A new life; same as the old life?

Memorial Day (originally Decoration Day) in the US remembers the fallen members of the nations armed forces. In Europe, as most of you will know, we do this on Remembrance Day or Poppy Day in November, although they have this day too and call it Veteran's Day . Memorial Day is the first Public Holiday day of the year, and it bookends the summer. We have spent the last month being told that, the pool opens on Memorial Day weekend, or the mini golf, or the prices change, or whatever. Suffice to say it is a big weekend in the US, huge sales, many parades, people hang out, break out the grill, etc. We went to our friends Chris Provost & his wife Danni, and their two sons Luke and Eric. They have a beautiful huge house in the stix, with a pool , 3 acres of land and more trees than you can shake a stick at. Clearly the local wild life enjoy it, and I just could not resist this beautiful specimen . The parade was excellent. Led by old soldiers , the local school bands , swinging the...

For those friends of mine who grew up with Smokey & The Bandit. I know it is a different colour, but didn't we all want one of these!

Your element is Fire: Strong, hot tempered, powerful, and passionate. Well now lets see, being fire you are quite strong and powerful. People look up to you greatly and often seek your protection. You have the ability to gain many friends and you are always one people can count on to do what you say you will do. You are extremely loyal, be it friends or family. You'll stick up for them and you are never willing to put them in a position that could hurt them. You know what role you play in life, leader, and you intend to let people know it. Not everyone is capable of leadership but you certainly have the willpower and flare to do it. You have quite a temper if it shows itself, one that can often lead you into trouble. Once your mind is made up there is no changing it but no one said that was a bad thing. .:-What is your true element?-:. -With Anime Pictures and detailed answers

Occasionally I take a minute or two to check out other folks blogs. This week I found a couple of interesting posts. I haven't read the blogs in any great detail, but these individual posts are quite good. I am betting the Hemel one was Jimmy!

Well it all arrived last Thursday as planned and we did a pretty good job of thinning it all out to only 18 boxes from 86 shipped , mostly clothes and books that have not yet been unpacked. We spent the weekend returning most of the stuff we borrowed so that we actually had room for our own stuff! You can see from the pictures , that it was pretty chaotic for a time, but apart from a lack of storage space we are pretty much organised now. I even brought some of my crap into the office to decorate my cube..yes folks, for those of you who know Dilbert or anything of American corporate planning, I do actually have a CUBE . As you can see, the area I work in is completely cube based. It is quite amusing when something happens, like a loud noise or someone laughs loudly, people's heads suddenly pop up and I always imagine some giant with a hammer, just waiting to smack us on the head, before we pop back down, just like those games you see on Brighton Pier.

It feels like an eternity, but really it’s only been two months, so I don’t suppose we have too much cause for complaint. It all got through customs remarkably quickly too, I guess they weren't really interested in my DVDs or bizarre artwork! At this point some of you will know exactly what I am talking about and others will have no clue! Our belongings have arrived, they are currently in a warehouse on the Northside and will, all things being equal, be with us tomorrow morning around 8:30am. It will be nice to have our own stuff at last, although with all the great friends here, we have not gone short. Now begins the tasks of returning the various things to the right people, although to make this easier, we listed and photographed everything when we got it..ah the wonder of digital cameras. A proper bed, wine glasses, a sofa and music & artwork. Our first party is fast approaching and it would have been a nightmare without our proper stuff. We were thinking of having a Wimbled...

Wish I could take credit for this one, but I can't. Our friend Hazel, from New Zealand, via the UK, and now here in the US has a very funny blog . She somehow came up with this very timely link , you gotta do it..my favourites were Yoda and Chewbacca!

Here they are at last, those pictures of our new home. A couple of pictures of the bedroom , a couple of the living room . One of the work area , the dining area , the bathroom , and a couple of the kitchen . Let us know what you think by leaving a comment.

Lorraine's Own Tyre Brand! , originally uploaded by gordy_sk . The real reason we bought the truck. If you cannot see it, zoom in and you will see Cooper on the brand.

Park Club Room , originally uploaded by gordy_sk . The club room at our new pad, although unfortunately not part of our apartment, but we are able to use this room at any time. It has a big telly, wifi, etc

Our New Pool, Hopefully , originally uploaded by gordy_sk . They say it will be ready by the end of the month. At the moment it is a building site as you can see.

