It's been a few days I know, but I've been too busy to get round to posting. Also, I'm clearly so gobsmacked about getting my visa without further hassle that I really am lost for words!!

I must say I've had a great time in London. I can't believe my 2.5 weeks is nearly up and I get to go back to New York tomorrow. I've really enjoyed being in the London office - seeing all the familiar faces (and a good few new ones). It's been enlightening and inspirational to catch up with the big cheeses and hear what's really going on. I only wish that I could work here again and benefit from the structure that is being put into place. The New York office is like a tomb in comparison.

And it's been totally fab to catch up with everyone. Had a fantastically relaxing time with the folks at the weekend - I'm enjoying visiting more and more these days (sentimentality obviously sets in with old age!) - and that includes a quite hilarious visit with Maggie and Zoe on Sunday, where I had the dubious pleasure of riding the Thelwell (if riding is what it can be called!). Rather guiltily missed out on Sarah's birthday celebrations on Monday in order to welcome Sam back from Florida. Then had great Tapas with JonP on Tuesday and heard a bit more about how Cozai are getting on (and inevitably mulled over some of the [old] Bluewave politics). Yesterday was Sam's birthday so we went for drinks and Vietnamese in Soho, including a catch-up with Rose (looking very 'New York'!), and Nettie. So tonight, sadly, is my last night and a drink with Gerard (followed by speedy packing), before flying out tomorrow afternoon.

Of course I love New York and I've missed Roj like crazy, but being here has made me realise what I'm missing. First on the list is a positive work environment that's going somewhere (with management I trust and respect!). The downward spiral of the New York office sort of crept up on me over the last few months, and I obviously haven't realised quite how demoralising it's become. Second is seeing friends and colleagues for the first time in, sometimes, almost two years. I'm not known for being overly sociable anyway, so I hadn't felt I'd been missing out, but getting back together with people has made me realise that there's quite a community over here which I'd like to be part of again. Seeing family (and family-in-law) is third on the list. Although I've seen them a couple of times in the last year and a half, I've come to a point where I'd like to see more of them (more easily).

Sigh. Is this just me becoming sentimental and nostalgic? I know for a fact that when I get back to NYC I'll be enthusiastic for what is on offer there, but I can't ignore what I've re-discovered in Blighty. On the other hand I don't want to be spending my remaining US time wishing I was somewhere else. Oh the dilemmas of an international lifestyle!! More on this, inevitably, later ...

Like a 5-year-old I went to bed at 9 last night, but still couldn't sleep until around midnight. Serves me right I suppose. Should have read a few chapters of 100 Years of Solitude cos that has the habit of sending me right to sleep! Yes, object all you will, but I really can't get into it. I'm just finding it to be a long and exasperating list of events involving characters who I don't really empathise with or have interest in following. I find the narrative style detached and cursory (a hazard of 3rd person and translations, admittedly). I hate the way the timeline jumps around, I hate the fact that every single character is called Aureliano or Jose Arcadio, and I really hate the way the story leaps into the world of magical fantasy from time to time without warning. Ok the latter is just personal preference - I had the same objections to Louis de Bernières' The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (it's because I always get the sneaky suspicion that meddling with reality is basically because the author has run out of ideas), but still ...

Good things about yesterday evening? - I spoke to Sven for the first time since Christmas. Had a good chat but just became envious of the 6 weeks he's about to spend in Europe, following the Tour de France, then riding all the mountain stages like the nutter he is.

Also spoke to Samski from Florida which was very cool. Sounds like she's having a good time and is going to be kind enough to let me stay on her floor even when she comes back over on Sunday. Sweetheart.

Still no news on the visa front, but that's hardly surprising. I'm not going to start panicking until mid-next week when my return flight becomes imminent. I don't even want to start thinking about what might happen if it doesn't come through, especially now our windsurfing holiday has been moved (3rd time lucky) to early August.

Tube strike in London today, so I'm limited as to what I can do after work. The bus took 10 minutes longer than usual, but as that just meant 10 minutes of extra sleep time for me, I didn't mind in the least! The return journey won't be quite so straightforward. Even yesterday I had to push my way through the barrage of bodies on Oxford Street to get the bus where it originates. Reminded me of one of the main reasons I prefer the Big Apple over the Big Smoke - somehow NYC doesn't get nearly as fraught, probably thanks to its more logical network of alternative routes. So there's a third good reason to get back home ...

