Recent events

Hi Everybody (Hi Dr Nick!)

Recent news is sparse. However, biggest by far lately is that I got my Social Security number and Green Card, so I am now fully able to pursue work and do other stuff (like stay here without any trouble), so yay me! I am officially and completely a Permanent Resident, and I can prove it! I’ve been looking for work for a couple of weeks, and I have some good leads, including one job in particular that I really want and hope to get.

In other news, while taking out the trash one evening, my son and I found an adult men’s bike in the dumpster. It’s a Schwinn Caliente, with minor rust damage on the front and rear rims, spokes and a couple of other areas. It looks like it’s been sitting in someone’s garage for years, and it looks like it’s never been ridden. So the Boy and I will be fixing it up for summer, and as he’s nearly as tall as me now, we’ll share it.

A quick update…

As of 6th December 2011, I am a legal permanent resident of the United States 🙂

I’m just waiting on getting my Green Card issued to me, but as of right now, I am legally resident here and happy and content to be with my family once more, without the cloud hanging over our heads of me having to leave.

Protected: Woohoo! I’m still here…

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I am still alive…

… contrary to any rumours.

I’ve moved house. It’s a much better place. Still shared accommodation, but in this one, the landlord lives in, and so has a vested interest in keeping the place nice. I don’t remember if I blogged about it, but in the the last house, a small drip in the bathroom resulted in the ceiling in the living room falling down. This was November, 2007; as of two weeks ago, new plasterboard was put in. Yeah, exactly.

Anyway, the room I have now is nicer and the house generally is in better shape – less cold, less run down, and the people seem much nicer and more together. Less likely to go bugshit nuts, in other words, which was a problem in the last place.

I don’t have any responsibility for the bills, beyond handing money to the landlord for them.

Altogether, it’s a much better place to be living.

I have also come late to the game and started using Skype for calling the missus; I have the Unlimited World package, meaning that I can make up to 10,000 minutes of calls monthly for £7.99, which is significantly less than what I was previously paying…

It’s a much better situation all round for me right now, and I’m happy to be here 🙂

I’m working Monday to Wednesday in the coming week; not because I couldn’t get time off, but because I didn’t want it. I’ll have Christmas Day and Boxing, because they’re Bank Holidays, but there’s not really much I can do about that. I dislike Christmas generally, and not only for the whole religious side of it; there’s the atmosphere of forced jollity and the requirement that you be seen to be enjoying yourself. I got called “Scrooge” by a couple of people in (partial) jest, and I responded by challenging them to call me when they start celebrating Ramadan or Rosh Hashanah or Diwali, which seems to have done the trick…

In other news, I’ve also moved back to Opera-based browsing, and boy, is it an improvement! I was using Firefox for a while, because anything beats Internet Exploder, but that was really only because I wanted to use StumbleUpon. It was just cranky and kept crashing on me, so I decided to come back to Opera, and what a blissful browsing experience it is. I can recommend 9.6 to everyone.

That’s about it for now, really.

Possibly Peeved

I am irked. The new possibly related feature on WordPress doesn’t seem to be working on my blog. Waaah, etc.

This leads me to believe that there are two possibilities at play. Either the feature doesn’t work with the Andreas theme (which is wot I got) or none of my posts relate to each other.

If it’s the first, I may have to consider using another theme, although this is something which has passed through my thoughts on a few occasions so far. I might go for a lighter theme.

If it’s the second, I just don’t know what to think. Is my thinking so disordered that I never say anything which might constitute some kind of narrative around my life? Or is it that I just randomly make up tags on the spot?

Either way, a little irritating.

I know I’ve been quiet lately…

… but, well, I think I’ve earned it. I’m just enjoying spending time with my girl and The Boy, and am avoiding doing anything much substantial. Normal blogging will return when I get back to the UK.