Here is our very cool coffee machine that Jack & Hugh gave us as a wedding present (via Bec & Jeremy's internet savyness).  

I was just going through my pictures and remembered that I was compiling a "Front Door Transformation" picture. I hadn't taken the final pic since we got the new screen door the week before Christmas so I zoomed outside just now in the dark and took the third shot with the flash. I will have to do a better one in the daylight so I get the steps lined up like in the other two. So the series is.... firstly the original screen door, secondly with it removed (and the No 4 replaced!) and thirdly the new one (which is glass in Winter for insulation and better aesthetics and you replace it with mesh in the Summer). The final pic is meant to be with the door stripped back to the original oak, but in light of the life changes and potential moving house, we're not quite sure if/when that will take place.  

NewsFlash! - VF

Well, we have some exciting news to report.....
Jamie has a new job! We are quite excited by this prospect as it is a better deal all around.... more holidays (yay!!!), more $$$ and very, very cool people to work with. It is about an hour and 20 min north of here, in central Michigan in a town called Saginaw. Here is a map of Michigan and (if you are not sure where Michigan is, here is a map of the USA. Michigan is the light blue one at the top towards the right side, surrounded by the Great Lakes and is in the shape of a mitten!). This will eventually mean moving house, although we are not quite sure when or where to at this point. We spent 6-8 hours driving around with the Exectutive Director of the new group that Jamie will be working for, looking at various houses and suburbs which was quite fascinating. We even looked right up on the edge of Lake Huron. That was very nice, but it probably a little too isolated for me and although it is 22 minutes drive to work , why drive 22 min when you can drive only 10 by living closer? Bay City is only 10 min away from the main hospitals (yes, as in 'The Bay City Rollers' band of the '70s) and there were some nice townhouses (condos) on the river that are also an option. Of course there are also plenty of the big mega-houses (5000-9000 sq feet mansions) but we might wait a few years until there are more of us to fill the house with for that. Everything seems 30-50% cheaper than here in Detroit so that will be a bonus when the time comes for house-buying.
Anyway, the group is called "Advanced Diagnostic Imaging" (ADI) and they have a web-site that even has the radiologists schedules so you know who is working and where! it also has 'physician profiles' so you can see about all the other docs and their backgrounds. Although the Saginaw web-site says that the town is about 60,000 people with another 80-100,000 in the surrounding areas, the practice serves about 420,000 people as it is the main health-care hub of central Michigan. They do neuro-surgery, cardiac surgery, plastics and everything in between. The radiologists go to about 5 different hospitals, as well as outpatient clinics, MRI centres etc all around the area. There is one facility up in the north (they call it 'The Thumb' as if you look at the mitten shape of Michigan it is up there!) and one called Tawas on the east side of Lake Huron (about where the 23 and 75 roads meet if you are looking at the map of Michigan that I linked in the above paragraph). If you work up there the group has a condominium overlooking the Lake where you stay for the week. Apparently everyone requests to work there in the Summer!
All this came about as Jamie has a friend called George who has been working there for about 3-4 years. He has been trying to recruit Jamie for quite some time as he says the group is so cool and they need more cool people to work with them. We had quite a talk with him as he was at the conference we went to in New Orleans back in October and he kept telling up to come up and visit and check the place out. In the meantime, another friend of Jamie's (these three used to work together at Garden City Hospital, one of the places Jamie works at now), Brien; has started work with ADI as well as is just loving it. So, amidst some gentle urging from his wife, Jamie phoned George just before our two weeks off to go to Australia (actually, around 8pm on a Friday night - New Years Eve!) and said that we would come up for a drive on Monday 3rd Jan. On Sunday 2nd at 4pm, George called and said 'come up tonight, we'll put you up in a hotel and you can check out some of the hospitals and maybe meet a few people'. So within 2 hours, we were on the road..... The next day dawned bright and chilly and in no time we were zipped around 5 different facilities. They took up out to lunch and about 8 of the partners turned up! They also took up out to dinner and more partners showed up! They all chatted on in an animated fashion about what a great place this is to live/ work/ bring up a family and you so must come! We found this all quite amazing seeing as the partners in the current group Jamie works for can hardly give you the time of day, even at the Christmas parties. We met most of the people that were working that day and they were all so nice (no malignant personalities as Jamie says!). It turns out that this tiki-tour/meet and greet journey was the job interview! Seeing as we had less than 24 hours notice, there was no time for stressing! The greatest thing about all this (even more than the "you get 12 weeks holiday a year and can buy more if you want but you are not allowed to take more than 24 weeks" comment) , is that it is only 1 year until you become a partner. And this is practically 99% guaranteed as you can only work there if they think that you are 'partner material' to start with. This is in stark contrast to the current situation where it is a 4 year partnership track with 0% guarantee (and several people they have told at the 3 years, 9-month point 'sorry, you are not partner material for our group, here's your 90-days notice). The ADI people seem very democratic (several people said when Jamie asked in his 'what are the good/bad things about working here questions', that the worst thing is that they can be "too democratic so decision making can sometimes take a long time" and everything seems quite transparent and fair. They even put out the holiday roster (vacation schedule) a year in advance! So that will give us plenty of time for planning our life!!! So we had Sunday evening and the Monday night up in Saginaw and drove back to Berkley on Tuesday 4th, just in time to do the washing and throw it in our suitcases and get back on the road to Toronto and then on to Sydney! We had messages from ADI whilst we were in Sydney and so on our return went back again so that Jamie could meet the president of the group and go through the contract with someone from the recruiment committee. It was quite a crazy thing to do, but amazingly we were not tired in the least..... 14 hours flying Sydney-LA, 2 hours break, 5 hours flying to Toronto, a flat battery in the 4WD that needed attention and then immediately it was going, 5 hours driving from Toronto to Saginaw! Needless to say,we slept well and then Jamie had his meeting whilst I was driven around looking at houses. The next day we had another drive-by of places to live from 9am-3pm and then finally, we went home! Even though we only had 5 days in Sydney, it was 2 weeks since we last slept in our own bed! But it was all good! So last Monday, we wrote the resignation letter and once the ADI contract came, we e-mailed it off and in 90 days, Jamie will be an ex-employee of the current group he works for. Actually it will be less time as he has negotiated a finishing date of 1 April because the guy that does the scheduling couldn't be bothered writing him in for only part of the month. Then..... who knows the specifics of where we will be staying and what will be our day-to-day activities..... Watch this space!!!!

