30May2008 - What is is Day 6?

Ok, so hope these blogs aren't overbearinly boring as they are somewhat in the mundane, but that is life and we are hoping this will be a good record as to what we have done, even if its boring to you who may be reading this.

Here is a boring note: I got a haircut today. Cost me £13. So, that is $26. Most expensive haircut I've ever gotten, well, next to the one they gave me at my surgery last year.

Today, Teri went to a park with Makenna and our little one managed to get dirt all over her nice pink sweatshirt. She was on a slide and lost her balance and grabbed a dirty portion of the railing and managed to drag her coat along it. Teri cleaned it for the most part, but suppose that that will happen quite alot.

It was actually a nice day though and we managed to get some clothes dried on the line, there is still clothes all over the place in here trying to get the last bit of moisture out of them, but it is much better than yesterday.

Chris got out of work early and went up to Rochester downtown to the NatWest office to try to get our bank account figured out. They didn't have any checks yet or anything and he called the bank person in charge and they said they would not have anything until at least late next week. He also signed up for a credit card, so we'll see when that gets done. We're still draining our accounts back home pretty good, so we'll probably have to transfer some british funds back to the states...not sure how to do that, but we're sure the bank would love to charge us a fee to make that happen. Luckily Chris is on expenses right now so, we think we should be able to get money back for that fee.

There is a Charles Dickins festival going on in Rochester right now. Everyone is walking around in period garb and there is food and stuff for sale everywhere. It was amazing to see the castle today in the sun, but he didn't have a camera. We're going to go down there again tomorrow as it is supposed to be more going on then. We'll take some pictures and post a couple.

Many of you may know of Chris' addiction to Sam's Club, well we found a Costco here and joined. It is just like home, only, well who knows if anything is really a good deal because we just don't know the prices yet. Teri is going on the theory that if the price in pounds sterling is the same as what would be a good deal in dollars, then it is probably a good deal. Of course, that means it is really 2x the cost but its a good theory to work from. No A1 steak sauce here which is a real dissappointment, but they had these monsterous bottles of HP sauce with is like Heinz 57 Chris thinks. Anyway, we didn't get any on this trip. But, we did get a bunch of staples - not staples like a stapler...staples like soap, shampoo, and cereal...try to keep up. But, speaking of staples, this time really staples, I didn't see any there...(wierd...where on earth am I going to get staples now! If I buy them at Staples, the store this time, in non-bulk size, I will have to buy them again sometime before I die. Oh well. The sacrifices one makes for one's job! Are staples a reasonable busines expense? Wait, I have a stapler at work! I'll just pilfer some for now...oh wait...we forgot to pack the stapler. Dang it. Never mind. ...sorry for the side track, I guess I'm tired. ) So Makenna of course freaked out in the store because she wants to "Wa". What the heck is Wa! Wa! Wa!...well of course it is walk. Not just walk with us kind of walk though, walk wherever she wants to walk kind of walk. So that was pure joy. She was hungry though so, Teri went to get her some pizza and she calmed down.

She was hungry because we had left the house around 5, thinking we could get there in about 30 minutes according to the GPS. 2 hours later and we still aren't there. The traffic was really bad and we got lost so many times it wasn't funny, we just could not find the place on the GPS and it kept leading us all over creation with us blindly following. (I got so fed up of hearing it say: "turn around...when convenient", and "pass through the round about, second exit" in the nice Brit accent I picked for it. Oh if you don't know about round abouts, picture the Johnson City circle every 1000 ft. Everywhere. Really...it's amazing people don't die every second. I suppose it's efficient, but Teri mostly closes her eyes when I'm driving as it is like russian rulette if there are a lot of cars going through...ok...wait...ok...wait...ok,ok,ok,...go go go...ah! wait. BEEEP! GO!...It's nuts.) We stopped for directions and to fill up on gas and a nice guy there said we could follow him. (By the way, I haven't run into a person here that isn't willing to go out of his way to help you if you need it. Very Very nice people these Brits!) So we finally made it and Makenna was screaming for joy when she got out of that seat, literally screaming for joy. It was funny. Not so funny when she kept right on doing it into the store, but funny...before that.

So, we packed the back of the little car with bulk cheerios and 1000 lbs. of chicken and bbq sauce and headed home. We got home in less than 30 minutes. GPS' are great when you know where you are going and can judge if it is telling you something bogus because it decided Chris wanted to go back to work all on its own and he had to ignore it half way through. Teri was like: "didn't it just say third exit on the round about? This is the second one." Chris was like: "Just close your eyes. You'll be home soon." And she was.