When the going gets tough, the tough get going

Going down to South Park, gonna leave my woes behind... gonna see if I can't unwind...
(mumble-mumble-gibberish-gibberish - you really don't want to know what those lyrics are, trust me.)

Well we had us a lovely drive on Saturday, once we finally got a car. I had heard that there was a start up fibre festival in Fairplay at their annual county show.

Then I discovered that Fairplay is in South Park! It still has buildings that indicate it was the local community centre of South Park. We could go to South Park!

Well that decided it, didn't it?

Off we set on a trip to Fairplay, around Denver and through some foothills and up Turkey Creek Canyon (didn't see us any turkeys - see I am learning to talk like the locals! ;-).


(didn't realise my driving was that hairy! Look at the angle the pic is on! Whoopsy! Wasn't me driving, nosiree no! I was not allowed to drive that car one mile, let alone 350...)

Nathan suggested we get one of these for our front yard back 'ome,

but we figured that it would take up the whole front yard, and maybe we'd have to demolish the house too. Also we'd probably need to get a permit from the council. So alas, we won't be getting one and sending it home.

Along the way it occurred to us that maybe we should've brought some rain gear, mebbe even just a jacket since we were climbing up to about 3000m, or 10,000', and it would be colder there.



Up into bigger and bigger hills, along the US 285





Through clouds of smoke belched out by THE most disgusting U-Haul van anyone e'er did see!

And over the last big hill, over the Kenosha Pass, onto the plateau.






My goodness, how magnificent! You really need to click on the pics to see the bigger ones but excuse the reflections. This great wide flat area ringed all around by mountains. We figured it must've been a lake bed or something that was filled up with glacial stuff. But we didn't really know - Wikipedia has a lot of good info on South Park. See? We didn't really know. For whatever reason, that whole basin is pretty darned flat, yet it is surrounded by many lumpy bits.



Up and over one last pass,


Then we discovered the charming little town of Fairplay.



Ahem. They may get lots of tourists hoping to find South Park but umm, yeah.



The county fair and fiber market were interesting, not that I have any pics from it. There are still people who appear to be real cowboys out there, and girls who dress up in tight jeans and purple satin shirts who get to be the county fair queen and princesses. Nathan got to talk to a few fibre ladies whilst I chatted a bit and browsed a lot (but that is for Yarnivorous!). I sorta felt like a real city gal, but I am! Even to the point of skirting the horse and cow dung, but I also had sandals on and didn't want the added extra fertiliser on my feet. Also our rental car, a Corolla, didn't really fit in with the other cars there - like it would've fitted on the back of half of them.


The clouds started pushing in and it was time to move on.

So we said farewell to Fairplay and went in search of new scenes.

What do you do when the dream goes sour?

Oh dear.

DH is hating his job. This was his dream job, the job that he thought would make him a happy man. But there is so much bureaucracy and so many broken links (he has to do online courses and work practices stuff but the links don't work and the help stuff tells him his browser is incorrectly configured but won't help any) and so little actual real help and so much politicking and so few people to talk to that it is all going sour. All he wants to do is quit and go home. This is having major repercussions on his fragile ego.

Of course all this comes to head just at the same time as his boss is away for a loooong weekend and left a whole list of things that have to be done before he gets back.

Sigh.

I so wanted this to work. I so want my husband to be happy. I don't want any more days (and nights) like the last one....

On Social Security Numbers

Everything in the USA is based on your social security number.

Everything.

No credit rating without an SSN.

No loans without an SSN.

No health insurance without an SSN.

No online access to various institutions (eg the credit union) without an SSN.

I can't get an SSN. I am not allowed to work. SSNs are only for those who work. I can get an ITIN which is an Internal Revenue Service number that is for tax purposes (even though I am not allowed to work, go figure!). I am holding off on that until I find out whether I can get a work permit - you can't have an ITIN and an SSN at the same time.

DH can get an SSN but you can't apply for an SSN until you've been here for 10 working days or more, and then it is not issued for at least another four weeks after that. He has applied for his SSN.

This is causing some problems, as you may imagine.

Currently, DH has to nominate which health insurance fund we are to be covered under within 30 days of our arrival (ie real soon now). To do this, he has to provide his, guess what?

You got it! His SSN!

But he doesn't have one.

You would think that the health insurance providers for big company like HP would be used to people not having SSNs. After all HP recruits lots of people from overseas. But no they want the SSN first. Someone there has to be able to sort this out, but there is no HR contact number, only a help page and an email contact....

