Changing time(s) zones

This post should have been made from my hotel in London last weekend, but motivation was severely lacking. I think the surreal feeling of actually having a place to live in England hadn't sunk in yet. Now it has and while it's still a little unreal, it's also very exciting.

Needless to say last week's trip was a success. I found a nice place for Fiance and I to live for the two years we'll be in England. It's going to be different than my suburban living normalcy as our flat is in a seven story building a short distance from Southampton city center and even closer to the water. You can see the berths for the Queen Mary and QE II from our balcony and a marina on the River Itchen from our bedroom. That's quite the change from suburban middle America. We're also within walking distance of numerous restaurants and pubs, two movie theaters, and a not unreasonable trek or short bus ride to a large shopping center. We're looking forward to the urban life and not having to drive everywhere. My only concern is having room for our bicycles. The rooms in the apartment are not what you would call roomy.

I was also able to open a bank account, which was an interesting experience. The head of our accounting department in our England office had notified the appropriate people that I would be coming to open an account. You wouldn't think that would be a big deal, but in England they don't let you open an account as easily as they do here. It basically worked out that we had arrangements with the people at the bank that when I came in I would skip a lot of the preliminaries and get a full account immediately since I had my company behind me. Unfortunately when we got there, all the people who knew of these arrangements were on holiday. It took a couple of phone calls, but eventually we were given the red carpet treatment and I now have a bank account. It doesn't have any money in it (something else that's strange to me), but I have an account.

Wedding plans are proceeding at a good pace. We seem to have most things worked out at the moment, or at least that's what I think. I doubt Fiance would agree with me. It's funny because in so many respects she is not overly girlie (which I like), but the wedding is bringing it out more in her than even she likes. She even recognizes that it's happening but is powerless to resist it.

Hopefully the house will be ready to put on the market next week. That will be one huge thing that I will be glad to have sorted out. It's unfortunate that I waited until now to do all these improvements to the house. It would have made it much more enjoyable to live there had I gone ahead and taken care of these things earlier. Oh well, at least the improvements will make it easier to sell.

That's the update for now. There may be more later in the week or early next week, but no guarantees. I imagine the next....good God! It's only NINE days away! I better get going.

Cheers,
Frog