The Christmas-Off

It's Christmas Eve and I am on my second drink of the day. It's 3.30pm. But it's Christmas Eve and if you can't have a Baileys at midday at Christmas, when can you?


I have spent Christmas in Orlando before, as a CP, watching the Christmas Day Parade on ABC in Vista Way by myself and opening the presents my mum had sent me in a stocking. It wasn't nearly as depressing as it sounds, and then I went to work which kept me busy and cheerful. This year though I feel like I'm coming at it brand new, because it is my first Christmas with my new husband.


One thing that is surprising me is how much I'm missing the wintry atmosphere of being home at Christmas. Not just snow (although I could easily have plenty of that given the state of the place at the moment), but just the cold air on my ears and the way the cold smells and how it gets dark at 4pm. And I am missing Christmas Eve in my hometown of Northallerton, going to all the over-priced pubs and almost falling on my arse on the ice.


When it is 20C outside and bright sunshine, it is hard to find that Christmas spirit, but me and Jason have been working hard at it, and everyone knows that starts with Christmas music.


It had never occurred to me that Christmas music might differ on either side of the pond, but this was driven home to me by one shocking discovery.


Jason had never heard the Fairytale of New York before this week.


I know, I know. If you need to have a lie down, I understand. (Americans: if you, too, have never heard the greatest Christmas song ever written, look it up. It's by the Pogues. Your life will change forever.)


This led to an immediate comparison of favourite Christmas songs, both our favourite good ones and our favourite really crap ones. I seem to favour all the post-70s ones - Elton John, Slade, Wizzard, et al - whereas Jason seems to be more about the golden oldies and a whole world of Johnny Mathis.


This Christmas song has led into a wider 'Christmas-off' of who's country does the better Christmas. And there is no doubt that America, or Florida specifically, since Florida is the only state where I've ever spent Christmas, has some cool stuff going on. My personal favourite is the Candlelight Processional at Epcot. This happens 3 times a night from the end of November until New Year and you have to be there 90 minutes prior minimum to even have a hope of getting a seat. In short, it is a recital of the nativity story by several different celebrities over the course of the month, accompanied by the WDW Orchestra and the Mass Cast Choir. Now I am not a religious person by any means, but I defy anyone not to be moved by Candlelight. It's like a grown-up's nativity play. Me and Jason went last night - our second attempt, after our first last week was thwarted by Disney's failure to label their food and I had to be treated by their in-house paramedics mid-show for an allergic reaction! - and it's the first time I've felt truly festive this year.


Talking of foodstuffs, our Christmas-off descended into who's country does the best Christmas desserts, which I think led to my favourite quote of the year. Apparently, the French are old too, but dammit they know how to make a good pastry.


I've managed to prove I can bake cookies, though. Happy Christmas everyone :)

Snow Chaos?

I've spent quite a lot of time over the last few days reading stories such as this, and this, and being simultaneously surprised and relieved. Surprised that I am not in the middle of the travel nightmare that is currently ensuing back home in the UK - for, as anyone who is friends with me on Facebook knows, I am usually suffering a variety of delays and cancellations when snow/ash/mutant slugs hit (and having slept on the floor in both Gatwick and Heathrow, though fortunately not for long periods, everyone who is stranded has my deepest sympathy) - and relieved that 1.  I am not having to go to work in that stuff, and 2. I am not being subjected to continuous Daily Mail headlines screaming, unimaginatively, "SNOW CHAOS" or variations thereof.

Here in Florida this week, the news has also been gripped by the weather, because the temperature was forecast to reach a perilous - wait for it - minus 2 celsius. Every evening on the TV, the major networks had a temperature monitor in the bottom of the screen so you could watch the temperature drop degree by degree to a temperature I am sure most of my fellow countrymen currently suffering -9c or below would consider toasty by comparison.

Meanwhile, the American midwest was experiencing snow storms that would make the gritters back home run away screaming. The roof of the Minnesota Vikings stadium collapsed under the weight of 17 inches of snow, and yet planes were still taking off. Ohio-born Jason's reaction when I showed him photos of the snow in London that has caused Heathrow to be closed for 2 days was "I wouldn't have even got a day off school for that."

