The premise of Matt Barry doing anything always has my interest. Add Matt Barry singing, then mix in a 1970’s parody and I think this video may have single handled saved 2021. Gotta love M for finding this gem on YouTube.
Our 4th England-versary
It does not really feel like a long time until you really start to think about it. Then it does start feeling like a long time. It is so misleading thinking 4 years is not a lot if you are in your 40’s. Looking at the photos of us getting ready to move and I realise how little the girls were compared to now. The cliche is true. So much has changed and yet so much is the same.
4 years ago we were scared and excited. We had so much to do. So much to explore even beyond the physically just getting here. Today there is still so much to explore. We are still excited to be living here. So much so that this year we bought the house we were renting. M called it perfectly 4 years ago when we were looking at houses on our Thanksgiving week scouting trip in 2017. Of the 12-15 we looked at she flagged what became ours as the one she was most interested in. In the end it was down to this house and one other. The location and school options on our house won out. It is why we initially inquired with the former owners to purchase it right around a year ago near our 3rd anniversary here. We were delighted they were interested in selling. We looked around our neighbourhood for other options earlier this year. There were a few possibilities however when it became clear we could have the house we were in we knew our choice.
Lockdown’s and pandemic’s have slowed our exploring. Just not our desire to continue to explore this new country and continent. We are still excited for 4 more and many more years to come…
A small story about the luggage cart pictured that can almost summarize a big difference between NY & London.
Those carts in JFK are like $5 a piece to rent. They are for going from the car drop off to the check in counter. A trip that is maybe 2 minutes.
At Gatwick or Heathrow (in this story we arrived in Gatwick) the same carts are free. On top of that there are little kid carts throughout arrivals for one or even two kids for you to put your kids in for the very long walk to customs. Once you get through customs to get your luggage you can get a free cart for the much longer walk than in JFK for your luggage.
And Then You Blink and Now Have an Eight Year Old
I keep saying it. It keeps happening. I wake up and the girls are so much bigger. They are still adorable little kids. I just now the days of saying that are slowing running out. I attempt to savor each day when they are so cuddly. Today A turns 8.
Due to situations beyond our control we stayed in for the day. M organized a take away Tea setup for lunch. As well as fancy bagels and cake for dinner. Hopefully we can have a semi normal party for A after the term break is over. Only government restrictions and COVID will tell.
$8.89 Web Hosting
Last year when the promotional deal I had for three years of Web hosting was running out I purchased a VPS costing about $24.00 for the year. A VPS, aka Virtual Private Server is a Virtual Machine at a hosting provider that is setup just for you/me. It is a nice playground to let me install use the compute power however I want it. The deal I bought I thought was great. To renew via the traditional hosting plan I had at the time would have run me like £15 a month. I wrote about the crazy costs of web hosting when i purchased the VPS (Virtual private Server) aka a Virtual Machine dedicated for my use at a hosting provider.
I have had really good luck with the VPS and the provider. I even purchased a 2nd more powerful VPS when they had a New Years sale. I use each VPS for different purposes however the one I used for hosting I have used all year. The only slight downside is that its my responsibility to manage and maintain. In a big deal however it is in the back of my head what happens if I have a catastrophic failure. I do have back ups it would be awesome effort to get the system restored. Thanksgiving started rolling around I kept my eye out for new deals for hosting. When Black Friday came around the same provider that offered the VPS deal had a deal for what they call CPANEL hosting for $8.89 a year. Basically that means they were offering a managed hosting package for less money a year than many plans offer for a month. There were some small limitations on the number of domain’s i could link to the account. For a few dollars more i could increase the offering. For my needs the $8.89 plan was just fine. I “splurged” and bought 2 years for less than $18.00.
