The ten minute blog

Today we are having a lot of "Scottish weather," as my husband says.  It's nice enough in the morning, a bit chilly but not too bad. We go out, to the St. Peter's church Christmas Fun Day (which was quite a low-key, fun even for us and the kids).  By the time we emerge, it is spitting rain and the winds are gusting probably up to 15-20 mph.  Heading home is a chilly proposition.  After lunch, we have no motivation to go out, although that means many consecutive hours in the house with two small children. But, we can observe the Scottish weather from inside instead of walking around in it.

The other thing I did today (in response to the Scottish weather) was bake bread - Speedy White Bread, to be exact.  This went okay, only involving two conversions (3 Tablespoons of butter is how many grams? They don't print the tablespoons on the packaging in Scotland!) This problem was averted by my husband again, who pulled out his scale and found the internet conversion 1 Tablespoon = approximately 15 grams. So I put the measuring cup on the scale, added 45 grams of butter, and there we were. The other conversion is one that I'm almost used to now - the Celsius to Fahrenheit oven conversion...just turn it to 190 C and figure it's "about" 400 F. Actually, the bread was ready 10 minutes early so maybe there is something to this convection oven!

  

UK work visa: a couple of answers

St. Andrews Cathedral, Scotland

As we settle in her and begin to explore, there are many things I'd like to blog about. However, I think I'm going to start with a brief post about the thing I searched for when I first found out we would be moving to the UK, which was...VISAS. Getting a visa from the UK government was not exactly a transparent process. It worked out fine at the end, but the things I wish I'd known are the following:

1. Yes, your visa might take up to 12 weeks to be issued and the "average" visa processing time might be 4 weeks. BUT it could happen much faster. Like approved for all four of us, 2 adults and 2 children, in 5 business days. 
2. Related to that, if you are going on a limited-time work visa, you are allowed to be the UK for 4 weeks around your start/end dates. On your visa application, you have to specify the date you will travel.  Of course, they tell you NOT to book your plane tickets until you have the visa, so it's really just a guess of how long it'll take to process the visa application. Given our experience of getting visas almost immediately, and then being unable to travel for 3 weeks until the visa was valid, I recommend assuming the best and asking for a travel date (aka visa start date) that you would like - like 2 weeks in advance of your work start date - even if it doesn't seem feasible that the visa will come through that fast. You may be surprised.
3. Also, after you put in your visa application, you have to make an appointment to have biometric data taken  - despite having to make appointments on two different days, the biometric folks were able to accommodate us and take our information all on the same day so we could submit our visa applications together. It never hurts to ask. 

Good luck!  

Changing Direction

The title of this post, changing direction, has multiple meanings.  For those of you who read this blog before, it used to be about my experiences of being a new mother with Audrey, who is now 5.  We've added Claire to the family too since then, and most pertinent for this blog, we've moved to Scotland for me to take a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Dundee in Dundee, Scotland.

In the few years since I've been blogging, this site (Blogger) has changed too.  I guess it was always part of the Google universe, but now it's more explicitly so, trying to get me to "sign in to all of Google" with my gmail account, and encouraging me to tag people (well, they don't call it tag, it's something else more google-ish like "call out") on my blog posts so they'll be flagged on Google+, which still seems a little Facebook-wanna-be to me. But part of my job now at Dundee is to consider current use of online/social media, and start thinking about the future of it as well, so I'll give Google+ the benefit of the doubt.

So as I change direction, I return to this blog.  I write for myself, but also to explain to family and friends (and other readers, although I doubt even if I link this blog to Google+, I'll be overrun with readers :-) exactly how Scotland is different, even though the US and Scotland are both 1st world, English speaking countries.  So it's really one part venting, one part information and one part anthropology. Hope you enjoy this trifecta.

    Sunset over Magdalen Green, near our house in Dundee: October 2013

The Post-PhD Life

Okay so catching up since April. Revise dissertation X 43 days. Start packing house X 7 days. Travel to San Antonio for SLEEP meetings X 5 days. Finish packing X 7 days. Drive cross-country X 10 days (including stops with good friends and family). See parents and celebrate Audrey's 2nd birthday X 2 days. Unpack X 1 day. Start postodc.

But really since then, things have been pretty calm. There have been the usual hassles associated with relocating to a new city (I don't know where I am going AND there are no street signs! Car insurance costs WHAT? Ah, the DMV...) but it has also been fun exploring - there are plenty of parks, lakes, beaches, carousels etc. within an hour's drive from Providence. The newest attraction is "pick your own apples" which we may try in the next few weeks...

Providence residents (Providenizens?) are very nice, we've met quite a few folks, especially since our local "pocket park" is a magnet for everyone within a 10-block radius who has a 2-year-old. Work is good (actually accomplishing small, discrete goals! What a concept!) and Paul is making inroads in the art community - look for benches designed and partially built by him to be installed on Hope Street, maybe next month.

The post-dissertation-defense entry

So I have not written since December, but here's my excuse - I was writing my dissertation draft. Now that I have defended, and passed, and been told by my committe that "draft" was probably a generous description of my dissertation, and started my revisions, I'm taking a moment out to update whoever is reading about Audrey.

