It was so gorgeous and sunny in Bristol again today, and supposed to be the same tomorrow! But later in the week it will return to our usual shade of grey... And all the daffies are coming up early!

Useful to know! Thanks



Ouch, that's the only thing I don't like about the US! I'm leaving what must be one of the safest countries in the world (no proper hurricanes, no tsunamis, few damaging earthquakes or tornadoes, only one poisonous creature, no giant spiders, no rabies, etc.) for a state that has poison oak and black widows and a huge fault line running straight through! Oh well, California also has humming-birds, and I love humming-birds, so it's not all bad.

Daffodils and snowbells a-plenty here, too! I'm hoping that maybe when I visit my parents in March the bluebells will be out; they flowered early last year, and my parents live very close to some fabulous bluebell woods.

morning! i'm staying home today...don't want to deal with that icy mess! we got about 6 inches of snow and now the freezing rain is coming down on top of it. yuck.

we have humming birds here too...when it's warm enough! my mom always had a humming bird feeder.

oh you are going to cali they have tornados there too. along with poisionous snakes, spiders, and so on

good morning uk

How comforting of you! Good morning

i'm leaving the gorgeous hills, mountains, glens, lochs and rugged coastlines of Scotland all gently covered with heather and dotted with sheep...
... I'm going to the utter flatness, cornfields, cows and no coastline of Nebraska. Freezing winters, roasting summers and tornados in between.

the things we do for love!!!

Debz
Im leaving the mild East of England, with its beaches and green green countryside, winter temperatures hardy ever below freezing. We are in a niche, we miss the snow and bad weather 80% of the time although we do get the winds off the North Sea that lead to cooler summers too. We don't seem to have seasons here anymore, one just runs into the next. The birds have started nesting a few weeks ago and the spring bulbs started coming up about a month ago.
I'm going to Wisconsin where the winters can be -35C and the summers in the 40's. I love the people, the life, ect. The weather does worry me some though, I havent seen snow in over 2 years here!!!
Yes, the things we do for love

I'm a cold-blooded person who loves to bask in the sun, so I'm actually pretty happy to be moving to California. I have visited at the height of summer so I know how hot it can get, but to be fair I've not actually worked in such hot weather, and I know living in a hot climate can be very different from holidaying in one.

Still, if I go in autumn I'll have a very enjoyable warm, sunny winter and spring before I start complaining about how I'm meeeeeelting.

It's actually rather worrying how the UK doesn't really have seasons any more. I swear that as a child in the 80s phrases such as 'April showers' still held true. Now anything seems to go!

Long before I met my husband, everyone used to tell me I needed to move to a warmer climate because I was always cold. It's funny the paths that life takes you down. My husband was transferred to Florida two years after we met. And I can tell you.... living in a hot climate ROCKS!!!!

oh sounds like nebraska. brown recluses, black widows, rattlesnakes....

eta: and chiggers!

I'm suffering through my first "real" winter since 1994/95 -- oh my god, is that really true? -- and I can't believe I managed to even like New England winters as a kid. Yesterday about 2 or 3 inches of snow came down; overnight it changed to rain, which is now pounding down unabated and turning everything into deep puddles of slush.

But life goes on as normal despite the snow/slush/rain, in a way that would totally incapactitate London. I remember my very first job in London, which was at what eventually became Edexcel, the people who set the GCSEs, A-Levels, BTECs etc. I did a little light filing but mostly I packed exams into boxes, applied shipping labels and brought the boxes to the mailroom. It ranks in the top three cr*p jobs I have ever held, mostly because I used to be made fun of by the guys in the mailroom who took umbrage with my American accent and tried to look up my skirt. I spent a lot of time crying in various bathrooms.

Anyway, I digress. One February night, there was some snow. I mean, about an inch, if that much. Since I grew up in Connecticut, I just pulled on my boots and trudged my way up the hill from my bedsit to the Finchley Road tube. When I got to work, about two-thirds of the staff was AWOL. My supervisor (just about the only person I could stand) came bustling up to me, saying "I can't believe you made it in! You clever, clever girl!" I asked why the office was so empty, and why it was such a big deal I made it all the way from Swiss Cottage to Russell Square.

"All that snow... so treacherous. No wonder so many people couldn't make it in."



I saw this scene repeated again and again -- a dusting stopped the trains and snarled the roads. The only time I ever saw more than 2 inches on the ground -- and saw it stick -- must have been Christmas 1999 or 2001 (memory a bit fuzzy) in Suffolk, when about 6 inches came down. Other than that, infinitesimal. But you would have thought the Apocalypse had arrived every time the flakes came down.

sounds like when i lived in the south.

