After my last whingey post, I feel obligated to mention I haven’t died.   I’ve just been trying to stay busy and have actually been mildly successful.  I did want to say thanks to everyone who wrote to tell me to have a stiff upper lip and all that, though.  It makes me smile.

I spent Easter weekend kicking around in Islington, which (for the US readers) is a wealthy neighborhood in London, where the rows of Porsches are long and unbroken except by the occasional Bentley.  I guess Tony Blair used to live around the corner from where I was staying, and this amused me greatly.  I’m so used to politicians in the states owning hundred acre ranches or those kind of McMansions you see all over now, so it actually seemed very modest to me to think of Blair living there.

While I was there, I got to finally meet the rest of my husband’s family and we had a great time.  This particular household has only just moved back to the UK after a five year stay in New York City, and so we spent a lot of time trading grocery store confusion stories and the like.  It was a lot of fun to meet someone who has had all of my same challenges, except in reverse.  It was fun, too, to compare our american lives, as they lived smack in the middle of a huge city and I grew up in the burbs in the midwest, and they are two very different experiences.

I dyed Easter eggs with my husband, who had told me it’s something only grannies do here.  In the states, kids would get a basket on easter, full of all kinds of toys and candy, and when I was growing up, we’d dye at least a few dozen eggs and hide them.  It was only a couple of years ago, actually, my entire family (mom, sisters, nieces and nephews, etc.) got into a huge easter egg food fight on the front lawn, like the rednecks we are.  (The egg fight is not traditional.  It just sort of happened.)

Here, people give each other chocolate eggs, which appear to come with things like M&Ms inside.  (Smarties, too, but UK smarties, which are not the same as US smarties, in yet another instance of Same Name, Different Food.)   My sister in law got me an egg and it’s so pretty I don’t want to untie the bow on it.

Today is a bank holiday, and it’s sunny, too.   I live within earshot of a soccer field and a public park, so there was no chance of sleeping in.  Hubby is downstairs making pancakes.   I have no idea what that means, as pancakes are also a Same Name, Different Food item.  (Pancakes here are more like crepes.   American style pancakes are known here as Scotch pancakes.)  

After that, we are off to a wedding.  I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that later, as I suspect it’s not the same as home, either.

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#89 Saint Patrick’s Day « Stuff White People Like

I was going to write a post about how we celebrate St. Pat’s in the states, but basically, this SWPL sums it up perfectly.

I’m honestly not an anniversary and occasions kind of gal, but I noticed that tomorrow is my 6-month wedding anniversary and was surprised by that.   Probably because I’ve only been here living with him for just over 2 months.

I like being in love with someone who loves me back.  And of course, now that I’ve been married for all of twelve seconds, I know all about how to be happy in a marriage.  I’m pretty sure all you need is two people who are both willing to try hard for the other one’s sake instead of just their own.

I mean, it’s that easy.  (Probably doesn’t hurt if you think they’re exceedingly attractive, though, and maybe with some kind of accent.)

Happy Valentine’s Day (via In Tea We Trust)

Love is the answer to a question that I

have forgotten

but I know I’ve been asked

and the answer has got to be love.

-Regina Spektor

We have discovered today that americans do Valentine’s day differently from Brits.  My very excellent mother sent me a care package today and inside was a v-day card for me and another for him.   He found this to be exceedingly unusual.

Here in the UK, it seems you only send Valentine’s stuff to your crush or romantic partner, and you’re supposed to send it secretly.

In the states, we have a bit of that, I suppose, but it’s not really uncommon at all to buy some sweets for say.. your siblings or parents, or your best friends.   You might bring a box of chocolates to the office, even.   The stores this time of year are lined with aisles of special cards designed for children, covered in Looney Toons or Dora the Explorer or whatever.   They buy them in boxes of 30 and take them to school - one for each classmate - and they often bring them in along with a tray of cupcakes or candies to be shared in a class party.

Anyway, I think he’s satisfied my Mom wasn’t putting the moves on him now.  Glad we could clear that up, and glad I didn’t send his parents anything, haha.

New Year’s Eve (via In Tea We Trust)

For NYE, we went to a party.  It was the first time I’ve been out on NYE since about 2000.   In the states, we call it “Amateur Night” and it’s fullll of drunk, obnoxious and dangerous people attempting to drive drunk in the ice and snow.  Most people I know just get a movie and some liquor and stay in, like sensible people.

Here, we can walk.   Here, people DO walk.  So we went to see friends, where we danced and drank and toasted and laughed.   It was a very good time.

