And let us not forget what made Obama's victory possible - Money. Money in gobs, money in torrents, money in spectacular waterfalls. So much money that the political experts were left sitting around, slack-jawed in amazement, wordlessly pointing and gobbling. So much money that they literally couldn't figure out what to do with it all.
And not money from Big Business, or even (ha) Big Unions, but money in $10 and $20 and $50 contributions from an enormous range of people, people who would normally never be interested in politics, but who believed in Obama from the start, and showed their (our) belief in the most direct way.
As for me, well, I couldn't vote for him, but I could contribute my support, and gladly did.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Election Night
Free at last, Free at last, Great God A'mighty, free at last.
I didn't think they'd actually do it, polls or no polls, but damned if they haven't
I'm -still- not entirely convinced that something won't intervene: an assassin's bullet, a calamitous catastrophe, a big serious war, any excuse really.
But, it really appears, at last ... no more Bush. A shame he'll get to pardon all his cronies before he leaves office, but at least they'll finally be *out* of office.
And finally, a calm, level-headed man of ability - someone who could keep such tight discipline on his staff that they never leaked in 21 months of campaigning, someone who seems to have a quick eye for picking able subordinates, and above all, someone of temperament and caution. This is the America I remember, the America I want to be part of, at last.
I didn't think they'd actually do it, polls or no polls, but damned if they haven't
I'm -still- not entirely convinced that something won't intervene: an assassin's bullet, a calamitous catastrophe, a big serious war, any excuse really.
But, it really appears, at last ... no more Bush. A shame he'll get to pardon all his cronies before he leaves office, but at least they'll finally be *out* of office.
And finally, a calm, level-headed man of ability - someone who could keep such tight discipline on his staff that they never leaked in 21 months of campaigning, someone who seems to have a quick eye for picking able subordinates, and above all, someone of temperament and caution. This is the America I remember, the America I want to be part of, at last.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Another road trip
Well, another fairly successful trip - this time to Baton Rouge in Louisiana, to visit my friend Dudley and play a tournament in the city. We drove down on Thursday, a seven hour drive through southern Arkansas, a bit of Mississippi, and north Louisiana. The drive itself went smoothly, on the US65 & US 61 highways, but - man - some things surprised me. I've been told that Arkansas is the second poorest state, but Little Rock & the surrounding area all look pretty prosperous and well-kept - even the slums of South Little Rock look passably prosperous, even if incredibly threatening and dangerous (the lines of police yellow tape seem to be the common decoration for houses).
So, I thought, well, sure, Arkansas is poor by American standards, but that doesn't mean poor. Wow, was I wrong - southern Arkansas is rural poor, with a capital P - shacks I wouldn't put a dog in, ruinous 'mobile' home trailers, and squalor that reminded me of the worst bits of East Cape: actually, worse than that I think. Lots of the land seemed to be cultivated & unfenced, which (apparently) is due to being owned & farmed by big Agribusinesses, which I'm sure is economically efficient, but not so great for the individuals left living there. The bit of Mississippi we drove through looked much the same (not too surprising, as Mississippi is the one state poorer than Arkansas).
Funnily enough, once we crossed the state line into Louisiana (Loosyana), it changed like the click of fingers, and there were lots of fairly prosperous looking medium-sized farms, with neat, well-maintained farmhouses.
Staying with Dudley was, well, not exactly what we'd expected: Dudley was a Sergeant Major of Marines, and I guess I was expecting him to have carried their ferocious discipline to his home, but not so much. His wife was away (her annual trip back home to Oz) when we arrived, and he had 3 teenagers still at home to handle: I guess because they were stepkids, he was much gentler with them than I'd expected. Unfortunately, it also meant they had the usual teenage effect on the environment.
He'd kindly taken Friday off to get ready for the tournament, and to show us around the town, which was great - the capital building & the spot where Huey Long was assassinatied were particularly fascinating.
Saturday was 3 games (thru til 9 at night), plus one game on Sunday for the tournament. Hard going, and I lost my first game - being fairly rusty - but managed to win the other 3 games, and sneak into 3rd place (the guy that beat me wound up 4th, having gotten a draw in the last round). Reasonably pleased, but my position was mostly due to a moment's inattention by my 3rd opponent, and some truly heroic dicing on the part of my light horse, in the last game - I really didn't deserve to win that one.
After the Sunday game, we drove back home - for some reason, on the way back the GPS routed us through a ton of back roads and avoided both the highways we'd used to drive down. Cat got quite wrought at this & was convinced the GPS had gotten us lost, but I insisted it had just determined a fractionally faster route (which I think is correct, it saved us 5 or 6 minutes off the 7 hour trip). I wish there was some way of turning that option off, though, the extra stress it causes isn't worth the small saving of time, and the much greater concentration required on small, windy roads. Finally got back to LR around 8, then went to a local cafe for dinner, and home by 9.
Since then, I've had 3 days off work : I originally arranged for a week, as the original plan - truncated for financial considerations - was to take more time, and visit New Orleans as well. Oh well, next time we go there, I guess. Nice to have time to catch up on simple stuff, and goof off, too :)
So, I thought, well, sure, Arkansas is poor by American standards, but that doesn't mean poor. Wow, was I wrong - southern Arkansas is rural poor, with a capital P - shacks I wouldn't put a dog in, ruinous 'mobile' home trailers, and squalor that reminded me of the worst bits of East Cape: actually, worse than that I think. Lots of the land seemed to be cultivated & unfenced, which (apparently) is due to being owned & farmed by big Agribusinesses, which I'm sure is economically efficient, but not so great for the individuals left living there. The bit of Mississippi we drove through looked much the same (not too surprising, as Mississippi is the one state poorer than Arkansas).
Funnily enough, once we crossed the state line into Louisiana (Loosyana), it changed like the click of fingers, and there were lots of fairly prosperous looking medium-sized farms, with neat, well-maintained farmhouses.
Staying with Dudley was, well, not exactly what we'd expected: Dudley was a Sergeant Major of Marines, and I guess I was expecting him to have carried their ferocious discipline to his home, but not so much. His wife was away (her annual trip back home to Oz) when we arrived, and he had 3 teenagers still at home to handle: I guess because they were stepkids, he was much gentler with them than I'd expected. Unfortunately, it also meant they had the usual teenage effect on the environment.
He'd kindly taken Friday off to get ready for the tournament, and to show us around the town, which was great - the capital building & the spot where Huey Long was assassinatied were particularly fascinating.
Saturday was 3 games (thru til 9 at night), plus one game on Sunday for the tournament. Hard going, and I lost my first game - being fairly rusty - but managed to win the other 3 games, and sneak into 3rd place (the guy that beat me wound up 4th, having gotten a draw in the last round). Reasonably pleased, but my position was mostly due to a moment's inattention by my 3rd opponent, and some truly heroic dicing on the part of my light horse, in the last game - I really didn't deserve to win that one.
After the Sunday game, we drove back home - for some reason, on the way back the GPS routed us through a ton of back roads and avoided both the highways we'd used to drive down. Cat got quite wrought at this & was convinced the GPS had gotten us lost, but I insisted it had just determined a fractionally faster route (which I think is correct, it saved us 5 or 6 minutes off the 7 hour trip). I wish there was some way of turning that option off, though, the extra stress it causes isn't worth the small saving of time, and the much greater concentration required on small, windy roads. Finally got back to LR around 8, then went to a local cafe for dinner, and home by 9.
Since then, I've had 3 days off work : I originally arranged for a week, as the original plan - truncated for financial considerations - was to take more time, and visit New Orleans as well. Oh well, next time we go there, I guess. Nice to have time to catch up on simple stuff, and goof off, too :)
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Blecch
Sorry for the silence, another wretched summer cold has struck, & I've been flat on my back, snuffling snorting sneezing, and generally providing too many bodily fluids. Oh well, mostly over it now, and back at work (altho whether I'll last past lunch is a moot point so far).
On the bright side, we had another visit from Ray last weekend, which was really great for both of us: it's kinda weird to make such a good friend, at the age of 50, but we seem to have so many shared/overlapping experiences, it's like I've known him forever, without ever meeting: like some parallel dimension.
We did a couple of sessions of Runequest, so he could see what it played like: I was a bit lacking as GM, with a sore throat precluding much detailed descriptions, but it seemed to work pretty well overall, and gave him a fair picture of classic Gloranthan RQ.
Cat keeps getting snippets from NZ about her father's arrest, which has finally happened (thank ghu) - but then his idiot brother wants a 'family conference' to sort things out, i.e. help Ashley escape the just retribution coming his way; then the police were asking her whether she was interested in 'restorative' justice rather than 'punitive' justice ... I ask you, what is it he's going to restore, her childhood innocence? the years wasted in mental hospitals because her accusations were deemed to be psychotic fantasy? the years after that where she was miserable, offcentre, and self-hating? Fortunately, she didn't get sucked into that, and firmly expressed her opinion that there was no avenue for that with her, and the best restorative she could have was to see him rotting in prison at last.
Of course, all this has left her extremely upset, and depressed. I've gotten her to talk to her therapist in the UK, to try & identify a US therapist that might fit her, and she has, I think, some hints about what to loook for - hopefully she can find some help shortly. I do what I can, of course, but I'm hardly a trained therapist.
Well, back to work now, there's actually something for me to do today :)
On the bright side, we had another visit from Ray last weekend, which was really great for both of us: it's kinda weird to make such a good friend, at the age of 50, but we seem to have so many shared/overlapping experiences, it's like I've known him forever, without ever meeting: like some parallel dimension.
We did a couple of sessions of Runequest, so he could see what it played like: I was a bit lacking as GM, with a sore throat precluding much detailed descriptions, but it seemed to work pretty well overall, and gave him a fair picture of classic Gloranthan RQ.
