Finally the State of Ohio has released my tax refund for payment. I can't believe how long it has taken them. Admittedly I didn't do my taxes until the beginning of April but it was still 5 months before they approved the payment with some rubbish excuse about not having Kristens SSN in the system (despite them taking her money in taxes from her payroll for the past two years). The cheques not arrived yet and I doubt I'll get the 8% interest and $80 fine that they charge taxpayers for being late on their payments though.
Mind you, now that they've got everything finally sorted this year, hopefully I'll be able to e-file next year.

Huh - I go outside to get stuff into the car for a picnic tonight and all of a sudden the tornado sirens go off. Apparently Dublin is in the path of a severe storm that could develop into tornado's. I'm really not sure if a picnic is a good idea or not....

Actually it wasn't bad working in the garden over the weekend even if I did get a little suntan/burn on the back of my neck. I really have the farmers tan now - but I think that is mainly because the rest of me is so white, anything non-white sticks out quite drastically :-) On Saturday we borrowed Kristen's parents mower and I spent about 100 minutes mowing the back and front garden whilst Kristen and Mom weeded and raked up the fallen leaves that were left in the flower beds. By the end of the day we had sore backs and 10 lawn bags and 2 bins full of grass cuttings and leaves for the green disposal lorry to come and take away today. I've been trying to decide on whether to get a ride on mower (called lawn tractors nowadays) or whether to get a self propelled walk behind mower. The cost difference is pretty big but the ride-on would be much more comfortable but starting at $900 its a big outlay. The other thing is that there doesn't seem to be anywhere you can actually try a tractor (although John Deere's are all over the neighbourhood but I can't afford one of those). I was favouring the craftsman mowers from sears until we found out that their cheapest one doesn't have a gear system that you can change whilst driving - apparently you have to come to a stop to change gears (according to the sales person) but that strikes me as odd as you always move away from a standstill in first, so coming to a stop doesn't make sense.
A google search for reconditioned, second hand or used mowers does not come up with anything in the vicinity and I am not aware of any mower shops (unlke Haslington mowers or Congleton Mowers back home in England). Any locals got any ideas or want to let me borrow their tractor for a test drive (I'll even cut YOUR garden if I can try out your mower!)

It's been one year today, since we moved from the UK. In the past year that we've been here we've lived in two houses, purchased a house and a car, passed a driving test, called a plumber out three times, been to the vets twice, got a job each, driven lots, eaten lots, thought about getting a hottub OR a rideon tractor mower, found a great church and new friends, went to one wedding and a funeral, replaced all the exterior doors and windows, ended up with more (broken) tv's and great furniture that we could use at any one time, passed 4 microsoft exams, broke the 400 geocache marker, got vonage and used skype a lot but not heard from many people in the uk (you know who you are!),got roped in to design 2 web sites (neither of which i've got very far with), got two fish, lost a fish, discovered Apples2Apples and many more things that I'm sure you can remember if you have been reading the blogs.

We're off out to celebrate now - yummy burgers await.

Or that is certainly the impression that the US Government seems to be giving to me.

