Saturday 14th Feb 23:00

It’s time to give an update! Four significant milestones have ‘been achieved’ over the last couple of weeks:

- I’ve sold my car! A sad day, as I’d had it for nearly three years, and it has taken me (and often Jamie!) everywhere. France, Scotland, Cornwall many times, Norfolk, Peak District, not to mention the Nurburgring – twice! I’ve also sold off all the old stuff I had lying around, and luckily made a few quid out of it, which is nice.

- Jamie and I have booked our tickets for the flight out to America. It’s 15:15 on February 23rd…. Departure Day! Really close now, and I’m getting quite excited about it. I’m in the process of sorting out the shipping of all my books, tools, kitchen stuff and extra clothes. Not much time left to do that!

- My visa is in hand. I went to the American Embassy in London for the interview appointment at the end of January. The interview wasn’t too gruelling at all; I was casually asked a few questions while filling in forms and taking fingerprints: when & where is the wedding, where are we planning to live, what’s Jamie’s occupation, etc. I guess I must have got enough of them right, as the visa appeared in the post only two days afterwards.

- We have a place to live! We’ve signed a rental agreement on a 1-bedroom flat in Pasadena, located only a couple of miles from the city centre, and about 4 miles from the Jamie’s parents’ house, so fairly easily cyclable. Coincidentally, it’s the same flat Jamie’s sister Valerie rented for a year or so when she was newly married to Josh. The nice thing about it is that the agreement is monthly – a rarity; most are yearly – so we have the flexibility to move out as soon as I have a stable income and we find something bigger, hopefully to buy.

Then, quite apart from things to do with my move out there, there’s some progress on the wedding arrangements too: We’ve appointed a new photographer (the new guys are much more personal than the previous ones: they’re a 3-man outfit rather than an faceless nationwide operation, and they do great candid shots). The invitations have gone out to the US guests, and we’ll do the UK invites next week.