Cat keeps getting snippets from NZ about her father's arrest, which has finally happened (thank ghu) - but then his idiot brother wants a 'family conference' to sort things out, i.e. help Ashley escape the just retribution coming his way; then the police were asking her whether she was interested in 'restorative' justice rather than 'punitive' justice ... I ask you, what is it he's going to restore, her childhood innocence? the years wasted in mental hospitals because her accusations were deemed to be psychotic fantasy? the years after that where she was miserable, offcentre, and self-hating? Fortunately, she didn't get sucked into that, and firmly expressed her opinion that there was no avenue for that with her, and the best restorative she could have was to see him rotting in prison at last.
Of course, all this has left her extremely upset, and depressed. I've gotten her to talk to her therapist in the UK, to try & identify a US therapist that might fit her, and she has, I think, some hints about what to loook for - hopefully she can find some help shortly. I do what I can, of course, but I'm hardly a trained therapist.
Well, back to work now, there's actually something for me to do today :)
Monday, September 8, 2008
Storms
Well, we survived the remnants of Hurricane Gustav pretty easily. Weds was quite stormy (even by Wellington-winter standards), and produced quite prodigious amounts of rain: enough to persuade me to stay & work from home for the day, rather than risk the car aquaplaning all over the road: but other than that, it wasn't too bad.
The creek in the back yard must have risen by 8 or 9 feet I guess - almost to the top of the banks - but that's no real threat to the house, as there's another 8 feet or so of elevation before it would get to the foundations (and much wider, of course). The dead tree out the front yard shed quite a lot of branches, and has kinda broken in half, with the upper half now dangling down in the fork of the bottom half - we're waiting for the landlords to fix this, lacking appropriate tools (a decent length of rope, essentially).
Parts of the city lost power for the day, but nowhere near us (they appear to be the, umm, poor parts of town, for whatever reason). We did have a lot of N'orleanois up working in our Little Rock office for the week, as it seems to have been moderately badly hit again.
And afterwards, we've had just a stunning few days of weather - warm, sunny, and with just enough wind to be pleasant.
We had Betty & Dennis over for lunch on Sunday - Betty works in the quilting shop that Cat goes to all the time, and is (of course) a keen quilter, and Dennis is her husband - an interesting mix of Texas hick and sophisticate. I think it went very well, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the food seemed to work well : I made bacon&egg pie, and Cat made corn/cheese/onion muffins, neither of which they had ever had before - Muffins in the US seem to be exclusively of the cakey, very sweet, saturated with syrup variety, so savoury ones were a great surprise :)
Other than that, just trundling along, trying to find friends, and trying to fit in.
The creek in the back yard must have risen by 8 or 9 feet I guess - almost to the top of the banks - but that's no real threat to the house, as there's another 8 feet or so of elevation before it would get to the foundations (and much wider, of course). The dead tree out the front yard shed quite a lot of branches, and has kinda broken in half, with the upper half now dangling down in the fork of the bottom half - we're waiting for the landlords to fix this, lacking appropriate tools (a decent length of rope, essentially).
Parts of the city lost power for the day, but nowhere near us (they appear to be the, umm, poor parts of town, for whatever reason). We did have a lot of N'orleanois up working in our Little Rock office for the week, as it seems to have been moderately badly hit again.
And afterwards, we've had just a stunning few days of weather - warm, sunny, and with just enough wind to be pleasant.
We had Betty & Dennis over for lunch on Sunday - Betty works in the quilting shop that Cat goes to all the time, and is (of course) a keen quilter, and Dennis is her husband - an interesting mix of Texas hick and sophisticate. I think it went very well, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the food seemed to work well : I made bacon&egg pie, and Cat made corn/cheese/onion muffins, neither of which they had ever had before - Muffins in the US seem to be exclusively of the cakey, very sweet, saturated with syrup variety, so savoury ones were a great surprise :)
Other than that, just trundling along, trying to find friends, and trying to fit in.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Good days
Well, last weekend Ray drove over from Oklahoma City & spent the weekend, which was really good: we had a game of Fields of Glory on Saturday and discovered we knew the rules a lot less well than we thought: went out for dinner and brunches to the best bits of Little Rock that we've discovered so far: and talked our heads off.
It's rather odd to find a friend, at age 50, who feels like you've known him since age 10. We seem to have had so many parallel experiences, between wargaming and roleplaying, and identify closely with many shared ideas and thoughts (everywhere except politics where he seems to be wrongheadedly and stubbornly Republican, which I just dont get - he'd doubtless say the same, in reverse :) Saturday night we were up talking til 3 o'clock, just chewing over ideas for roleplaying: it's a damn shame OKC is so far away, too far really to run a regular RPG group from Little Rock, or I'd definitely run a campaign: but 4-5 hours drive every weekend, or even every 2nd weekend, is just too much (time, and especially cash for gas - it must be $40 each way at least I guess).
It's not just with me, Cat and Ray also enjoy talking, about America & just generally: certainly made for a great weekend.
Oh, and Bridge last night was -scorching- I haven't seen the results yet, but I don't doubt that we placed top: some of the hands I got to play were just wonderful, so tricky, but yielding great results for the right approach - I had a 3NT contract making every trick, and a 5C contract that everyone else went down 2 on, where I managed to make it, with some very tricksy discards to fool the opposition: several others too, but those were the most memorable. Cat was bidding much more precisely, and delivered exactly as promised: and her defensive play was outstanding too, she seemed to read my mind for picking the right leads, and we had a couple of spectacular results that way - a 2NT contract that should make, went down 2 because Cat found the right lead to me twice, a 4H contract that went down 3 (altho that was partly just gross optimism by our opposition, because they insisted on bidding on over a sacrificial 3D I made, and then got excited by 3H) .. oh, and funniest of all in some ways, a 4NT contract that went spectacularly down 3, where it should have been 4S making 5 (due to their initial 3S followed by my preempt 4C throwing them into a panic).
Fun times :)
It's rather odd to find a friend, at age 50, who feels like you've known him since age 10. We seem to have had so many parallel experiences, between wargaming and roleplaying, and identify closely with many shared ideas and thoughts (everywhere except politics where he seems to be wrongheadedly and stubbornly Republican, which I just dont get - he'd doubtless say the same, in reverse :) Saturday night we were up talking til 3 o'clock, just chewing over ideas for roleplaying: it's a damn shame OKC is so far away, too far really to run a regular RPG group from Little Rock, or I'd definitely run a campaign: but 4-5 hours drive every weekend, or even every 2nd weekend, is just too much (time, and especially cash for gas - it must be $40 each way at least I guess).
It's not just with me, Cat and Ray also enjoy talking, about America & just generally: certainly made for a great weekend.
Oh, and Bridge last night was -scorching- I haven't seen the results yet, but I don't doubt that we placed top: some of the hands I got to play were just wonderful, so tricky, but yielding great results for the right approach - I had a 3NT contract making every trick, and a 5C contract that everyone else went down 2 on, where I managed to make it, with some very tricksy discards to fool the opposition: several others too, but those were the most memorable. Cat was bidding much more precisely, and delivered exactly as promised: and her defensive play was outstanding too, she seemed to read my mind for picking the right leads, and we had a couple of spectacular results that way - a 2NT contract that should make, went down 2 because Cat found the right lead to me twice, a 4H contract that went down 3 (altho that was partly just gross optimism by our opposition, because they insisted on bidding on over a sacrificial 3D I made, and then got excited by 3H) .. oh, and funniest of all in some ways, a 4NT contract that went spectacularly down 3, where it should have been 4S making 5 (due to their initial 3S followed by my preempt 4C throwing them into a panic).
Fun times :)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
RPGs
On a brighter note, we've started playing with a local D&D group, after a 7 year hiatus. It's run out of a games shop - the owner has a whole mezzanine that he makes available to boardgamers and RPG'ers, as they all seem to do here. This group is us, plus 4 other players and the GM: we're trying out the (brand-new) 4th Edition of D&D which - I think - is fairly terminally silly, but at least a balanced game where all the classes get a decent chance of action at all times.
As with most RPG groups, it's a bit of a mixed bag, but at least noone too awfully immature, and a couple of the players are both skillful and worth knowing (probably above average), so overall it's a positive experience.
The first try at it was pretty rough, due to lots of breaks and delays, and people arriving late, but our second session was much better: smoothflowing and enjoyable. The only real problem was the volume of noise from the gamers upstairs, but that's probably just me being spoilt for playing at home, the other players didnt seem too bothered.
As with most RPG groups, it's a bit of a mixed bag, but at least noone too awfully immature, and a couple of the players are both skillful and worth knowing (probably above average), so overall it's a positive experience.
The first try at it was pretty rough, due to lots of breaks and delays, and people arriving late, but our second session was much better: smoothflowing and enjoyable. The only real problem was the volume of noise from the gamers upstairs, but that's probably just me being spoilt for playing at home, the other players didnt seem too bothered.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Hanks - No Thanks!
well, time seems to be slipping away from me at the moment. Most of that is just (finally) getting busy at work - now that we've officially taken over the production facilities from our customer, there's actually some things that need doing (and a few, I'm discovering, that are woefully overdue in fact). It's fairly weird, working in one city, on a contract where all the clients are in another city (another state in fact), while the rest of my team are in that state, and my bosses are in yet another state. Not exactly designed for close supervision, but I'm doing my best dedicated worker bit.
Cat has given up smoking again, thank god - but because of that, her temper has been a bit frayed, unsurprisingly. She was prescribed Chantix by the doctor, to help this, but one of it's side-effects was warned as depression, and this really hit her hard, so I got her to stop it after a week: nothing is worth that level of depression and suffering, not even stopping smoking. Fortunately, the pills don't seem to have been helping that much, as their absence hasn't made it any harder, apparently.
