January 26, 2002

Hello all,

here's an summary of week 1, now complete.

Departure from Boston went smoothly with a few small exceptions. Our plan to take a bunch of stuff as carryon failed when they told us there is a 13 lb. weight limit on carryons. That meant 2 more bags to check at $85/bag. Had we realized this, we could've packed to eliminate at least one of these. Oh well. About 1 hour before departure, I had an epipheny that we didn't have our marriage license with us. Thanks to Kerry for rushing it to us from Carol's house!!! Plenty of time to spare, despite my worrying, and we didn't really need it right away, although we've used it at least once so far (bank). And, on the plane, my control for the entertainment system (mini-tv) and overhead light did not work, so they gave me a Ł25 credit for duty-free goods, with which we bought a little polaroid camera and some Toblerone chocolate.

Arrival in Aylesbury went fine. The corporate flat is perfectly "lovely". Not the biggest, but it'll be fine for the short-term. It's conveniently located a 5 minute walk from a supermarket and an 8 minute walk to work.

Here's the layout:
Layout

Click on a room to see a picture. No, we're not slobs...the guest room is our closet - in there is basically all of our clothes. And, we just had dinner, so no comments about the kitchen (except to note the small dorm fridge in there-makes for frequent trips to the market).

Our car, temporarily, is a Vauxhall, and it is an automatic. This picture is the right car, wrong color (ours was red). We like it, it's easy to drive. It is a people mover, which is like a station wagon or more like a small minivan. It will only be ours for a few weeks, and then we inherit a Nissan Primera with 56k miles on it. It'll be a standard. That'll be ours until sometime at the end of this year when I believe I will get a brand new car.

We drove to Oxford on Saturday last week, and looked around. It's a nice place. Population about 150,000. A real downtown, with many stores we are familiar with (e.g. Gap, Borders), but also the charm of old England and the tall spires of the University. We wandered around a nice upscale covered market for a while, drove around a bunch. Stopped at a few rental agents - there are many of these, and they each have unique listings, so you do best by visiting as many as you can.

Drove back, holding onto the wheel tightly as we "stayed left, looked right". We only stayed awake until about 8 p.m. that night. Slept late too.

On Sunday, Toby pointed out the dent in the passenger rear door to me. We couldn't remember it being there, but we don't remember hitting anything either, or parking where anyone was likely to do it. Hmm, how strange, especially because there was also a piece of black duct tape holding on some moulding right near the dent. I fretted a lot over this, even asked the neighbors who park next to us if they knew anything about it, but found out on Monday that the dent and duct tape were already there. Phew.

We also saw a movie on Sunday night (Behind Enemy Lines, not very good). There is a big, new 6 screen cinema in Aylesbury. It's about $8 for a movie - but you get assigned seats! One of the screens is attached to a bar, and they let you bring your food and drinks in. One supposedly has loveseats or something in it, but we didn't see them this time around. They have a variety of popcorn: with salt (LOTS of salt), sweet popcorn (which has sugar too), and toffee popcorn (which looks like caramel corn). No butter flavored topping. Big bummer in Toby's book.

For me, the workweek went quickly. ESRI (UK) was not that organized for my arrival, from a task perspective. The admin staff was on top of things, but my coworkers had their own things going on, so I settled in on my own, asking any and all questions I could when I thought of them. They seem to be a really nice group of folks - 5 of us total in the "presales" group. Wednesday, my boss, who lives and works in Edinburgh came down and we had a nice meeting. We will meet again to set some goals etc for me. Thursday and Friday I started accumulating work to do. Friday I even spent 1 hour on the phone with a biz. partner talking about our software, and concentrating really hard to understand his thick scottish (?) accent. I got 90% of it, I interpolated the rest.

Today (Saturday), we went back to Oxford. We are trying to decide whether or not to rent the apartment of my predecessor (which we declined to take in November, because we wanted to do our own search). It is a little farther outside of town than others - in fact it overlooks a pasture where "freemen" graze their cattle. It is still less than 3 miles to Oxford city center, and about 1 mile from a small shopping area called Summertown. We did see another apartment in Summertown in an older house that has 3 apts in it (one on each floor). The Summertown apt. is more money (Ł825 versus Ł750), but is a short walk to the Summertown shops. Since Toby won't have a car, the location is a bit of an issue, even if the farther-away apartment is 2-story, and felt homier (better decorated/furnished). Both have a bus very close by, although the Summertown bus runs more frequently to city center than the farther-out one (every 10 min, versus every 30 min). The differences aren't big, but I am a fan of 2-story living. Anyway, we have to make a decision by Monday (even if that decision is passing on both), so ANY SUGGESTIONS/THOUGHTS are welcome, but send them soon!

Toby has been driving herself back and forth to Oxford every day this week looking at apartments. Some dumpy, some nice (as described above). She feels acclimated to the driving already, I am almost there.

Today we got in the mail (our first real mail here) our bank cards and credit cards. I take victory (albeit very small) in knowing that we now have a checking account (called a current account) with actual money, british pounds sterling, in it. Was it hard? No (despite what my predecessor said). But it is some sort of landmark in my mind.

The weather, while starting out deceptively sunny and mild when we arrived, has been misty, overcast, with occasional rain throughout the day. Today, we have big winds and occasional downpours, although right now the sun is out, peaking through lots of clouds. The weather on the web basically says something like this for the next five days: Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain. Neither of us mind it (yet), let's hope it stays that way.

Tonight we are having dinner with Kevin (Amy's husband) who is in the UK for business, and another couple who are friends of Kevin's. That should be fun.

That's it for now. Write us back!

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