San Francisco - A bit like Whitby

If you enter the phrase "June is the sunniest month in England" into the Google English/Spanish translator, it comes up with the questions "Did you mean 'June is the rainiest month in England'?". Apart from being absolutely hilarious from a coding point-of-view (us IT professionals are known for our waggish sense of humour), it is also patently untrue. San Francisco must be the wettest, coldest, most blustery place on any coast. Including, yes, Whitby, as they do have the smoked kippers to mitigate any moistness.

Although winter jackets would have been best, we were the typical Brits abroad in that we each had several cardies, a cagoule and a rain-mate. at one point, I realised my hood had created handy guttering around my forehead, when, leaning forward to speak to the small person in front of me, I completely deluged her already sodden face.

Apart from the weather ("colder than Stoke!"), it was great fun. Easily the best US city we've been to so far. We stayed in a really nice flat in Castro, which is where all the more handsome chaps with dogs hang out. There was one slightly embarrassing moment when I called T over to a shop-window and said "Awww, look at all the pretty Easter eggs", and she said "Oh yes, Mummy. they must be for St Valentine's Day AND Easter, because they have Love written on them"....bridgjo pulled us both back from the window by our collars muttering "I'll talk to you later".

We went across to Alcatraz. Interesting and damp. I hadn't known that so many children used to live on the island, the kids of the guards, who would take the ferry across to school each day.

A highlight for the small person was the Pirate Shop . It's a front for a community writing group. If a child goes in and offers a drawing or poem, they can barter with the staff for treasure.

My favourite place was the Winchester House. It was unnerving how one room would be colder than the rest, and you could well imagine spirits being abroad, or at least walking around the rooms.

Muir Woods were pretty impressive - especially as we also did a 10 mile hike. T managed to go all the way round with a constant supply of Pringles, crisps and Fruit Pastilles. Luckily, as most people were just doing wobbly-bottomed coach-tours, it meant everyone else stayed on the board-walk, and we had the paths to ourselves.

Eau, deer

The winter has seemed to have passed us by this year. Apart from one or two minus 20C days, it has been quite acceptable. Last year we had snow till way passed April. This year I may even be able to succumb to my faux middle-class roots and go and plant tomatoes (which generally seems to be just a posh way of feeding the local deer population).

I was not impressed by the local animal husbandry. The neighbour came home just before Christmas at about 1am and found a pile of four deer at the bottom of the road. When he called the police to complain, he was told it was actually the police who'd done it, and it was part of the culling program. As we only have 5 deer (well, one, obvs) which wander about, rather than a swathe of rampaging wildebeest across the savannah, I thought that this was a bit odd, until I saw the price of venison in the supermarket.

I was there  in the local Wholefoods last week. Wholefoods is a bit like M&S....overpriced organic produce selling to gullible mums, who otherwise just frisby Vitamin C in the form of jaffa cakes to their kids. At the check-out, I'd unloaded my basket onto the conveyor-belt behind this well-turned out lady in front of me (ie she had a nice perm, and you couldn't see her gun), and put down The Barrier of Death.

I suddenly realised that I needed to pop back to the veg department and grab some frisee (or something else I would probably not recognise by sight). When I came back, she was just paying up....and I saw she'd actually helped herself to the two bottles of Pelligrino and some parmesan from my section. She looked at me. I looked at her. We did the unspoken "I know you know I know etc", and she looked so horrified I just could not bring myself to say anything.

Serves me right when tap-water and cheddar would do just as well, but I just knew she would carry that guilt with her all day.

Friend or Foe?

Right - let me make this quite clear. I am all for any country keeping out nasty foreigners with questionable hygiene who refuse both to integrate and to work. However, when it comes to ME, I tend to reach for the deodorant and get rather righteous and irritable.

Yes - it was time for us to renew our visas.

The whole procedure is a process of documentary obstacles, with only the most tenacious applicants being awarded the Big Prize ("Yes, another 2 years of 6 foot snow can be yours for the low, low price of your sanity!").

The first step is to apply using the visa application system on-line. Except it was written and completed by a really distracted 15 year-old who was taking his GSCE in Computing Science a year early, and forgot about the testing module. The initial screen informs you (rather optimistically) that the process may take 25 minutes to complete. It took me fours hours. For each application. A little like an original BBC text-based adventure game ("Hit troll", "What troll?" etc), it would either intermittently throw you out of the system as you had not touched the key-board for 3 seconds (this was timed, by me, sobbing very very quietly, so that the pixies couldn't hear), or, on using the drop-down list-boxes, would redirect you out to a completely random screen on the Homeland Security web-site. "Oh , yes," said one of the Brits, "It's been like that for about 12 months. When it happened to us we told our company they would have to do it for us". Unfortunately, I did not have that sort of privilege, so had to plough on. Finally, I was in the position to scan in the photos and print out all the forms we needed.

