Done and Dusted!

Yep, that's right, we're both done. Finished. Have our lives back. Neither of us knows how well we've done, and we probably won't know for about another two months, but at least neither of us has the pressure of studying hanging over us any more. Yay!

Ian had his written exam last Tuesday. It was mainly multiple choice and he thinks he's done OK. He's been doing really well on the mock tests so there is no reason to think he's done anything than pass. He was talking to his Captain today asking what he would have to do as well as get the pass to get his "probie" label removed. They've been that impressed with his commitment and performance that they're happy to recommend his promotion as soon as he gets his pass so it shows that persistence pays off.

After his exam, Ian and the boys headed round the corner for a "few" drinks! He then managed to wake Annalie up when he sauntered home at 1.30am but she forgave him, because he deserved it. Shame it was a school night for her though!

Ian has also been involved in other Fire Department activities over the last couple of weeks. First there was a "mock car accident" demonstration at Glastonbury High School to show the kids how scary it is to be extracted from a car wreck. It is supposed to put them off drink driving. So Ian got involved in photographing the exercise for the team.

Monday 25th May was Memorial Day in the US so we got a bank holiday out of them. As part of the celebrations, most towns have a parade and Glastonbury is no exception. The Fire Department are a big part of the parade so the engines get spruced up and the Department turns out in its finery. As Ian hasn't "graduated" yet, he couldn't exactly march with the others, but he found a way to get involved! He ended up stood in their rescue boat, donning an ice rescue suit in 70+ degree heat!! Maybe they did that to him on purpose! Being the newbie and all

And today he's been putting all his newly-learned skills to the test on a forest rescue drill. Annalie's sure it's just an excuse for boys to play with toys! He was racing through the woods on an ATV and chopping trees down with a chainsaw. Sounds like too much fun to be serious!!

There's also been some advancements at the limo company. He's had a couple of small jobs, but now he's free from all his study, he can be more gainfully employed So he was at the yard getting his pay check and chatting about availability when he overheard them complaining about a shortage of bus drivers. Given his past experience, he piped up and is now getting ready to get his bus license so he can get more regular, and better paid work.

Also on the work front, Ian went for an assessment with Glastonbury Town for the position of 911 Dispatcher, which would complement his work with the Fire Department. There were 16 candidates taking this test, which included note taking while watching a video, then questions were asked based on the notes, and finally there was a computerised moving map with 4 different simulated police vehicles on it and scenarios where he had to "dispatch" which vehicle and how soon it had to get to the scene.

Annalie's dissertation reached its climax today as well. She'd got through most of the main content earlier in the week and had been getting good feedback from her tutor. And amazingly she is only 1,000 words over the limit which is a good percentage seeing as that is 18,000 words At the end she just had to write a "learning statement" to reflect on what she'd learnt during the course of the project. As usual, the word count simply wasn't enough for her though! So she hasn't written about as many subjects as she'd have liked, but what she's provided is better than nothing! Just when she thought she'd finished, she decided to review the dissertation handbook one last time, only to find there were some niggly little bits she needed to include in the appendices. So a couple of hours spent this morning finishing it off and she was ready to hand it in.

So off it was posted to her tutor. But she also had to arrange to get the thing bound. Luckily, her friend Melly (thanks Mel ) had recommended a website through which binding can be ordered. And to top it all off, it is just down the road from University in Leeds So the plan is, that Annalie will stop off in the UK on the way to the Paris Air Show in order to hand the damn thing in herself. Then she can get it out of her mind completely! It's currently due to be ready for collection on Friday 12th June, but she's hoping to convince them to get it ready on the 11th.

Annalie has also received feedback from her penultimate assignment that was handed in back in March. Amazingly she has maintained her 70+% scores, so the pressure is really on for the dissertation if she's going to get a first!

