Category: Life, The Universe and Everything

I just looked back and realized that I hadn’t posted anything since Dawnise broke her wrist in February.

Sheesh.

Kamran, the cat we adopted the same day Dawnise had her “uncontrolled descent,” has integrated and generally made himself at home. He and Ivan have largely reached détente – the last few mornings I’ve come downstairs to find them both sleeping at the top of the cat tree. He really likes sitting in laps – and doesn’t really care if you’re ready for him or not.

Mixed in with the home-find and home-buying shenanigans, Dawnise accompanied me on a work trip back to Seattle in June. Her first trip stateside since January 2022. We got to spend time with my brother, sister and brother-in-law and our nieces, and my parents. My parents had relocated from Florida to the Pacific North West in March, and we got to drive up to see their new place – about an hour north of Seattle. Dawnise and my mom spent a day driving all over WA visiting quilt and sewing stores. It was the most time in a car since our trip to New Zealand (which I refuse to believe was nearly a year ago).

Around work and family visits Dawnise and I reconnected with friends over brunches, dinners and pub trivia (there’s something deeply ironic about traveling thousands of miles from London to participate in a “British style pub quiz”) and got a proper donut. Okay, maybe more than a donut. Maybe a couple donuts. I regret nothing.

Eurovision was “nearly in our back yard” in May, but we hadn’t tried for tickets. and had our traditional viewing with friends at the flat. Thanks to some “totally coincidental, really” train strikes, a bunch of people who had gotten tickets also ended up watching on TV, which I’m sure they were thrilled about.

Also in May the UK participated in one of its utterly archaic institutions and crowned a new King. I was in Seattle for work – Dawnise watched much of the days pomp and circumstance with some friends.

I’m sure there’s other interesting stuff in there, but from the haze of the move it seems like the time just flew past. Somewhere in there I made several work trips back to Seattle, and have another coming in a few weeks.

I just really like Virgin Atlantic’s food, what can I say.

In any event, I’ll endeavour to post on a more regular cadence.

For the second time in recent memory Dawnise and I found ourselves reflecting on the length of Purple Rain’s outro while surrounded by the sturm und drang of moving.

We hadn’t planned to move, but life – as the saying goes – is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

What happened? The short(ish) version of the long story goes something like this:

Two and a half years ago, in the depth of the pandemic, the flat that we’d lived in since arriving in the UK sprung a leak. Not the sort of small leak that’s easily and quickly fixed, mind you. The sort of leak that involves “water cascading down the inside of doors and dripping out of light fixtures” and requires major roofing works that can’t get underway for months.

We conducted a frantic search for a flat and were lucky enough to find one in the same neighborhood that had just been put up for rent. The owners of the flat had moved abroad and had been looking to sell it, but the market hadn’t cooperated so they ended up falling back to putting it up for rent. It ticked all our boxes, we made an offer to rent it, they accepted, and we hired movers as quickly as we could get keys.

By the time our two year lease was ending last October we had developed a pretty good relationship with the owners, and we mutually agreed to renew the lease for another two years.

So why, you might ask, did we move?

Fair question.

A number of times over our tenancy the owners asked us to let the flat be shown to a potentially interested buyer. We’d cooperate, ’cause that’s just how we are, and for a while there’d be a looming cloud of uncertainty and instability that drove us a bit nuts.

The owners asked again near the beginning of the year, kicking off renewed uncertainty, and Dawnise and I decided enough was enough.

We discussed our options and found only three: we could move into something owned by a commercial landlord, who’d be less likely to sell out from under us. We could try to buy the place we were in, or we could try to buy something else. Renting from someone else didn’t feel like a solution, just kicking the can down the road, so we decided to focus on the other two.

We had seen the sales listing for the flat while we were flat hunting, so had some idea about what the owners were after – at least a couple years ago, so I started watching the “central-ish” London real estate market. In March we started doing occasional “real-life” viewings. Everyone had told us that a real-estate transaction here would take on average 6 months, so it didn’t feel like we were starting all that early if we wanted to align with October.

