Absoblogginlutely

2 year anniversary

Yesterday was the second anniversary of moving to the States. The time has really flown by and so much has happened since our move. This now means that if we ever did go back to the UK then Kristen would have to go through the whole visa process again, which means the move is even more unlikely! I'll write a longer post up later but right now we're enjoying a secluded getaway in Hocking Hill's. It's unlikely we'll go out from the cabin as the "road" up to the cabin has many potcaverns in them (too big to be called holes) and the car makes a funny noise every time we go over them. (I did manage to get 3 geocaches yesterday whilst Kristen was getting supplies though!)

I get interviewed!

Victor from Immigration Tales interviewed me earlier on in the week over skype and my immigration memory from the uk is now online. If you've ever wondered what I sound like (and like british accents) then go and check it out. Hopefully there are some useful tips for people in the same situation. A couple of websites that I would recommend are Visa Journey for information on the visa process and also MSN expats mailing list and also there are my posts on moving to the states.
There are also several other interviews that have already been posted with some really fascinating stories.

Oh - and keep an eye out on In The Trenches for my next interview about my life and career as a techie (which hasn't actually been recorded yet.....

If you have to claim on your marine content insurance - persevere.

We had the misfortune to have to claim for our kitchen table that we moved to the states. The table top had cracked in the move. We filled out the paperwork for the claim and 3 days later got the response back :"We regret to advise that we have to decline payment of your claim for the following reason:The table is not noted on your completed proposal form or on any of the attached sheets, therefore you have not paid to cover the item and cannot claim for it under your marine insurance policy."

My response back was something along the lines of "what part of H1 - Table do you not understand?" although I was a bit more polite.

Today we got an email saying the cheque had been approved.Makes me wonder how many people give up on their claims as they receive a standard form letter.

Cease and Desist documentation.

Chilling Effects is a good site about receiving/sending a cease and desist letter. Basically you post the letter you receive to the site for other people to take note - should have used it when I said that I would not recommend that people use HamridingSimpson estate agents in Congleton

At last - the house is sold.

Finally - our house sold today and the money was transferred into our account or it would have done if the annoying solicitors hadn't employed a sneaky trick to hang onto the money for an extra day. We had previously told them (several times) our account details at the bank but today they sent an email to us giving a summary of the house balance (less the estate agents and their fees) and asking us if we really wanted the money paid into our account that we had previously told them. So we've sent them a snotty letter asking for the money to be paid into our account immediately.
The whole house selling saga has been a right pain with lots of hassles with estate agents who lie and do not work for our best interests by telling people to put in an extremely low offer on the house as it is overpriced whilst at the same time telling us that there would be no problem selling the house at the price we were listing at and then having the cheek to tell us that they were trying to protect our higher price as long as they could - for less than 24 hours after they became our agent.
I would suggest anyone who wants to sell a house in the congleton area to stay away from HamRidingSimpson.

More good news on the house

We heard back from the Estate Agents today to say that the survey didn't show up anything that the buyer wasn't happy with so the sale is proceeding. In disappointing news we got a letter from the solicitors asking for the deeds for the house and the inventory - something we gave them about 5 months ago. After calling them they admitted they had lost the papers but found them after sending the letter to us. This is good news as I didn't want to delay the proceedings by having to get another inventory done and get the paperwork back to the UK. Oh, and if you are looking for a solicitor, find one who uses email so you don't have to rely on snail mail for correspondance (or the time difference on phone calls)

Our stuff is here....

I phoned the moving company up this afternoon as we had a letter saying that our contents were due to arrive at the end of May and our stuff is now sitting in a box on the pier in New York. They were talking about delivering it to us in two weeks and I had to remind them that they were putting it in storage until we had a job and a house. Good job I mentioned that as I would have not been happy if they turned up one morning with a big truck!

House for sale in Congleton

We now have a new estate agent for our 3 bedroom semi-detached house for sale in Congleton. The old estate agent was useless and only came up with an (absurdly low) offer on the final day that he had the agreement. The new agent seems to be more proactive so we will see how it goes.