Wonderful to catch up with my old university pals last night. Everyone seems to be totally happy and sorted - buying flats, moving in with fellas, moving up the corporate ladder ... very encouraging. Definitely hoping that they might venture over to the other side of the Atlantic early next year for a certain 30th birthday that we don't really want to talk about too much!! Also the cheesecake was amazing!

Had lunch with Cozai plus Mike today too ... even got the chance to see the office space which is really bright and friendly. Lovely to see everyone (hopefully more of them next week too).

And now I just want to go home and chill out in front of Sam's minature telly, have something crap to eat and go to bed at about 9.30! Still haven't fully recovered from jetlag, on top of which getting up at 5.20 to go running round Clapham Common is a bit draining (considering that's 12.30 New York time!) and the horrendous classical English cold which I've contracted from an unknown source doesn't help either. Need sleep!!

I'm having a really good time here in the UK. Of course the best weather England's had all year certainly helps, but I'm almost thinking I'd like to be back (quick, bring on the rain and wind so I can change my mind!!). Had a lovely day yesterday being lazy and wandering along the banks of the Thames. Was very excited to find a Lucien Freud exhibition at the Tate, but when I saw the 15-or-so people in front of every painting I changed my mind. I don't need to pay £9 to see backs-of-heads when I can watch those nearly anywhere! Instead am making plans to go and see Matisse/Picasso at the Tate Modern with a few people from work (killing two birds with one stone - great artists & a gallery I haven't yet visited) and plenty of other plans to catch up with nearly everyone. I wish I was here for an extra weekend so I could go visiting a bit futher afield, being currently restricted to London-based people, but I feel comfortably obliged to go and visit my parents next weekend in Shropshire. Rude not to.

Saturday was lovely jubbly too. I went out to East Grinstead in Kent (gorgeous place - who said Kent was flat and urban?) to visit Rowan, her brother Jerome, partner Miranda and cute little 2-month-old Ellie. We had a beautiful traditional English afternoon with lunch in a beer garden followed by afternoon tea in Miranda's parents' garden - so English!! I've been horrendously tired since about Thursday though, so after nearly falling asleep during tea, I came back to Sam's ickle flat and fell asleep trying to get my head around Big Brother (with no luck!).

This week is more catchup time. Tuesday the imperative Pizza Express experience with the 260 gals, Wednesday lunch at Cozai, and more stuff yet to be arranged. So many things to do, so little time!!! (but at least it takes my mind off the visa nonsense!).

Oh yeah ... photos are on the way, but I'm lacking any decent authoring software at present. For those of you who have ever opened a Homesite-written document in Notepad, you'll know what I mean!!

I'm in England!

And I must say it's a bit weird being in the UK office. It hasn't changed all that much, but there are a lot of new faces and a lot less of the old ones. Good to be here though, on the whole. The visa application is in the post (my fingers are crossed), and I'm making lots of plans to catchup with people who I haven't seen for over a year. Cool.

It seems ages ago now that I was back in Idaho. It was good though - a little too much wine and good food and too little sleep, but has to be done occasionally, and it usually is when Mike Taylor is involved! The highpoints were the tandem paragliding, the rodeo and the mountain biking, all of which were new things for me. Independence Day was, I'm afraid, unmomentous. We were going to go to a parade in Sun Valley during the day, but we were all more inclined to sit around in the sun (100 degrees, but dry) than wave our star-spangled banners. We did go to some kind of celebration in the evening with a pretty impressive ice show including the two Russian champions, and some reasonable fireworks. I quite enjoyed the show, but we were too far from the ice rink to get much of a view (despite being only two tables from the front), much less any photos.

It was pretty painful getting up the next morning at 8 to do the paraglide, but it was definitely worth it. My instructor was the owner of the school, and managed to get us up from 9,000ft (launch height) to nearly 11 on the thermals. It was very sedate and relaxing, but gave us fantastic views of the surrounding mountains and Sun Valley (photos online soonish). In the last 5 minutes Chuck decided to spin us around (using the chute like a pivot) for a bit of excitement. Unfortunately, due to copius amounts of red wine the previous night and the altitude, being subjected to 3g's didn't really do me much good - I nearly blacked out (lost vision completely) and had to yell at him to stop. Wuss!!

It was nearly lunch by the time we landed, so we parked the idea of mountainbiking that afternoon, and instead went to the rodeo in Hailey for entertainment. Fantastic show! It was like walking into some sort of strange TV program. Very impressive to see all these stupid gung-ho cowboys nearly break their backs on massive angry bulls and bucking broncos. Shame it was sunset time, or I'd have got some better photos.

