Sunday Night Football

Sunday was football day in London. Fiona met up with the girls to go shopping in Kensington and I headed down to Wembley to take in an honest to goodness NFL game. Both of us had a really good time - the company was good and the activities entertaining.

Wembley was very impressive - the huge arch lit up over the roof and large comfy seats with lots of legroom. They tried to spoil it by playing perhaps the worst first half of NFL football I have ever seen, but averted disaster with a reasonably entertaining second half. I even got to witness a missed extra point.

It was tough getting up at 4am to hop a return flight to Aberdeen, but overall, another highly enjoyable London visit.

Fall in London

We've arrived in London for the Clash of the NFL Titans tomorrow afternoon. We had a bit of a bumpy flight leaving Aberdeen yesterday evening, and then spent a good 45 minutes circling over London, so we were quite knackered by the time we reached our hotel. The endless circling would normally have been more of a sore point, but we got a terrific view of the city, all lit up and colorful, that was quite enchanting. London always hits us with a sequence like that - showing us something cool and appealing, making us think that life in the big city wouldn't be too bad, and then we run into an obvious negative, like the insane crowds outside the Portobello Road market, and we're back to being quite happy to spend a little more time in Aberdeen.

The day started quite well, as Fiona was not only clever enough to book us a room at a great hotel in the middle of Kensington, but also got us "club" access - which means we can duck off into this small glass-walled room for breakfast or drinks and not have to deal with the rest of the hotel riff-raff. We wear our elitist label with pride. Breakfast was great and we followed it up with a tour of the hotel gardens, marvelling at the huge maple leaves falling from the central tree and wondering what caused them to feel they needed to put up several signs asking people to "Please respect our shrubbery".

We decided to try and get in to see the Natural History Museum, which everyone has been telling us is well worth the effort. When we arrived and saw the queue snaking out of the building, around the drive, into the garden, back out onto the drive... we turned tail and ran. We ended up in Kensington Gardens, on the other side of Hyde Park. THe fall colours were amazing. We strolled around the gardens, enjoying the weather and the foliage.

For lunch we headed to the well-reviewed Churchill Arms pub. It turns out that in the back of the pub is a little Thai restaurant, so we sat down for some pad thai. It came to the table absolutely reeking of something not entirely edible, but we decided to give it a go and ended up quite enjoying it.

We were wandering through Notting Hill, trying (and failing) to get into the market, and decided instead to head for Holland Park. We arrived in the park just in time to be greeted by a rain squall. Thankfully the trees still had enough leaves to offer us some shelter, and we ended up waiting out the rain on a small bench. I won't lie, there may have been some snogging.

We met up with some friends for dinner and are now looking forward to another good night's sleep. Our room has proven itself to have all the requirements - good and dark, with the right temperature. Hopefully we're a little smarter than yesterday, when we stayed up too late after being caught up with a TV movie about an old Canadian heavy metal band called Anvil. They had a little success in the 80's, but are now all in their 50's and still clinging to the dream. I don't quite know if it was the sincerity with which they spoke of their dreams, or the background Canadiana (which made us more than a little homesick), but by the end we were hooked, rooting for the band to find what they were looking for. I guess it's a true-story, slightly less comical version of Spinal Tap. Neither of us like heavy metal music, but we both enjoyed it.

Autumn

It's definitely autumn now, and threatening to move quickly through into winter. The days flip schizophrenically between crisp, clear, blue-skied wonder and long, dark, dreary spells of rain. The former puts me in a great mood - being possibly my favourite season. I love being able to walk around in a forest of multi-coloured leaf litter wearing a good thick sweater and coming back an hour later with the faintest tingle of coldness on the tips of your ears. No bugs, no sweating and a reduced number of people doing the outdoorsy bit. The grey days have their benefits too, giving you the perfect excuse to have a relaxing day in, catching up on your reading (Churchill's 'History of the English Speaking Peoples') or movies ('Away We Go' and '500 Days of Summer' - see them both), or even dashing between house and car and then car and Cineplex to see something good, like 'Despicable Me', the best animated movie since 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'.