When we’d found two candidate properties we had a candid conversation with our landlords. I shared why we’d started looking – that the recurring churn of a potential sale was the primary motivator – shared the listings for the couple of the properties we were considering, and basically said “we don’t particularly want to move – we like the flat, you want to sell it, here’s our best offer.”

They went away and thought about it, and came back with a minimum that was higher than our maximum. No zone of possible agreement.

So, not really expecting much to come of it, we made an offer on our first choice. We’d been told there were several other offers on the table, and we went in at the asking price. Like I said, we didn’t think anything would come of it.

We didn’t fully appreciate how much leverage we had being “chain free.”

Chains? Like Marley’s Chains? No. Well… maybe.

In American English we’d say that Dawnise and I had no contingencies. We weren’t trying to sell a property to finance this purchase – and that made our offer more compelling than the others on the table. So a bit to our surprise the sellers verbally accepted.

(I should note that the purchase process in the UK is markedly different from in the US, and I could spill a bunch of ink here – but for the moment imagine it’s the same, it doesn’t really matter that much. If you’re curious, drop me a note, I’ll write a separate post if there’s sufficient interest.)

Suddenly we were buying a house – and because the house was owned by a developer who’d renovated it (more later) they wanted the transaction to “complete” (close) quickly. We’d been candid from the outset that we were looking toward August or September, they wanted as soon as technically possible, and we came to a mutual agreement.

Fortunately, our landlords were very reasonable when we asked to exit our lease early. They’re taking this opportunity to do some small renovations before they take next steps.

In mid-May we collected keys.

The house was built somewhere around the 1850’s and was a pretty classic example of a Victorian “terraced house” but remodeled and renovated. The ground floor has a small WC, living room, dining room and modern kitchen. The first floor has two bedrooms and a “family bathroom,” and the loft has been converted into a bedroom with office nook and ensuite shower room. The renovation mixes classic features – like sash windows, plaster cornices and the retained chimney breasts – and modern features, especially in the kitchen and converted loft.

What it doesn’t have – and is often missing “over here” – are built in wardrobes. So once we had keys we got quotes for made-to-measure wardrobes in the main and loft bedrooms. Between fitting in around the fireplace stack in the main bedroom and the a-frame ceiling in the loft, we couldn’t find a good free-standing answer.

It’s reasonably energy efficient for a building of its age. The original single-pane sash windows aren’t helping much, but it turns out (says our surveyor) in a building of this age you can’t assume there are lintels over the windows – so replacing them without the wall falling down could be tricky (and not cheap).

It’s a couple miles north and slightly west of the flat we were in – the title of this post are its what three words coordinates. We’re along the same tube line, very close to the tube station and bus links, and have equal or improved access to central London compared to the flat.

At any rate, we moved in last week and spent the weekend attacking boxes. Dawnise continued to make progress when I went back to work (in the loft/office) on Monday, and I wrapped up at the flat and surrendered the keys on Tuesday. We’re working through a short list of snags with the developer, who’s so far been good to deal with.

The wardrobes are scheduled be fitted the last week of July – until then our clothes are in the moving boxes. Not optimal, but livable.

If you’re reading this from “this side of the pond” there will be a housewarming in the hopefully near future.

Stay tuned.

A friend and former colleague is fond of saying “everything’s fine, nothing is broken.” Everyone’s fine, but Dawnise’s wrist is definitely broken – we’ve got pictures to prove it.

…Rewind to Tuesday…

We’d picked up Kamran early that morning, and brought him home into quarantine for a couple hours before we put him back in the carrier for his initial check at our vet, a short walk from the flat.

We were a bit over half way there when Dawnise tripped, going “ass over tea kettle” as the saying goes, twisting her ankle and landing mostly on her left wrist. She got up feeling a bit nauseous and convinced me to carry on and keep our vet appointment while she caught her breath at the bus stop we were just a few feet away from.