I would never have believed someone if they had told me how much junk mail gets sent to you after you purchase a house. I think (although I'm not positive) that Huntington must have sold my details on as all of a sudden I started to get letters, a lot of them looking as though they came from Huntington or were at the least endorsed by them, begging me to take out life insurance or mortgage protection to pay off my mortgage if I died or became too ill to work. I actually did reply to a couple of the letters out of curiosity but I've not had a reply. The cheekiest one came today which was made to look like a final demand!
To counteract all the rubbish that we are getting we have also had quite a few "welcome to the neighbourhood" brochures that I know was triggered when we informed the post office that we were moving (take note Royal Mail - this is a free service in the US!) - as we then started to get loads of offers. Fortunately we got an offer for a "free day of care" at a local chiropractor (Inner Health Chiropractor click this link to get your own coupon too and tell them Absoblogginlutely! sent you.) which came in really handy last Monday after straining my neck the previous Friday. I had rolled out of bed and then got stuck as the pain that shot through my head and back made it practically impossible to move. Fortunately I discovered that as long as I didn't move and kept my head in one position it wasn't too bad, so I spent most of the day at home working in front of the laptop screen catching up on some SBS training I need to do.
Anyway, on Monday we got this voucher and as my neck was still painful I made an appointment to see them. I was pretty nervous as I had no idea what would happen and half expected a "helga" to come out and practically rip my neck off.
I was pleasantly suprised to see the chiropractor looked normal and was very pleasant and kept asking if I had any questions. After a brief check to see how restricted my neck movement was (very) I laid face down on the table/chair and then he cracked my ribs by pushing down on the shoulderblades - a quick burst of pain but not too bad. Ditto when the neck was twisted to get back into re-alignment. I have no idea how they know just how far they can twist a neck without breaking it - I guess their first few attempts at University must be pretty nervewracking.
The next step of the treatment was the best though - they put some cold plates on my back which were attached to some electrodes to give a tingling sensation on the back, and then I laid down on some hotplates positioned in the small of my back and then the whole table gave a really nice rolling massage for about 10 minutes. It was then back for some more realigning and then I went back to work.
By the end of the day I had a storming headache (which I had been warned about) but the next day practically all of the stiffness in the neck had gone.
They did recommend that I come back 3 times a week for two weeks - but there is no way my bank balance can justify that - so I was really pleased that the neck was better the following day :-)
That was about a week ago and I really should go back for another visit (if only to have another trial on the massage table) but the neck is pretty good now - slightly stiff if I strain it but ok.
Update Updated to add coupon details and link to Chiropractor

Seeing as though I'd not received ANY communication from the IRS I thought I'd best start to prepare now before the end of March rush. Target were doing TaxCut Deluxe (State and something else) for $19.99 but naturally its not possible to actually buy it in the store as they have sold out. So first I headed off to the library where a mass of forms such as 1040. 1040A and 1040EZ (the latter sounds promising) were on display with about 30 extra schedules that I could have. I'm almost positive they invented an extra few characters of the alphabet so they could have schedule a,b,c,ñ etc.
Anyway, I take them home and decide to ring the IRS to see what they say. After ringing the helpline on 1800 829 1040 I enter the worlds most comprehensive (aka confusing) voice menu system. I'm currently programming a 2 layer deep voicemenu system for a customer and I thought this was confusing - however the IRS system must be about 8 or 9 layers deep. Naturally you enter a wrong choice and head off down a branch that you no longer need, but there is no option to get out of the branch and head back up or back to a receptionist. As I was stuck in a menu branch I just kept pressing buttons until I got through to a live person who had difficulty speaking english and promptly put me through to someone else who would help.
The second person actually understood what I was asking and said they were going to put me through to the tech centre. That was about 5 minutes before I started to post this blog item. In the meantime I've listened to several pieces of classical music and every 60 seconds or so I get asked to press 1 to continue in English or 2 to continue in Spanish - why they keep asking me to do this I have no idea. I'm just glad that I have a phone with a headset socket, free US calls so I can sit down and blog whilst waiting for them. Unfortunately as I sat down in the chair the phone beeped as I accidentally pushed a button - I really hope it wasn't the 2 key and I end up speaking to someone in Spanish!
Ooh - they've answered.
So they now start asking me questions about whether I want to file seperately, joint etc. - thats one of the reasons I was ringing in the first place!

The movers rang back today and delighted us in saying that they were going to be able to move our UK stuff in tomorrow - we weren't expecting it for at least another week. Unfortunately we don't have any furniture ready for them although we did get our bed and a christmas tree installed today. - Tomorrow night it will be home sweet home!

Ok - NOW Im started to get a bit excited. In 46 minutes time, Kristen and I will start the process of signing our lives away when we close on our house. Now that it is finally here I just hope it all goes smoothly and I don't get writers cramp.
Fortunately the snow hasn't been too bad here so I don't think it will have held up the sellers moving out process as moving contents in the snow can not be much fun - wouldn't want to slip on the ice and snow. We will make sure that when we move in we pick a day that isn't freezing cold or snowing or raining. We have the luxury in that we don't have to move in on a specific day.