We haven' really been up to much lately. Work has been hectic and we've taken a lot of time to just relax after some crazy weeks. Tidying things up, planning vacations and ... other stuff I'm sure, but I just don't remember. See on Sunday I was rummaging around in the cupboard-underneath-the-stairs to try and find a something or the other and upon exiting head my head on the door frame in a truly epic fashion. I didn't quite knock myself unconscious, but perhaps that would have been better. It defined my weekend. People ask, "so what did you do this weekend"? "Hit my head".

I'm hoping the foggyness lifts in time for this weekend, as we're off to London on Friday evening for a weekend trip. I have a ticket to the annual NFL game at Wembley on Sunday night, and I'm reasonably excited, even though I defy anyone to choose two more ridiculously awful teams to play. Oh well, it should be fun regardless.

In the meantime, Roger is here to visit. Hopefully the weather will change and he and Fiona will be able to get in a golf game or two. He's dogsitting Casey this weekend, and we have a couple more days together after we get back from London.

Two Years - has it really been that long??

I've been wondering for a few days now what to do with the big two year anniversary post. Do I do a long re-cap of the past year here, with the all the requisite highlights and lowlights? I figure you can get as much from going back in ye olde blog archive, so how about instead of reminiscing about past trips and recalling past glories I recount a few of the things that we're looking forward to in the next two years?

1. More travel than you can shake a stick at. We're looking at finishing up our Scottish tours with trips to the Borders (May '11), Shetland & Orkney ('11), Ullapool/Durness ('11), Dumfries & Galloway ('12) and the Isles of Mull and Harris ('12). Then we'll truly have seen it all. I'm sure there will be a great multitude of castles, monuments and fabulous hiking. It has been our great joy to discover this country that we probably would never have seen if we hadn't transferred. The European travel will continue as well. We've got plans for Florence and Vienna this year, and Fiona talks about another trip to Paris to see the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais. She's also off to Budapest with her ladies group in November, and it looks like we'll be taking a side trip to Wales next time Cathy and Roger are in town. More trips to Holland are a certainty. We'll try and step out a little further as well. We're planning a trip to Egypt in the winter, and of course, back to North America to see family.
2. More good food. We're still loving the food here in Scotland. Bacon rolls, haggis, cranachan, curries, pork pies ... the list goes on. Our favorite restaurants continue to impress, instead of getting old and tired as some restaurants do.
3. Expanding our group of friends. We've met some really great people. It has been hard being away from friends in Houston and Calgary, and especially from family, but it takes a bit of the edge off the loss when you meet new people.
4. Scottish culture. We're looking forward to a few more Snow Balls, Braemar Gatherings and Burns Nights. Chances to put on the kilt and dance a few reels. I think we'll miss that when we leave.
5. It's starting to feel like home. The greenery, the small cars, the weird obsession with pop-dance music and the great news quiz comedy shows - all the things that felt foreign when we got here are now comforting (ok, except for the pop-dance music obsession).

So we're looking forward to another two years of this adventure. Thanks for tuning in. Hopefully we'll keep it exciting for you.

Catching Up

After a pretty miserable Friday, which we have now agreed was the most miserable day, weather-wise that we have had in our two years here, we had a great day on Saturday. We made it down to the International Market and ran a whole bunch of errands, all under clear blue skies and plenty of sunshine. We made it home in time to put a pork shoulder in the oven, preparation for a Tex-Mex dinner party with our old neighbours, Roz and Lance. We had a great time as usual, although I'm not entirely sure the finer points of bidding in Bridge stuck with us.

On Sunday we went to a Thanksgiving Dinner put on by the Canadian Association. It was being held a week early due to the fact that the schools here would be out next week. Fiona had volunteered to make the centrepieces and the sign-in table decorations and she pulled it off with her usual flair. What a creative little genius my wife is! Now if only she could get it all done without stressing.

When we were downloading the pictures we found we still had a few Houston/San Antonio shots left.

