Helloween

Everyone seems to be decorating their houses at the moment. Our next door neighbours have built a mock graveyard complete with fake ghosts ‘floating’ above the gravestones. All this for my birthday! Oh ok it’s for Halloween, which just happens to be my birthday.

We are off to the pumpkin patch near my in laws this weekend, and then we get to carve them (the pumpkins not my in laws). I remember that we used to do a similar thing in Saltash but being Cornwall we used Turnips instead of pumpkins which looking back at it makes me laugh.

Anyway to celebrate my 31st birthday we are going to Boo in the Zoo, which is trick or treating in Sacramento Zoo. It was obviously my choice to go there. I have resigned myself to my birthday being the time when our kids go trick or treating, after all everyone is giving out sweeties, whereas my birthday involves the kids getting me a present. No competition really.

Our first class

Jen & I went to our first birthing class last night. It went well but there was the dreaded moment where you have to get involved and participate. It wasn’t too bad – it could have been a lot worse.

Anyway we are enrolled in a 6 week course and this first week was a gentle introduction. We learnt that a woman’s hips (in fact all her joints) move, which helps explain why Jen is currently waddling like a duck. We also learnt some basic relaxation techniques, although we forgot to take a pillow or a cushion so it wasn’t so relaxing for us more incredibly uncomfortable. I have heard other fathers say that these classes can be embarrassing, but they took them in the UK – just imagine how much worse they are in California where everyone all day wants to tell you about their therapy sessions.

I think we are going to learn some useful things and techniques, but my big concern is how am I going to react when Jen is in pain? I think I display the normal protective instinct with her, in that whenever she is in pain, or upset I immediately want to resolve the problem, but during child birth how am I going to do that. I also want to have the confidence to tell the doctors and nurses what we want. Now we aren’t having any weird birthing technique, but Jen is adamant that she does not want a caesarean unless hers or the baby’s life is at stake. Becky, Jen’s sister, was basically forced to have a caesarean because the doctor couldn’t be bothered to wait around. They also made Becky lie down which from what I saw last night is probably one of the hardest ways to give birth.

So the class is all good and interesting, which is more than can be said for some of our fellow class mates. There were 2 couples who knew each other and proceeded to spend all of last nights class giggling and talking while the instructor was speaking to us. They were acting like Jen’s kids at school. The main difference being that Jen’s kids are 7 or 8 – not 27 or 28. I don’t think I have heard someone laugh at the word vagina since I was 14, unless it was the punch line to a joke. But last night one of the blokes kept laughing when the instructor said vagina.

We were given some homework at the end, and the tutor told us we were going to watch a video next week of the birth. I think its going to be like the 2000 Presidential election all Bush and Gore.

Class Apart

Tonight we have another Dr’s appointment to hear the heartbeat of The Bump. I get so excited about this, but last night it suddenly dawned on me that I was going to be responsible for a tiny, living thing. Tomorrow night we are going to a parenting class, which is surely a misnomer. They will not actually teach me to be a parent, but rather they will teach Jen how to push a melon out of her body, and will teach me how to be supportive. “Surely I’ve already done my part?” I said to Jen. “I don’t really need to be there do I?” 3 Nights on the sofa made me realise that I do in fact need to be at the birth.

Fender Bender

The weekend just gone we went down to Monterey. Partly to celebrate me passing my driving test, but partly because just before you get to Monterey is a place called Gilroy. Gilroy was once famed for its garlic farms and whilst they still grow a lot of Garlic they also have a massive factory outlet complex. So we stopped there to do some Christmas and Birthday shopping and then headed down to the coast to Monterey, so that we could go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Jen and I always seem to pick a time when there is something else going on in Monterey to go and stay there. The last time we went to stay in Monterey there was the Monterey Marathon taking place so all the hotel rooms were booked, the time before there was a dog show going on, and then time before that there was a marine biologist convention. This time there was a car race taking place on the Sunday, but luckily we only had to try one hotel before we found a room.

