Long Overdue Update

I really should have kept this updated, as this has been an amazing summer. Oh well, such is life....been so darn busy.

Ok, so I bought myself a LOVELY 2002 Mini Cooper S. It really tears up the roads. I have gotten pretty good at driving it and a manual transmission, I think. Whatever the case, it is loads of fun.



Found a 3 bedroom house to rent in the village of Dowley, located on the west side of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The house is spectacular, especially for the good deal I got on rent. The master bedroom has this amazing long huge window across one entire side of the room - around 15 feet long and 6 feet tall. The view out the window is down the hill of the village and over the valley where I can see some great English countryside. Stars viewable from bed, and the moon. Lovely walking trails nearby. Truly great.

It is a drive into work - 30 mins to an hour, depending on whether I am coming in to the company or client office. But not so bad. Good schools in the area, once I convince them to let the kids in. :)

And I found myself something wonderful called Freecyle. In a nutshell, freecycle is this social network of people posting emails to mailing lists offering away free stuff that they want to get rid of. Since I moved into the house 6 weeks ago, I have LITERALLY furnished the entire thing off of freecycle. That's enough beds & bedroom stuff, house stuff, kitchen gear, etc, for a home of 2 adults and 3 kiddos. Some of the stuff is pretty average, nothing horrible. But some is REALLY nice quality.

For instance, got a hardwood sideboard from someone, so nice. And there is the mahogany dining table that came with 2 leaves, big enough to seat 8. Wonderful. :)

And, a special gift from above, got a free 180 litre fish tank with stand that I am setting up as my first UK marine aquarium. It is 100 cm long, 40 cm deep & 50 cm tall. I have gotten it drilled by a friend in the West London Reef Club. Last night I cut and siliconed together the internal overflows (called weirs over here). And tonight I will hopefully manage to get the stand modified & reinforced and the overflows installed...perhaps even some plumbing work accomplished.

ALSO, even cooler, I got a huge pile of free live rock and other reef goodies from someone over here who is actually moving to Ohio in the fall. I actually have MORE rock then I even need. He also gave me a skimmer which I will mod for better performance, a fluidized bed filter which I will mod to use as a phosban / carbon reactor, and some misc reef chemicals, salt, pump or 2, etc. Way cool - makes me feel so much better about all the stuff I unloaded before moving from the USA.

Anyhow, been fun. I'll try to post again soon. Perhaps I will try to fill in some more details of my time over here, retroactively.

Oh yeah, best news of all, the wife & kiddos have plane tickets to leave from DFW Sunday, September 9th. They'll arrive the next morning (overnight flight) in Heathrow at around noon. Woohoooooooo! :) ;) :D

I found a local reef club called the West London Reef Club which has been fun so far.