Snow!

Last week we had a foot of snow fall, and Paul and I were sure to take advantage of it. It's been a few years since we've lived somewhere you could actually go play in the snow, so it was a real treat! We went sledding and built an awesome snowman!

Here we are in the snow storm

From Winter 2008

To give an idea of the size of our snowman, here he is before we totally decked him out:

From Winter 2008

And here he is with the finishing touches:

From Winter 2008

Thanksgiving take two

I realized I never updated about our second Thanksgiving. On the actual day, we went to my cousin Tara and Derell's house. It was so much fun because there were tons of people, including Tara's two adorable little boys and my cousin Ted and Liz's adorable little boy and little girl, and a bunch of us 'grown ups'. There's a big age gap between me and my cousins, so Katana, who's 5, told me that he was disappointed because he thought I was going to be a kid. haha. Paul had a blast playing with the boys; they were climbing all over him on some kind of pirate raid, and Emily drew me some nice pictures and gave me a foot massage (apparently Aunt Tara's influence - nice one!). Needless to say, it was tons of fun being around all the kids. We really haven't seen kids since we were living in Oxford and our neighbor's kids would play outside our window. It's even better when it's your own family, and it really made me appreciate being close to everyone.

Since we've got lots of time right now, Paul and I helped my mom make a bunch of goodies for the feast. We made olive and cream cheese penguins, deviled eggs, bacon-wrapped dates, corn bread pudding and "turkey" cupcakes. The cupcakes were so much fun to make -we saw a picture in a magazine and just had to do it.

Here's the finished product:

From Fall2008

And I think this is a good place to plug the impressive pumpkin we carved for Halloween. We used a chisel to make the face on it - so much better than a knife!

From Fall2008

So if you think we don't find good uses of our time, think again!

The Job Search or Life as Retirees

While watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special tonight, one of the commercials really resonated with me. It was for the news, and the anchorwoman said "tonight on News Channel 6, we'll tell you about one company in the area that is actually hiring! Stay tuned." And to be honest, I think I read about it in the newspaper this morning - the discount grocer called Aldi is opening a new location in Framingham, MA and hiring 20 new full-time employees.

So I think that's a pretty good indication of the current job vacancy situation (RI has the highest unemployment rate in the country). But for us, it's not all that bad. We own nothing, no cars, no house, so that means no mortgage payments and no car payments. My parents are generous enough to let us stay with them and feed us, so really, we're living pretty well. We read the newspaper every day and do all kinds of research on things we'd like for the future, like cars, dogs, a home, etc. It's also nice for us to spend so much time together because when we are both working, we won't have that luxury.

Sometimes it's hard not to get discouraged when all you read or see on the news is that every company you're applying to is laying off a large proportion of their workforce or having a hiring freeze, but we do have a lot to be thankful for and we realize it could be a whole lot worse for us.

Las Vegas & Hoover Dam

As many of you may know, I had never been to Las Vegas, nor much of the Southwest for that matter. So, while we were in Arizona with not much to do, we decided to take advantage of those mid-week hotel deals in Las Vegas and make a road trip out of it.

We made our way the 300 or so miles from Phoenix north to the Grand Canyon, before heading another 300 or so miles west to Las Vegas. I took a whole bunch of pictures of our drive to show how the landscape changed over those vast expanses, and I won't post them all here, but if you want to see you can check them out here.

Here's some highlights from our road trip:

Paul's about to enjoy a Navajo taco at the Cameron Trading Post at the edge of the Navajo reservation:

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Here we are at an overlook at the Grand Canyon - you can kind of get an idea of the size of the drop off the edge on this one:

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Funny story about this spot...as we were walking around the little platform, a couple came down the steps to share in the breathtaking view. The woman walked down first, and then her boyfriend followed, got to the platform and announced in a thick Rhode Island accent "This is retahded" and ran back up the steps. His girlfriend then said "He's afraid 'a heights." Ahh, nothing like a reminder of the East Coast. At least after that I didn't feel so bad about being nervous about looking over the edge!

Another of my favorites is this picture of Paul at a gas station just outside the Grand Canyon en route to Las Vegas. As we pulled into the station, a herd of cattle were crossing it. If that wasn't enough to make you feel like you were in real rural America, they had this fantastic elk statue with an American flag, just as the moon was coming up. So I absolutely had to get a shot of Paul holding a sarsaparilla soda in front of the statue. Ahh, America. This is about as opposite from England as you can get!

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

We stayed at the New York New York hotel in Las Vegas, which I thought was pretty cool. We were up on the 36th floor in a corner room with a view of the strip. Here's the view from one of the windows:

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Las Vegas is a place that tries to take your money any way it possibly can. How else could they afford to build these ridiculous buildings? So, with this in mind, we booked the $60/night rooms and held on tight to our wallets. There's not as much free stuff to do as I thought there would be, and the food was very expensive at the buffets, but we saw the free stuff and ate at Subway so it wasn't too bad.