I find Monterey breathtaking and the entire coast around there is full of natural beauty. The aquarium is perfectly located in Monterey as a mile out of Monterey Bay the floor of the ocean drops away and it is as deep as the Grand Canyon. They are continually finding new species of sea animals as they send probes deeper and deeper. They have even found creatures that have never seen sun light (a bit like me as a teenager).

On the way home we ran into some trouble. The journey from Monterey to Highway 101 should only take about 35-40 minutes. We spent an hour and a half doing it. The first part was fine but 2 miles before the junction we slowed up and moved at around 2 mph the rest of the way. This continued for another 20 miles or so, until we finally passed the cause of the problem, one car had hit another and dented its bumper. And that was it. Everyone was slowing down to see what the problem was, and as soon as we passed it we got back up to normal speed. It was unbelievable.

Man at Work

Part of my role at work is to do the security badges. This is nice as I get to meet all the new joiners as they start work with us and can put a face to the names that I have been working with over the previous few weeks. However, one of the ladies who I deal with on a regular basis for this duty has some how got it into her head that I am Australian. She keeps saying things to me in a terrible Australian accent when ever she sees me and then says “ooh he’s going to kill me” and laughs.

For example she just brought some new joiners up to have their badges done and she asked is I had been to a “Barbie” on the weekend and then laughed. Previously she has asked me about Kangaroos, Fosters and come from “down under”. I am obviously too polite and British to put her right so I suffer every time we meet.

She reminds me of Trigger on Only Fools and Horses, the difference being that whereas he thinks Rodney is called Dave, this woman thinks that I am Australian. I just imagine her trying to explain to her colleagues who I am and them not knowing, because they all know that I am British and they all assuming that there is an Australian that works in my department too.

Congratulations - The Jacksons

Jen, Emma and I would like to extend huge congratulations (can congratulations be different sizes?) to Stuart and Natalie who are now expecting their 3rd child. Well done guys, but Natalie, don’t let Stuart near you again for a while, that boy is fertile!

Stu and Nat have 2 beautiful children already and Stu has asked me to deny the rumours that he wanted a third child because he needed a drummer on his next album. The Screaming Jacksons is their band and I have mentioned them on previous posts.

Well done guys, and I like to see that you are quashing the stereotype that Catholics have big families.

Jen also pointed out that as the Jackson’s baby is due in May, they must have conceived in July which is when we announced that we were pregnant, so just as we pulled level with them they had to go and get another one. Some people are so competitive.

Toilet Earnings

Obviously we all get email jokes sent to us, and most of them are pretty lame. But there is one that I remember, and whilst I suppose not technically a joke, it did make me laugh. It was an excel spreadsheet, onto which you entered how much you were paid annually. Then there was a button that said Start, and another that said Stop and what you did was, you started the clock when you went on a toilet break, and then when you returned you stopped the clock and the spreadsheet would calculate how much money you made whilst going to the bathroom.

Driving in a Fast Car

Only my first day of solo driving and already I realise what a joy and a curse it is. Like the blind bloke out of Oedipus who could see the future (oh the irony), it is both blessing and a hindrance. Here traffic is a nightmare from 7.30am until 10am and then again from 3.30pm until 6.30pm. There is no longer a rush hour. To try and encourage sharing of travel there are car pool lanes that allow any vehicle that has 2 or more people (or is a hybrid) to travel, and that certainly speeds up the process at times. But the general problem is the amount of nutters on the road. Unlike the UK the Californian test lasts 20 minutes and the only maenourve I had to do was reverse in a straight line. No emergency stops, no 3 point turns, not parallel parking, so pretty much anyone can and does get a licence.

I am sure I will be whinging about this for weeks to come, so I'll stop now. Luckily I had Basement Jaxx playing to keep me smiling, while people cut me off, swerved in front of me and honked their horn at me. Why they were all insisting on driving on the right hand side I will never know. Luckily I didn't let them put me off.