She is now about 21 1/2 months old (her second birthday is coming up in June) and while she is still sometimes hard to understand, she does use a lot more words. She still can't pronounce some letters, though, which leads to very cute mis-pronounciations. She calls Paul's flip-flops "bap-baps." Nana Mary gave her a stuffed elephant that we often use as a pillow when she's getting her diaper changed, and "elephant" comes out sounding more like "elli-floo." Her favorite stuffed animals are "Ow" and "Bear" (Owl and Bear). A blanket is "ban-keh," and horse (either the animal or the bouncing on the leg game) is "or-see." One of my favorites is "Got-chew" - When Paul would chase her or pick her up I used to say "Daddy got you!" and now she'll run away and say "Got-chew! More Daddy got-chew!"

On the other hand, some words are very clear. Mom, Mommy, Mama. Daddy, Dad. Audrey. Her favorite thing - dance! Even complex words like "pretzel" she can practically do, especially if the pretzel in question is chocolate-covered. (Pretzel! More!).


Other than talking, she's busy playing at day care, and hanging out once a week with Grammie and Grampie and one of her new favorite people, Paul's brother Patrick (Pat-tri). She's also a daredevil, insisting on climbing ladders at the park that look way too big for her, but somehow she manages to get her little feet from rung to rung (see picture), whith a certain amount of parental hovering, of course.

She's definitely in the "Audrey can do it" stage with everything from putting on her pants to brushing her teeth (although we have taught her that while Audrey gets a turn to brush her teeth, so does Mom, so she'll come up to me after she finishes brushing and say "Mommy turn." And she definitely knows what she wants, whether it's for us to dance with her (Mommy, dance! Daddy, dance! Nana, Poppa, dance!) or to buy some ice-cream from the ice-cream truck at the park (Mommy, ice?), or to not take a nap (No, no, no, down!). More fun to come, I am sure, and hopefully it'll be a bit better documented on this site in the future!

White Elephant 2009

So tonight we had the annual Grad Group White Elephant gift exchange. It's always one of my favorite holiday things but this year it was especially bittersweet because Ben, Gretchen and Lily are leaving us, getting in the car in just a few days to drive to New York, and a new pastor post for Ben. There were lots of hugs and "Merry Christmases" at the end of our meeting, and even a hug from Lily to Holly that turned into a tackle, sending Holly falling (almost) into a couple of big-ish rocks in our front yard (and fortunately not the saguaro cactus that was about a foot away). As Ben said, "That will be a goodbye to remember!"

But while we were celebrating, we were too busy to be sad. We took a group picture, ate potluck food, and then all checked in as Lily (2 1/2), Audrey (1 1/2) and Elliott (11 months) competed for airtime. Then came the White Elephant. Everyone had brought an item, so everyone, including Lily and Audrey, got a number, and the games began. The most popular item was a pair of books, one a Tucson hiking guide and another a book on desert gardening, which were stolen the maximum 3 times. Hale ended up with the big box, with two tray tables and a giant stuffed bear inside, although Lily ended up going home with the bear, who will likely be her pillow on the cross-country trip to come. And Paul ended up with the "classic" white elephant gift, a Christmas Yoda (see picture).



As we gathered outside to say our goodbyes, Lily discovered that when she cupped her hands around a colored Christmas light bulb on our porch, her hand turned green or blue or whatever color the light was. She loved this and kept doing it, causing Audrey to start running from light to light, cupping her hands around each bulb, just like Lily. It was a sweet moment of them playing together - something to remember as we go our separate ways.

So as we start this Christmas week, Godspeed, Ben, Gretchen and Lily, and know you will always have a place here in our hearts and our homes in Tucson!

The 17+ months update

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I don't know what happened to October, but November got away from me because of job applications. The first weekend of November Paul went up to Carefree, Arizona (Phoenix-ish) for an art show. Since it was only about a 2 hour drive, Audrey and I went up to support him, and to see what doing an art show with a toddler would really be like. We thought she might be bored, but she really loved it - lots of people to charm, and she thought the whole show area was a big game of "chase Audrey." She would walk away from Paul's booth, then turn around and smile to see if one of us was following her, and then she's scoot a few more feet away, merrily walking in front of show visitors and their babies and dogs. Though I didn't get any pictures of her at the show, I did take this one of her eating breakfast at the pancake house one morning before we went out to sell some art.

After we returned from the show, I was buried in job applications and presentation preparation for a few weeks, and then we headed to Virginia on Nov 25 for Thanksgiving and, for me, a trip up to Philadelphia for the AAA meeting the next week. Audrey has been enjoying hanging out with Nana and Poppa (and she can now say both of those names) running them ragged by being in constant motion and making most of her desires known with her still somewhat limited vocabulary. Although many of her words sound alike (dog and duck both sound kind of like "doh") she often uses a sign to distinguish which word she means. She also has some words that she exclusively says (like "plane," that we don't know the sign for) and others she exclusively signs (like "cereal," apple" and "signing"). Though she's enjoyed being the center of attention as the only grandchild on this side, she also had fun playing with her cousin Owen, about 8 months older,one day after Thanksgiving, and all the Guilford Avenue roommate's kids a couple of days later (she is the youngest of a 6-kid group, the oldest being 5 1/2 and the closest to her age being 3 months older).

One of the funniest moments of this trip to my parents' house was that they bought her a little kid cell phone that makes noise when you press the buttons, and also, if you close the phone, it waits about 5 seconds and then rings. Audrey was attempting to wave bye-bye and leave the room (one of her favorite things to do, followed by a re-appearance a few seconds later) but every time she closed the phone and said bye bye to us, the phone would ring. The first couple of times, she answered it, but after about four times, with all of us laughing as she got more and more put out, she handed the open phone to Paul and then successfully left the room.