Hot Dog!

Welcome, celebratory reader, as this week I fill you in on two important anniversaries which sailed past this week: as of last Wednesday, we've been in the US for 3 years, and as of the day before that, we've been married for 25. And they said it wouldn't last!

We celebrated our 25th anniversary the way that anyone would choose to do in these parts: we ate a hot dog and shouted "BEAT LA!" a lot. Yes, we went to the baseball, to see the SF Giants take on arch rivals (and possibly the best team in baseball right now) the LA Dodgers. It was quite mind-bending to think that this 25 year journey had brought us right there, right then: when we got married we'd both been to the US precisely once, and my current employer hadn't even been founded.

We fully embraced every possible aspect of the baseball: we really did eat hot dogs, we had a hot fudge sundae afterwards, and it got a bit cold so we went to the merchandise store and bought some fetching new hoodies. I think there was a game going on as well, but as is often the case with these things, it seemed like a bit of a sideshow. It didn't help that the Giants aren't doing great this year, which meant that the chances of "BEAT LA" becoming a reality were small. But anyway, we had a lot of fun, and it seemed like a fitting memory for the 25th anniversary.

Our 3-year anniversary of being in the US passed off without too much incident, although the usual background hum of inefficient administrivia which is the hallmark of this country continued: I got new "tags" for my car (roughly the equivalent of the tax disc in the UK), the California government decided I've paid them too much tax and sent me a cheque, oh, and the USCIS has decided that my visa extension application isn't as trivial as I might have hoped and they need Google's lawyers to provide more info about what it is I actually do all day. I've learned not to worry about these things; they'll probably get sorted out, unless they don't, in which case we'll do something else.

It's amazing to think we've been here 3 years, despite in some ways the whole process of packing up and moving seeming like it was a very long time ago. It's also odd to think that when we came here we said it was a 3-4 year adventure, and it looks like it will be exactly that.

We now find ourselves back in California, where the sheer predictability of the weather makes it very obviously not Boulder. Even if we didn't manage to "BEAT LA" this time, I'm sure there will be more opportunities before the USCIS decides to unceremoniously chuck us out.