New moving category

Now that we've actually moved to the States, new posts on the move and our new life will be under the "Settling in" category as opposed to "Moving to the States" category. This will probably only affect those of you who are looking at the category archives. Regular rss readers and website readers will not be affected.

The flight out....

Well I woke up at 3am this morning and I didn't really try to get back to sleep as the alarm clock was set for 4.15 this morning to get ready for the drive to the airport. It was a quick check of email to make sure we hadn't had any important emails come in and then it was time to shut the computer network down, pack it in the hand luggage and let the cats out for their last roam around the house. They all seemed to be very suspicious that I was letting them out of their room AND they were hungry as we were not allowed to feed them last night so needless to say they were making their feelings heard.
(seeing as though this post is pretty long, the rest of it is in the more section)

Our friend Bjorn came to pick the cats up and we quickly loaded the car with the bags and drove off to Skymaster to load the cats. After checking the paperwork we then drove the 50 yards to the cargo terminal where we had to wait in the car whilst a forklift was used to carry the two empty cat carriers into a room to be xrayed and then brought back out again (although I think the forklift was an overkill it might have been useful AFTER the cats had been loaded in.)
We then persuaded the cats to leave the carriers we had brought them in and put them in the new containers. They didn't seem to mind this too much as the new ones smelt interesting and were a lot bigger than the ones we had used. It was then a drive around to the main terminal where we had to check in.

Unfortunately 3 out of the 4 bags were overweight by 2kilo's (our scales at home must be wrong) and we therefore had to take a little bit out of each suitcase and then work out what we were going to do with it. Fortunately Kristen had packed a spare carrier bag in one of the bags so we were able to put the stuff in that carrier bag so we now had 4 carryon bags - 2 of the trolleys, one "purse" rucksack and the carrier bag. Amazingly enough all the bags passed through security with no problems and we had a couple of hours to spare in manchester airport until our plane took off.

The plane was very full, I don't think there was an empty seat on it but they forecasted some good weather so we made good time. There was an ignorant bloke who had put his coat in the luggage space over our seat and then had the cheek to complain and whinge after Kristen moved it to another compartment.

As predicted the films on the plane were pretty rubbish. We watched Bride and Prejudice which had some funny bits in it but I certainlyu wouldn't recommend it to anyone to watch (unless you LOVE bollywood films). The other film was Spanglish which was rubbish so I watched Joey and about 4 other sitcoms which were ok to pass the flight time.
I was pretty pleased to hear an interview with Switchfoot on the rock and pop channel on the radio and also to hear 3 of their songs.

We landed at Newark early and managed to avoid the huge queue due to my Permanent Resident card but I think we had Mr Misery at immigration as I think he just barely grunted any responses to us. Customs was a brief pause and then we had to recheck our luggage and go through security. The rechecking of the luggage was a fairly long queue, probably about 30 minutes wait but at least they had the sense to prioritise flights that were going out soon so those passengers didn't have to wait very long. Then it was through security. They seem to be a lot tighter than at Manchester as we had to remove our shoes and then they stopped my carryon. I wasn't really suprised as it was packed full. I got told off for carrying that much stuff in the case and when he opened it up said "yep - looked just like that in the xray". A wand for magic pixie dust/explosives and I was declared clean and then it was off to wait for our last flight (and a very nice cheeseburger and coke to keep us going).

Our last flight out was delayed whilst we waited for our crew to arrive who were delayed on their incoming flight so we spent a rather boring 40-50 minutes in the plane at the stand waiting and then we were off. The flight to Columbus was pretty uneventful and only half full so there were plenty of spare seats which meant I could stretch out and not feel as cramped as I did on the transatlantic flight.

Kristen's dad met us at the airport and suprisingly enough, our bags were one of the first off the carousel AND they had all made it too. A drive home in 80 degree weather,some tea and stuff and then it was off to get the cats. Their flight was also delayed a little bit so it wasn't until 11.20 that they arrived. The place we had to pick them up from was like a lockup in a deserted back alley, or at least that is what it felt like at 11pm on a dark (and by this time very rainy) night. There was no-one around, the lighted signs flickered and it felt just like a set from an old black and white film.