Mind you, her temper has had some reason to fray - we bought a dining table & chair at a place called Hanks Fine Furniture (a chain of stores): and paid $75 (!) for delivery on Wednesday, a scant halfmile down the road. The arrangement was that they would phone us the previous day to confirm the time of delivery, then phone on the day, an hour before arrival, to make sure we were home. However, the only phone call we got the day before, consisted of some guy bellowing requests to speak to a Matilda, and not being willing to talk or entertain the idea he might have the wrong name: then on Wednesday, I phoned the store, and was told we were 7th on the list and should get delivery mid-afternoon.
Of course, they didn't actually turn up 'til 6 p.m. - when we were already at the bridge club for our weekly game - and instead of phoning an hour ahead, we got a call when they were 5 minutes away from home, plus another when they arrived & we weren't there: followed by a threat that they would just drive away & we'd have to pay another $75 to get our stuff. Well, we couldn't make it back in time anyway, not that we were inclined to, at that point, so Cat tried to discuss the problem with the store manager, three times, only to find that he was another of these idiotic bullies who is completely unwilling to listen, and insists on overriding anything you might try to say with his own opinions and worthless bombast.
We gave up on any redress, so I called the store manager, to find out how we could pick the items up ourself, and when: of course, he gave me a wrong address for the warehouse, but we eventually found it (along with the guy who cuts our lawns, who was willing to rent out his truck to carry the furniture), only to find the store manager had tacked on a second $75 delivery charge to the account. Fortunately, the warehouse manager was willing to be reasonable, and cancelled this charge, and handed over the furniture.
So that's another store we won't be going back to - a shame, they have some quite nice pieces, but with staff like that, who would want to repeat that experience. I do have to thank Robert, the lawnmower man (so to speak), for his help, and his navigational skills in getting us there!
Well, another week, another gripe: doesn't sound that positive, really, but it's not really like that: just easier to write about the most vivid, and worst, bits. There have also been some good bits, of course - bridge is going well, although playing twice a week was a bit much for both of us, so we've cut back to once a week for a while.
Mostly just, we're still adjusting, finding our way around & trying to work out how everything works. We did go out to dinner with a couple - Cindy, who works at SAIC with me, and is a keen quilter and gardener, and her husband John - which went really well, and we're planning to repeat that shortly: and gradually making friends at the bridge club.
Have to remember, we've only been here 3 months, it's not surprising we're still finding it alien.
Cat has given up smoking again, thank god - but because of that, her temper has been a bit frayed, unsurprisingly. She was prescribed Chantix by the doctor, to help this, but one of it's side-effects was warned as depression, and this really hit her hard, so I got her to stop it after a week: nothing is worth that level of depression and suffering, not even stopping smoking. Fortunately, the pills don't seem to have been helping that much, as their absence hasn't made it any harder, apparently.
Mind you, her temper has had some reason to fray - we bought a dining table & chair at a place called Hanks Fine Furniture (a chain of stores): and paid $75 (!) for delivery on Wednesday, a scant halfmile down the road. The arrangement was that they would phone us the previous day to confirm the time of delivery, then phone on the day, an hour before arrival, to make sure we were home. However, the only phone call we got the day before, consisted of some guy bellowing requests to speak to a Matilda, and not being willing to talk or entertain the idea he might have the wrong name: then on Wednesday, I phoned the store, and was told we were 7th on the list and should get delivery mid-afternoon.
Of course, they didn't actually turn up 'til 6 p.m. - when we were already at the bridge club for our weekly game - and instead of phoning an hour ahead, we got a call when they were 5 minutes away from home, plus another when they arrived & we weren't there: followed by a threat that they would just drive away & we'd have to pay another $75 to get our stuff. Well, we couldn't make it back in time anyway, not that we were inclined to, at that point, so Cat tried to discuss the problem with the store manager, three times, only to find that he was another of these idiotic bullies who is completely unwilling to listen, and insists on overriding anything you might try to say with his own opinions and worthless bombast.
We gave up on any redress, so I called the store manager, to find out how we could pick the items up ourself, and when: of course, he gave me a wrong address for the warehouse, but we eventually found it (along with the guy who cuts our lawns, who was willing to rent out his truck to carry the furniture), only to find the store manager had tacked on a second $75 delivery charge to the account. Fortunately, the warehouse manager was willing to be reasonable, and cancelled this charge, and handed over the furniture.
So that's another store we won't be going back to - a shame, they have some quite nice pieces, but with staff like that, who would want to repeat that experience. I do have to thank Robert, the lawnmower man (so to speak), for his help, and his navigational skills in getting us there!
Well, another week, another gripe: doesn't sound that positive, really, but it's not really like that: just easier to write about the most vivid, and worst, bits. There have also been some good bits, of course - bridge is going well, although playing twice a week was a bit much for both of us, so we've cut back to once a week for a while.
Mostly just, we're still adjusting, finding our way around & trying to work out how everything works. We did go out to dinner with a couple - Cindy, who works at SAIC with me, and is a keen quilter and gardener, and her husband John - which went really well, and we're planning to repeat that shortly: and gradually making friends at the bridge club.
Have to remember, we've only been here 3 months, it's not surprising we're still finding it alien.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Catchup
Bleh, sorry for the silence, but last week I was sick - came down with something respiratory on Friday, spent Sat/Sun in bed, tried to work from home Mon/Tues (but mostly back in bed), then crawled to work and worked at about 40% capacity the rest of the week. The most debilitating thing about it was that I couldn't seem to stay asleep for more than a few minutes at a time, so I spent several days living in this twilight haze of overtiredness without sleep, a very strange and uncomfortable state.
To make matters worse, that was the week leading up to our handover of work for the contract I've been hired to work on, and after months - literally - of people dawdling or simply not responding to my requests, requirements, urgings, attempts to plan, and general frustration, all of a sudden it was panic stations: just what I needed when I'm feeling so wretched :/
On the bright side, I got the database monitoring working as designed, with a couple of days to spare - and then when the Security team decided this design was going to overstrain their communications channels (and why did they not think of this 3 months ago? oh well), I got it redesigned and implemented by the due date (Midnight Sun/Mon), with a whole 90 minutes to spare in fact.
On the down side, I had to guess at where to host it, and chose the wrong host (too busy really), but when you don't get answers to your questions, you sometimes just have to stab blindly in the dark.
Enough of that, anyway.
Before I got sick, we had another sparkling Wednesday night at Bridge, getting top place again, but after a weeks' break, our performance this Monday was just woeful: Cat was bidding OK, but her play and cardsense was woeful, and while my play was accurate enough, if not inspired, my bidding was absolute rubbish, both overoptimistic and overpessimistic, both at the wrong times. Last night was considerably better, tho, and we were much sharper - we didn't place, but that was (after examining the results) due to an A class pair slumming it, that we had to face over 3 tricky boards, and a certain amount of bad luck, rather than any egregious decisions on our part.
Perhaps the classic example was when we were sitting EW, and N (Dealer) opened 2C. I checked to make sure this was 23+ as I thought, then surveyed my 13 HCP and passed. S passed (!!!) as well, then Cat (with 16 HCP as it turned out), also wisely passed - well, wisely if N wasn't lying about her hand.
North had of course meant this as a weak 2 (despite their not playing this), but it completely killed our bidding chances, and she was very fortunate that her partner did not respond as she was required to! As it was, we took her down 4, for a 200pt score ... but of course all the other EW teams scored game in spades or NT, for 600+ pts, so we came out bottom ... hard to see what to do about it tho, altho in Cat's seat I might have doubled for takeout, if I'd worked out that N had misbid egregiously.
And this weekend we've got dinner out with a couple from work, and Sunday playing D&D to look forward to :)
To make matters worse, that was the week leading up to our handover of work for the contract I've been hired to work on, and after months - literally - of people dawdling or simply not responding to my requests, requirements, urgings, attempts to plan, and general frustration, all of a sudden it was panic stations: just what I needed when I'm feeling so wretched :/
On the bright side, I got the database monitoring working as designed, with a couple of days to spare - and then when the Security team decided this design was going to overstrain their communications channels (and why did they not think of this 3 months ago? oh well), I got it redesigned and implemented by the due date (Midnight Sun/Mon), with a whole 90 minutes to spare in fact.
On the down side, I had to guess at where to host it, and chose the wrong host (too busy really), but when you don't get answers to your questions, you sometimes just have to stab blindly in the dark.
Enough of that, anyway.
Before I got sick, we had another sparkling Wednesday night at Bridge, getting top place again, but after a weeks' break, our performance this Monday was just woeful: Cat was bidding OK, but her play and cardsense was woeful, and while my play was accurate enough, if not inspired, my bidding was absolute rubbish, both overoptimistic and overpessimistic, both at the wrong times. Last night was considerably better, tho, and we were much sharper - we didn't place, but that was (after examining the results) due to an A class pair slumming it, that we had to face over 3 tricky boards, and a certain amount of bad luck, rather than any egregious decisions on our part.
Perhaps the classic example was when we were sitting EW, and N (Dealer) opened 2C. I checked to make sure this was 23+ as I thought, then surveyed my 13 HCP and passed. S passed (!!!) as well, then Cat (with 16 HCP as it turned out), also wisely passed - well, wisely if N wasn't lying about her hand.
North had of course meant this as a weak 2 (despite their not playing this), but it completely killed our bidding chances, and she was very fortunate that her partner did not respond as she was required to! As it was, we took her down 4, for a 200pt score ... but of course all the other EW teams scored game in spades or NT, for 600+ pts, so we came out bottom ... hard to see what to do about it tho, altho in Cat's seat I might have doubled for takeout, if I'd worked out that N had misbid egregiously.
