Kristen woke up early the next morning and went downstairs to see the cats and found that Winston had found his way into the closed off area of the basement and Basil couldn’t be found anywhere. We subsequently found that he was hiding under the stairs, wedged in as far as he could go and it was a hard job pulling him out. Unfortunately he was not very happy with the move and was still pretty scared. Every sound had him running to the far corner of the room where he could hide. (However you’ll be pleased to know that he is now fine). By this time Frankie and Winston were back to normal and were playing like they’d lived here all their lives. Sometimes i’m sure Frankie has a memoryspan comparable to a goldfish.
Thursday morning we went to the Social Security and I filled in the form to get a number. It is very difficult to do anything in the states without ones of these and why they don’t give you one as you get your permanent resident visa I don’t know. I now have to wait a week for the number to arrive in the post (they don’t give numbers out immediately) which means I can’t apply for a driving licence, credit card or mobile phone under my own name yet. We then went to see the bank to enquire about our credit rating/mortgages and we both applied for a credit card to improve our scores. Kristen had a credit rating from when she lived in the states previously so that helped a great deal, but we are now waiting for my SSN before the card application can come through.
We’ve also got new mobile phones which are quite a bit different to those in the uk. In the States, Nokia phones are very much in the minority and the majority of phones are flip covers. There are about 3 or 4 major networks and we chose Verizon primarily because with two phones on the same network you can talk between them (and any other phone) at any time for free. (and for $5 a month you get unlimited text and picture messages too). Thankfully most of our friends and family are on verizon apart from Kristens Dad so we shouldn’t get any nasty suprises.
We got the phones from Radioshack which seemed to have the best deals that I could find locally and the guy that served us is the owner of the geocache behind the shop so we had a good chat about that too.
I also got a new wireless hub for the computers upstairs. I had brought mine with me but as its an adsl modem I had suspicions it wouldn’t work easily in the current network (cable modem) setup. Also I didn’t bring the uk power supply so I would need to get a US one, and that costs $20 yet I could buy a new wireless router for $29 from bestbuy (after rebates!) That was installed yesterday and works great and I get coverage in the basement too (which is where I am typing this from).
Later on today we get to go to the spring game at Ohio State’s football ground. (A Spring Game is where the offensive play against the defensive and is like a training match that anyone can come along to.) Really looking forward to that and I hope it doesn’t rain. Hopefully we have some decent seats so I can get some good pictures.