Heaven help Australia if we go down the Australia card path. It would mean all our records would be tied to one number, just like the American SSN. If you lose that number or someone steals it from you (identity theft) or you are new in the country and everything relies on you having that number, what on earth do you do? What if you do not qualify for that number? Do you remain a non-entity, a legal but barely tolerated alien?

Am I to be a non-entity here, simply a subsidiary alien? I quite object to that! Should I start jumping up and down and doing my best Elephant Man impersonation? I am not an animal (nor an alien), I am a human being!

Eh, it won't do any good. I'll just wait and see if I can get a work permit. Only three or so months of waiting to go!

Into the mountains, part deux

Ah, long time, no post pictures!

Three weeks ago, we went up into the mountains. What a lovely drive! So much has happened since then but I figure I should share some pretties with you.

Lots of pretties!


I couldn't figure out which angle to show you as they each highlight different things, so you get both. BTW, excuse the blodges in the pics - the windscreen was pretty dirty and of course all the best pics were taken from a moving car, not when we stopped to line the shots up well....


We drove up the Cache la Poudre Canyon to Cameron Pass.


Now for a lowlander like me, that pass is pretty darned high! It is almost another kilometre higher than the highest point on mainland Australia. No wonder I felt a little dizzy up there! (Don't ask who reverted to driving on the left side of the road. Ooops!)



A little further along the road were the Crags. Totally spectacular! So spectacular that we did not manage to get one picture that really shows their magnificence. This one will have to do (again out of the car as we found a turn around point).


We saw a moose - so did lots of other people. The fact that about 10 cars were pulled up on the side of the road sorta gave it away. It was not at all fussed by the attention.


On the way back down the canyon, we decided to stop and look at the tunnel which brings water from another river (the Laramie?) to the main branch of the Poudre.

Nathan was extremely enthusiastic about going for a little walk. It was a bit uphill. I had to get my all wheel drive legs out just to make it up the grade, which was about 45 degrees in some bits. We climbed and puffed and climbed some more and puffed and glowed a whole lot. But the views were great!


See the road down there? We climbed up from that road!





I thought I'd blow a foofer valve on the last bit of the climb it was so steep! But this is what we saw there - the tunnel outlet. Seemed smaller than I expected, though I know a metre wide pipe can carry an *awful* lot of water.


Last, but by no means least, the Colorado state flower, seen growing at Cameron's Pass.

I so wanna grow some of these! I love grannies' bonnets and this is a very pretty colour combo.

On the t-word and water directions

Those of you who are squeamish about certain parts of the bathroom, go someplace else now.

I've gotta get something cleared up nice and quickly. The third-most common question we get asked (after "Where are you from?" and "Why did you come to America?") is "I'm kinda embarrassed about this but does the water in the toilet go the other way?"

Well to cut a long story short, we don't know. Y'see American toilets freak Aussies out. This Great Big Pool of Water is Scary and Intimidating. The way the water gets slurped down and then sorta floods back up again is completely worrisome. Will it stop before it reaches the top of the bowl? Any toilet Back 'Ome that rises up that far is blocked and therefore of extreme concern. (and the ones that auto flush? Yeah we have them too but having the water only a coupla inches beneath one's nether regions is ahem challenging!)

Aussie toots work by having a much smaller amount of water in the bowl. Like we have 3 and 6 litre flush loos in new houses. That is less than two gallons by a lot. (Old houses that haven't been renovated have like 15 litre or four gallon flushes.) So they work not by sucking and refilling but by dumping new water on the old. Since there is no suck, there is no swirl of water.

Hence we can't say if the water goes the other way.

You might ask well what about the bath then? Well I can't say there either cos it is a while since I've done a bath in Oz and I didn't bother looking to see how the little tornado whirled around.

(BTW, our downstairs toilet also randomly refills the cistern. It is a bit freaky when you hear the toilet apparently flush at 3am when both of you are in bed....)

Soon I will rise up out of the sewer, mebbe even get into the gutter. Or even higher! I have more pics, I just need time to edit them. I am sooo busy at present!

On recycled "bathroom tissue"

Ah, the joys of finding new products in a new country. This is an issue that is, well I'd like to say close to my heart but really it is much closer to somewhere else.

Those who are sensitive to such issues had best go find another blog to read right now - the title should give you an idea of today's topic.

Back 'ome, my local supermarkets carry not just one but four brands of recycled dunny paper. (Gosh I said dunny! Next I will say toot, toilet, loo, lavatory, bog or other such taboo words!) And I reviewed them all in a side by side (so to speak) comparison earlier this year.

Here I've found just one so far.