And this weekend we've got dinner out with a couple from work, and Sunday playing D&D to look forward to :)
Thursday, July 17, 2008
We aren't in ArrrrKansas any more, Toto
First off, our stuff has arrived from London at last!! However, it arrived at 6 pm on Thursday, when we were due to go away Friday morning for a weekend in Dallas, so it's pretty much still there, piled up in boxes.
Well, our weekend excursion to Dallas was pretty good overall. Driving down went fairly well, altho my driving was a bit dodgy, as I kept crabbing right in the lanes - the natural instinct for driving on the other side of the road, & apparently quite hard to ditch. Cat got a bit nervous about it, so she did the bulk of the drive down.
We met up with Ray & Pat from Oklahoma, & Ray acted as native guide, steering us to the biggest available branch of Half Price Books, where we spent a couple of happy hours wandering around and oohing and ahhing, buying a relatively restrained pile of books at the end. I have to say, we really needed the native guide - Dallas traffic is almost as aggressive as London traffic, and the city centre is a spectacular spaghetti of freeways: quite beautiful and awe-inspiring as an object, but also pretty daunting as something to navigate! Oh, and I should mention, Dallas is Hot Hot Hot - I thought Little Rock was pretty hot & sticky, but Dallas has it beat into a cocked hat.
Monty had arrived by the time we got back to our motel, so we all went out to the nearby Steak&Ale place for a drink (and in Monty's case, dinner), and sat and talked for a couple of hours.
Saturday, I went off with the lads to the wargames tournament, playing FOG. As I hadnt had time to excavate any armies, I had arranged to borrow figures from the umpire, Ian Buttridge, and took an Aragonese army - I'll post the list & battle reports on Kruppfalz .
During the first round, John Witstyn pitched up, with his son Austen in tow (about 12 I think). Once I'd finished off my opponent, we went off for an early lunch, and a chance to catch up and chat. He's changed remarkably little - quite a bit greyer, but that's hardly a surprise - much the same calm and happy John that I remember so fondly, with all the verbal quirks, and the same sparkle.
The rest of the tournament took up Saturday pretty thoroughly, and we didn't get back to the motel til about 9:30, then went next door for steaks & beer, and a post-tournament dissection. Cat had intended to go shopping in Dallas, but the traffic had intimidated her enough that she chose to stay at the motel and read her new book for the day.
Sunday we had planned to go spend time with John & his family, but we were both so tired (and probably a touch hungover from the beers), and so worn from the heat & humidity, we had to cry off, and just drove home - I did a lot more driving this time, & seem to be getting over the crabbing problem.
I was quite surprised by how green the bit of Texas we saw was, but then, it's just the very north-east corner. It was quite noticeable when we passed from Arkansas to Texas, tho, both in the change in terrain, from rolling hills and plains, to pretty flat (not Nebraska-flat, but still, flat), and in the change in feel of the rural homes, from fairly prosperous in Arkansas, to looking quite shabby and poor in Texas - until we hit the edge of the commuter belt, when it abruptly changed to 4000sqft mansions on hobby farms or half-acre sprawls, of course.
Oh, and I won the tournament, which was a nice way to start things off in the USA!
Well, our weekend excursion to Dallas was pretty good overall. Driving down went fairly well, altho my driving was a bit dodgy, as I kept crabbing right in the lanes - the natural instinct for driving on the other side of the road, & apparently quite hard to ditch. Cat got a bit nervous about it, so she did the bulk of the drive down.
We met up with Ray & Pat from Oklahoma, & Ray acted as native guide, steering us to the biggest available branch of Half Price Books, where we spent a couple of happy hours wandering around and oohing and ahhing, buying a relatively restrained pile of books at the end. I have to say, we really needed the native guide - Dallas traffic is almost as aggressive as London traffic, and the city centre is a spectacular spaghetti of freeways: quite beautiful and awe-inspiring as an object, but also pretty daunting as something to navigate! Oh, and I should mention, Dallas is Hot Hot Hot - I thought Little Rock was pretty hot & sticky, but Dallas has it beat into a cocked hat.
Monty had arrived by the time we got back to our motel, so we all went out to the nearby Steak&Ale place for a drink (and in Monty's case, dinner), and sat and talked for a couple of hours.
Saturday, I went off with the lads to the wargames tournament, playing FOG. As I hadnt had time to excavate any armies, I had arranged to borrow figures from the umpire, Ian Buttridge, and took an Aragonese army - I'll post the list & battle reports on Kruppfalz .
During the first round, John Witstyn pitched up, with his son Austen in tow (about 12 I think). Once I'd finished off my opponent, we went off for an early lunch, and a chance to catch up and chat. He's changed remarkably little - quite a bit greyer, but that's hardly a surprise - much the same calm and happy John that I remember so fondly, with all the verbal quirks, and the same sparkle.
The rest of the tournament took up Saturday pretty thoroughly, and we didn't get back to the motel til about 9:30, then went next door for steaks & beer, and a post-tournament dissection. Cat had intended to go shopping in Dallas, but the traffic had intimidated her enough that she chose to stay at the motel and read her new book for the day.
Sunday we had planned to go spend time with John & his family, but we were both so tired (and probably a touch hungover from the beers), and so worn from the heat & humidity, we had to cry off, and just drove home - I did a lot more driving this time, & seem to be getting over the crabbing problem.
I was quite surprised by how green the bit of Texas we saw was, but then, it's just the very north-east corner. It was quite noticeable when we passed from Arkansas to Texas, tho, both in the change in terrain, from rolling hills and plains, to pretty flat (not Nebraska-flat, but still, flat), and in the change in feel of the rural homes, from fairly prosperous in Arkansas, to looking quite shabby and poor in Texas - until we hit the edge of the commuter belt, when it abruptly changed to 4000sqft mansions on hobby farms or half-acre sprawls, of course.
Oh, and I won the tournament, which was a nice way to start things off in the USA!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Bridge, II
Well, we ventured forth again on Monday & last night (weds) to try our luck at the bridge club. Monday was tough, & we didnt do very well - 2nd to last amongst EW, 3rd to last overall - a mixture of some forgetfulness from Kat as to significance of bids, and some very sloppy play on my part, missing a couple of contracts.
Wednesday was quite an improvement! there were only 7 couples there (with the Director & his friend, making 8, or 4 full tables). The way they handle this, it means you play all the NS positions, then all (or in this case 75%) of the EW positions. We started brightly, altho I missed a slam that perhaps should have been bid (altho it turns out noone else bid it either), then just kept improving.
Kat was bidding more freely, and remembering better, and her cardplay was pinpoint accurate - just brutal to the opposition sometimes: at least three contracts, we took down before they ever came on lead, so basically those opponents never had a chance. Kat seemed to be finding exactly the right leads to pick out their weaknesses, or to find my voids. As a result, we finished clear winners overall, with about 78%, which earns us our first matchpoints (well, 0.35 points each, but it's a start). Admittedly, this is very much the duffers' club, but it's definitely good for morale, and after only a fortnight of starting, a great step.
Wednesday was quite an improvement! there were only 7 couples there (with the Director & his friend, making 8, or 4 full tables). The way they handle this, it means you play all the NS positions, then all (or in this case 75%) of the EW positions. We started brightly, altho I missed a slam that perhaps should have been bid (altho it turns out noone else bid it either), then just kept improving.
Kat was bidding more freely, and remembering better, and her cardplay was pinpoint accurate - just brutal to the opposition sometimes: at least three contracts, we took down before they ever came on lead, so basically those opponents never had a chance. Kat seemed to be finding exactly the right leads to pick out their weaknesses, or to find my voids. As a result, we finished clear winners overall, with about 78%, which earns us our first matchpoints (well, 0.35 points each, but it's a start). Admittedly, this is very much the duffers' club, but it's definitely good for morale, and after only a fortnight of starting, a great step.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
AT&T Blues...... again
Well, that was interesting: my internet access disappeared on Saturday night, sometime between 10 and 11. Not that I did anything, y'understand, it just ... went away. So, I tried AT&T helpdesk, but they only operate til 7 p.m.
Sunday after breakfast, I tried again - after negotiating their very hostile voice-response program, I eventually got to talk to a technician, who took me through all his standard fixes, without any result. His conclusion? there was some problem with the setup of my PC, and I should either
(a) call Microsoft for support, or (b) call AT&T's out-of-scope helpline and pay for support. I did point out that this occurred without my intervention or changing anything on the PC, but this apparently did not matter.
So, I called Microsoft help, and they wanted $75 to help me. That seemed a bit silly, so I said no, and called the AT&T helpline. It turned out, they wanted $129 to help me! although, to be fair, that would let me call with other problems for free, for the next 6 months. Obviously they expect quite a few problems in any six month period.
I restrained my temper, declined the offer, and asked if they could tell me who to contact, to terminate my account with them. This, it turns out, is the Billing Department, who aren't open on Sundays, so I noted the phone number.
Ten minutes after this, again without my having taken any further action, my internet access was restored.
Nothing like a little revenue-gathering exercise, is there.
Sunday after breakfast, I tried again - after negotiating their very hostile voice-response program, I eventually got to talk to a technician, who took me through all his standard fixes, without any result. His conclusion? there was some problem with the setup of my PC, and I should either
(a) call Microsoft for support, or (b) call AT&T's out-of-scope helpline and pay for support. I did point out that this occurred without my intervention or changing anything on the PC, but this apparently did not matter.
So, I called Microsoft help, and they wanted $75 to help me. That seemed a bit silly, so I said no, and called the AT&T helpline. It turned out, they wanted $129 to help me! although, to be fair, that would let me call with other problems for free, for the next 6 months. Obviously they expect quite a few problems in any six month period.
