'Tis the Season to eat raisins.

So Christmas has officially begun for the Vallentine household. The Christmas season had begun for the Horn-turned-Vallentine contingent way back at Thanksgiving, but proper Christmas - the actual "doing" of Christmas - started this weekend.

Friday evening we picked up Mark's sister Sarah and her boyfriend Tim from the Weston-super-Mare train station on the way into Brean and stayed at his mum's place over the weekend. Sarah is planning to stay down here until the day after Boxing Day (no, it doesn't have a name), but Tim is spending Christmas Day with his family, so he's actually taking the train up to Hull (that's in the North) today. That meant that this weekend was the only time when everyone was going to be there, so we tried to be extra festive, and hence, kicked off the Christmas party early.

All that really meant is we started upping the quantities of food eaten per meal, played some games (including the Wii, which was, as expected, a big hit), and then last night sat around and watched while Tim opened his presents in front of us.

But the main thing that tells me that Christmas is here (and the reason for this post, as you might have guessed) is that the raisins have arrived.

I think I've probably ranted about this in front of all of you before, but let's recap. Pretty much all the traditional British dishes/foods eaten at Christmastime involve raisins or sultanas in some fashion. All the stuff that everyone only eats during the holiday, which everyone gets excited about contain raisins. Mince pies, christmas cake (which sounds great but is, in fact, fruitcake), christmas pudding (which isn't pudding at all for an American, but a raisin-flavored, raisin filled booby trap) have all gone to the dark side. Normally I'm ok for the actual Christmas dinner, but I have in fact seen brussel sprouts and stuffing each with raisins in. It's pretty tragic.

This year I'm making the stuffing (just in case) and hoping to make a pecan pie to create a small non-raisin safe haven for myself. I think my British citizenship may be held up by the fact that I don't accept raisins, since it seems to be a national pasttime over here (it's not restricted just to Christmas - oh no sireee).

But as you tuck in to your apple pies and tree-shaped sugar cookies this year, spare a small thought for me, a lone ex-pat in a sea of sultanas, trying to celebrate a raisin-free Christmas.


(...and Jenny, if you post a comment about how raisins are good for me and I just need to think myself out of this problem, so help me, Christmas or no Christmas...)

:)

Step number 523, complete.

Yesterday, I drove an hour and a half to Newton Abbot, a town in Devon. It's a nice little place, and is on the way to Torquay, which is one of the sort of old British resort towns on the South coast of Devon.

Newton Abbot's local authority (sort of the equivalent of a town council) is the only place in the South West of England that does the Nationality Checking Service (NCS). The NCS basically means that if you pay £35 they look at your application for naturalisation (see it's working, notice the "s") and make sure that you've filled everything in properly and you've included all the documents you need.

The most important bit is that they make official photocopies of all of your documents so you don't have to send the originals into the national office that considers the applications. Normally, if you just mail in the application, you have to send in your passport, your spouse's passport (if you are applying on the basis of marriage, like me), your marriage certificate and some other paperwork. Which means that there are lots of chances of it being lost, or being kept for a long period of time (months, or in one case I've heard of, 2 years!). I don't like the idea of not being able to travel at all for however long it takes them to do the paperwork, so it's definitely worth it to drive the distance and pay the money to be able to keep our passports!

It was all a very quick process - it took all of about 15 minutes. There was a bit of a panic because they asked for lots of documents that I didn't bring because I had already showed them to the people when I got my indefinite leave. They said that it's a different office that is considering this application (Home Office rather than Passport Control), so they ask to see it. But they said that it's not really required, they just ask to see if it people bring it. I kept asking again and again if they thought I should come back, but they assured me that if the Home Office did need to see some more proof or identification they would contact me and ask for it, rather than just reject my application outright. Which is good, since if they reject your application, you don't get your £655 back!

They also submit your application by secure post, and so it was meant to arrive in Liverpool today at 1pm GMT. Apparently, the Home Office will get in touch in the next couple of weeks just to let me know they received it, and then it will probably take a couple to a few months to hear the response.

It's nice that it's all done, and now I just wait and see!

Jiggitty-jig.

Mark and I arrived back home safely this morning (UK time). Considering my back injury (the story of which I don't need to tell since all my blog's audience members were in the house when it happened!), the trip went as smoothly as it possibly could have.

1) Upon arriving at the airport (with plenty of time), I happened to overhear a guy at the "baggage drop" (where you hand your bags over if you printed your boarding pass at home) tell someone else that they could check in there even if they hadn't checked in online since he didn't have anyone waiting. We got to, too, so we got to skip the long lines. The guy closed up shop right after we finished, so it was perfect timing.

2) We had enough time to find our gate, buy a few more last minute crossword puzzle books, have a last burrito, and buy our water. We got to the gate right when they started to board.