One free thing is the water fountain show at the Bellagio. It goes every 15 minutes and there's music to accompany the streams of water.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Our hotel had a roller coaster on the 4th floor, and while it wasn't free, our room package came with a 2-for-1 deal on the roller coaster. So, of course we had to try it! It'd been a few years since I'd been on a roller coaster, and I used to absolutely love them, but I was little nervous and wound up screaming so much my voice was raspy for a couple days later. But it was worth it! Here we are in front of the hotel (no, we didn't buy the souvenir photo from the ride).

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

A lot of the hotels are actually pretty expensive to stay at, but you can walk through their casinos for free. We had one full day in the city, and we spent it walking up and down the strip. We didn't even see all of the casinos in that amount of time! The MGM Grand has a particularly impressive casino because they have REAL LIONS in it! I really don't know how they can do it without some major SPCA pressure, but on the other hand, it is a true reflection on the ethics of Las Vegas. So here's my lion picture.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

The Flamingo hotel also has its own FREE animal display, but theirs is actually kind of pleasant. Here's Paul with the flamingos

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

It's also free to walk through the indoor canals at the Venetian, see the pirate ship at Treasure Island, and peek into the wedding chapels. But not much else is free.

A highlight of our exploration was finding a bit of Indiana in Las Vegas (kind of). Here's Paul posing in front of Kokomo's (also the name of his home town in Indiana). The food was beyond our budget, but the picture was free!

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Rather than going to a $30 buffet, we did the $15 1/2lb crab leg and steak dinner at the hotel for our big splurge, and that's probably the last time we'll go to Vegas. We can get ripped off enough at home.

After we left, we stopped at the Hoover Dam on the way back to Phoenix. It was $30 for the tour, so we decided to park, skip the tour and enjoy the free view before heading on our way.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Here you can see the new bridge they're building to bypass having to drive over the actual dam.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Our next stop on the 300+ mile journey back to Phoenix was Chloride, Arizona. It is like a miniature version of Tombstone, with an old ghost town in the middle. Strangely enough, the man who worked at the general store/tourist information place used to live in Massachusetts! Here's Paul striking a cowboy pose in the old ghost town (note the experimentation with the camera 'colorize' feature)

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

We decided not to stop at the local saloon before heading onward

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

And unexpectedly, as we drove back toward Phoenix, we wound up going through a Joshua Tree Forest. I had no idea these things grew in such dense areas; normally they're more like scrubby bushes, but these were nearly 10 feet tall or more.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

And that about sums up our trip. It will probably be a while before we go on another trip, so I'm glad we made the most of it!

Phoenix in November

Since we've got tons of time on our hands, being over-educated and unemployed at the moment, we used some of our time to make our way out to Phoenix to visit Paul's family. While it didn't result in any job opportunities, we did get to spend some quality time with the family and see some sights around Arizona in the two weeks we visited.

Since we wouldn't be together for Thanksgiving, we put on a full Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks early. Anne came up from college so we could all be together.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Arizona is home to lots and lots of desert, and Phoenix is surrounded by vast expanses of desert dotted with saguaros - those cacti that look like they have arms sticking out. Here's a particularly photogenic one

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

We also took a drive down to see the St Xavier Mission outside of Tucson. It was built with help from local Native Americans from the Tohono O'Odham tribe, so it's got some unique wood carvings on the inside. They've never finished the second tower on the church, which some speculate may be an excuse to perpetually raise funds for the tower.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

They also had the kind of cactus that attacked Paul as a child (you'll have to ask him for the full story).

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Paul's dad took us on a day trip to see Tombstone and the Chiricahua National Monument. Unfortunately, we forgot to recharge the battery in our camera, so we don't have pictures of this (except one from my phone camera), but both are really fascinating places to see. Tombstone is neat for it's authentic old west feel, a nice change from the sometimes overwhelming big box feel of the city. Here's the one picture I got, at the Tombstone graveyard. You don't see this kind of thing every day!

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Chiricahua, on the other hand, has some extraordinarily impressive "balancing" rock formations that are worth seeing in person. They're the kind of thing that you look up at and think "who put that there and why hasn't it fallen over?"

Most of the time we were in Phoenix, we were continuing our job search, or lounging about drinking lemonade we made from the lemon tree in the back yard. On my next post, I'll tell you about our little 1,000 mile road trip to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam.

Name change is official!