I restrained my temper, declined the offer, and asked if they could tell me who to contact, to terminate my account with them. This, it turns out, is the Billing Department, who aren't open on Sundays, so I noted the phone number.
Ten minutes after this, again without my having taken any further action, my internet access was restored.
Nothing like a little revenue-gathering exercise, is there.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Bridge
The other thing we've started this week, is attending the local Bridge club, about half a mile from home. Mondays they run a 0-300 night - more or less equivalent to a B grade night, I think - and Wednesdays they run a 0-20 night, for beginners (the other nights are either open, or for higher graded players).
The Monday night crowd was about 30 - 8 tables, so we played 3 hands per table, 21 hands for the evening. That worked well, as it meant stopping around 10 p.m. Given it was our first time playing for 10 years or more, we did pretty satisfactorily I think - 43% & slightly under halfway: a couple of fiascos, as to be expected when we were so rusty, but also a few good top boards, including a slam noone else bid.
Wednesday night was only 7 pairs, so we played 6 rounds, 3 hands per round, shifting from N/S pair to E/W pair partway through, to allow all the pairs to play eachother. This was much more relaxed, with time (and the inclination) to stop and discuss tricky hands afterwards, which made the whole thing feel much looser and friendlier. We did fairly well again, placing right in the middle this time (4th of 7), after a couple of blips - and again a few really excellent hands. Overall I think our bidding is working fairly well, but we need to work on defensive play.
All in all, a good start, and hopefully a small bridge to congenial companions.
The Monday night crowd was about 30 - 8 tables, so we played 3 hands per table, 21 hands for the evening. That worked well, as it meant stopping around 10 p.m. Given it was our first time playing for 10 years or more, we did pretty satisfactorily I think - 43% & slightly under halfway: a couple of fiascos, as to be expected when we were so rusty, but also a few good top boards, including a slam noone else bid.
Wednesday night was only 7 pairs, so we played 6 rounds, 3 hands per round, shifting from N/S pair to E/W pair partway through, to allow all the pairs to play eachother. This was much more relaxed, with time (and the inclination) to stop and discuss tricky hands afterwards, which made the whole thing feel much looser and friendlier. We did fairly well again, placing right in the middle this time (4th of 7), after a couple of blips - and again a few really excellent hands. Overall I think our bidding is working fairly well, but we need to work on defensive play.
All in all, a good start, and hopefully a small bridge to congenial companions.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Cars, again
On the bright side, now that we've got our own car, I can start driving again - and I did so, last Sunday.
We went back to the Starving Artists cafe, as it had (a) really good interesting food, (b) delicious deserts, (c) isn't a chain, and (d) has lots of baaad art on the walls, allowing us to feel comfortably superior, plus a bit of quite good stuff that we could gawk at.
Sadly, that turns out to be their last brunch - they're located right in the middle of the CBD, and weekends, it's just a desert, man: No shops around to speak of - they're all out in the suburban malls - so noone much goes into town. They've also cut back their evening openings from 3 or 4 nights a week to just Fridays, and survive on weekday lunches, when they do a really roaring trade. Despite this, they've decided to move the cafe to North Little Rock, somewhere closer to residential areas: I'm hoping they will then resume brunches in the weekend.
Driving there & back was actually very simple and easy, once I got over my initial nerves - a month of sitting beside Cat when she was doing all the hard work, seems to have really helped me adjust more easily to this driving on the wrong side of the road business: Not that I don't periodically have to mutter to myself 'rightie tightie, leftie loosie' when executing a turn, but I haven't actually tried to turn into oncoming traffic, which can only be a good sign. I even felt safe enough to make a couple of other minor excursions, to do some shopping. Actually, driving a brand new car certainly feels pretty good!
Saturday we spent mostly building kitset furniture - 2 DVD racks, 2 computer desks (one to serve as my painting station), and 2 computer chairs. We actually bought 3 desks, but they are so large that we've decided to try and share one for both PCs - certainly seems large enough - and that means we can put the third one together to serve as Cat's workstation for sewing & the quilting that she's now busily engaged with.
We went back to the Starving Artists cafe, as it had (a) really good interesting food, (b) delicious deserts, (c) isn't a chain, and (d) has lots of baaad art on the walls, allowing us to feel comfortably superior, plus a bit of quite good stuff that we could gawk at.
Sadly, that turns out to be their last brunch - they're located right in the middle of the CBD, and weekends, it's just a desert, man: No shops around to speak of - they're all out in the suburban malls - so noone much goes into town. They've also cut back their evening openings from 3 or 4 nights a week to just Fridays, and survive on weekday lunches, when they do a really roaring trade. Despite this, they've decided to move the cafe to North Little Rock, somewhere closer to residential areas: I'm hoping they will then resume brunches in the weekend.
Driving there & back was actually very simple and easy, once I got over my initial nerves - a month of sitting beside Cat when she was doing all the hard work, seems to have really helped me adjust more easily to this driving on the wrong side of the road business: Not that I don't periodically have to mutter to myself 'rightie tightie, leftie loosie' when executing a turn, but I haven't actually tried to turn into oncoming traffic, which can only be a good sign. I even felt safe enough to make a couple of other minor excursions, to do some shopping. Actually, driving a brand new car certainly feels pretty good!
Saturday we spent mostly building kitset furniture - 2 DVD racks, 2 computer desks (one to serve as my painting station), and 2 computer chairs. We actually bought 3 desks, but they are so large that we've decided to try and share one for both PCs - certainly seems large enough - and that means we can put the third one together to serve as Cat's workstation for sewing & the quilting that she's now busily engaged with.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Cars
Well, perhaps there's fewer differences between the States and the UK than we thought. We picked up our new car yesterday, a leased Honda Accord. The arrangement we'd made with the salesman was that we'd pick the car up on Wednesday (when the rental was due to be renewed), or he'd provide a loaner until our car was ready.
Cat dropped the rental at Budget (where it had cost us an arm and a leg for rental), and caught a taxi to the Honda agency, where she'd been told the car would be ready at 3 o'clock. She was apparently sat down, and essentially ignored for a couple of hours, without being told what was going on or why the delay (or how long the delay would be), and no sign of any loaner. At that point she phoned me, fairly upset, & I arranged to catch a taxi out there and pick up her and the car, and deal with the car yard myself, as she was out of all patience with them.
She then called back shortly thereafter, having left the lot because one of the sales managers had approached her in an unpleasantly aggressive manner and, in the guise of apologising, tried to make her feel angry or bad (I guess as a way of feeling justified in the way they'd treated her). Fortunately rather than losing it with him, she just left the lot, and waited for me on the next sidestreet.
After I picked her up and went back to the yard (I had an internal debate about just telling them to stuff it & walking away from the deal - but the practical problems that that would have created were too great), I dealt with the salesman we'd originally dealt with, who was very apologetic, then got handed to a different sales manager to finish the financial details (and who seemed pretty adept at not listening to what the customers were saying, himself).
We then sat outside waiting for the final details, and the sales manager that had already ticked off Cat came over, and delivered what I'd have to say was one of the slimiest and most unpleasant performances I've seen in many years: under the guise of allegedly apologising, he strenuously and repeatedly made every effort to put all the blame for this on Cat, and tried to portray himself as put-upon and - of course - always in the right: the old politico's trick of the apology that is no apology ("I'm sorry you feel like I kicked you in the nuts").
I'm very proud to say that Cat kept her head, and was quite civil, without accepting an inch of this nonsense, and kept pushing back at him quite directly, without ever being unduly abusive or excessive. It's fortunate that the original salesman came over and finished the details off tho, as I was at the point of becoming confrontational with him - the way the 'apology' had deteriorated, he was essentially calling her a liar, which isn't something I'm going to sit still for.
As it is, I think we both somewhat regret that we hadn't just torn the whole deal up and walked away ... but at least the car is very pleasant, and should be large enough for the comfort of our future guests.
Cat dropped the rental at Budget (where it had cost us an arm and a leg for rental), and caught a taxi to the Honda agency, where she'd been told the car would be ready at 3 o'clock. She was apparently sat down, and essentially ignored for a couple of hours, without being told what was going on or why the delay (or how long the delay would be), and no sign of any loaner. At that point she phoned me, fairly upset, & I arranged to catch a taxi out there and pick up her and the car, and deal with the car yard myself, as she was out of all patience with them.
She then called back shortly thereafter, having left the lot because one of the sales managers had approached her in an unpleasantly aggressive manner and, in the guise of apologising, tried to make her feel angry or bad (I guess as a way of feeling justified in the way they'd treated her). Fortunately rather than losing it with him, she just left the lot, and waited for me on the next sidestreet.
After I picked her up and went back to the yard (I had an internal debate about just telling them to stuff it & walking away from the deal - but the practical problems that that would have created were too great), I dealt with the salesman we'd originally dealt with, who was very apologetic, then got handed to a different sales manager to finish the financial details (and who seemed pretty adept at not listening to what the customers were saying, himself).
We then sat outside waiting for the final details, and the sales manager that had already ticked off Cat came over, and delivered what I'd have to say was one of the slimiest and most unpleasant performances I've seen in many years: under the guise of allegedly apologising, he strenuously and repeatedly made every effort to put all the blame for this on Cat, and tried to portray himself as put-upon and - of course - always in the right: the old politico's trick of the apology that is no apology ("I'm sorry you feel like I kicked you in the nuts").
I'm very proud to say that Cat kept her head, and was quite civil, without accepting an inch of this nonsense, and kept pushing back at him quite directly, without ever being unduly abusive or excessive. It's fortunate that the original salesman came over and finished the details off tho, as I was at the point of becoming confrontational with him - the way the 'apology' had deteriorated, he was essentially calling her a liar, which isn't something I'm going to sit still for.