She texted me a few minutes later that she was going to head home to ice her wrist. By the time I got home with the cat she’d applied ice, and took some ibuprofen.

I suggested we seek medical attention, she demurred and insisted it was probably just a sprain and would be fine in a couple days. But, she said, if it didn’t get better, she’d reconsider.

By Thursday it was clearly not improved. She called our GP, but after listening to their hold message do its best to tell us to go away and use the internet, we pivoted to their electronic consult system instead. We described the symptoms, the event, the treatment steps taken, the time lapsed, and the current status. The doctor called Dawnise back that afternoon and referred her to UCLH radiology for an X-ray.

Dawnise left this morning in time to arrive at the radiology department when they opened at 9am. By 10 they had taken the x-ray, read it, confirmed a fracture, and walked her up to the emergency department (ED). I went to join her after our grocery delivery arrived at 10am. Neither of us were sure what to expect, and we settled in for a potentially long wait.

They called her back in about another hour. The doctor showed us the x-ray and talked us through it. She had a radial fracture and a small bone chip in her left wrist, and the joint was slightly compressed from the impact. They’d need to put it in a cast, and before they cast it they needed to “manipulate it” (fancy way to say “pull on her hand”) to improve bone position.

It was going to hurt, no two ways around it. They’d give her a codine tablet ahead of time, a local anesthetic injection (a hematoma block) and some “air and gas” (nitrous) while they worked.

We went back to the waiting room for a few minutes while they got set up.

True to the Doctor’s word, the shot clearly hurt. And despite the local injection and the laughing gas, the manipulation was clearly not Dawnise’s favorite thing ever. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than a couple minutes, but it felt longer, and I was just the observer – staying out of the way while they worked.

They finished setting the cast, got her setup with a sling, and sent us back to the waiting room for a few minutes until they could take another set of x-rays to see the new bone position.

After the new set of x-rays we went back to the waiting room one more time until the doc could review them.

When he called us back in he showed us the new pictures (they basically looked the same to me, if I’m honest) and said the positioning looked good.

He explained that the hospital would send the before and after x-rays to the fractures team for a consultant to review. Early next week we’d hear back with one of three outcomes. If the set looked good to the fractures consultant she’d stay in the temporary cast for two weeks and then be re-cast for another month. If they were concerned about what they saw, they might call her in for an in-person consult. If they were really concerned about what they saw, they’d call her in to discuss a surgical fix. The ED doc said he thought surgery was unlikely, but not impossible.

A short stop at the hospital pharmacy to collect some pain medication, and a detour to get bagels from our favorite bagel bakery, and we were home around 2pm.

Everyone she dealt with was great – competent and pleasant – including the GP who called her back in response to the initial consult request. The ED was busy, but not slammed, and no single step today seemed particularly lengthy or inefficient.

Dawnise is doing ok – definitely uncomfortable and when the hospital drugs wear off we expect it to get a bit worse before it starts to get better, but it will get better.

Hopefully neither of us get whacked with her cast while we sleep.

Fingers crossed.

The Universe has presented us with a cat, and we’re in the rough and sometimes infuriating first few days of integrating a new cat into the house.

Since losing Oscar in late October we’ve occasionally talked about if and when we might look into adopting another cat. We had a “near miss” a couple months ago. We were in contact with someone with a rescue they needed to place. Someone else had responded first, and we thought the important thing was that the cat find a home, not that the home be with us, so we were happy to let the right thing happen.

Since then I’d researched a few London animal shelters, and in the process learned that adopting a cat in the UK is different than our experiences in the US. There’s a strong cultural bias that cats are hunters and need access to the outdoors. We live in a flat several stories above street level, so “access to the outdoors” is problematic – even ignoring our concern about the mix of cats, foxes, and cars in the middle of London.

