lived in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Charleston to be precise. Snow? Ice? The last time I saw snow I was in Germany, and that was November of '05. Ice is something you put in Sweet Tea or single malt. It's something you make. It doesn't just appear one morning and coat everything outside.

Now I'm living in South East England. It's cold. It's damp. I'm not even close to being used to the change. I'm wearing thermals. I have never worn thermals before. Well once. The only time I went hunting I bought a pair and it was just odd. Mind you, I've been in the cold, I can deal with it. But still....

Think about it this way: McDonalds' French Fries. Mmm Mmm Good. You can smell them cooking while you're waiting on your burgers. The golden little morsels have a distinctive taste and smell. I know you're just salivating thinking about those little guys.

Now take the salt off. Forever and ever. But only where you live.

They taste completely different now. You recognize them by looks and the red container they arrive in, they must be McDonalds, but it's not the same. Something's odd. You'll still eat them. Complain for a bit. Even buy more later. You'll deal with the change. You'll learn to live with it, still longing for the days of the Original.

I'm still in the complaining stage. :)

It's Cold. Damn Cold. And my brother in Wisconsin has no sympathy. That's ok. He has to dig his car out of 3 feet of snow to even GO to McDonalds.

It's Cold. Well compared to Charleston it is. Currently 39°F (about 4°C) and cloudy.

This morning Heather went to church down the street and then we hopped a train to Ashford to go shopping. There's this huge outdoor outlet mall near the train station. Mostly clothes, and mostly not discounted, unlike outlet malls in the US. What's up with that? Our only purchase ended up being a set of wine glasses from the Edinburg Crystal shop. Oh well.

Now we're at her office in Staplehurst so I can update on the 'net. That's about it right now.


Did I mention it's Cold?

Well today was a total waste. I thought I was finally adjusting to the time change, but not to be. Heather got up at 6 this morning to head up to London for a meeting. I woke up for a bit, and was planning to wake back up around 8, but again, it was not to be. I didn't wake back up until 1pm, which is 8am EST. So much for that. Got the SKY card for our satellite today. As soon as Heather gets back, with her cell phone, we can activate it and watch more than 3 stations. Yippee! I can only watch so much Snooker or cheesy call-in quiz shows. I can't wait for monday to come around to get the phone problem situated and order broadband. Maybe I can get some work done then. Hopefully Heather got the bank account activated today, so I can go out and get more stuff for the house without getting raped on conversion charges on our US bank account cards. The conversion rates aren't that bad with the cards, but they charge a fee for each one. Greedy bastards.

In addition to the 3 or 4 regular channels we get at the moment, there are TONS of call-in trivia/quiz shows on tv. Find the difference in these pictures, how many triangles are in this shape, what's this picture a drawing of, name 5 specific movies of a certain actor, that kind of thing. They take forever to play and most people who call in are complete morons. It costs £1 per call and you have to wait on hold until a dog barks or some such nonsense tells the host to answer the call. Anyway, the one that is bothering me was listed as this: "166-5+15x4÷2" and they wanted to know what the answer was. I came up with 352, but the answer the show took was 131. Anyone care to explain that? The triangle one was pretty easy. I'll try to photoshop it and let you guys have a go at it.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we head out to Tenterden by bus for a day-trip. It is supposed to be this cool little town. I'm planning on taking the camera, so I should have photos of that.

Oddities of a British home:

• All the power outlets are switched. Meaning they have little on/off switches for each side.
• Multi-plug or surge strips are not switched.
• The telephone outlets on the wall are RJ-45 plugs that reduce down to RJ-11 at the phone.
• My house sounds like a grumbling stomach when the "heat" (read: radiators) come on. It can be quite annoying in the middle of the night. We need some kind of white noise in the bedroom to drown it out.
• The connectors on the back of the TV for the cable or satellite is called a SCART plug (or something close to that.) It's a rectangle about 2 inches by 1/2 inch. Similar to what a DVI computer plug looks like, but not quite.
• Most exterior locking doors have a skeleton key lock at the doorknob and a "Night Latch" for the deadbolt, which is a regular key.
• Most toilets, well all the ones I've seen, have two different flush modes. The first just flushes with just a bit of water. The second is used when you've made a significant deposit and dumps the whole tank of water to flush. I've seen them in the US, but not to the same extent that I've seen here.
• The clothes washer & dryer here at the house is a single unit. It does both. And it takes FOREVER. Which sucks because it's quite small. I'm not sure, but I think it uses hot water to heat the drum to dry the clothes. Throw the clothes in, put the detergent in a separate slide out drawer, turn the machine on, set what kind of material the clothes are, set the water temperature, set the wash cycle's spin dry RPM, set the type of drying (store, mostly, somewhat, warm, etc), then set the drying time. Finally push the Start button and wait for 3 to 4 hours. It's called a Jetdryer or something. Which is misleading. You'd think if a Jet was involved it would be done in 15 minutes. Not so.

