THAT Dr Who Episode...

Ok, you're forgiven for Gridlock - even M thought it was good.  I must admit the final scene was brilliant - I want to see the first Youtube of parents carrying screaming kids past statues...

In other news: M took me away for the weekend to The Inn at Langley, which is up on Whidbey Island.  There we mostly ate and slept.  The food was good but overpriced.

On Sunday we got a reasonably early start home but detoured to take in some open houses in areas were were sort of interested and had a walk around Discovery Park (which reminds me, I'd like to find out more about the army base it obviously once was) - then home, gym, Doctor Who and caught up on some TV before bed.

Today has been quite a good day so far.

Other Updates

M had 2 second interviews last week, an all day nightmare with the Beast, and a more sensible session with a Canadian consulting company who are based in Bellevue.  She also had a push back from one of the Amazon jobs, but frankly, we'd already decided that Amazon probably wasn't a good fit.

On Friday MS called to ask permission to contact her references, which is apparently a good sign and a precursor to an actually bone fide offer, then the Canadians called back and asked for a 3rd interview, one via Video conference with the unit manager and the other with the team she'd actually work for at MS HQ.  So all positive there and we might get back to being a dual income household again.

We've not exactly been tightening our belts and we've managed to live on one salary - which was good, because it raises the possibility that we can continue to have a reasonable standard of living and also completely save one income.  Of course, it will be odd to both be working again, and on the East side for that matter.  Still, between car pooling and other things it should be interesting.

I've also had some reasonably good news at work.  We've won a couple of deals which probably will take a lot of the pressure off and we can start to seriously discuss my request to get the Green Card application started (that should take 6-9 months with the type of Visa I have) - then we are a little more free to relax a little.

In light of that, and that M is feeling broody (for a house, not a kid), we wandered around a couple of open houses to see what we could get for the kind of money we could probably afford and also to get a feeling for the areas out there.  I like Fremont, M likes Queen Anne, but we also had a look at Magnolia - which is not really our thing.  

The strangest thing was the houses themselves, I find the layout of USian houses to be rather odd.  The use of space doesn't quite jell for me and I'm not entirely sure I can put my finger on what the problem is.  The rooms on the main levels seem to be small, with the basement making up for the slightly claustrophobic feeling of the upper floors.  I'm not sure that I see the point of a "lounge" area which is quite obviously for "best", and then another area where you actually live.

OTOH, if we do hang around here for another year and we figure out a way to get Ms inheiritance out of RSA, we probably will be in the market for a place to live by the start of next year.  It would be nice to get settled down more.  It really would.

Holidays...

We're going to be taking a small vacation, before M starts working.

We've decided to see some more of this country we find ourselves living in.  To whit: the western seaboard.

We're leaving next Thursday with a 3 day drive down to San Diego.  I've business in SD a week on Monday and then we're meandering back up via the Bay Area, Napa, Northern California and Oregon - back in time for the 4th July.  Should be fun, we're looking forward to it.

In other news we're off to Vancouver for the weekend, which will be interesting.