12th January 2008

Completing on a house US style - Take one small room about 6ft by 9ft add 3 lawyers (one for me, one for seller, one for mortgage company) one deed writer, one realtor and 2 builders and then sit there for nearly 2 hours signing some 26 documents and 6 cheques. Amazing !

But I got through it all and we are now the proud owners of 4.5 acres of prime US real estate :-). We will be open to guests from mid February.

Rob is going to build a website and put a calendar on it so that you can see available dates - we would love to see you all. It is a great base to go and visit the local beauty spots and also spend time in the the big apple or go spend your dollars at the nearby outlet mall ( this paragraph has been sponsored by the Hudson Valley Tourist Board)

Last Tuesday I drove to Harrisburg Pennsylvania, well actually Mike Jones drove, but I sat next to him - it took 3.5 hours and the scenery did not vary - just lots of bare trees and rock it has to be some of the drabbest scenery I have seen in the US -- it did not improve on the 3.5 hours drive from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh (pictured above) Got to Pittsburgh at about 5.30 just in time to go and visit the second customer of the day and then out to dinner with them. Fell into bed at about 9.30 pm bone tired. The weather was the only bright spot on the day it has been really surprising it was 60 plus degrees and bright blue skies.

Walked to meet the final customer of the trip early the next morning, unfortunately the temperature had dropped 25degrees and there were winds gusting up to 50mph brrrrr......... Thank goodness we were not driving back to Newburgh - although having said that our flight was delayed for 2 hours because of the high winds which meant we were driving back from Newark to Newburgh in peak hour traffic.

I have had people out at the house this week quoting for water filtration, we have high sulphur content in the well and I figured that people would not appreciate me going into the office smelling of rotten eggs. Also someone out to measure up for blinds for the windows. It is amazing how all these things add up - I forgot tht moving into a new house is usually more work than buying old.

Sunday I am off to New York -- I am at a trade show for 2 days and have about 8 meetings with different analysts and trade reporters as well as many meeting with clients and new prospects. If you know how to search press releases in google you should see my name coming up a few times over the next few weeks. Back home on Wednesday then off to Irvine, Los Cabos and Las Vegas. So glad I am not travelling so much with this new job!

Rob got his visa on Wednesday and all of our worldly goods were packed into a container which will hopefully be here early February. We have also had 2 families over to look at renting the house this week which is pretty impressive as we only put it with an agent on Tuesday.