Yesterday started off well. I walked around the village picking up a few things we needed in the house, a few small garbage cans, some plastic food storage bins, and other miscellaneous kitchen items. Toted all that back to the house and went back out to the grocery & butcher. Brought all that stuff back and made a sandwich. FYI, the peanut butter here is a bit different. When the package says "Creamy" it's not like Creamy JIF in the States. Much less oil. Its somewhat smoother than the "Fat Free" US peanut butter. The closest thing I can compare it to would be a "natural" (free range if you will) peanut butter you can get at Whole Foods & the like. Quite tasty, but different.

After lunch I went back out once again to search for a barber or a salon to get a much needed haircut. What I assume is the village center (the street we live on) has about 2 blocks of shops all within walking distance to the house. On the same side of the street there are three different places to get a cut. The first one I came to seemed kinda stylish so I stopped in. They didn't look all that busy, but they had no space for me until Monday @ lunch. I signed up, took my appointment card & left. The next salon I came to was "Women Only" so I kept walking. Right past the George and Dragon there was another shop. I peeked in and saw only the woman at the counter and someone sitting in the back. No customers to be seen anywhere. I thought, "Either they don't know how to cut hair very well, or they're just far enough down the street they don't get hit up as much as the others." I took a chance. The woman, thankfully, can cut hair. At the first salon I had this deep seated worry that I'd come out with some faux-hawk or some silly thing that seems to be all the rage here in Britian. I really had no worry about this last place. Very straight forward, and the woman was quite nice. Well done!

So then with a new, shorter haircut I made my way back home. Checked the phone, it still doesn't work. :meh: On a sidenote, Heather called BT from work and they said there must be a problem on the line outside the house, and a technician will be there Monday between 8 and 12. I unpacked a few boxes, finished the book I've been reading (The Footprints of God, by Greg Iles, the computer geeks should read this one,) and took a nap, which I probably shouldn't be doing until my internal clock correctly adjusts to the 5 hour time change. Anyway, this is getting to detailed before getting to the actual meat of the day's events. It's like a Clancy novel, yeah?...Prepared dinner (chevré stuffed burgers), watched TV until Heather got home, ate dinner and then the fun begins....

Teh Wife said she needed to go back to work to pick up her laptop that was loading some software. Wanted to know if I wanted to come along. Sure, I needed to get on the 'net anyways. Head out to Staplehurst, no problems. :hehe: Right.

We get off the train in Staplehurst, start walking up the street and Heather's patting her pockets. "What's wrong," I ask.
"I can't find my keys"
Staring at her in disbelief, "You're kidding, right?"
She says no, and we both IMMEDIATELY turn to look back at the train station to watch the train we were just on, head out to finish it's route. AHHHHHhhhh! Noooooooo!

On the key ring: Her only work keys and the only house key we had with us.

Guess where the keys are at this point. Yup. On the way to London Charing Cross Station. About an hour away. It's about 9pm. Luckily Heather's cell phone for work came in the day before and she starts dialing the Southeast Rail customer service number conveniently printed on a large poster on the station wall. "If they're found we'll hold them for you at Charing Cross." Ok, great. Cheers. click. We wait 30 minutes for the next train and hop on. About 45 minutes later the Rail CS call back and say the train was searched and no keys were found. Great. We get off at London Bridge (one station before Charing Cross) and wait for the next train back towards Headcorn. At this point we've planned to go all the way back to Ashford International and stay in a hotel. Mind you, Heather has to be back in London the next day at 10am for a business meeting. She still has to ride back to Staplehurst to pick up her laptop and then up to London. Needless to say she's quite panicked. We hop on the train and start walking through the cars asking everyone that is sitting at a table if they found any keys. Most look at us like we just farted on their best suit. BTW, this train is PACKED.

We pass the next station after London Bridge and the Rail CS calls back again. The keys were found by a cleaning crew and turned in to the station at Charing Cross, get off at Tonbridge and "We'll send them down". Ok. Will do.

Get off at Tonbridge and wait. The next train down from Charing Cross is in 30 minutes. We talk to one of the Station workers, who was quite nice & and interesting chap to boot. The next train shows up and the station worker asks the driver about the keys while we ask the conductor. Nope. No keys. Crap. Train pulls away and Heather runs to the station worker. "Would you please call up to Charing Cross, blah blah blah." He does and comes back and says the Conductor on the LAST train out has the keys. They should be here in 30 minutes or so. For Pete's sake... No matter what, we have to get on this train and head back. Keys or not. It's the last train that makes stops where we need to go.

At this point we've realized that one of us has left Heather's hat, gloves, and scarf on the last train we jumped off of. :grumblegrumblemoan: "I'm not calling to get those back," Heather says. Fine we've got more.

Finally the train shows and everyone is getting off. We start looking for the conductor & hear a whistle blow. Turn towards the sound and there's the conductor waving Heather's keys at us. HURRAY!!! Heather runs over, gives the man a hug and we hop on the train for the ride home. By the time we get back to the house, it's 1am-ish.

All said, the people we dealt with who worked for Southeastern were very helpful and quite friendly. Cheers to you all who helped find my wife's keys on a very chilly night.

Cliff Notes: When on a train, DO NOT take your keys out of your pocket and place them on the table infront of you. It will take MUCH longer than you expect to retrieve them, if you do at all.