3) Best of all, the window seat on our row was empty! I was able to lie on my side and sleep for part of the flight. Mark even was able to lie down a bit when I was sitting up for a while (I don't know how he did it--I just barely fit on the two seats). It was great. I even woke up once with my travel pillow completely covered in drool, so I know I must have got some good sleep! (And I don't envy who gets that pillow after me--I felt I should have put a warning sticker on it....)

4) Our bags made it! (Sorry, Jenny!). I've already had some Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese for lunch!

My back is doing ok and was ok during the flight. It's mostly just sort of tight and tender--nowhere near as painful as it was on Saturday. I can move around and squat down to pick things up off the floor. It still hurts for me to look down and I can't twist around. Every now and then I'll get a twinge, but I can at least do most non-lifting things for myself. And, woo baby, do I love my heat pack!

But we had a fantastic time over Thanksgiving. I'm so glad we got to see Marty, Jennie and their boys, and that John Michael was finally won over! I don't think we were quite able to woo Naomi completely, but we'll definitely work on her more the next chance we get! It was wonderful to see everyone and be reminded how great a family I have! (And I think that's as sappy as I'm going to get for now...I think Jenny covered everything pretty well already.)

:)

Ho-hum.

Dad's comment on the previous post reminds me that I never finished what I started, blogging-wise, with my post on the Man Booker prize long list and my attempts to tackle it in its entirety. So in the absence of other blogworthy topics (yes, there are some things that aren't blogworthy, believe it or not), I'll end the suspense on this particular topic.

So, first of all, by the announcement of the winner of the prize on 16 October, I had read all of the long-list, bar two. Both of the two that I didn't read were not on the short list. One of them (Winnie and Wolf) I had absolutely no desire to be near, let alone crack the cover on, after reading the Observer's review of it. The other (The Gift of Rain) I had bought and plan to read some day, I just didn't make it in time for the announcement. A friend currently has it, so I'll just read it whenever it comes back my way.

I don't think 11 out of 13 is bad going, considering that I did it all in the allotted time (about two months). I know I'm not the only one that tries to achieve this particular (minor) feat, but it still lets me have the satisfaction of feeling like I have a more informed opinion than those people who post comments on blogs about the Booker about books they admit to never having read. But anyway, as Sesame Street or Confucious or someone else equally wise might say, the value is in the journey, not the destination, so I should feel pretty good about it all.

But I don't. Because after doing something like this, you can't help but feel let down when you disagree totally with the decision of the judges. This year the prize went to Anne Enright, for The Gathering, a story about a traditional Irish family and all the messy stuff that they're involved with. It's not a bad book. Enright has a real mastery of language and writing and there are some very moving passages. But it just isn't a great book. It's not a book to get excited about. It's not really one you would recommend other people reading. You just read it, it's ok, it's kind of interesting, and you move on. So not really a book to rock anyone's world by being awarded a prestigous literary prize. I think I would rather a book that I absolutely hated had won, because then I could at least have the pleasure of self-righteous rage at the judges being SO wrong. But instead they went with a mediocre choice. Enright supposedly is a really nice person, so it's hard to get upset. And she's going to spend the £50,000 on a new kitchen, so who can argue with that?

The thing that really gets me is that it isn't surprising that they ended up with a middle of the road choice, when you read about how the book was chosen. It was chosen, ladies and gentlemen, by a FORMULA. This is what you get when you have the panel of literary prize chaired by an ECONOMIST. Howard Davies, chair of the 2007 panel, is the director of the London School of Economics. Why he was chosen to lead up the thing, I have no idea. Maybe he's some great artist inside, but it looks to me like he's an economist. By all means, let people from all fields of endeavor participate, but don't give them the reins.

Yes, prizes are always subjective. Yes, prizes don't really mean anything. But come on. Can we at least have the prizes chosen by people who actively participate in the field that the prizes are meant to honor? Even the Academy Awards recognize that!

Needless to say, I'm a bit peeved by it all. It also doesn't help when I read an article that is written by someone who actually knows the history of the prize and understands the context of all this, who argues that the prize has gone completely downhill. Plus, it sounds like our economist gave a stinker of a speech on the night. I haven't yet looked to see if I can find a transcript of his speech, since I think it will just make me mad. And I'm trying to put this all behind me.

It's such a shame, because I enjoy the challenge of reading them all, and it is interesting to compare books that you ordinarily would not compare, just because they've all been thrown together by a random panel of strangers. But, man, this year was just a bit pants all round, and last year was also pretty poor (although the year before, I completely agree that Banville deserved the win). So, the question is, am I going to put myself through this again next year?

Absolutely.

Yes, it's got me too.

A couple of weeks ago, Mark was out at a gig in the evening and I was left home alone with the interweb. The result? I finally succumbed and signed up to Facebook.

I had (still have, actually, though I never look at it) an account with Friendster way back when it was the thing-to-do, but when I moved from LA I didn't use it and I never replaced it with anything else. I think friends have used different things since then, but lately, everyone has been talking about Facebook. It's been in the news, which means that it's been around so long that you're way too late for the "early adopters" badge, you've gone past the "bandwagon" stage and you're pretty much in the "might-as-well-do-it-since-everyone-else-is-and-there-may-be-something-to-it" moment. So I thought I would give it a go.