There's also been a Girls' Night Out with the Rolls-Royce ladies at one of our favourite restaurants in Glastonbury, Sakura Garden. It was the first time she'd had a drink in several weeks so made the most of the fact that she wasn't driving (Sake anyone? ). On Friday there were some drinks after work as one of the Rolls-Royce guys bid goodbye to IAE and Glastonbury. There was a good turnout at Houlihan's but it's not surprising. Iggy is a nice guy and has been around for a while. Ian joined the IAE crew to see some of the guys for the first time in ages. He also met our new next door neighbour, who is another RR secondee. Annalie is concerned about their mutual love of motorbikes though and how much Ian's desire for a bike has returned. Hmmmm.

Over the long weekend we also went out to get some new additions for the deck, now that the good weather is getting more regular. Check out the photos (House and stuff) for a view of our hammock and a hummingbird nectar feeder. We've already had a couple of new visitors to that, but they are so flighty and skittish that they're gone before you can photograph them. And then you wait to photograph them and they never come back. They're such teases!

And finally, we've been getting more prepared for our our trip to NZ in October. We've got an itinerary agreed, so we've finally managed to book the campervan for our travels, the ferry from the North Island to the South Island, and the hotel we're going to end up in when we reach Queenstown for the last few days there. We've decided to fly from Queenstown back up to Auckland to catch our return flight to the US, so we're going to ditch the campervan a few days early and finish off with some luxury before flying home.

Not that we're wishing time away, but we can't wait for that trip!

(By the way, Orlando photos are now uploaded sorry about the delay - we've just had other things on our minds!)

Congrats Mr B - One Down, One to Go

Well, it's been a couple of weeks so there's a few things to update you on. Firstly, and most importantly, Ian has passed the practical element of his firefighter exams. So he's half way through his assessments with just the written exam to go on the 26th. His practical involved six different stations, each with a different test. These were: changing a burst hose and nozzle operation, water into a building via sprinkler unit and closing individual sprinkler head (whilst trying to avoid getting completely drenched!!), overhaul and salvage - protecting items of furniture getting too wet and damaged, self-contained breathing apparatus assessments, large, heavy ladder drill and building ventilation, and HazMat tanker rollover. He was one of a handful that passed every test first time, so he's now officially a girlie swot, just like Annalie Well done Ian!

He's been revising hard for the written part as well though. He and a bunch of the other guys have been meeting up in a study group to prepare themselves for the test. He's got this Tuesday at the Academy and then the Tuesday after for the test and that's his training over. He just has to do a couple of bits at the fire house and then he can be a fully-fledged firefighter, and able to take the "Probationer" badge off Although Annalie's not sure if she's pleased about this or not

Ian's Ground School is also over and he has successfully passed that too This means he can now go to the FAA department at the local airport and take his written test for that - although it's probably a little harder than the firefighter test! There are plenty of mock tests online so he's had his head buried in those for the past couple of weeks. There's a pretty high pass mark needed so he's making sure he's consistently getting past that before forking out $100 on a test! But to start flying, he needs to apply to the TSA to get clearance because he's an "alien"! This is an extra security measure that has been put in place since 9/11 as all the terrorists learnt to fly in the States before they committed the hijackings.

Annalie is also well on her way to completing university and finishing her dissertation with well over 12,000 words written already. Unfortunately this means that, yet again, she's going to blast through a word limit, but who's counting right now? What matters is that she gets it written and handed in. The deadline is June 1st, but because of her unusual circumstances, i.e. being in another continent, let alone country, Leeds Met Uni are being very flexible about the hand in date.

So Annalie thought she'd make the most of the fact that she's flying to Europe for the Paris Air Show and has negotiated a hand in date of June 11th or 12th, depending on when it will be available to pick up from the binders. She'd like to get it emailed on June 1st to prove that she can meet the deadline, and that will enable her to get the cheapest binding option done (10 days' notice). But we shall see. There's still two weeks to go, but she thinks that will be enough time. She's been sending sections to her tutor already and has been given the thumbs up for most.

