Long weekend

We just had a long weekend - yes one week before the NZ Queens Birthday weekend and two weeks before the Australian one. They call them 'holidays' here, which as I am starting to get used to, are different from 'vacations'. Holidays seem to be official public holidays and vacations are what you request off from work (although people don't seem to look too confused when I talk about going 'on holiday' rather than 'on vacation'). This weekend was 'Memorial Day' which is kind of like Anzac Day in NZ/Australia although without quite so much awe/reverence attached to it. There was quite a bit of confusion about which shops were open and it doesn't seem like there are laws against being open like in NZ. The other thing that was quite different was that it didn't seem so much about remembering people that had died in the 1st and 2nd World Wars etc as I am used to, but there was very much an awareness that the country IS at war. Quite a different feeling. Very 'current'. As with all the other holidays so far, some people decorated their houses. Yes, lots of flags and some red/white/blue wreaths. Interesting. I wonder if they then stay up until 4th of July? So far on the house decorating front I have seen 'Fall' which is sort of combined with a 'Halloween' theme, 'Christmas', 'red' for Valentiens Day, 'Spring' and now the patriotic look. I am quite intrigued by this practice.

Memorial Day also is the unofficial start to Summer and barbeque-ing is the defining action of the day. Jamie fired up the BBQ and we had a little picnic on a blanket at home on Monday before coming back to Saginaw for the week. We also had a bike ride around the neighbourhood for a couple of hours. There were a lot of people visiting the cemetary as we biked past so I assume that Memorial Day is also about anyone that died, unless there are lots and lots of veterans buried near us. To me, the word 'veteran' has always meant an old person that came back from war, but here it doesn't have the same 'old' connotation because there are so many people that have been in the military at some time. There seems to be quite a few people that we know who were in the first Iraq war who are only our age or younger. The cemetary not only had flags placed every few metres along the fenceline, but also poking out of the ground all over it. At first I thought that everyone who was a veteran had a flag, but then I realised that they were all over the non-burial parts as well. The cemetary seems to go on for acres and acres and so there were probably tens of thousands of flags. Initially I thought that maybe everyone who visited for the day got a flag and they could put it wherever they wanted, but then I realised that they were placed in an orderly fashion so it must have been done by the people that work there. I wondered how many days it took to place them all.

I'm also quite surprised how inextricably linked Summer is with Christmas in my mind. We went shopping at Costco and all the Summer things were there - plastic pool toys, BBQs, outdoor swings, beach chairs (yes there are sandy beaches here in Michigan - they are just on lakes!) and to me it felt like Christmas shopping at 'The Warehouse' but rather strange as it is not December.

Overall, we had a nice weekend with three whole days at home rather than just two! We weren't completely home all the time because on Saturday we drove to Lansing to go to church with Jamie's mom and to see his Dad so that was a full day out and about. Next weekend we won't be home as we are going north for the weekend and the following one we'll only have one day there because on the Sunday we fly to California to see Rebecca and Jeremy. Maybe we need to re-title the blog 'a few bits and pieces from jamie and victoria's life in a suitcase'!

More on hotel life - VF

Here is our hotel - if you are really keen you can take a photo or virtual tour of it below the picture! This week we (I!!) have done more cooking in the evenings than before because there really is a limit on how many times you can eat out without a) becoming the size of a house and b) getting tired of homogeneous food. But now I have a list of things we need to bring back with us next week like seasonings and proper microwave dishes (styrofoam plates definitely don't do well in the microwave!) so we will almost be needing a trailer to bring our supplies with us! Or maybe we are just being fussy - yes maybe that's it because last night we went shopping to buy two new pillows because we are finding the hotel ones lumpy and the night before we bought lots of candles (yes the favourite pomegranate ones) so that room smells less like hotel air freshener. Suzette whom I went out with this week has lent us a little stove-thing with two heating elements for cooking on so we'll have to bring a pot as well next week!

I've had a couple of outings this week with some of the wives of the partners in the practice - one to a cafe for the 'Newcomers Group' and one out driving around potential neighbourhoods to live in. The Newcomers Group is for people who have just moved to Saginaw, although lots of the people have been here for ages and still go along to hang out with their now not new friends (or maybe they want to make new friends). So thats all an improvement on life as there was not much coming and going in the Detroit neighbourhood (although I did recently have an invitation to coffee from someone called Chrys in Berkley that I met online through finding her bookcrossing books).