I have been adamantly reminding people for months not to get me things for the holiday, or at least, if they must, to get them to me BEFORE the movers took the bulk of my things in crates.   Anything that didn’t go with them must travel in my suitcases, and both of them are beyond full already.  I had to pack 2 months worth of clothing (to hold me over until the crate arrives at my house… assuming it doesn’t go sleep with the fishes) and my hard drives, laptop, camera, etc.  I am a small, stickly girl who prefers to take a single carry-on bag no matter where I am going or how long I am staying, and the thought of lugging two suitcases and my laptop bag through O’Hare airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year kind of makes me want to vomit.

My mom, hearing my pleas, went out and bought me a blanket to take along.

This is how it goes.

Well, despite the visa guy’s promise that it’d only take two days, it did end up taking about a week for my final approval to roll in.   Still, as I was expecting up to a five or six week wait, I can hardly complain.   So there you go - a year’s worth of planning, waiting and paperwork-ing all comes down to this one single little sheet of green paper jammed into my passport.   How anti-climactic, eh?

I really wanted to be in the UK before Christmas.  My friends, who are angels, were so moved by our story that they actually all chipped in to pay for my flight to the UK.   Sometimes, I can barely believe the serendipity in my life…  first to find the man I love from half a world away, and then to find this amazing group of friends who support me no matter what and just want my happiness.

Unfortunately, holiday travel is busy and books fast, and my family was doing a brilliant job of making me feel guilty for wanting to spend the holdiay with my husband.  They seem to forget sometimes that he and I have spent 8 of the last 12 months apart from each other and we didn’t get to see each other LAST year on Christmas, but in the end, I caved.  Let it be all about them for the next four days, sure.  On the 28th, I will be on a plane to MY house, where my life suddenly becomes my own again and not just an accessory to everyone around me.  It’s not that I don’t love my family - I do.   It’s more that they are very emotional and sometimes have a hard time stepping back to see more of the world than what lies at the end of their noses.   They’re good people who just happen to love me a lot.   Still, I can’t help but feel a little annoyed that suddenly, SUDDENLY, the reality of all this is finally starting to dawn on them.  I spent the entire last year feeling very alone and overwhelmed and like nobody in my family was trying to understand it from my point of view, and some things will never be the same because of that.

Oh, what a cheery holiday post.     It’s ok.  I have decided to stop being grinchy, enjoy this last Christmas here in the states, with my sister’s seven little dwarves who will all be tearing gifts open on my floor in a day or so.  After that, everything changes.    I will save the Christmas crackers for next year.

I’ve been so busy the last couple of weeks.  Busy and under the shadow of this cold that just never seems to go away.

I finally got our marriage certificate last week, which was the key factor holding up pretty much everything else that needs doing.  I immediately went to the DMV and changed my name.  I’m officially the Mrs., at least as far as the state of Illinois is concerned.  It’s funky not knowing what your signature looks like anymore.

Monday is Columbus day here (government holiday) but on Tuesday, I can change my social security card (for free) and then mail my US passport off for a name change ($75 rush service).  Once they come back, it’s visa application time.

I also moved my banking over to HSBC.  It seems somewhat difficult to open a bank account in the UK until you’re pretty established there.  (At least, this is what my husband reports back to me.)  HSBC tells me there is some fancy thing they can do where, if I have a US account with them, they can just use that to verify my ID and then open me an account at their UK branch.  It will be ready and waiting for me when I arrive.   This is nice, since I’m not really sure yet how long it’ll take to get my insurance numbers and whatever when I arrive.   And either way, their customer service so far has been about 247820472 times better than Citibank, whom I was with for seven years and rarely had anything but trouble with.

Graham has been busy on his end, too.  He moved us back into the house in Lancaster and gave back the flat.  He turned on our phone and hallelujah the internet is coming soon.   Signing up for internet in the UK appears to be much more annoying and complicated than doing it in the US.  You rent your line from BT, the phone company, and then can hire out your phone, internet and cable services to all these different providers, who all look a little shady and unreliable, and all of whom demand a nice fat 18-month contract.  Looks like most of them have hidden clauses about capping your speeds and spying on your downloads, too.  I’m glad he took care of that, or I’d have gone nuts trying to figure it out.

I had a conference for work this week that meant a domestic flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh.  I had almost forgotten how stress-free travel works.  No PoE at the other end, no stops through customs.  One single ID check.  Easy peasy.  It was nice.

Nicer still was that I made a friend in the shuttle to the airport with a lovely guy who had been staying at my hotel.  Originally from Macedonia but living in Holland, he’s lived all around the world, so we had a nice talk about visas and moving from country to country.  He also used to live in Italy but date a girl in Tokyo, so we had a good laugh about how we should own stock in Skype.  It was really nice to sit and have coffee with someone who really understands the unique joys and stresses of being the stranger in a strange land.  I had also met a very talented girl from Hong Kong.

On my flight back, I marveled at my knack to always meet very odd and interesting people, anywhere I go.  I guess it’s because those are the only ones that I am interested in meeting most of the time.