Update 2 hours later IT IS OURS AND WE HAVE THE KEYS - WOOHOO (now I'm excited)

This cartoon from speedbump (one of the comics I read on a daily basis) is going to be very apt in the early part of December

can anyone recommend a good internet service that preferably doesn't require additional services such as cable tv, phone service etc? We intend to use our mobiles for our main phone line in the house and don't feel the need to purchase cable tv in the new house. However we do NEED internet access (and not dialup!) so any suggestions on who to use (or avoid?) (There is a cable hookup in the house already)

I think we've just purchased a house! Kristen saw a really nice house yesterday and I went back with her last night to look at it and it really was as good as she was raving about. We put an offer in that was accepted an hour or so ago and Monday we go back to the realtor for yet more paperwork. We also need to organise the inspection, title people, mortgage people and bank people and all that stuff (and find a ride on lawnmower) so its going to be a very busy week next week.
One of the best things about the house is that Kristen and I have agreed on the choice of houses all along - we've not had the stress of one of us liking one house and the other hating it - just shows how much alike we are and how perfect we are for each other....now onto some less sappy stuff :-)

I'm actually surprised I've managed to blog this before Kristen has, but she has got more excitement lined up as she is now looking for a car!

I found out today that the cost of health insurance for Kristen and me per month is $300. Unfortunately we hadn't budgeted for that when we were doing our budget recently. If it costs that much for insurance I'd hate to get a bill without insurance.

Last night was (almost) the quietest Guy Fawkes night I've ever had as there wasn't a firework to be heard, not even a sparkler sizzling. I think I wouldn't have missed it until someone mentioned the date and I read some blogs about their firework plans.
I say it was almost the quietest night as at about 10.30 loads of teenagers across the road started to make a racket about something - whether a party they were having was finished (unlikely) or just starting (probable) I'm not sure but this was the same house that got toilet papered on Friday night. (The first time I'd seen a house get toilet papered)

Happy Independence Day*

This is just one of the hundred photo's that I took at Dublin's Independence Day parade. We got to our spot about 45 minutes before the parade started and I amused myself by taking various candid pictures of the crowd. Most people were dressed in red white and blue and the kids were very cute. Photo's have been uploaded to my photo gallery and some will also be uploaded to flickr at a later date. I will be also adding some more photos in the next couple of days as I will be taking some more photos tonight at the dublin fireworks and concert (where Huey Lewis and the News is headlining)
I've deliberately left the photo narrow and long to emphasis just how "tall" this guy was.
*For the non-americans reading this, Happy 4th July. It was a bit weird going to this parade, wearing my American Flag trousers and USA shirt being a Brit, but I really enjoyed it and there was a strong sense of American Pride which was nice to see. The respect that everyone gave to the veterans as they paraded past was also good to see.

Last night I saw my first ever real Lightning bug/Firefly. Although I had seen them in the movies I had never seen one in real life. I didn't try to catch them in a glass jar but Kristen did try to catch one in her hand but it rose up over the screened in porch much to her annoyance. There is quite a good close up of them on Flickr

or at least not if you want it quickly. Only after I started the transfer off from the UK did I find out that it was going to take 7-10 working days for the money to arrive in my US paypal account. Then in order to transfer the money into the US bank account it is going to take another 3-4 working days. I'm sure they don't publicise the fact that it could take 2 weeks for money to get transferred when you sign up for paypal.
The weird thing is that when I took some money out of an ATM in the mall the other day I didn't get charged a disloyalty fee from the issuing bank as the card was not an american card. I got the money instantly (as you'd hope from an ATM!) at an exchange rate of 1.77 though.
To transfer $500 via an atm would cost 281.92 pounds and I'd get it the following day (as there is a limit you can withdraw). Via paypal it cost 270.21 pounds but takes 12 days (and thats just to reach my US account)
The alternative is to do things "properly" and use a bank transfer which is a flat rate of 10 pounds but can take 10 days.