Jamie with the snowblower (taken this time last year). It's kind of like mowing the lawn but without a catcher! I'm not sure what happens if the snow is more than half a metre deep..... 

As mentioned in the snow, snow.... and more snow entries, the snow that came last weekend was quite deep. Jamie did indeed have to dig his way inside the house after work as the drifts blown by the wind in front of the door were apparently up to his waist! On Sunday when I went ti visit Trish and our new niece in the hospital, I had to dig around the car to get it out. Here is where the car was parked (you can see the tyre marks when I finally got it out). Even though it was a lovely sunny day it was SO cold. With 4 layers of thermal clothes on, a wollen hat and my gloves, I could only stay out 5 minutes at a time as my nose got so cold. The driveway looks quite different to this now because Jamie managed to get home from work before it was too dark on Monday and attacked it with the snowblower (I will add a picture above form last year of him with the snow-blower).  

Elyse the niece

As of Friday 21st we have a niece to add to the two nephews that we have. Elyse Anne Finch was born by caeserian section to Joe and Trish. Jac (age 4) and Tyler (age 2) are quite exited to have a baby sister (although they have known for many months that she was coming thanks to 3-D ultrasound scanning that they have here in the USA). She is apparently the First Finch Girl to be born in 75 years!!!

.... and more snow!

As I write this we are having a snowstorm. It's kind of weird because it is completely silent outside. So far there is about half a metre of snow piled up against the doors so when Jamie gets in from work he might have to shovel his way inside! The news reports are on msn and sound heaps worse than what I am seeing out the window, but then again we are a quiet street in a nice surburban neighbourhood! I spoke with Pat in New York just after midday and she was seeing the first snowflakes hitting her window so it was just starting there at that time. I think it has been snowing here since around 2 or 3am as it hadn't started when we went to bed at 1am. I heard a noise outside not long ago when there was a lull in the volume of snow coming down and it was the neighbour from across the road snow-blowing our driveway! So that was nice of him. It will save Jamie doing it tonight when he gets in from work (he is working 8am - 8pm). The neighbour also did the older lady next doors footpath and a pathway to her front-door. She has had a good week because I shovelled her snow from the footpath on Wednesday after the last snowfall!

