We made it safely back to Sydney on Saturday morning. Our departure wasn’t without dramas – our plane was delayed over six hours on the tarmac on Thursday night and we didn’t fly out until Friday night. More on this in another post… but on the positive side, I got my upgrade to business class, [...]

We FINALLY have internet up and running at our new home. This has been a major saga! We had an awesome cable internet provider in San Francisco but unfortunately they don’t serve our new area. So we were in the market for a new internet company. I consulted DSL Reports to see if I could [...]

Here is something to take your mind off the Australian election, which still doesn’t have a result! Spotting hummingbirds is one the great joys of living in California. They are just so darn cute! We have hung a hummingbird feeder on our balcony and the little birds have been coming to visit. They usually announce [...]

San Francisco really turned on the summer sunshine this weekend – I think the city is trying to convince me not to leave! I won’t be fooled – I know the summer fog is hiding somewhere. It’s been a fantastic weekend, crammed with fun things. Yesterday was especially full. At lunch time we headed to [...]

We’ve found a place to live! As I mentioned previously, we are leaving San Francisco to move closer to work opportunities in Silicon Valley. For me the most stressful part of moving house is the overlapping time between giving notice on the old home and finding a new place to live. Unfortunately that’s pretty much [...]

We have loved living in San Francisco but all good things eventually come to an end. We have decided to leave the city and move down to the peninsula to be closer to my husband’s new job. We are looking at Palo Alto or Menlo Park, which are about 40 minutes drive from here when [...]

I now know why Americans refer to this time of year as “the holidays”. I always thought that it was a politically correct term to avoid using the word “Christmas” and include other religious festivals such as Hanukkah. I was partly right. It is also because Christmas is not the only holiday, even for Christians. [...]

Last week we had the first proper rain we’ve had since I moved to San Francisco in July. The lack of rain was notable – the closest we had got was fog so heavy that it was verging on drizzle. Then last Tuesday the skies opened and we had several months all in one go [...]

October is here already. We are having gloriously sunny days but there is a definite chill in the evenings. Pumpkins of all shapes and colours have appeared in the shops and sweet pumpkin flavours are on the menu at my local ice creamery. I’m sad to bid farewell to summer, though we should have nice [...]