It's just made me realise that 'severe weather' is definitely relative. Florida has an obsession with weather that I would argue exceeds the British - all the local news stations boast about who has the biggest 'severe weather centre' and who's technology gives the most accurate rate of lightning strikes per minute - but their idea of a severe weather warning during the winter is a 'hard freeze' or 'wind chill' warning. In other words, wear a coat. See, isn't that easier?


In fairness, there is an financial reason why Floridians fly into a blind panic at the first sign of frost, and that is the citrus crop which accounts for a significant proportion of the state economy. Oranges start to die just under the freezing point, so we had live continual broadcasts from the orange fields of Florida about what the farmers are doing to protect their produce.


And there is also a financial reason why planes continue to fly in Minnesota, yet Heathrow has so many passengers sleeping on the floor that the airport is at capacity - cost. Cost-benefit analysis dictates that this weather is such a freak event in Europe that it's not worth investing in the snow clearing technology.


But then, I've got stuck in it 3 years in a row - not so freak any more is it?


(By the way, I'm aware this isn't really about life in Florida - but unemployment means I have a lot of time to dwell on these things :))

Broom broom...my adventure in the American used car market

Ladies and gents, I would like to introduce you to my new friend, Vicky the Volkswagen. She is my new favourite thing, but as I am about to describe, our relationship has gotten off to a rather tempestuous start.

Yes, those are gold alloys, and she has an exhaust the size of my head and sounds like a monster coming round the corner. I officially own a chav car.


I always knew I was going to have to get a car eventually, but last week, as I sat at home with Jason gone for 12-14 hours every day (sigh, Disney at Christmas!), I was losing the will to live and rapidly realised that I was going to need one sooner rather than later - especially if I want to volunteer or go to classes to fill my jobless hours waiting for my work card.


So the search began.


Here in an important fact about the American used car market - it sucks. Especially if, like me, you are on a limited budget. It's not really fair to do a direct comparison between the US and UK markets, but even so the US market is excessively inflated, partly due to much higher annual miles and partly due to the recession. I was on a budget of around $5000 - which is about £3500. Back home, £3500 could have bought me a 4-year old Renault ClioSport 172 with 45,000 miles, or a 1.3L 2008 Ford Ka with a tiny 13,000 miles on the clock. Over here, for my budget, I wanted something under 10 years old with under 100,000 miles on the clock. And let me tell you, my options were limited, and when they do show up they are gone in 5 seconds flat. Most dealerships looked at me like I'd lost my mind.


So, limited availability was my first challenge. My second challenge was trying to find something that wasn't going to kill me. One thing I've noticed whilst trying not to get flattened by some of the crazy drivers on the interstate is that cars over here are driven literally until bits start falling off. In Florida at least, there is no such thing as an MOT (translation for Americans: an MOT is an annual check-up that is required by law on all cars over 3 years old that checks if your car is roadworthy. If you car fails its MOT, you either need to get whatever it fails on fixed, or it is not legal to drive.) - so that means that it can be extremely difficult to know whether the used car you are looking at has just had a lot of cosmetic work done, looks shiny, but is going to fall apart 5 minutes after you drive it away.


I ended up getting my new friend Vicky from what can only be described as a fairly sketchy dealership in a fairly sketchy area. I found her on Craigslist after a tip from a nice bloke in the Honda dealership me and Jason visited a few days ago. Craigslist easily had the most vehicle listings that hit my critera, but this was a serious case of sorting the wheat from the highly-illegal chaff. I probably enquired after about 10 or 11 cars, and about 40% of the responses I got were of the 'sob story/need to sell great car at too good to be true price/all I need you to do is send me money via Paypal and I'll ship you the car for a no-obligation trial!' - otherwise known as scammers. 


So when I rang up about the VW and an actual person answered, I decided it was worth checking out, even though I was nervous about parting with my money. The dealership looked rough but the gents were nice. The test drive was good, so I decided to get in there before someone else did...and drove off with my new car about an hour later :)


But then when I went to pick Jason up from work, she wouldn't start. Panic, panic, panic. Warranties on used cars here basically don't exist and it's sold-as-seen - had I just been totally screwed?