Then came the Book Your Interview challenge.

The interview could be done within the USA (but only 10% of visa renewals are awarded this way), or go out of the country (but not Mexico, as that can take upto (or at least) a month).

However, this is further limited to the fact that an interview could only be booked through the internet, and only within the next 6 weeks. At eleven o'clock at night.

Eventually, we got an interview in Halifax (the "I Love Halifax" blog will be written when I've stopped the valium).

Off we went, in our posh togs, just in case.

As it was being renovated, we had to sit on the floor in the corridor outside of the consulate. Now and then a disembodied voice would direct us to move along the line, go to the back, come to the front, present a form, wait at the coffee shop downstairs. On entering, we were then told that the hand-bag had to be taken to another building two blocks away and checked into a hotel locker; that the bottle of water had to be left at the desk (in spite of us having to wait for 3 hours); and that "Your daughter cannot bring her MP3 player in.You may not believe this - but once we had someone in and it took down all the computers and printers".

No, actually, I don't believe it - because that was the plot of a FILM!!!

And all the time, you have to be hyper-aware of your facial expression as each sneer and upwards glance will be punished by being thoroughly pushed to the back of the queue again.

We presented the papers - our forms, passports and the company 3inch petition, and were then told that the print-outs I had done at home were not a high-enough quality for the machine to read in the bar-code (even though I have seen the girl on the till actually type in the number BY HAND for the milk I buy each week - so if our local Target can do it....).

But, no - we had to go back to the hotel, and hope that its antiquated broad-band connection (powered by weevils) would be fast enough for us to log on to the website (after firstly trying to remember the URL, and then the password (mother's grand-mother's maiden name, apparently. It didn't help that I, of course, had to make one up, and couldn't remember if it was Phyllis or Kevin). So, clutching the reprinted forms, we then ran back to the Consulate - just before the security guard locked up and took in the flag). Yes, everything's now OK, but, um, we can't possibly say when the visas will be printed. Because they are printed from Washington, you see. And we have no control over it. Come back tomorrow. And no, you can't have the phone number, you must just come round.

So we did. Twice, by which time it was Saturday, and we had to wait until the following Monday - 24 hours before we were due to fly out.

With much trepidation, we again approached the Consulate door, and whispered the magic words in tremulous voices. The door opened a crack, and the passports were slid out.  L. Frank Baum obviously based his famous story on something very similar.

It's the pits.

They have started building next-door. It was a lovely copse of silver-birch, but now looks like a battered corpse (ooh, did you see what I did there?). It took one man a day-and-a-half to cut down all the trees and turn them into wood-chip. The heavy plant moved in the next day and has started digging out the basement. I am a little concerned as it looks ENORMOUS. I am going to guess it is 6-bedrooms, based on my extensive architectural knowledge (ie several episodes of Grand Designs. I will take to standing next to the plot and sighing into the middle-distance "I can't help thinking that..."). Almost had a falling out with the owner who decided to check up on progress by popping round at six o'clock on Saturday morning, standing on what will ultimately be our shared drive and telling his wife authoritatively (loudly) "And that is where the toilet will be". Naturally, I didn't say anything, being both English and in Minnesota, so just tutted and closed the window IN A FORCEFUL MANNER. That'll show 'im.

We have had to cave in to social mores and purchase our first net-curtains. It will give us something to twitch.

Interestingly they were not allowed to start earlier, as there is a city rule that heavy plant must be kept off the roads for a certain time after the last snows melt. Damn' - said the S word, and I'd promised myself I wouldn't.

I don't normally watch Reality TV, as it is a bit of a Voyeuristic Indulgence - particularly the program the other day about hoarders. Ten minutes into it, I decided to do out the garage, and then moved onto the guest-room. I even dropped the nine garbage bags, two chairs and a blanket off at the thrift store, it moved me so much.

Bean has made her first kill. We're very proud, but it's the person in charge of kitty litter (ie me) who has to dispose of the mangled remains.

We went to play crazy golf last weekend. It is an amazing place. The guy makes random pieces of sculpture and each year seems to add another hole (he is up to 13). It's wonderfully eccentric.

Just. Too. Hot.

Forty degrees today. I know. I'm never satisfied. T's ice-skating started up again this evening, and most of the town had turned up to watch, it seemed, sitting on the frigid bleachers in shorts and vests. Her classroom was so warm at school, that they had to have lessons in the cafeteria. Alas, like in Australian schools, there seems to be very little air-conditioning for what, when it's not minus forty, is plus.

I overheard this at the ice-rink: Child reading Malory Towers: "Mommy, what's a 'blazer'?". Mommy: "It's a kinda snow-mobile, honey".