One thing I like about this provider is when they offer a deal it’s not an introductory one. Meaning I just renewed VPS purchase last year and I feel exactly the same amount for the renewal. This is a refreshing change from pretty much all other mainstream Web hosting providers at the deal the offer is only good the first time you buy it.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been testing out there setup. It has been pretty stable. Anything I have wanted to do i have been able to. Building that confidence today I migrated my mail and blog over to the new hosting. The VPS i have is not going away. I renewed that already for the next year. I will continue to use it for some other apps i host and a few other things however i will entrust my blog to the hosting provider instead of running on my own VM.
And no I cannot tell the difference between the £100+ per year hosting vs the $8.98 a year one. That is what amuses me.
Now lets hope that after writing how things look stable they do not blow up in my face tomorrow.
W Sisters on Self Portrait
Dee Dee the monkey decided to make a self portrait apparently. Then write a little about herself.
W Sisters Short on Making Dinner
Both girls wanted to help peel carrots for dinner tonight. When it was A’s turn she was peeling the carrot and the peel was flinging out onto our counter and side of our microwave. I told her that she should not fling the peels. Her response was “It is ok, I am a kid”
Why Hello Delicious
On our way back from an outdoor market today we took a detour for what we had been told were really good NY style bagels at Beigel Bake Brick Lane Bakery. Now we had to be the judge for ourselves. The line was out the door and down the street. It was worth it. They were not huge like a NY bagel but pretty dam good.
My only issue with the place was how they spell bagel.
The Story of that Overseas Check(s)
Apparently one of my US banks made some error in interest calculations or something. I know this because they sent me what as of this writing is 4 separate checks with an explication. Each check has been for well under $2. Two of them for under 10 cents each.
This is noteworthy because they sent paper checks instead of just direct depositing money back into my account. This is of course a bank i still do business with. The biggest reason for calling this out is that the postage for each of these checks was $1.30 since they were sent internationally. None of the checks were worth more than the postage it cost to send them. That is funny as is. When one of them is 4 cents it gets into bonkers territory.
Hello Old Office
Sitting down to breakfast I am presented with this lovely view. I am not used to DTC from this angle.
Holiday Plan B
This was not the post I was expecting to be writing 48 hours ago. To tell this story I have to go back to August. M has to work so I decided to take off term break and take the girls somewhere. My master plan was to take the girls on a cruise out of Southampton for a few days. I was worried about things to do however the ship seemed like there was a ton of options and the girls are generally fine in a pool.
48 hours ago we got an email from our cruise line saying that due to a covid exposure the kids club and a host of activities were going to be closed our sailing. Around the same time others in a group I am in for the ship were sailing on were saying they only let 11 kids in the indoor pool at a time and then they get 10 minutes and they have to get out. Having to queue for 20-30 minutes for one of the few activities they can do was troubling however doable. When Royal Caribbean emailed they gave us 3 options. 1, get some money back and we cruise, 2, a lot of credit for another cruise or 3, all our money back no questions.
Lots of people in the group I was in for the cruise said they were going to bring games and make the best of it. I thought about that. Doing that was doable. My issue was more the fact if we took the credit the amount we would’ve spent on the cruise was way more than I thought we would be getting out of it. With all the restrictions. That I was by myself and not having any kids club to get a break from the girls was a big deal. The fact that Covid was on the boat was is another concern. Talking with M we both agreed that just getting our money back was probably the safest bet.
The girls and I were disappointed. I would rather be disappointed and plan another cruise then go on this and have the girls have a negative feeling towards cruising. The last cruise we did with their grandparents they thought was out of this world fantastic. I thought it was pretty epic also.
I went into back planning mode. The girls love a pool. I figured if I could find a nice hotel with a pool they would be very happy. After looking at several options I settled on one with an indoor pool that did not require any sort of pre-booking the pool. Several I investigated did have that restriction.
So instead of cruising today girls and I start our few days holiday in London. It’s a little odd being able to go home in 40 minutes if we forgot anything however we are settling into hotel life nicely. Our view is pretty awesome also.
As plan B’s go this feels like a winner.
You must be logged in to post a comment.