I quickly found that actually, it's kind of useful. Lots of people that I haven't talked to in ages are on it, and it's given me a good reason to drop them a line. Plus, it's such a low-pressure environment--you can send a note of just a couple lines and you don't have to worry about writing everything that has happened in your life since you last spoke to them. So it's a nice way of letting people know that you're thinking of them and catching up with what they're doing now.

You can do lots of different things through adding applications--and I did go a bit overboard at the beginning and over-applicate, if you know what I mean--but I'm back to a happy, managable level.

And I'll be buying you all dinner once I cash my checks from this commercial...

The whole story.

No, I really didn't keep from posting just to experiment with everyone...it started out as building suspense, but quickly progressed to forgetfulness (Sunday) and then to laziness (Monday). And the laziness continued to today, since initially I didn't even bother posting the whole story about the experience.

So here it is. With pictures!

As I mentioned in a previous post, it all started with getting the official book that the test is based on and studying through the week.

Saturday morning we were up at about 8am; I had a banana and a last minute look at my citizenship timeline.

Before we left Clevedon, we had the important step of withdrawing the test fee (£35):



The ride to the test centre in Bristol was quiet and slightly tense.


We arrived to the area a bit early, so we sat in the car and Mark asked me random questions from the book. Then, at 10 am, the test centre opened, and it was time to go in!


Once inside, I filled out a simple form saying who I was and I paid my money.



Mark then wasn't allowed to go any further, so we don't have any more pictures of the inside. I took a picture of the waiting room with my phone, but I don't know if I should post it, in case it's some kind of State secret. But I have to say, there was a mural of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, so it wasn't all that intimidating. Although Eeyore did have a bit of leer.

I sat around in the waiting room for a while, reading a story by Alice Munro (that doesn't bear any significance, just a little bit of extra color). The other people who were taking the test came in one by one, until there were six of us in total. It was a nice mix of nationalities; kind of like United Colours of Bristol. No one talked to each other; I think we were all trying to make sure the statistics we had crammed in wouldn't fall out of our heads before the test started.

We were called into a separate testing room, one at a time, to have our details inputted into the computer system. Then, once everyone did that, we were all called in together. The testing room had about eight computers in it and was pretty shoddy, to be honest. Each computer had a set of headphones (so you could listen to questions if you wanted to) and an instruction sheet about how the test worked taped to the desk. The thing that initially drove me crazy was that the sheet taped to the desk was crooked. Sheesh.

Anyway, they ran through the rules (no standing, no looking at other people's screens, no talking). We then took a practice test with really easy questions to make sure we knew how to use the system and all that.

Then, the test began. It was a mixture of multiple choice and true/false questions. I signed a little waiver saying that I wouldn't divulge any material from the test, so I guess technically I can't say what the questions actually were. But suffice to say, it was a mix of easy ones and less easy ones and I did get a couple of statistics questions. I might have been able to pass without studying, but it would have been a much closer thing. As it stood, there were about 5 questions (out of a total of 24) that I wasn't absolutely sure about the correct answer, and even those I was pretty confident about.

They give you 45 minutes to complete the test, but everyone was done after about 15-20 minutes. We had to leave the room when we were finished with the test, and once everyone was back in the waiting room, there was a little bit of a pause and then each person was called into the room individually, to hear whether or not they had passed. I was the second person in, and the moderator person just said "congratulations, you passed" and gave me a little printout that said "congratulations, you passed" with a boring red stamp on it. They don't even tell you what your score was, so I have no idea if I got everything right or if I only squeaked by or something in-between. But of course that only matters if that sort of thing is important to you, or if you are trying to out-do someone else, and since I don't know anyone else who has taken the test, I wouldn't be able to gloat anyway.

So I came out of the test centre all smiley, where Mark was waiting for me.



It wasn't as traumatic as it might have been, and I have to say that all in all it wasn't that stressful, even for someone who has an uncanny ability to make any situation unnecessarily fraught. So they must be doing something right.

Now the next step is to fill in the application form and send it in with the test certificate and lots and lots of money. They say that at the moment it is taking them about four months to process applications, so if I get it in before Christmas, I may actually be naturalized by the end of March (if they approve my application, of course).

Crazy!

The Answer.

So, I took the test on Saturday morning. I'm only posting now because I wanted to build suspense. I didn't want everyone see how it went before they even read that I was taking the test. The only thing, is that I hadn't realized that it's really difficult to build suspense when you have an audience of 5 people, max, and those 5 people probably don't look at the blog every day.

But it was an interesting experiment. I posted about the test on Friday, and it took until Tuesday for someone to ask how it went (thanks, Julie!). Granted, I got impatient and talked to half of my audience on the phone on Saturday night and spilled the beans. So really, I only have myself to blame.

Anyway, I passed.