As it is, I think we both somewhat regret that we hadn't just torn the whole deal up and walked away ... but at least the car is very pleasant, and should be large enough for the comfort of our future guests.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Happy Waterloo Day
and a mere 193 years since Drouet screwed the pooch, and let the Bad Guys win.
To celebrate, or not, I'm off to Albuquerque again today - just for a meeting tomorrow, then home tomorrow night in time for our weekend guest arriving Friday.
Last weekend was a nice change - the first weekend we haven't had to spend, frenziedly comparison-shopping and dashing around trying to fit out the house and make it livable. Instead we could spend it at a more leisurely, even lazy, pace, just adjusting ourselves slowly to life here. Haven't really tried to explore the city for adventures and places of interest yet, but that will happen soon enough. We also had to spend a certain amount of time dealing with the car rental company and exchanging our rental -
We had picked up a GPS system so Cat could steer around without constant resort to the map book - possibly we should have done this much earlier! Or possibly not, as Cat had an accident on Thursday last week, where she seems* to have been distracted by the GPS unit and failed to notice that she was at a red light (she apparently missed the existence of the lights, not just whether it was red or green). As a result, she had a - fortunately minor - prang with a car crossing in front of her: just her front corner and the other party's rear bumper, but a nasty shock (to both drivers, I'm sure).
The actual damage seems to have been trivial on both parts, but it left her very shaken and unsure for the next three days, unsurprisingly: so we spent quite a bit of the weekend with her driving, and taking things slow & careful, to rebuild her confidence.
I'm feeling quite ready to try driving myself now, but we still can't afford it - the rental company insurance is already preposterously exorbitant, and jumps another huge step if more than one person is listed as driving, so this'll have to wait until we have our own car.
Which looks like it's going to be the project for this weekend - not least because the cost of renting is killing our budget severely: due to the difficulties of getting financing arranged, it's already dragged on twice as long as I had projected originally. Of course, if my employer would just pull finger and pay me the promised relocation expenses, then this would be a lot simpler (not that they are refusing to, just that it takes place at the speed of continental drift). Oh well, more on that later, I guess.
* I wasn't present, so can't say for myself
To celebrate, or not, I'm off to Albuquerque again today - just for a meeting tomorrow, then home tomorrow night in time for our weekend guest arriving Friday.
Last weekend was a nice change - the first weekend we haven't had to spend, frenziedly comparison-shopping and dashing around trying to fit out the house and make it livable. Instead we could spend it at a more leisurely, even lazy, pace, just adjusting ourselves slowly to life here. Haven't really tried to explore the city for adventures and places of interest yet, but that will happen soon enough. We also had to spend a certain amount of time dealing with the car rental company and exchanging our rental -
We had picked up a GPS system so Cat could steer around without constant resort to the map book - possibly we should have done this much earlier! Or possibly not, as Cat had an accident on Thursday last week, where she seems* to have been distracted by the GPS unit and failed to notice that she was at a red light (she apparently missed the existence of the lights, not just whether it was red or green). As a result, she had a - fortunately minor - prang with a car crossing in front of her: just her front corner and the other party's rear bumper, but a nasty shock (to both drivers, I'm sure).
The actual damage seems to have been trivial on both parts, but it left her very shaken and unsure for the next three days, unsurprisingly: so we spent quite a bit of the weekend with her driving, and taking things slow & careful, to rebuild her confidence.
I'm feeling quite ready to try driving myself now, but we still can't afford it - the rental company insurance is already preposterously exorbitant, and jumps another huge step if more than one person is listed as driving, so this'll have to wait until we have our own car.
Which looks like it's going to be the project for this weekend - not least because the cost of renting is killing our budget severely: due to the difficulties of getting financing arranged, it's already dragged on twice as long as I had projected originally. Of course, if my employer would just pull finger and pay me the promised relocation expenses, then this would be a lot simpler (not that they are refusing to, just that it takes place at the speed of continental drift). Oh well, more on that later, I guess.
* I wasn't present, so can't say for myself
Monday, June 16, 2008
Birthday
Well, my birthday went well, if not quite as initially planned - we had aimed to go to Acadia, a cajun restaurant much recommended, but it turned out they were closed for a private party on the 12th. I tried looking for other cajun restaurants, but all the other listings looked, well, dubious - more on the line of cajun restaurant and budweiser refueling station - except for one, which, despite being listed as cajun, was (on inspection of the menu) just a seafood restaurant, and not a particularly inspiring one at that.
I also tried ransacking looking for a good proprietorial (i.e. not a chain) Italian or French place, without any joy - the few possibilities turned out to be either pretty lowrent, or too far out of town. So, we wound up going to a 'French' style chain restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised.
Not that any Parisian would have recognised it as French, except for the decor - the waiters were neither surly nor superior, the service was in fact excellent, and the food was hot and timely: and the menu almost completely lacked typical french fare & heavy cream sauces, something that didnt disappoint.
We started with the recommended specialty appetiser, pork pot-stickers. I'm not sure what we expected, but it certainly wasn't what we got - parcels of minced pork wrapped in a thin pastry and (I think) steamed then lightly fried. For all the unexpectedness, quite tasty. For a main, I had planned to stick to a steak, figuring that would be the one option on the menu that any chain restaurant would do well.
In fact, to my astonishment, they had orange roughy on the menu - a delicacy I haven't had since we left NZ - so I ordered that, and was utterly delighted: panfried with a simple citrus sauce on the side, it was perfectly cooked and completely delicious. Cat had chicken cordon bleu, which she was very satisfied with, altho the quantity was such that she couldn't finish it (not a problem I experienced with the fish, I hasten to say!
We were so well fed at this point, that desert seemed superfluous, so we decamped home to coffee and some of the excellent fruit cake Cat had baked as my birthday cake.
I also tried ransacking looking for a good proprietorial (i.e. not a chain) Italian or French place, without any joy - the few possibilities turned out to be either pretty lowrent, or too far out of town. So, we wound up going to a 'French' style chain restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised.
Not that any Parisian would have recognised it as French, except for the decor - the waiters were neither surly nor superior, the service was in fact excellent, and the food was hot and timely: and the menu almost completely lacked typical french fare & heavy cream sauces, something that didnt disappoint.
We started with the recommended specialty appetiser, pork pot-stickers. I'm not sure what we expected, but it certainly wasn't what we got - parcels of minced pork wrapped in a thin pastry and (I think) steamed then lightly fried. For all the unexpectedness, quite tasty. For a main, I had planned to stick to a steak, figuring that would be the one option on the menu that any chain restaurant would do well.
In fact, to my astonishment, they had orange roughy on the menu - a delicacy I haven't had since we left NZ - so I ordered that, and was utterly delighted: panfried with a simple citrus sauce on the side, it was perfectly cooked and completely delicious. Cat had chicken cordon bleu, which she was very satisfied with, altho the quantity was such that she couldn't finish it (not a problem I experienced with the fish, I hasten to say!
We were so well fed at this point, that desert seemed superfluous, so we decamped home to coffee and some of the excellent fruit cake Cat had baked as my birthday cake.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
You can't get there from here, or AT&T blues
Just so we can be reassured that some UK traditions have passed on to the USA:
When I went to phone NZ on Saturday, I got a message saying the phone was tollbarred. I phone the number given and was informed that I'd exceeded my credit limit for toll calls (not that I knew I had one), and would have to pay the bill of $475 before they'd unbar it. I phoned the accounts department to do this, and they demanded my Customer Code, which is printed on the bill they send out - but, we've only had the phone a couple of weeks, so I don't have any bill & don't know what the Customer Code is: and they couldn't possibly take payment until I gave them the Customer Code.
After a full hour of whining, blustering & begging, I finally got them to look up on the computer, and tell me what the Customer Code will be .... so then I went back to accounts to pay the bill, but the first bill will only be for $175: I told them I needed to pay $475 according to the other department, but they refused to accept more than the bill amount of $175, so I paid that, then rang the other department again with the payment code, to get the tollbar lifted.
They checked the code, and then said it was insufficient to lift the tollbar, and I'd have to phone accounts again and pay the rest. I did that again, and ... of course they repeated that they couldn't accept any more payment as there was nothing owing, according to them.
Deadlock.
... and, BTW, wtf is with the $475 in tolls??? I know Cat has spent 2 or 3 hours on toll calls to the UK and NZ, but I haven't made a single call on the landline to date - what rate are they charging, $90/hour or more??? (that is, assuming Cat's spent twice as long as she thought, on the phone).
Oh well, should have this problem sorted next week, we're switching providers (&keeping the same phone number, thank ghu).
When I went to phone NZ on Saturday, I got a message saying the phone was tollbarred. I phone the number given and was informed that I'd exceeded my credit limit for toll calls (not that I knew I had one), and would have to pay the bill of $475 before they'd unbar it. I phoned the accounts department to do this, and they demanded my Customer Code, which is printed on the bill they send out - but, we've only had the phone a couple of weeks, so I don't have any bill & don't know what the Customer Code is: and they couldn't possibly take payment until I gave them the Customer Code.
After a full hour of whining, blustering & begging, I finally got them to look up on the computer, and tell me what the Customer Code will be .... so then I went back to accounts to pay the bill, but the first bill will only be for $175: I told them I needed to pay $475 according to the other department, but they refused to accept more than the bill amount of $175, so I paid that, then rang the other department again with the payment code, to get the tollbar lifted.
They checked the code, and then said it was insufficient to lift the tollbar, and I'd have to phone accounts again and pay the rest. I did that again, and ... of course they repeated that they couldn't accept any more payment as there was nothing owing, according to them.
Deadlock.
... and, BTW, wtf is with the $475 in tolls??? I know Cat has spent 2 or 3 hours on toll calls to the UK and NZ, but I haven't made a single call on the landline to date - what rate are they charging, $90/hour or more??? (that is, assuming Cat's spent twice as long as she thought, on the phone).