Eventually the cats arrived in their boxes, we picked them up and then had to listen to Basil cry for most of the way home - he was not impressed with having to stay in a box for 24 hours with little food, water or space to run around with.

When we got home we let them out in the basement. Frankie and Winston proceeded to explore around, sniffing everything. They were very jumpy and there are a lot of strange noises in a basement! Then it was time for bed so after being up for 24 hours straight, Kristen and I went upstairs and left Winston to begin his houdini inspired tour of the house......

All Gone......

Well about the only thing left in the house is the furniture AND the broadband connection :-)
The pickfords movers came at 9.10 this morning (slightly early) and got stuck in pretty quickly. We had 43 boxes (i think we had allowed for 44) and they had finished by 12.10pm. The box-to-tea ratio was not bad at 22:1. They could have had more but the packed ALL the mugs so I've not even got a mug to drink coffee from between now and Wednesday morning. That will have to be rectified if I am going to be awake to get to the airport.
I gave away all my motorbike stuff on the freecycle mailing list. One guy was extremely thankful and took everything I had (apart from the helmet and gloves which had gone mouldy). Then this afternoon a mechanic came round to collect the motorbike. After a couple of minutes fiddling with the choke and a boost from a special battery pack he had the bike running. He wasn't able to drive it away because as soon as the booster pack was disconnected the bike died, but I was very impressed that it started up. He had to bash the brakes with a brick (which promptly split in two) to release them as they had siezed up a bit and after pumping up the tires (with an electric pump) he wheeled the bike down the lane. I was very sad to see it go as I had many a happy mile on it and seeing him getting it started to easily I wish I had flogged it for more money.

The freecycle network was quite neat as last night I deleted all the content on Boring Bulb Blog and recreated articles on all the things I had to give away. Then sent an email out to the list and people could comment if they wanted the things. That way everyone knew what was left. As I received comments I moved the category from Free to Gone and the url that I gave out only contained the Free items. It worked out really well - thanks MT

We had a celebratory meal out at The Plough at lunchtime which was nice. Kristen had a duck wrap and I had a steak and onion baguette. Mine wasn't as nice as I remembered from the Friday lunchtimes at Siemens - partly because it didn't have gravy on it and partly because a lot of the steak had fat/gristle in it. The bits that didn't were nice though. Kristen wanted to go to this pub as we had often driven past it but never stopped so now was a good time.

TV Licensing

Got a letter from the tv licensing company today asking me to "send the balance of 0.00 together with this letter.....Please make cheques payable to..."
I am so tempted to do this just to see what would happen.

4 Hobbits for sale.

As part of our clearout we're selling our 4 hobbit standee on ebay. Check the description as I had to ensure we were totally covered...... :-)
We managed to sell our Sky Digibox last weekend and 2 X-Files series 1 dvd box sets. The weird thing is that the opened (but new) box set sold for more than the shrinkwrapped box set!

Animal Airlines respond

After my post about Animal Airlines being a bunch of cowboys I get the following amusing email from them. Spelling mistakes left untouched :-)

DEAR MR/MRS. HELSBY - YOU REALLY ARE DEARS,
WELCOME AND CONGRATULATIONS - FOR JOINING OUR 'COMPLAINTS CLUB' - I AM SURE YOU WILL BE PLEASED TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE THE VERY FIRST MEMBERS IN OVER 40 YEARS. HOWEVER, DON'T GET TOO EXCITED BECAUSE,SADLEY, YOU WILL BE DISSAPOINTED TO HEAR THAT WE SIMPLY CAN'T FIND ANY OTHERS WILLING TO JOIN YOU BOTH. BUT HOLD-ON IN THERE, LETS SEE WHAT THE NEXT 40 YEARS BRINGS - YOU NEVER KNOW!
AS YOU ARE BOTH THE VERY 'FIRST' MEMBERS TO THE CLUB WE HAVE DECIDED TO MAKE YOU 'HONARY LIFE MEMBERS' AND I HOPE YOU WILL BOTH ACCEPT THIS INVITATION IN THE SPIRIT IT IS INTENDED.
BON VOYAGE,
TONY

Avoid Animal Airlines!

