It’s always Autumn in England

Tomorrow, I am claiming the day as my birthday. Why?

Because, Evan gave me a gift certificate for a massage and tomorrow I am finally using it!

If you read my post the other day about all the things that have happened regarding my car since moving here, I wanted to update.

Friday, I left work to meet my sister just a few minutes away at a pet store to pick up her new puppy. She is borrowing my cage for a few weeks to get the puppy settled. She had her two kids and the cat, so I was meeting her and then driving the dog to her house. About halfway to meeting my sister, I got rear-ended at a stop light. The guy behind me thought I was going, but really I was just inching forward so I could see traffic better.

There wasn’t any damage on the bumber, so I got back in the car to leave…and it wouldn’t start. I called my sister to tell her I would be late and started crying. Now, stuff like this doesn’t normally bother me, but with everything that has happened since moving to America, it was just one thing too many. Thankfully, I called AAA and they arrived within 30 minutes and it was just a loose cable on the battery, so the car started right up again and by the time I got to PetLand, Angela was just finishing up the paperwork and ready to go.

This Christmas was the first time in many years that me and my 3 siblings were all together for the holidays. We had so much fun hanging out and goofing off. As soon as Angela sent me these pictures, I knew I had to do a layout. This is the first time in almost a year I have sat down and done any scrapbooking. Early in 2008, Evan and I decided to move from England to America, and scrapbooking was one of the first things I stopped doing to start the moving process. It feels good to get back into the creative swing. However, I am sharing this layout even without knowing if I am 100% done with it. So, I might have to go back and play with it some more!

Monday is the inspection of the house we are buying. We really don’t anticipate any problems because the house was built in 1995, so it’s not that old. But, I’m a little nervous none the less. This is the point where it really could go wrong. But, once the inspection is done, our mortgage people will arrange an appraisal to figure out if the house is worth what we offered on it. Once those two things are done, everything else should fall into place.

We signed all the paperwork on Friday that is required to apply for the mortgage.

Closing is set for the 12th February, with possession set for two weeks later.

Here are a couple more pictures. We will paint this room, and hopefully put new carpt in too.

I headed to work today a little after 8am. A little bit later than usual, but I was slow to get moving this morning, plus by waiting until then, it is starting to get light. I got to within 15 minutes from work, and I felt the steering start pulling to the left. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I slowed down to about 40mph and turned the music off. I was just getting onto I-865 from I-65 in Indy, and as I went over the bridge, there is a very un-smooth connection on the bridge. At that point, the car really took a bump, and I knew something was wrong. As soon as I got to a safe point, I pulled onto the hard shoulder and got out. Back of car - fine. Front tire on drivers side - completely blown apart. I’m not even sure all of the tire was still there.

In the -16 weather, I hopped back in the car, and called Evan. Then I called AAA - for 20 minutes. Then I called Evan back, saying all I was getting was a busy signal. So I tried again…when AAA finally answered the lady said, "It should be less than 120 minutes and we are making people actually on the roadside a priority." WHAT???

I called work, explained what was going on, and then turned the heat and the music up. I sent a few emails from my phone, called Evan a couple of times and waited. 2 hours later, a AAA guy turns up, changes my tire and within 10 minutes I am on the road again. For real, if the tire would have been on the other side, I think I would have braved the cold and done it myself. However, the AAA man was head to toe in Carharts and thick gloves. I don’t think he felt the cold.

In the 10.5 years I have been driving, I think I called AAA twice. Once for a dead battery after a 2 week vacation and once when my car died and I had them tow it to the garage that took my car for free.

Since moving here in July, here is what I have faced with my car:

2nd August - buy car
end August - hit a deer and totoal the car
1st Sept - buy a new car
5th Sept - spend $700 on a new battery, brake pads & disks & other stuff
10th Sept - ball joint breaks - call AAA
1st Dec - slide off the road in an ice storm & hit guard rail
Car spends 2 weeks in the shop
23rd Dec - spend 6 hours sitting on I-465 in an ice storm
14th Jan - miss work because of snow & cold temps
16th Jan - blow out a tire

No one warned me that in this kind of weather the slightest thing can blow out a tire. So, my question is this. How do I make a reasonable decision about whether or not I should go to work. All the local schools closed, but my office was not. Was it safe to go to work? Should I have stayed home, even though the roads were safe, but it was approximately -16 Farenheight? How do you decide? After the fact, people said, well maybe you should have stayed home, but how do you actually make a decision? I’ve not really spent any winters in Indiana, so I really don’t know. I made the best decision I could based on the fact that the roads were safe. I think I would always choose going to work, over not going, so how do I decide when my responsibility rather than my sense is taking over?

My conclusion is that I need to move somwhere where it never gets colder than 60F or 16C!

When I woke up this morning, there was 2-3 inches of snow on the ground and Lafayette schools were on a 2 hour delay. By the time I was ready for work, it was snowing pretty heavily again. I woke Evan up and asked his advice. He said that a two hour delay was a pretty good indication of the roads. I emailed Gary, my boss, and told him I was waiting another 30minutes to make a decision, but I was definitely going to be late. He called me and said stay put. He said the roads in Indy were bad, and if I came, I would likely end up getting stuck over night in Indy.

So, I stayed put. I did what work I could from home had some lunch and ventured out with Evan to Brady Lane, only 5 minutes from home. The roads are not too icy, but I am glad I did not try to drive the hour trip to Indy. It would certainly have taken far longer than an hour. Plus, by 2pm, E91 had decided to shut at 5pm for the day and cancelled all Wednesday evening programming. I am fairly sure I would have either had to spend the night in Indy, or it would have taken me so long to get to work that by the time I got there, it would have been time to turn around and come home.

I took several pictures of the snow around noon today, but it has not stopped snowing all day. I am guessing we have accumulated a couple more inches since this morning. Anyone want to move with me to somewhere with better weather? Somewhere it does not get to less than 60 degrees F? That would be my dream!!

I’m not sure why I have not had the motivation to post since Christmas, but here I am.

Over the 2 weeks I had off work, Evan and I viewed around 12-15 houses that we thought we might like. We found several we liked, but one of them would have meant me driving around an hour and half to get to work and Evan driving around 35 minutes. We decided that was just too much driving. There was one house I loved, but Evan didn’t and one house Evan loved, but I didn’t.

Finally we found this

This house sits on 6 acres and will take me around 40 minutes to get to work, and Evan will drive around 30.

We have put an offer on the house, and after several counter offers, we came to an agreeable compromise with the sellers. Our closing date is set for the 12th February and we would have possesion two weeks later.

I am trying not to be excited, because we still have to get an inspection of the house, to say that it is safe, etc. We also have to finalise a mortgage. So, until those two things happen, this could fall through. We don’t have any reason to think it would fall through, but I don’t want to get my heart broken…so I am not getting too excited yet. However, I wanted to share pictures with people and answer any questions too.