I've been doing more running. One of my favourite tracks is to run along the railway-line, which is a common evening walk for a lot of people around here (the rails have a utility vehicle track along side, so are quite wide). The consensus is that it is 'most likely illegal', but the drivers wave to you, and the police just drive on by. For a state which seems to have quite a loose definition of 'gun-control', they probably think "Well, if you're daft enough to be walking along a track when a 120-carriage freight train is rolling-along, is there really anything we can do or say to help you?". And, yes, they are really 120 carriages long - this means (quick mental calculation) with each one 20m long, it can sometimes straddle several railway crossings at once; effectively cutting one side of the town from the other. I tried to run along side of one the other day as it was waiting for its green-light, but gave up and ate chocolate instead.

I have a problem, otherwise, on where to run. Memorial Day was last week (white heels - hurrah!), which means that everyone (else) has opened up their cabins, and cracked open the Glad-Wrap on their boats. As the roads here can be quite narrow, the boat-trailers quite wide and the road-kill plentiful, it means there's sometimes very little space for me (pavements are non-existent....everywhere requires a car, and today I treated myself both to the drive-through chemists, and the drive-through post-box).

And I'm not able to run cross-country at the moment because of the ticks. The ones you can see are OK...it's the ones the size of poppy-seeds which are the ones to scream hysterically at.

I took an executive decision last week (i..e spent a Lancashire man's money without asking him first), and bought some furniture for the 3-season porch. In the last house we were always being nibbled at by the voracious mosquitoes, but here, luckily, there is a balcony enclosed with screens - pretty handy on a swamp. It also has a ceiling fan and speakers for piped music, if only we could be bothered with trying to figure out how it works. Once or twice we have found ourselves sitted in there, Conversing.

Bridgjo had a good day's kayaking on the river, which is very high, due, of course, to the snow. He took T out on the lake, but she sat in the back, with her friend in front, and let her do all the work. Chip off the old block.

This is why I hate computers....

Intermittently I earn my keep by ploughing through all the piles of paper on my desk: pay the lawn chap, sort out turning on the reticulation, downloading claim forms for medical bills, organizing T's hectic social life and changing my address on my UK Bank account.

This last one is held at a Well Known British Banking Institution, and necessitates you typing into the phone key-pad card numbers, date of birth, security codes, best-friend's dog's icense number before you can even speak to an operator - who then REALLY grills you. Now my English bank account is there purely as Running Away Money (or, Dash Cash), which, admittedly isn't going to get me very far at the moment as it only contains $2.52. But it's there should my US cards ever get zapped, or I need an extra couple of bob to tide me over to the next Rapture. So I find it a bit annoying when I have to try and remember the exact last time I bought something ("Umm, Jackie magazine in 1986?"), or the number of direct debits, passwords for on-line banking which I never use, etc.

So, this was going to be an easy one.

I wanted to change my address.

So I call the UK, get through all of the above dialog and the lady says to me, "Ah, I see you do not have the necessary security layer set up," (there's more?), "So I will need to send you a form. To your new address. Could you spell it out for me please?".

And this is why I hate computers.

Drive-Thru Life

We went to Colorado last month for a weekend. I was extremely impressed by the drive-through cigarette shop, although the drive-through post-boxes here take some beating. Bridgjo found an original share certificate for the Isabella Gold-Mine, which was accepted as The Official Souvenir (in Disney, it was a plastic snow-globe of the Little Mermaid, so I am happy that T's tastes are improving). It was bitterly cold, and I was a bit grumpy that I had forgotten to bring my ski-jacket. On the Sunday I went out wearing every single item of clothing in my possession, including several pairs of knickers, one of which doubled-up as ear-warmers.

We'll be staying for another two years, it seems, so maybe I'll be unpacking some of those boxes soon. Unfortunately, not until we manage to ascend the K12 of paper-work which is Renewing Your Visa. It starts by forcing you to take at least 4 hours per application on-line (the system crashes more often than...than...ANYTHING! (apologies, but after that evening I found it quite difficult finding humour in anything for a quite a while), then making sure all the documentation has been completed correctly by the company (which still managed to spell bridgjo's name 3 different ways, and put on our Australian address where we haven't lived for the past 5 years). Then it's the gentle teasing and joshing that is Organising Your Interview. Yes you can go to Montreal...oops, no you can't...how about Quebec?...no, too late, you hovered too long over the mouse...Halifax then?

So Halifax it is...known for its slogan "Halifax...It's a Blast!" (no, not really), and for being next to the Estate Agents in Baxtergate.

T has just completed a week of exams. These are for the French Government - the American's are next year. She had four days of 4 French tests, and 4 maths. I'm not quite sure she completely Got It, but I'm certainly interested in how she is progressing. So the next blog will either be very braggy, or very fibby. ("So,yes, we are thinking she should be doing the Chinese immersion this summer....").

The picture shown at the top was done courtesy of Wordle - an extremely addictive application.