A new life; same as the old life?

A friend on mine and regular golf partner Charlie, knows only too well my golfing records. Previously my record lowest score was 88, my US record low was 90, which Charlie recently matched, inlcuding a fantastic 39 outward 9! I was cock-a-hoop last recently when I got a real life handicap of 26. A record I am not so proud of, is my highest number of balls lost, twelve, at a course called Slinfold Park Golf & Country Club a very beautiful club with a lot of water and some very challenging holes. I scored 121 that day. Well, like I said it today was a new record. I lost 16, count 'em, 16 balls today! I scored 122 at the Bittersweet Golf Club . A gorgeous course in Gurnee, a little way North of us. Lorraine saw turtles, chipmunks and frogs. There is a lot of water and fantastic swampland with dead trees that I hope to get some pictures of, but maybe not by replaying the course! On Monday I am playing at a course called Arboretum . Apparently it is as hard or harder than Bittersw...

Appetizer : Name 3 people whom you admire for their intelligence. This one took some serious thinking and was almost too tough a question for an appetizer. Alan Turing , a hugely prolific codebreaker at Bletchley Park during WWII, who despite Hollywood claims in movies like U-571 , were almost solely responsible for breaking the Enigma code. They became so successful at breaking the code, that they often had order meant for German Field Officers, before the officers themselves! He is credited by some as having invented the first ever computer , which again my American friends had to relinquish claim to when the official secrets act released the details. Tim Berners-Lee , whilst not completely responsible for our ability to partake in this thing we call blogging, he was certainly right up there. Currently director of the World Wide Web Consortium, he wrote the first browser and first web server, going on to invent HTML and HTTP. The third on my list is probably not someone that peopl...

In a shock revelation today, the Chicago Cubs revealed that they would be appointing Gordy as their new mascot. Attending his first game yesterday, where the cubs pulled it out of the bag in the dying minutes to finish the game 4-3 , Gordon was said to be delighted with the lifetime free ticket offer and Cubs cap. Seriously though, I had a great time. The game is pretty fast moving, particularly as they have the assistance of a huge gloved hand for the catches. It is pretty easy to understand after an innings or so, which always makes any sport more entertaining to watch. The weather was perfect in the early 80s, the firm did a pretty good job with the seats, and there was a good cross section of the IS groups there. We went over to Murphy's towards the end of the game and I actually ended up staying there past the bus departure time and got the train home; I was having so much fun with the guys. A great day out, that I will certainly repeat at some point.

When I started this blog, it was intended to be a way to keep in touch with people back home and hopefully a sometimes humorous look at the differences between our two cultures. The title, an idiosyncratic phrase often used by my friends in Epsom, "A new xxxx, same as the old xxxx?" was intended to convey my realisation that despite any differences, ultimately we would lead a similar life here in the US as to home. We would still have to work, pay the bills, service the car, do the housework, etc. Well, we have been here for almost 4 months now and have settled into what I would loosely term a normal life. I go to work every day and play golf as often as I can. We watch TV in the evenings, go to the cinema, out for the occasional meal, etc. Lorraine does an awesome job keeping house, showing me what a great cook she is, running errands, is learning to play golf and quite often finds out about local events like the Taste Of Lincolnshire for us to attend. She is starting to lo...

I know it's a cheeky use of the blog, but I know a bunch of people in Illinois and Wisconsin read me, so you never know. I understand that Bears tickets are like gold dust, and I suspect even more so for the Packers game on the 4th December. A couple of buddies will be in town that weekend, from the UK, with the express desire of seeing the game, and spending some time with me as a secondary concern. So I am looking for 3 or preferably 4 tickets (although I don't suppose Lorraine will be heartbroken if she can't go) at a reasonable price for that game..anyone, anyone, Beuller, Beuller?

