Post #481
Back in America
27th August 2004, lunch time | Comments (24)
Well, well, I have some catching up to do here, don’t I? No-one seems to know where I am, or what I’m doing, so here’s a quick recap before I go on to post some more technical stuff.
Back to the UK for a wedding
The first of my three month visas expired on the 20th of August so I was forced to leave the States for a while. I’d planned my temporary return to the UK so it coincided with my friends’ wedding at the end of August, for which I was the official photographer.
The day went very well, with fabulous weather, excellent speeches, and a great group of friends rallying ’round to help whenever they were needed. The photos came out pretty well, but since the sun was so bright they all require quite a lot of tweaking to counteract the harsh lighting conditions. Here’s a few I’ve already played with:
The family Italiano come to England
My brother, his wife, and their son came over from Italy to see me for a couple of weeks. Lucas is about three and a quarter at the moment and is even more adorable than the last time I saw him. He speaks in a delightful mixture of English and Italian, combining the two whenever he can:
- dove = ‘where’ in Italian
- cosa = ‘what’ in Italian
Becomes:
Ganma, Ganma, dove going, Ganma?
Ungul Dunan, cosa doing, Ungul Dunan?
Here are a few photos of him, and the lego we all played with:
Grandad Crawford
The worst part of the trip back to the UK was that my Scottish grandad (Mum’s dad) died. I’ll write more on this another time because his life, and his last week in hospital, demand more than just the brief mention I could give him here.
It’s odd, because apart from the chap who lived across the road from us, he’s the first person I ever knew who died. I didn’t entirely know how to react.
The Brighton Boys
The penultimate act of my month-long trip home was to visit the fellas down in Brighton for four days. Richard Rutter kindly put me up, Andy Budd organised the events, and Jeremy Keith chipped in whenever the Andy Budd Organisational Train hit a bump.
Jon Hicks, Patrick Griffiths, Drew McLellan, Rachael Andrew (and her midget sidekick, Bethany) all travelled down as well. A very nice, relaxing time, I must say.
Getting back in to America
I got a bit of a grilling at US immigration this time, and for a while I didn’t think I was going to be let in. I was eventually allowed to pass, but on the understanding that this would be my last visit of the year; 6 months out of 12 is apparently the limit, after which they presume you’re living here illegally, and then you’re in trouble.
That means I have three months to find a permanent job here, or The Girlfriend and I will be reduced to daily “Argh, I miss you!” calls across the Atlantic. I have some amazing offers so far, but it all comes down to the visa applications, so keep your fingers crossed for me.
And that’s about it really. Nice to be back with you all. I’ll write more very soon, but for now I think I’m going to go get some lunch.
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Blogmarks
A collection of miscellaneous links that don't merit a main blog posting, but which are interesting none-the-less.
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
— George W Bush (9)- What WordPress is doing to combat comment spam. (1)
- Mobile web tools, from Pukupi. (1)
- Pukupi’s top 10 hints for building interoperable mobile Web sites. (3)
- The photography of E.J. Peiker. (4)
Stuff from the intersection of design, culture and technology.
(3)- Some handy tips for advanced Google use. (35)
- Make your own church signs, or view some real ones. (8)
- Michael Heilemann is doing a great job with his new WordPress theme; Kubrick. (1)
- I’m late to the party, but Dan has a book out. (1)
- What a crazy concept for laying out housing estates. (3)
- In San Francisco, I live here. (Try the zoom feature.) (1)
- Spider-Man reviews crayons. [Via] (3)
- Some beautiful images from photographer Greg Downing. (2)
- Lots of links, from the Link Bunnies. (1)
- Nice “when I was a child” sort of post from Stuart. (1)
- How much does SafariSorter cost? (4)
- Some handy maintenance tips for Mac owners running Panther. (2)
- Alex King launches Use Tasks: a hosted service for Tasks and Tasks Pro™. (2)
- Min Jung, Anil Dash, and I get interviewed for HBO’s Real Sex. (10)
Blog-roll
A selection of blogs I read on a regular basis.
- Hmm, the blog-roll seems to be a little bit broken right now (it may be that the blo.gs service is having problems). I’ve sent myself an email about this problem, and will try to fix it ASAP.