I must have jinxed things beccause since writing above that it is silent, the wind has come up and is swirling snow off the roof and all around the garden and in front of the windows. I guess that means that instead of the 10-20cm last night and the same again today, there will be parts where it is deeper where there is more snow plied up. It's hard to know how much is on the ground without going outside and walking in it because there was a good 10-15 cm on the ground after Wedensday's fall. We only had a few little light snow showers on Thursday and Friday and most of the time it was quite sunny (but well below freezing in temperature!). I'm not planning to go out as because even though we have new snow tyres on the Lexus (and a cool snow traction button that you activate when you are driving in snow) I don't think that they are designed for more than 5cm or so of snow on the ground. I'm going to make some more French Onion soup this afternoon as I haven't made it since our blog entry about it back in October.

Snow....snow.... - VF

As I write this it is snowing outside. I think it is quite beautiful but it has been a most interesting time over the past 2 months regarding the snow situation. Here are my observations:-

• It doesn't snow everyday, but sometimes we have 'flurries' which are kind of comparable to a light rain shower in Auckland - lasting about 15 minutes and then no more all day.
• About 20% of the snow we had just before Christmas (see Blog entry 23rd Dec) was still on the ground when we left for Toronto & Sydney, and most was gone by the time we came back. There must have been rain because even when it is sunny, it doesn't melt because the temperature is way below freezing, it mainly vanishes with the rain. I'm not sure why it can rain without freezing into snow, but Jamie says it is often too cold to snow (I think it might be something to do with what part of the atmosphere is cold/not cold enough to make it freeze and there the snow is formed up there).
• Snow is quite useful - our church provides meals for the homeless and we volunteered to provide a lunch on 2nd Jan. We brought enough lasagne for 80 people but of course the fridge and freezer weren't big enough so I put it out in the snow and piled more snow on top and it stayed frozen for 3 days!
• If I get back from the shops too late, I can leave the frozen food in the boot (trunk) of the car until the morning (but not any liquids as they freeze).
• Weird things happen - I left my little beach shoes in the car by mistake after going to the gym (I wear them in the showers there), they were wet and when I remembered 2 hours later, I went out to the car and there they were frozen solid!
• You have to keep the lid on the rubbish wheelie-bin because if it gets filled with snow it does not melt and is there until it gets emptied next week.
• The snow here is light and dry. It is not wet like in NZ, more like icing sugar (they say powdered or confectioners sugar here), so it sticks to you and you can brish it off rather than making you cold and wet.
• As far as cold (yesterday got down to 4 degrees F - that's minus 22 C!!!!) goes, the days when it is sunny with high cloud are much colder than when it is grey and overcast (clouds keeping the heat in??). The coldest thing of all is the wind, the coldest I have seen on the weather reports is minus 5 F.
• You know that it has been snowing in the night when you wake up at 2am wondering if you left the outside light on because it is so bright outside that it is like a light shining in the window. When you think about it, you KNOW that you turned it off. A peep out the window confirms that there is lots of white stuff all over the ground
• This is the weather page I check each day to know what is going to be happening - it tells how likely it is to be snowing although they seem to be about 20% lower in their snow estimations than the national radio or TV weather forecasts Detroit weather
  
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Here we are at the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (see blog from Jan 13th!). Yes we were there, it's not a pull-down background!!!  

The long and the short of it! Finch Family hairdos! Not the best picture of me (self-portrait late at night holding the camera out in front of me!), but it shows how long the hair is ... (Fleur - I'll need your advice when we are back in March!) Jamie's is completely shaven and I think his looks fantastic like this!.  

Here are a couple more photos Jamie took. I think the one looking up at the tower is very cool - we forced ourselves to stop in the way below freezing temperatures with a wind chill factor of about minus 5 F (is that really minus 20 C???) and look up at it for a few seconds! We stopped at a shop and brought a hat for Jamie as we had just given him a cool new No 0 haircut and I'm sure he must have been almost hypothermic from the cold (my ears were freezing and I have lots of hair covering them... see next pic that will be posted above). 