We went to the Taste of Lincolnshire this weekend. I was hoping it would prove better than the Taste Of Chicago , which I found a little disappointing; and it was!! The participants, although much fewer, really got it right. We had some mexican from El Barrio, some margaritas from Champps, some fantastic ice cream from Maggie Moos, chinese food from Simon Lins and some more cocktails from Carluccis. The portions were all very generous, and the pricing pretty good too. The end result being that we will definitely patronise those folks in future. They had some pretty good entertainment too, with a string quartet on Saturday afternoon and the award winning Beatles tribute band, British Export on Saturday night, complete with the haircuts , Sergeant Peppers Outfits and pretty good scouse accents to boot. Check out a sample of their stuff, here and here .

Appetizer : What kind of car do you drive? If you could make an even trade for any other car, what would you want to drive? I currently drive a Chevy Silverado Excab , which was kind of one of the bits of my "American Dream", driving a big ass truck. I really enjoy it, the high ride position, slinging stuff in the back and it was great when we moved. It is a bit old, so making an even trade would be tough, but my dream car since I was very young has been the Porsche 911 and latterly, the Carerra 4 version, although the MG SV is awesome! Soup : Take your phone number and add each number together separately (example: 8+6+7+5+3+0+9=38) - what's the total? Is this a sneaky way to work out my phone number..you only have to ask; it's 53. Salad : When were you last outside, and what were you doing? I was just outside walking round our parking lot with one of the other managers after lunch, talking about work stuff. The weather is perfect, not too hot, not too humid. Ma...

Check out a cool new feature from Google Google Maps . Where you can literally drill down to your street US or UK and see the streets around, great if you need to find somewhere and you know "where it's near". Double click on a spot to centre the map on it, and then zoom in some more on the slider on the left, repeat till you see what you need. But wait, that's not even the cool part! If you click on the Satellite link on the upper right corner, you can see a satellite picture of your house. I suppose the satellite images are supplied from US satellites, as you cannot get so close on the pictures of UK places, although the maps do go down to street level. This picture is our actual building. I don't know how often they get updated as this is an old picture, they have moved the pool in the last 6 months, but still, it's way cool. As my boss Todd said, if they let Joe Public see this image, just how close do you suppose the government satellite images can get, B...

I have at last broken the magical 100 barrier often enough to have a real handicap (other than my ability to swing a club!). Offically, well according to my calculation software at least, my handicap is 26. Last week I scored a 90, and this week a 96 which did the trick and dropped me from 28.7 to 27.4, to 26.4, which rounds down to 26. Lookout Tiger, I'm acomin' for ya!

There is a bit of chain interviewing thing going on at the moment. I picked this up from Babbling Brooke , who has, in fact, been known to babble :-). I will answer the questions shortly, but first, I am contractually obligated to explain the rules to this inquisitive round-robin. 1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying "Interview me." "Blow me" or "Eat me" are not acceptable substitutes. 2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different. I'll post the questions in the comments section of this post. 3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. 4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post. 5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. Without further ado, here are my questions from Brooke. Q1. What does a proper Scotsman wear under his kilt? What do you wear under your kilt? In both cases, Air! If you ...

Every Friday in the office is dress down day. Usually that means jeans, but occasionally some of my US colleagues like to pretend they have Celtic roots and wear kilts! This was taken on the 1st July. I joined in just to make them feel good. Mike (on the right) does look pretty authentic though.

Appetizer : What is your middle name? Would you change any of your names if you could? If so, what would you like to be called? Leighton, the same as my dad. Not really sure where it came from, it's a bit odd. I would probably just like someone a little easier to spell, but no major preferences as to a specific name. Soup : If you were a fashion designer, which fabrics, colours, and styles would you probably use the most? I love Cotton and Linen. Yellow is my favourite colour, but anything in the brown colour range works for me, chinos, beige (I know) chocolate brown (like the colour of the dog I want!). I like the whole "GAP Casual", Eddie Bauer, Timberland look, so anything in that kind of style. Salad : What is your least favourite chore, and why? Anything housework related (although Lorraine does most of it at the moment), I would just much rather be out doing fun stuff or doing DIY instead, but then wouldn't we all. As soon as I can afford it, we will get a ma...

