Well a lot has happened!

On Halloween Ben and I put in an offer to buy a house, 3 long months later we finally exchanged contracts and then we moved in on the 8th of February. I'm told I got a house for my birthday, although I'm not sure how that works seeing as I'm paying half the mortgage!

Moving in was quite a lot of work, especially since we bought all the furniture that was in the house as well! It felt like there was no room for use for a few weeks.
This was the first bit of work we had to do, otherwise our bed wouldn't fit up the stairs! I should also thank Andy who helped for the very long Friday of moving, and who almost ended up dead under the sofa several times!

We've done more since then, tiled part of the bathroom (just enough so that you can take a shower without being in a coffin of shower curtains) ripped out a unit in the kitchen so we could have a proper fridge freezer, and now we're in the process of decorating the spare room (although we're at the stage where it looks 10 times worse than when you started, and there are several more hours work before it'll even look like you could start to decorate!).

We will be taking a break from the work and coming to Canada for 2 weeks at the end of April / beginning of May. We'll be in the Toronto area from the evening of April 25th until the morning of April 30th, we then head to Montreal for a night and then down to New Brunswick on the train. We'll stay with Mom and Dad for 4 or 5 days and then go on to Antigonish for a day or so and then a couple of days in Halifax before we fly back home. I'm exhausted just writing that!

Wow that was a long time ago!

So the furniture came long ago, we've been enjoying not having to sit on the floor in the lounge. Now that we've got this flat furnished how we like it we are looking for a house to buy!

The housing market is quite depressed here at the moment but is predicted to go up again in the spring, so if we buy carefully we could get a property that will increase in value by 20% or more in a few months with few improvements. We been looking at houses 10,000 pounds above our limit because people are so desperate to sell that they'll take that much less for their properties.

We both have this coming week off of work, and will spend the first half of the week viewing as many properties as we can, and then Ben's parents are coming to visit on Thursday, so hopefully we'll have a short list that we can take them to see.

Its so exciting! It seems like such a grownup thing to do, buying a house!

I am too drained to think of a clever title.

I seem particularly lazy lately, but only towards computers. I think its because I spend all my time at work on the computer, doing the work of two people to sort out the hellish mess that is our database that the thought of looking at a computer when I get home gives me a headache. Aside from that I love my job, its almost like being a detective to track down the root cause of the error, or even sometimes to figure out what exactly is the error in the first place!

Our furniture came last week, its so nice to have a sofa and a chair so we don't have to sit on the floor anymore! We even had people over for the first time since we moved in a month ago. We had a bbq in the back garden and bought far too much food, so we have burgers sausages and other bbqed stuff to eat for at least a week! Speaking of food, I'm hungry so I'm going to go get food!

Ouch that was expensive!

We went and bought furniture for our lounge today. We got a sofa bed and a chair which will be delivered in approximately 6 weeks. We had picked out the one we liked last week but we weren't sure that it would fit, so we had to go home and move things around to make sure it would. We have spend ~1300 pounds on two pieces of furniture, and when I (stupidly) converted it into Canadian dollars I got a shock, its $2780! On a sofa and a chair! A very nice sofa and chair but still! Oh well, it will look nice, its very comfy and we have 4 years 0% financing to pay for it, but it still seems like a ridiculous amount of money to spend on two pieces of furniture! So when it comes no place to stay is no longer an excuse for anyone wanting to visit England.

Officially Moved in!

We officially moved into our new flat on Saturday, but that involved taking two van loads of stuff from the old house, and dumping it on the dining room floor before we left for Ben's parent's to pick up the furniture that they had stored for him. Its a four hour drive so we stayed there Saturday night and left to come back Sunday morning. We dropped of the furniture and went back to the old house to clean it, and did it ever need cleaning! We left at 9 to get a curry, came back to the new flat to shower and sleep, and then went back to finish the old house Monday morning. We turned in the keys to the old house around 11 Monday morning, a full 30 hours before they had to be turned in!

We have started setting up the new flat, the TV and stereo is set up, the kitchen is mostly unpacked, and the bedroom is pretty well done, although we are still living out of suitcases for a while yet. The dining room is still full of boxes and bags of packed stuff (mostly stuff that really should have been thrown out I suspect), but its all at one end of the room because we bought a second hand dining table that should be dropped off within the next hour. I can't wait, two days of eating all meals off of the lounge floor was enough. The last major thing we have to do is buy a sofabed for guests, but where ever we get it from it won't be delivered for at least a month, so I suspect we will be sitting on the floor for a while yet!

New Job!

I was offered the job at the Anglian Group even after I told them about Ben's interview and the possibility that we will be moving to Oxford soon. The were very keen to hire me even knowing I may leave in a month, which is very flattering.

I'm home sick from work for the first time since I've been in England. I was fine until I was about to leave for Rocco's and then I just felt so sick to my stomach, which didn't make them very happy at Rocco's but I stick out my tongue in their general direction.

Congradulations to everyone who is graduating on Sunday!

Well things have changed a little bit...

Ok Jeff, something for you to read at the library...
And Steve, yes the number is still the same, but I'll give you the landline, its cheaper to call it!

I am employed, at a bar and restaurant called Rocco's in Norwich. Its pretty good as far as bars are concerned, we're done by two at the latest, and thats on Saturdays when the people in the clubs are working until 330 or 4 in the morning. I'm not overly keen to work full time in a bar so I am casually looking for something else, but I'm not particularly bothered because...

I moved in officially with Ben as soon as Mom left (she was here for three weeks for a visit, and left the 9th of April) so officially I've been living here for two weeks, unofficially I've been living here since before Mom came to visit. I am thoroughly enjoying it, especially since I don't get kicked out of bed when Ben goes to work anymore, now I turn over and go back to sleep!

Although I had a good interview for a data entry/problem solver position at the Anglian Group focusing on stock control and manufacturing last week, I'm not particularly bothered about looking hard for another job. The reason for this is that Ben is not particularly happy where he is working at the moment, and is looking to ideally get a job working for a f1 team or if not perhaps to do some design work on contract. Either of those would involve moving to another part of England, so I'd rather stick to boring drudgery than get a job I'd really like and then be foreced to choose, especially since he should hear back from the race teams by early next month.

Thats about all thats new, I hope it provided a short break in your studying, although you should be almost done by now.