Animal Airlines really seem to be a cowboy company and are really unorganised and I really recommend avoiding them.
I'd be intrigued to see if anyone has had any success with importing their cats to the states with them. We fly out on the 20th April (hooray!) and are having major hassles getting straight answers out of "animal airlines" who are meant to be the people to send the cats with.
We are flying continental from Manchester to Columbus Ohio and have been quoted £1500 for the three cats by continental who say we need to go via animal airlines. However animal airlines gave us a quote for £735 but when we tried to book it they then bumped the price up by £135 by saying we needed to have the cats sent to cincinatti (and we would have to pick them up from there - a 3 hours drive from Columbus). When we reluctantly decided to try that route, the price went up ANOTHER 3% as we wanted to pay by credit card - NOW they are saying that they could decide to use Continental and we might have to pay that - but they'd decide on the day - oh and we'd have to throw the cats out of the airplane window as they can't be dropped off at the airport until an hour *after* our flight has left. The fact that a quote (which is meant to be legally binding) has increased in value by £135 is just not right and I wonder if trading standards would have something to say.......
This company seem to make the rules up as they go along and I just don't trust them - but £1500 is VERY expensive for three cats and I'm not sure we can afford that with everything else we have to pay out in the first weeks of moving.
The whole experience is really frustrating. Kristen managed to speak to another company this afternoon who said that they had had a lot of people coming to them after getting the runaround from Animal Airlines and who had not been very happy with their service.
(Hopefully this rant will get a high rating in google as I couldn't find much on them in google (which is a bad sign by itself))

You know you are ready to move when.....

you start spelling colour as color (or it could just be i've been doing too much html coding where it is spell it as color)

Exporting the cats to america

4 phone calls, 3 departments and a very hard to understand voicemessage I have found the Importation of Pets and Other Animals into the United States page (this page also has information on birds, dogs,monkeys and turtles) which states "Pet cats are subject to inspection at ports of entry for evidence of infectious diseases that can be transmitted to humans (zoonotics). If a cat appears to be ill, further examination by a licensed veterinarian might be required. There is no rabies vaccination requirement for cats. Following entry into the United States, all cats are subject to state and local vaccination requirements. Looks like we don't need any further documentation as far as the states are concerned. The airline needs some paperwork too though.....
That zoonotics makes a nice word-of-the-day.

House updates - a viewer turned up!

Well the move is a step closer tonight due to the fact that the viewer scheduled for tonight actually showed up! The one that was meant to have come this morning had the decency to let us know that they had to postphone the meeting but the two before that just never showed up :-( We're going to give the estate agent Kristen's mobile number so they can at least ring us to say if they are going to be delayed or need to cancel.

House for sale in Congleton.

Three bedroom semi-detached property in Congleton, Cheshire, UK benefiting from gas central heating, good sized gardens, off-road parking and garage. The Rightmove website has all the details or you can see the Timothy Brown estate agents site too. I had posted one of these urls a while back but I missed out a quote so the link never actually appeared on the page even though it was in the code so here it is again.

Voltage converter

This 3KWatt Voltage converter may be handy for running the computers and stuff when we move to the states. This site also has lots of smaller sizes too. Bookmarked for later use.

Housing market improving?

People keep asking how the move is going. The fact that I'm still here should give them a clue really :-) Having said that I think the market is improving as we have had a couple of visitors around to look and yesterday my parents put an offer into a house (not mine unfortunately) that was accepted so they are now looking forward to moving yet again. Hopefully this will be the last time they move though (and the last time I'll be asked to move loads and loads of large potted plants)

Green card has arrived!

The good news is that my green card has now arrived at home, the bad news is that it isn't green. Weird eh?

We* all live in a yellow kitchen**

I got home from work last night and volunteered to help paint our kitchen ready for part of it to be tiled this morning. It now looks really good but does need at least one more coat of paint. My arm and fingers ache from pushing on the roller though. Hopefully all the paint and tiling and tidying up will be done before a viewer comes round on Saturday.

The official Green Card has arrived.

The real green card has now arrived at my american residence (ooh sounds posh) AND it came with an official welcome to the united states letter. I'm quite impressed at the speed this has arrived - less than 3 weeks after my entrance to the states (with one of those weeks being christmas/new year)

My Visa has arrived!