Continuing my efforts to fit into the country in which I live, I attended a blood drive in our building today. Being a veteran of some 15 pints in the UK, I figured it was something I could do quite easily that may help someone in need, and make me feel like I am contributing. As read the paperwork however, and filled in the questionnaire, I started to get a bad feeling. Questions 29 and 30 specifically related to the amount of time I have spent in the UK and Europe. Sure enough, I was rejected when subsequently questioned by the attending nurse. Apparently because I am European, then I might be a mad cow . Until someone proves otherwise, not be allowed to donate, although it is OK to eat it . Talk about paranoid! I am sure the UK Blood guys will quite happily take it when I go home.

Our first, but hopefully not our last, American wedding was a fine show. Steve & Kristi, friends of ours from my office (Steve that is) were getting hitched, in a Lutheran service. We learned all sorts of new traditions starting out at the church. Todd (my guv'nor) was telling us that quite often the photographs are taken before the wedding takes place (but I thought it was bad luck to see the bride before the wedding). This kinda makes sense, as everyone is fresh, looking their best, not stressed from the service, etc. Some people do it so early that they have to go home get undressed and wait till later to get dressed again, which seems like a really extreme measure. After leaving the church, the bride and groom returned to "dismiss" the congregation, one row at a time. This replaced the traditional "line up", and was actually quite a nice way to do it, rather than have to shake hands and make small talk with the whole family, particularly when you hardly ...

London has seen a week of mixed emotions this week. We started the week with the fantastic news that London had beaten everyone to be the Olympic destination in the year 2012. Celebrations of course followed and everyone was really excited. The very next day we are attacked by terrorist scum, placing bombs in our transit system, at peak hours for maximum innocent death & injury. People have, of course, drawn links to G8 and the Olympic win, but I think it unlikely that they are related, as I can' t see them cancelling the bombing if we had not won the Olympic bid and the G8 is in Edinburgh. Of course, a group linked to Al Qaeda have claimed responsibility. At last count they managed to kill over 50 people , although this is expected to rise as we sift through the underground mess, and injured over 700. These are pretty big number, but when held in comparison to 9/11 and taken in context of the number of people (3m) who use the tube on a daily basis, I think we escaped pretty ...

The locals call it "The Taste", it's full title being the Taste Of Chicago, celebrating it's 25th anniversary this year. The concept is that you get to taste a little bit of everyone's wares so that you can find some great new restaurants to go to in future. I think somewhere along the way, it may have lost this concept. I don't know what it used to be like, but what happens now is that you buy sets of 11 tickets for $7. Each ticket is supposed to be worth 50c, which means that $1.50 goes unaccounted for. Apparently the $1.50 is a facilities fee! So over 20% of all money goes to the city. Each vendor has 4 items on their menu and one of those is their "taste" item. The taste item is 3 tickets ($1.50) and the others are anything from 6-9 tickets. To be honest the whole thing felt like a bit of a rip off, but maybe that was just me, as plenty of people seemed to enjoy it. We went along to the park where the fireworks and orchestra were going to be mi...

One of the very interesting things about the US that I have always known and admired, is the degree of nationalism generally displayed. I know the Scots are very nationalistic and to a lesser degree the English too. However recent experiences at the Memorial Day parade and my observations since arriving show the Brits generally to be somewhat less enthusiastic. Example : Flying The Flag The most obvious statement of your commitment to your country. On the occasions when we have tried this in the UK we have been prevented by the PC brigade telling us that it may offend other groups of people who are perhaps not British, or at least not born in the UK. My take on this has always been, that you make your best efforts to fit in with the "locals" in whichever country you choose to live. This should include tolerance of local customs, local symbols, eg flags, learning the local language and supporting local decisions. That is not to say you should be prevented from practicing your ...