October Snow and Coming Home

It snowed in October here.  Which is strange because it doesn't normally snow until sometime in December.

Autumn Snowman by Be

The trees were still all covered in their orange, red and brown leaves so the extra burden of two evenings of snow caused more than a few of them to snap off some substantial branches.  In fact, power was out for much of the small city of Franklin and many of the stores were closed for a day or so because of it.  It's amazing how slowly snow melts.  There were still huge ploughed piles of snow at the shopping centre more than a week afterwards - it looked like a mountain of dirty white rubbish by then. 

It was also my birthday, in October, and fiance sneaked out "for a drive" and came back with a pair of African violets.  It was very sweet.  I didn't suspect a thing, either, which goes to show how perceptive I am.  Fiance had his birthday in November and I baked him Pumpkin Apple Spice bread and, eventually, Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding - Edmond's cookbook recipes.  I also upgraded his PC with a new 650 watt power supply (previously 350 watt) to power the new graphics card which I then installed so that he could play Skyrim when it came out a few days later.  It does look impressive, though I haven't had a chance to play it myself yet, and he's been enjoying it.

The latest news in my quest for permanent residency is that I will be heading home on Sunday to New Zealand so that I can complete the steps of the process there that I didn't manage to before we had to leave.  We're taking two direct flights so it will be less time in the air and in airports.  We've also elected to leave a day early to stay over night in Los Angeles in a hotel so we can be well rested for the long trip from LA to Auckland.  Still not sure where we'll be staying or how long we'll be staying but it will take at least 3 weeks for me to get an appointment at the US Consulate in Auckland, once I have had the required medical examination, so I suspect it will be at least a month.

As much as it will be nice to be back in NZ; it will also be quite a hassle.  I'm still not sure where we'll be staying and we'll have to fly between Wellington and Auckland to deal with the consulate.  It's not a long flight, though, only about 1 hour each way.  At least it will be Spring there now so I won't have to deal with being too hot one day and too cold the next like it has been here for the past month. I will also be able to have real Marmite again.  I was so excited the other week when I found Marmite in the grocery store.  When I tried it, though, I found it wasn't the familiar, black, thick, smooth paste that I recalled.  Instead it was a thin, brown, syrupy texture and it didn't taste as it should have.  I wonder if this is the British recipe or one especially formulated to irritate ex-pats since I can't imagine any Americans to give it so much as a second glance.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: fiance and I bought our wedding rings.  They were a little discounted but we ended up getting platinum 3mm bands in the classic rounded plain bands with engraving on the inside of the bands.  We're pretty happy with them bit fiance suspects that his one is a little too large for him so we might need to get it adjusted, quickly, before we go back to NZ.