Baby, you can drive my car

I took my drivers test on Saturday and passed. Yipeee! Drove into work today and it was the 1st time I have ever driven on my own. It felt great. Watch out California here I come!

For those about to Rocky...

I learnt some shocking news and it has taken me a while to get over it and write on the blog again. The news you ask? Sly Stallone is releasing another Rocky Movie.

I will let that sink in.

The story goes something like this; some computer programmers design some software that will rank boxers of all time against each other. The current champion gets annoyed that Rocky Balboa is crowned “The Greatest” and so challenges Rocky (who must be about 60 by now) to a fight. This will be the 6th Rocky movie, and if memory serves right he was considered too old to fight in Rocky 5 so how is he going to be able to fight in this new movie?

It put me in mind of the worst film I have ever seen which is Jaws 4. Now if you are lucky enough never to have seen this, then keep it that way. Summing up: woman believes that a shark is stalking her and she needs to leave her beach side home. Where does she go? Hawaii. Not Austria, not Congo, not Paraguay which would be safe as they are land locked, no she goes to an island. 1st of all – lady the shark is not stalking you, but secondly if you truly believe that then get away from the ocean.

4 weddings (but please, no funeral)

This Friday my old flatmate Caroline gets wed. She is pictured here with Douglas whom she is marrying (he;s the one with the beard). We are sorry not to be there with them to celebrate their day. This will be the 3rd wedding of close friends we are going to miss and this is before Ian and Jayne get married in November (I have some photo treats for you when his day comes up).

Lucy and Neil were married in July and Chris and Charlotte were married in July also - we are sorry we missed your special days.

Back to Caroline - she put up with me for 3 whole years before she fled to live with Douglas in Glasgow. I like to think I played a small part in making her move out, by refusing to do the dishes, vacuum the flat or in fact clean it up. My master stroke was throwing up in the bath and forgetting to clean it out before Caroline's mother went to take a shower. Not one of my proudest moments.

The Shit Parade

The obvious thing to do is to now list the 5 bands who were the worst live..so in the words of Barry Norman, why not.

5) Shane McGowan at Guilfest. He was drunk before he got on stage. He got even drunker on stage and his guitar player had to whisper the words of the songs into his ear. Not funny just tragic,

4) Manic Street Preacher at Isle Of Wight Festival. They sounded just like their records, they didn’t move around or interact with the crowd. And I don’t like their records.

3) Big Fun at Wadebridge Scout Jubilee. No fun.

2) Blur at Reading Festival – Graham Coxon had been kicked out, Damon Albran (or whatever) was playing guitar. He can’t. And he fell off stage. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

1) Sex Pistols at The Phoenix Festival. They were there for the money. They told everyone that, and then they performed badly and changed the festivals atmosphere.

Again all just personal experience and opinions but would love to hear yours too.

The Hit Parade

All that talk about bands got me thinking about the groups that I have seen over the years, and in a High Fidelity moment I have decided to list the 5 best artists that I have seen live. So here they are:

5) Pop Will Eat Itself at Exeter University – just a great live band, who put on a really good show.

4) Madness at Guilfest – they played all the hits and were the perfect band to close the main stage on the Saturday at Guildford as they got everyone dancing.

3) Beck – Reading Festival – he had just released Sea Changes (one of the most depressing albums of all times) but his show was upbeat and fun, and he is a great dancer to boot.

2) David Bowie at The Phoenix Festival – This was his first festival show in 28 years and he is my idol. The problem with idols is they sometimes fail to deliver but not this time. His version of Lust for Life will live with me forever.

1) Barenaked Ladies at Wembley Arena – I had seen them support The Beautiful South and they blew them off the stage and so when I went to see them headline I was expecting a lot and they delivered. No nude ladies but plenty of dancing, rapping, security guards playing guitars and great catchy songs.

I tried to avoid picking trendy bands that would make me look cool and I think I have succeeded quite easily. I am interested to hear your top 5 bands too so please post a comment.

