The Willimers in America

Driving in New Jersey in Late Fall

We live in a lovely part of central New Jersey. You wouldn't know just by looking that New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the US, and that we are just a little over an hour from New York City. Central New Jersey is full of upscale communities like ours, and Hopewell Township is expert at clinging to its open spaces through planning committies and regulations. There's a lot of woodland in central New Jersey, and therefore a lot of wild deer. And everyone I know has a  'hitting a deer with my car' story. Mark up another US tradition to the Willimer family.

I was driving home from work in the winter darkness, when the poor deer appeared out of nowhere. He seemed to do that classic 'deer in the headlight' thing, with a look of "oh, **** "  when he knew I was going to hit him. I had that look too, if I'm being honest ! He almost seemed to crouch down and brace himself for the impact - which meant that luckily for me (but not the deer) the front fender of my car took all the impact. The red bits that flew past my windshield were not bits of deer as I first thought, but my front radiator grill disintegrating. The poor deer was killed outright, as was my radiator grill, one of my headlights and both of my turn signals.

I had to wait 30 minutes for a policeman to arrive from Princeton, only to be told that the jurisdiction followed the yellow line down the centre of the road, so then I had to wait another 30 minutes for a policeman from Montgomery (the other side of the road) to make the police report. I let the patrolman look for my missing licence plate - I was dreading finding it embedded in the poor animal's side. However my only souvenir is a sad little wisp of fur stuck in the broken remains of the grill...

Before and After...I'm in one piece but the car is going to be in hospital for at least a week.

A Christmas Letter

Whenever I go through a period when I haven't been blogging regularly, I find it increasingly hard to 'catch up' - I'm faced with two choices. Either forget about the intervening weeks (or even months !!), which seems like a bit of a betrayal, or else try and write about all the things that have happened - but the longer I put off the decision, the more catching up there is to do and the harder it actually is to get started. What I need is a really good excuse to write a summary of the year...say something like an 'end-of-year' or Christmas letter....mmm...

We get several Christmas letters every year, and while it might seem a little impersonal in some ways, while also a tad egotistical in others (do people who don't already know what's going on in your life really want to be told all the gruesome details ?) we find it nothing less than interesting. So I hope you find this one the same way it leaves us. BTW, this text is liberally sprinkled with images from the year, all of which can be found on my Flickr site.

So another year rolls around. Only recently, we were trying to make arrangements to meet up with a friend, but he was having difficulty finding a suitable time. "After all, it is my birthday this weekend"...this reminded us that it was a whole 12 months ago that we'd been to his 40th birthday party, and about the same time since we'd written our last Christmas letter. And what is quite remarkable is that time seems to have flown by, despite the action-packed and eventful year we have had.

The title of ‘Biggest Event of the Year’ for us (which was a close run thing) was finally getting our Green Cards. We started the process of completing paperwork and gathering documents back in September 2004, and had elected to use Consular Processing, since we had heard that this route was rather quicker than the 'normal' route. Little did we know how abnormal the whole process was going to be. To cut a long story short, we had our permanent visa application approved in February, and needed only to visit the US Embassy in London with more paperwork in order to have the visa issued. We expected 6-8 weeks notice of an appointment some time in April, but when April arrived with no word, we were told to wait patiently as there was a backlog. With May arriving and still no word, Chris pursued the lawyers at Dow Jones to get some kind of status. We were politely told that our appointment had been arranged for April 20th, and we had not attended (that much we knew...) Some frantic to-ing and fro-ing between the embassy and both UK and US lawyers got us a revised appointment for late June, which we turned into our first long UK visit since David's wedding in 2004.

The disruption in planning our UK trip also affected plans for Chris' Mum to visit us. When we realised that we could not confirm our travel plans any time in the first few months of the year, Chris and his brother spontaneously arranged for Mum to fly out in March, once the worst of the winter weather had passed. Chris and Nigel were both concerned about how Mum would cope with the demanding journey with her ever increasing years, so we took great pains to make sure she has as much assistance as she needed.

We know that Mum likes to simply spend time with the family, so we didn't do too much in the way of outings. We visited Camden Aquarium again - we'd taken Mum there on her very first visit, but it had since had a $53 million refurbishment and was worth another look - but Mum spent a lot of time in one of three chairs enjoying the spring weather and our new house.

We'd already had other visitors earlier in the year. We'd seen in the New Year with Roger and Sally Huggins and the girls, who'd flown in on Christmas Day. We managed to see some parts of New York that we'd never seen before, both intentionally and unintentionally ! Roger, ever the Beatles fan, wanted to see the Dakota Building and the Strawberry Fields Memorial, then Chris took us on a mysterious circular tour of undiscovered parts of Central Park, trying to locate the Zoo. We also took in Philadelphia, especially for Sally to go ice skating at Penn's Landing.

Then in April Marcus and Janet Goddard (and Jamie) made us part of their American tour, spending a few days with us after a whirlwind visit to New York. Philadelphia was on the agenda again, as was apparently aimless wandering disguised as navigation by Chris. This time we were also lead by dubious locals on a tour of Philadelphia's least friendly subway tunnels, with visions of the worst kind of Hollywood horror movie flicking through our minds eye...We got out unscathed and (eventually) found our way back to the car.

