We're In!

Just a quick post to say that we have finally moved house this past weekend. We're now living in Linton in a lovely 4-bedroom terraced/flat right in the centre of the village just off the high street. I'll post a few pics in the next week and let you know more about our wonderful pair of kittens!

Admin Errors

Well, almost 9 months after putting in an offer on the house in Linton, and a year after we'd decided it was time to move, we are almost there. Hopefully (fingers crossed) by the end of this week we will have exchanged contracts and received the keys to our new house in the centre of Linon... but it still amazes me how things can go wrong! Here is just a sample of the last two weeks...

After my 6-monthly haircut in Linton I decided to go and have a look at the house as I wanted to see where the evening sun would fall in the courtyard. Arriving at the house I noticed that the postbox had been blocked up (because it had been re-possessed) and the posty had been leaving the mail in a little alcove. Being the nosey so-and-so that I am, I had a quick flick through only to find that some of the mail had been addressed to us. Opening one of the letters it took me a few seconds to digest what I was reading.... Summons for Non-Payment of Council Tax.

What? Why? What for? ... I then realised that the council were trying to claim that we'd owed them over £400 because we'd been living there since the 10th of December. Err No! I don't think so. We haven't even bought the place yet! Needless to say I contacted the council the next day who accepted that they were wrong, and I was right! I asked where they'd received the information from and the lady tried to quote the Data Protection Act on me... I soon corrected her saying that seeing as they held info on me, I had the right to know where it came from! She soon gave in and it turns out the previous occupiers had informed them we'd moved in in December! They were still living there in January.... crazy!

Onto the next hiccup... we received our mortgage approval last week!! HOORAY... but wait a minute, it was for the wrong amount?! How? We'd even received a PDF and email from them confirming all the details back in April, but they'd still managed to give us the wrong amount. I really don't understand that one! Anyway, after a bit of a stressful evening, and a phonecall the Nationwide who described it as an Admin Error the mortgage has now been approved for the correct amount and we are full steam ahead! Watch this space...

Stag Sumo

This weekend was a very busy one including a day spent with Dave Horton on his stagg doo. The afternoon started with some fantastic sumo wrestling. The suits were massive and took all my energy just to get on. I won all 4 of my warm up fights, but lost in the first round of the main knockout!! Gutted. It was a fun day and ended with Dave dressing up in a wet suit, stripy socks, knickers, braces and a silly hat.

Sydney Pictures

Nearly two years after visiting Sydney as part of our Singapore and Australia trip I have finally completed uploading the pictures!! Now all I need to do is finish the Queensland pics and start on the Brazil holiday!! Crazy. Click here if you want to see the Sydney pictures... go on, there not that bad!!

Ben & Becky's USA Travels

Ben and Becky, two friends from Cambridge are currently in the US traveling around California and the Grand Canyon area going to the amazing places that Ang and I went to on our holiday to the US in 2000. When we made the same trip it was our best holiday EVER!! The contrast of scenery was something very special - for example, one morning we left Yosemite national park with snow capped mountain and by the evenin we were below sea level in the middle of the desert with temperatures pushing towards 50C! I am sure Ben and Becky will have a fantastic time - if you want to follow their journey you can have a look at their blogg here.

If you want to see some of the photos of our holiday in the USA then click on this link to be taken to our main webpage.

Counting Chickens

After nearly 10 months of searching for a house we think we've finally found one! We're not counting our chickens yet, but the house we were originally going to buy in Linton is back on the market and we've had an offer accepted. All we need to do now is sort out a mortgage and check all the paperwork. If all goes well we'll be moving into the house sometime at the end of May. Can't wait!!

Tim & Deb's Travels

Some of our good friends from Cambridge (Tim & Debs) have taken 4 months off from work to go travelling around the globe. They are currently in the south of France working for a conservation charity... counting flowers!! If you want to follow how they are getting on have a look at their blog here.

New Offices

After just over a year working for ESco we have finally moved into our new purpose-built building over this bank holiday weekend. It is so exciting to move out of the converted piggery where we've been squashed in every day after navigating past the chickens in the car park!! The building is fantastic and certainly launches ESco into what will hopefully be a prosperous future.

This weekend has been very busy, starting on Friday afternoon when I turned off the broadband connection in the old office before racing up to the new building with router and firewall in-hand to test that the new connection would work! Only having one of everything, it has meant that we have had to move all the equipment (desks, chairs, computers, network switches etc) from the old building to the new, so it has been a very hectic couple of days shifting crates around and then crawling around under desks connecting computer bits together. I don't think I want to PING again for weeks! I'm feeling very tired now (three 12 hour days in a row doesn't help!) but hopefull everything will be working happily tomorrow so that we don't have any downtime. Fingers crossed!!