Update

Branden is headed back to London today, in hopes that his Monday morning flight takes off from Heathrow's Terminal 5. Chris is taking full advantage of having Branden here. Below is a picture of their 2-day Axis & Allies game.

Chris got some exciting news yesterday. He's been asked to interview for a post-doc position at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. They still need to decide on a date and I'm hopeful the interview will happen soon, so that we finally know where we'll be living! He's offered to interview Chris in Europe, so he seems quite interested.

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We switched to daylight savings time last night, or British Summertime as it's known here, so we're back to the standard time difference. I'm happy that we'll have more daylight in the evenings now. After two days of constant heavy rain, the sun is out today and it definitely feels like spring.

Branden is Back

Branden was scheduled to fly from London to Oslo this morning. However, chaos ensued when the new terminal 5 opened at Heathrow yesterday, so shortly after midnight he received an e-mail notifying him that his 7:15am flight was cancelled until Monday! So we have him back for the weekend :)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7318337.stm

The other front page news story today was in relation to the sentencing of two boys who murdered a girl and tried to kill her boyfriend because they were "goths." I was horrified to read that the parents of the killers joked and laughed in court about what they had done. It's not hard to guess who steered these two kids in the wrong direction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7316601.stm

As I scrolled through the online news headlines earlier, I noticed a seemingly related article in Time Magazine about Britain's Out-of-Control Kids. The story is so dead-on as to what life is like here.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725547,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

Chip & Pin

Has chip and pin hit the United States yet? It's all over Europe and it's incredibly annoying when traveling. It's as though the system is designed entirely to keep tourists from making purchases. I'm curious if credit card fraud is actually any lower with the new system. I can think of a few examples that have annoyed us.

In Amsterdam all of the train ticket machines accepted Netherlands issued credit/debit cards only (no cash and no other cards). Luckily, they did have a ticket counter where you could pay cash after taking a number and waiting your turn with every other tourist that needed a ticket. It was worse than waiting at the DMV!

We didn't get as lucky this past weekend when we tried filling our rental car up with gas before returning it to the airport. Very few gas stations were open on Easter Monday. We found one open that was the unmanned type only accepting cards...and you guessed it, only French cards! We gave up as our car got lower and lower on gas (or diesel to be more accurate) and returned it empty. The charge hasn't come through yet, and I'm somewhat terrified to see how much it's going to be.

I don't really think about it here, but having visitors always reminds me that the UK is just as bad. We first realized this when Chris' Dad tried paying the deposit on his rental car and they would only accept a chip & pin card. I was reminded again this weekend when we were buying train tickets to get home from the airport and looked for a ticket machine which would allow my brother to use cash. It was really bad because the machines only accepted chip & pin and there was no ticket window to pay cash!

Packing

It's weird to be in the position again of deciding what's worth moving. Earlier this week at work a co-worker started making a list of all the things she wants when we leave. All are electronic items which she knows we can't take with us. The past two years have just flown by. I easily remember sitting in our Madison apartment making decisions about what to bring with us here.

Today as I packed for our upcoming trip to France, I decided to start sorting through our clothes. I tried on everything that had made it's way to the back to the closet and filled an entire trash bag with clothes that neither of us wears. It's so much easier to do it now then just before the move because I also remember frantically sorting through clothes in late June 2006, with my brother making multiple trips to Goodwill for us.

Another reason it's important to start making decisions now about what we'll take back to the U.S. because our first suitcase full will go with Chris in April for his Atlanta trip (his parents are meeting him there) just two weeks after we return from France. We'll be able to move quite a bit home considering Chris' trip in April, our visit home in May and then the eventual move home in July.

A Quiet Weekend

Chris and I are both sick, which means it's going to be a quiet weekend. Just colds, but annoying all the same. His is respiratory and greatly affected by his asthma. The timing is ok though. The forecast is for heavy rains all weekend and we have no commitments, with the exception of a 6 mile charity run on Sunday that Chris will no longer be able to do.

We're both hopeful that we feel 100% for my brother's arrival on Thursday. We're excited to see him and visit Normandy in France. The boys will also be spending some time in London at the Imperial War Museum. I never imagined I'd marry someone who enjoys reading about WWII as much as my brother. It's freaky how similar they are!

Chris' job search is moving very slowly but we finally have a lead, so we're clinging to that. Chris has been asked to a lunch meeting during his conference in Atlanta next month to discuss a post-doc opportunity at the Blood Center of Wisconsin (connected with the Medical College in Milwaukee).

It's so strange to think about moving back to Wisconsin. I never thought it was a possibility until now. Chris is so excited at the thought of getting back into triathlons and being able to collaborate with his former colleagues at UW. Of course, I'm excited at the idea of being close to most of my friends and family again. We'll know more after April 16!

Free Time

I've been thinking today about how much free time we have living here and how little free time we'll have upon returning to the States...if all goes according to plan and we have kids right away. This occurred to me while picking up books at the library earlier today. I read more now than I ever have and I love it...well non-school books that is :)

Something else which I'm sure will not occur as frequently is having friends over. Tonight we had our friend Dario over for dinner and to play our favorite game (Catan). Chris made two Chinese dishes - broccoli & chicken and pork & mushrooms. In addition, he made homemade fortune cookies, which turned out very well.

Our traveling will definitely come to an end soon. Neither of us would possibly have enough vacation time in the States to travel the way we do here. We just finalized our last trip which will be 6 days in Paris in July. We're very excited about this trip because we're staying in Central Paris in an apartment. Our brief visit to Paris last summer wasn't enough for us to experience everything we wanted to. This time we're planning to take day trips to Giverny and Versailles, and also see some of the amazing museums such as the Louvre, Rodin and the Orsay.

The Date is Set, The Destination is Not

We received part 1 of our UK tax refund which means we definitely can spend no longer than two years in the UK. We have tickets to return home on July 30 (we arrived here on July 31, 2006). We fly into Chicago and will drive to Madison to pick up all the items my Mom has kindly been storing in her basement for us. Chris has pointed out that we may need to rent a small trailer if we intend to take everything with us at once. Where will be going with this trailer is still unknown, but Chris is working very hard to obtain a second post-doc somewhere in the San Francisco area. Stay tuned...