Man, BT (British Telecom) is slow. On Monday I called those guys up to activate the phone service and here is Thursday morning and still no service. BP Time means something entirely different in the UK. Yeah, I know that's a stereotype... you don't really think stereotypes come out of thin air do you? Anyway. So I have to wait for the phone service to be active before I can order broadband. Ack. It's amazing that the internet as we use it has only been around since the early 90's and now we (well most of us) can't live without it.

We finally got our shipments from the US yesterday. Well, a dozen of the boxes anyway. Tuesday we got one. Yesterday we got 12 and a form in the mail to get 2 more cleared through customs. Those haven't arrived yet. And wouldn't you know, those 2 have my knives in them and a couple of power converters. Do you realize how hard it is to dice an onion with regular utensils? It's a pain in the arse. Safer maybe than a sharp Chef's Knife, but man it sucks. The power converter I can live without for a little while, I really only need it for the computer speakers. Most everything else electronic I brought can convert the 220V automatically, just need a plug conversion. I picked up a few of those yesterday at the local hardware store. It's a cool store, kinda small buy a great staff. And they're looking for someone full-time.

Oh Hallo! What's that. Someone's knocking at the door......Schweet! The last two boxes have arrived.

Oh yeah, the hardware store. When one of the clerks mentioned that, she also asked if I could work in the UK (Heather "happened" to mention to them I used to work in a hardware store back in the States). I gave her the bad news (no work-visa for me) and I don't really think she knew quite how to respond. :shrug: Might be cool to do. BTW, they sell paint in 2.5 liter cans and 5 liter cans. For the film buffs out there: Royal with Cheese. The 5L can looks like a tall version of the US 1gal can. The store is like a True Value in most respects (at-least the one I worked in.) They have housewares, tools, fasteners, cleaning supplies, paint, a bit of electrical, a few gardening supplies and a bit of wood.

Ok, the boxes are calling me to unpack them.

We made it! It's a bit cold & foggy. Huh, who'da thunk it in England. Well, I'm at Heather's office trying to get the telephone & broadband set up for the house & I need to finish. Just wanted to give everyone a quick note that everything is good. I'll try to shoot pics of the house & whatnot sometime this afternoon & post them sometime soon.

D

So yeah, we finally are in the air on the way to England. I was beginning to think it might never happen. Took forever to get the house completely packed up & have everything moved to the storage unit. I became quite proficient in packing a MINI. Still, on the last day of toting stuff that wasn't too large to fit in the MINI I think I made at least 5 trips. You'd be amazed how much crap you can fit in the boot with the seats down. Truly amazing.

Anyways, we were supposed to leave back on Wednesday the 11th. Well the passports & visas were taking their sweet time coming back from NYC. Wating on the British Embassy to approve them or something to that affect. I don't really know. So Heather rescheduled our plane tickets to leave on Saturday (today) from Charlotte. That gave me a bit of extra time to get everything squared away in Charleston (5 trips, I tell ya). I still felt I'd never get everything done. Finally got word Thursday that the visas were approved and would be shipping out on Friday for a Saturday delivery. We decided to have them shipped to Greenville and meet them there Saturday morning after I dropped the MINI off to be warehoused.

When the bell rang I think Heather & I felt this massive weight lift. We were Legal!! We could leave!!!

So here we are. On the Plane. Heather is watching some weird movie on the little LCD screen in the headrest and I'm typing away on the laptop until the battery dies. By the time you read this we'll be in England cause there ain't no wireless up here over the Atlantic.

Until then,

Cheers!

Seriously, if I have to pack ONE MORE cardboard box, I'm gonna freak. Ok, well probably not 'cause we aren't finished...But the house looks like some squatter/homeless village, only in smaller boxes.

Almost done packing the house for the move and renovation. The movers are supposed to show up Monday morning to start loading and then off to the storage facility. I am SO ready to get on the plane. Kinda nervous, kinda not. :shrug:

We finally found (read:coerced) a Wonderful friend to take care of Sebastian while he waits out his quarantine here in the States. I don't know what we would have done if she hadn't been willing to watch the furry demon. Belle will be staying with her long-haired brother and sister for her quarantine. It's great they can do their time (6 months) here in the States instead of in a crate somewhere in London. I'm sure the plane ride will be traumatic enough for them, both Teh Wife and the pets.

I know I know I know, Still haven't posted pics from Germany & Prague. You are more than welcome to finish packing the house for me & I'll up them right now. Once we get to the UK, and after I've aclimated to the 5 hour time difference, I'll post away. Until then, you're on your own to imagine what the trip looked like. Not my best stuff by far, but not crap either.

Speaking of pictures, Shot a TON over the holidays with the family. Over 3GB of stuff. Plenty of work for me when I FINALLY get the time. Sent LindsayBeans my old Blue & White G3, so hopefully there will be Xmas pics up on that site SOON. Maybe. If she can figure out how to put it together.

This might be the last post for awhile, cause it might take some time to get Teh Internets working at the UK house. (Not that I've been posting alot lately anyway) Hopefully I'll find a hotspot somewhere nearby before we "officially" have a connection at the house. Anyways.

Cheers