House update

Hi there everyone,

Thought I would just post a little update for everybody. No news on the job front yet. Keep rifling through the post every time it arrives, but so far nothing. Ah well. Einar and I went to Aurora (where Wells is) a few nights back actually. C.J (lady who teaches history at Wells and who I know from a conference I went to in Cambridge last yr) invited us to her house for food. We met a bunch of people (all very nice), some of whom worked at Wells and some who didn't. Then we went to the morgan opera house in aurora to listen to an american folk band. They were fantastic! So all in all we had a great night. I have to admit that while lovely, Aurora is, how can I put it...unique...in a few ways. I got an inkling this might be the case when I was in a cafe in ithaca. Part of the graffiti in the bathroom there read "keep Aurora weird."

Anyway, It turns out that an old graduate of Wells College, Pleasant Rowland, made a fortune by inventing a doll called American Girl. She sold the company to Mattel in a deal worth $700 million and was made vice-chairperson on Mattel's board as a result. She invested a whole heap of cash in Wells College and the village of Aurora as a whole, apparently ruffling a few feathers in the process. Einar and I drove through Aurora before we knew any of this and were slightly perplexed by the atmosphere of the place. We stopped at a coffee shop and it was strangely "perfect." You went in and on your right were pretty notebooks, quilts, and crockery to buy. On your left was a cafe area with cakes and pastrys on display. And straight ahead were rows of glass jars full of sweets. I felt like I was in harrogate in betty's tea shop! So very nice, but a little, well, peculiar.

So there you go. Pleasant Rowland owns a lot of Aurora from what I can gather. Who'd have thought it?

On a slightly more disgusting note, check out this news story. Keep Aurora weird indeed!

What else, well the house purchase story has moved on a bit (some of you will know my news on this front and some won't so I'll fill you in.) We're in the process of buying a blue house in Ithaca. It's a 1950's techbuild so most of the internal walls are moveable. There are pics on flickr of it. Google flickr. go to the photosharing website, then search for vollset. Click underneath one of the pics that pops up, on the words Brit Abroad. That should take you to all the pics of the house, interior and exterior views. Be warned some of them are dull, they're there to help us remember layout as well as interest you lot!
So yes, we're currently waiting for our loan to be approved, which we hope to have done by next friday. Both of us are turning into DIY bores. We can spend hours discussing laminate.

Oh and one final snippet of news. It's a classic embarrassing 'Laura' moment. These things always happen when I'm trying to be good/polite. You know what it's like, husband has very intelligent, out-of-my-league type colleagues who are lovely and put up with my desperate ramblings in social situations (I'm talking about cornell faculty here, you lot from newcastle don't have the same effect somehow, sorry!). We go round for dinner to said faculty member's house and have great food with his wife (Lesley) and their two children. I'm terrified for the entire evening. Don't ask me why, I just was. I couldn't stop talking. It was like every time a silence fell I had to fill it in. Truly useless. Anyway, this guy, Robert, is academically brilliant, plays the ukulele, rides a unicycle and manages to have a family life. His wife is equally brilliant, has a variety of sciency degrees, but changed to the arts and now runs the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca. (I mean, what could I say? "I write my blog, eat peanut butter from the jar and watch the food network?")

It turns out they have pets. A very old cat (who was very sociable and talkative). He's got so arthritic that Robert says he spends his evenings lifting the cat on and off the sofa. They also have hermit crabs....Now I admit, at this point alarm bells should have rung, but I was so nervous that any alarms would have been drowned out by my inner voice which was begging me to a) shut up and b) stop sweating. So anyway we were chatting about these pets, and Robert was saying that these hermit crabs just need misting once in a while, but its kind of hard to tell whether they're alive sometimes. Then I, despite the voice screaming at me from the back of my skull, to shut up, for the LOVE OF GOD SHUT UP.....go and utter the immortal words "So Robert, you have crabs?" It's not a great line is it? Not, I think you will agree, a great thing to say to your husband's brilliant colleague in his own home, in front of his wife and children. So there you go. That has, I think, been the most embarrassing moment of Ithaca life to-date. I think it's best if I never go out. That way Einar can tell all the cornell folks that he has a beautiful, intelligent, coherent wife...and they never need to find out the truth!