There are some shelters that focus on placing “indoor” cats. Many of those shelters only consider cats that are elderly, immnuocompromised, or physically incapable of living the “free range life.” On top of that, COVID put a damper on “come to the shelter and meet some cats,” resulting in most shelters asking you to apply, and them match making you with a candidate cat or two.

Ultimately, we weren’t really thrilled with the prospect, so we hadn’t taken any steps or submitted any applications, though we were slowly convincing ourselves that was the path forward.

Then the other day Dawnise saw a post on nextdoor from a local neighbor who was looking to re-home their cat. They were moving countries and couldn’t bring him with. Dawnise reached out and arranged a meet-and-greet.

On the day of the meeting I was stuck in a work crisis, so Dawnise had to go without me. She met the cat (and the humans). He (the cat) was a street rescue from a charity in Abu Dhabi. He’s about three years old, has a gentle friendly disposition, and he and Dawnise got along pretty much immediately. She arranged for us both come back the next day, so I could meet him too. Our meeting went equally well, and his humans decided that out of the people who’d expressed interest they preferred he go with us.

So we had agreement in principle to adopt a cat, and a plan to pick him up once we could schedule a vet check up for him.

And we needed to figure out a name. When he was adopted from the charity that rescued him he was named Lucky. We tend to choose human names, and neither of us loved the name Lucky.

I had joked for a long time that if we got a dog we should name it Loki – after all, what could possibly go wrong naming a dog after a god of mischief? Since Loki was acoustically similar, our first thought was to try that. But neither of us loved that name either.

The morning before we were scheduled to pick him up we were still thinking about names. We had the thought to see if we could draw on his origin and his current name. So I started looking for names that meant approximately “lucky” in Arabic…

And we found Kamran.

The internet told us it meant “blessed” in Arabic and “fortunate” in Farsi. I’m always skeptical of using words I don’t understand – and was concerned that we were essentially giving him a tattoo of random characters that someone told you means something. So we asked a friend, who relayed the ask to friends who were native speakers, and they confirmed that Kamran was a name, not commonly used in general speech, and didn’t mean anything terrible. That seemed good enough.

So Tuesday morning, bright and early, we picked up Kamran and brought him home. Dawnise and I went into quarantine with him for a few hours before taking him to the vet for a once over. He got a clean bill of health, caught up on his immunizations, and when we got home we started gently introducing him to Ivan.

So now were in the phase where two cats try to decide if they want to attack each other, play together, or ignore each other. There’s some occasional growling, occasional hissing, and hopefully over the next few days there’s less of each.

In which our heroes get COVID, recover, fly halfway around the world, visit Middle Earth, walk through Mirkwood, and spelunk into Moria. Sorta.

It seems both yesterday and an age ago that good friends from Seattle passed through London while moving to New Zealand. They moved before the pandemic got rolling, and their encouragement that we come visit quickly became academic, as countries restricted travel and New Zealand closed its borders.

In late March, when New Zealand set out a timeline for tourism without quarantine, we started planning a visit; aiming for the New Zealand winter school break. We picked dates, bought tickets, and crossed our fingers that the pandemic didn’t throw another spanner in the works.

We started by sorting out cat care for the two weeks we’d be gone, and learned our very-local cat sitter – who we and the cats really liked – was moving to the other side of London and hence out of consideration. Dawnise hit on the idea of asking my brother if he wanted to come stay at our place, take care of the cats, and explore London and the UK while we were away. It slotted reasonably well into his work schedule, he was able to find flights that worked with our dates, and so we had a plan.

And then I got COVID. I came back from a trip to Seattle two-and-a-bit weeks before our scheduled departure and what I thought (hoped?) were allergies developed into feeling generally crappy and a fever. I initially tested negative, but symptoms persisted and I rolled to disbelieve – sure enough the next test was positive. Dawnise tested positive a couple days after I did and the race was on.

New Zealand had dropped their pre-flight test requirement but still required day zero and day five rapid antigen (lateral flow) tests – with a follow up PCR test and isolation on a positive result. Regardless of the test requirement, flying while positive seemed at best irresponsible, so our tickets were in a game of chicken with the virus.

