Wednesday, November 07, 2007

So much has happened since the last time I updated this. I finished at PwC at the end of February and temped for a couple of weeks in March. Then Genevieve and I spent a week with our good friends Stacy, Claire & James Mitchell and Alveen Thoresen at Stacy’s house in Normandy. It was very cold and actually snowed a couple of days but we chilled out in front of the fire and got a lot of reading done. We also saw the Bayeux Tapestry, which is incredibly well preserved for something made of fabric that’s 1000 years old! The colours were still vibrant and there was such a sense of movement and immediacy about it. Amazing!

I started temping at Reading Borough Council in the Child Protection department at the end of March and absolutely loved it. I really felt like I was making a difference, in my small way, which I’ve never had in any of my previous jobs. I was really sad to have to leave it last month. I’m now just temping till the end of November.

Genevieve finished her GCSEs in June and left straight away to spend the summer with my folks in California and she is now in her senior year at Rio Lindo Academy and has settled in well.

David and I have been spending the last few months getting things prepared for our move to the States – if we had known just how much work and hassle was going to be involved we might have thought twice about doing this, so it’s probably just as well we didn’t.

We had to have our dog, Willoughby, put to sleep last month which was very sad for us, but he was old, arthritic, blind, deaf and increasingly incontinent due to dog dementia and his quality of life was declining so we decided it was the for the best. We found him at the dog rescue four years ago and he has brightened our lives and we like to think we gave him a really good home in his declining years.

I may not have time to update this before we leave but I will try very hard to update regularly when we are in the States so you can see what we are getting up to there.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Major Update

OK - I join the long list of people who start a blog and never update. However, I have big news and thought this would be a good way to share it.

1) I've quit my job. Well, actually, they were making noises about cutting back in my department so I pre-empted them and said that if voluntary redundancy was on the cards I'd be interested. So, here I am two weeks later about to finish on a job I've been at for over seven years. Fortunately, the package was good enough I can pay off some debts and have enough left over as a buffer in case I have periods where there is no temp work and enough to cover December so I can go to California early.

2) Which leads me to major news item number two - we are moving to California for the year 2008. David has accepted a year-long research position at Pacific Union College. We will only be 2-2 1/2 hours from Mom & Dad and Lauren, Fin and the girls. I'm so excited I'm beside myself! Of course I already have a list as long as my arm of things we have to do before we go... David and I are getting UK citizenship so we don't have any problems when we want to come back (Genevieve of course is already a citizen by birth); David has to sort out work permits; we have to find tenants to rent the house while we are away; we have to do a major cull of junk and decide what goes, what stays and what will come with us; get quotes for shipping our stuff; I've got to get the house in a fit state to be rented out; we have to decide what to do with the pets - one frail, elderly dog, one middle aged cat and a budgie (parakeet). Arghhhh!

So, we will be looking forward to seeing all our friends on the other side of the pond and getting to know my nieces better.

I'll try and keep this updated with our progress as we get ready to go.

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