When it eventually came round, the UK visit combined Factiva work, visa processing and a vacation. First, Chris had to deal with an increasing amount of pressure at work across the timezones from a new and unsympathetic boss, whilst simultaneously arranging the last paperwork task for the Green Card, the medical. Then we were finally ready for the Embassy appointment. Many people had told us how routine this would be, provided all our paperwork was in order - and, boy, was ours in order ! We had two complete sets of every piece of documentation, including birth certificates, immunization records, salary details, work references, plus we had extra copies to hand over and a spare set of some papers "just in case..." Our paperwork couldn't have been in any better order, so as we sat in the Embassy early one late June morning we were feeling pretty confident. Then the immigration officer started asking Linda some difficult questions about her past – “Has she ever been in trouble with the police?”, “Did she have any other relatives in the US ?” and - the clincher – “Had she ever been to Minnesota ?” Turns out Linda had a double - a woman with an almost identical maiden-name and an almost identical birthday who had been arrested in Rogers, Minnesota for holding up local coffee shops. The immigration officer could not issue Linda's visa without first conducting a fingerprint check with the FBI in Washington DC. So we left the Embassy that day with no passports, no visas, and with the prospect of Thomas and Chris heading home alone - and David looking forward to his sister's extended stay. All was well, however, as our stamped passports arrived two days later - the Embassy had confirmed that Linda was not actually the female leader of the mid-West "Arby's Gang", and we were able to relax and spend the last week of our stay on a well-earned vacation.

We'd asked Thomas what he wanted to do in England, and he had unhesitatingly opted to ride the Pepsi Max Big One, which is the tallest roller coaster in Europe, and located at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. So we drove the 230 miles to Blackpool - which, as a cultural journey, turned out to be a greater distance than the trip back to New Jersey ! We had both been to Blackpool in times gone by, but had obviously blacked out the experience. In New Jersey, the boardwalks at Atlantic City or our nearest shore destination, Seaside Heights, are known for their tackiness, but they could not come close to the sumptuous tastelessness of the Promenade at Blackpool ! Having said that, we stayed in the most amazing hotel, which was like a little oasis of style and class, but was also built right on top of the Pleasure Beach, allowing riders of the coasters to literally peer in through our bedroom window as they flashed by - Thomas thought this was ace ! . In one exhausting day we 'did' the Pleasure Beach until it could be done no more - and we discovered that we had travelled 4,000 miles to a town with the only permanent Doctor Who exhibition in the world.

We always have mixed feelings about returning to New Jersey after a trip to England - but increasingly the return trip to New Jersey has us "going home". This feeling has only intensified since we bought the house last year, and of course now we have a cat waiting for us. Having a Green Card now gives us an extra level of permanence, since it now allows Chris to change jobs. Previously our visas were attached to Factiva, and while it didn't really affect us day-to-day, we were looking forward to revelling in the feeling of having our future and our choices firmly in our own hands.

This feeling lasted around 40 minutes of Chris' first day back in the office, when he was marched into a room and told his services were no longer required by Factiva. Whilst this was obviously somewhat of a shocking welcome back, it wasn't altogether unexpected. After five years in the same demanding role, Chris had become noticeably burned out, and had had trouble adapting to the direction his new boss was moving the department. After a few fraught weeks of writing resumes and checking finances however, everything fell into place. Chris had already had several interviews with large companies like Thomson and Bloomberg when he received a job offer from Dow Jones. Then, that same day, a colleague in another group in Factiva reached out and offered him the perfect position. It was a shame that it took all this drama and disruption to arrive at the result, but things are much better now in every way - Chris is happier and more fulfilled, and finances are on a much stronger footing !

This Fall we adopted another American habit, and became Soccer Mom (and Dad). Tom had a try-out for a local travel team in May, and made the team. From August to November we spent at least one weekend day (and sometimes both) travelling to games in central and northern New Jersey. Although new this year, the team has been very successful, with 7 wins and 2 draws in 10 games, plus visits to two tournaments where they were unbeaten in 6 games. Tom is not the best player on the team, but he should get more focus in the Spring when half the side (including our coach) are also involved in Travel Baseball - which takes priority here.

We've also created another Willimer tradition by taking a vacation trip at Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the major family holiday here, and we've previously found that no-one is around and/or we get invited to have dinner with someone out of sympathy. So after setting our sights on Niagara last Thanksgiving, this year we visited Washington DC for a few days away. Washington is very impressive, unsurprisingly full of history and pomp for what is, after all, the seat of American government. But it has the advantage over London of being laid out recently enough to maximise the visual and emotional impact of the buildings and monuments. We visited Arlington Cemetery, the Air and Space Museum, and took hundreds of photos up and down the National Mall. As a vacation destination, Washington DC deserves several days of anyone's time. Anyone planning a visit to the Willimer's in the future should be prepared for a possible one night stop-over in the Nation's capital.

The end of the year has been full of Christmas and birthday preparations as usual - although this year Linda has not been Room Parent for Tom’s class (some lesser local rival stole the position from under her nose...) but she has had more time to concentrate on her stamping and scrapbooking business. This Fall she has been to several conventions, had a partnership with a local craft shop and done successful workshops at the local library - all creating great interest and bringing in extra business.

Plus one more American tradition adopted, when Chris hit a wild deer with his car on the way home from work... It happens fairly often here, unsurprisingly as there are so many deer around, but it can often be dangerous. We've heard of several people having hospital visits as hooves and horns come flying through the windshield. Luckily for Chris (but not the deer) the front grill took all the impact. No injuries, just one dead deer and a $1000 repair bill

So, that was 2006 in New Jersey. We're hoping for lots of visitors in 2007, but in the meantime, until you book our spare room, we wish you all best wishes for a happy Christmas.