Right that's it. Off to research kitchen cabinets!xx

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, (well picking it up from yesterday anyway), that's another thing that is taking a bit of getting used to. Americans don't appear to drink much. Which of course is a good thing! But it makes making friends kind of an angst-ridden process. So Einar and I are learning to be good and not embarrass ourselves in company ;) The culture over here on fridays for example is very different to the UK. This Friday (today) Einar is playing football after work....at 10.30 pm...10.30!!!! If we were still in the uk we might be eating out, or having a meal at someone's house, or in the pub. Whatever we did we'd be relaxing and greeting the weekend with a few drinks. Not a drunken rampage, just a few. It's just that just a few for an american seems to mean 2 glasses of wine or 1 pint, drunk slowly over 2 hours and that's it. Anyway there will be nothing like that tonight, instead it's football for einar and knitting for me :) Yes people, that's right, knitting. I am learning to knit and chose a placemat for my first project. Of course it may be easy, but it is also I am discovering, incredibly dull. So yes, mum, I may let you down on the knitting front. I can do it, but perhaps a placemat was a bad way to start. only a million more rows of green plain knit stitch to go..... I may pass out with sheer excitement.

Well I'm all blogged out for now, so I'll sign off. But before I forget, I've put a few pictures of our current home in Ithaca on flickr here. Oh and I'm also trying to get a job...all very exciting. I've applied to Wells college, so I'll update you on how that goes as and when I hear anything. Bye for now! xx
P.S , here's a view of Wells, which is in the village of Aurora, 30mins drive from Ithaca

and here's the view Wells has over Cayuga lake. Looks lovely. Cross your fingers for me!

Well, this is my first ever attempt at a weblog. If it's anything like my diary (kept for 1 week at age 13) it'll consist of 5 pages of salacious playground gossip. Then I'll give up because it's too much like hard work. Anyway for now, it's an attempt to keep all my friends and family in the UK and Norway updated as to what is going on in the world of Mr and Mrs Vollset, now we have upacked our spotted hankies and are living in the land of the free.

The first thing I must tell you people, is that the TV is GOD AWFUL...and I really mean that. They have a million channels, none of which is worth watching for more than an hour. Every night I pray to god that John Snow will make a leap across the pond and present a considered informative in-depth news programme-not that I actually take any of it in, but at least you know you're watching quality programming. So far no luck. As anyone who is in a relationship will appreciate, this dearth of decent telly has dire consequences. Einar and I are forced to hold conversations. It's not that we want to you understand. It's just that we have to. Decent (or even crap, but addictive) TV allows you to particpate in what could nominally be described as a collective activity with your loved-one, without actually having to engage with them in any really meaningful way.

So instead of watching TV we avoid talking in other ways. Usually we end up eating something healthy like bread and peanut butter. Or I end up falling asleep. Or Einar opens the laptop and surfs mutely for hours. Initially we solved the lack of TV problem by going out for meals all the time. (As our friends from Newcastle will already know, we are very good at this). This however is not financially viable as a long term option so we have had to re-consider. Tonight Einar may go to the gym after becoming morbidly depressed about his weight this morning. I did tell him he smelled of sausages, which probably didn't help matters. But it was an observation made as I was surfacing after a good nights kip, I wasn't on my guard. Anyway, he's probably at the gym as we speak. This makes me feel guilty of course. As I lean over the keyboard I can feel a roll of fat bunching itself up under my ribcage. That'll be the result of the 3 cookies I ate earlier instead of a rounded lunch with vegetables (and no cookies are not biscuits, they're bigger, chewier and I felt slightly sick after eating 3 at once.) So there you are. My husband is at the gym while I am at home writing a weblog entry and getting fat. My cunning plan to slide into obesity as a couple has been foiled.

In other news, our house is lovely. Very homely, if a little different to what we've been used to in the UK. It's quite a novelty to have a wooden house for me. Of course the viking just thinks it's completely normal. I sometimes worry about termites, or woodworm, but it seems to hold up just fine, even in the foot or so of snow that fell a week ago. It's a 3 bed house (though it feels a lot bigger. ) And as those of you who received an email from me will already know it has a chamber stove which I have just learned has this terrifying broiler thing in it. You turn the gas on, light it, lift this big lid on the stove top and suddenly it's as if the underside of the lid has errupted in flames. I am told this cooks things quickly. Either that or it's a kind of DIY cremation device.

What else...Well, Einar seems to be settling in well at Cornell. The job's going well, he's finding his feet and seems happy. Ithaca itself is a lovely town I think. Downtown is located in a valley with Cayuga Lake at the northern end of it. The city extends up hills on either side of this area. Cornell university and collegetown (where we live at the moment) are at the top of one hill and there are other areas (which I've not seen yet), plus Ithaca college on the other side, or thereabouts.

Cornell university is big by english standards. It's got a lovely art museum and I'm looking forward to seeing the plantations when spring and summer arrive. I've even bought a map with walking trails and information for you to borrow ma and pa (and indeed all our other visitors) which looks like it might be handy. There are also a number of wineries in the region that should be good for a tasting or two.