It's good not to talk

Whilst at the Theatre I noticed just how rude people are. We were sat watching a pretty intense play and the people behind us kept talking the whole way through it and insisted on making comments. Being too polite (or cowardly) I couldn’t possibly say anything to them, but it really struck me as rude. For some reason it seemed even ruder than when people talk in the cinema. In the cinema if you talk you are just being rude to everyone around you, but you can’t put off the actors on screen, but in the theatre you are disturbing other patrons as well as the actors. Having treaded the boards myself (Oedipus, Wizard of Oz, St Austell 6th Form Revue) I know how of putting it can be to have people talk in the audience (especially when you have given the performance of your life and sung “If I only had a heart”).

It reminded me of the couple of times that I have seen Belle & Sebastian. The 1st time I saw them at Brixton Academy, and they were quiet, but they are Belle & Sebastian!!! What did the crowd expect? Some people started shouting at the sound desk to “turn it up” which meant that not only couldn’t you hear Belle and Sebastian, but you then had other people telling the people who were shouting to “Be quiet”, it was like being back in school.

The second time I saw them was in the Astoria and there were a group of around 12 people in front of us, who proceeded to talk the whole way through the gig. Why would you pay 25 quid to then talk over the band you were there to see? Why not just stay at home and put the album on and then talk to your friends? It all proved too much to a guy who was stood behind us. He leant forwards and tapped one of the girls on the shoulder and asked to shut up or move away (he may have used some other words but that was the gist). This led to the girl rather than telling her friends to be quiet, telling her friends they had been asked to be quiet, and then all her friends asked who had said that and then they proceeded to have a conversation about whether it was fair that they should have been asked to be quiet.

I would like to point out that I have never had this problem at any other gig apart from once with The Tinners but that was because people wanted The Tinners to stop playing. Ok – I wanted The Tinners to stop playing. The term Blues Jam still sends shivers down my spine.

Romantic Stalking

Last Saturday Jen and I took advantage of a weekend to ourselves and decided to go back to the Delta King in Old Sacramento. This is the boat that we got married on and it is coming up to 6 months ago that we were saying our vows. Anyway the romantic in me decided to treat Mrs B and so I booked us a state room, a 4 course dinner and a theatre trip. The boat has it's own theatre on the bottom deck and we went to see a play called Boy gets Girl.

Now this was advertised as a romantic package and certainly everything up until the play was romantic. Our room had a lovely big bed and a lovely bath with ceramic feet. The meal was delicious and for one of the courses we had Caesar salad which they prepared at our table. We could have had wine but due to an unfortunate incident in Napa a few years ago I can not drink too much wine and with Jen being pregnant we decided to have soft drinks instead.

So far so good, we then descended down to the lovely theatre that they have at the bottom of the boat, and things changed. I have no one to blame but myself, I should have read what the play was about, but I thought from the title and the fact that the whole package is designed as a romantic one that the play would be a lighted hearted romantic comedy. What it was in fact was a play about a man who stalks a woman with terrifying results. Nice.

That said it was a good play and we did enjoy it (as much as you can enjoy things like that), and it didn't ruin our lovely night together. Can't wait for the next time we can do something like that.

On the shoe rack of pain

We are having problems with t’internet at home hence no entries over the weekend. Our computer tells us it has a link to the internet but our router doesn’t recognise that. So we called the company and after the performed extensive tests (or so they say) they decided that they needed to send round a technician. We had tried everything we could think of including resetting the router, but when he turned up he reset the router and as luck would have it we got a connection back – for 30 minutes. So we called back and they ran more tests. Currently we get 30 minutes of internet before it then shuts down. Which isn’t very useful.

