Oh Gillian *hugs* I already posted in the UK forum and I am so sorry to hear it hasn't worked out for you But it's great that you are still friends and it is great that you are going on exciting adventures!


HAHAHA - Oh Jeremy has a billion credit cards and they are all maxed out totalling about $2000 so I can relate to that as well!!! What with that and everything falling to pieces right now it is so not fun - I can't wait 'til Saturday - we can just have a good old b*tch about everything that is screwing up and maybe with enough wine inside us we will actually get to laughing about it all!!! We can compare horror stories!!

Will check out that USCIS thing now - didn't realise we had to use a specific doctor... that really sucks


It's normal to feel lonely, especially when you haven't made any real friends yet. But you do have all of us and I can prolly vouch for pretty much everyone on here by saying we are all at the end of a... computer If you ever need a sounding board, just shout

Thanks Aly, it means a lot to know that there are people out there willing to lend an ear.

YAY! Marta is coming to our housewarming luau!!! Woohoo!!!

We have tacky party bags from the dollar store

That's cool! I wish I lived near enough to attend! I'll just ahve to settle with being there in spirit!

I posted this in the UK OT thread, but want to share with those of you who don't frequent that thread that we are moving into our new house this Saturday! I am so excited! Our new furniture is being delivered friday and we're doing the rest ourselves on Saturday! With the help of a few burly guys we know, of course!

After Friday, I'll be MIA for a bit. Try not to miss me too much.

Oooh! That's great news Julez!!! But leaving us again so soon...? You only just got back!

Just for a few days, I'm not using any holiday time for the move, so providing no major disasters, I'll be back to work Monday and back with the gang! Well, what's left of our gang anyway.

Awww

I just found out that I am going to have more people at the luau!! I am sooo excited now!!

I want to go to the party

So do I.

Unfortunately it's on the day that I fly back from Charlotte, otherwise I would have given serious thought to going to it.

Hehe - that would have been awesome!! You can't change your flight?

StP - if you can make it I can e-mail you an invite too - I just figured that Texas was a bit of a jaunt...

Afraid not. I booked one of those hotel/flight/hire car packages through Expedia and paid upfront and in order to get a good deal it's non-changable and non-refundable. Perhaps you'll have another party soon that I can come to??

Make that 3 of us.

But I can't afford to fly to Cali.

no spare cash at present, unfortunately

thanks to the US gummint

Well... maybe we can have some pre-Thanksgiving thing as well? We can try and come up with some theme-

Scratch that - how about a Hallowe'en fancy dress party?! They will have TONS of stuff in the dollar store for that!! AND it gives us an excuse not to buy furniture we can't afford so we can fit people in our tiny place!! Oh that would be too cool

October 31st is a Friday or we can do it on the 1st November which is a Saturday (duh). Palm Springs is meant to be gorgeous in November as well - that is when the tourist season picks up a bit more here so if anyone fancies a mini-trip, there is a weekly street fair on Thursdays - at that time of year it will start at 6pm I can also recommend Angelina's, a lovely Italian place and Cafe 285 for outside dining/bar/live music in view of the street fair

*gets excited about party #2 as well*

i just checked on mapquest, it would take us 6h to drive ......
if i can take friday as a half-day off we'll be there

Oh that would be AWESOME!!! It is on a Saturday though, isn't it?

*runs off to check her invitation*

Yeah - Saturday So you can always leave Saturday morning if you wanted Of course, making a long weekend of it is nice and if you get here on the Friday and its is too hot to do anything on the Saturday in the day, you can always head up the mountain on the world's largest 360 degree revolving aerial tram It's nice up there - maybe about 72 as I recall

Oh this is just too cool! At this rate Jeremy isn't going to need to invite anyone

Ok - I am FINALLY getting to updating the spreadsheet... Agnes - did you keep your interview date quiet or was I just being totally ignorant?! July 2009?!?!?!? That's INSANE! I'm wondering if I will have the same problem living where I do as well... time will tell I guess

Oh - and if I missed out any updates then please let me know - I have a lot of catching up to do!!!

interview date is in my siggy: 8/20. i have NO idea why my timeline got so messed up. oh well, i just changed it.
i am SO fed up with this AOS-crap that i didn't really prepare at all yet.
but other than getting certified copies of the marriage cert. and erics birth cert and the employer letters we should be fine.

well - *shrugs*

eric keeps telling people that i was a mailorder bride and that he ordered catalogues from the german government with possible brides-to-be. LOL. and most of them at first believe him......

Hahaha - that's too funny!!! I am so glad it was just a mistake - there's me thinking you had to wait over a year for an interview

Ok - maybe things don't look so bad after all You'll be having your interview the day before I get to Tucson! And on the day we sign our wedding paperwork BS!! Woohoo!!

that's hilarious
I think I'd do something like that

and people believe him?! that's sort of scary...

Aly, if you have a hallowe'en party I think I'll come dressed as a huntsman spider.

Only if StP can make it

You'd look something like this:





(I don't even know if the pic will show so prepare for an edit )

(( Oooojh it's ok ))

I WISH I could look like that!!

Hahaha - I dunno - she looks a little... Barbie-like to me!!

I just went to see if my cat wanted to come in and she was freaking out around a little shrub we have in our back yard - I went to see what she was after thinking maybe she had found a lizard or something and there was nothing there but she was going crazy. Then I saw a tiny movement of green in the bush - we have praying mantises in our back garden! I saw one female and two males (that looked like little green grasshoppers) and took a bunch of pics - not sure how clear they are but I am going to get them off my camera now! Finally! Bugs that are cool!! Woohoo!!

Here is the Female

There were two males as well - they looked distinctly unimpressive and a lot like grasshoppers!!

funky!