Hmm...I'm not really sure what to think about this:

I broke up with my ex a week before I started dating Alex, so I expected there to be some resentment, but after a couple of months we started to meet up again as friends and he seemed fine. This was back in June 2006 and since then I've seen him maybe once a month, we'd meet up for a chat and a film.

Anyway, all seemed fine until December, when I was 'officially' engaged. My ex said congratulations, etc., and continued to chat to me, but then I found a blog entry (on his website, and also linked through facebook, so I was hardly snooping) talking about our relationship, and how much he blamed me, and he sounded really bitter. I thought it a bit sad that he hasn't been able to move on after 1 1/2 years but decided that I was better off ignoring it.

After I came back from California we met up again last month for a cinema trip and he seemed very amiable and I lent him a few DS games as I promised (my favourite games, too - just wanted to share )

After that trip...nothing. He wasn't online for a week afterwards (I could usually find him on AIM every day when I was at work). I stopped signing into AIM at work after a while because I only used to sign in to chat to him in the first place.

Now today, I was idly checking facebook and he's..de-friended me. I've also been blocked on skype/AIM (or I presume I've been blocked, skype suddenly said 'no contact details have been shared with you.' Um, harsh! He hasn't de-friended any of my friends (who are also on his friends list, despite the fact that he has never seen or talked to them without me). I don't know...it's one thing to stop chatting to someone, it's going a step further to physically block them (I hadn't even been messaging him or trying to get hold of him lately...) Plus he has my games! They'll probably have to be written off as lost now

I'm disappointed that this has just suddenly happened, a year and a half after we broke up, and that he didn't have the decency to at least say 'I need to stop talking to you'. Bit suspicious too to do it the week after I've lent him some games! (All imported for me by Alex).

Eh it's only flat in that area around GI. Omaha is killer to drive in when it's icy with the hills.

Oh, Debz is going to need to read Night of the Twisters! Every school child in Nebraska is required to read that I believe.

Anyways, don't forget the suicidal deer who love to jump in front of any moving vehicle. And the occasional cougar/mountain lion, and neighbors with shotguns who "don't like you on their property."



The best things are tubing on the Niobrara River, Indian Caves State Park, Lazlo's Restaurant, Empyrean Ales, thunderstorms in the spring, Czech Days in Wilber, Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, and Saddle Creek Records.

oh yeah, forgot about the suicidal deer. have them here in kansas. allegedly we have mountain lions, not seen one. got plenty of coyotes.

happy valentine's day for everyone

Happy Valentine's Day!

(No idea what chiggers are, but I hope to never encounter one.)

Happy Valentine's Day! And I'm not exactly sure I want to say good morning back to Charles

generally in the southern usa.

info on them nasty buggers

more stuff!


if you don't i'll post info about the brown recluse

Eek! You meanie. Good morning then, Charles!

An awful 24 hours here in the Elm City... My Bruce had a very bad slip and fall on ice at noon yesterday; it turned out he dislocated his shoulder. He called me to say he had fallen and he couldn't feel his arm, could I come get him? I found him crouching in the doorway of an office block, clutching his arm. We rushed to the hospital (luckily only about 4 blocks away, but the uneven road made it agony) and they pumped him full of drugs. The morphine did NOTHING -- watching him trying to be tough whilst clearly close to fainting from pain made me feel so powerless.

The doctor and nurses were great though; they gave him something even stronger which calmed him down enough to take him off for x-rays, as the doctor was afraid he might have fractured his arm. Luckily, there was no break, but they did have to put him under general anaesthesia to reset the arm. It apparently popped right back in -- one of the easiest the doctor had ever done! He was very ill coming off the morphine and other meds (the nurse said Bruce must have been in extreme pain, as weedy guys like him hardly ever need that much! ), but he's now installed in bed, on the mend. He actually thought he was going back to work today!

Throughout the whole thing, he kept his humour and was making the medical staff crack up with his dry wit. He was really afraid he was going to act "like a baby", he said. I was so impressed by his strength and bravery and stoicism -- typical Yorkshireman! And when he was coming out of the general, he said all sorts of hyper-lovey dovey malarkey he never goes in for, which was quite amusing, but very charming nonetheless.

So...send your healing powers our way, VJers!

Oh no, poor Bruce! I'm sending healing vibes your way - what a way to spend Valentine's!

Raccoons getting into the trash too. I can remember coming home one time and my dad had left the garage door half way up. I pull it up the rest of the way to park inside and a good 3-4 of those nasty buggers run out...nearly scared the bejesus out of me.

I hate on coyotes though...especially in packs. I remember when I lived out in the country hearing them attack a calf one time as the momma cow bellowed...just a very eerie situation esp when it's dark and all you can hear is the pack and the mother cow trying to protect it's young.

Morning! The sun disappeared again.

Hope you all have a lovely Friday and a great weekend!