Other local people I've met are 'Tracy' who goes to the hotel gym around the same time of day that I do (see last weeks 'more on the leisurely life posting'). She shares an apartment with one of the people who works at the front desk here and hangs out with lots of the other people who work here so I get to find all the goings on about their lives and past lives. 'Mary-Lou' also is into the fitness thing (it was inevitable that living here I would eventually run into someone with such a stereotypical USA name wasnt it?) - she is an older larger lady (probably in her late 70's) who is an ex-schoolteacher and has lived here all her life. She has a pacemaker and her doctor said that she had best get into shape if she wants to live much longer. So she comes to the pool every day for an hour. She walks up and down with her glasses on and neatly-done hair and calls out to people going past and chats to me as I swim up and down! Then she does lots of other exercise moves and uses her big blue and white polystyrene weights to firm up her arms. I told her she should run an aqua-aerobics class and people might pay to come (she has ALL the correct moves from when I used to do it!). When she is not using her weights she always offers them to me so I have a bit of a go from time to time - it's amazing how much resistance they create - it's actually quite hard to use them! She has lived all her life here, although in saying that, her and her husband go down to Alabama in Winter and up to their lake cottage about 360 miles away in Canada for the summer.

Whilst on the bike and treadmill at the gym I get enough of a dose of US cable TV to last me all day. There is always something yummy on Food Network and today the history channel had a documentary about a plane crash in 1982 where an Air Florida (no longer in existance 'cos the families all sued them and it went bankrupt) plane took off from Washington DC in a blizzard and crashed into the Potomic River. All but 5 people died (plus 4 in their cars on the bridge that the plane clipped as it went by). The rescue was complicated by gridlock traffic so rescue services couldnt get there and 8-inch thick blocks of ice on the river. It seems that there were a couple of reasons for the crash: the plane got de-iced, then had to wait another hour to take-off but they did not want to be too late so they did not de-ice it again [I will NEVER get annoyed again about the time it takes to de-ice planes that I am on!] and then when they did the pre-leaving checks the co-pilot read out the checklist 'engine de-icer' and the pilot said 'off' when in fact it should have been on [moral of the story for me - always fly out of Michigan in Winter on an airline like NorthWest that is used to snow, not on one based in a warm part of the country that is not used to having their internal engine de-icers on] so that the sensors were frozen up and did not register that it was not going fast enough along the runway or that it was not lifting up as it should when it did take off so within 30sec of taking off, it had crashed. For those who are into such things (I know who you are...!!) there is more info on these other sites and apparently it has been made into a movie as well.

Picture of de-icing a plane I was on before leaving Detroit last year (see comments in posting above and reference in posting from Feb 25th....) 

After my previous issues with squirrels eating and relocating the flower bulbs and finding empty tulip bulb 'skins' in the flower beds by the front door; I was rather excited when we got home on the weekend to see these couple of tulips and a grape hyacinth sprouting!!! Not quite the mass of colour brimming over the flower bed that I had initially envisaged, but at least there was something there! Maybe I will purchase some pansies and marigolds because at least they will eventually self-seed and reganerate (although given my luck with the two packets of forget-me-nots that I emptied in these flower beds in June last year that I never saw any evidence of, maybe I should just be content with what we've got!).  

As requested, more detail on the leisurely life....

Well, I am, almost at the end of week 2 "at the spa", and I am managing to not yet be bored! Generally my day consists of getting up when Jamie does, going down for breakfast with him and having either a small omelette or scrambled eggs and a leisurely read of the paper (not that it's hugely interesting - I find the USA Today is more like a news summary for school-age children than anything deep. I find it quite intriguing that the main headline of the day is usually not a news story but something else like 'foods that make you fat', 'everything you need to know about stem cell research' or 'why the current fascination with whether Hollywood stars are pregnant'). The paper-reading session usually lasts about half an hour after he has gone on his way and then I take a plastic bowl of fruit salad (today was mangoes and watermelon, yesterday was nectarines and pineapple) - I think it is a frozen mix as it is more mushy-tasting than super-fresh - and a blueberry yoghut and off I go back up to the room. Then to the e-mail or maybe some reading and about 10-ish I go to the gym for treadmilling and biking. At that time the morning rush is over and I can try and miss the weird super-skinny guy that comes in his lunchtime at 12 o'clock exactly, weighs himself, and then puts his legs that are about 1/4 the size of mine on the stepper-machine for 45minutes having changed the TV channel to 'Women's Entertainment'. I try and be out of there and into the pool by the time he gets there. There is another woman who comes about the same time as me and she says that this guy always changes the channel whereas her and I are both happy with CNN, Travel, FoodNetwork, talk shows or anything the other one wants but not WE and their 1940s slow, black and white movies! She works in a bar at a hotel across the road so I might have to drop by sometime and see how creative she is at making a non-alcoholic cocktail with no orange juice (boring) and no banana (yuk!). By the time I get back to the room the housekeeping people have made the bed (yay!) and it's about 1pm so more e-mail checking/work/reading/sorting out computer/paperwork/mail follow-up etc and a long leisurely bath to get rid of the pool chlorine. Lunch is the aforementioned snacks acquired from the breakfast buffet and appropriately chilled in the room fridge. There's generally some tidying, chores etc etc of some sort to be done somewhere along the line (but remember I'm trying to slow down and not be so hard-out as I used to be in my previous life in Auckland so these things can take a while!) and then it's almost time for Jamie to be back again (seeing as he finishes after 8 hours rather than like the other job where an 8 hour day was never 8 hours and could stretch to 10, 12 or 14 hours. So that's the current routine! Next week I will probably be out and about more as we met some of Jamie's colleagues' wives last night and they are planning some social events for me! Every day I am quite amazed that I actually have this opportunity to take 'time out' and be leisurely - these kind of times dont come too often in one's life so I am definitely enjoying it for now!!!

