Typical Weekend

Today is a pretty typical Saturday. I'm getting ready for our next trip by looking up train schedules, packing, booking reservations, etc because we leave for a 3-day trip to Amsterdam on Tuesday. Chris will be in lab all weekend working on the papers that he needs to get published before we leave in July.

Tonight we're meeting our friends Dario and Majd (Chris' labmates) for Chinese food and then going to a pub where Jun (another labmate) will be playing (drums and piano). I like that we now live in a "My Space" age because I was able to listen to the other bands that will be performing tonight. I discovered that I really want to hear an Irish duo named Fola who are performing directly after Jun.

http://www.myspace.com/folamusic

I've also been trying to sort out car rental insurance for our visit home in May and our move home in July. I've become increasingly frustrated while trying to figure out what our options are, partially because I'm searching from the UK so all my Google hits are UK related. There are lots of great options for UK residents, but from what I can tell we're going to be stuck with using the insurance offered by the car rental company which costs an arm and a leg.

Visa offers decent coverage if certain measures are taken, such as declining CDW insurance offered by the car rental company, however it's very basic and I'm not sure that Chris and I should rely on that. Particularly if we're going to be driving from the Midwest to California in August.

We're nearing the end of February, which is Chris' self-imposed deadline for obtaining a faculty job. So far none of the schools that expressed interest in him by asking for references have asked him to interview. Therefore it's onto plan B which is a second post-doc. There are many schools that's he's interested in, with quite a few of them being in California. I'm trying to be patient but I really want to know where we're going to be living in 6 months!

It's Always Something

Lately it seems as if there's always something going wrong. I was reminded of this while sitting at home today waiting on the carpenters who were repairing the hole they created in our kitchen back in November. We got a call from the landlord saying they'd be here between 9-10am. Chris has mouse surgeries all week, so I was stuck staying home. I got three subsequent calls from the carpenter each giving me a different arrival time. They showed up around noon, discovered they had the wrong color wood, and left to go shopping. They finally finished around 3pm, which meant I wasn't able to go to work at all today. Sounds ok in theory, but I need to make those hours up and it feels like a complete waste of a day.

Since I'm bored, I thought I might bore you with photos of our on-going kitchen saga. It started in November when our washer stopped working. First the plumber came, he determined that the washer could not be pulled out due to the way the cabinets had been built around it. So then a few days later the carpenter came to remove a cabinet. Next the plumber came back and fixed the washer. Three months later, the carpenter came back to install a new smaller cabinet...actually a wine rack. I would imagine the worse possible place for a wine rack would be in the kitchen next to the oven. We certainly won't be storing wine in it.

A stuck washer in November...


A fixed washer, but missing cabinet in November.


A replacement "cabinet" installed in February!

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, we had computer problems when our anti-virus software expired. Luckily, re-formatting the hard drive has seemingly solved the problems we were having. However, we now have new problems. For example, the space bar on our keyboard came off and so I'm typing this on an external USB keyboard. It only cost 9 pounds, but it's taking up valuable USB space (only 3 of the 4 are working). We could get all our laptop problems fixed under warranty but that would involve transferring our warranty to the UK which seems silly considering we're moving home this summer. I just hope nothing else goes wrong in the meantime. It's only when a computer is not working that you realize just how often you need it.

I purchased flight tickets to move home last night, but that didn't go smoothly either. We bought them through studentuniverse.com which offers discounted airfare to students and faculty. We haven't purchased flights through them since moving here but had bought quite a few when living in the U.S. Anyway, I didn't realize until after buying our tickets that they had to call the HR departments where we work to determine if we were faculty members. Apparently, you cannot simply be a staff member, you actually have to be a professor. Luckily, we were able to get the tickets cancelled. We think Chris would have qualified, but I definitely did not. So now it's back to the web to search for cheap one-way tickets home in July.

Super Pancake Tuesday

Today is Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday as it's officially known. Historically, rich foods such as fat, butter and eggs were used up on Shrove Tuesday because they were forbidden throughout the 40-day fasting period of Lent...so what better to make than pancakes!

As you can tell from the photo above our idea of pancakes differs from the British idea. Their pancakes are very thin and have a variety of fillings/toppings. It is amazing how talk at the office today revolved around pancakes. Questions such as...are you making them at home or going out for pancakes? What toppings will you use? (Lemon and sugar are the most common).

kk

I wish I was home to vote in the presidential primary. We're now 99% sure that we'll home to cast our ballots in November. Shockingly, Chris and I actually agree on who we'd cast our vote for if he makes it onto the final ballot. I refer to our favoriate candidate as Osama, Chris calls him Yo Mama :)

kk

Today is also my sister's 15th birthday, happy birthday Brianne!!