Which leads me onto the other useless thing I encountered this weekend. Jen forced me to get a shoe rack in order to organize my shoes. I only have one pair of shoes but I do have walking boots, trainers and sports boots too, so I gave in and we bought one from the gypo store that is Wal Mart. Wal Mart is huge, massive, and it is really, really cheap, but the scary part are the people who shop there. My god some of them are fresh out of prison that morning. Anyway, we bought the aforementioned implement, and then we went home in order for me to make it (or put it together depending who you are talking to). Now I am not pretending that I am a Mr Fixit Handy Andy man,and I know there are some people who read this blog who can make walls and houses and footpaths, but I can put together these self assembly kits quite well as it doesn’t involve any skills. So it was quite a frustrating 45 minutes that I spent trying to get the shoe rack together. You see the thing had 8 screws and there were 8 holes. The 1st 7 screws fitted the first 7 holes perfectly, but for some reason I couldn’t get the 8th in. I tried all possible solutions until after 45 minutes of struggle I looked a bit closer at the screw only to discover that it was a different size to the other 7. I had spent 45 minutes trying to screw a wrong sized screw in to the hole. I went and found a screw that we had lying around that fitted, and finished the shoe rack. How can this happen, surely the parts are put in the box by machines, so how did the wrong sized screw get in there. If it wasn’t done by machine that means that some joker in China thought it would hilarious to waste my time by including faulty equipment. And of course Wal Mart don’t care because they have got my $14.95, and are none the wiser, really I should take it back and complain, but that will just anger Jen as my shoes will be all over the house. So instead of informing Wal Mart of how unhappy I am, I solve their problem for them.

Badger Honour

Over the last few years more and more grey has crept into my hair. Not only on my head but also in my beard, my chest and well, further afield (and I am a big field). Today I finally realised that I am the human equivalent of a badger. I only bring this up as I am off to get a hair cut this weekend and was looking at my big bushy salt and pepper hair (see picture left) and thought how I am now going to have put up with getting more and more grey hair each year and whilst I was doing that I suddenly realised that my chest hair is now almost exclusively grey and whilst I didn’t mind my manly youthful black chest hair showing through my buttons at the top of my shirt, grey chest hair makes me feel old, and not so much a medallion man, but more a Burdock and Dandelion man.

12 Weeks to go

Jen is due in exactly 12 weeks time. It is hard to believe how quickly it has gone. The first 12 weeks we kept it to ourselves as we were worried that there may be complications. So when we started telling people we were already 3 months pregnant and moving into the 2nd trimester.

We have a name for the baby and unless it comes out as a boy I don’t think it will change, but we are not telling anyone yet just in case when the baby comes she doesn’t look like the name we have chosen. My vote of Jocasta Tamara Geoffrey Neville Southall Burr was vetoed. Before we knew what the baby was going to be we sat down and made lists of names that we liked. We really struggled with boys names and so Jen is taking that as a sign that we knew it was going to be a girl. The one boy’s name that Jen did like was Timothy but when I pointed out that he would be known as Tim Burr we decided against the name.

It is hard choosing a babies name. You have to avoid the obvious prat falls like Randy Bender, Robin Banks, and Ben Dover etc but also you have to choose a name that you like but doesn’t hold any connotations for you. For example, I really like the name Megan but having an ex-girlfriend called that means I can’t possibly choose that as name for my daughter as it would bring back memories some happy and some not so happy.

Also you don’t want to ruin your child’s life by giving them an incredibly trendy name now only for them to grow up and be embarrassed about being called Sunshine. Or maybe that is my own insecurities showing up. That said you can never be too sure what nicknames your kids are going to pick up. In my list of friends there is Monge whose real name is Andrew but somewhere in the mists of time his name became Monge and that is all I ever call him. Then there is Martin who because he was German obviously became known as Jurg and again that is all we ever really call him. Then there is Jon who became Beanpole but that was too long so it got shortened to Bean. But my all time favourite is a guy I knew at School who was called Andrew Pitkeathly. He came to our school from Gosport so he was called Gosport, because no one could remember his last name. Over the years laziness meant that Gosport became Goss. He was called Goss for years, so much so that many people thought that was his real name. Until one fateful day at rugby somebody (believing his real name was Goss) called him Pete – after the sailor Pete Goss (you know the guy from Cornwall who in a round the world race stopped and went and rescued some French guy who had capsized) and so he became known as Pete. Just because someone thought that was his name.