Oh well, should have this problem sorted next week, we're switching providers (&keeping the same phone number, thank ghu).
Monday, June 9, 2008
Julie, Don't Go, I said
with apologies to Wayne & Schuster...
Saturday being Cat's birthday, we decided to go for a slightly more upmarket meal than the diners we've been frequented, & booked in to a midprice sort of place called Julie's (part of a chain, I surmise). We had been there once on a quiet Friday evening and found it quite pleasant, wtih good food and service. Not so much, this time.
Despite booking a table, they tried to fit us into a booth (not a great idea at my size), and when that didn't work, tried to seat us at a table in the bar, where we could be entertained by the blaring TV screen. After putting my foot down, we got a table for two, without too much delay.
For the rest, well ... as Cat said, the ice water was very nice: and the service was excellent, I must admit, but the food was, well, the worst we've had since we got here, and as bad as a bad English pub. My prime rib was both tasteless and tough, to the point that I sent it back, & ordered spaghetti and meatballs instead - which turned out to be two (2) meatballs, with a lot of thin spaghetti and a thick tomato/vegetable sauce, basically dull and uninteresting. I managed about a third of it and gave up.
Cat had beef nacho salad, which she had maybe a quarter of - I didn't ask for a critique of it, didn't seem necessary. We left hurriedly for points eastward, and I can't see going back there as an option. (I did leave the waitress a tip, after getting her promise that none of it would go to the kitchen staff - she really did do a great job, with miserable materials).
Saturday being Cat's birthday, we decided to go for a slightly more upmarket meal than the diners we've been frequented, & booked in to a midprice sort of place called Julie's (part of a chain, I surmise). We had been there once on a quiet Friday evening and found it quite pleasant, wtih good food and service. Not so much, this time.
Despite booking a table, they tried to fit us into a booth (not a great idea at my size), and when that didn't work, tried to seat us at a table in the bar, where we could be entertained by the blaring TV screen. After putting my foot down, we got a table for two, without too much delay.
For the rest, well ... as Cat said, the ice water was very nice: and the service was excellent, I must admit, but the food was, well, the worst we've had since we got here, and as bad as a bad English pub. My prime rib was both tasteless and tough, to the point that I sent it back, & ordered spaghetti and meatballs instead - which turned out to be two (2) meatballs, with a lot of thin spaghetti and a thick tomato/vegetable sauce, basically dull and uninteresting. I managed about a third of it and gave up.
Cat had beef nacho salad, which she had maybe a quarter of - I didn't ask for a critique of it, didn't seem necessary. We left hurriedly for points eastward, and I can't see going back there as an option. (I did leave the waitress a tip, after getting her promise that none of it would go to the kitchen staff - she really did do a great job, with miserable materials).
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Shopping
Well, our first actual weekend in our new house: finally able to start doing things in slightly less than a headlong rush of emergency setup mode. Whew.
My SS card arrived on Friday, so we tried to obtain credit from a couple of stores, but, as I expected, we were declined as we have no credit history so far :/ I must find out exactly what *does* generate credit history with the firms - I think paying utility bills (and maybe rent) helps with this, but I should identify all the ways we can boost this.
However, we did go and buy a new bed - a huge Kingsize, wahoo! room for the cats at last - and a new TV: I was planning to get a 32 inch flatscreen as they seemed on first inspection to be the best price/size bargain, but the sales woman checked through her supplies & found a 42inch screen for an extra 10% of the one I had planned to buy: seemed too good a bargain to decline, so we now have this massive screen plonked at one end of the admittedly very-large lounge. Well, at least when we get our PC's set up at the other end of the room, there won't be any problem watching the screen :)
We've also hooked up with satellite TV, so now we've got a couple of hundred channels to watch, notionally: mind you, as 50 of them are pay-per-view, 20 or 30 are home-shopping, another 10 or more are religious/christian-nutcase, and another 30 or more are Spanish language versions, it's not exactly as expansive as it might sound. Still, it gives a reasonable chance of finding something watchable, or CNN :/
Our neighbours to one side, Tom & Polly, brought cake over to welcome us, last week, so we arranged to have coffee with them on Sunday afternoon, but that kinda fell through for some reason, so we left a plate of Cat's shortbread for them, & will try again next weekend.
We also found the LR Whole Foods store at last, and Cat found it much more comfortable shopping there: if most of the goods are still unfamiliar brands & types, at least there's a reasonable expectation that the food won't be horribly artificial, plastic, or loaded with corn syrups & transfats (tho, at quite a price, in some cases). I should perhaps add that I found it more comfortable too, even aside of the scurf of elderly hippies underfoot: at least they are harmless, I guess.
We're still working on the furniture acquisitions (and trying to establish a line of credit with the Credit Union, so we can buy a car), but I think it's probably time to start making social contacts - I'm trying to arrange contacts with the local bridge club, and the Democratic party branch (figuring they're more likely to be on our wavelength than many), and I've found a games shop which subs as a meeting place for potential D&D players, so we may be able to put together a RPG group, with any luck.
My SS card arrived on Friday, so we tried to obtain credit from a couple of stores, but, as I expected, we were declined as we have no credit history so far :/ I must find out exactly what *does* generate credit history with the firms - I think paying utility bills (and maybe rent) helps with this, but I should identify all the ways we can boost this.
However, we did go and buy a new bed - a huge Kingsize, wahoo! room for the cats at last - and a new TV: I was planning to get a 32 inch flatscreen as they seemed on first inspection to be the best price/size bargain, but the sales woman checked through her supplies & found a 42inch screen for an extra 10% of the one I had planned to buy: seemed too good a bargain to decline, so we now have this massive screen plonked at one end of the admittedly very-large lounge. Well, at least when we get our PC's set up at the other end of the room, there won't be any problem watching the screen :)
We've also hooked up with satellite TV, so now we've got a couple of hundred channels to watch, notionally: mind you, as 50 of them are pay-per-view, 20 or 30 are home-shopping, another 10 or more are religious/christian-nutcase, and another 30 or more are Spanish language versions, it's not exactly as expansive as it might sound. Still, it gives a reasonable chance of finding something watchable, or CNN :/
Our neighbours to one side, Tom & Polly, brought cake over to welcome us, last week, so we arranged to have coffee with them on Sunday afternoon, but that kinda fell through for some reason, so we left a plate of Cat's shortbread for them, & will try again next weekend.
We also found the LR Whole Foods store at last, and Cat found it much more comfortable shopping there: if most of the goods are still unfamiliar brands & types, at least there's a reasonable expectation that the food won't be horribly artificial, plastic, or loaded with corn syrups & transfats (tho, at quite a price, in some cases). I should perhaps add that I found it more comfortable too, even aside of the scurf of elderly hippies underfoot: at least they are harmless, I guess.
We're still working on the furniture acquisitions (and trying to establish a line of credit with the Credit Union, so we can buy a car), but I think it's probably time to start making social contacts - I'm trying to arrange contacts with the local bridge club, and the Democratic party branch (figuring they're more likely to be on our wavelength than many), and I've found a games shop which subs as a meeting place for potential D&D players, so we may be able to put together a RPG group, with any luck.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
A brief excursion
Well, Albuquerque was pretty - not sure of the population, but I'd hazard a guess at less than 250K, but incredibly sprawling city, with a positive tangle of interstates weaved through it. Fortunately I could rely on taxis to negotiate it, while I stared at the countryside.
The place is about 5000' up, in the fringe of the (I guess) southern Rockies, and a very arid desert. The air is very dry, to the point of making you thirsty after a couple of minutes walking in it, but the light is beautiful, quite hard and crystalline, especially at dusk, when it looks so clear you could reach out and tumble the mountain peaks.
The reason I was there was to meet the DBA's I'd be supporting/taking over from, and that went extremely well - the SQLServer DBA was a woman called Debbie Rosen, who I found very friendly, and a lot of fun to talk with: she looks to be an excellent DBA, and we spent the first day going over the layouts, the sorts of problems encountered, and so on: she is staying on with PNMR, supporting the dev/test environments, while I'm just taking over her production support work, so it's good we seem to be on the same wavelength.
The Oracle DBA will be staying on, so I'm just backing him up. He seems able, but we didn't spend that much time talking (altho he's a bike fiend, & a little older than me, so I suspect this will change with time).
Otherwise the trip was pretty dreadful - delayed flights both ways, so lots of sitting around; poor quality room with an awfully noisy aircon; and the food nearby (Applebees & Pizza Hut) was actively bad - definitely a first for my US experiences. No worse than many UK places, but bad by US standards.
The place is about 5000' up, in the fringe of the (I guess) southern Rockies, and a very arid desert. The air is very dry, to the point of making you thirsty after a couple of minutes walking in it, but the light is beautiful, quite hard and crystalline, especially at dusk, when it looks so clear you could reach out and tumble the mountain peaks.
The reason I was there was to meet the DBA's I'd be supporting/taking over from, and that went extremely well - the SQLServer DBA was a woman called Debbie Rosen, who I found very friendly, and a lot of fun to talk with: she looks to be an excellent DBA, and we spent the first day going over the layouts, the sorts of problems encountered, and so on: she is staying on with PNMR, supporting the dev/test environments, while I'm just taking over her production support work, so it's good we seem to be on the same wavelength.
The Oracle DBA will be staying on, so I'm just backing him up. He seems able, but we didn't spend that much time talking (altho he's a bike fiend, & a little older than me, so I suspect this will change with time).
Otherwise the trip was pretty dreadful - delayed flights both ways, so lots of sitting around; poor quality room with an awfully noisy aircon; and the food nearby (Applebees & Pizza Hut) was actively bad - definitely a first for my US experiences. No worse than many UK places, but bad by US standards.