Good News

It's been a fairly mundane few weeks since we returned from Houston. We struggled to readjust to the temperature here in Aberdeen, which are significantly different then what we enjoyed in Houston. There is a definite chill creeping into the air now, you can feel winter around the corner. I think it jumped out and scared the tree in front of our house yesterday - it dropped about half of its leaves in one night.

Fiona's been fighting a monster cold since we got off the plane. It's finally backing off now, but it was a doozy. In a way it was useful because it kept things fairly relaxed, which helped us get over the jet lag.

Casey was a little down too. We had to take her in for a little surgery on Tuesday. She had a few lumps removed and is now practicing her "pity-me" look - big sad eyes and a giant plastic cone. We got her lab results back and it turns out none of her cysts were cancerous. We've put her in a t-shirt now so she doesn't scratch her stitches. We didn't realize until we put it on that it was an anti-cancer shirt.

We're now hanging out at home having a quiet evening with a nice warm coal fire in the fireplace. We've watched another Hitchcock movie, "To Catch a Thief", and have both nominated it to replace "Rear Window" as our favorite. It was quite cool to see all those places in Southern France where we ran around this spring. And Grace Kelly in designer dresses ... well that doesn't hurt either. On a slightly less high-brow note, we've only just repaired our guts after splitting them watching "The Hangover". The content is not for everyone, but man, was it funny.

Mission: San Antonio

With no more house buying to occupy our hours we left early for San Antonio. The driving was easy in the Dodge Journey and the straight roads left me with none of the characteristic soreness in the shoulders I would normally get from an equivalent drive in Scotland. I think I only had to turn off the cruise control a half dozen times for the full trip.

We've spent a bit of time at the house, enjoying Ethna and Manny's hospitality, which is as warm as always. The little dogs have resumed their habit of licking Fiona's feet, which she can't stand. She's let them know this in no uncertain terms, so they've adopted new tactics - the stealth lick, the lick-and-run or the kamikaze lick (going ahead with it knowing full well the consequences).

We graced the Quarry Market to spend a few more of our hefty British pounds on cheap American merchandise. It was a gorgeous day, so it was nice to walk from shop to shop. Our suitcases are now quite full, so I think we'll be slowing down a little bit. We can only do so much to help revive the economy here. At some point the locals will have to take over.

Today was spent touring one of San Antonio's best known attractions - the Missions. The Missions are a series of 5 Catholic missions set up by the Spanish in the San Antonio area in the 1700s. They were fortified villages that contained churches, mills, granaries and some living quarters. The Franciscan monks that operated them were attempting to convert the local natives. It must have been a tough life - heavy woolen robes in 100 degree heat, hostile Apache and Comanches, rampant disease amongst the converts and constant toil to provide food. The missions really are quite amazing, considering how far on the frontier they actually were.

We skipped the first mission, the downtown complex that includes the Alamo, because we had been there before. We started instead at Concepcion. It is the best maintained of the missions and contains the most original material. The painted church, covered in a stunning yellow/orange color and accented with a tri-color border, is still in use.

From there we went to San Jose, which was my favorite. Its walls were very extensive and encircled a large courtyard with many built-in residences. The church inside was the largest and most impressive, although we were somewhat confused by all the fuss over the Rose Window. There was also an interpretive centre with a neat museum and a historical documentary about the missions. All very informative.

The next mission was San Juan, which was the least impressive because of the relatively large amount of damage/erosion. There were only a few buildings left standing. It was nice to see the site still being used for a large outdoor party of some kind - including a pig roast that smelled quite good.

Before we hit the last mission we stopped at a remnant of the aqueduct system that the friars used to cultivate the huge areas of land between the missions. They used a series of dams and aqueducts to turn what might generously be called "semi-arid" land into a fertile cropland, producing melons, squash, sugar cane and corn. They also managed to tend large herds of sheep, goats and cattle with their Indian converts.

The last mission (Espada) was quite large but with only a few standing buildings. One was a shop where the resident friars ran a small glass-blowing business. They were extremely friendly and happy to sell us a bauble to remember our day by. Fiona won't be forgetting it in the next couple of days, as she'll be nursing a sunburn honestly acquired by a day of trudging around under the warmth of the San Antonio sun. That puts me on aloe vera duty. I can think of worse gigs ...