This trip will make up for the recent one Annalie missed to Europe thanks to Rolls-Royce On May 1st, Annalie was due to pick a hire car up at about 3.30pm to travel to the UK that night, spending the weekend at home before flying to Germany for an event and some meetings. Only that morning, Rolls-Royce decided to issue a travel restriction based on "pig flu." But rather than restricting travel just to Mexico, they restricted all international travel. So the IAE Leadership Team had an emergency meeting to see if the trip to Germany would still be on. Eventually they called it off. So just as Annalie should have been preparing to pick her hire car up, she was ringing the travel agent and cancelling everything. So she missed out on Lucy's birthday party But on the positive side it did give her a bit more dedicated time to her dissertation instead of travelling so she's probably closer to finishing now than she would have been had she been in Europe for a week. She's no good at working and travelling together!!

Elsewhere Ian has had a steady stream of driving work that has taken up his Friday's. Annalie managed to get him a good job for IAE so he drove a few of the guys he knows down to New York for a lunch and then brought them back. They were very impressed with his professionalism and actually feeling safe in a car for once (for those of you that have experienced American driving, you know what we mean!!). Once he's got the written exam out of the way for the fire department, he'll be able to do a few more days' work if he wants, but Annalie thinks he quite likes it the way things are

Annalie has also been getting closer to one of the girls that was working for Pratt & Whitney Communications but has recently transferred to the corporate headquarters, which is in downtown Hartford. She wants to meet Jennifer's two hounds because she's amazed how a single girl can cope with them - a Great Dane and a Lab x Great Dane!! But they sound like fab dogs and we're sure Jennifer must feel very secure having those two around!

But other than that Annalie has been working hard. Neither of us have been to the IAE golf league yet. Ian has been at the fire academy every Tuesday so far and Annalie has made the most of the quiet time that affords her and cracked on with her assignment. But with only two weeks left for both of us now, we know there will be other opportunities soon enough.

Visitor number 1

So we've had our first visitor of the year, and so far the only person who's booked in to see us. Ami was a temp with Annalie's team at Rolls-Royce a couple of years back and has kept in touch since moving on. He now works for Virgin so used his ridiculous staff travel concessions to do a tour of North America and the Caribbean (or at least that's what it sounded like!).

Ian had to act as "babysitter" on Friday as Annalie had to work. So he took Ami up to Manchester to shoot some pool. Apparently the score was quite one-sided in the end.

Annalie decided to take a couple of nights off from writing her dissertation to entertain him. The first night was simply a meal at a local Mexican that we had not tried before. After a stressful Friday at work though, Annalie felt like some more serious relaxation and took Ami down to Mohegan Sun for a dabble on the card tables.

Ami had been more of a slots player in the past but Annalie managed to get him hooked on the Black Jack when, after losing a bit on one table, he moved to another and didn't seem able to lose! We both came away up. Annalie could have been up more, but she decided to wager her two $5 chips in an attempt to walk away with $100, and therefore doubling her money. It didn't work though, but she still walked away $25 up. Ami managed $20 up - not bad for a beginner!

This weekend we've had a taste of what might be in store for us this summer as we've experienced temperature well into the 80s It's been quite incredible Ian had a full-on day outside at the Fire Academy doing ladder drills and the heat managed to send one of the more experienced firefighters to hospital!

As the sun got its hat on, we thought it would be a prime opportunity to crack open the grill - sorry, barbeque! - for its inaugural cook out. The corn has appeared in the shops again, although not local as it's not quite the weather for our Connecticut crops just yet. But we got some ears anyway and grilled some pork chops to accompany them. Yum! We also made sure we had a lunch sat outside at the Diamond Bar to catch a few rays. We didn't realise that they hadn't got their awning up yet so we were trying to shade ourselves under a small umbrella that only just provided enough cover for the two of us! As the sun moved, Annalie was getting sizzled.

Other than that we didn't have much opportunity to enjoy the weather. Annalie has been cracking on with her dissertation again, and has even squeezed in another trip to JetBlue this week. It wasn't as fruitful as she'd hoped but it's better than nothing. She even took a trip to work this weekend to print out what she's got so far - nearly 100 pages of it! But that will come down quite a bit as she starts rewriting the content.

