What I miss I'll abridge Friday morning's visa panic (camera store in Paoli made wrong size passport photos, despite me writing down the dimensions and mentioning three times that it's very important that they are UK size). Waiting two hours for photos that are the wrong size
Using a lifeline Today was the fourth straight day of working on my 135-page visa application. The UK website made it clear that attending the biometric screening is critically important. One makes an appointment on the UK visa application website; prints out the biometric appointment confirmation, which includes a barcode; attends said appointment;
Spouse visa David headed back to Northern Ireland on Wednesday so we were under the gun to finish putting the visa application package together. It contains 37 documents comprising 135 pages. Wow. Being married to a British citizen doesn't carry much weight. We have to submit lots of documents showing
What do you miss? I'm enjoying catching up with friends, including dinner last night with former neighbors. One asked me what I missed about the U.S. while in Ireland. I stared blankly for a while before saying I miss my friends. Which I do. Which is why they all have to
Mow mow mow the lawn One of the things I enjoy about the U.K. is that everyone has a smaller carbon footprint. Cars get better gas mileage; commutes are much shorter; public transportation is heavily used; and roundabouts mean you don't spend a lot of time idling at traffic lights. Might this
Love and the stock market I had a wonderful dinner Saturday night with a group of women friends from my church. Every one of their lives has not gone according to plan. Either through divorce or death, they are not enjoying the golden years of travel and adventure with their spouses as they had planned.
Another gift from running I'm back in the U.S., staying with my friend, Judy, at her lovely Chesterbrook townhouse. I ran this morning for a half hour on a paved path that lead through woods, along, and across a river. It was lovely. Today's realization is that the many
White glove inspection Today (Thursday) I spent an hour and a half going through the Queens Parade house with Luane, the woman from whom David rented our temporary quarters. She has been rehabbing and selling or renting properties for years, including a Victorian townhouse near ours. The verdict? Two thumbs up. The house
Whip it! One of the great things about life is how it can serve up the most exquisite joys in totally unexpected ways. The joy of the experience is compounded by the way it rounds a corner and whacks you up side the head. In a good way. This morning I was
Piketty's conclusion I want to finish my Piketty highlights so they are in proximity to each other. How wars start "If you have free trade and free circulation of capital and people but destroy the social state and all forms of progressive taxation, the temptations of defensive nationalism and identity politics
Beating the drum for Bangor One of the reasons we chose a townhouse on the marina in Bangor is it suits our lifestyle to a T. T. Bangor is a Fairtrade Town [http://www.fairtradebangor.co.uk/about.html]. Here's the mission statement: "Bangor Fair-Trade exists at a local level to support
Homeless no more Today I bid on a beautiful Victorian townhouse on the marina in Bangor. The owners accepted the bid, I hired an attorney and arranged an inspection for Thursday. A very productive morning. I spent the afternoon reviewing websites about the visa application process. It's pretty depressing. So many
Piketty on taxes Piketty examines the role of the state in the concentration of wealth because it is much greater than citizens realize. The eye-popping salaries of the super managers came about after the top marginal tax rate [http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/course/Labortaxes/taxableincome/taxableincome_attach.pdf] fell from the 70%
Piketty, abridged I recently finished a book on capitalism by French economist Thomas Piketty. It's attracting a lot of buzz because he has looked at more series of data over longer periods in more countries than anyone before him to reveal the underlying machinery of capitalism. In very very short
Day at the Museum I spent today at the Ulster Museum [http://www.nmni.com/um] with 16 primary school children (ages 10-11) and a high school friend, Cathy Arthur, who is the primary school principal. The kids were on a day trip from Derry, where I lived as a teenager. Cathy's
Not having fun anymore I've looked at 20 or 21 houses now (six today) and it isn't fun anymore. We bid on one when we got back from Portugal, 10% less than asking price, and the bid was rejected. I thought we would then be clear to bid on choice
Beefcake Last weekend crowds turned out to see beefcake on bikes. This week, it's the real thing. The Balmoral Show is an agricultural event drawing more than 10,000 people. I volunteered there today and I'm exhausted. I hope to never say again: "Would you like
Pinks and blues Well it's blue bell festival time. This is the English blue bell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) not the American bluebell (Mertensia virginica), which is an unwelcome invasive here. While we were in Portugal, the glen came to life as all the trees leafed out. Descending from Crawfordsburn down to the
House hunting headaches We made an offer last week on a house that a gay couple has owned for 20 years. It is in impeccable condition and would need no additional work. The price was very high for the neighborhood. We offered what we thought was fair (and affordable to us), and this
We found a house! Check out Mount Stewart [http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/mount-stewart/]: One hundred and fifty-two rooms of 18th Century neoclassical splendor. Which means we'll need a big staff. Check out the switchboard: The top boards list all the bedrooms, each named for a different European city, the bottom board
Another lighthouse + Giro Saturday we went to Whitehead, which is on the opposite coast from North Down, where we live. It looks like this: We hiked up a hill that took us to a lighthouse that once guided the ships coming and going through Belfast Lough: And then it was off to the
Giro! Giro! Giro! I think I mentioned Belfast has gone Giro mad. The lead rider gets to wear the Maglia Rosa-the pink jersey. So all of Belfast is decked out in sympathetic shades of pink. We went to city hall on Friday to see the teams cross the finish line after the first
Big Al I went into the equivalent of a Dollar Store yesterday in Bangor. A man in his 40s wearing an Eagles pullover was stocking the shelves. I told him I lived near Philly for 15 years and asked about his attire. He said that Channel 4 began showing American football in
A feast of festivals I've been so busy house hunting and gyming since I've been here that I've ignored the growing stack of colorful booklets and brochures promoting "What's On." Monday I sat down and read through the Festival of Fools brochure (comedy festival)
Bernard MacLaverty The first book I read when I got here was Ireland in Mind, a collection of essays and short stories either by writers who visited Ireland or by Irish ex-pats. Most are household names (Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Frank McCourt). Of the 32 featured, I circled four that spoke to