View from the top of the Toronto Tower - apparently the tallest structure in the world! 

Jamie blogging at LAX before getting on our Qantas plane to Sydney. His post he was composing at the time is below (6th Jan) 

It's snowing in Mississippi! Double click the picture and look closely at the trees and where the building is..... it IS snow! 

Yummy Christmas lunch - including the delicious sweet potato dish with pecans on top .... very yummy! The bean casserole is the one at the front with special fried onion on top.  

Back home!

We are now back from our journeyings around the world/country and will endeavour to update this blog in the next day or so! 8 ->
V & J xx

Update on the week in Sydney! - JF

Once again V & I find ourselves at LAX on return from SYD following a quick trip (only 5 full days on the ground). But it felt like much longer. Nothing feels undone and we spent some QT (quality time) with Helen, Kevin, Bec and Jeremy, so the final assessment is all good. While there, we had Christmas dinner at B&J’s apt. [see http://popsies.blogspot.com] and exchanged gifts (as B&J were in the US during the holidays).

One VERY exciting gift V & I got were Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb vouchers which we redeemed on Wednesday at 645AM. While it was a very early start for Tor, (second day in a row - as she was up at ~4AM and off to Auckland, NZ for the day Tuesday for some contract work she is continuing) we were off to the city on the train by daybreak and watching the sunrise over the skyline/harbour was quite an awesome site. Especially nice b/c on the previous trip (March 04 - “Meet The Parent’s” odyssey) we were met with rather bogus rainy weather for the majority of the trip. Wednesday, however, was a beautiful day with sunshine and warmth and now I know what Helen means when she says “On a sunny day the harbour just GLOWS!!” It was such an awesome thing to do.

On the climb, you are actually tethered to the bridge from the bottom with no real means of disengaging oneself. So it is rather safe. The only part that bothered me was a small section where you are approximately 50 meters or so above the pavement/water and instead of a steel floor there is only a steel grating which is totally see through which allowed me to see passing cars and choppy water directly beneath me and this of course leads to next logical thought of “what if one were to fall through/over……?” Not such a nice thing, really. But because V. was tethered only a few feet in front of me I persevered on (and of course not wanting to look like a wus!).

The climb is not as taxing physically as I was expecting. There were really only approximately 4 sections of nearly straight up and down stairs and the rest is gently sloping bridgey girders. Frequent stops are made along the way, with time to gaze about and absorb all the fantastic sites, as well as time to catch ones breath. Pictures are taken at several places on the bridge and one of the group is included in the price.
We purchased the one posted because it was cool (to be added above in the blog). Our guide “Prue” took the photos w/ a Canon G5 digital camera. Climbers are not deemed safe with potential projectiles (like a digital camera). It is reported that a AUS$2 coin dropped from the tippy top of the bridge would completely shatter the windscreen of any passing car or train and I would think do some serious damage and disfigurement to any biker or pedestrian.

While we were sitting here at gate 40, waiting impatiently for our flight to arrive and go, V. went and bought some VERY nice mocha Frappucinos from Starbuck-y’s (care of our friend Pauly aka Zamboni I - whose wedding gift was a his and hers gift set of starbuck-y’s cards) and while drinking the initial mouthfuls I was being rude and making V. laugh and a little sputter of mocha-frap hit the straw - I was thinking it came through V’s nasal passages, but I really think it was sputtered out her mouth and we had a good laugh. She then shared with me that Jac had a similar experience many moons ago and had penned a song memorializing the time “things came out her nose” and it went a little something like this:
“Milo, o, Milo; Milo came out by the end of my nose” I suppose it bears repeating that we should all be careful, because, Mama Cass died from aspirating a ham sandwich.
[ed. note 1: for those who are unaware (as I was before coming to live here), a Zamboni is the machine that comes out on the ice-hockey rink and clears away all the snow from the ice. Apparently there are similarities with people who are efficient at clearing their plates/the table after eating…. Shall leave it at that…. - VF]
[ed. note 2: I have had a request from the original composer of this song to let it be known to our readers that she was aged approx 3 years old at the time (lest you think that it was written in more recent times....) ]
[ed. note 3: if you do not know who Mama Cass was (I did not), click here ]
We made a quick call to Trish & Joe to see if we have a niece waiting for us in Michigan. But alas, no such luck although apparently there were 8 hours of pre-term labor several days ago. Its looking like a Monster Truck Jam is occurring at the Palace of Auburn Hills (a stadium near our house) this weekend. It’s a thing where HUGELY modified monster trucks jump over cars and roll and tumble. Quite a testosterone charged event for sure. Victoria is extremely excited to join me, Joe, Jac and Ty for this new and exciting pastime (I think….) 8 > ).