We didn't even manage to sneak in a game of golf to really make the most of the outdoors. Although last weekend we tried Minnechaug Golf Course for the first time this year and both had pretty poor games. Although on the 8th hole, which is an island green, Ian somehow managed to "bounce" his ball from the water to the green! A bit of a fluke, but it worked! After this poor performance Annalie decided it was about time for another lesson and headed back to our mate Don for some proper instruction. By the end of her hour she was hitting like Tiger again (she wishes!). Well, certainly a lot better than she had been at the start.

Annalie also had an impromptu half-day break from work, of the paid kind, because she still worked on her dissertation. As a response to the economic downturn, Pratt & Whitney has declared five furlough days for their staff - basically enforced unpaid leave. Easter Monday is not a bank holiday here so we were expected to work, except that P&W had declared it a furlough. So with only a quarter of the usual employees in that day, not much was really happening and the management took the decision to send everyone home at lunchtime. It didn't help that P&W Security was arguing with every member of staff turning up for work, telling them they shouldn't be there and it was a lock-down due to the furlough

Visiting the Mouse House

With Annalie's sister and family holidaying in Orlando this Easter, we decided it was a good excuse for ourselves to get down to the "Mouse House" Annalie made an excuse to use the trip as part of her Masters research as Orlando is the location of JetBlue's "University" where all new employees go through their induction, or Orientation process. She was invited to participate in one such session, so travelled down to Florida the Tuesday before the family arrived to attend "JetBlue U" on the Wednesday. It proved to be great fodder for her dissertation so she was glad of the opportunity to do it. She should have a lot of good material for the thesis now, it's now just a case of making sense of it academically.

Ian arrived on the Friday so she introduced him to all things Orlando before some lunch and dinner and some serious discussions about what we were going to do with our relatively free Saturday. The family weren't due to arrive until the late afternoon, so we had the day to kill. With all the attractions and activities we could have done, we ended up playing golf! Again!

The course we chose happened to be right beside Kissimmee executive airport, so we sometimes played dodge the light aircraft with our drives! Ian did manage to stick one ball on the end of the runway, but we're sure it's not the first time...The round was pretty abysmal for both of us so we almost wish we hadn't bothered with it and that we'd spent more money and gone somewhere else or done something different!

By the time we got back, the Twemlows were unpacking in their room so we went to wake them up (with the time difference we were sure the kids would be flagging!). To our surprise all were awake and happy to see us (we think! ).

We took them off for an early dinner as we knew an early night would be in order. The plan was to hit Epcot on Sunday as we'd been advised to do the Magic Kingdom last. It meant that we would both miss out on the opportunity to go there but at least it's easier for us to go back than it is for the family. And making their holiday good was more important.

The family trooped off to the welcome meeting to get sorted with their tickets while we waited for the text to say they were done. By the time all the paperwork had been sorted and breakfast had been eaten, we didn't get to the park until about 11.30. We all queued up to pick up our tickets. Annalie had no problem with hers, but it seemed that Andrea's rep had sold her a pony! We had to wait about 20 minutes before we were able to all get in the park. But we were given a priority pass for a ride of our choosing for our trouble

And we were in. Annalie introduced the family to the concept of FastPass (getting a timed entry to a ride ahead of time). We got one for a new ride called Soarin' before going on the Lucy (and Greg )-friendly Nemo and Friends. We had a go at Honey I Shrunk the Audience and then headed over to Test Track to do a "proper" ride for Jack The queue was huge and even FastPass was showing a time of 8pm, but we got one anyway. Ian and Jack then decided to try the "single rider" line to make up the numbers in other cars. It was only showing a 20-minute wait, so we thought it would be a short wait. As we stood trying to shade from the sun, the single rider wait time crept up to 30 minutes, and then 40. We thought we might be in for a much longer stay, but they reappeared just over 20 minutes later.