Hooray! Earlier than expected, my visa has arrived at the office. I must say it looks fairly impressive. Hopefully I don't get delayed at immigration for too long.

The visa story

If you are interested in our weekend experience of the visa then click on the more button that follows

We set off for London at about 9.30 having had to pick up the garage from the repair centre after someone drove into the side of it a week previously. Then it was off down to London. As we were driving down the M40, the mobile rang and the estate agents wanted to know if we would be around at the weekend to show the house to a prospective buyer! We've had the house on the market since October and not had anyone show any interest - until the night before my visa interview! Although we had previously said that we didn't want to have any people come around until early in January, we hastily agreed to have them come around on Monday. Apparently the people have already sold their house, want to move quickly as they are living in rented accomodation and are keen to look at our house so a quick phone call to the helsby cleaners to persuade Mum, Dad and my sister to come and help tidy and clean and we were back on the road again.
We were fortunate to stay in the London Corus Hotel. which is situated right opposite Hyde Park. I think Kristen used laterooms to make the booking. We arrived at about 1.30, I dropped Kristen off to checkin whilst I unloaded the bags and then drove the car to the carpark. At £22 a day it is not cheap to park in London! However, parking at the Paddington Station carpark was cheaper than parking in the masterpark carpark (even with the 10% discount the hotel gave us). After finding my way back to the hotel, Kristen collapsed into the bed as she was suffering heavily from a cold and I went caching around hyde park and kensington gardens. I had a great 3 hours walk around the park and found 9 caches, and failed to find 3 others. At the very last one I did at night, I even met another geocacher so that made a nice end to the afternoon.
Back at the hotel, Kristen was too exhausted to go out so I went foraging for food and brought back 2 pizza's, we played cards and then went to bed early.....only to wake up really early due to the excitement! 6.45 we set off towards Marble Arch and then to the doctors. When we arrived at the Dr's (via breakfast at McD's) there were already about 8 people in the queue in front of us and we had to wait about 15-20 minutes in the rain. Neither of us had an umbrella so it wasn't a pleasant experience.
At 8am we were herded into a really posh drawing room, given folders to put our medical questionnaire and photo in and then had to wait. Kristen was chucked out as there wasn't even room for everyone (about 25 people I reckon were there for the morning sitting) so she went back to McD's whilst I waited. I got chatting to a couple of other people there, one of whom is also emigrating to Ohio but to Cincinatti. After about an hour I got called to go downstairs for my bloodtest - but first I had to fork out the first £135 of the day. After another 20 mins or so I got jabbed in the arm, told I needed the MMR vaccine and something called Td - which was going to cost £55 in total. Then about 6 of us guys were called through into some stalls (now I know how horses feel when they look out of their horsebox - as I'm sure we looked very similar as we poked our head over the swingdoors to see what the doctor was saying). We then had to have a chest xray (wearing shoes,socks and a white smock(how fetching)) and then for the medical exam which consisted of blood pressure reading, a poke, prod and a "cough" :-(
Then it was upstairs (oh yeah - we got dressed again) and two VERY quick jabs later it was off to the embassy. I was told that the jabs would have no side effects apart from the td would possibly give a sore arm (which it has done).

A walk in the rain to the embassy wasn't much fun but it wasn't too far - until we had to go around the block to the other side due to all the security arrangements that they now have in place. At each corner of the embassy is a policeman with a machinegun and also at halfway points along the embassy walls. Brick and fence barriers force you to do a long walk around the embassy AND you have to go through (not very thorough) security. As I am a non-immigrant application I didn't have to queue - or so I had been told. When we got to the front of the building there were two lines - one for visa's and one for immigrant services. Suprisingly we didn't have to join the visa queue but the much shorter services one. After checking who we were on the list of visitors and checking that my face matched my passport we were eventually allowed in.....and then we met with Mr I Know. The security guard checked my passport and then called me Andrew Peterson. When I corrected him I got a "yes I know" response. He also asked if my pocket pc was a camera. I said no, and started to tell him it was a pocket pc and also got a "yes I know" - weird.
Anyway, we were waved through to the visa hall.
At this point you get allocated a number when you take a ticket. I was number 24 (10th in line) for non-immigrant visa's. The immigrant visa's were up to about 290 but they went through the line a lot quicker as there were about 7 or more operators checking the status, compared to 3 for us lot. We also had to buy a "courier visa package" to have the visa sent back. This costs £10 and it turns out that the work is basically done by CityLink. Anyway, after an hour of waiting we were eventually called to give our papers to a very friendly bloke behind the counter and after checking various forms we were then told to go to the cashier to pay the $355 visa processing fee and then back to sit down again and wait for the interview.
After about another hours wait we were finally called back to the interview window. By this time I had seen all my new found friends get their visa's, shaken their hands and heard Kristen welcome them to the United States (as the visa women wasn't doing this!). We were the last ones in our little group, but there were two more people behind us.