I haven’t really picked up nicknames along the way. I am Nicholas but everyone calls me Nick. At rugby I was called Belly, named after the advert where the big belly chased you down the street and caught up with you and the soundtrack had the mantra “Belly’s going to get you”, due to an incident on tour in Vienna, and my friend Nick Bell for some reason which has been lost in the mists of drunkenness calls me Sven (and I call him Lars – no I don’t remember why) but that is it. I once tried to give myself the moniker of the Crafty Cornishman when playing pool, but being a terrible pool player it soon got dropped in favour of the Crap Cornishman.
I am interested to hear of anyone else nicknames or their friends nicknames.

Twinkle Toes

When I used to think about being a dad, I used to imagine going along and watching them play football or rugby, depending on what they got into, and enjoying watching them play on a Saturday afternoon. I even naively thought that if I had a girl I would convince her to play football or rugby and I could still go and watch – and whilst that still may happen Emma is currently into ballet. There is little input I can give her about dancing (see the previous posts as evidence) or ballet, and so when she goes each Wednesday to practice I try my hardest to find excuses not to go. I am worried that this makes me a bad Dad, because I am happy to go and watch her perform (the picture above is from her performance of Swan Lake) but the practice is nerve racking as each week Madame Sonja (that’s the teacher and she insists on the Madame) always needs a male volunteer to hold something or pretend to be a toy maker, and each week I am the only male there so end up having to do that job. Needless to say Jen finds the whole thing amusing.

Even my attempts to get Emma interested in football have failed, we sat down to watch England V’s Macedonia last Saturday and we both fell asleep watching it. We had to pay for the privilege of watching the game and it is possibly the second worst $25 I have ever spent in my life. Thank the lord I didn’t tape the game against Croatia.

Dub Side of the Moon

With the Arlenes gig now over in the UK, I obviously have nothing else to plug. Or so I thought. Stu had sent me his latest album and I have put an entry in about it below. What I didn't say was that he also had sent me over another couple of cd's of things that I may like. One of them was an album called Dub Side of the Moon by the Easy Star All Stars. Basically this is a reggae reworking of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (see previous entry about DOTM as well!). Last night I finally got around to listening to it and was blown away as to how good it was. Not as good as the original but still very good, and I don't even like reggae music.

I would urge you to try and get a copy of this and sit back and relax.

One reason I don't like reggae is that two friends of mine were in a band called The Tinners, and the played pubs in Cornwall and Devon, primarily doing cover versions. The were musical prostitutes and were happy to play any style of music in order to appease a crowd. So far so good. Occasionally they would play Bob Marley's, "No Woman, No Cry", until one fateful night in The Two Bridges in Saltash they were forced to play the song 17 times in a row by the landlord, who had just contracted a fatal disease, received the final divorce papers from his wife and had criminal charges brought against to him due to an incident involving a shot gun, a bridge and 12 construction workers (legally I can't go into any more details). My brother & I heard it the first 3 times and departed and I have never liked reggae music since. Pete who sang the song that night still gets a look of fear in his eyes whenever anyone mentions it, and Ian who played guitar still wakes in a cold sweat with his fingers bent in the shape of the c minor cord but that is for another reason altogether.

Colombo Day

Today is Colombo day here in the US. Schools and government workers have the day off to celebrate the day that in 1492 Colombo set sail and with his brown Mac and cigar discovered America had committed the crime, whilst he looked disheveled. This is not to be confused with Columbus Day. Which I think I may have just done.

Why does it always rain on me?

Ok - it hasn't rained on me since April 20th. But it rained yesterday. And it was unbelievable - it was the headline news on the local tv station. The whole segment lasted about 5 minutes and was entitled "Storm Watch", and this was for a wee bit of rain. People here are just not set up for rain and don't seem able to cope. There were around 20 accidents in the space of an hour on the major roads around Sacramento. A couple of the accidents involved police cars which has got to hurt.

