Reflection on our first two months .....

.... Now that I've rediscovered this blog - I suppose it's time for me to start to use it!  It's been two months since Kathryn and I left the UK and arrived here in the US.  I can honestly say that on the whole it's been absolutely brilliant.  I did have a couple of days in April when I felt really low - but I think that was more to do with the amount of unpacking that was in front of me, and I was feeling very housebound!!  However, I'm back to normal now.

Our first couple of weeks we stayed at the hotel in Novi.  The place was great - we had an apartment set up to make us feel as comfortable as we could be.  While it was really nice, it felt great when we finally moved into our new house - even though we didn't have much furniture at the time.

We moved into this house on 1st April which made me smile as I've often moved on or around this date.  It was 1st April when I first moved to London in 1984 - and when I found my diary for that year, I'd written "this is either going to be brilliant or a fool's move!"  It turned out to be a great move - and I think this move is going to be good too.

Now that we have all our furniture, books, clothes, crafting stash, CDs, photographic equipment and other stuff, this house feels like home.  Kathryn has settled into her new school really well and has made friends.  She only has a few more weeks at school - they break up early over here - term ends on 14th June!!  Kathryn plans to spend as much of her summer break in the local pool as she can!  Jonathan is very busy at work, but hopefully he will be able to take some holiday soon and then perhaps we can all have a holiday.

When we were in Wales we used to enjoy going out to visit local places of interest, and we have been determined to carry on with that over here.  We've been out to Lansing - capital of Michigan, but it was rather dull and grey on our first visit, so we will go again.  We've joined the Henry Ford Museum - there's so much to see there; I can see several visits in the next few months.  We've become members of Detroit Zoo - another place that we'll visit again.

I've managed to get to a craft show - something I never did in the UK - it was fantastic and I'm already looking forward to my next show :)

And today, we went to Motor City Comic Con at the Suburban Showplace in Novi.  I think I can safely say that we are a family of nerds/geeks!!!  Jonathan and I share a love of science fiction in all its various forms - books, comics, films and TV shows.  I also really enjoy fantasy fiction of the vampire variety, as does Kathryn.  However, Kathryn told us that her love of Monster High dolls didn't make her a nerd/geek!  She changed her mind when she found the latest doll on one of the stalls!!!

It was really busy - there was a much longer queue for Comic Con than Mega Meet :)  There were lots of TV celebrities at the show too - Dean Cain (Superman), Colin Ferguson (Eureka), Britt Ekland (???), Bill Mumy (Babylon 5) and Peter Tork (The Monkees) to name a few!!!  Here are a few pictures of our day out.

Just love this licence plate!!!

There were lots of people in costume - some were really excellent.

Colin Ferguson (Sheriff Carter in Eureka) with a fan.

Some characters from Star Wars.

The dalek from the 2WW - love it!!

This is the queue waiting to get in as we left at midday - it was around the block!!

Oh yes, I am no longer housebound!!  Today, we picked up another car for Jonathan to use to get to and from work, and that means I can use his car.  I've been out in the car a few times, but today was the first time I'd done more than a 10 minute drive.  I like the grid system of roads - very easy to get around - and next week I'm going to do just that!  Bye for now.

A recovered blog ....

...  one good thing that has come out of all the changes happening at Blogger is that I've rediscovered my very first blog!!!  Apparently I started this one in 2004 and then promptly forgot all about it!  I going to have a think about what to do with this one.  But I've a feeling I may use it to record our adventures in the States!

That's all for now.  I'm scheduling this to post in the morning!

Random Viewing

Have just had a quick look at some other Blogs. Very impressive. I have to work out how to add pictures, put in the nice side bar information, etc. Still very much a beginner at this sort of thing. Still it could be fun.

Starting Out

I think the main purpose of my blog will be to detail my study with the Open University. I've been a student since 2003 and to date have passed two courses - S103: Discovering Science and ST240: Our Chemical Environment. At the moment I'm working my way through S293: Fats for Life. This is an interesting course, but the writing style is rather difficult to get to grips with. Still I hope to have finished the end of course assessment by 10th January. Then I shall be starting on S205: The Molecular World. This is a second level chemistry course - it gives an introduction to most areas in chemistry.
Anyway I think this is probably all for now, as it's almost time to close the computer for Christmas.