As predicted, last night we barely lasted into the evening. By 7pm, we were out cold. However, I woke up in the middle of the night when someone texted me happy new year. The time-stamp was 9:31pm, so I thought "Oh, the networks must have been overloaded so the text didn't get through until now." Then I looked at the clock. It actually was 9:31pm! Sheesh! Crawled back in bed to try to sleep through the night.
At around 11:00, we woke up again when there were some huge fireworks blasts nearby. We were too awake to fall back asleep so we decided to get up to watch TV for a bit, just in time to catch the fireworks show in central London on BBC1. It was quite spectacular, even on television. There were also tons of fireworks going off in the neighborhoods around us, though we couldn't really see them. After the fireworks, we each took an Excedrin PM and watched some of the cheesy New Year's TV specials while we waited for the drowsiness to kick until about 1:30. There was a bottle of cheap Cava in the fridge, which we had planned to open, but it's still in there now. We'll probably open it tonight instead.
Both of us slept like rocks in a frozen pond until about noon, though I woke up around 11:30 and stayed in bed to read for a while. It was quite sunny and beautiful this morning. We did our "Sunday morning ritual" of breakfast and a newspaper for a couple of hours, then looked through our 2006 year planner to transfer birthdays and other dates into our 2007 book. All the while, clouds rolled in and now it is stormy and dusky. What happened to the nice sunshine?
The post-vacation blues seems to be lifting already. The great panacea of rest, resumption of routine, and listening to a stream of A Prairie Home Companion seems to be working. We'll try to stay up to a more reasonable bed time tonight and, hopefully, tomorrow we will be mostly normalized. Looking forward to putting the new head, bridge, and tailpiece (purchased from Zepp Country Music in the US) on my banjo, but first, it's time to uphold our yearly tradition of reflecting on the year that has passed.
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2006 was a year of...
...Englishness... Obviously, the longer we live here, the more we learn about this society. We're learning the vocabulary, pronounciation, customs (such as Pancake Day), and work ethic of this island. And we're making more friends. For example, we spent a weekend in a cozy, English cottage in the Cotswolds and had a nice picnic in a London park followed by avant garde performance art. We got wrapped up in World Cup fever, rooting for England, Sweden, and France to varying degrees. A colleague from UEA and Newsfilm Online moved down to Bournemouth in August, so we have a friend down here, too. In November, he went to see Neko Case in Bristol with us.
...Birds... We joined the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. This spring, while we were still in Winchester, we watched a lot of birds, a swan nest in a nearby stream. The swan mother stayed on the nest for what seemed like an eternity, but finally the eggs hatched. Lots of the locals flocked to view the chicks, but one night the entire swan family disappeared. We still don't know what happened to them.
...Prosperity (for lack of a better word)... As we've done every year since 2003, we once again uprooted and moved to another city. "uprooted" is perhaps the wrong word since we consider ourselves to be potted plants by now (for ease of replanting). K retained her job at Bournemouth University, but R traded his employment at Newsfilm Online for a job as a Technician Demonstrator at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth with a slightly higher pay-rate and a much more fulfilling and interesting job. Since we were then both working in Bournemouth, we decided to leave our beloved Winchester to move down South. We found a great apartment in Westbourne which we moved into in July after a bit of financial wrangling with our former landlord. This apartment is at least 10 times nicer than the one in Winchester and probably 100 times nicer than the one in Norwich, a welcomed upward trend in our life. Our finances have stabilized and our quality of life is much higher, therefore: prosperity!
...Banjos... R had been wanting to learn to play the banjo for a while, so he decided to go ahead and get one to celebrate landing the new job. He's having fun playing it, trying to learn the Clawhammer style.
...House-sitting... In July, right after we moved into our apartment in Bournemouth, we followed through with our agreement to house-sit for my former boss while he and his family were in Puglia, Italy. We looked after their cottage, two Jack Russells, and two dressage horses. Though it was a lot of work and the bed we slept in was quite uncomfortable, we had a wonderful time.
...Crop Circles... Well, actually the lack of crop circles. We met up with Suzanne Taylor while she was here, but unfortunately, there weren't any good crop circles for us to see during that time. However, we went to a fascinating lecture on the subject.
...DVLA... That's where British residents go to get there driver's licences. And that's where R went to get his license. Someone with a foreign license can only drive legally in the UK for one year and since we're both way past that mark and because AIB requested that R get a UK license so he could drive the college vehicles, he decided to go through the trials of getting a British license. He passed his theory test without too much trouble. Then he just had to take the driving test, but before that, he took a few driving lessons. Though he was a bit worried about actually being able to pass the test, R came through it with only 6 minor errors and walked away with a test pass certificate. R is now carrying an authentic UK driver's license alongside my US license.
...Mo(u)ld... When we first realized that we had been moving forward/upward in our lives, having just moved into a much nicer apartment, we assumed that our days of battling mold were over. However, as autumn fell into place, we discovered that this was not the case. The mold spores reared their ugly heads in various corners, on a few window sills, and on the things stored under our bed. Thankfully, it's not as bad as it was in Norwich or Winchester, but it's there, nonetheless. There was even mold inside the wall-safe in our apartment (our passports and the wallet filled with US dollars smelled strongly of mold). Then, while we were in Florida, we found out that our bodies are impregnated with mold, no joke, but more about that in a future blog post.
...Training... In September, R started taking some martial arts classes at a nearby gym. He has been learning Panantukan (Filipino Boxing), Jeet Kun Do, and Kali. Quite enjoyable and usually a good work-out. R has learned many ways to kill people.
...Scholarship... K has been trucking along on her post-9/11 PhD at Bournemouth University while working as a researcher for the Center for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP). However, some things changed at CEMP, opening up an opportunity for K to go full-time with the PhD while still making the same amount of money as if she was still working full-time. An opportunity that could not be passed up, so as of December 1st, she has been a full-time PhD student. She will still work for CEMP about 4-5 days per month. This means she will be able to finish her PhD much faster (she's optimistically shooting for the summer of 2008).
...Planning... Related to finishing the PhD, we have an impending decision about what to do afterwards. Will we continue living in England (or even somewhere else in Europe)? Or will we move back to the US? Right now, we're strongly leaning towards moving back to the US, but R still maintains that anything is possible. However, we have made a list of places in the US that we are interested to settle down in. K has been ordering publicity material from the State tourist boards, so we have a few maps hanging on the walls in the office. At the moment, our top four are Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho. Elsewhere on our list: New England, Virginia, and Florida. A great resource for making decisions like this: Money.com.
...Family... K was finally introduced to Sweden. We visited the Swedish side of R's family, at least the ones who were in town during Easter, staying with his cousin and his partner on an idyllic, little island near Stockholm. It was a lovely, peaceful trip. Then in December, R's father came to visit us in Bournemouth. And a week later, we flew to Florida for a long Christmas holiday with R's family.
Happy New Year!
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