Well, that was certainly interesting · Dec 26, 04:54 AM by Amberlee
November and December were just as nutty as I expected them to be—thus the proverbial radio silence until now. The run-up to the trip to Australia was really crazy and I didn’t even have the usual birthday dinner. Instead, I gave three Microsoft exams at the testing center while madly trying to print off checks, ensure all the bills were paid, sending out invoices, and printing off things to go over for the flights over and back.
I did, however, get some lovely birthday presents. My friend, Ren, sent me a box of goodies and my husband obtained a new companion for the laptop. Swift now has a spiffy black nano iPod named Gulliver to keep him company. So far, Gulliver has some Police, my audio lessons of Japanese, the RotS soundtrack, and some music from Cowboy Bebop. I have determined that Gulliver’s set of headphones suck (the little white things hurt my ears) so I’ll be doing a search for some nice workout headphones that don’t hurt my ears and a good set of noise reduction ones for regular use.
Trip to Austalia: awesome. I tried a boogie board. I got a tan. I drank lots of frozen fruity drinks with Malibu rum, had some great food, hung out with my friend Kylie, and did some investigation for the great migration. Husband is about 3/4 sold on the idea of the move but wants to go back in winter (July/August). Not only does he want to get an idea of the weather then but he also wants to meet with CPA, Lawyers, and government people on second trip. The overall goal is to get things set up so that we can come over for two more weeks and get a branch of the business ready to go (including bank accounts and whatnot) when we make the next run. We will definately be coming over on a business owners visa set if we do the move. While a lot of what husband does is in big demand, the rates are only running around 85-95k a year with pension and that’s a heck of a pay cut for us now. Also, most of the really good jobs that do what he’s into seem to be under government classifications for defense so you have to be a citizen. Since he’s got a classification in the US for top secret thanks to his parents and his own work with defense contracters here in the states, we think he could qualify in the long haul but it’s getting the citizenship and if they’d be ok with a dual or not in that kind of a setting. Likely? I’m thinking, no.
So it’s a branch of the business in Australia for us. Given the fact that we have two pretty good options for that (our co-operation in golf and our own computer consultancy firm) we think we can make a go of it. We’ll have to wait until the taxes for the end of the year are done to see what we have in overall flow for 2005 and then we’ll see what’s up. I figure it will take three years for me to get this house ready, boxed up, and everything taken care of to move. We’ll see what happens.
The trip back from Brisbane got of to a rough start. We spent almost three hours sitting on the tarmac thanks to a fuel spill. It was rather hot and it meant that the fuel was expanding and building pressure in the tanks. Since we were doing a non-stop to LA from Brisbane they needed to have the tanks full so they had to pump, stop, wait for the pressure to go down, then start pumping again. They were also in a hurry. This is a bad combo. In the end, it meant that they over pumped and the safety latches blew the hose off as a precaution dumping a good hundred gallons or more of aircraft fuel all over the side of the plane and the tarmac. We got surrounded by fire trucks, hosed down with foam, then we had to wait while the fire marshalls came and said that the foam and the other stuff was all cleaned up. Then they cleared them to start fueling again and loading more cargo. In the end we had fire trucks twice for fuel spillage and our steward (we were in the back of the aircraft next to the back doors) said, “guys, if the plane catches on fire we’re going out that (points to the opposite side of the plane from him) door. Got it?”
Yeah, that’ll make ya feel real confident for a flight.
So, thanks to this delay we got in to LA two and a half hours after expected arrival. This means we missed our connection and Quantas stuck us on another flight with NorthWest to get us home. Problem is that they didn’t give us tickets they just assigned it and gave us a slip of paper with the new info. When we got to NorthWest they gave us the boarding passes and assigned our seats but told us that if we didn’t have the tickets issued from Quantas (or a “FIM”: flight interruption manifest) that we wouldn’t be allowed to board. Everyone at Quantas was pretty much gone so it took my husband another hour and a half of running all over LAX to get what we needed. At least they gave us a free room at the Mariott and some “distressed passenger” vouchers for food so our 9 hour layover was filled with an ok meal, a shower, and some rest.
We got home a literal day late but we got here and we slept right through most of Christmas. What little we were awake in the last two days has been spent watching my Samurai 7 DVDs. I also got a set of Space:Above and Beyond on DVD.
Goals for the next few days include doing three bags full of dirty clothes and getting on normal time by Thursday when I give more exams. I’ll also be going through the mail, paying bills, and calling up the payroll folks to be sure we all get paid for January 1st.
Yep, already I’m sorry to be home.
Finally, I’m hard at work on original stuff for kids. Cross your fingers for good news in the next few weeks as Ren and I try to get something going with a Japanese publisher!
Oh, there goes the dryer. Time to get back to work. Hope all of you had a lovely holiday and I’ll see about updating and doing some more web site work in the next few weeks.