Happy as a boy in a candy store..... in this case outside a 100yr old shop that sells handmade chocolates, sweets and lollies (candy in Americanese!) [think 'Mary Grays' in Christchurch but also selling also ice-creams and rosted nuts]. After our Mexican meal we walked along the river (see pics below) and found this shop! I ordered a single scoop ice-cream which came out the size of a triple-scooper in NZ would be. I had the hugest drama of a problem - for the first time in my life I knew I could not finish it.... (chocolate custard with gooey caramel!)... so I spent about 5 minutes agonising about throwing 3/4 of it it in the rubbish bin... Jamie had his own chocolate mocha crunchy thing going on so could not help me out.... so out it had to go : ( 

Jamie liked this fountain (complete with bird a-top). If you look very closely you can see another bird sitting at the base of it (Mrs Finch!).  

If we had have had Jamie's camera with us instead of mine, we could have 'photo-stitched' this picture with the one below, but alas we did not so you will have to see them one at a time. There is a lot of construction going on along the river as you can see. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant owned by the brother of one the the techs at one of the hospitals that Jamie works at (yes the family IS Mexican!).  

On Tuesday night we went to Bay City for dinner (yes, as in the '70s group 'Bay City Rollers'!!), it is about 10km from Saginaw and a potential option for our current project of considering housing possibilities. The city is on the Saginaw River at Saginaw Bay which is on Lake Huron. One of Jamie's collegues lives in these condos which we thought about buying something similar on the river for a year or so, but the current thought is to just go straight into the 'family home' idea rather than buying two properties within the short-medium term.  

Updating life away from the Berkley estate

Well, the first week went well in Saginaw: the new work scene went well for Jamie and rest and relaxation went well for me! Jamie is referring to my new lifestyle as 'the spa' or the Holiday Inn Spa. I think Spa de Saginaw is quite a good name because Americans pronounce the name of the town in such a way that it sounds to me as though it rhymes with 'spa' - in fact initially I thought it must be spelt as 'Saginar' because that is what everyone seemed to be saying. But is was SO NICE to get home on Friday evening to the Berkley estate! I had forgotten how nice the house is and how much wood there is everywhere. I have some more photos that I took recently that I will put on the kodak gallery link. I was really craving some 'normal' food after having every meal either in the hotel or at a restaurant of some sort so we stopped at the supermarket not far from home (whilst we were in there there was a HUGE thunderstorm, so loud it initially sounded like things were falling off the shelves!) and got some provisions for the weekend. No sooner had we walked in the door I was peeling a 5-pound bag of potatoes like a mad-woman! (I did heaps as we were taking lunch items to share on Saturday after church). Also peas/beans and a vegetarian stroganoff that turned out rather well if dont say so myself. I think that as time goes by (and when I stop being a hermit and start wanting to get out of the hotel during the day) we will probably bring more food with us each week as we do have a fridge and microwave in the hotel and we can bring the electric frypan and crock-pot with us. But for now whilst we get our bearings and adjust to the new environment, we are eating out and there have been no complaints from Mrs Finch about the situation! Last week Jamie worked at Covenant Medical Center, a 768-bed facility. This week he might be there again as he was scheduled at St Mary's hospital but their credentialling meeting wasnt until this morning so we assume that after he has been to that and they have given him the a-ok, he can work there as well. Other facilities that the practice (group as they call it), serves are Hills & Dales General Hospital (sounds to me like a cute little country hospital), Open MRI of the Thumb (the Thumb refers to the eastern part of Michigan - if you look at a map, Michigan is shaped like a mitten and this part if the thumb of it!), and Tawas (which apparently is really beautiful and is further up the side of Lake Huron) The Tawas area hospital and Standsh Hospital are further away and so the group has a condominium where whoever is working there for the week can stay. Apparently everyone requests to work there over Summer as it is very nice!