This morning went really well and if I had known it was going to be that easy I would have been a lot less stressed out about the whole thing. The test consisted of reversing out of my angled parking space (much easier than ones parallel to the kerb), pulling out into the main road and doing 3 right turns, followed by a left back into the testing car park. I then had to do the manoevrability test which was pretty simple too. Just before I did the manoeuvres I asked if I was allowed to lean out of the window and I was - the only thing I wasn't allowed to do was to hit the cones or run them over. This was the main thing that I was concerned about as when the cones are out in the parking lot you can't practise with them and when they are not out, it is very difficult to see where they are placed as you rely on a painted square on the ground. In fact when we were practising last night I had to get Kristen to get out of the car and stand on one of the spots so I had an idea where the poles would be.
The practise was worthwhile though as I did this with no problems. I also found out that they introduced this test when they stopped doing the parallel park - something we had spent quite some time on practising as it's quite different when you do it on the "wrong" side of the car.
Whilst doing the test the extremely nice examiner was asking me questions about how long I had been over here and noted that I wasn't wasting any time in getting the licence (3 weeks to the day) and asked how Kristen and I met and we had a nice chat which reduced the nerves and also showed that I was capable of driving AND thinking at the same time :-)
Anyway, I got the piece of paper to say I had passed with no points deducted in either of the two driving pieces or the written test, so what can I say - perfect all round :-)
The only downside is that I couldn't get the full licence straight away as we didn't have my Social Security card with the correct number on it (my learner permit had the wrong number on) so we had to drive to another dmv centre after stopping at home to get the card. (oh and the other downside is I'm not insured to drive the porsche :-( )

Kristen booked me in for a driving test tomorrow morning at 9.30 so hopefully we'll wake up in time (I had a layin this morning). I've not done any maneuverability practising yet - that is this afternoons job but hopefully it shouldn't be too hard. Yesterday I spent a torturous hour watching a video on how to drive which I got out from the library. Unfortunately it was filmed in canada so the guy talks about kilometres an hour for speeds and some of the things he said were wrong. There were also a couple of times that the woman demonstrating the manouvres actually did something wrong (she crossed a "sidewalk" and entered the road and only stopped once - these are meant to be treated as two individual stops.
Also the talking and effects were really cheesy. There is some debate going on about my steering as I now find it very difficult NOT to use the push-pull method of steering that we are taught in the UK, but according to Kristen the hand over hand method is preferred in the states (although a couple of books that I've read mention both methods but with push-pull used in certain circumstances).
Kristen also got her new numberplates yesterday - expect to see something on her blog very shortly (as soon as I've uploaded the photo)

It's all very well having moving backgrounds for powerpoint images at church (although they are distracting) but it really is a bad idea to have an animated background image of a lightning storm when people are trying to read the words in a darkened room - it's enough to give anyone an epileptic fit. (Danny I don't think WHBC are quite ready for this yet!)

The local insurance agent finally bothered to return our phone calls this morning so we were able to get insured for me to drive the car. The cost was better than I thought it would be considering that I am on a learners permit. 300 dollars for 6 months. This afternoon I drove the car back from the library and it feels weird to be in a ''learner" situation again.Hopefully I can get a lot of practise in over the weekend and take my test early next week

Kristen and I were sitting in the screened in porch when we could hear a tune sounding similar to a Nintendo- (or Ross playing his keyboard in Friends).After a few minutes it got louder and louder as the sound approached but the tune stayed the same. I thought it was a real shame that "It's a small world after all" was true otherwise we wouldn't have to listen to the annoying icecream van playing that tune! Now if anyone asks me if I miss anything from the UK, I'll say "Yes,ice cream vans playing short tunes"