I still get excited about the animules in my garden... I LOVE spotting cardinals... and woodpeckers are something new
even the squirrels behave differently to the London ones... altogether more cheeky and naughty

Have you given her a name?

I might do... maybe "eaty" or "muncher" or something else... I went out to look at her again and she doesn't *appear* to have moved but I can't see either of the males...

she looks like a Gertrude to me

Hrmmm... ok Gertrude it is!! I hope she doesn't move too far - I want to show Jeremy when he gets home from work!!

We've got lots to do today though - I have to leave for my orientation meeting in just over an hour (*nervous*) and then I am walking down the road to the car hire place where I am meeting Jeremy - we then need to get a fumigator thing for the house while we are away for a few days (found another roach on the kitchen counter last night - two in as many days is not fun ) as the cat will be out too. We also need to buy some stuff to block any holes and things we might find. I need to sweep and mop then clean the kitchen after dinner really well (no point before - Jeremy has an amazing way of making EVERY surface dirty!!).

Then tomorrow I need to pack, Jeremy gets off work early so we need to take the cat to the boarding house, then come back here to take the trash and recycling out, set up the fumigator and head off to Camp Verde in AZ!!!

Busy busy!!

Guys Guess what I´ve been busy so I still have catching up to do. But I just randomly checked USCIS webpage today (cuz I stopped checking it regularly cuz I lost interest in it ) and it says they sent me the AP approval on 08-02 So now I don´t know what I am doing I already stopped thinking about going to Europe for the wedding in Aug/Sept but now I´m maybe going Isn´t that crazy? That could also mean that our trip to see Aly might be in danger since I don´t know what I´m doing yet

Oh Marta - that is awesome news!! You've waited so long!! And it would be amazing if you could make it back to Europe after all We fully understand if you can't make the party - besides, as soon as people choose a date (Oct 31 or 1 Nov) then I'll be sending out invitations to a halloween party too so you can come to that

Yippee!! Just EAD and GC now!!!

Congrats on the AP approval Marta. I'm still getting my AOS paperwork together. It was nice having a break from USCIS paperwork for a while but now I'm panicking about being tardy about sorting it. I've been taking care of my nephew over the summer so have had some 'spends' but now he is close to returning to school and i'm panicking about how i'm going to get a job without EAD. Oh well.

The freakiest bug I've encountered so far is a big blue flying insect which looks like a beetle and has a wingspan of 2 inches or so. They fly right by your head and the buzzing is horrific. I hate them!! Have no idea what they are though.

Congrats on the AP approval Marta.

Congrats on the AP marta.

I've encountered several freaky bugs. The locusts scare me. Big ugly noisy things. I like the fireflies though.

We need to try do a more central meet up sometime for those of us stuck in the arse-end-of-nowhere.

Current missions for me to keep mind off AOS.
1. Try train our kitty not to bite. He's a 2 yr old rescue cat and he has agression issues. His name is Oscar the grouch.
2. Find an affordable SUV or Van or car that's big enough to carry all Nick's band stuff (also need to be able to afford insurance on said transport.)
3. It's eldest sister in laws b'day today, another sister in laws b'day tomorrow and brother in laws b'day on sat. How my mother in law did it I don't know.
Millie 7th august (18th)
Mollie 8th august (16th)
Brodey 9th august (20th)

Thanks everyone

I was just thinking we all have pretty adventurous lives one way or another

So I won´t be able to get to PS this time unfortunately, but we´ll hopefully make it at Halloween. Then, I might only fit into an elephant costume

Two weddings in a year, Aly Hope your second one went as well as the first one

And Julez is gonna need someone to give her a rub after so much hard work

I think you wrote it somewhere Gillian, I tried to look for it but I skipped through the posts too fast I guess so...do we know when you are going on your trip?

Rach, has Scott found more things to like about this country or does he still hate it the same?

Prettiest, I know it´s your real name

Now that was a big random post wasn´t it

I'm off to Charlotte on 24 Aug for 6 nights. getting quite excited about it.

Hope all is well with you Marta.

Well, I think Scott will always feel pretty much the way he does about the States and about a lot of Americans. But at least he doesn't walk around saying "I hate this, I hate this." I think knowing we will go back to Canada makes it much easier to live here. And he said, before he came, that he thought living in NYC would be an interesting chapter to add to his life. So at least he's been looking at it positively. And I'm sure he misses his friends and lots of things up in Canada, but I really think he's mostly been happy.

And we are actually in Tennessee right now, visiting my dad. We just took an overnight trip to Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain, where we went climbing. Climbing is something Scott is super into, so I'm really happy we did this. I know NYC is not a place where he can do all the outdoorsy things he loves.

Awesome news about your AP. Have you decided if you're going to attend that wedding?

Congrats Aly, I hope the wedding was awesome.

OOOOOO the annoyance.

Some late July filers getting EAD rejected as there is a new form even though it states on the old form that it doesn't expire until 8/31/08. This was the same version I downloaded from USCIS and sent. So guess I'll get my EAD rejection in the next few weeks too.

wow, really?
do you have a link to the proper form that should be used? we're about to send all our stuff off...

see that's what I don't get. The version on USCIS site is the same one.

man, that really sucks!!!!!
we still have to prepare for our interview, it's coming up in a hurry.....


oh, and we met aly in tombestone yesterday and shared a whole lot of rum&cokes in the saloon. i can't find the cable for my camera, but maybe aly can upload the picture to share the proof!

after much searching calling and tranferred calls I found out EAD should be fine. The July filers possibly had the form from before late may when it was updated.

....and round 2 is go!!!

Got my NOA1's today for AOS and EAD

Yes

Yay, Marta! When do you go?

Day after Gil

OK, and how long will you be away??

A month Will you miss me?

A whole month? OMG, of course I will miss you!