Goodbye, July. . .

Synopsis of events of the past few days of life at the Lere household:

* Bird Scare: On Saturday morning Philip awoke to my screaming and squaking. We sleep with our windows open (AC does not exist in this country and the last week it would have felt nice). Well, a bird decided to visit and landed on the windowsill inside of the room. Bird freak me out. I reacted. Philip thought the house was on fire or North Korea was knocking down our door. He was a smart man, threw the covers over my head and saved me from the bird.

* Mouse Dream: The next night Philip didn't get a restful night's sleep as I wake up SCREAMING and tell him in my sleep that there is a mouse in my dream (I didn't remember this at all - as you can imagine, he recounted it quite vividly. . .)

* STUPID ROAD TAX. So in the UK, you have to pay tax for everything. This includes having a vehicle on the road. $400 per year per car (this is after you pay for a strict yearly inspection and all necessary fixes AND for a retest). Well we just bought a second car and were thinking that we had until next week to renew the tax on it. I was pulling into the gate to go to the comissary last night and the airman at the gate was like, "um, ma'am - your road tax is expired" (every car here has a seal certifiying it on the dash). I looked. Sure enough. The guy we bought the car from had been driving it w/o for a month (VERY risky - the ticket is about $1000). The airman should have ticketed me but I smiled sweetly and gave my story about having just bought the car and played the part of the innocent officer's wife. Luckily I got off with a warning.

HOWEVER, I had to renew the tax today. I checked at our village's post office (in the UK since most things are nationalized, you can pay a lot of bills at the post office). They told me I had to go IN to town to do it (I wasn't surprised this same thing happened when I paid our TV tax. . . yes $200 a year to own a TV). I walked into town (I obviously wasn't going to drive the car!). I presented the documents and sure enough I didn't have the insurance papers (I didn't know they were necessary). I walked/ran home (in my dress shoes). By this time I was running very late for meeting someone. Luckily I got a hold of her to to explain what was going on. So, $400, two blisters and two frantic trips into Mildenhall later - the car is set to be on British roads for another 12 months. Oy. . .

* Sunday, Sunday. I got to meet the new chaplin and his wife last weekend briefly but this past Sunday we had a welcome picnic for his family after church. We are really looking forward to getting to know the Adamsons! After church our friend Matt came over and he and phililp jammed on guitar for awhile.

* Family Budget Meeting. Enough said.

* Buyer's Market. Philip and I have been doing a lot of thinking and planning (as much as we can from where we are right now) about what move we are going to make next as far as homeownership goes. We are anxious to start investing and hope to own rental property in the not-so-distant (meaning the next assignment or two) future. We're working hard on saving all of my salary so we'll be ready for a downpayment in 12-24 months. While most 23 year olds were partying or downloading music on Saturday night, we were drooling over foreclosed houses in Denver that we wish we could afford to buy right now. We looked at each other and said, "we are such nerds."

My parents got Philip hooked on financial planner, Dave Ramsey, so Philip listens to his radio show religiously and has been reading business and real estate books left and right.

* Girl Time. Today a classmate of mine and I met up for tea and hung out for the afternoon. It was GLORIOUS to have some girl time with a friend. Sadly, I'm singing the tune I am learning quite well "she's leaving soon." She will be going back to the states in a few weeks. *Tea I have officially fallen in love with: Rhubarb Blackcurrant. Soooooooo good.*

I just heard a car pull up to the driveway. . . time to meet the handsome man in uniform knocking at my door. . .