Anyway, back to the weekend, we had a very leisurely time - catching up with friends etc after church and an early night on Saturday night. On Sunday morning we went out to eat at Jamie's favourite breakfast place (The Original Pancake House) for delicious omelettes and then I got to work getting everything washed and packed in order to leave again!

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V & J xx

Arrival in a new location - VF

Well here we are in Saginaw! (Where's Saginaw?) Jamie started his new job yesterday and it seems to have gone well. The people are apparently just as nice as when we visited and apart from getting to know the new computer system, the day went well. I had a nice day too (and again today) doing all the things that I thought I would do when I became a wife but haven't had time to do with all this home rennovation etc that we have doing over the past few months!!! I think it might be quite a while before I get bored! Between the gym and the pool and all the computer-related tasks I have on my list to attend to.... my goodness me it might indeed be quite a while!!!!

Jamie assembling the cycle rack and putting it onto the back of the 4WD. 

Jamie part way through our ride with the lake that we went right around in the background. I think we need to get him a bike that is as cool as mine (disc brakes, cool shock absorbers and 27 gears!). 

Me with my new bike!!! (Jamie said I didnt look fat but I think the pic makes me look like the back of a bus, but at least you can see the cool bike and scenery behind). We rode for an hour - 8miles (close to 13 km) and it was SO nice to be out and about in the fresh Spring air 

a NEW blue bike

Today we went shopping at REI (a sporting goods shop) with the intention of buying some more Gatorade sachets for our friend Chad who is in Iraq (by the way we found a few good pictures of him 25 years ago when we were cleaning out the basement - he and Jamie were on the high-school swim-team). We came out with not just Gatorade, but also a new bike for me!!! When I was riding it around I realised how much I have been missing not going for bike rides. So tomorrow we plan to take a picnic and head off to a place called 'Kensington Park' which is about 30-40 minutes away from here. Pictures to come!!!

We're back again

After a longer than planned absence, we're back! Instead of flying back from Mississippi after 6 days as originally intended, there was a collective family decision to bring Jamie's parents back to Michigan with us. We had found a place for his dad that we thought might be better for him than the nursing home that he has been in, it's called a 'Memory Care Residence' and it is less than 10 min from their home/s in Lansing. So eventually off we set in convoy - Jamie's mom's van and his brother Jon's little Mercedes SLK. We swapped seating around a bit over the two days of travelling (1ooo miles/ 1600km) apart from Jamie's Dad who missed out on riding in the speorts car as his lack of mobility prevents him from getting into such a low vehicle. We drove through Mississippi to Alabama, through Tenessee to Kentucky where we stayed the night in Louisville (thankfully we timed it ok as a couple of days later was the Kentucky Derby so had we been later there may not have been rooms for us at the Hampton Inn) and the next day drove through Indiana to Michigan. So I have now done the US from South to North! After getting Jamie's Dad settled in, Jon, Jamie and I stayed with his Mom for a few days to help her get further on in the tasks that we had spent the previous few weeks helping with. Lets just say that besides an empty basement, she has a cleaned out barn/shed and a house that is 'debulked' as Jamie puts it. Most of the unusable items from three generations of households/four generations of family have gone away to the place wherever it is that unwanted items go in two huge 30 yard dumpters. On Wendesday night Jamie set up a slide projector and we had a slide show of some of their childhood pictures! It was quite amazing to see the similarities to family life in the '70s but amusing to see the differences between a family of 3 boys compared to our family of 3 girls! Also the mid-west US/NZ differences - beach holidays were on a sandy lakefront, rather than by the sea, trips to the park was an amusement park not a playground etc. In one of the pictures they were watching a slideshow and eating popcorn from a large round Tupperware container - so iff Jamie went and made some popcorn and put it in the exact same container that was still in the kitchen! It was also quite fascinating to see how our little house was 40 years ago - yes, that's where his parents lived when they first got married too! Now we have two days off to rest before getting ready to pack up for life in a hotel 5 days/week....