We then used our priority pass to go on the ride next door, Mission to Mars, that succeeded in sending us all a bit queasy with it's good simulation of a rocket launch. Some playing with toys later and we were all ready for some dinner, so we headed off round the "World Showcase" to find something edible. Greg voted for the United Kingdom, but fish and chips was vetoed for some native American cuisine burgers and hot dogs!

After dinner had settled (very important that!) we headed off in the direction of our FastPass rides. Soarin' was our first stop, which was an innovative experiential ride. Then we headed for Test Track. Lucy even managed to enjoy the fast car ride - although the obligatory photo came out a treat with Andrea desperately trying to hold on to Lucy's head to stop her banging herself!

After all that we'd had enough for one day and made our way back to the car, just missing the fireworks.

The next day we thought we'd go for something a little less strenuous, so we settled on Gatorland for something more subdued! We all got to get very close to the animals, which seemed to have a penchant for turkey frankfurters! Even the heavy rain showers didn't seem to deter them!

For Ian's last night we ventured to CiCi's Pizza for an all-you-can-eat buffet for just $5.99. Plus we had buy one get one free vouchers There was a distinct liking for the cheesey garlic bread around the table. I think there will be another visit there before the Twemlows leave!

Tuesday saw an early drop-off to the airport for Ian's return flight as he had to get back for the Fire Academy. Annalie and co decided to make it their day to visit Disney Hollywood Studios. Most of this park was a bit of a disappointment. It was very crowded and a relatively cold day with a cold wind blowing through clear blue skies. Annalie and Jack went off to try and find some of the more interesting rides seeing as both the Tower of Terror and the Rock 'n' Rollercoaster both had late FastPass times. Annalie and Andrea managed to sneak extra Passes for the latter - because we'd already got Passes for the Tower, the Rollercoaster wouldn't allow us to get tickets for it. But the machines were playing up, so we played dumb to the attendant handing out tickets and wangled some extras

There was a Star Tours simulator ride and the Studio Backlot Tour, plus a ride through the Movies, but nothing quite held the excitement of the two major rides. After we'd watched the Lights, Motors, Action show, we headed over to the Tower only to find a big queue because only half the ride was working. Annalie and Jack still endured the 50-minute wait and were rewarded with a cool ride We were just in time to make the Rollercoaster and had probably the first "proper" ride of the holiday! Andrea and Annalie were mean though and teased Jack about screaming like a girl throughout the ride The photo did nothing to convince us otherwise!

Wednesday was a lazy day by the pool to work on the tan and to allow Annalie some time to recharge the batteries before leaving for home the following day. She tried to drop the family off at Seaworld before going back to pack, but after getting stuck in traffic, she kicked them out to walk the last bit and just got back to her hotel with about 15 minutes before check out A rushed pack and made the deadline.

Getting back to CT meant that Annalie could get back to focusing on eating correctly, which hadn't exactly been easy while in Orlando. She's hoping the walking made up for it a little. Although there was also a fair bit of standing. In queues!

In Annalie's absence, Ian has been selling flowers(!) for the Fire Department. Each Spring they have a plant sale as a fundraiser. As a volunteer with not much else to occupy his time, Ian got stuck with a couple of shifts. He really does live the high life while the Mrs is away

On Friday Ian went for a bit of a briefing as part of his flight ground school, getting some one-to-one time with his instructor, who has offered to teach him to fly (the actual flying bit, not just the ground school!) for a cheaper rate than the school is offering. Annalie wonders what he's giving in return for this cheap rate

Saturday saw another day at the Fire Academy, giving Annalie some time to work on her dissertation. Oh yeah. She'd managed to forget about that a bit while on holiday, so now it's back to the grindstone . We took the night off though and headed out to the Funny Bone comedy show. There were some good acts on stage but the headliner, Mark Eddie, was in that spot for a reason. Very funny and a great voice. Colin would have liked it for the guitar improv that took place

We've been trying to upload the photos from Orlando but the website is having a few "issues." Annalie has put some on Facebook though, if any of you are "friends"