I started feeling better after a week or so, and tested negative a week before departure. Dawnise cut it a bit closer, but was negative a few days before our flights – though her energy levels were still ramping back toward normal.

My brother had arranged to arrive before we left, planning to spend a week traveling before settling in at our place. He landed in London while we were both still positive, so coming here seemed a questionable choice. Wary of the flight disruptions in and out of the UK, he elected to take the train up to Edinburgh for a few days, rather than risk complications getting to or back from the continent. We got occasional dispatches from him, and he seemed to be enjoying the city as much as I thought and hoped he would.

And then he got COVID. His last morning in Edinburgh what he thought (hoped?) were allergies had expanded to include a sore throat – and the COVID test quickly returned a positive result. He made his way to our place in London – masked-up and as distanced as possible – and basically quarantined in the guest room, only emerging masked and doing everything he could to not share whatever strain he had with us.

On our day of departure we made our way to Heathrow and boarded the first of two flights, heading to Los Angeles to connect to Auckland. Our layover was taken up by a delayed departure from LHR and by sitting on the tarmac in LAX waiting for a parking stand, so we ended up running through the airport – needing to clear customs, claim our bags, recheck our bags, and re-do security (don’t get me started). Fortunately for us there were a dozen of us making the connection, and they held the Auckland flight for us.

After a long but uneventful flight we arrived in Auckland bleary eyed two days after we left. We cleared customs and biosecurity (where they asked a surprising number of questions about my hiking shoes), and picked up our day zero and five lateral flow test kits on our way out of the airport.

Our friends picked us up, and after a quick greeting drove us to their place, just north of the city.

We spent a couple days hanging out, walking on the beach, getting over jet lag and reconnecting before we hired a car (British english for “renting” a car) and formed up a convoy destined to an Air B&B in Rotarua.

We spent a few days in and around Rotarua being tourists. We saw the volcanic mud and geothermal pools and geysers that made the town a tourist destination. Saw kiwis (the bird) and learned a bit about Māori carving and weaving traditions at Te Puia Māori cultural center and art school. Walked around the “buried village,” and read about the 1886 Mt Tarawera eruption, and the now-buried pink and white terraces, walked high in the canopy of a redwood forest, and went back to do it again at night, which was pretty magical.

And of course, if you’re us you don’t go all the way to New Zealand and not tour Hobbiton. The occasional rain burst didn’t stop us having a great time. The setting was literally fantastic and the attention to detail was mind boggling. The place felt real and lived in – and some part of me wouldn’t have been surprised if a door had opened and a Hobbit had poked its head out. We had booked the “Evening Banquet Tour” so our tour group was alone in the set – no group ahead or behind us. The late day lighting added to the magic of the place, and I’m happy to say I was plesantly surprised by the banquet bit. After dinner and several dessert courses (‘urp) we picked up appropriately themed lanterns and headed back into the set, taking a moment as a group to turn off the lights and gaze up at the stars through a cinematically timed break in the evening clouds.

On the morning we left the Air B&B we took separate paths. Dawnise and I headed off to visit the Waitomo limestone and glow worm caves taking the long way back to Auckland.

The following day we dropped off the hire car back in the city and wandered around Auckland a bit. We found very respectable Mexican food, good coffee and possibly the most pretentious ice cream ever before catching the bus back to their place.

And then Dawnise got… a cold. Nothing horrible, just some sinus congestion and fatigue, but most unwelcome.

We spent the last couple days hanging out with our friends – playing games, chatting, sharing meals. The day we left we played games basically right up to when we needed to leave for the airport.

Our flight from Auckland to San Francisco was slightly delayed, but a longer stop in SFO meant we just spent a bit more time waiting in AKL and a bit less time waiting in SFO. We departed for London on schedule – a couple hours before we’d left Auckland (timezones are weird).