Rik & Fiona = Dwight Yoakum

That cacophony you heard yesterday morning was the sound of our Houston home buying dreams being shattered. Or perhaps it was muffled by the large door the banks and mortgage companies slammed in our face - a la Jodie Foster on Dwight Yoakum in "Panic Room". I will use the bloody remnants of my fingers to type out the story (ours, not the complete plot of Panic Room, you can and should go see that for yourselves).

We had spent a frustrating first day here looking at houses. Nothing really matched our criteria and a few of the homes we toured were downright scary. As we started modifying our selections, our wonderful realtor started asking about moving our price point. Could it be done? We had no answer as we were still having trouble getting banks and mortgage companies to return our calls. We would start a conversation with lenders that we had history with, fill out some forms and then be put into some mysterious limbo where no further calls or emails were returned. It had been happening for weeks, as we had started looking into it from Aberdeen. Our realtor finally connected us with someone who laid it all out for us. My credit was poor. Fiona's was decent, but she was hampered by the fact she had no income. In the final equation, the loan we were looking for (and any loan, actually) was just not do-able. We got this nugget of information while touring the first house we thought we might actually like. It did not go over well. We spent the rest of the afternoon chasing banks around and receiving the same refusals. This from people who used to lend 110% of the house price to people with worse financial backgrounds than us.

Apparently the problem was two-fold. One - we no longer live in the US and therefore have no regular debt repayments that can establish us as reliable. Two - we didn't have enough revolving credit history. That item was fixed pronto with a call to our credit card company. Apparently they had transposed some digits in my social security number and our long-established credit card was not showing up on the report. We also found out our old power company was chasing us for an unpaid bill - a few days of power after our old house was sold and we were already in the UK. No time to argue so we paid that as well.

Fixing the first point required more work and us doing something that I find complete and total nonsense. We had to borrow money from the bank and pay it back on monthly installments to re-establish payment pattern. What bollocks. In this insane system a person with no debt and a good income can't borrow money for a mortgage because ... they have no debt! I now hate banks. I was only on semi-friendly terms with them before, but now the gloves are off.

If only the Kentucky Department of Agriculture offered mortgages - those guys have their stuff together!

So we're putting off the home purchase for 18 months or so. No big deal, just immensely frustrating and a giant waste of our time.

That being said we have been productive on another front - knocking off visits to our favorite restaurants, shopping establishments and people.

Pappadeaux for crawdads and crabcakes - done. Whataburger for a #5 special with no tomato and a whatasized fries and coke - done. El Jarrito for the tacos al carbon and a cheese enchilada - done with a side of chips. Yao's for the world's best Chinese food - tonight. Chipotle for a burrito bowl, rice, black beans, carnitas, chili corn, hot salsa, guacamole, cheese, sour cream and lettuce - still to come.

We also descended on Katy Mills Mall like a horde of Visigoths sacking Rome, if Rome were an outlet mall with a Coach store. Come to think of it, it may have worked out better for the Romans if they had a few discount retail outlets to cater to the sophisticated barbarian. Anyway, no store was left undisturbed, the local fled in terror and we now require an additional suitcase for all our plunderings.

The stars also aligned perfectly for us to visit our good friends from Aberdeen, the Stubbs, who have been back in Houston for a little over a year. They built the wonderful and stately Stubbs Manor out in Spring and were kind enough to invite us over for dinner even though they were preparing for a trip to Qatar later in the week.

Side note - they claimed proper pronunciation of the country was "cutter" not "ka-tar". Who thinks they were just having us on?

As always it was great to see Vicki and Bob. We had missed them quite a bit. It was also fortuitous timing in that we got to meet the next generation, in the person of their wonderful little grand-daughter Leina. Had her mother Amanda been a little less watchful I'm certain Fiona and I could have snuck that little doll out in Fiona's handbag.

Tomorrow we drive to San Antonio. We're really looking forward to seeing Ethna and Manny again. Put the kettle on!

More pictures from Loo-ville

Here are a couple more pictures that didn't fit in the last post...