There was a special weather reporter who was out looking at how wet the streets were, and when the camera panned down there was a wet road, no puddles, just a slightly damp road. The weatherman is obviously not used to reporting other weather other than sunshine so when the rain came yesterday he was thrown into a panic and decided to draw all over the map with one of those computer pens so beloved of Andy Gray. He drew so much that it was impossible to see any of the map beneath, so all I can tell you is that today we are expecting blue pen in the morning followed by a sweeping line of pink.

Masimo plugs the Arlenes

Mr Masimo (Gentleman Jackson to his fans) is seen here advertising the Arlenes, who are playing at the Spitz this Saturday in London and then they head up to Scotland for a festival gig. Glad to see the Gentleman enjoying a glass of wine whilst at the venue. He has his own blogspot which can be found at www.thescreamingjacksonsblog.blogspot.com

Man flu over the cuckoo's nest

Yes, I have man flu. Jen has been feeling ill for a few days solid, but she has gone to work without complaint. I on the other hand have felt grotty all day, and so have whinged about it since Jen picked me up from my training. I have sniffled my way through dinner and have moaned and groaned on the couch whilst we watched a Bug's Life (for Emma - honest!). Why is it that men get sicker than women?

Tie me neckwear down sport.

I was on training today (and I go back for more tomorrow) so I wasn't able to update the blog. The trainer had on one of those wacky ties, which for some reason people who wear them think gives them a personality. This one had a lovely picture of Yoda from the Star Wars movies, with Darth Vadar and Luke Skywalker fighting with lightsabres at the bottom. Nice.

A Reminder

Just a quick reminder that the Arlenes play The Spitz this weekend, do check them out if you can.
By the way this picture of Steve can not be found in their publicity shots for some bizarre reason!

Tr-Tr-Tr-Train of Fools

The keen readers of this blog will have noticed that I didn’t update it yesterday. This is due to me going on a team building day with my new employers. We took the Napa Wine Train up the Napa Valley. For those that don’t know Napa Valley is where a lot of Californian wine is grown and they have around 300 vineyards in the space of about 10 miles, and most of them have free wine tasting (although more and more are now starting to charge small fees). I have been there a couple of times with Jen, but the downside is someone has to drive. Well not yesterday, the 13 of us in my department went to Napa and then boarded the wine train. We were given lunch and wine and all of this on an old style steam train. There was also a wine tasting carriage where you could taste 4 wines (although it did cost $5).

The idea was to speak to people in the team that you didn’t know that well, and as I have only just joined that meant I could talk to everyone. One girl asked me if we celebrated 4th of July in the UK, and seemed shocked when the answer was no. I am not entirely sure that she had thought the question through properly. Why would we in the UK celebrate 4th of July, the day when America won it’s independence from the UK. If we celebrated every time another country had gained it’s independence from the UK then we would have about 5 days of work left. I was also asked loads of questions about the Royal family and I had to bite my tongue or else I would have blurted out that the Royal Family are nothing but parasites who live of the tax payers money and provide no benefit to the UK whatsoever. In my experience Americans are more interested in the Royal Family then we Brits and I think this has something to do with them not having them. It must seem romantic to have castles and palaces as well as a Royal family, when as a country you do not have anything similar to that. Although celebrities are the closest people come in the US to the same level of attention that Royal families have, and the boom in sales of OK and Hello would show that the British feel similar to celebrities as Americans do to our Royal Family.

Tax Entertainment

I hope I don’t lose too many of you here, but I want to talk about the exciting issue of tax! When we discuss having the new baby and tell people when it is due, here in America we have had pretty much the same response and that is that we should hope and pray that the baby comes a week early. The reason? Well the baby would be born in 2006 and therefore would be tax deductible for 2006.