The flights were long but basically uneventful, aside from the turbulence that seems nearly guaranteed to happen just as they’re serving drinks and dinner.

Dawnise even managed to get some sleep in transit.

When we got back to the flat we had missed my brother by an hour or so – he waited to know we were on the final flight home before heading out on an overnight trip to York – and the cats seemed to mostly not notice or care we were back.

We unpacked, showered off 30 hours of travel grime and went to get some groceries. With some help from a re-run of Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled we even managed to stay up to a mostly reasonable hour before surrendering to sleep.

It was our first “real” trip in three years – and all things considered went pretty well.

We spent Monday recovering from jet lag, and Tuesday I went back to work – but that’s a story for another time.

Oh, and with a little nudging my brother pushed out his flight home to spend a bit more time “over here,” and make up for the time he spent isolating and recovering from COVID. He’s off to Barcelona in a couple days. Fingers crossed he makes it back for his flight home.

Chatting about the trip through the haze of jet lag Dawnise poignantly observed that our time there felt completely normal.

It was probably the first time she’d said that in three years, and was a sharp and present reminder to us both of how much we miss having these people close, and in our lives.

Yesterday afternoon Dawnise helped me assemble the guest bed, which had been disassembled and stowed up against the wall since before we moved in to this flat 14 months ago.

I was surprised at how much seeing a bed in that bedroom made me smile.

Yesterday was my last day in the office, and assuming our pre-flight COVID tests tomorrow don’t surprise us (incredibly unlikely, since we’ve basically self-isolated for the past week), Tuesday morning we head to Heathrow to catch a flight to Seattle. We planned the trip before the Omicron wave, and after much consideration and debate, we decided to stick to the plan.

We’ve dialed down our social planning a bunch, so as not to catch anything and become super spreaders, so if you’re reading this in Seattle and would like to catch up while we’re there – we’d love to, but “not this time,” I’m sorry to say.

The bed building that started this all is for a friend of ours who’s coming to stay at the flat for the time we’re gone. It’s a change of scenery for her and care and company for the cats, who’ve not been separated from us for the better part of two years. She might even get to spend some time wandering around London, weather permitting.

One of the hardest bits of planning this trip – or any trip – was sorting out care for Oscar. A cat sitter willing to appear twice a day to feed and inject a cat has proven to be tricky.

I’m happy to report that our cat care needs got significantly easier a few days ago, when Oscar’s latest blood work showed continued normal fructosamie levels and glucose control. When his vet called to chat about the results, she said “it’s up to you, but if it were my cat, I’d stop giving the insulin; the risk of overdose at this point is higher than being underdosed.”

You don’t need to tell me twice.

Along with the need for daily insulin, so goes the need for a strict 12 hour feeding schedule. His (very low carbohydrate) wet-food diet, and needing to ensure Oscar doesn’t eat Ivan’s food, still pose challenges for once-daily pet care vists.

We bought Ivan a fancy feeder that only opens for him when we found one on significant reduction (who knew having the cat microchipped would be useful beyond reuniting us if we wandered off?), and a lower tech dual timed feeder for Oscar. We’ve been working on figuring out how to do all the days feeding at night. We haven’t quite cracked it, but it feels like we’re close.

So no insulin while we’re gone, and a week or so after we return we’ll bring him in for another test. Assuming the blood work continues to look good he’ll go to a six-month recheck schedule, and after that TBD.

Tuesday evening we’ll land at SEATAC, pick up the rental car, and switch back to driving on the right (hand) side of the road.

We’ll sort through a couple years of mail and clean out the pantry of stuff that’s two years out of date. Dawnise has an appointment at the Department of Licensing to get her driving licence renewed, and we’ll finally get to meet our nieces. After about a week in Seattle we head to visit my parents on the east coast for a few days before heading back to London.

I wish I could say I’m looking forward to the trip, but mostly I’m just trepidacious.

Oh, that guest bed? Once COVID sees fit to give us our lives back, reservations will be available…