I was asked a couple of questions - how long had we been married (which I got right much to my relief) and then asked where we were going to live. At this point, Kristen answered and got politely told to ssssh and let me answer. However, the interviewer kept looking at Kristen whilst asking the questions so Kristen still kept trying to answer. Fortunately though we both gave the same answers. The other questions was where we were going to live and what job I was looking for and then I was told my medical results were clear, my original certificates were handed back and I was told that my visa would be with me on Monday.
We walked back to the hotel, I then headed off back to the carpark and managed to pay for my parking 23 hours and 59 minutes after parking the car - this was a big relief as it was going to be more expensive for over 24 hours. I picked up Kristen from the hotel and we started to drive back home VERY excited, happy and relieved.......

......and then we got to Warwick services, about 90 minutes outside london and got a phone call from the embassy asking me to ring them. After trying twice and getting an engaged tone, we got through on the 3rd time only to be told the guy had probably gone home. When we said that he left a message 5 mins ago, they checked and found him somewhere and then he said "ah...Mr Helsby.....do you have your medical records?" I replied "Eh? no.....I've not had them" "Are you sure? Can you check in the paperwork we handed back to you?" - "yes, let me check.....no definately not here" "oh......you sure?.....oh........erm.....let me ring you back...." At this point Kristen was shooting me looks across the car and I was really hoping we didnt have to go back to London again and so a long 5 minutes went past as we continued driving up the motorway. Eventually he rang back and said that there was a problem with my medical records and they had been sent in a separate envelope which they hadn't found until now (despite having been told at the interview that they had received my medical records and everything was ok). He also said that due to this delay my visa wouldn't be with me until Tuesday. It was a good job we hadn't booked a flight for the day after getting a visa!
Anyway, we got home and when I checked on the visa status tonight, it was picked up at 9pm on Friday night and is now awaiting delivery at my local delivery office so I should get it Monday morning - can't wait!
Now all we need is for the buyer to put an offer in on Monday and everything will be sorted :-)

A VIL arrives.

At long last, a Very Important Letter arrived in the post this morning - . We're not sure if it is a coincidence that the letter was sent from the embassy (and arrives here two days later in FirstClass mail) the day after that Kristen's parents contacted their senator to see what was going on but it does seem very suspicious that the letter has finally come through (but it was quick work once the phone call was made). Hopefully we won't be the uk equivalent of Blunkett's nanny and appear in American newspapers as someone fasttracking visa forms as this has been anything but the fast track.
The interview and medical exam is next Friday. As my surname starts with H I get to see the doc before the interview - at 8am in the morning.....something tells me this could be a long day.
There is a possibility that we could then fly out to america on holiday for christmas, but looking at the prices, if we flew back on the 2nd Jan, the prices start from £3000 each - yep, 3grand. If we fly back the day before, it drops to a respectable £700 each - but thats still a fortune.

House for sale?

Anyone want to buy a house in Congleton? Our house is now online for purchase.

As you can probably tell, the secret about moving to the states is now out. Last week I was asked by my manager what my future plans were and "what is this about you moving to the states?" He had been warned that I was going to get my greencard one day when his company took over the company that I worked for. Then the situation was discussed at a recent management meeting when I think someone thought the process was getting close to completion.
Thankfully the boss took it well, but I've got loads to do to provide a clean handover.