We purchased a new computer from shudder Compusa this morning. We got a very decently spec'ed HP Pavillion A1030N desktop with 512MB memory, 200GB hard disk, 3GHz Intel processor with HT (appears as 2 processors) technology,DVD writer (with lightscribe so I can pay a fortune and have my dvd labels laser engraved - ooooohhhh) and a dvdrom. We also purchased a Norwood Micro 17" TFT screen to go with it, some speakers, blank dvd's and a small UPS to power it all. I also got a USB2 wireless adapter so the pc can be set up in the basement (or anywhere we feel like) without being confined to the computer room. This is made by Hawking Technologies (who I've never heard of) so it was a bit of a risk buying it, but at $20 after rebates it was cheap enough and I could always return it - but it seems to be working fine.
The whole lot is way cheaper than buying it in the UK and the price gets better as the rebate checks come in (3 for this lot!)
After switching the machine on, going through the boot up procedure it was time to install the wireless adapter which went through without a hitch and connected to the wireless Lan a lot easier than other things I've connected. Then it was off to Windows Updates......
18 items and 19MB to download (and it then detects I have some GDI vulnerable programs). The machine also came bundled with some new antispyware software called SpySubtract which I must admit I'd never heard of. It had a 60 day trial so thats enough to let me see what its like.
The other bundled software includes Norton's Internet protection suite (which will be uninstalled asap), Microsoft Works (useful for Word only), Microsoft Money (will be very handy for keeping track of our balances) and interestingly some WildTangent games. Now supposedly these games are not spyware, according to WildTangent's support site but other spyware detection programs detect them as spyware as they report back pc specs and each user has a unique id. It will be interesting to see what spysubtract thinks of it. Personally I will remove it if SpySubtract doesn't - I want to keep this machine as clean as possible.
Down points

• Spysubtract keeps bugging me that it needs a new download to update it, even though the download program then says that the patch has already been applied


• Adobe Reader 6 is installed not 7


• WildTangent


• HD has a recovery partition on it, but no instructions on how to use it (that I can see so far)

More updates as I carry on the installation of the machine.

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.

When people ask me what the difference is between american living and english living I can tell them a little story....

In england, when you go to a drivethru and ask for some ketchup, you end up with  
However if you go to an american drivethru you end up with

Kristen woke up early the next morning and went downstairs to see the cats and found that Winston had found his way into the closed off area of the basement and Basil couldn't be found anywhere. We subsequently found that he was hiding under the stairs, wedged in as far as he could go and it was a hard job pulling him out. Unfortunately he was not very happy with the move and was still pretty scared. Every sound had him running to the far corner of the room where he could hide. (However you'll be pleased to know that he is now fine). By this time Frankie and Winston were back to normal and were playing like they'd lived here all their lives. Sometimes i'm sure Frankie has a memoryspan comparable to a goldfish.

Thursday morning we went to the Social Security and I filled in the form to get a number. It is very difficult to do anything in the states without ones of these and why they don't give you one as you get your permanent resident visa I don't know. I now have to wait a week for the number to arrive in the post (they don't give numbers out immediately) which means I can't apply for a driving licence, credit card or mobile phone under my own name yet. We then went to see the bank to enquire about our credit rating/mortgages and we both applied for a credit card to improve our scores. Kristen had a credit rating from when she lived in the states previously so that helped a great deal, but we are now waiting for my SSN before the card application can come through.
We've also got new mobile phones which are quite a bit different to those in the uk. In the States, Nokia phones are very much in the minority and the majority of phones are flip covers. There are about 3 or 4 major networks and we chose Verizon primarily because with two phones on the same network you can talk between them (and any other phone) at any time for free. (and for $5 a month you get unlimited text and picture messages too). Thankfully most of our friends and family are on verizon apart from Kristens Dad so we shouldn't get any nasty suprises.
We got the phones from Radioshack which seemed to have the best deals that I could find locally and the guy that served us is the owner of the geocache behind the shop so we had a good chat about that too.
I also got a new wireless hub for the computers upstairs. I had brought mine with me but as its an adsl modem I had suspicions it wouldn't work easily in the current network (cable modem) setup. Also I didn't bring the uk power supply so I would need to get a US one, and that costs $20 yet I could buy a new wireless router for $29 from bestbuy (after rebates!) That was installed yesterday and works great and I get coverage in the basement too (which is where I am typing this from).

Later on today we get to go to the spring game at Ohio State's football ground. (A Spring Game is where the offensive play against the defensive and is like a training match that anyone can come along to.) Really looking forward to that and I hope it doesn't rain. Hopefully we have some decent seats so I can get some good pictures.

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.