Over a year after we got married, I finally legally changed my name! I had been using my married name in the UK, which is fine, but still had to change all my US government documents. It's amazing how many places you need to change your name, and what kind of documentation you need to do it. The Registry of Motor Vehicles gave me a lot of trouble over changing my name on my driver's license because I didn't have a government document with my married signature on it, nor a bill in my married name. I don't know how you're supposed to have your married name on things before it's even changed! But after two visits about about 3 hours of waiting, I have my new driver's license with my married name.

But as time goes on, I realized there's more and more things where my name is now wrong - frequent flier accounts (you can't change it over the phone), passport, library cards, shopper cards, online accounts (like paypal, wishlists, etc), and on and on. I'm sure I'll find more. Many of these make it so hard to change your name it's easier to just get a new account. But boy, is it annoying!

Well, enough of a rant. What matters is that it's official!

Cruising the Atlantic

Well, it's a couple months later (yikes! how'd that happen?) and so I thought it's about time to write a little something about our cruise back from England. We had 11 days on the Norwegian Jewel from Dover to New York City, calling at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New York City. It was a really great way to travel gradually back to the US, and cost about the same as flying.

In total, we had six full days at sea, and most of the time we were traveling on rough seas (9-12 foot waves). I got pretty seasick on the first sea day after Lerwick, but I gave in and took seasickness medication the rest of the time we were at sea, and felt much better. Taking a big cruise ship across the ocean is like being on a giant floating hotel - something like 15 stories high. So, even though the waves were pretty high, the worst you got was a little spray in your face on deck 7. Often the doors to the decks were blocked due to wind, but you could still go out for a walk, which you need to do after all the food you eat!

Most of the time, the rain followed us from England, but we did have some nice sunshine on a few occasions.

Here we are leaving Dover, with the white cliffs behind us:

From Transatlantic Cruise

And here's Lerwick, Shetland Islands where we're on an old fort. Paul's having some fun with the cannon.

From Transatlantic Cruise

And here's a neat old castle in Scalloway, Shetland Islands

From Transatlantic Cruise

And of course, the highlight of the Shetland Islands, the Shetland Pony

From Transatlantic Cruise

And to honor those Vikings of the past, Paul tried to mimic one of them at a gift shop.

From Transatlantic Cruise

After a day at sea, we arrived at Reykjavik Iceland. It was pretty rainy out, and we didn't want to book an expensive tour through the cruise, so we decided to go horseback riding. Iceland is home to some fancy breed of horses that are unique to Iceland. They don't let other horses mix with them, and they're supposed to be very rugged. Because it was cold and rainy and we were in Iceland, we were given some special outfits to wear while riding the ponies - a full-body snowsuit of sorts and a screaming orange jacket. Hey, everyone was doing it!

From Transatlantic Cruise

We did have a little sunshine on the deck on the two sea days across the atlantic. Here I am enjoying the pool deck in the sunshine. They had to empty the water and tie down the deck chairs due to rough seas, but that didn't stop us from standing there long enough for a photo!

From Transatlantic Cruise

Next was Newfoundland, where one of Paul's favorite bands is from (Great Big Sea), and the home of the Newfoundland dog. They are such gentle, friendly dogs despite being the size of a small bear!

From Transatlantic Cruise

Here's Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America. They are actually 30 minutes ahead of standard time in eastern Canada. By this point, I was armed with an Icelandic wool scarf, but it was still cold!

From Transatlantic Cruise

I just like this picture of me and the lighthouse.

From Transatlantic Cruise

And here's Paul at a little fishing village called Qidi Vidi in Newfoundland

From Transatlantic Cruise

Traveling from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia was really great. The weather was gorgeous and in that particular region, there a tons of whales, dolphins and porpoises. We saw a school of whales go by, and we had some dolphins/porpoises follow the ship (there was a lot of debate on which kind they were). The dolphins/porpoises love to play in the wake of the ship, and try to keep up with it. It was great seeing their little free show! See if you can spot them in this picture (taken from deck 14):

From Transatlantic Cruise

In Nova Scotia, we signed up for a bus tour with the cruise. It was pretty easy that way, and we got to see a few different little towns.

Here I am standing next to a whale jaw. I still remember when some marine biologist brought one in to show my elementary school. It was still fun to see this time.

From Transatlantic Cruise

And here's an obligatory lighthouse picture (we saw a bunch of these)

From Transatlantic Cruise

And finally, we arrived on American soil. Only, getting off the ship wasn't that simple. The ship next to ours had a bomb threat, so there were a ton of fire trucks, etc on the pier. It caused about a two hour delay to debarkation, which was annoying but at least it was only a threat. Nothing says "welcome to the USA" like a NYC bomb threat!

Here's my last picture on the ship, sporting my medeConnect hat. Just a little shout-out to all my former colleagues in the UK. And, appropriately, the rain followed us to shore as well (but thankfully we missed a hurricane by a couple hours).

From Transatlantic Cruise