Update on New Year and latest happenings - JF

Almost 4 months and all remains blissful here in married people land. While the landscape seems at times ever-changing, it is an always exciting odyssey because I have Victoria at my side. She is the best partner/life-enhancer/life-coach I could ever imagine or want to have. We are currently sitting at LAX waiting for QF8 (1250p) to begin to board for our journey to Sydney for Drs. Joshua and Natalie’s wedding at the University of Sydney’s Great Hall. This is sure to be quite the gala event and not to be missed. It was so cool of them to make the effort to be at our wedding in Maui, we felt we should be “representin’ “ at theirs.

Tor and I closed the year 2004 (surely the best year to date for both of us) by attending a workshop sort of gathering where goal setting strategies were discussed as well as ways to experience a balanced life not leaving out any of the essential ingredients including family, work, spiritual, relaxation and the like. Quite cool. We were encouraged to write down our goals in 6 areas of life (2 for each) giving 12 ideals to strive for throughout the year. We had also been instructed to bring 12 x $0.37 stamps which would then go on 12 SAE’s (self addressed envelopes) which would then be sent to our humble abode at the beginning of each month reminding us of the course we had set on 31 Dec 2004. The analogy was set forth that a small aircraft is off course approximately 95% of the time, BUT because the pilot knows where he started and where he wishes to end up, they end up at the desired destination in spite of spending the vast majority of the time being off course. Quite a cool analogy and applicable to the task of setting and maintaining goals for the new year.

As anyone who has reviewed the blog knows, we seem to have made some progress at the Berkley estate. The dining room pantry is yet to be installed and is scheduled for approximately 17 Jan (when we return from Oz).

We came to LA via Toronto (aka The Great White North) and a friend turned us on to the Four Seasons in downtown which was FABULOUS. We got there a little later than expected Tuesday evening due to forces beyond our control. But they “kept the light on for us” and we had a very splendid time indeed. Because we got in at approximately 0130 Wednesday morning, we ended up lollygagging about the hotel room until about 4pm. Then finally got up and decided we should visit the CN Tower - which is the tallest building (yes - taller even than the Empire State Building, Sears Tower in Chicago and Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur). I thought that surely, the Auckland SkyTower was higher. Perhaps they are not tuned into Kiwi achievements of late…..

Tor was stressed that we wouldn’t make it to the “top of the world” before darkness came, but secondary to the chill in the air (~ -10C with windy conditions) and the status of my freshly shorn noggin, we felt it prudent to find a souvenir shop and quickly bought a woolly hat and took the very nice, convenient and inexpensive subway from our hotel to the CN Tower. We made it about just before dusk, so it was rather beautiful with the acquisition of several pictures of the city landscape and of Lake Huron of course to the south. [photos to be posted on blog - will probably appear above this posting… - VF] After descending to earth again, we made our way to the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame, which of course, houses one of my favourite restaurants of all time, Movenpick Marche’s “Richland Market” which is a veritable Bazaar of foodstuffs. The vendors/cooks are outfitted in uniforms which appear to be from Paris. It is set up like a sort of unbelievably large and diverse cafeteria where there are stations/counters with all sorts of different foods: grilled steaks and potatoes/grilled veggies, pasta and Rosti counter with all sorts of interesting sauces and toppings, sushi, omelettes, Belgian waffles, crepes, pizzas, Caesar salads, cakes, pastries, coffees, smoothies, fruit juices, and all sorts of yummy, yummy things. It is one of the things I was intent on doing in Toronto. Victoria has now been indoctrinated and appears to be a fan. Quite cool indeed!