Gordy & Lake Michigan , originally uploaded by gordy_sk . Beautiful views over Lake Michigan from Lake Forest yacht club.

Yacht Club , originally uploaded by gordy_sk . The Lake Forest Yacht club, a gorgeous little community down at the lake side in Michigan.

As you probably would guess, calling the UK from the US is pretty expensive, and so as a result we have restricted ourselves to email and emergency calls only. Which of course leads to a huge disconnect in our lives, when we are so used to simply picking up the phone to talk to people. Recently we heard about a great service called Lingo, which is, for the techies amongst you, a Voice Over IP system, meaning, for the non techies amongst you, that we can use our existing internet connection to talk to the UK or anyone for that matter, for as long as we like, for the vastly reduced price of $19.99 per month; now if only I can get it working. I was very proud of myself, having made my wireless network work, after a bit of swearing and hair pulling; I was thinking this VOIP stuff would be a synch. Never could I be more wrong. I have had it every which way and still it won’t work, I have called tech support at Dlink (the router people) and Lingo, but to no avail. I have messed around, hard ...

...well you wanna go South on Milwaukee, East on Lake Cook, and the Walmart is gonna be on your North side. This is a typical set of directions from a resident of Chicagoland. Now those who know me well, know that when it comes to directions, my attention span is about 5 seconds, and my sense of direction struggles with left and right, never mind trying to navigate by compass directions. To help, I bought one of those little stick on compasses but it's bust and continually points to North being the front of the truck irrespective of which direction I face! Add to this the confusion of night driving when there are virtually no street lights or for that matter road markings (I think the snow ploughs scrape them all away), and you usually end up with a recipe for disaster and lots of U turns. Fortunately Lorraine is very adept at reading maps, except that when she is not in the car, that's not much help! Taxi for Gordy.....

For the last four weeks, that is about how I felt. Nothing to do with the double barrelled surname, but everything to do with only having arrived in the country four weeks ago. It seems I was genuinely born yesterday, although some people have been saying that about me for years. None of my history is transferable, be it credit history or driving history (although maybe that's a good thing). So I am being treated like a teenager again, just out of school, although, even they can get credit cards! My car insurance is sky high, at $900 for 6 months, largely because I don't have an Illinois drivers licence or any allowable driver history. I do, now, at least have a social security number, having gone through a fairly painless process. However it seems that even that does not mean that much, as when I tried to use it at the Nextel store at the weekend to get a phone for Lorraine, I was told I did not exist on their systems, and so therefore still could not have a phone! We moved ye...

We went out house hunting this weekend, well apartment hunting really, although we did look at a townhouse. We stuck to our original areas that we scoped out back when we came over in February. It was a fabulous day for it, with the temperature at around the mid 70s. The first place we looked at on Saturday was very cheap, a studio flat, in the middle of nowhere in Kenosha, Wisconsin. At only $600 pcm and zero deposit it was an attractive option to allow us to save probably another $600 each month towards a deposit for our own mortgage eventually. However, the journey would have been about an hour, and literally it was in the middle of a field! We moved on to our favourite little town, Libertyville, and saw a couple of gorgeous places. A townhouse which was a kinda tri-level place, with three bedrooms, a nice lounge, 1.5 bathrooms, a big, if slightly dated, kitchen/diner and a nice little yard. At $1200 it was right at the top of our budget. The guy from that place pointed us in the d...

Well, I set my heart on it, and gosh darn it, I only went and did it. OK it's 2nd hand (97 model year) and it's done 120,000 miles, but it's in great nick, and a bargain at only $8800. I went out today to have a look around at various trucks, cars, etc. Finance is going to be an issue, because I have no credit history, and also I don't have my drivers licence or social security number yet. So it had to be something cheap that I could afford to buy for cash. I fell in love with the blue truck in the pictures, but it was only two wheel drive and also was a bit beat up. The red truck I bought is double cab, has all the toys, is much newer and a very loud straight through exhaust. I have placed a deposit today, and collect it on the 16th, when I get paid. I will try to get a sound file posted, in the meantime you will just have to imagine.