Friday, May 30, 2008
After a slight delay
Update somewhat late - I got sent off to Albuquerque for 3 days on a business trip.
Well, we're now moved in to our house - 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a truly enormous lounge & kitchen/diner, along with nice polished hardwood floors, a neat fenced yard shaded by trees, even a brook running along the back of the property - altho it might just be a drainage channel I suppose.
Of course, as I don't have a social security number yet, we can't get financing for anything, so we only have a small amount of rented furniture, and the place feels pretty empty, but that will resolve in time - especially once all our junk arrives from Britain, in July. Still, nice to have somewhere more permanent (and cheaper!) than the motel.
Cat has been busy this week shopping for all the small bits you need for a home, and stocking the freezer & shelves (well, a few of them - the kitchen has so much storage, I can't conceive what we'll ever do with it all): so it's feeling more homelike, and she's starting to cook dinners so we aren't eating out all the time.
Brandy & Midnight took a day or so to forgive us for moving them *again* - they'd basically just recovered from the trauma of the long haul, when we packed them up and moved them again: but now they've discovered the Great Outdoors! and the joys of wading through the grass and sniffing the trees, for the first time in their lives, and I think we're well forgiven :) Even with the fenced yard, I'm a bit paranoid about letting them have free reign outside yet, so we have to herd them back inside when we go out.
Meanwhile, we're wandering around furniture stores identifying what we want to buy, once we're in a position to do so (however, I do fear we may get tripped up by another factor once the social security card arrives, namely, No Credit History - a pretty tricky hurdle to get over. Still, we'll find out about that pretty shortly I guess.)
Well, we're now moved in to our house - 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a truly enormous lounge & kitchen/diner, along with nice polished hardwood floors, a neat fenced yard shaded by trees, even a brook running along the back of the property - altho it might just be a drainage channel I suppose.
Of course, as I don't have a social security number yet, we can't get financing for anything, so we only have a small amount of rented furniture, and the place feels pretty empty, but that will resolve in time - especially once all our junk arrives from Britain, in July. Still, nice to have somewhere more permanent (and cheaper!) than the motel.
Cat has been busy this week shopping for all the small bits you need for a home, and stocking the freezer & shelves (well, a few of them - the kitchen has so much storage, I can't conceive what we'll ever do with it all): so it's feeling more homelike, and she's starting to cook dinners so we aren't eating out all the time.
Brandy & Midnight took a day or so to forgive us for moving them *again* - they'd basically just recovered from the trauma of the long haul, when we packed them up and moved them again: but now they've discovered the Great Outdoors! and the joys of wading through the grass and sniffing the trees, for the first time in their lives, and I think we're well forgiven :) Even with the fenced yard, I'm a bit paranoid about letting them have free reign outside yet, so we have to herd them back inside when we go out.
Meanwhile, we're wandering around furniture stores identifying what we want to buy, once we're in a position to do so (however, I do fear we may get tripped up by another factor once the social security card arrives, namely, No Credit History - a pretty tricky hurdle to get over. Still, we'll find out about that pretty shortly I guess.)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Finding our feet
The first day we were here was thankfully low stress. Ray Summers had offered to drive over from Oklahoma to chauffeur us around and help get us adjusted, but got delayed arriving with an issue with his car, so we spent a real quiet morning recuperating, and once he arrived just did a little initial scouting.
Friday was productive, tho - I got social security application underway (you can't do hardly anything in the USA without a social security numer), and opened a bank account, then joined Ray & Cat in starting the house-hunting, which consumed pretty much the rest of Friday & all Saturday. Ray & Cat had already looked at a couple of places when I joined them, and one looked quite feasible: but to widen the search, we got a listing from a rental agency.
We started by looking at the cheapest places (well, the cheapest we would consider) - my mistake, they were mostly dreadful, or at least rough, and located in some pretty shocking areas: quite a few we didn't even bother getting out of the car to examine, after counting the boarded-up windows & security notices. Once we worked our way up the list, we started having more lucky, and Saturday evening we saw 4 places in a row that were all very promising, so set up an interior viewing for each for Monday.
Sunday we had a look at a couple of the more expensive places (ones that didn't seem too far out of the city), but none of them looked worth the extra - one was pretty shoddily built & right beside a burnt out house, and another just looked a bit ... haphazard I guess, and didn't inspire any curiosity or positive feelings. After that we went to look at a car yard waaaaay out in North Little Rock, mostly because it was offering a BMW 325 at a decent price. Car yards being closed on Sundays here, all we could do was an external inspection, but it looked pretty good.
Ray left to drive the long haul home, around 5, and we just vegetated the rest of the day. I'm still amazed at his generosity and hlepfulness: I've known him for 9 or 10 years on the 'net, but never actually met before - that was somewhat of a surprise too, I thought he'd look like the typical geeky gamer, overweight & glasses, but he was actually quite Jimmy-Stewart like, both in appearance and in his manner - courteous & gentlemanly, and incredibly helpful.
Friday was productive, tho - I got social security application underway (you can't do hardly anything in the USA without a social security numer), and opened a bank account, then joined Ray & Cat in starting the house-hunting, which consumed pretty much the rest of Friday & all Saturday. Ray & Cat had already looked at a couple of places when I joined them, and one looked quite feasible: but to widen the search, we got a listing from a rental agency.
We started by looking at the cheapest places (well, the cheapest we would consider) - my mistake, they were mostly dreadful, or at least rough, and located in some pretty shocking areas: quite a few we didn't even bother getting out of the car to examine, after counting the boarded-up windows & security notices. Once we worked our way up the list, we started having more lucky, and Saturday evening we saw 4 places in a row that were all very promising, so set up an interior viewing for each for Monday.
Sunday we had a look at a couple of the more expensive places (ones that didn't seem too far out of the city), but none of them looked worth the extra - one was pretty shoddily built & right beside a burnt out house, and another just looked a bit ... haphazard I guess, and didn't inspire any curiosity or positive feelings. After that we went to look at a car yard waaaaay out in North Little Rock, mostly because it was offering a BMW 325 at a decent price. Car yards being closed on Sundays here, all we could do was an external inspection, but it looked pretty good.
Ray left to drive the long haul home, around 5, and we just vegetated the rest of the day. I'm still amazed at his generosity and hlepfulness: I've known him for 9 or 10 years on the 'net, but never actually met before - that was somewhat of a surprise too, I thought he'd look like the typical geeky gamer, overweight & glasses, but he was actually quite Jimmy-Stewart like, both in appearance and in his manner - courteous & gentlemanly, and incredibly helpful.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Landing, cats and things
Well, we've been here a week already, which seems a bit amazing all by itself.
The flight to Washington went well, even landed an hour early - just as well, as all that extra time was soaked up dealing with Immigration & Customs, and getting our cats inspected for the flight onwards to Little Rock. Speaking of which, the little furballs didn't like the trip in the least - at the Washington stop they were pretty unhappy, but calmed down once Cat had cleaned their cages of stuff, and replaced the towels. Unfortunately, the flight to Little Rock was delayed by an hour, and when we went to board it, we saw the cat cages had been brought out and left on the tarmac beside the hold while all the baggage was loading - a particularly thoughtless and cruel thing to do, as the area was INCREDIBLY noisy with jet engines revving up everywhere. Cat remonstrated with the (I think Haitian) attendant, to absolutely no effect of course (the rules must be obeyed, ja wohl?)
Once we got to the motel and decanted them, they were both pretty traumatised from the noise, and the uncertainty, and it took a couple of days before they recovered enough to even show interest in cat treats or tuna. They're still a bit disgruntled, but I think that's partly just the change of routine, plus the small area they have - one room plus a bathroom.
I started work on Monday but they werent/arent ready for me, so I still haven't done anything worth speaking of, nor even gotten the basic paperwork done: nice to see HR departments are equally useless all around the world! More on this next time :)
It appears we now may have a rental property arranged for a 10 month lease - 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, enormous lounge, and fenced back yard to keep the cats safe. Havent heard definitively yet, but it seems to be going well (there are also a couple of other nearby properties if this does fall through).
Weather has been warm to hot (up to 90 one day), and some humid.
More tomorrow
The flight to Washington went well, even landed an hour early - just as well, as all that extra time was soaked up dealing with Immigration & Customs, and getting our cats inspected for the flight onwards to Little Rock. Speaking of which, the little furballs didn't like the trip in the least - at the Washington stop they were pretty unhappy, but calmed down once Cat had cleaned their cages of stuff, and replaced the towels. Unfortunately, the flight to Little Rock was delayed by an hour, and when we went to board it, we saw the cat cages had been brought out and left on the tarmac beside the hold while all the baggage was loading - a particularly thoughtless and cruel thing to do, as the area was INCREDIBLY noisy with jet engines revving up everywhere. Cat remonstrated with the (I think Haitian) attendant, to absolutely no effect of course (the rules must be obeyed, ja wohl?)
Once we got to the motel and decanted them, they were both pretty traumatised from the noise, and the uncertainty, and it took a couple of days before they recovered enough to even show interest in cat treats or tuna. They're still a bit disgruntled, but I think that's partly just the change of routine, plus the small area they have - one room plus a bathroom.
I started work on Monday but they werent/arent ready for me, so I still haven't done anything worth speaking of, nor even gotten the basic paperwork done: nice to see HR departments are equally useless all around the world! More on this next time :)
It appears we now may have a rental property arranged for a 10 month lease - 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, enormous lounge, and fenced back yard to keep the cats safe. Havent heard definitively yet, but it seems to be going well (there are also a couple of other nearby properties if this does fall through).
Weather has been warm to hot (up to 90 one day), and some humid.
More tomorrow
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