Life and Times in SoCal

September 2021

Hello and welcome back 

Well, it’s coming toward the end of summer, the nights are starting to draw in and its darker on a morning when I get up. I know you will say it’s only the end of August but for us at this latitude it starts to get darker earlier and by the middle of September it will be dark at 7pm.

So, as I told you all in my last post, we were looking forward to having visitors here from mid-June until mid-July, sadly these visits were cancelled due to covid. My mum and aunt had rescheduled for mid-July but unfortunately that was cancelled as well. 

We were also due to come back to the old country in late August for my niece, Lizzie’s wedding and my mom’s 80^th birthday.

Unfortunately, we can’t get back for that again because of covid but also, we no longer have the correct travel documents!!

How could that happen I hear you ask? If you recall from last year, I mentioned that both Julie and I had applied to become American Citizens, well on July 27, 2021, we became American citizens! What we didn’t know was that we had to surrender our green cards and right now we do not have a US passport to enable us to travel back to the USA. We still have UK passports but in these uncertain times we cannot re-enter the US on a UK passport! We have applied for US passports, but it could take up to 16 weeks! We should have gone through the ceremony in mid-June. However, a new federal holiday was announced 12 hours before we were due to swear the oath of allegiance, so we were pushed back by 6 weeks if this hadn’t happened, we would have been able to get back for the celebrations.

We do plan to be back this year now that the UK is allowing double vaccinated travelers, so mum save us some birthday cake!

We have had a good summer so far and not withstanding no visitors, we did have a 4^th July party at our house with around 25 people, neighbors and co-workers. I like to think of it as a practice for when Jordan and Dom get here then we will do it again.

We have had some sad news also; it breaks my heart to inform you that our friend and companion the big yellow duck expired! Still, he had a good life swimming with the kids both large and small. We will miss him or her! There is talk of a new replacement in the form of a chicken or was that a flamingo! Not a lot of difference, right??

We have also been watching a great series on Apple TV+ it’s called Ted Lasso it is a very funny and poignant program that can have you laughing one minute and give you tears in your eyes the next. Watch it and let me know what you think?

Right now, Julie is between jobs, she left Stir Foods in early June and is now a lady that lunches! She has been into my facility to help with developing and commercializing a number of our new salad dressing that have just launched in to the market here, so she is keeping her hand in!



Update Julie has a new position as Director of R&D for a company called Cadence Kitchen.

Until next time!