To cut a long story short, my friends at the dodgy dealership aren't so hot on battery replacements, and a loose terminal was causing the battery to short out, all the electrics to die, and the engine to stop (including when I was in motion, which needless to say was terrifying). My very handy husband spent all day on Sunday just making her safe enough to get back to the dealership on Monday to be checked out. Fortunately, he succeeded, and now she is running like clockwork - but that doesn't mean I'm not taking her back today to give the dealer an earful. You never know, I might be able to guilt them into fixing the cigarette lighter.


So now I have a car again, after 3 years of being car-less. It feels weird to have that big an asset in my life, and a bit nerve-wracking as buying her took a significant chunk of my Unemployment Survival Fund. But she also means freedom, and that really is priceless.

A most unusual start to married life

Before I start this, can I just say how much I love how you post things here? You go to the mailbox outside your house, put the letter you want to send in it, then lift up the little flag on the side that says you have something to send (I always wondered what that was for!). Then when the postman delivers your post, he also picks up your outgoing post. Genius. Why don't we do that in England?


But anyway, back to topic. Me and Jason are finally married!!

We had an absolutely amazing day. From putting facepacks on and watching Hairspray with my bridesmaids to our first kiss, all the way to watching two of my closest friends, Ed and Gareth, educate the Americans on the Peter Kay dance for 'Is This the Way to Amarillo?', it was as close to perfect as we could have hoped for. The sun shone at just the right moment and, apparently, there were dolphins swimming in the bay as we said our vows. If that isn't a sign I don't know what is :)


Yes, in true bridezilla fashion, I did have a couple of tizzes (our sound system for the reception was a bit rubbish and after a couple of - ok, a few - strong gins I decided noone was enjoying themselves!) but that's not what I will remember - I will remember all my friends, from both sides of the pond, coming together, getting along and having an amazing time with me and my lovely new husband. I hope my rubbish memory works for me this time and I keep those memories always.


The day after the wedding, me and Jason sat on our balcony at the wedding hotel, overlooking Clearwater Bay, drank bucks fizz and read our guestbook. Everyone at our wedding got a guestbook page with places to draw pictures and random questions about us and the wedding. Reading the whole thing was a blast - some bits made us cry and some bits just made us laugh our asses off. It's amazing.


After we checked our we headed back to Orlando for our honeymoon with a twist. We were staying at a Disney resort - so we didn't exactly stray far from home - and more than that, we still had 14 Brits in town (plus me!), so our honeymoon was going to get a little crowded...


We did achieve something pretty impressive, with the help of 3 very lovely cast member friends. Each Disney cast member gets a 'main entrance pass', more commonly known as a maingate, which allows them to let 3 friends into the parks for free so many time a year. So with a monumental logistic effort, Jason and our friends got myself plus my 14 British friends into the parks gratis for a day. And we had an amazing, if exhausting time!

Anyone who has ever gone to Disney World knows how tiring doing a full day in the parks is - and we did 3 parks in one day. It is possible to do all 4 in a day, but not with 15 people, and definitely not when you finish up at a German bierhalle for dinner drinking one-litre steins. We did awesome, and had an amazing day.


Everyone has gone home now. For once, the horrendous British winter actually worked in my favour in the travel domain, allowing me a few extra hours with my mum and my closest friends while the gate jetties froze at Gatwick. 


Saying goodbye to everyone, in particular my mum and my best friend Nic, for the second time in 2 months, was very tough. But now I have to accept that I will see them a lot less than I used to. That is very difficult too. But I have to work with the magic of modern technology to keep in touch and, much like when me and Jason were apart, look forward to the next trip or visit!


And I don't mean to sound like I have it rough, because I don't. I married a man who understands how I feel about all of the above and instead of rolling his eyes when I get upset, just gives me a big cuddle. I worry that now I'm married I somehow have to act more mature and be a different person, but given Jason said that if I suddenly became more mature he'd divorce me on the spot (what a guy!!), I feel a bit more comfortable about just being myself. 'That's what she said' jokes and all.


It's going to be a difficult ride - marriage is, and with an emigration involved, doubly so. But what can I say? I like a challenge :)