If we have our new girl in 2006, even if she is born on 31 December we can use her to deduct some tax that we have to pay for the entire year. Coming from a system where all my tax was taken out at source on a pay as you earn scheme this is really different to me. Each year Jen has to sit down and calculate how much tax she has paid and how much tax she should have paid. For the last couple of years she has got a tax rebate because she has paid too much. This is what happens at the moment; I get paid weekly, and each week my employer withholds money. So far just like the UK, but the difference is, come March I can then sit down and claim money back from the amount I paid in tax. One thing is a new dependant (child, spouse etc) another is if you own a house you can deduct your mortgage from the amount of tax you have to pay (not if you rent as they want to encourage people to buy houses). I have even been told that I could deduct any money that I spent when I was trying to find a job.

If the baby is born in 2007 then we cannot deduct for 2006 and so will have to wait until March 2008 to claim money back. I feel slightly uncomfortable that everyone here is rooting for an early baby for financial reasons. I’m sure they mean well.

The other strange thing about tax here is sales tax. This is similar to VAT, but where as VAT is the same across the whole of the UK and is already included in the price of our goods, here sales tax can vary from, State to State, County to County and even from City to City within the same county. Oregon has no sales tax. California and the rest of the states do. Sacramento’s sales tax is around 8 or 9% (I think) but this extra money is added on at the till. So a t-shirt can be on sale for $9.99 and there will be huge signs telling you this, but once you get to the checkout counter they will scan it and then add the sales tax and so it will end up costing you around $10.79. I have been caught out on couple of occasions where I have had the exact change for an item only to be charged a higher price because I have forgotten that sales tax had not yet been included in the price.

Weight for it

As most will know the weights and measures system here in the US is different to Europe’s, with the only exception being that the UK still does miles, as does the USA while Europe does Kilometers.

As I write this I am taking a sip out of my water bottle which is 1 quart in size. It is also labeled clearly that this is 1.8 fluid ounces. I would have no idea how much this is if it wasn’t for the very small writing that say that the bottle is 1 liter (yes that is how there spell litre here).

There are a lot of things here that I have no concept of because I grew up with the metric system. So in the earlier post I had to convert Fahrenheit into Celsius by a complicated formula (ok I looked up a conversion table but I could have worked it out myself if I had chosen to. So whilst I knew that 115f was hot, because it felt hot, I couldn’t picture that in my mind until I realised that it was in the 40’s Celsius!

It is the same with measurements of all kinds, be they for recipes asking for cups and spoon measurements, personal weight, which is weighed in pounds rather than kilos and also distance, which is measured in inches, feet, yards and miles so I have problems working out how many yards something is away as my mind works in meters.

As always any spelling mistakes are my PC’s as it auto corrects my spelling and uses the US format.

Everywhere you go, you always take the weather

I woke up this morning and put on the news. The weather report came on and for the 1st time I have been here it was interesting. When I first arrived in California they were having an unusually wet time of it. However, the rains past and by my wedding day (21 April) the sun was shining and it hasn’t gone back in.

So this makes weather reports pretty boring. Each day the weather boys and girls just have to talk about how hot it is. At the height of summer it got up to 46c here in Sacramento (115f) which let me tell you is very, very warm. Luckily it’s a dry heat as there is no humidity at all.

Anyway the point is weather reports are pretty much the same during the summer here. San Francisco is always a bit cooler than Sacramento as it’s down on the coast, where as here in Sacramento we are nestled in the Central Valley. We went to the San Francisco Zoo on Saturday. When we got there it was around 26c, and there were people there in hats and scarves!! I even saw a couple of people in mittens. I could not believe it. Weather that in the UK would prompt everyone to leave work early and go and lounge around in any green space (or a beer garden) they could find, forced Californians to wear their winter clothes.

Back to the weather report. The first thing the weather man said was that “it’s going to be a cold one today”, utto I thought, I may have to dig out my jumpers, and see where my coat is. He then proceeded to say that the temperature will be a cool 20c. YES 20c and he is telling everyone that it is going to be cold here today. Now the UK doesn’t really get cold when compared to some of our European neighbours, but if 20c feels cold to you then you are going to struggle to cope anywhere else in the world. I have a feeling that it is going to be an interesting winter for me in terms of weather as I fully expect to be wearing shorts all year round.