Golly, it ain't worth it, I can tell you! It is like applying fine grade sand paper (and I am sure would feel like coarse sand paper on bad days). From my Oz experience, recycled bog roll does not have to be like folding up photocopier paper or that really cheap poster paper for little kids and one should not have to martyr various delicate parts of one's anatomy just to be environmentally conscious (but heck, it sure makes you conscious!).

Does anyone have any suggestions for brands other than 7G (name shortened to protect the guilty)? Or should I just give up and go running for the Kleenex Cottonelle cos that sure is soft, or at least the version back 'ome is! Are there issues here with various paper companies cutting down virgin forest like in Oz, or are they all OK? This enquiring mind (and other regions) needs to know! Thanks!

On new lodgings

Once upon a time, Nathan and Lynne moved to Colorado. There they searched for a place to live.

Eventually (ok, the fifth place they looked at, or maybe the sixth), they found a place that looked really nice in a good location. Even better, the placed was available almost immediately, which was *extremely* convenient.

So Lynne and Nathan moved in.

Nice new (secondhand) kitchen - so new it was still covered in construction dust (and the remnants of the previous owner's food gobs. Ick!).

Such a new kitchen that there was no water to the sink. Rather amusingly, when Nathan threw the water from the new tea mugs into the sink, it made a very odd splatter noise, not the tinkle-tinkle of water going down a drain.

Yep, the sink was not plumbed in in any way shape or form.

Alas, alack, Lynne had to take her bike and trailer out to not just one but TWO supermarkets to find a wash tub to do the dishes in - y'see the dishwasher also was not plumbed in and the crockery and glassware and pots and cutlery all had to be washed before they could be used. (I rode 20 miles that day mostly with the trailer - gosh I was tired by the end of it!)

The sink was plumbed in yesterday. Hooray! The dishwasher gets tied down today - it is plumbed in but has not been installed properly yet. Even the washing machine and drier were installed again (they are a bit dodgy but I am assured that the drier will work better now that its exhaust vent doesn't have a bird nest in it).

Then it was shower time.

Apparently showers in a lot of the rentals here do not have shower curtains/rods/screens. That is left to the individual taste of the renter. To an Aussie, this seems totally bizarre. So after we created a flood in the bathroom (I kid you not it was at least half an inch deep by the bath and there was no floor drain), Lynne took the bike and trailer out AGAIN in search of cheap bathmats (check!), some sort of shower rail (check!) and a shower curtain (check!).

In Target, they had adjustable rails - things that Lynne had never noticed before in Oz (nathan says he has seen them). They are designed to be temporary installations. You unscrew them, winding them out to a bit bigger than the gap they have to span, squish them in a bit and plonk them where you want them to sit (eg near the top of the tiles in the shower-bath). Ta-dum! Instant rail to hang a shower curtain on! Considering the number of these things they had available, they are obviously very popular.

So Lynne brought home a rail, shower curtain, new towels, new kitchen towels, new hand towels and a bathmat, and two used bathmats to be used for icky things. Hooray for new things!

But someone forgot to buy pillows. Again. Dangit!

But she did remember to go to Home Depot (I say it dep-o to Nathan and for the sake of the Americans here dee-po for Americans) and buy an extension thing for the shower, which was barely tall enough for the shorter of them to shower under. So at least the bathroom is all in order now!

On our first night here, when it got dark, we discovered that the loungeroom and the upstairs rooms do NOT have lights! Instead there are "light" switches on the walls that turn on and off powerpoints. Y'know when you look at a place during daylight, you don't think to look for lights. LOL So third on the list to buy is floor lamps. This is very possible once Nathan cons one of his mates into doing a spot of shopping. Anything over about four feet long doesn't fit on/into the bike trailer and Lynne feels uninclined to have to bungee-strap (we call them occy straps for octopus straps) things like lamps and brooms/mops to her bike trailer with a nice little flag on the bag to say long load....

So the new lodgings are great, but have some teething problems which are mostly readily fixable. After the kitchen is cleaned out (since the last of the work is happening today), we will start playing in the yard, such as it is. It appears despite the strong NO CATS/PETS prohibition here, the previous tenants had a silver tabby (evidence is that there are cat you-know whats in the gravel in our "yard" and the colour of the cat is apparent from the cat hair I've already found in fluff balls on the carpet).

Our visitors so far have commented on the lack of places to sit. Furniture? What is that? One of Nathan's workmates gave us some plastic outdoor chairs yesterday so now we have options to sit on a chair, not just on the stairs or the floor or our mattress (which currently sits on the floor in the living area cos upstairs was Too Hot and a base was Too Expensive yet). What a kind gift! (Chairs are another thing that don't fit into the bike trailer.)

After we get some pillows, a broom and a mop, we will have all the basics! Yay us! Then we can work on the rest. Cool, huh?