Get well soon to Bruce. Hope coming off all those meds isn't too hard for him. That's a good reminder to make sure to sort out some health insurance, you never know what's around the corner. resetting arms is no fun when you have to do it yourself, with no anesthetic

good morning uk peeps

Good morning afternoon UK Forum. I trust everyone had a nice Valentine's. Well, everyone except Bruce, that is. Mind you, Maven did get her little bit of love as a result of the drugs, though. lol

Good morning all!

I spent last night at a friend's house...she'd said I could sleep in her bed (she's absent this week) so I wouldn't disturb my housemate. I brought along my own sheet so she'd come back to the same clean bed that she'd left. Woke up this morning and...whoops, I bled all over my sheet, her sheets and the mattress cover.

Fortunately the sheets went straight into the wash and when I checked back at lunchtime everything had come out pristine - no stains anywhere! So I've left the sheets to dry and cleaned her kitchen and left a big bar of chocolate by way of apology.

Morning! Bruce is on the mend, and cranky as ever so he must be improving! He's back at work today. If it were me, I would have milked this for all it was worth, but not him. What's driving me nuts is that when the doctor was giving us follow-up care advice, Bruce was pretty out of it and didn't hear anything (although I heard it all) EXCEPT one little thing: if your arm is numb, go to the doctor. Now, he has a small area of pins and needles on his forearm -- not big, and he can certainly feel it if you touch it or pinch it. He has normal colour in his arm and can squeeze really tight. But because he heard this one piece of advice, all he can think is that his arm is going to die and he won't be able to use it. My mom and I tried to reason with him: your arm is in a sling, of course you're going to get pins and needles! But no, he's a candidate for amputation, clearly.

And I have to drive him to work now, which involves a lot of commentary from the peanut gallery situated in the passenger seat. "Accelerate into the corner!" "Look out for that school bus!" "Why are you getting annoyed with me?"

I do love my darling convalescent boy, but sheesh.

My right arm is in a constant state of numbness due to an old neck injury. But it never occurred to me that I might have to get it amputated!!!

Here is a Scottish joke to brighten your day:

Voted Best Scottish Short Joke

A bloke walks into a Glasgow library and says to the prim librarian, "Excuse me Miss, dey ye hiv ony books on suicide?" To which she stops doing her tasks, looks at him over the top of her glasses and says, "Fook off, ye'll no bring it back!"

Awesome. Just awesome.

haha love the joke.

Anyways...horray for the upcoming weekend. Another busy one for me sorting out more of my stuff. 26 days to go and still counting.

g'morning everyone

where is everyone?

Been wondering the same thing...

I'm here!

Sshhh, it's Monday morning.

Morning! It's sunny again in Bristol!!! I might fall over from the shock! Bit chilly though, 37F!

I'm here! Just waiting for everyone else to post first

Sunny and chilly here, too. I'm always nervous walking to work in the mornings because I'm afraid I'll slip on the frosty pavement, and I've started taking my gloves in my bag because otherwise my hands go numb with cold at night.

But during the day, sitting in the office? It's beautifully warm, and I start to doze in the sun.

It's our second wedding anniversary today!

The past two years have been pretty incredible. We've lived in three different countries, been dozens of different places, and generally had a blast.

So here's to my foxy stoat!

Happy Anniversary Gwen! I think I recognize you from UKyankee!

Happy 2nd Anniversary! And may you have many more happy anniversaries to come

One of the best parts, for me, of marrying someone from a different country is automatically having access to two countries, two different cultures and ways of life. Travelling and getting to explore a little more of the world is great, and I grow very restless after staying in one place too long - I don't understand how some of my friends from my home town can manage to continue living there and dating the same guys they met in sixth form - each to their own, I guess.



redkitty - I love your B&W wedding photos - you both look so relaxed and happy and they're gorgeous shots.

me be here. happy monday, if such a thing exists

Thanks! Yep, that's me over there!

Thanks!

I love having the ability to move around, see different bits of the world - hubby and I are very similar in that we get restless quickly. We've lived in the US, England, Ireland, and are now back in the US but debating moving to a different part of the country.

Some people are just meant to be "locals", and that's fine (though they don't tend to understand the moving every eight or nine months that we do!). I prefer a less sedentary lifestyle, though - and I'm glad I married someone who feels the same!

I have decided that peanut butter on toast is amongst the Food of Kings.

nom nom nom.

Congrats on the 2nd anniversary, Gwen

Stu

Happy Anniversary, Gwen! Here's to many more years of happiness with your "foxy stoat".

happy anniversary Gwen!!!

asked is in the OT forum but will try here too. Anyone know where I can get decent medical insurance short term? Don't fancy being left bankrupt by tripping over one of the 4 cats or 3 dogs.