So we did the mountainbiking the next day instead. We cycled up Bald Mountain (which is where we'd launched our parachutes the day before), and I had my first experience of dual suspension. Actually I found it pretty spongy and heavy, but then I would think that, being the owner of one of the lightest carbon-fibre hardtails around! The trail was fantastic though - it took us around 4 hours to climb the 3,000ft to the top of Bald Mountain on sandy mildly technical singletrack all the way. I was puffing like a maniac due to the altitude (honest guv!), but was pleased to keep up a reasonable pace after the traditional 1 hour useless warmup. After a buffalo burger at the top, we set off on a pretty amazing downhill on similarly sandy, minimally technical singletrack. We could have got to the bottom in about half an hour with no pedalling had it not been for Roj's 5 snakebite punctures!

Anyway. Enough waffle of what I was up to a week ago. It was a great break, so many thanks go to Mike, Jill and our Harley cowboy host Dana (very impressive guns!). Sun Valley was beautiful, hot and mountainous - it would be great to go back one day with either snowboards or mountan bikes (and a second mortgage, unfortunately!).

Meanwhile, back to the UK which is, unbelievably, sunny and warm. If it stays like this at the weekend I might have to do a youth hostelling trip somewhere nice and try and get the visa nonsense out of my brain!

Phew! My faith in beaurocracy (what little there was of it) is somewhat restored. I got a reply from the embassy first thing this morning - which is an under-12-hour response time. Looks like I should be able to go back to the UK and get my visa after all ... I just hope that I'm not being sent on a wild goose chase that ends with me being kept in the UK for several months - and I'm certainly not going to hold my breath until my passport, with it's shiny new visa stamp, is in my hand.

I still need to talk a bit about Idaho ... didn't eat many potatoes, but did lots of other interesting things. I will update soon.

Oh ... and ... most importantly ... Happy Birthday to the love of my life. xxx

Well ... after all that waiting, my worst fears came true with the visa. I heard last Wednesday that my application has been remanded (in custody?). Due to an INS backlog, I won't hear why it's been remanded for two months ... two months!!, which clearly isn't very helpful as my current visa expires in exactly one week. My immigration lawyer suspects it's all down to an oversight of the US Embassy in London who issued my visa, because they didn't fill in the section on my form which says whether I'm subject to this stupid 2-year residency rule that I've talked about previously (it should say that I'm not subject to the rule, but they just plain forgot to tick the box).

I therefore have to hot-tail it to London and apply directly at the embassy which should take around 10 days. Sounds good doesn't it? - except I don't know if they're going to kick up a fuss about the 2-year residency thing either. If they are, I may have to obtain a waiver for the rule, which will take a good three months during which time I will not be allowed back to the US (whereas if I apply in the US, I'm allowed to stay in the country while my application is pending). Therefore I'm trying to find out if I'm eligible, but the bloody Embassy is only contactable by fax and there's no follow-up system. Meaning that I'm sitting here pulling my hair out, looking into flights to the UK and hoping to hell they'll get back to me before the end of this week so I can get this all sorted.

All this shit because of a simple 'oversight' from the Embassy in the first place. I mean ... the damn form is only one page long. You'd have thought they could do it properly.

I got up at 1.30 on Saturday. That's the afternoon! And that's the first time I've done that in about 10 years!!!! In fact I had the whole weekend off training and consequently feel very tired and lethargic this week ... eh?

Went to see Minority Report on Saturday evening and it was fantastic! I totally loved it. I mean ... it had a couple of rather cringeworthy Spielberg moments, but they were generally counterbalanced by some very impressive effects and Tom Cruise, aged 39, looking amazing (life-long fan ... sorry!).

NYARA board meeting last night - slightly less political than usual, but still went on for ages. Predictably couldn't get to sleep for a couple of hours when I got in, so ended up sleeping through my running alarm this morning. Ah well ... a bit of rest never hurt anyone.

Been catching up with a few people recently ... some more expectedly than others ... it's weird, but really good to hear from people I haven't been in touch with for several years. I'm even coming round to the idea of reunions and things - it just seems nice to hear what other people have been up to for a while. Does this mean I'm getting even more old and boring than usual!? ... probably!!! ;-)

Starting to look forward to going to Idaho tomorrow. It's a bit of a long flight, but I really need the time off work. Being in a small office is all well and good, but not when the work starts pouring in since there's no-one left to take up the slack. Luckily we have a new designer now, which should ease the pressure in that department, but it's looking much like I'm going to have to recruit someone in my department too. Amazing but true.